Speaker 1: Get in text with technology with text stuff from dot com.
Speaker 1: Hey everyone, and welcome to tex Stuff. I am Jonathan
Speaker 1: Strickland and I'm Lauren voc Obam. And you know what,
Speaker 1: I'm so sorry guys in our last episode we left
Speaker 1: you halfway through two thousand thirteen, But don't worry. We're
Speaker 1: back and we're here to pick you up and carry
Speaker 1: you the rest of the way, because otherwise, how would
Speaker 1: you ever know what would have happened in the past
Speaker 1: six months of your life? Right? I mean clearly you
Speaker 1: were sitting on the edge of your seat. How is
Speaker 1: two thousand thir taking It turned out? Well, June follow me,
Speaker 1: Yes it did, So we're picking up in June two thirteen. Uh,
Speaker 1: this is the first story we have is one that
Speaker 1: amused me because I was very curious to see how
Speaker 1: it would play out. And I'm still perplexed. Um, and
Speaker 1: we're talking about the my Space relaunch. So my Space
Speaker 1: obviously a huge social media platform back in the day. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think as of what would that have been like
Speaker 1: two thousand Yeah, Like you know, there was a time
Speaker 1: where everyone was on my Space. Facebook had just started
Speaker 1: as yeah, and and Facebook was just for college students
Speaker 1: when it first started, I couldn't. By that time, I
Speaker 1: was out of college, so I was not I was
Speaker 1: not admitted into Facebook. I didn't fit that that criterionographic. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I was, but I was on my Space, and
Speaker 1: I remember seeing Facebook opening up to the public and
Speaker 1: thinking this upstart social platforms. Never, why are they even trying?
Speaker 1: My Space already dominates the space. But then over time,
Speaker 1: you know, I got a little tired of everyone turning
Speaker 1: their profile pages into sparkly unicorns that play music at
Speaker 1: you no matter what you try to do. That was
Speaker 1: the best part of my Space. Yeah, when it became
Speaker 1: Geo City's part two. So anyway, long story short, they
Speaker 1: decided to uh, new owners came in and bought up
Speaker 1: the company. They rebranded, they relaunched, They had a twenty
Speaker 1: million all our ad campaign. Yeah, and it's really more
Speaker 1: about I mean, it was always a big place for
Speaker 1: music discovery, but now that's almost all it's about. And
Speaker 1: it's just about music discovery. But I don't know that
Speaker 1: that many people care about it. I think it was
Speaker 1: a little it was too little, too late. You had
Speaker 1: already lost a great deal of your audience, and the
Speaker 1: ones who remain are are die hards, but you're not really.
Speaker 1: I don't think that my space is attracting new audience
Speaker 1: the way they need to. I think that I think
Speaker 1: that young bands are probably going to something like Tumbler
Speaker 1: or SoundCloud or making their own um, their own blog
Speaker 1: to launch that where you can get all that stuff
Speaker 1: and or or a little bit on Facebook. Still. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: so that's a that was a tough one. Also, in June,
Speaker 1: that's when we first learned about Google's Project Loon. We
Speaker 1: talked about, right, those are those um kind of internet
Speaker 1: weather balloons. Yeah, balloons that provide WiFi to remote locations
Speaker 1: and they float in the stratsphere to do it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: We did a whole episode on that on November twenty
Speaker 1: called The Louns at Google. If you would like to
Speaker 1: go check that out. Yeah. My favorite part of that
Speaker 1: story is the Australian couple who were one of the
Speaker 1: early early alpha testers, who were approached by the Google
Speaker 1: men in black. Can we put this on your house?
Speaker 1: We can't tell you what it is or what it
Speaker 1: does or how long it will be there, And they said, okay,
Speaker 1: apparently it's very laid back on the outback. So uh,
Speaker 1: then we've got another big story. This is really we
Speaker 1: joked last last in the last episode about the biggest
Speaker 1: story of the year being Gift or Jeff. This I
Speaker 1: think is truly the biggest story of the year. Would
Speaker 1: be hard to say it's not. Absolutely. The ramifications of
Speaker 1: this one are are huge. We are, of course, talking
Speaker 1: about the story that was first broken by The Guardian
Speaker 1: and the Washington Post that coordinated together to reveal that
Speaker 1: the n s A was having a surveillance program that
Speaker 1: stretched across the Internet and was incredibly deep, to the
Speaker 1: point where it was it was farming out information from
Speaker 1: major providers like Google. It was you know, essentially tapping
Speaker 1: into that stream and seeing all the stuff that was
Speaker 1: going through UM in an attempt, at least from the
Speaker 1: NSA's point of view, to stop foreign threats against the
Speaker 1: United States. The idea of being that this was really
Speaker 1: only supposed to apply to communications between agents of foreign nations,
Speaker 1: whether that is a citizen who's working on the United
Speaker 1: States is and working on behalf of a foreign nation,
Speaker 1: or some person of uh, you know, some somewhat a
Speaker 1: foreigner who was working on behalf of a nation. UM. However,
Speaker 1: because of the way the Internet works and the way
Speaker 1: that data centers work. We it's really a quite widespread
Speaker 1: surveillance program. And not only that, but they have a
Speaker 1: very low threshold of certainty that they felt they needed
Speaker 1: to hit in order for them to identify someone as
Speaker 1: a foreign agent. In other words, you know, like if
Speaker 1: they felt fift sure that someone was a foreign agent,
Speaker 1: they would go ahead of start, which yeah, they they
Speaker 1: instructed their their operators to go a little more than
Speaker 1: a coin flip. And on top of that, there were
Speaker 1: some stories about n s A employees abusing the system,
Speaker 1: people who are using it to spy on like ex
Speaker 1: girlfriends or ex boyfriends, or people who were using it
Speaker 1: for other means, where you know, clearly this is not
Speaker 1: a foreign agent. This is people being people. And even
Speaker 1: this is a good example of how even if your
Speaker 1: system was designed to do a specific thing really well,
Speaker 1: it's really only as good as the people who are
Speaker 1: using it. So even if we were to take the
Speaker 1: n s A at their word that everything was on
Speaker 1: the up and up and everything is legal, and that's
Speaker 1: questionable to according to your point of view. I mean,
Speaker 1: the whole thing was approved by a secret court whose
Speaker 1: findings are under under a court order, so that you
Speaker 1: can't see them, you know, we we aren't allowed to
Speaker 1: actually look in on the process, but we're told that
Speaker 1: the process works. It's a complicated and frankly terrified ing story,
Speaker 1: and it's one that's played out over the entire year
Speaker 1: since then. Yeah, and and especially I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: it's the fact that we learned about all of this
Speaker 1: from a former n s A contractor, Edward Snowden, kind
Speaker 1: of proves the point of of the system is only
Speaker 1: as good its operators. Yes, because Snowdon was not like
Speaker 1: an n Essay spy. Snowdon was someone who worked on
Speaker 1: the system side of it, saw stuff that he felt
Speaker 1: the public need to. Yeah, he's he was like, this
Speaker 1: is not right, and I don't know how to act
Speaker 1: on this other than to hand this information over to
Speaker 1: the press. And so that's what Snowton did. And of course,
Speaker 1: depending upon how you view Snowden, you may think that
Speaker 1: he's a trader or you may think he's a hero.
