Speaker 1: I'm Julie Douglas, host of The Stuff of Life, a
Speaker 1: podcast that teases apart the tales we tell, because when
Speaker 1: we crack open a story and look inside, we see
Speaker 1: the seeds of what make our world so maddening, so strange,
Speaker 1: and so achingly beautiful. The Stuff of Life is a
Speaker 1: podcast about how we're all just getting by, learning and
Speaker 1: surviving through the stories that we share. We'll look at
Speaker 1: everything from fear and what fuels it, the inconceivability of
Speaker 1: death and our desire to become immortal, to the big
Speaker 1: universal question in life, why don't men dance? Join you
Speaker 1: for the first episode on January. You can find The
Speaker 1: Stuff of Life on iTunes or any other podcast provider.
Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with Hope Stuff from how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host Jonathan Strictly. Now we're at the close
Speaker 1: of two thousand fifteen, so that means it's time to
Speaker 1: look at some of the big tech stories of the
Speaker 1: past twelve months and to see what the tech world
Speaker 1: has been up to over the last year. Now, in
Speaker 1: full disclosure, I am recording this on December third, two
Speaker 1: thousand fifteen, So when I get to the month of December,
Speaker 1: there's not gonna be anything to talk about because nothing
Speaker 1: really has happened yet. But there's a ton of stuff
Speaker 1: to talk about from the previous months. So starting way
Speaker 1: back in January, first, I'll talk about c e S
Speaker 1: two thousand fifteen. I attended that last year, as well
Speaker 1: as the seven years before that. At any rate, it
Speaker 1: was all about things like wearables, the Internet of Things,
Speaker 1: automated systems, and four K displays and eight K displays.
Speaker 1: Those were all the big, big items that were kind
Speaker 1: of taking center stage at CES. There were a lot
Speaker 1: of other devices that were also kind of capturing people's imagination.
Speaker 1: I saw a lot of the very various devices meant
Speaker 1: to allow you to scoot around, whether it was electric
Speaker 1: skateboards like the hoverboard type stuff, or roller skates even
Speaker 1: and some other ones. I didn't brave those. I didn't
Speaker 1: try them because I was pretty convinced i'd be one
Speaker 1: of the outlying statistics of people capable of falling down
Speaker 1: on something that is supposed to be impossible to fall
Speaker 1: off of. IM pretty sure I could. I could prove
Speaker 1: them wrong on that one. We also saw more VR
Speaker 1: headsets on display also a lot of conversion kits that
Speaker 1: turned phones into VR screens. Augmented reality was still something
Speaker 1: that we were kind of seeing some products show off,
Speaker 1: but I don't think anyone has found the perfect implementation
Speaker 1: of that, with the possible exception of the hollow lens,
Speaker 1: but that isn't yet available for consumers. Uh We also
Speaker 1: saw a lot of autonomous vehicles, which I would argue
Speaker 1: as another technology that's still in the incubation period. I
Speaker 1: think we've got a lot of evidence to show that
Speaker 1: autonomous cars are safer and more reliable than human drivers
Speaker 1: are on a day to day basis, but still gonna
Speaker 1: take some time before that is ready for actual street use,
Speaker 1: at least in widespread fashion. Early in January two thousand fifteen,
Speaker 1: the White House approved of sanctions against North Korea. Now,
Speaker 1: this was in response to the two thousand fourteen Sony hack.
Speaker 1: Some cybersecurity experts expressed doubts that North Korea was the
Speaker 1: originator of the attacks, but the government, specifically the FBI
Speaker 1: and some other agencies said no, this this seems to
Speaker 1: be the work of hackers out of North Korea. Uh
Speaker 1: So there was some disagreement there in the cybersecurity industry,
Speaker 1: but in general it looked like fingers were pointing to
Speaker 1: North Korea, so the White House approved of sanctions against
Speaker 1: North Korea. North Korea's reaction was understandably one of um disdain.
Speaker 1: I guess is a good word, but whether North Korea
Speaker 1: was ultimately responsible for the hack or not, that was
Speaker 1: the expected reaction UM. During his State of the Union address,
Speaker 1: United States President Barack Obama pledged to expand broadband service
Speaker 1: to more United States citizens. Also wanted to push for
Speaker 1: net neutrality and invest in cybersecurity measures, all of which
Speaker 1: were prevalent on the minds of people. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: one of those things that especially the Sony hack had
Speaker 1: brought into the limelight. Also in January and the wake
Speaker 1: of the terrible Charlie Hebdo attacks in which journalists and
Speaker 1: their families were threatened and killed. It was terrible. Anonymous,
Speaker 1: the activist group announced a essentially a campaign against terrorists
Speaker 1: and vowed to shut down communication tools and to weed
Speaker 1: out terrorism using cyber attacks and and cyber strategies. And
Speaker 1: this would go on throughout the entire year. Uh, it
Speaker 1: really escalated in November, but it was going on throughout
Speaker 1: the whole year. Also in January, Google ended up shelving
Speaker 1: the Google Glass project. I wasn't really surprised by this.
Speaker 1: I was a little sad. I'm a huge fan of
Speaker 1: Google Glass, but I also felt that it wasn't quite
Speaker 1: right for consumers, and it was incredibly expensive as dollars
Speaker 1: for a pair of Google Glass. But Google has stressed
Speaker 1: that it plans to incorporate the technology into future products,
Speaker 1: both physical and software products, and also that Google Glass
Speaker 1: would return at some point once it was ready. So
Speaker 1: I don't know when that will be, but supposedly it
Speaker 1: will come back. In January, Bill Gates expressed concern that
Speaker 1: artificial intelligence could become the biggest threat to humanity. He
Speaker 1: said this during a Reddit a m a, which has
Speaker 1: Reddit for ask me anything, Uh, kind of interesting. Speaking
Speaker 1: of Bill Gates, the company co founded Microsoft introduced Windows
Speaker 1: ten on January twenty one, and also showed off the
Speaker 1: hollow lens headset. That's that augmented reality device I had
Speaker 1: talked about. I wish I had had a chance to
Speaker 1: actually experience a hollow lens. I have not done that yet.
Speaker 1: I really hope to have that experience at some point.
