2016 Predictions Report Card

about what will happen over the following twelve months. That is my quote unquote favorite episode of the year, and my second favorite is when we revisited a year later and see how he did. So. Last year I had I as actar joined me on the show, and this year for the results, I have I as actar on one of the show. Hey, heyes, how are you. I'm good. I'm hoping I'm less hapless than last year. Yeah, I know. I think we both got happed a couple of times

throughout that year, so we'll handle it. We were not not quite too happy, but we're working toward it. Right. That's some good feedbacks. Almost haptic, Yes, it is almost haptic. Yeah, you can really sense it. So what we're you gonna do today is we're gonna go through the predictions we made last year. We've both gone back and listened to that episode, written down some notes, kind of evaluated how far or close we were when you know, when reality unfolded.

Did we get it right, were we wrong? Somewhere in between, and it kind of spans the whole spectrum. So one of the things I said at the very beginning of last year's episode was that I was determined to make bolder predictions because I had discovered that it didn't matter if I made more modest predictions. My accuracy was still

pretty awful. So if you're gonna make awful predictions, at least make big awful predictions right that no one's impressed if you make a modest prediction and that's wrong, it's just that's that's kind of boring. So the first one I made was that in twenty sixteen, the year that is now coming to a close, Microsoft would buy Yahoo's core business. And I, as you, actually had a slightly

different take on it. You thought that perhaps there'd be some wireless carrier, or maybe um Apple or possibly Facebook buying Yah whose core business. As it turns out the wireless carrier was the best of the predictions because, as we know, Microsoft didn't buy all whose core business, nor Apple nor Facebook. Instead, it was Verizon only four point

eight three billion dollars on the deal. Now, I know that the right after the news of that can that news of the Yahoo hack that I don't know how many was like half a billion people or accounts were compromised, something crazy, you like that. Yeah, Verizon is kind of cautiously going forward. I've read recently that the head of a O L. Sorry sorry, well YEAHOO was concerned that this will go cautiously optimistically. Let's use as many adverbs

as we possibly can. Now, Verizon did acquire A O L in twenty fIF so Verizon has been kind of on a tear recently. UM and a lot of people are kind of curious to see what happens with whose core business going on in the future. And I'm pretty sure at this point I'm gonna have to do a

full episode about Verizon. UM. And then we came to I ass first prediction, Oh yeah, that three D printers would go much more mainstream, and the idea was there's a lot more three D scanning technology there was a bunch of the phones out there now that have like three D scanning. But Jonathan, you disagree with me on three D printing going mainstream, and not because the de potential, because the technology just wasn't ready yet, right, Yeah, it

just was. It was still at level where unless you have a lot of patients and uh you don't mind babysitting the technology for quite some time, you're not likely to have very, um, very satisfying results. It's it's very easy to create a bad three D print job, right, So take take like the most finicky printer you've ever had any experience with, and then imagine that it has to print in three dimensions, not just in two, and you realize, yeah, this is, um this is a recipe

for potential disaster. And in fact, that's kind of how I've that's been my experience with three D printers. So we wanted to take a look like, did three D printers really take off in steen did they become or at least did we see you know, a good solid improvement in in market adoption? Um and and really it just kind of it did continue to grow. It's not like it's not like it stopped growing. It didn't the rate of growth didn't increase, but it's still chugging along

pretty healthily. So, UM, I guess it's a partial one for you. I as I think, I mean more mainstream doesn't mean that it's doing well, but i'd say very small partial here. I'm not gonna even give myself a lot of credit for this one. It's doing better than it was at the beginning of the year and the compared to the beginning of the year, but it's still

still not mainstream by any stretching the imagination. Yeah, and in fact, later on in the episode you did clarify you said that you weren't really thinking about it being a three D printer on everybody's desk by the end of twenty six. You were saying that you expected to see that trend continue, and uh, and in fact, that's exactly what has happened. There's no dramatic changes. It's not like, as far as I know, I didn't hear about any massive drive to buy a bunch of three D printers

during the holiday sales, for example. UM, I think in large part it's one of those things that people who are interested in the field are still going out and you know, looking at the different models that are out there and trying to decide which one is best for them. It has not really penetrated your average consumer's mind as this is um must have item. But I think I

think you were more right than wrong. My next prediction was that Apple, now that we're getting further and further removed from Steve Jobs as Apple company, that Apple was going to start offering up more products that would seem like they were not as directly influenced by Steve Jobs.

I realized now in retrospect that that is an incredibly difficult prediction to to judge whether or not I was right, because without knowing, without having Steve Jobs here to say, hey, would you do that, it's it's kind of um impossible to answer unless you just see something that just looks like welcome to the Apple cinder block, Like then you say, okay, no, that Steve Jobs would not come out with a cinder block,

And I don't know about that one. Maybe the only the only thing for sure we could tell if there was no h clones, you know, mac clones out there, that's definitely something that was anti Jobs at the time. When we came back to Apple, he killed that off. So, I mean, without looking backwards, I don't know how we would ever tell, but I'm pretty sure we have a decent catalog of things that Apple could have done that

Steve Jobs didn't like. Yeah, I mean in the last year episode we mentioned the pencil stylist device that had been introduced in in late and how that was something that that Steve Jobs had kind of ridiculed at one point back when a stylus was the only way to interact with some handheld devices, and he said, no, one wants that, and I, as you pointed out, well, the Apple solution is that it's it's a an additional peripheral.

It's not necessary to interact with the device, but it's an additional way to interact with the device, which is a slight distinction. UM. Not sure how Steve Jobs would have felt about abandoning the lightning ports on MacBook pros where they switched from Lightning to USBC or the idea. I'm pretty sure he would have been down with the idea of getting rid of the headphone jack. I don't see Steve Jobs as saying no, that's something we absolutely have to keep. Um. I think for the that that's

referring to the iPhone. The new iPhones don't have the headphone jacks, they just have the lightning connector. It does make it weird if you have a MacBook Pro and an iPhone that you can't use a simple cable between the two to charge your iPhone while your MacBook Pro is running. But um, I don't think I don't think any of those were big warning flags, saying Steve Jobs would absolutely not want this to happen, but potentially save

you hundreds and thousands of emails. And you said Apple moving away from lightning to USBC, did you mean the Thunderbolt ports. That's why I meant Thunderbolt pot. Yeah. Yeah, because Thunderbolt is built into the new versions of these USBC style receptacles. It's such a weird thing that's actually in the MacBook Pro right now that I don't really have a great way to explain, and maybe you could. It's like it's a Thunderbolt enabled USB sorry, Thunderbolt three