Speaker 1: He's currently living in temporary asylum in Russia because he's
Speaker 1: essentially in exile. If he were to come back to
Speaker 1: the United States, he would immediately be arrested. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: complicated story, that's still playing out, and it's it's got
Speaker 1: a lot of ramifications outside of just this story. It's
Speaker 1: it's raised awareness about everything from online privacy to what
Speaker 1: is our expectation for uh for our government looking in
Speaker 1: on not just US, but other countries, other countries of
Speaker 1: course looking at the United States saying even if all
Speaker 1: of your citizens are cool with this, we're totally not
Speaker 1: cool with this. Yeah, and especially since you know they're
Speaker 1: they're they're monitoring so much information from so many people
Speaker 1: that that use services that either porth to America are
Speaker 1: owned by American companies that that normal citizens in many
Speaker 1: other countries are being affected by this as well. So, yeah, big,
Speaker 1: big story. Yeah, we we did. We did a two
Speaker 1: part about prison, which is that that main program that
Speaker 1: the n s A is running. Those episodes ran on
Speaker 1: July first. Excellent, so go check those out if you
Speaker 1: want to hear more about this story. Next, we have
Speaker 1: a little more lighthearted story. That was when the Uyah
Speaker 1: console launched on Amazon for it sold out basically immediately.
Speaker 1: Uh So, this was the console that had a Kickstarter
Speaker 1: campaign in two thousand twelve and was overwhell mainly successful.
Speaker 1: This was one of those stories like the Pebbles smartwatch
Speaker 1: that just you know, it just skyrocket and it really
Speaker 1: hit a nerve. However, from the at least the initial
Speaker 1: reviews of the system, a lot of people felt that um,
Speaker 1: it had a lot of potential but didn't live up
Speaker 1: to it yet it was a little bit half banked.
Speaker 1: So it may it may turn out that in the
Speaker 1: long run it turns into a console that people but
Speaker 1: are consider one of the beloved consoles. But right now,
Speaker 1: I mean a lot of those earlier reviews were pretty harsh.
Speaker 1: I remember even seeing an unboxing video where a person
Speaker 1: unboxed and showed it off to the camera and then
Speaker 1: immediately put it in a garbage can. Yeah, which I
Speaker 1: thought was you know that, come on, stay classy. But
Speaker 1: still you get the wa wait, we're on the internet.
Speaker 1: I do you know how the internet works? What's the
Speaker 1: what's the internet? I'm still on the arpanet and no
Speaker 1: one talks to me. I think I've isolated your problem.
Speaker 1: Let's move on to July, shall we. Yes? Um that's
Speaker 1: when the director of Microsoft's Xbox program, Don Matric, left
Speaker 1: the company to become the new CEO of Zenga. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which was one of those things that caused a lot
Speaker 1: of analysts to say, wait what because because because Xbox,
Speaker 1: you know, one like arguably at that point in the year,
Speaker 1: the largest gaming company. Yeah, I mean Xbox had been
Speaker 1: selling like crazy. Some people would argue that the Xbox
Speaker 1: division was the one division in Microsoft that really was
Speaker 1: doing a great job. And then Matric leaves that to
Speaker 1: go help Zinga, which had was a company that was
Speaker 1: known to be in a kind of weird spiral continual
Speaker 1: weird state of flux and Zinca of course, being that
Speaker 1: mobile gaming app company, um, that that has done things
Speaker 1: like Farmville and Words Friends, Yeah, stuff that is on
Speaker 1: mobile platforms and also on on social media platforms. And uh,
Speaker 1: I mean Zinga's old CEO actually essentially fired himself and
Speaker 1: then hired Metric, So that was an interesting story. And
Speaker 1: then uh, you know Xbox got a new director. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that would be Julie Larson Green. She is officially the
Speaker 1: executive vice President of Devices and Studios, which means that
Speaker 1: she's in charge of all Xbox hardware, devices, games, music,
Speaker 1: and entertainment. Um. This was scene is a pretty good
Speaker 1: choice by most people because she, I mean she she
Speaker 1: got her start at Microsoft overseeing the development of Visual
Speaker 1: c plus plus. She helped create the ribbon for Office
Speaker 1: two thousands. She's the previous co leader of Windows. She
Speaker 1: led the planning on Windows seven. Um, so she had
Speaker 1: some chops, some serious chops. Let me guess what the
Speaker 1: problem was. She was a she. She was a she
Speaker 1: and some really sexist gamers and she, I mean, she
Speaker 1: happens to be like more or less like symmetrical in
Speaker 1: her face, and so therefore a lot of really sexist
Speaker 1: gamers were like that pretty lady can't possibly be a
Speaker 1: gamer or know enough about games to do stuff and things.