Speaker 1: I'm intrigued by the idea. I like the possibility of
Speaker 1: the hollow lens adding a new dimension to computing, at
Speaker 1: least some applications. Obviously, it's not ideal for everything. You're
Speaker 1: not going to use the hollow lens for word processing,
Speaker 1: I would imagine, but for gaming, for design, for understanding
Speaker 1: how stuff works, that's something I'm really concerned with. I
Speaker 1: really think the hollow lens is a potentially useful tool,
Speaker 1: so I hope I get a chance to use it
Speaker 1: at some point. At the end of January, the f
Speaker 1: c C redefined broadband speed, calling it twenty five megabits
Speaker 1: per second as download speed and three megabits per second
Speaker 1: upload speed. It was a big increase from the earlier definition,
Speaker 1: which I believe was ten megabit megabits per second down
Speaker 1: and one megabit per second up. I got some I
Speaker 1: s p s in a tizzy Internet service providers because
Speaker 1: now they could not claim a ten megabit per second
Speaker 1: speed as being broadband speed. They could not advertise broadband
Speaker 1: speed unless it was at twenty five megabits per second
Speaker 1: or faster, and uh that ended up impacting their business.
Speaker 1: I'd say it was a positive impact for the consumer,
Speaker 1: and I don't have a whole lot of sympathy for
Speaker 1: I s p s in general when it comes to
Speaker 1: defining broadband speeds. But that's because as of my own
Speaker 1: personal perspective, maybe if I were running an i SP
Speaker 1: I'd have a very different opinion. Moving onto February, we
Speaker 1: saw more data breach problems UH. An insurance company, a
Speaker 1: large one called Anthem, disclosed an enormous hacker attack in
Speaker 1: which millions of people's personal information had been leaked not
Speaker 1: just direct customers of Anthem, but Anthem also handles insurance
Speaker 1: from lots of other providers. It's kind of like the
Speaker 1: back end for a lot of insurance companies, so potentially
Speaker 1: millions of people had their personal information leaked to hackers
Speaker 1: in that attack. Just a few days later, the White
Speaker 1: House announced the formation of a cyber Threat Intelligence Center
Speaker 1: or Intelligence Integration Center, which would collect information and organize
Speaker 1: it and and distribute it in such a way to
Speaker 1: prevent cyber attacks from being successful or responding to eiber threats,
Speaker 1: although that also raised some people's flags worrying about how
Speaker 1: this might end up impacting privacy issues uh February also
Speaker 1: saw Twitter announced the new policy to handle trolls, streamlining
Speaker 1: the internal process for identifying and dealing with online abuse
Speaker 1: on Twitter, and said that after instituting the change, they
Speaker 1: saw a five times increase in the number of people
Speaker 1: being reported for harassment and abuse and they were responding
Speaker 1: as fast as possible in order taking it seriously, which
Speaker 1: was great news for people on Twitter. I have friends
Speaker 1: who have been the victims of harassment on Twitter, and
Speaker 1: it's a terrible thing. It's one of those things about
Speaker 1: the Internet where the distance the Internet provides and the
Speaker 1: anonymity you can have can create an environment that can
Speaker 1: be pretty toxic in some cases, it's not always. I mean,
Speaker 1: it also provides the ability for us to communicate with
Speaker 1: folks we otherwise can never talk to. So there are
Speaker 1: great things about this environment, but unfortunately there are some
Speaker 1: bad things too. So this was Twitter's attempt to counteract
Speaker 1: some of the bad. On February twenty six, the FCC
Speaker 1: reclassified broadband as a utility and past net neutrality rules,
Speaker 1: which lots of people on the Internet absolutely loved. I
Speaker 1: s p s were not among them. Uh, And there
Speaker 1: were some politicians who reacted negatively towards this, largely the
Speaker 1: ones who who are also let's say influenced by lobbies
Speaker 1: that represent I sps. We're still seeing those rules being
Speaker 1: challenged by various affected parties. UM, we're going to continue
Speaker 1: to see this shake out over time. But the reclassification
Speaker 1: means that broadband would providers would no longer be able
Speaker 1: to charge for prioritized traffic. In other words, they would
Speaker 1: not be able to set an amount saying, uh, if
Speaker 1: you create content and you want to go across our
Speaker 1: networks at a decent speed, you have to pay this
Speaker 1: amount that was no longer allowed. Uh. They also could
Speaker 1: not selectively block or throttle traffic from sources. So in
Speaker 1: other words, you shouldn't have a company like Comcast be
Speaker 1: able to throttle content from a company like Netflix. That
Speaker 1: that would be against the rules based upon this reclassification.
Speaker 1: In March, a lot of news happened here. On March six,
Speaker 1: the Dawn Probe entered orbit around Series, which meant that
Speaker 1: for the first time ever, we had a spacecraft enter
Speaker 1: the orbit of a dwarf planet, and that was pretty
Speaker 1: incredible and uh, really exciting stuff. I was very pleased
Speaker 1: to read the news about that, and the the information
Speaker 1: about Series was really fascinating. We also learned in March
Speaker 1: that Tinder. This will not be the only Tender story
Speaker 1: in two thousand fifteen. I find Tinder endlessly fascinating. Tinder
Speaker 1: we found out charges older users more for their premium
Speaker 1: service than younger users. So if you are a user
Speaker 1: of a certain age and you want to use Tender premium,
Speaker 1: your rates will be higher than people younger than you are.