enabled us B C input. It's a very strange name. Yeah. I think moving towards standard things is within the realm of Jobs. The idea of simply going, okay, this is the future we don't care. We're making were drawing in the line right now. I think it looks a lot like the way the MacBook Air was set up in the first place, with its original one USB port that grew a little bit. Same thing with the MacBook pros um the headphone jack removal. Yeah, I would I could

believe that happening. Maybe, although Jobs really did like music, I don't know if he would want you to listen to bluetooth headphones, be honest. Yeah, I mean it's a good point. I mean, well, the fact that you're already listening on an Apple device and you're likely listening to some form of compressed music. I think you could be

listening to uncompressed music files, but I don't know. Yeah, it's it does seem like it would be another step further away from that that that experience that truly defined

the or redefined Apple. I mean, the iPod, I would argue, was the product that brought Apple truly to the forefront of the technology world again, and the iPhones cemented their place once once it came out that uh, you know, when Steve Jobs came back to the company and he began to revitalize the Mac platform uh, the iPod was really the device that kind of got the tech world's

attention and said, oh wow, Apple's doing stuff again. Uh. So to to make that step where you are saying, oh, you know, bluetooth headphones are fine, that does seem a little weird. But I can't really say this is a

win or a loss. And it's largely because again at the very beginning, as I said, it's hard to judge how well I did without having the authority there too a d so that in retrospect it was a bad prediction just because there's it's hard to judge if it was correct or not unless again, there was something that was just wildly elt of character for Apple. I predict you will not be making predictions like that for your next show. I certainly hope I won't. Alright, So my

my nex prediction was about wearables. Wearables will be better with follow ups to the earlier smart watches, and Activity Tracker was supposed to be the year we're gonna see refined approaches. And I'm laughing at reading my own note here there will be a compelling reason to own a smart watch. Um. Reality, No, that didn't happen. There's currently no true compelling reason that anyone needs a smart watches. That's my own opinion. I saw a report on the

day of recording. List I d C just released a wearables market report and they said basic wearables, primarily composed of fitness bands, accounted for of the market and experience. It's double digit growth now, by the way, year over year growth the third quarter between compared to three point one percent, So not a huge growth in the wearables which includes smart watches and and uh fitness devices. So Google basically sat out when it came to Android where

they're like, yeah, we're gonna show a new one. Here it is, and we're gonna release it. Seen, they backed off very hard. Apple basically said we screwed up. They redefine their their watch with Watch OS three. It's it's really not even close. Um, I don't see smart watches everywhere. Do you see smart watches everywhere where you are? Uh? No, I do not. I mean I'm wearing a pebble right now.

But some people would argue that pebble doesn't really like some some would say pebble almost doesn't fit the definition of a smart watch because it has limited interactive abilities and you know, you've got the monochromatic screen. And but that's all I want it because it gives me notifications and I don't ignore of them. I don't or I

don't miss them. Uh So specifically when someone's calling me, I don't miss those calls anymore because when I'm walking I walked to and from home and work, when I'm walking off, and don't feel my phone vibrating if someone calls me, but I feel my risk vibrating. So that's you know, that's why I have one. But that's the that's the only compelling reason is really because otherwise I miss phone calls and my wife gets mad at me. Um, my wife hasn't I watch. She's gonna Apple watch, and

I mean she likes it just fine. But yeah, I don't see him everywhere. There's like maybe one other person in this office who has one, and that's it. So yeah, I'm not seeing an explosion and adoption right now. Wearables are one of those things where I think the potential is there. No one has created the killer, the killer product that people absolutely must go out and purchase, and so it remains this kind of promised land that no

one's been able to tap into. I'm sure as we record this, I as and I are both in our own individual ways preparing for the apocalypse known as c e S, which will take place at the very beginning of January. And we both know wearables will yet again be an enormous story there because it's it's it's an area of potential growth, and whenever those exist within the world of electronics, you're gonna see endless examples of it.

On the CEOs show floor. The question is, well, we see one that's so interesting and so different from the other thousands of products that we've already seen that we will be convinced, yes, this is the one that is going to redefine the market. I'm not convinced yet. There's plenty of good products out there, activity trackers and smart watches, but nothing that I would sit there and say like, oh, well, you absolutely have to go out and get one of these. Yeah.

I don't bold prediction. No, we're not gonna see anything that's going to change the wearables market sees in a couple of weeks. Um. But I just if Apple couldn't figure it out, and Samsung's they got their great approach where they try everything, they iterate and they iterate, and they iterate. Eventually they get it right. It might be another couple of years. I really thought I thought sixteen was the year because the the the idea was already presented.

People were getting used to the idea of having more than one device maybe, and there were major companies behind it, but the execution just wasn't here this year. In I don't see it happening in the next few weeks. Maybe long shot, you know, December twenty six of next year, seventeen, somebody figures it out, but it won't be public until. Yeah.

I remember I mentioned that if you were to pair wearables with a r you could have some really interesting applications and respect and we'll talk more about VR in just a short moment. But I agree with you. I think I think. I think we're gonna see plenty of examples. I think they're going to be lots of products to choose from. But I don't I don't see any breakaways yet on the horizon. But maybe we'll we'll be proven wrong. We're willing to have that happen. At the point being tway,

sixteen definitely wasn't the wearable year. Uh My next prediction was that Apple would make a move to acquire Tesla, although Tesla might not agree to Apple's terms, and the reality is, whoo, maybe we don't know if that happened. We do know that uh, Tesla got shareholder approval to acquire or actually to merge with another company called solar City, which was founded coincidentally not coincidentally by Elon Musk's cousins, and he was the chairman of solar City. Uh So

Tesla and solar City are merging together. But uh, we do also know that Apple held some discussions with the executive team over at Tesla. But Musk was very careful to say like he could not comment on what the nature of those conversations was all about, because you know, that's that's confidential stuff. Uh. But a lot of reporters kept on asking does this mean that there have been talks of acquisition between Apple and Tesla? And he says, I even if there were, I couldn't comment on it.