Speaker 1: And to be fair, she's she's self professed like not
Speaker 1: huge into gaming. But I don't think we're not talking
Speaker 1: about the business side of things. It's it's not like
Speaker 1: the president of the Xbox division is the person who
Speaker 1: decides which games get made and which ones don't. This
Speaker 1: is someone who's got a vision for the overall consoles direction.
Speaker 1: And also, I would like to posit that if in
Speaker 1: fact we chose Xbox is president by like the person
Speaker 1: who got the best gamer score. Uh yeah, it would
Speaker 1: be terrible. These would be these companies would be in shambles.
Speaker 1: So come on, guys, all right, at any rate. So
Speaker 1: Also in July, Google unveiled Chrome Cast, which is a
Speaker 1: cute little dongle that can connect to a television's h
Speaker 1: d M I port and over WiFi. It can pick
Speaker 1: up signals from your laptop or mobile device and stream
Speaker 1: from the content on your computer or a mobile device
Speaker 1: to the television. So, in other words, if you don't
Speaker 1: have something like a game console or some other set
Speaker 1: top box that brings in web content, or you've got
Speaker 1: one but it's really limited, like it only brings in
Speaker 1: web con tip from very specific sources, this would give
Speaker 1: you more flexibility. I actually own one of these, and uh,
Speaker 1: and I've got a lot of different options when it
Speaker 1: comes to getting web content on my TV because I'm
Speaker 1: I don't know if you know this. I like technology,
Speaker 1: so but I got one of these, and it turns
Speaker 1: out that I love this because if you want to
Speaker 1: look for something specific on let's say YouTube, Let's say,
Speaker 1: as you want to you want to look at a
Speaker 1: YouTube video on your large screen, UM, this would be
Speaker 1: a way of being able to do a search very quickly,
Speaker 1: whereas a lot of the different consoles and set top
Speaker 1: boxes out there have very clunky search features. If you're
Speaker 1: not using something that has voice command where you can say,
Speaker 1: look for that funny video where the cat falls asleep,
Speaker 1: then you're gonna have some trouble. But if you're able
Speaker 1: to go to your laptop and just do a quick
Speaker 1: search by typing out a few keywords and then casting it,
Speaker 1: you know, streaming it from your computer to the TV,
Speaker 1: it makes it much simpler. And it's also a super
Speaker 1: relatively speaking, a super cheap device. Yeah, it retails for
Speaker 1: like thirty five bucks. I think thirty five bucks. I
Speaker 1: was on a waiting list because by the time I
Speaker 1: ordered it, it it already I had been announced and then
Speaker 1: initially sold out. But even on the waiting list, I
Speaker 1: think I had to wait maybe two weeks and then
Speaker 1: I got mine and that was when it first came out.
Speaker 1: So speaking of waiting lists, though, hey, oh yeah, this
Speaker 1: is a story that fills me with joy. And this
Speaker 1: one was not perhaps one of the largest stories of
Speaker 1: the year, but but it is very, very close to
Speaker 1: Jonathan's heart if you've listened to that. I can't remember
Speaker 1: what episode it was where I totally lost it on
Speaker 1: this particular story. I do remember doing that, and whether
Speaker 1: we edited most of that out or not. But but
Speaker 1: in in July, best Buy began stalking Pebble smart watches,
Speaker 1: um uh, slightly before all of the Kickstarter backers of
Speaker 1: of the Pedal Project had received their own right, I
Speaker 1: was not a Kickstarter project backer, so I was not
Speaker 1: expecting pre order. Yeah I was. I was a pre order,
Speaker 1: But yeah, I I like to think that when you
Speaker 1: pre order, I'm gonna have the same brand. I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna do it. I'm not gonna do it. You pre
Speaker 1: ordered a special color and they had not manufactured that
Speaker 1: color yet, that the ones available best Buy were only
Speaker 1: the black. That's true. And I got the I got
Speaker 1: the very style. Only that on the back of it
Speaker 1: it says Kickstarter Edition. And I was not a Kickstarter backer,
Speaker 1: and yet I got a Kickstarter edition watch, so I
Speaker 1: cannot really complain. Also, I love that watch. I'm not
Speaker 1: wearing it right now. I accidentally left it at home.
Speaker 1: I had that he usually is I usually do wear it. Um.
Speaker 1: I love it. It is one of my favorite gadgets
Speaker 1: that I've picked up in the last couple of years.
Speaker 1: And it's you know, people say, well, the Pebble smart
Speaker 1: watch is kind of limited what it can do, which
Speaker 1: is true. But what it does do, it does really
Speaker 1: well and I like the things that it does do. So, um,
Speaker 1: I've really had If you ever watch any of my
Speaker 1: forward thinking videos, anyone I shot after the I got
Speaker 1: that watch, you'll see that watch on my wrist. So
Speaker 1: but yes, there was a moment where I was I
Speaker 1: was curssing pebble. Uh. Next, we have a story that
Speaker 1: developed and we also covered this in an episode of
Speaker 1: tech Stuff. This was a special episode of tech Stuff
Speaker 1: that Lauren you you you weren't there. Yeah, I was
Speaker 1: out at one of my two best friends got married
Speaker 1: two weekends in a row in October, So I missed
Speaker 1: a little bit of things due to insanity and travel plans.