Speaker 1: Tender's response was that old people tend to have more money,
Speaker 1: so that's why I guess. Uh. Later in March, a
Speaker 1: hacker created a program that connected straight men with other
Speaker 1: straight men, but it appeared that each of the straight
Speaker 1: men were in touch with a woman and created a
Speaker 1: situation in which straight men were essentially flirting with each
Speaker 1: other and Uh. The way it worked was the hacker
Speaker 1: created fake bait profiles of women, and when two men
Speaker 1: identified that they were interested in that specific woman, his
Speaker 1: program would link those two men up to each other,
Speaker 1: but they would each believe they were actually talking to
Speaker 1: the bait profile, not to another guy. And when asked
Speaker 1: about his motivation for this, the hackers said that he
Speaker 1: had female friends who complained about the types of messages
Speaker 1: they would receive on Tender, that they thought that they
Speaker 1: were distasteful and harassing, and he thought, well, this will
Speaker 1: give guys a taste of their own medicine. Um. Of
Speaker 1: course this targets all guys, not just the ones who
Speaker 1: are being jerk faces. UM. At any rate, it was
Speaker 1: kind of an amusing story. Also in March, we saw
Speaker 1: the launch of two different broadcast services too that we're
Speaker 1: supposed to be using Twitter as a means of of
Speaker 1: linking profiles, uh, mere Cat and Periscope. Now, between the two,
Speaker 1: Periscope did much better, but that's because Periscope was actually
Speaker 1: being backed by Twitter. Mayor Cat was using Twitter to
Speaker 1: link accounts to the Twitter service, so that if you're
Speaker 1: using Mercat, the idea was that it could broadcast the
Speaker 1: fact that you are online to your Twitter followers. And
Speaker 1: then Twitter ended up blocking that app, um because they
Speaker 1: had their own They had Periscope, and they had that power.
Speaker 1: So Twitter is like, well, we're doing our own broadcast
Speaker 1: app that allows people to stream video live from their
Speaker 1: phone to their followers, and we don't really want the competition.
Speaker 1: So guess what, you don't get to play in our yard.
Speaker 1: And that was a big blow to mere Cat. Periscope
Speaker 1: is still one of those things that UM, I think
Speaker 1: is fairly popular, but not overwhelmingly popular. We like to
Speaker 1: do it here at How Stuff Works. If you have
Speaker 1: not followed How Stuff Works on periscope, if you have periscope,
Speaker 1: you might want to consider following How Stuff Works because
Speaker 1: we do periscope pretty frequently. Uh and you'll see it
Speaker 1: from all sorts of different shows, like Stuff They Don't
Speaker 1: Want You To Know does a periscope every week. Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind also does a periscope every week.
Speaker 1: I'll be doing periscopes pretty frequently on How Stuff Works.
Speaker 1: Lauren vogelba on my former co host, She also periscopes
Speaker 1: regularly for How Stuff Works, So check us out. It's
Speaker 1: kind of fun and we like to respond to people.
Speaker 1: You know, you can send questions in real time and
Speaker 1: we can respond to you. That's a lot of fun.
Speaker 1: Moving on to April, that's when Apple officially put the
Speaker 1: Apple Watch on sale. You can pre order and buy them,
Speaker 1: and it started at around three dollars for your basic
Speaker 1: Apple Watch model, so pretty expensive, particularly when you consider
Speaker 1: the fact that it's not useful unless you also have
Speaker 1: an iPhone Um. This is kind of typical with smart watches.
Speaker 1: Most of them require another device to pair with and
Speaker 1: that's where they get their data. So, for example the Pebble,
Speaker 1: it pairs via Bluetooth to a smartphone and then you
Speaker 1: get notifications on your smartphone and then gets sent to
Speaker 1: your Pebble Watch, and then that's what gives you the notification.
Speaker 1: Same sort of thing with the Apple Watch, except of
Speaker 1: course it only works with the iPhone. It does not
Speaker 1: work with other devices. Early reviews the Apple Watch where
Speaker 1: a little mixed. A lot of them said that there
Speaker 1: was a pretty high learning curve um and not everybody
Speaker 1: thought it was terribly useful. And again, like if you're
Speaker 1: talking about you want just the Apple Watch and you
Speaker 1: don't have an iPhone, you're looking at almost a thousand
Speaker 1: dollars to get the watch plus a current iPhone UH
Speaker 1: to be able to use the thing. So little bit
Speaker 1: of a steep road. But for Apple fanatics, obviously it
Speaker 1: was something that was greeted with glee. People couldn't wait
Speaker 1: to get there. Well, I was gonna say get their
Speaker 1: hands on it, but I guess get them on their
Speaker 1: wrists would be more accurate. Also in April, HBO launched
Speaker 1: HBO Now, which finally allowed people who did not have
Speaker 1: HBO on their cable plan to get access to HBO content.
Speaker 1: This is something people have been asking for for a
Speaker 1: few years now, the idea of, you know, I want
Speaker 1: to have an experience where I can subscribe to the
Speaker 1: specific channels I want and I don't have to get
Speaker 1: everything else. Uh. It turns out that we're gonna have
Speaker 1: to do that ala carte channel by channel, or at
Speaker 1: least that's what it looks like right now, and HBO
Speaker 1: is one of those that you can do this with.
Speaker 1: You can subscribe to HBO now, you don't have to
Speaker 1: have HBO on your cable subscription, and you can get
Speaker 1: access to HBO content. So uh. This has also led
Speaker 1: some people to say, perhaps this is the beginning of
Speaker 1: the end of the cable industry, the cable television industry,
Speaker 1: which would be really interesting if that's the case, because
Speaker 1: HBO played a big role in the beginning of the
Speaker 1: cable industry. If you listen to the episodes we did
Speaker 1: about the HBO story, you can hear about how important
Speaker 1: HBO was when cable was just growing. Also, in April,
Speaker 1: Comcast and Time Warner ended up calling it quits on
Speaker 1: their move for a merger. This relieved a lot of
Speaker 1: people who said that if Comcast and Time Warner were
Speaker 1: to merge into one company, then even the illusion of
Speaker 1: competition would be erased in the cable company and I
Speaker 1: s P world, there are a lot of places where
Speaker 1: Time Warner is the only choice for your cable, Comcast
Speaker 1: is the only choice for your cable. This merger would
Speaker 1: have made the company even bigger. And while Comcast kept
Speaker 1: saying that it would promote competition, a lot of critics said,
Speaker 1: I can't possibly see how that would happen to us.
Speaker 1: It looks like you would essentially just dominate eight the
Speaker 1: entire landscape. And if you listen to the Comcast story episodes,
Speaker 1: you know comcasts history is essentially one of acquisitions. It's
Speaker 1: a company that bought other companies, and that's how it grew.