So it's useless to ask me those questions. So we don't know if Apple had made a move. It's possible to Apple at least express some interest, but there's no way to confirm that one way or the other um and in the episode, I as you mentioned that there was a possibility that Apple would invest in Tesla, but not try to acquire it, and so, in other words, there would be some sort of corporate investment on Apple's part, perhaps even having some bars of Apple joined the board

of directors over at Tesla. But as far as I know, that has not yet happened either. We do know that

Apple is definitely interested in developing autonomous car programs. Are very recently apples director of Product Integrity, Steve Kenner, wrote to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to advocate for better rules and regulations specifically for autonomous vehicles, whether that is, you know, to expressly allow autonomous vehicles to be on the road, or to create the infrastructure necessary to have have those rules so that when weird things happen, we

actually have law to point to and say, well, this is what we do in this case. But Apple itself as a company has not come out and said what they are planning on doing or what sort of timeline they're looking at. We just know that they're interested in autonomous cars, not when they might pull the trigger and jump into the game. Based on the last things you were talking about if Apple did buy a pre existing car company, that would be a non jobs move back

to your other prediction. Uh, if Apple actually announced ahead of time in we're gonna have a self driving car, that would also be not jobs in in that kind of way now that I think about it. But yeah, the the idea that Apple and Tesla were gonna work together, I like that idea. They seem like they're a natural fit. But I've seen enough, I've read enough in the press that seems like there's a bit of animosity between the

two companies. Yeah, I know that Elon Musk says some derogatory things about some of the engineers that end up at Apple. They're they're the they're the ones who get rejected from Tesla. So yeah, there's been there's been some like sniping back and forth. And I know that there's been like whenever you look into the news stories, you'll hear about people defecting from one company and going to the other, and there's always some sort of snarky comment

about that. So yeah, I think there's definitely some some rivalry going on there. Um. I like the idea of Cook taking the stage and saying essentially doing what Steve Jobs did for the announcement of the iPhone, saying, talk about an iPod that has wireless connectivity, a phone and an Internet device, and that you know, as he goes on, you realize he's talking about one product, not three products. So something allot the lines of UH. Today, I want to introduce to you a phone, a car, and an

Internet device. A phone, a car, an Internet device. Are you guys getting it? It's the same thing. It's the I car. That's what I want to see. I think a car. Just saying the phrase of cars a little bit um what's the word? It kind of gives it away too much everything. They would come up with something fancier to say, I think it gives it away too much too, But I think I got a personal transport device. Yeah, because then it could be a segue, right and the

investing Are you getting it? It's our car and we think you're gonna love it. It's the thinnest car, which is really bad for the safety tests. Well it would it would. It would save on power consumption. You wouldn't have is much mass to move around. The lightest car. It gets picked up from the slightest breeze Yeah, if you want to turn left, you just swipe left. Some features will be added later. It turns out that you're all of your all of your navigation features are likely

to send you to places that don't exist. Or oh that's gotten that's gotten better this year, and Apple has drones out there checking out at least that's coccording a certain recent report that Apple's got drones out there searching, getting a maps app data back to the Maps apps. Maybe it's not as bad as it used to be. Where you where you don't have like the Washington Monument located across the street from where it really is that

kind of thing. Oh no, they moved that just for the Apple's map decided that's the drones are there for. They like, oh, you're right, it does look better over here exactly alright. So what was your next one? Sorry? Mine was also dead. Rom Google was gonna go wireless and finally it was gonna become its own wireless carrier.

Now that didn't happen. In I remember was talking a bit about Project five being out there and Google still has that, uh, and I was thinking maybe they were tied in with Google Fiber, and Google Fiber would be some kind of backbone for a wireless service. Yeah, that slowed down to Google Fiber. There was a post on it from Google saying, for the most part, our potential fiber cities, those where we have where we've been in exploratory discussions, We're going to pause our operations and offices

while we were fine our approaches. So it looks like Google's pushed towards wired and wireless internet seems to be installed. Surprisingly, I really thought they were going to push forward with this maybe next year. Then maybe maybe there's always hope that they do this because there's so much consolidation in the wireless and wired space at this point that competition

is good. But um, yeah, when when it happened, when the news was first breaking that Google was kind of putting the brakes on fiber, like they're still rolling it out in cities where they had started. So for example, in Atlanta, they're still rolling out fiber because they had already started that process. They had already wired up several of the neighborhoods of Atlanta, not mine, but some of

the neighboring ones. Um. And then, uh, there was some rumors at that point when Google said we're gonna We're gonna slow down. That maybe they were going to explore becoming a wireless UH Internet service provider instead, and rather than have to lay out a fiber infrastructure, they would look at, you know, building essentially essentially what equates to towers or or using existing UH architecture to attach their their technology too. But we I haven't seen any movement

on that one way or the other. It all seemed to be largely based on just assumptions from the media. An other thing is that's just thinking about how Google did introduced or WiFi router system that us essentially creates a mesh network within your own home. If Google sells enough of those, maybe they can somehow come up with a way to bridge up a Project five to build a network. But that that's a much longer term thing.

I don't doubt that Google is working on wireless solutions, but they have yet to make a real move, right Yeah, yeah, we'll have to see if seen changes that up at all. I I do expect, like I keep hoping that Google Fiber will continue in Atlanta and continue to deploy so that I can hook up to it. I've really been looking totally selfish reasons totally. I completely will own up to that, but it would make podcasting from home a possibility as opposed to a trial, as I as well knows.

I'm very aware of that. That's actually why I'm happy with a service I have now that's wireless, and I'm not gonna sound like an AD, but I like my wireless carrier right now. So maybe we'll see Google follow suit and do the wireless thing. We'll have to keep deep an eye out, but at the moment it is as not a wireless carrier. My next prediction was that VR would fizzle out in two thousands sixteen in the consumer market, mostly because it took too long for really

compelling headsets to make their way to store shelves. In late none of the major headsets had yet hit the market where consumers could actually buy a finished headset, so Oculus hadn't launched, h HTC Vibe wasn't out yet, and of course PlayStation VR only recently came out for consumers, so um, the only ones that you could really get your hands on were essentially apps on phones, and then you would get a cheap headset or a Google cardboard or something like that and slide your phone into it,

and that was as close as you were going to get. And some of those experiences are all right, but they aren't nearly as immersive or as comprehensive as the full headsets that were on their way. And my worry was that by the time the headsets finally premiered, because they we had been waiting for years for them to come out, uh, they would not be able to live up to expectation, and thus we would end up seeing low adoption rates and also we'd probably see some sets just never come

to market at all. That the fact that there'd be a lack of interest after all this time would cause that to collapse up So the day we are recording this episode, which is on December six, b GR published a piece titled demand for VR headsets has been surprisingly disappointing.