Speaker 1: And Ben Bolan was kind enough to step in and
Speaker 1: do this episode with Jonathan about Elon Musk's hyper loop yep,
Speaker 1: and Elon Musk, of course, founder of Tesla Motors, founder
Speaker 1: of SpaceX. Everyone has acknowledged that this dude is really
Speaker 1: smart and really good at the business, and so he
Speaker 1: had been teasing for a while that he had this
Speaker 1: this cool idea for a new kind of transportation system,
Speaker 1: and eventually he leaked that it was going to be
Speaker 1: called the hyper loop, or that His concept was called
Speaker 1: hyper loop, right, not that it was going to be
Speaker 1: called because we're not really positive that this is going
Speaker 1: to come to fruition ever. Yeah, no one has any
Speaker 1: plans of actually building this. In fact, even Musk was
Speaker 1: saying like it would be great if someone took this on,
Speaker 1: suggesting that he himself was not going to be that person.
Speaker 1: And to be fair, Musk has a lot on his plate.
Speaker 1: So anyway, little bit busy with you know, to Tesla
Speaker 1: motors and space. Little things like getting people into space
Speaker 1: and getting electric super fast cars on the road does
Speaker 1: take a lot of time. What what would not take
Speaker 1: a lot of time if Hyperlooper built would be a
Speaker 1: trip between San Francisco and Los Angeles, which would be
Speaker 1: only thirty five minutes in duration. Right, Uh, yeah, these
Speaker 1: this is a electromagnetic train kind of thing. And yeah,
Speaker 1: each each car is its own little capsule. It would
Speaker 1: float on a cushion of air. Those electromagnetic motors would
Speaker 1: provide the push that would allow it to go around
Speaker 1: this loop track between San Francisco and l A and
Speaker 1: um and supposedly you would travel at at a top
Speaker 1: be that would be faster than what most commercial jets
Speaker 1: travel at Uh. You know, it remains to be seeing
Speaker 1: whether this is even feasible because no one has an
Speaker 1: actual example of this to show that it truly would
Speaker 1: work efficiently. If you listen to the hyper loop episode
Speaker 1: we did, you will, Yeah, that one, that one published
Speaker 1: on NOVEM. You're looking for it, so just go back
Speaker 1: and check that one out. Let's move on to August.
Speaker 1: Big story. We only have one story for August, but
Speaker 1: it's a big one. Yeah. That was when Microsoft CEO
Speaker 1: Steve Balmber announced that he was going to step down. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which you know, some people had been calling for for
Speaker 1: Balmer to step down for a couple of years. Developers, developers, developers.
Speaker 1: I think the developers liked them, but I'm not sure
Speaker 1: that anyone else did. Um No, I'm not. That's being unfair,
Speaker 1: but there were there have been people who have said
Speaker 1: that Microsoft suffers from a lack of true leadership. I
Speaker 1: was never one of those people. I thought that Balmber
Speaker 1: certainly was a powerful leader, but I didn't I wasn't
Speaker 1: always sure that his vision of Microsoft was something that
Speaker 1: aligned with what a lot of us the rank and file,
Speaker 1: would consider, you know, really to be memorable or or relevant.
Speaker 1: Now he was trying to to to straddle that line
Speaker 1: between enterprise and consumers, and that's tough to do. That
Speaker 1: is very tough to do. I also think that he
Speaker 1: just has some a little bit of like charisma within
Speaker 1: the press issues going on, where he kind of frequently
Speaker 1: doesn't come off I think as well as he wants to,
Speaker 1: or he could. He certainly comes off as enthusiastic, yes,
Speaker 1: but perhaps not as a suave or like Steve Jobs
Speaker 1: could come out and in just a super cool kind
Speaker 1: of way for for geeks, super cool for geeks. Okay,
Speaker 1: we're talking about a niche audience here, but in a
Speaker 1: super cool kind of way, really drum up your excitement
Speaker 1: for something. Uh, and Balmer could come out and you'd
Speaker 1: be afraid he'd throw a chair at you. But but
Speaker 1: you know, to be fair to Balmer, I mean, he
Speaker 1: really obviously loves Yeah, so he um and his responses
Speaker 1: in the wake of the announcement, it seemed to me
Speaker 1: that it didn't sound like it was entirely his decision
Speaker 1: to step down. It seemed to be like he was
Speaker 1: someone who, you know, was really passionate about this company
Speaker 1: and doesn't necessarily have a vision for what comes next.
Speaker 1: For him UM, and the question of who will be
Speaker 1: Microsoft's next CEO remains unanswered as of the recording of
Speaker 1: this podcast. We are recording on December twelve, so it
Speaker 1: is possible that before the end of the year that
Speaker 1: that decision has been made. But right now they're looking
Speaker 1: at a couple of different candidates, Um, some of whom
Speaker 1: are people who are known to be great leaders but
Speaker 1: have no experience in the computer or software industries. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're going to talk a little bit about that, I
Speaker 1: think and predictions episode. Yeah. So, anyway, that was that
Speaker 1: was a big story for August and we have gotten
Speaker 1: through a Q three, so we want to hit SHU four.
Speaker 1: But before we do that, let's take a quick break
Speaker 1: to thank our sponsor. You know, try to remember the
Speaker 1: kind of September when grass was green and grain was yellow.
Speaker 1: We're talking September. I'm quoting from the Fantastics. If you
Speaker 1: recognize that, you are awesome. So September, that's traditionally when
Speaker 1: a company that rhymes with schmapple comes out and uh
Speaker 1: and and whips the crowd into a rabid fervor of
Speaker 1: joy and consumption. Right. Yeah, and they did tuberculosis consumption.
Speaker 1: They certainly. I hope not. I've forgotten that from my iPhone.
Speaker 1: There's no app for that. I no, No, that's that's
Speaker 1: when they unveiled the iPhone five C and five S.