Speaker 1: Year over year. It added customers, not by improving their
Speaker 1: their offerings necessarily, although you know, obviously I'm sure the
Speaker 1: company tried to do that. Year over year two, it
Speaker 1: largely added customers by buying up other networks and then
Speaker 1: incorporating those networks into Comcast. But this one did not
Speaker 1: work out, and so they abandoned it, largely because they
Speaker 1: were facing some pretty stiff opposition in the general public.
Speaker 1: They were also seeing opposition from special interest groups from
Speaker 1: other companies, and it was pretty clear there was gonna
Speaker 1: be a really hard sell for them to be able
Speaker 1: to merge, so they ultimately decided to quit finishing out
Speaker 1: the news for April. A computer glitch in a digital
Speaker 1: slot machine convinced a woman she had one forty one
Speaker 1: million dollars. It turned out to just be a glitch,
Speaker 1: a mistake. I can't imagine what this must have felt like.
Speaker 1: So the woman ended up suing the casino, saying she
Speaker 1: was owed the money she was told she had one.
Speaker 1: Imagine you're playing a video slot machine and you get
Speaker 1: a message saying, hey, you just won forty one million dollars.
Speaker 1: I think you'd be pretty disappointed to go to the
Speaker 1: cashier and find out, Nope, that's the computer error. You
Speaker 1: aren't owed any money, or maybe you're owed a couple
Speaker 1: of bucks. I think it was two dollars sixty three cents. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: for this person, the lawsuit was decided in favor of
Speaker 1: the casino, and the judge said, here's the thing, and
Speaker 1: the rules for the game are laid out. They're displayed
Speaker 1: on the device or on the machine or they show
Speaker 1: up on the screen and explains what the rules are.
Speaker 1: And included in those rules was the fact that the
Speaker 1: maximum payout of this machine was ten thousand dollars us
Speaker 1: that you could not win more than that, and based
Speaker 1: upon the results of that spin of the slot machine,
Speaker 1: the woman would not have one a jackpot in the
Speaker 1: first place. It was just a computer glitch. And that
Speaker 1: you cannot expect a casino to change the rules of
Speaker 1: a game while a game is being played. That would
Speaker 1: be unfair to one party or the other, or both.
Speaker 1: And so ultimately the judge said, you can't hold a
Speaker 1: casino responsible for the malfunction of a screen. It's an
Speaker 1: unfortunate experience, but it's not one that will result in
Speaker 1: forty one million dollars going to you, Sad Trombone. In
Speaker 1: May two fifteen, the big story was there was another
Speaker 1: data security breach, and this time it hit the I
Speaker 1: R S. By August, the U. S Government said that
Speaker 1: as many as three thirty four thousand taxpayer accounts had
Speaker 1: been compromised. Now in May, when they first announced the
Speaker 1: discovery of the breach, they thought it was closer to
Speaker 1: a hundred thousand. So it got worse as time went
Speaker 1: on and as the investigation continued, the hackers had actually
Speaker 1: used a program called get Transcript. That's the program I
Speaker 1: r S had implemented, which was meant to allow users
Speaker 1: to get a look at their tax transactions over time.
Speaker 1: So the hackers took advantage of vulnerabilities and to get
Speaker 1: transcript program to get personal information from taxpayers. It's pretty ugly,
Speaker 1: but that's really the only story out of May. So
Speaker 1: moving on into June, June and July, these are two
Speaker 1: months with lots and lots of stories, so I'll try
Speaker 1: and breathe through these as quickly as possible. First of all,
Speaker 1: in June, Apple had its Worldwide Developers Conference, one of
Speaker 1: the big events Apple holds every year, and at that
Speaker 1: conference they unveiled OS ten dot eleven, also known as
Speaker 1: El Capitan. They also announced Apple Music, which was a
Speaker 1: It is a streaming music service competes with other streaming
Speaker 1: music services, everything from Google Play and Amazon Music and
Speaker 1: Pandora and Spotify, all those sort of things over and
Speaker 1: read it. There was a bit of a brewjaha when
Speaker 1: Reddit ended up essentially removing a few subreddits because they
Speaker 1: were all centered around harassment, harassing different groups and read
Speaker 1: it said that while it strives to be a platform
Speaker 1: for free expression, it will not tolerate harassment. That actually
Speaker 1: caused a bit of a stir. It was also announced
Speaker 1: in June that Twitter CEO Dick Costolo would be stepping
Speaker 1: down from the position and Jack Dorsey, the co founder
Speaker 1: of Twitter, would be stepping in as the interim CEO.
Speaker 1: By October this would change, Dorsey would be named the
Speaker 1: new per minute CEO of Twitter, and so he is.
Speaker 1: Also in June, Verizon completed its acquisition of A o L,
Speaker 1: which was a four point four billion dollar deal, so
Speaker 1: A o L is now a property of Verizon. Also
Speaker 1: in June e three happened the big news there. Bethesda,
Speaker 1: the company that creates games like Fallout and Skyrim, held
Speaker 1: its first ever press conference and blew people away with
Speaker 1: the the real pit Boy that you could order, as
Speaker 1: well as a Fallout shelter which went which became available
Speaker 1: that day at least for iOS devices. It was a
Speaker 1: big hit. Microsoft showed off the hollow lens and that
Speaker 1: got a big reaction. They also announced that the Xbox
Speaker 1: One would get backwards compatibility with a selection of Xbox
Speaker 1: three sixty titles. That was a big hit as well.
Speaker 1: Another big hit was Star Wars battle Front. Excuse me,
Speaker 1: noll mm hmmm. Another big hit with Star Wars Battlefront. Uh.