Clearly they didn't listen to our show because I was not surprised h And according to DigiTimes, demand has been weakening recently for VR headsets and apparently the two big reasons that they were citing for the slow sales were

high prices. So these are expensive headsets for the most part, particularly if you're looking at the PC based one, because unless you happen to have a PC that has a pretty hefty graphics processor, you'll probably have to either upgrade your computer or buy a new rig, thus adding to the cost of your headset um. Also, the other big reason would be the lack of compelling content, which anyone who is familiar with like the WE or the WU or the WE move knows that will kill a system.

I mean those those systems were good, they weren't. There were decent systems with interesting innovations, but there weren't enough compelling games or experiences for them, and so you'd play a little bit and then you just put it aside and it would just kind of gather dust. I'm seeing the same thing in VR right now, and even the PS four PlayStation VR is suffering from this. I thought that that one out of all of them had the best chance of succeeding because there's a big install base

of PS four sets out there. Already a lot of people own a PS four, which means they don't have to worry about that extra cost if they go and buy a PS VR set. Uh. You know, they already have the basic system that will take care of what they need on the processing end. They don't have to worry about their console whether or not it's good enough. It is, but even that one hasn't done well. According to this piece and b g r Uh they had to slash their sales estimates from two point six million

units all the way down to seven fifty thousand. It's a huge drop. So the question now is can VR companies remain relevant enough to wait out this period until there are enough compelling reasons to own these systems to keep them viable in the market. I think so. I mean, you're right in you didn't really go VRS away, and there's a are all the different variants on these headset

based realities. Like I said last here, I said, it probably takes probably needs another year or two, and like you were mentioning, like I think, one of the biggest problems has been that the PC based VR needs really beefy processing. It needs a lot of power, and unless you have something that's really modern, it's not there yet. Now. Maybe in two to three years, when like the cutting edge computers of today are the standard low end pieces of computing, then then VR will be really universal. But

we have seen enough of these things come out. Occulus Rift came out. I was surprised that that the ATC Vibe came out. There's also the Google's daydream View. There's

a lot of different versions of these things. I believe Oculus mentioned that they're working or Facebook's working on a version of the Oculus that is somewhere between the full on rift that you're connecting to a PC and something that's between that and the one where you place a phone in a headset, something that's a little bit more all in one. And so maybe we'll see these things. But like you're saying, the content, I've seen some of it.

The content is pretty good. It's getting there. But again, like with the with smart watches, it's about compelling content. Is it just like, hey, look I can turn around and see a museum. That's nice, But do I want to be in this a long time? I think Again, technology, it's just not. The pace is too fast right now. The VR stuff is cool, but the screens aren't good enough yet, or the processing isn't good enough yet, or

the headsets or the headsets are too heavy. So when you wear them, you only want to wear them for up to maybe twenty to thirty minutes, which means you have to design experiences that are ideal for twenty to thirty minutes, not sitting down for two hours to game because it's too uncomfortable to wear the headset that long. Yeah, friend of mine has the Galaxy the Gear VR one and his phone was constantly overheating within it, so he hooked up a USB fan to it so he could

be there for longer than fifteen minutes. That is not the experience you should have when you're doing this. So it's still I think it's still early days, and UH did not exactly like the World on fire. Now I I I have, I really do hope that it's able to weather the storm and to continue being a viable technology. I love the idea of virtual reality, UH, and I

even love some of the implementations I've seen. I just I'm not ready to dive in and spend, you know, a couple of grand in order to have one of those at home, particularly since the one I like the most all the ones I've tried, and I have not tried all of them, so this is just based upon my limited experience is the HTC vive because I like the fact that you can move around in a physical space and it's reflected within a game. But at the same time, I don't have a space in my home

where I could do that. Like, even if I wanted to spend that much money, I don't have a room in my house that I could dedicate to VR. All of my rooms in my house are dedicated to just regular R. So I don't think that that's you know that that's not for me either. But if we can get to that point where the standard PC, just because the way technology moves, the standard PC is your baseline for being able to run VR, that will help a lot.

Where people are buying these new computers not because they want to use a VR headset, but because that's now the standard, low price computer and a VR headset will happen to work with that. That's the ideal situation. It is unfortunate that, uh, the way technology tends to go is we see people try to take advantage of all the power of technology has available to it at that given time, which then puts the burden on the consumer when it comes time to actually buying something because it's

gonna be way more expensive that way. At the same time, you do want it to have a good experience. You don't want it something that's gonna be super choppy or really low quality graphics or sound, or something that would be disastrous as well. So they were early in a tough position. They they had to come out with something because everyone was yelling for it. It had to be good, and preferably it would be cheap. But you couldn't really

do all three. So we got really good, and we got uh, you know, really powerful, uh and compelling in a way as long as the experiences there, but not cheap. It is not cheap, and I don't think there's anything out there yet for your average consumer to convince them to go and make that big investment. But maybe we will see that change over the next year or two. I'm sure we're gonna see lots of e R stuff at CES this year too. It would shock, babe, we didn't.

Microsoft had a big push into VR and AAR with its last update to Windows ten, so I could see that with those low priced accessories. I think they were talking about two hundred maybe three hundred dollars for more VR headsets that are working with Windows ten, so I can imagine that. C Yes, we're gonna see a lot of other headsets, a lot of other accessories that take advantage of this. But again it's not it's not ready for the masses yet. There's just it's just it's just

not there. Yeah. Uh, it kind of reminds me in a way of when personal computers first really hit the market, like that. That was also one of those things that a very niche market opened up for personal computers. It took more than a decade for that to become something that you would find in uh, in the average home. Uh you could even argue almost two decades really for that to become a thing. And uh so it may be that VR is going to follow probably a much

shorter cycle than that, but a similar pathway. Now that we both were talking about VR in that last one, then my prediction came up again. So the next one I made was that the cable industry will see subscriber numbers shrink further. But it wasn't going to be the tipping point where you know, the sky would be falling for cable companies. And I was more right than not. But I don't think I don't really give myself a lot of points for this one because it was pretty

obvious and to the shrinking actually slowed a bit. Um numbers show that, yes, there's still a decrease in subscribers overall throughout the industry, but that decrease isn't at the same rate as it was the previous year. It's slowed

a bit, so it's starting to trickle. Uh. Some people have said, perhaps we're seeing an end to this attrition rate that had been taking place, and maybe now we're reaching a point where the people who are currently subscribed to cable television are are are not They're not holdouts. It's just these are people who are satisfied with the service and don't have any desire to move away from it.