Speaker 1: And it's funny because one of your predictions was all
Speaker 1: about the US and you were and one of my
Speaker 1: predictions was kind of about this. I think either way,
Speaker 1: one of us predicted this and we were around the money.
Speaker 1: I think I think that was you. I want to
Speaker 1: I want to say that you said that there was
Speaker 1: going to be a new iPhone and that you were
Speaker 1: the one who called it iPhone five. Say it was
Speaker 1: a tag team victory. Excellent. Now now it all comes
Speaker 1: back to me, high fives. Um. So the five S
Speaker 1: was the slightly more hardware update update. Yeah, faster processor,
Speaker 1: better screen, biometric fingerprints, scanner, some all a little cool
Speaker 1: bells and whistles were added to that one. The five
Speaker 1: C was basically just a cheaper version of the of
Speaker 1: the five of the original five. Get it in a
Speaker 1: different color than wide or black, in in multiple kind
Speaker 1: of awful colors. Stupid color. I don't know. I'm sure
Speaker 1: there are people out there who accessorize everything, and you've
Speaker 1: got you know, your gorgeous phone. That's a gorgeous color.
Speaker 1: I'm a simple I just want a black phone. It's
Speaker 1: it's for me personally, that's what That's what cases are for.
Speaker 1: But I can certainly understand the cheaper part being a
Speaker 1: big draw. Yeah. Sure. September was also the month when
Speaker 1: Blockbuster Incorporated declared bankruptcy, which followed Blockbuster UK. They had
Speaker 1: declared bankruptcy back in January, but in the United States
Speaker 1: the main company didn't declare until September. Yeah. By November
Speaker 1: they would have closed all of their US brick and
Speaker 1: mortar stores, right right that they announced that they would
Speaker 1: do that by January. Yeah, So no longer will you
Speaker 1: walk into a neighborhood Blockbuster and look at the multiple
Speaker 1: copies of Parent Trapped two and say, yeah, I just
Speaker 1: don't know what to watch. Now you can do that
Speaker 1: from the convenience of a red box, yes, or streaming
Speaker 1: or streaming. So, in fact, Blockbuster still does have a
Speaker 1: streaming service. Although I've read some pretty critical reviews of
Speaker 1: that cular service, I have not used it, so I
Speaker 1: am I'm not sure what the quality is because I've
Speaker 1: never personally used it. It's in partnership with Dish though,
Speaker 1: which is you know, big enough that I think, you know,
Speaker 1: it certainly has the potential to live on Dish essentially
Speaker 1: bought Blockbuster um and has decided to shut down all
Speaker 1: the retail because it just looks like that's you know,
Speaker 1: that's that's in the past. It everything seems to be
Speaker 1: moving toward online distribution, which is not a big surprise
Speaker 1: to anyone who's been paying attention to the last few years.
Speaker 1: Oh sure. And also, I mean even for for offline distribution,
Speaker 1: I think that just when you're competing with a company
Speaker 1: like red Box that has these you know, I mean
Speaker 1: basically zero footprint machines instead of large retail spaces that
Speaker 1: you have to build out and and and pay, you know,
Speaker 1: even if you're competing against like Netflix's DVD service, which
Speaker 1: a lot of us forget about but still exists. So yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a tough story for them. That brings us into October, right.
Speaker 1: That's more Apple news Maple Yep, that's when they So
Speaker 1: they had already updated their iPhones, but that's not good
Speaker 1: enough for Apple. They have to update lots of stuff.
Speaker 1: They updated their iPad line. They introduced the iPad air,
Speaker 1: which is I will admit a gloriously beautiful looking device.
Speaker 1: Apple is pretty good at that. I don't own one.
Speaker 1: I don't think I'll be buying one anytime soon, but
Speaker 1: I can certainly see the appeal of it. Yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: They also introduced a new MacBook Pro YEP, a couple
Speaker 1: of different models of that, and they introduced they had
Speaker 1: already announced the new operating system, but this is when
Speaker 1: they actually were launching Mavericks, which was that was a
Speaker 1: big departure, right, Yeah, well a it's not named after
Speaker 1: a big cat, um, so that was that was weird there.
Speaker 1: But but also that it would be a free download
Speaker 1: for current Mac os owners. Yeah, so it wasn't something
Speaker 1: where you'd have to go and purchase this operating system update.
Speaker 1: You could download it for free, which is a new model.
Speaker 1: Is essentially kind of sends a message saying that Apple
Speaker 1: is getting into more and more of the hardware side
Speaker 1: of thing as their main revenue generation point and not
Speaker 1: the operating system side. Also, I think it was a
Speaker 1: huge bite of the thumb in the face of Microsoft
Speaker 1: and all of their all of their Windows eight problems. Yes,
Speaker 1: Apple was the montague to Microsoft's capulet, and they did
Speaker 1: bite their thumb at them. Uh yes, yes, sah, yes, indeed. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: that was a that was a big story actually because again,
Speaker 1: you know, Microsoft, we didn't really cover it in this
Speaker 1: in this uh look back a but Microsoft didn't have
Speaker 1: a whole of success with Windows eight. And yeah, that's
Speaker 1: kind of why we don't have to have a bullet
Speaker 1: in here because nothing happened with it. Yeah, just it
Speaker 1: was one of those things where people who liked it
Speaker 1: really liked it, but there weren't that many people. A
Speaker 1: lot of people just didn't try it. So it could
Speaker 1: be that the potential audience is huge, but the actual
Speaker 1: audience is pretty small. So you know, offering up your
Speaker 1: os for free was again thumbing the nose or biting
Speaker 1: the thumbs somewhere. That hand is somewhere in front of
Speaker 1: the face and things are not polite. Thumbs are involved.