Speaker 1: It got a great reaction from the crowd when it
Speaker 1: was announced. It has since come out and I think
Speaker 1: see mainly positive reviews, but there are certainly some criticisms
Speaker 1: I've seen. I I played in the beta and thought
Speaker 1: it was really It captured the feeling of Star Wars
Speaker 1: really well, but the gameplay left something to be desired,
Speaker 1: at least for me. But then I haven't played all
Speaker 1: the game modes either. I only played the couple that
Speaker 1: were available in the beta, so perhaps I would change
Speaker 1: my mind if I played the full game. But there
Speaker 1: are a lot of other things that came out of
Speaker 1: E three, uh. Final Fantasy Seven's getting a remake, the PlayStation,
Speaker 1: made a great presentation. Their conference was really well received,
Speaker 1: and in general it's like it was a pretty good
Speaker 1: year for E three, despite the fact that there were
Speaker 1: no huge announcements of new types of where with the
Speaker 1: exception of the hollow lens functionality where you could play
Speaker 1: Minecraft on a physical table and you could actually look
Speaker 1: at a representation of Minecraft as if it were sitting
Speaker 1: in front of you. Also in June, DARPA had its
Speaker 1: Robotics Challenge, which was super cool and involved teams that
Speaker 1: have worked on robot designs both from a software and
Speaker 1: hardware perspective. Some teams were using robots that were built
Speaker 1: by other companies or organizations, but they were the ones
Speaker 1: who developed the software for them, and the challenge was
Speaker 1: to complete a series of tasks that would be similar
Speaker 1: to what you would encounter in the wake of a
Speaker 1: nuclear reactor disaster, like what happened in Fukushima, Japan, after
Speaker 1: the nuclear reactor there had to melt down. The robots
Speaker 1: had to do things like drive a vehicle, get out,
Speaker 1: go through a door, climb some stairs, cut a hole
Speaker 1: in the wall, and some other tasks as well. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: the team that won was Team kist K A I
Speaker 1: S T, which completed all eight tasks in forty four
Speaker 1: minutes eight seconds. So it wasn't exactly speedy, but it
Speaker 1: was very impressive because it is difficult to build a
Speaker 1: robot that is capable of doing lots of different things. Typically,
Speaker 1: we design robots to do a specific task and that
Speaker 1: makes it easier to design. You just have to consider
Speaker 1: what things need to happen in order for this task
Speaker 1: to be completed as efficiently as possible. But when you
Speaker 1: have to design a robot that does multiple tasks, that's hard,
Speaker 1: especially if you're trying to make it do all these
Speaker 1: tasks as well as it possibly can and not kind
Speaker 1: of just bumble its way through. It's pretty tough. And
Speaker 1: if you watch videos from that DARPA challenge, you'll see
Speaker 1: lots of examples of robots falling over, which is both
Speaker 1: kind of funny and sad at the same time, but
Speaker 1: it really demonstrates how hard this field is. It's a
Speaker 1: very challenging field. In July two, thift well, on July eight,
Speaker 1: we had a real nasty trio of tech failure stories hit.
Speaker 1: At the same time, United Airlines had to halt flights
Speaker 1: for more than an hour due to an issue with
Speaker 1: quote degraded network connectivity for various applications end quote. In
Speaker 1: other words, it pretty much looked like it was a
Speaker 1: router failure, which Cisco immediately got on the job trying
Speaker 1: to fix. On that same day, the New York Stock
Speaker 1: Exchange suffered technical issues that caused halt trading to halt
Speaker 1: for more than three hours and The Wall Street Journal's
Speaker 1: website went offline only eight so all three of these
Speaker 1: things are happening. This actually led some people to question
Speaker 1: if perhaps they were connected in some way, and maybe
Speaker 1: it was indicative of a cyber attack. It looks like
Speaker 1: it was just coincidence that all three of these things
Speaker 1: hit on the aim day, but it definitely created some
Speaker 1: nervous laughter in various offices wonder who's next. Also in July,
Speaker 1: the FCC approved a T and T S merger with
Speaker 1: Direct TV, which was a forty eight point five billion
Speaker 1: dollar deal. You could say that two thousand fifteen was
Speaker 1: a year of attempted and successful mergers and acquisitions. A
Speaker 1: lot of big companies UH actually made deals, and a
Speaker 1: few like Comcast and Time Warner that I talked about earlier,
Speaker 1: attempted to but failed. UH. It was a big year
Speaker 1: for that. The FCC said that the reason they approved
Speaker 1: the merger was that they felt it would lead to
Speaker 1: stronger broadband and video bundles that could improve competition with
Speaker 1: established cable companies. If that's in fact the case, I'm
Speaker 1: in favor of it. I'm a little skeptical, but I
Speaker 1: would like to see more competition in that space for
Speaker 1: reason that I've already talked about. Also in July, Amazon
Speaker 1: held its first Prime Day, which is kind of like
Speaker 1: a Black Friday or Cyber Monday sales event catered specifically
Speaker 1: to Prime customers. Clearly this was a move to get
Speaker 1: more Prime subscriptions going and it worked really well. So
Speaker 1: now Amazon is going to do it every single year.
Speaker 1: No big surprise there. In sad news. In July, Nintendo
Speaker 1: president Satoro Iwata passed away at age fifty five. He
Speaker 1: passed away on July eleven. He was very much a
Speaker 1: beloved figure at Nintendo, not just as a president, but
Speaker 1: as a game developer, and he had shown great passion
Speaker 1: for video games. He actually said that he considered himself
Speaker 1: first and foremost a gamer, So his passing shock not
Speaker 1: just Nintendo, but the video game world in general. Also
Speaker 1: in July, Reddit CEO Ellen Powell stepped down. She was
Speaker 1: replaced by Reddit founder Steve huff and It's also a
Speaker 1: former ceo Reddit. Her departure followed a controversial decision to
Speaker 1: fire Victoria Taylor, who was the coordinator of the Asked
Speaker 1: Me Anything feature at redditum Full details of exactly what
Speaker 1: happened were never released, but it appeared, at least in
Speaker 1: some reports, that Victoria Taylor was resisting certain changes that
Speaker 1: read it was hoping to implement in the A M
Speaker 1: A world, and as a result she was let go.
Speaker 1: That seems to be what happened based upon certain reports.
Speaker 1: But like I said, a full disclosure of exactly what
Speaker 1: happened has never really been made, at least not that
Speaker 1: I could find. All right, let's go back to Tinder.
Speaker 1: I told you I was going to talk about it
Speaker 1: a couple of times throughout the year. So in July
Speaker 1: the service announced verified accounts for celebrities. So when you
Speaker 1: see a profile for Leonardo DiCaprio in your area, you
Speaker 1: can look for that little verification sign to make sure
Speaker 1: it's actually Leonardo DiCaprio and not just some guy named
Speaker 1: Vinnie who's hoping he his passing resemblance to Leonardo will
Speaker 1: get him somewhere. So yea, I being a married guy,
Speaker 1: I mean, I've been married for more than eighteen years now,
Speaker 1: I find this tender stuff to be really amusing. And
Speaker 1: I gotta be honest, I am so glad I am
Speaker 1: not in the dating world, because I also think I'd
Speaker 1: be terrified if no one ever swiped right on me.