So you could think of the people who were the cord cutters and the cord never's as being on the outskirts of this group, and now that they're gone, So what's left is that core And it's a big one. It's we're talking millions of people here, It's not like it's a few hundred thousand. So we may have hit a plateau. Uh. It may be that we're going to continue to see a decrease, but it will be a much smaller amount year over year um. And in fact, Comcast this year reported they had a slight gain and

subscribers compared to the year before. So it may very well be that the cord cutting phenomenon is at least pausing right now or or slowing down right now. What do you think I as, I mean, I I don't tend to cover this so much, but um, I mean, I know what my own personal feeling is, but that's based upon my own biases. So I think, you know, the the big guttural switch from being a cable having

person to a cord cutter. I think that's happened over the past couple of years, but that trend is declining just because there's only so much so many people who are willing to leave. For myself, I don't have it and not cable, my brother does. He would never give it to his cable, and my mom would. There's always a bunch of people that won't and and people like me who are cord killing. So if you want to call them that, we don't bother to like evangelize, Oh

you could do this, you could do that. At this point, it's just there's enough options out there that with something like the Sony PlayStation View, there's also direct TV. Now there's all these different options out there that I think the markets getting more and more educated when it comes to what can you do with or without the court.

I think that might change things next year because now the direct TV now exists and PlayStation view exists, and they're much very much like cable subscriptions that could maybe get people to switch, but only if they understand what costs they're saving, because a lot of people like, why would I ever pay this much money for television if I could just get cable. We're not paying for the rental of the box, you're not paying for the d

V R F and other stuff. But it's it's that kind of thing that's going to change people's perception if what do they understand cable to be? What do they wanted to be? And are they just trying to substitute that massive pipeline of channels or they just going I'm gonna do other stuff. I'm gonna do v are, I'm gonna read a book. Yeah, I'm gonna play a game. I'm gonna watch Netflix. Right, I'm just gonna mainline all

the Netflix original shows. Now. Your next one was another one revolving around Facebook acquisitions, and I can't be right about these Facebook, I said Facebook by atc UM. I believe ACC worked with Facebook on phones before and no, that didn't happen. Yeah, Facebook, that would have been interesting. We would have seen a dramagic decrease in competition in that phizz link VR space. Well, that would have been interesting if the vibe and the and the rift were

together somehow. Like it's odd because the word the word rift suggests that you could never have such a thing. I'm sure they have to come up with some kind of cross platform. I'm gonna leave that one alone. But a c C, which I thought was ripe for an acquisition at this point because it's it's struggling. Although a CC did get a design win, I believe they're the people behind or the company, excuse me, the company behind Google's Pixel phone and the Pixel XL so wow, it

doesn't have any branding from a SC. A c C is the hardware partners, so they do have that. I still think that company a SEC needs some kind of huge win out there because they make some really great hardware. I mean, I have Pixel, I really enjoy it. I've played with a STC phones for years. They're really quite solid, and they just can't make a splash in this crowded markets place between Samsung and Apple. Those two just together are just monstrously large. And then there's every there's a

small bit of the pie for everybody else. Yeah, and and we talked about this last time to My first smartphone was an HTC smartphone because it was the the HCCG one, the first Google phone in the United States with the slideout key board. And uh, it is interesting. Just as we were about to go into the studio, I saw a thing on the BBC that said that that there were some indications in the market that Google

might be interested in pursuing an acquisition with HTC. Although that seems kind of odd to me, uh, mostly because we already saw Google do that with Motorola Mobile and then that didn't work out. But I mean, who's to say. I'm not an expert on these things by any stretch of the imagination. So possibly we could see an acquisition, but maybe it's Google not Facebook doing the acquiring um, in which case you would see Google get into the VR game even bigger than they already have with their

their daydream stuff. And uh and Google Cardboard, I think you just accidentally hit on something there that that would be the good reason why Motorola didn't necessarily work out with Google, because Google can do hand sets, but when it comes to VR, they might be struggling. And the Vibe being one of the better experiences I've heard about. I have not trying it out myself. I know you have. Colleagues of mine have tried it out and they really love what the Vibe is. Maybe that's the kind of

information and technology that they're looking for, but that's all speculation. Yeah, it may just be that they were talking about other partnerships. I mean, like like you were saying, I asked, with the Pixel being an HDC handset even without the branding, I mean, that's a big deal. Uh. That's also the next phone I want, but I don't have one right now.

My next prediction was that we would see lots more growth in online media like Amazon, Prime Videos, Hulu, Netflix, and also we would see a lot more from independent or smaller creative studios, which was a total gimme. Uh, I don't think. I think I could have predicted water as wet, and that would have been slightly less surprising than this prediction. So yes, we did see lots of new shows and movies coming out from all of these platforms.

We also saw YouTube bread getting into the game and really pushing original content, including series that star YouTube uh celebrities who have become famous for their own channels being put into scripted series. Um, I've seen. I've seen lots of commercials for those recently. When I've gone to see actual movies, like, there's usually a promo there for the upcoming YouTube series. So this I think is going to continue. We're just going to see more and more of these.

A lot of different platforms out there, all of them are struggling to find a way to differentiate themselves from the other competitors in the field. You know, why is it that you would go to one versus another, And especially for for groups like Netflix where they're having a harder time establishing a video library from other content creators, why not just go through and make your own darn content. If it all happens to be Daredevil's spin off, so

be it. I'll watch them. Uh So, Yeah, I think not a bold prediction by any means, but I would say I was was pretty much correct on this one. Yeah, You're right on this. There wasn't like any massive consolidation by any means. It wasn't like Netflix was purchased by Disney. That would have been crazy. That was a rumor. At one point Hulu was dissolved. So there's still competition. So I like the fact that you are right on this one. And thankfully there's enough competition out there when it comes

to streaming services. But there's a lot, a lot of services out there that are just competing for your dollars. I know, there's like NBC C sells like this four dollar thing. There's a Lifetime Movie Club, it's four dollars. There's all these little tiny clubs that are popping up that you know, after a while you're paying. It's almost it's almost all the cart television almost, But um, we're not going to get that yet. No. I all of cart television I think is is I don't know that

we'll ever get it. Uh not, not until we get to a point where cable television and satellite TV just don't make sense anymore. And at that point maybe, but until that happens, I just don't see it being a real viable alternative. The biggest surprise for me was when HBO finally went with HBO go. That was one of those things where I was I was skeptical it would ever happen. Not and I still don't subscribe to it. So when people talk about west World, I tune out

because I haven't seen any of it yet. Wait wait, wait, wait, you haven't seen west World. I know I want to so badly, but I don't have HBO go. You can get HBO now or she get you can get one of those things. Like I'm shocked because I think West World would be right up your alley. I I know, I know, I'm still I'm still behind on Black Mirror though, so I gotta you can skip half of that. I wouldn't. We'll talk about that later. Yeah, so your next prediction

was about a high game company. Yeah, the Nintendo and X will be good. That was my prediction. And you know what, I'm gonna give myself, you know, a third of a point on that one. Not sure. It's not even out until March. But the n X got a name. It's called the Nintendo's Switch. It's this hybrid home console slash portable console. Basically, doc It's kind of like the Nvideo Shields tablet if you think of it that way. Yeah, you can dock this tablet and it works at your TV.