Speaker 1: Also in October, that's when um, Jeff Bezos, the CEO
Speaker 1: of course of Amazon, officially took over as the owner
Speaker 1: of the Washington Post newspaper, which was a big shake
Speaker 1: up in the in the newspaper industry. Oh yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I mean the paper had been owned by the same
Speaker 1: the same family, um, the Graham family for eighty years. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a long time. So he paid a cool two
Speaker 1: fifty million for that, which some people had suggested was
Speaker 1: actually too much, saying that you know, print is on
Speaker 1: the way out. Sure, but you know, I think that
Speaker 1: it's interesting, um for for Amazon to absorb that kind
Speaker 1: of news service, especially when you compare them to uh
Speaker 1: to to say, the Apple family of of of iTunes
Speaker 1: news distribution like that. Um. But for for more of
Speaker 1: the crazy things that um, Amazon and Bezos do, we
Speaker 1: did a two part series on on them that aired
Speaker 1: February of this year. Yep, so of course that pre
Speaker 1: dates this particular story. But and also I should point
Speaker 1: out that, uh, I believe it's Bezos who owns Washington
Speaker 1: Post and it's separate from Amazon entirely, which well, I
Speaker 1: don't know how long that will last or exactly. I
Speaker 1: wonder if Bezos is just positioning himself to be the
Speaker 1: next Hearst newspaper bar and if he builds a castle,
Speaker 1: and then if he buys a sled, just watch out.
Speaker 1: That's all I'm saying, no spoilers, but watch out other
Speaker 1: things to kind of watch out for a mysterious barge
Speaker 1: off the coast of San Francisco. Gosh. I remember hearing
Speaker 1: this story and I was immediately enthralled the idea that
Speaker 1: there was a barge and no one was really sure
Speaker 1: why it was there, and it had canisters aren't that
Speaker 1: made it four stories tall? And it was off Treasure
Speaker 1: Island off the coast of San Francisco. And I'm like,
Speaker 1: is this is this a pirate story that's happening? I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, granted it's not a Spanish War galleon or anything,
Speaker 1: but still, and turned out, uh well, eventually people figured
Speaker 1: out that was connected to Google, although Google was being
Speaker 1: very sly and not saying anything about it. And then
Speaker 1: the question was, well, what is it? Some people thought
Speaker 1: that perhaps it was gonna be one of those floating
Speaker 1: data centers that Google had created a patent four years ago,
Speaker 1: where the idea would be that you would use the
Speaker 1: ocean water to help keep the data center cool and
Speaker 1: you and harness even the power of the tides to
Speaker 1: to get power for your data center, and that maybe
Speaker 1: this was going to be the first one. And other
Speaker 1: people are saying, no, it's just gonna be a giant
Speaker 1: floating mall for really rich people to buy their Google
Speaker 1: glass and as it turns out it looks like it's
Speaker 1: a really giant mall for really rich people to buy
Speaker 1: their Google Glass and other Google x projects. So assuming
Speaker 1: that Google can pull together all of the correct regulation
Speaker 1: kind of kind of paperwork, yeah, it might be open sometime. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It turns out that a lot of different entities began
Speaker 1: to say, you know, Google, We're gonna need a little
Speaker 1: proof that you can operate this safely and within the
Speaker 1: laws of the United States. So the Coast Guard got interested,
Speaker 1: among other entities. So there's gonna be some price, some
Speaker 1: forms to fill out before this ever opens. Um. I
Speaker 1: am curious to find out if only like the super
Speaker 1: Google stuff is ever sold there. Like you can buy
Speaker 1: Google Glass and an autonomous car and that's it, and
Speaker 1: you have to drive that car back over. It's like
Speaker 1: bang bang um. Also in October, the the Affordable Care
Speaker 1: Acts website went into um healthcare dot gov. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: was one of those things that now it had garnered
Speaker 1: a lot of criticism before it even launched. Uh. Well,
Speaker 1: first of all, there's a political side of it, huge
Speaker 1: political controversy and lots of back and forth and many
Speaker 1: many many months of lots of tiresome arguments on that
Speaker 1: are still going on. But even apart from all the
Speaker 1: political arguments, there were some people who they divorced themselves
Speaker 1: from the whole political side. They just said, you announced
Speaker 1: us back, you know, in the spring of and you
Speaker 1: plan on launching it in the fall of That's not
Speaker 1: enough time to design and quality do do q A
Speaker 1: testing for a major operation like this website that millions
Speaker 1: of people are going to be trying to access potentially
Speaker 1: at the same time, right, and uh so, there were
Speaker 1: a lot of critics who were saying, like, you really,
Speaker 1: this this, this deadline is far too ambitious. Don't you
Speaker 1: want to actually have that or But but they went
Speaker 1: ahead and tried to launch it, and sure enough, there
Speaker 1: were technical problems early early on. The site suffered some
Speaker 1: for a couple of months. Really, I mean, I I
Speaker 1: kind of just heard within recent weeks that they put
Speaker 1: out a redesign early in December, I want to say,
Speaker 1: and and I've heard that people have been having more
Speaker 1: success with that. There's still some technical problems that pop up,
Speaker 1: but it was it was one of those things that
Speaker 1: it certainly didn't help the debate, you know, people pointed
Speaker 1: to the to that as being another another talking point
Speaker 1: in time, they got into an argument about the Affordable
Speaker 1: Care Act. Uh, it does seem like it is working
Speaker 1: better now than it was before, although you know, your
Speaker 1: mileage may vary on any given day. So but still
Speaker 1: that's one of the stories that we had to cover.
Speaker 1: So that brings us into November. Now we're getting into
Speaker 1: the recent past for for us, because pretty soon we're
Speaker 1: gonna be talking about the future because there's one one,
Speaker 1: one item on our list that has not yet happened.