Speaker 1: Also in July, it was revealed that the website Ashley Madison,
Speaker 1: which is dedicated to helping married people find people folks
Speaker 1: who who will have an affair with them, it had
Speaker 1: been hacked. I'm sure you heard this story. It was
Speaker 1: in all the news outlets for a long time, probably
Speaker 1: because of the salacious content here, and a lot of
Speaker 1: that information was released online. It was dumped into various
Speaker 1: sites where it was quickly propagated, and it embarrassed customers
Speaker 1: and the company alike. It also revealed some interesting data.
Speaker 1: A lot of people combed through this to get a
Speaker 1: better look at what it represented. It appears that an
Speaker 1: overwhelming majority of the accounts on Ashley Madison belonged to men.
Speaker 1: Uh that a good number of the accounts belonging to
Speaker 1: women actually are dummy accounts and were perhaps used to
Speaker 1: act as essentially bait to lure men to use the service.
Speaker 1: You know, doesn't do the men much good if there's
Speaker 1: no one there on the service for them to connect
Speaker 1: with and have their affair. I guess the hacker or
Speaker 1: hackers chose the name the Impact Team and said that
Speaker 1: they had targeted a l M, which is the parent
Speaker 1: company that owns Ashley Madison and other related sites because
Speaker 1: of unethical practices. Largely they want about if you wanted
Speaker 1: to delete your account of Ashley Madison, you had to
Speaker 1: pay nineteen dollars for the privilege of having your information deleted,
Speaker 1: and even then there was no guarantee that it was
Speaker 1: actually deleted. So that was the reason the hacker gave
Speaker 1: for targeting Ashley Madison. And this was a story that
Speaker 1: for at least a couple of weeks was in the
Speaker 1: headlines just because you kept getting names of people who
Speaker 1: were uh found within the database. And it was an
Speaker 1: ugly affair. And I can't believe I just used that pun.
Speaker 1: It was totally unintentional. I really do promise. I didn't
Speaker 1: mean to. As the words were coming out of my mouth,
Speaker 1: I was regretting it anyway. Last story July, uh f
Speaker 1: c A, which is the parent company of brands like Jeep, Dodge,
Speaker 1: and Chrysler, had a massive recall of one point four
Speaker 1: million cars over concerns about how hackers could get remote
Speaker 1: access to vehicles through their connectivity features. On July twenty one,
Speaker 1: senators introduced the Secure Pity and Privacy in Your Car
Speaker 1: Act which was meant to help curtail uh, the sort
Speaker 1: of incidents. It was supposed to create security standards for
Speaker 1: new vehicles in the connected age. Uh. This was a
Speaker 1: very sobering moment. It was certainly something we were expecting
Speaker 1: to happen because we knew that there were researchers, security
Speaker 1: researchers who are going to unveil something about hacking cars
Speaker 1: at various security conferences like def Con and you know,
Speaker 1: other black hat style conferences, to say this is a
Speaker 1: growing concern and if companies aren't going to address it,
Speaker 1: we will go public with it so that consumers are
Speaker 1: aware of the potential danger they face by having a
Speaker 1: connected car. And UH, honestly, I feel conflicted about this approach,
Speaker 1: but if a company is not taking steps to fix
Speaker 1: those problems for the products getting to the hand of consumers,
Speaker 1: something does have to happen. I mean, it's it's not
Speaker 1: worth putting people's lives in danger to sell a few
Speaker 1: more vehicles. But this was a big deal, a recall
Speaker 1: of one point four million cars across Jeep dodging Chrysler brands.
Speaker 1: Moving on to August, only a couple of stories, but
Speaker 1: one of them was huge August was when Google restructured
Speaker 1: and became Alphabet so technically, and I did a podcast
Speaker 1: where I described this. It was a really weird situation
Speaker 1: where Google formed a wholly owned subsidiary called Alphabet, then
Speaker 1: reorganized so that Alphabet became the parent company and Google
Speaker 1: was a subsidiary of Alphabet. There are other subsidiaries of
Speaker 1: Alphabet as well. And the idea is that these various
Speaker 1: new companies that formerly were departments under Google will be
Speaker 1: able to experiment and grow independently of Google. They will
Speaker 1: no longer depend upon Google to grow, and it's supposed
Speaker 1: to streamline those those different groups so that they can
Speaker 1: function better without having to depend upon uh companies that
Speaker 1: they don't have any other influence with. So we'll see
Speaker 1: how that pans out over time. Also more Tender news
Speaker 1: in August, after five months as CEO, Chris Payne stepped
Speaker 1: down and co founder Shaan Rad was reinstated as CEO. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: Tender said they was very diplomatic. They said that Chris
Speaker 1: Payne was not a good long term fit for CEO.
Speaker 1: Moving on to September, the Recording Industry Association of America
Speaker 1: or r i a A reported that streaming music generated
Speaker 1: a third of all music revenue for the first half
Speaker 1: of two thousand fifteen. That's huge. It marks an incredible
Speaker 1: shift from the to the way you know, we listen
Speaker 1: to music. It's used to be that you would buy
Speaker 1: albums or buy singles, you know, from the days of
Speaker 1: vinyl albums, two tapes, to c D s and then
Speaker 1: digital albums. Now we're using streaming services a lot more,
Speaker 1: enough for it to make up a third of the revenue.
Speaker 1: So while the music industry might not like the streaming model,
Speaker 1: it looks like that's the way the consumer wants to
Speaker 1: listen to music, or at least a growing number of consumers,
Speaker 1: so that's really interesting. Apple held its annual press event
Speaker 1: in September that was focused on products like the iPhone.