But this is all based on Nintendo's promo video where they showed off all the different variants of this and what it could do. But as far as I know, I don't know anybody's played with this device yet. I believe in January they're gonna Nintendo will speak about more of the features about the Switch, but it's definitely interesting.

Whether it's good or not, that's for debate. There's the possibility that they could be at c ES to show it off in a little quiet suite somewhere, because that's how I found out about the we U. It was before the Surprise, Yeah, would I mean when the WU, before the WEU came out, Nintendo rented a s eat in once it was in the Renaissance, and I got an invite to go check out the Wii you so I did, and I got a chance to play with it before anyone on the public had had a chance.

You know. It's just people, just people in the industry and people in media who got a chance to play with it. So here's hoping they do the same thing with the switch. I like the switch is reminds me a lot of the Wii in the sense that it has a very innovative uh style for the way you interact with the game system, whether you're using it as a handheld or if you plug it into your you know, docking stations, that you play it on a on a

large television, and the various types of controller configurations. Uh. It just again drives home the fact that they better have some really compelling games and experiences to make really good use of that configuration, because if they don't, you're like, well, this is really cool hardware, but what do I do with it? Yeah? I don't know if they do, but we'll see it's And then I had another prediction. Yeah, this is where we went into. This is where we

went into some rapid fire predictions. Apple will let you set default apps on iOS. Now I was wrong about that, but you can delete stock apps. You can delete stock app all you want to take. Let's imagine you're like, I'm gonna get rid of Apple's maps app. Cool, you can get rid of it. And then you're like, I'm gonna set Google Maps as my new default. You know what happens is when you click in address it asks, you iOS asked you to reinstall Apple's maps apps so

you can get rid of stock apps. You cannot choose any non Apple default app, and then it nags you to go back to the stock app. That's also why I'm on a pixel phone now, by the way, Okay, that's fair. That's actually why I'm like, Okay, I'm tired of this game. I'm moving over back to Android. Um and speaking of it, of Android and phones, I said something about a battery tech breakthrough. We're going to have

a battery tech breakthrough in Yeah, we didn't really get that. Well, we we've got we've got some promising work in labs, but nothing in the consumer space yet. Although one of the groups I was reading about and m I T was preparing uh the technology to go into consumer products in the near future, so we are seeing some movement on this now. Batteries are are constricted by these pesky laws of physics that unfortunately are keep things from just exploding.

Well not explains a bad word with Samsung, uh, keep keep things from from experiencing exponential performance. Right, You tend to see very gradual improvements and in performance with batteries

as we experiment with different materials. But there are a lot of researchers out there who are really working on trying to improve battery life because obviously we're making more and more powerful electronics that are meant to be portable handheld devices especially, and if they're sucking up all that power that has to come from somewhere, and you want to have a battery that's capable of keeping up or else you're recharging every you know, thirty minutes or whatever.

So some people at M I T have been working on the next generation of batteries. Some of them have been working with lithium metal batteries, which is interesting because early lithium batteries were lithium metal batteries, but they were not terribly stable. They were not very safe, and that's when we started moving away from lithium metal batteries to

lithium ion batteries. But now we're looking at another move back to lithium metal where you can have essentially twice the capacity of the previous generation batteries but in the same size form factor, which would be huge. Um And when we'll see that in consumer products, I don't know, or if it will ever actually make it there, I don't know. UM. There's been a lot of attention aimed at batteries ever since the Galaxy Note issue. And that

wasn't the breakthrough. I was talking about where things were poorly engineered the battery, where where fire was breaking through. That's that's not exactly what I was talking about in the literal sense. I guess technically it might might have actually got a point there, but that wasn't That wasn't

the breakthrough I was thinking of. I am I gotta I gotta go on record and say I am glad that neither you nor I made the prediction that Samsung was going to suffer this terrible pr disaster as people were discovering their their devices catching fire, and I have to issue an enormous recall because if either of us had predicted that, it would sound like we had caused it. Well, yeah, and then the other prediction that would have caused more problems,

that there would be a second recall. Yes, oh man. I flew to Berlin shortly after the second recall was announced, and uh, and every flight I was on, because I had to fly from Atlanta to Chicago first and then Chicago to Berlin and then coming back. It was reversing that that trip every airport and every announcement before getting on the flight involved like if you happen to have a Note seven, you can't take it on the plane.

They even set up an exchange table at one of the airports where you were supposed to come in and exchange your phone for a different phone that would not presumably catch fire in the middle of the flight. So yeah, not neither of us were able to predict that. UM. I had a couple of rapid fire questions that I just asked, and we both gave our kind of our

our opinions about. One of them was, well, we see a truly autonomous card debut in two thousand sixteen for consumer use, and both of us said, no, that's not gonna happen, and true to form, that didn't happen, although we did get a lot of driver assist systems that were being misused as if they were driver less cars, Tesla autopilot being the big example there. UM and I did a whole thing where I said, maybe calling it autopilot was the first mistake, because that sounds like it

could just take over for you, and that that's You're fine. UM, it doesn't excuse people from ignoring the multitude of warnings that say, under no circumstances should you do that. But we saw some pretty tragic results of people misusing Tesla autopilot as if it were a driverless car. And as we both predicted, we don't have any driverless cars on the market for consumers just yet. Everyone's working on it, though. To be fair to the naming convention here, don't forget

that there's a number of reports. I'm pretty sure these are These are real people deciding that they were going to hit cruise control on their vehicle and then going to the back of their vehicle or doing something else. Naming isn't everything. Yeah, now, there at least have been plenty of of scenes in movies and television where characters have done that to comedic of act, and I would not be surprised if those were in fact based upon true accounts. At some point or another. You make a

good point. It's I think when I said it's the first mistake of calling it autopilot, I don't mean it's the only mistake, like it's the primary driver. As soon as anyone knows, Hey, this system that's in this car is such an advanced driver assist system. That it is essentially driving for you. Then it's you're you're inviting people to use it in ways that it was not intended. Um. But yeah, maybe we'll see a driverless car hit the

market within the next couple of years. I don't think is going to be the year for it either, at least not one marketed as a driverless car. I don't think that's a possibility. We still have a lot of people working on just getting the legality of driverless cars established. I was gonna mention I was gonnaation the legal loopholes, not loopholes to the hurdles. Excuse me that they would.