Speaker 1: But anyway, as of the recording of this podcast, anyway,
Speaker 1: so November that's when, uh, well big big news for
Speaker 1: people who like to fly right right, the f a
Speaker 1: A announced that they were going to relax restrictions um
Speaker 1: almost immediately after we published an episode about their restrictions
Speaker 1: on using electronics during flight. I'd like to think that
Speaker 1: we caused them to really examine their policies and question
Speaker 1: whether or not they were actually useful. I think that
Speaker 1: had to have been at Jonathan. I think that we're
Speaker 1: doing really important work. My ego demands that that's the truth. Anyway,
Speaker 1: But so so at this point, you can, well, okay,
Speaker 1: it depend on any given airline providers regulations most airlines
Speaker 1: are going to probably fall right in line with it quickly,
Speaker 1: because no one wants to be the airline the one
Speaker 1: airline that doesn't allow their customers to do that, and
Speaker 1: then everyone's like, well, I'm just gonna go fly on
Speaker 1: this other one from now on. Yeah. But but so
Speaker 1: for it's already rolling out in many airlines, and for
Speaker 1: the most part, you can use electronic devices as long
Speaker 1: as it's not using a cellular phone signal. Right, Um,
Speaker 1: while you know, I mean from you know, the moment
Speaker 1: that you are seated until the moment that you land
Speaker 1: ready to get off the plane, so you can just
Speaker 1: keep that, don't need to shut it down during takeoff
Speaker 1: and landing, and keep that creative. Was it a creative
Speaker 1: labs uh MP three player that weighs four hundred pounds
Speaker 1: going the entire time? I do have one of those somewhere.
Speaker 1: But yeah, you still you still cannot use cell phone signals. Um,
Speaker 1: although that's also up for debate. Now that's up for debate. UM.
Speaker 1: It's It's also part of the problem is that it's
Speaker 1: uh that's tied up in the Federal Communications Commissions. So
Speaker 1: it's not just it's also the FCC much more complicated. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Um and and again yes, we we did a full
Speaker 1: episode on that on September if you would like to
Speaker 1: listen to exactly why we thought that they should do
Speaker 1: what they announced that they were going to do. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which clearly happened afterwards. Because we're talking November now, so
Speaker 1: I mean correlation, causation, same thing, right, all right, moving on.
Speaker 1: Also in November, a certain company held its initial public
Speaker 1: offering or I p O. Yeah, Twitter, Yeah, big, big,
Speaker 1: crazy news is it's kind of in the footsteps of
Speaker 1: Facebook's about a year previous I p O sort of
Speaker 1: kind of. Um. They their IPO launched with an offer
Speaker 1: of twenty six dollars per share. Yeah, that was the
Speaker 1: offer price that was before went on on actually the market,
Speaker 1: but they said the offer price was gonna be twenty
Speaker 1: six dollars per share. As it turns out, once the
Speaker 1: market actually opened, the opening price, which is not the
Speaker 1: same the offer price head was a little higher. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I had jumped all the way to uh forty five
Speaker 1: dollars and ten cents, and the peak that day was
Speaker 1: fifty dollars and nine cents per share. However, that's not
Speaker 1: what it closed at. It settled back down at Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that means that it was actually by the end
Speaker 1: of the day a little lower than what it was
Speaker 1: when it first started, which meant that if you bought
Speaker 1: it at the very beginning of the day and you
Speaker 1: were holding onto it at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: you technically lost cents. But share per share per share
Speaker 1: right now importantly. Um. You know however, uh no, I mean,
Speaker 1: that's that's great for you know, for for for a
Speaker 1: company that is still way behind say Facebook in users.
Speaker 1: It doesn't have a billion users, certainly not um but
Speaker 1: but you know, that's that's great. I was excited for him,
Speaker 1: and it's It's interesting because this is one of those
Speaker 1: I remember I was doing research for this podcast, and
Speaker 1: uh and I pulled up information about Twitter and the
Speaker 1: i p O and what reactions were to it, and
Speaker 1: two results back to back, where one was a person
Speaker 1: who wrote about how the Twitter i p O was
Speaker 1: a huge success for Twitter, and the other one was
Speaker 1: that Twitter i PO was a huge failure for Twitter.
Speaker 1: And thought, oh, finance, no wonder, I don't understand you.
Speaker 1: You're like quantum mechanics. It's in super position. It's both
Speaker 1: failing and succeeding at the same time, I think it's
Speaker 1: one of those time will tell kind of stories. And
Speaker 1: it's still it's still early. We'll still find out another
Speaker 1: another thing currently in weird financial development. Um, the value
Speaker 1: of bitcoins did did some crazy things this year. At
Speaker 1: the beginning of the year, they were pretty cheap, like
Speaker 1: twelve to thirteen bucks, yeah, right around you know, right
Speaker 1: at the very top end of twelve dollars, a low
Speaker 1: in the thirteen dollars depending upon the day you were
Speaker 1: looking at it. But yeah, throughout the year the value changed, uh,
Speaker 1: significantly all the way to the point on November twenty nine,
Speaker 1: the currency hit it's all time high so far as
Speaker 1: of the recording of this podcast of one thousand, two
Speaker 1: hundred forty two dollars per coin, which is a ten thousand,
Speaker 1: more than ten percent increase in value. Uh. It's since
Speaker 1: then dropped down to a little bit below a thousand dollars,
Speaker 1: it's sixty or something. Yeah, But um, I mean, oh see,
Speaker 1: this is why I say it's not I can't think
Speaker 1: of it as a currency because investment. Yeah, because you can't, like,
Speaker 1: how would I price something so that you could buy
Speaker 1: it with bitcoin? Knowing that the next day I could
Speaker 1: have potentially lost out on thousands of dollars, or that
Speaker 1: your your buyer could have lost out on thousands of
Speaker 1: dollars if they were buying, you know, a key chain
Speaker 1: from you. Then suddenly that key chain is worth yea,
Speaker 1: like like I paid what I thought was going to
Speaker 1: be three dollars for this key chain, but now it
Speaker 1: turns out I paid three thousand dollars for this key chain. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's that's why I say it's hard
Speaker 1: to call it a real currency because the volatility means
Speaker 1: that you cannot have a stable economy. You can't as
Speaker 1: a vendor, it's very dangerous for you to create any
Speaker 1: price for your items unless those are dynamically priced so
Speaker 1: that they reflect whatever the current value of bitcoin is,
Speaker 1: which means anytime anyone visits your store, the prices are
Speaker 1: going to look very different day to day. So it
Speaker 1: makes it really hard to have a stable economy. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: And I am not a finance person, but that's that
Speaker 1: just seems it seems like logic that brings us up
Speaker 1: to December. Yeah, and I think that we only have
Speaker 1: one bullet point. Technically we have to add yes, So
Speaker 1: anarchy is this first there's the the biggest, the other
Speaker 1: big announcement that Jeff Bezos was involved in where he
Speaker 1: went on sixty minutes um right before Cyber Monday, he
Speaker 1: went on sixty minutes and talked about his plans to
Speaker 1: launch Amazon Prime Air launch. I like what you did there, Laurence.