Speaker 1: It also announced the iPad Pro, the large tablet that
Speaker 1: measures like twelve point nine inches, and they also introduced
Speaker 1: a new stylus device called the Pencil, And that's probably
Speaker 1: what would have made Steve Jobs pull his hair out
Speaker 1: in frustration, because he famously dismissed the idea of a
Speaker 1: stylus when he launched the iPad. Apple also announced a
Speaker 1: new generation of the Apple TV set top box with
Speaker 1: Sirie integration one that is not without its problems, as
Speaker 1: I am led to understand from a friend of mine
Speaker 1: who owns one of these um The iPhone also got
Speaker 1: an update with the six S and the six S Plus,
Speaker 1: and they also introduced a new interface called three D
Speaker 1: touch UH. In September, John McAfee, the founder of the
Speaker 1: McAfee anti virus program and the all around eccentric dude
Speaker 1: some people might say eccentric as being exceedingly kind, he
Speaker 1: announced his intention to run for president. McAfee has a
Speaker 1: reputation for let's say, questionable behavior and has a pretty
Speaker 1: weird past. We did an episode about him this year
Speaker 1: on tech Stuff, so if you want, you can hunt
Speaker 1: down the John McAfee story on tech Stuff to hear
Speaker 1: more about this guy's life. On September, news broke that
Speaker 1: Volkswagen had been using what has been called a defeat
Speaker 1: device to rig emissions to staying for its diesel vehicles.
Speaker 1: We also did an episode about this on tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: So this device essentially turned on some emissions equipment, some
Speaker 1: protocols in Volkswagens so that when you are are actually
Speaker 1: doing an emissions test, the emissions are well below the
Speaker 1: limits that are are placed there. However, when you get
Speaker 1: into regular driving conditions, the defeat devices switched off and
Speaker 1: your vehicle starts to pollute a lot more, but the
Speaker 1: performance goes way up. And once this was discovered, it
Speaker 1: was the beginning of a real pr nightmare for Volkswagen
Speaker 1: that is continuing to this day. Also in September, Elon
Speaker 1: Musk or Elon Musk appeared on The Late Show with
Speaker 1: Stephen Colbert and suggested that we could tear a form
Speaker 1: Mars if we just detonated some nuclear bombs at the polls,
Speaker 1: kind of like melting all that Ason, possibly creating an atmosphere,
Speaker 1: and I don't know what else, because I honestly I
Speaker 1: think if we did do that, we would raise such
Speaker 1: enormous dust clouds in Mars' atmosphere that you wouldn't be
Speaker 1: able to do any useful terraforming for quite a long time.
Speaker 1: In the first place, I don't think it would necessarily work.
Speaker 1: I'm not the only one who thinks that, but what
Speaker 1: do I know. I'm not an expert. Speaking of Elon
Speaker 1: Musk and Tesla, Tesla launched the Model X SUV in September.
Speaker 1: That's an suv capable of going from zero to sixty
Speaker 1: miles per hour in four point eight seconds, unless you
Speaker 1: cough up the cash for the priceier performance model that
Speaker 1: can go zero to sixty and three point two seconds.
Speaker 1: It also has a top speed of a hundred fifty
Speaker 1: five miles per hour. That's wicked fast. So the price
Speaker 1: for a Signature Series Model X SUV is a hundred
Speaker 1: thirty thousand dollars. The standard model is slightly less expensive,
Speaker 1: still well out of my price range. However, in October,
Speaker 1: the film Steve Jobs, which was written by Aaron Sorkin, debuts.
Speaker 1: It would go on to earn only eighteen million dollars
Speaker 1: domestically if you if you factor in all the theaters worldwide,
Speaker 1: it's still a little less than twenty four million dollars,
Speaker 1: and that makes it a flop. Reportedly, it had a
Speaker 1: budget of thirty million, so it made less than it
Speaker 1: cost to make. A lot of people in the tech
Speaker 1: industry seemed to be happy about this. They criticized the movie,
Speaker 1: saying that it was not a realistic portrayal of Steve Jobs.
Speaker 1: On October five, People That's p e E p l
Speaker 1: E disappeared before it could even launch, so people in
Speaker 1: case You're not familiar, UH was an app that was
Speaker 1: supposed to allow people to rate one another, kind of
Speaker 1: like Yelp for people. So if I had an interaction
Speaker 1: with you and I thought you were being a little strappy,
Speaker 1: Kevin Free would say I could give you a negative
Speaker 1: reading on people and warn others of your strappiness. You
Speaker 1: could do the same for me, saying this man is
Speaker 1: bald and unpleasant. And it got a lot of people
Speaker 1: worried that the negativity that you can encounter online could
Speaker 1: spill over into our personal lives even more than it
Speaker 1: already is. So by October five, it was supposed to
Speaker 1: launch a November of this year, but by October most
Speaker 1: traces of it disappeared. The website was gone, It's Facebook
Speaker 1: and Twitter accounts disappeared. The Instagram account was switched to private,
Speaker 1: So it looks like people, after facing some public criticism
Speaker 1: and ridicule, maybe gone. Also in October, Amazon announced it
Speaker 1: would stop selling Apple TV and Chrome Cast on its site,
Speaker 1: instead fun people to buy stuff like Fire TV and
Speaker 1: become Amazon Prime members. You might say that's a little
Speaker 1: bit of self interest or a lot. It's a lot
Speaker 1: of self interest. Edward Snowden joined Twitter in October. He's
Speaker 1: the whistleblower who revealed the n s A practices. Um
Speaker 1: quickly became very popular on Twitter. People wanted to hear
Speaker 1: more about his perspective on cybersecurity and privacy issues. Facebook
Speaker 1: was rumored to be adding a dislike button in October,
Speaker 1: but instead introduced reactions. These are sort of emoticons that
Speaker 1: allow users to react to a status update beyond just
Speaker 1: the thumbs up. Because sometimes you see status updates that
Speaker 1: wererant a different reaction, you don't necessarily want to like
Speaker 1: that status update, and so this would give you a
Speaker 1: few more options without it becoming a tool that you
Speaker 1: could abuse and make people feel badly about it. At
Speaker 1: least that's the theory. Also, the New Horizon in his
Speaker 1: probe explored Pluto, and that was pretty awesome. We started
Speaker 1: getting some really cool information about Pluto. In October, NASA
Speaker 1: announced the probe had found evidence of exposed water ice
Speaker 1: on the surface of Pluto. Also, we got some incredible
Speaker 1: images of Pluto stuff I didn't think I would ever
Speaker 1: live to see, so I was really exciting. Tesla was
Speaker 1: back in the headlines. It gave an overnight update that
Speaker 1: allowed Tesla vehicles autonomous capabilities, it is limited. You cannot
Speaker 1: use this to just take you from point A to
Speaker 1: point B with never touching the steering wheel or the
Speaker 1: accelerator or the break. It's not intended to be that.