That's a lot of work ahead. Yeah, and and it's you know, it's hard to to dry how long that's going to take because it's unprecedented, right, A lot of the law that you know whenever we talk law, and and I as knows this way better than I do. He has training in law. Uh, but much of our laws based upon precedent and builds upon precedent. And when you get to two cases where it is, it requires

a new new layer of thinking. It's a lot slower because you have to really put a lot of thought into how are you going to frame this so that you don't cause more problems further down the road in this case, both figuratively and literally. So um, yeah, it's probably gonna take a while before we get truly autonomous

cars marketed for the book. Now, let me ask you this just I know that we're not making predictions right now, but do you think we're gonna see autonomous cars more likely to be used in uh like, uh like a fleet kind of like Uber or lift before they would ever be available for individual consumer purchase. I think I know they're being tested right now. You can get into an Uber that's it's it's essentially driving itself, but there

is an engineer sitting in the driver's seat. I think, I think I believe we're gonna see a lot of those happening before we see this the fleet allowed to be truly without anybody in the car, because I could also see the liability aspects just being through the roof. Just imagine some some guys decided to sit in the driver's seat of a driverless vehicle and then taking it over. That could be a huge nightmare as long as it as long as there are physical controls to take over.

That does remain a problem. Right, So that's that's the kind of thing that I would have to be figured out. So fleet maybe I would actually think it probably happened in commercial usages. Maybe in trucks. Yeah, maybe there's a lead trucker. I think I've seen a couple of those already in testing. I think that would happen first because that's a an industry that's more used to being regulated.

It sounds sounds very realistic to me. My next question was would we see any big company shakedowns with huge changes at the executive level. You had pointed out HTC and BlackBerry both had the potential to go that way. Neither of us were really certain. We knew that it was gonna happen because it happens every year. When you're talking about something as big as the tech industry. Clearly

there's gonna be at least one shakedown somewhere. It doesn't you know, it might not necessarily be a top top name in technology, but it will definitely happen. So there were some big ones. Condie Nast, which is you could argue is not really a tech company, UH had a pretty significant executive shuffle, but they're they're moving from print

based focus to digital focus. They've been concentrating on that for years, but the shakedown, moving things around and putting different executives into into new positions really had more to do with let's refocus this on creating a true digital business. Hyper Loop one had one of the most bizarre and dramatic stories. Did you follow any of the story of hyper Loop one and and the crazy stuff that was going on between the co founders. No, this I didn't

know about. Yeah, so alright, so hyper Loop one is one of the companies that's working to create hyper loop as a reality. Hyper Loop, of course, is Elon Musk's

little off the cuff suggestion. It's a little more than that, but he was very casual in the way he suggested this of an enclosed train system where you would pump out most of the air so it would be a near vacuum, but not a real vacuum, a very low pressure uh enclosed tunnel system and shoot trains through magnetic levitation at super high speeds so you can travel between say Los Angeles and San Francisco in like half an

hour um, which would be pretty darn fast. And there are a couple of different companies that have been working on being the first to actually make this a reality. One of those is hyper Loop one. UM and the former cy TEO of Hyperloop one was Brogan bam Brogan, and that is his name, Brogan bam Brogan, who who actually came over from SpaceX to be an engineer for

Hyperloop one. Uh. There was some sort of crazy falling out between Bam Brogan and the other co founders of the company, and bam Brogan was ousted from the company. He then sued his former co workers. They countersued him because they said that he was uh spreading untruths about them, including saying that one of the other executives had threatened him by placing a noose on his desk, which seems

pretty extreme. Uh, don't know if it's true or not, but anyway, there was this big move of suing and countersuing, and then in November the whole thing was settled out of court. The terms were not disclosed. We don't know who was paid what or to what extent. But man, if you want to talk about dramatic shakedown in the executive level, it tells me that I'm going to have to do an episode about hyper loop one just to

really dig into what exactly happened. And uh and too because it is a crazy even the bit I've just talked about, that's just the tip of the iceberg. We saw some other sorry icebergs as uh well you know, uh, typically these are would we have to be figurative icebergs. You don't really get literal icebergs in enclosed train tubes at least not at Yeah, maybe that let's look for

a hyperop version two point oh for iceberg integration. Intel also said goodbye to some executives U some folks who were in charge of the mobile chip divisions, the PC division and the Internet of Things division were either let

go or replaced or or moved into a different position. UM. Intel has been struggling a little bit in this space because PC sales are starting to really well, they have been over the last few years on on the decline, and of course Intel's big businesses manufacturing chips for for personal computers, and that's still where they get most of their revenue. But uh, you know, it's they're they're trying to maintain relevancy in a world that is changing around them,

so they've been reevaluating their priorities. I'm curious to see what their booth is going to look like this year. It's or next year. At CES, since we're still in UH and each trade changed several executive level positions in September, including replacing the chief executive officer, So there were some big shifts around at the executive level at various companies UM, but again that happens every year. UH. I also asked, are there any tech bubbles that will see burst in?