Speaker 1: I didn't mean to what you did. Well, I'll remember
Speaker 1: this day, Okay. So anyway, so Amazon Prime Air is
Speaker 1: a drone delivery service, or will hypothetically be a drone
Speaker 1: delivery service, assuming that many things and including technology, pricing,
Speaker 1: and regulations all fall into place, right, and it would
Speaker 1: it would all that's like a pun too. It would
Speaker 1: end up taking off four to five years if the
Speaker 1: idea fly. But it may turn out that, you know
Speaker 1: something that maybe one or multiple factors caused this idea
Speaker 1: to drop like a stone and not glide on by.
Speaker 1: I'm I'm running out, I'm running out. So yeah, Amazon
Speaker 1: Prime Air, if it happens, that means that, you know,
Speaker 1: we might have robots delivering our our our stuff. Are
Speaker 1: are our stuff under five pounds? Yeah? If we live
Speaker 1: within ten miles of a fulfillment center, and I'm guessing
Speaker 1: there's going to be potentially a hefty delivery fee. I
Speaker 1: would certainly guess that personally, Yeah, yeah, I would. I've
Speaker 1: seen people say like, is this going to put people
Speaker 1: of a job. My guess is that to make this
Speaker 1: make economic sense, there would have to be an additional
Speaker 1: delivery fee if you had to have something within half
Speaker 1: an hour, which would mean that a lot of people
Speaker 1: would opt out of it and say, you know what,
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna wait for it to get to meet
Speaker 1: through regular means. I would suspect that it would be
Speaker 1: pricing on on par at least with overnight delivery pricing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but at least Yeah. So here's my final bullet, the
Speaker 1: one that does not appear on your notes. Technically, the
Speaker 1: reason why it doesn't appear on your notes is I
Speaker 1: added it at the last minute. And also today, as
Speaker 1: we said, is December twelve when we're recording this. Yeah, this,
Speaker 1: this news refers to something that should happen on the thirteenth,
Speaker 1: So by the time you, dear listener, are listening to
Speaker 1: this episode, it will have already happened, unless it didn't.
Speaker 1: And uh that is that the Steam operating system is
Speaker 1: supposed to be available starting tomorrow, December Friday. I'll be
Speaker 1: right back. Uh that uh, you know, so assuming that
Speaker 1: that all goes well, we're going to have this new
Speaker 1: operating system on the market, which potentially could end up
Speaker 1: being down the line a real competitor against some of
Speaker 1: the next generation consoles that have just come out current generation.
Speaker 1: I keep saying next generation now they're current, but Xbox
Speaker 1: one and PS four, oh and also Nintendo. We you,
Speaker 1: I don't know, we keep forgetting about that. Everybody else anyway,
Speaker 1: So if that in fact happened or did not happen,
Speaker 1: we don't know yet, So you guys should write us
Speaker 1: and let us know. Actually we're gonna go ahead and
Speaker 1: wrap up this whole conversation. So yeah, yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, overall, I I hope that this has been
Speaker 1: an enjoyable look back at twenty. It's always fun to remember,
Speaker 1: like like their stories here, they're like, oh, yeah, that
Speaker 1: did happen to happen, and you know, just it's weird
Speaker 1: for perspective purposes of of how quickly some things went
Speaker 1: out or failed to go out. And yeah, yeah, this
Speaker 1: also marks a full year of you podcasting on tech stuff.
Speaker 1: Oh my goodness, how does that feel? That feels very strange?
Speaker 1: Ye yep. So I hope, I hope that that you
Speaker 1: have enjoyed my learning curve. Y'all, Well, it certainly didn't
Speaker 1: take you very long to get the grasp of it,
Speaker 1: so so I think the listeners agree with me. And
Speaker 1: if you don't keep it to yourself yet, so and
Speaker 1: so's all right. But for the rest of you guys
Speaker 1: who want to chime in with constructive things to say,
Speaker 1: like suggestions for future episodes. Maybe there's something about fourteen
Speaker 1: that really has you excited and that's something you want
Speaker 1: us to talk about, Or maybe there's something that happened
Speaker 1: in ten fourteen and you're like, I wanted to hear
Speaker 1: a podcast about that. We've been known to do those
Speaker 1: kind of things. Write us and let us know our
Speaker 1: email addresses tex stuff at Discovery dot com, or drop
Speaker 1: us a line on Facebook, Twitter or Tumbler. You can
Speaker 1: find us there. Our handle is text stuff hs W
Speaker 1: and Laren and I will talk to you again in
Speaker 1: two thousand and fourteen. For more on this and thousands
Speaker 1: of other topics. Does it how staff works dot com