Speaker 1: It's more like a really sophisticated driver assist system, not
Speaker 1: a fully autonomous vehicle. That being said, there are a
Speaker 1: lot of people who did videos of themselves behind the
Speaker 1: wheel of a Tesla in autonomous mode not touching any
Speaker 1: of the controls, which is remarkably day dress. As Tesla
Speaker 1: has said, don't do that, but hey, you know you can't.
Speaker 1: I guess, I guess if you give people a toy,
Speaker 1: they're gonna play with it. Also in October, Consumer Reports
Speaker 1: revised its previous rating for the Tesla Model s Now. Originally,
Speaker 1: they said the Tesla Model s was so good it
Speaker 1: broke their ratings scale. They said it was it was
Speaker 1: just remarkable how its performance was above and beyond every
Speaker 1: other vehicle on the road. They revised that and said
Speaker 1: while the performance was still incredible, they were not reliable.
Speaker 1: In other words, when they're working, they work great, but
Speaker 1: they don't always work. So they pulled the recommendation rating
Speaker 1: from the car as a result of these reliability issues,
Speaker 1: and on October fifteen, we finally had Back to the
Speaker 1: few Future Day. That's the date that Marty McFly and
Speaker 1: Doc Brown visit in Back to the Future Too, and
Speaker 1: as part of that celebration, Nike announced that it would
Speaker 1: be releasing self lacing shoes, which are also featured in
Speaker 1: Back to the Future Too. Didn't get a whole lot
Speaker 1: of other things that are in Back to the Future Too,
Speaker 1: which I'm fine with. I don't need to see Jaw's
Speaker 1: nineteen Also, we saw that Yahoo announced its video streaming service,
Speaker 1: which had picked up Community after it had been canceled
Speaker 1: on broadcast television. The streaming service lost forty two million
Speaker 1: dollars in the third quarter of largely due to the
Speaker 1: expense of producing high end shows like Community. Uh. They
Speaker 1: had not figured out how to monetize it, so things
Speaker 1: were looking pretty grim for that Yahoo's streaming service, and
Speaker 1: The Wall Street Journal reported that chrome os is living
Speaker 1: on borrowed time, that in it will end up being
Speaker 1: holded into Android, and that by you will no longer
Speaker 1: be able to buy a Chromebook anywhere. They won't be
Speaker 1: on sale anymore. Finally, November and I say finally because
Speaker 1: remember it as December three as I record this, so
Speaker 1: I don't really have any December news. On Black Friday,
Speaker 1: which is the day after Thanksgiving here in the United States,
Speaker 1: there was about just shy of a billion dollars nine
Speaker 1: five million dollars in sales from smartphones and tablets. Not
Speaker 1: of the smartphones and tablets, but rather people were using
Speaker 1: their mobile devices to do shopping, with iOS users spending
Speaker 1: the most money. Apparently, mobile shopping had increased by from
Speaker 1: the previous year, so it looks like more and more
Speaker 1: people are using their mobile devices for their shopping needs. Ah.
Speaker 1: It's pretty interesting to me, and it's again another implication
Speaker 1: that the Internet is changing wildly, that that are noble
Speaker 1: devices are becoming our our primary means of interacting with
Speaker 1: the Internet these days. It's not true for me, but
Speaker 1: it's certainly the the prevalent uh theme that I'm seeing
Speaker 1: in every other you know, demographic, just not bald guys
Speaker 1: who host tech stuff. And finally, it's rumored that the
Speaker 1: next iPhone will no longer have a three point five
Speaker 1: millimeter headphone jack. Instead, you will have to use either
Speaker 1: Bluetooth or a lightning connector to connect your your headset
Speaker 1: to your phone. Now, that means that if you're using
Speaker 1: a hard wired headset, you will not be able to
Speaker 1: do so while also charging the phone. You will have
Speaker 1: to do one or the other. And it also means
Speaker 1: that if you want a hard wired headset, you're gonna
Speaker 1: have to rely on a proprietary connector for headphones, which
Speaker 1: really limits where you can get your headphones at least
Speaker 1: until other manufacturers are able to produce lightning connector headsets,
Speaker 1: and that tends to upset consumers. I know that I
Speaker 1: go crazy when I buy something that has its own
Speaker 1: proprietary connector, because it means that if I lose that cable,
Speaker 1: that's it. I have to buy a replacement. In some places,
Speaker 1: you can't even get replacement cables, at least not easily.
Speaker 1: I'm thinking largely of h certain products from a company
Speaker 1: that rhymes with Pony, but at any rate, that's tough.
Speaker 1: Like I would much prefer to have UH universal connectors
Speaker 1: because I've got tons of like many in micro USB cables,
Speaker 1: for example, I would much rather have those, even if
Speaker 1: they don't perform as well as lightning, because if I
Speaker 1: lose one, I've still got replacements but that's the problem.
Speaker 1: I guess, all right. So that wraps up the year
Speaker 1: in review. Our next episode will be our predictions for
Speaker 1: two thousand sixteen, my favorite time of year when I
Speaker 1: put on my prognosticator hat and I make wildly inaccurate predictions.
Speaker 1: So I hope you guys enjoy those next episodes. I
Speaker 1: hope that your two thousand fifteen was a good one.
Speaker 1: I hope two thousand sixteen is even better. And guys,
Speaker 1: if you have suggestions for future episodes of tech Stuff,
Speaker 1: let me know. Send me a message. I'd love to
Speaker 1: hear from you. My email address is tex Stuff at
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com or drop me aliance on Twitter,
Speaker 1: Tumbler or Facebook to handle it. All three of those
Speaker 1: is text stuff hs W and I will talk to
Speaker 1: you again really soon for more on this and bathands
Speaker 1: of other topics. Is it stuck works dot com.