And this is kind of similar to the executive shake up one. We're like, well, may maybe there There didn't seem to be anything that was just on the verge of imploding. I, as you said, maybe we will finally stop hearing the phrase the uber of whatever, Like this company is the uber of mobile game apps. I think that's actually right, though I don't don't remember hearing that phrase in a long time, or my brain is completely blocked it since the last year. Yeah, I I haven't

heard it a whole lot either. I think I think part of that is due to the fact that as time goes on, I feel worse and worse about the company uber Like I don't I'm not terribly I'm not a big fan, Like I like the service just fine, but it's a company that makes me uncomfortable with the way the executive leadership uh communicates. I mean, you've got executives who are actively talking about a future in which they replace all human drivers with autonomous cars, which puts

thousands of people out of work. Like You're you're saying this while these people are working for you. You're essentially announcing, Hey, your time is limited, your days are numbered, We're going to replace you. Keep driving. It doesn't that that rubs me the wrong way. Uh so anyway, but I also have not heard people use that phrase very much. Recently. I said that we probably see some food delivery services start to phase out due to too many players in

the market space. I think actually there are more of them, at least in my neighborhood. So I'm not complaining because I'm lazy and I like it when food comes to me, So I'm alright with being wrong about that. And uh yeah, I don't know that there is anything that's on the verge of imploding, like VR probably would have been the closest except for the fact that it hadn't really launched yet. So I think to implode you have to be big

first and then fall apart. I think VRS problem is that it it's having a real issue getting traction, and so it may be more of a a fizzle rather than an implosion. Um. And I also, will any technology officially die in sixteen, I don't. I can't think of anything where you know, we we just say, oh, do you remember such and such? Yeah, that doesn't exist anymore. Um. In fact, I would say some of the war obsolete quote unquote obsolete types of technology made a little bit

of a comeback in like vinyl vinyl. Definitely I bought three vinyl albums on Saturday. Or no, I'm sorry on Friday. Well I guess technically one of them was on Saturday because it had passed midnight at that point. Um. Yeah, so I bought three vinyl albums just this past weekend. And or like we mentioned, eight millimeter film, we did I as You and I did an episode, not not the Predictions episode, but we did an episode about obsolete technologies once upon a time, and one of those we

talked about was eight millimeter film. Well, CS code at came out with a new eight super eight and millimeter film camera, which was one of the big hits among my team. We all went crazy for it because it was a real kind of nostalgic throwback to how we all got started and shooting film. So maybe I am a little more gun shy about saying which pieces of technology are gonna die at this point. I did just find. I did just find while we were talking about this

technology that did die this year. It was happened in July. Headline reads, the last known VCR maker stops production forty years after the VHS format launch. Now, yeah, I believe the last VHS tapes were being produced is the end of the VCR production, which is a very very sad. Yeah, we can we can say that the VCR, I guess officially is dead now. Uh so, yeah, maybe there we go. There's one. Yeah. We we couldn't really think of any off the top of our heads when we were making

these predictions. I also asked, do you think the Facebook Professional Services platform will be a success, and we were both very noncommittal, like, well, we don't know enough about it yet. Maybe it will be, we don't really know, and uh no, it got shut down in November, so I think we didn't really know about We never really got to know. I completely forgot that it existed until I saw the note and I'm like, oh, yeah, that

was a thing and it didn't go anywhere. And then I asked, you do you think well, I said this this question wasn't for you because you're not as into computer games as I am. I asked, will the the game starts is and actually come out in so you had no opinion, I said it probably would not, and it was running the risk of becoming the next Nukem forever.

A game that is, you know, is almost always just in development, and so it runs the danger by the time it finally comes out disappointing people because it's not what they were hoping it would be. It didn't come out into sixteen, or at least not since not by the time we're recording this AH, parts of the game have come out, like you can do little things that are connected to the game, but the game itself hasn't

come out. People have poured a hundred and thirty one million dollars into this game, and there there are people who have spent thousands of dollars on video games spaceships for this game, and the game has not yet come out. Um, this game is weird. It's it's like the most successful game that hasn't come out yet. Uh so not. I'm not shocked that it didn't come out. I keep hoping that to see it come out. The last I saw there still wasn't a specific date that was being cited

as the release date. But it's supposed to be coming out soon. Um. And the final question is when we can't answer, which was do you think Rogue one will be any good? I mean, we could answer that, but we can't answer whether or not it is good because we haven't seen it yet. I assume I as you haven't seen it yet, right, I have not seen it. In last year when you mentioned this to me, I had no idea this movie was being made. Yeah, well, now you can't avoid the marketing for it. It's everywhere

Star Wars. Rogue one the first of the spinoff Star Wars movies that are not directly part of the the main storyline, although this one is real darn close to it, since it's about the team that stole the plans for the Death Star, which play an important role in a little movie called Star Wars A New Hope. Do you know that there's no sequel to Rogue one coming that's been announced, because essentially the sequel to Rogue one is

the New Hope. It's Star Wars. Did you see did you see the thing that hit the internet where someone like Disney furious that Rogue one sequel poster has leaked and it was the poster for Star Wars and New Hope. I did see that because that's I mean, that's essentially it. Yeah, that's cute. That's a cute joke. Um. Yeah, still haven't seen it because it hasn't come out as of the time we're recording this podcast, so I'm still anticipating it. There's one of my coworkers here who maybe she's already

seen it. She's got a lot of she's got a lot of clout over with the Star Wars folks, but she's positively like vibrating over excitement about seeing this movie. It's if you if you say Rogue one near her, her eyes just light up. So, um, here's hoping it will be a truly entertaining film for her sake if no one else's. And that's it. Those were all the predictions we made. I think we did okay, our big crazy predictions didn't necessarily come true, but in some cases

even weirder things happened, and that's always fun. Um, did you have any any that you were like, Wow, man, I was. I was just either I was way closer than I thought, or I was just completely off base, you know it. It's looking back on the Prediction Show and seeing the results. I see that I'm consistently yearly

fascinated with BlackBerry and a PC. It's this sickness I have because I keep seeing these two floundering companies which I've been covering for years, and so I guess it's it's Uh, although I didn't even think about BlackBerry this year, so that's waning, So maybe that's already over. I'm getting past it, So I was. I guess I'm a little surprised at things I've forgotten. Facebook even having that business thing, and Yahoo finally finding its proper suitor, or it's it's

it's it's a new home. That seems like that was an inevitable So we'll see how this all shakes out over the long term. Yeah, yeah, I feel the same way. Uh. And and you know, I'm going to be doing a Predictions episode which you guys out there will hear very shortly where I will predict what I think will happen in seventeen, a year filled with way more uncertainty than

I think was. There's some big questions, particularly along the lines of things like what is the fate of net neutrality in twenty seventeen, Big tough questions, so I can't wait to tackle that one. It's gonna be a laugh riot and people, and I'm gonna try I I as is invited to do this as well. I'm gonna try and get some of my friends to send in a prediction or two if they like, and those will also be featured in the show. It'll mainly be me, but I will be happy to uh to feature some predictions

from other folks. Will see how many people are able to respond. I gave them a little bit of time, but everyone's very busy this time of year, so we will try to get as many of those as we can. And um, I asked, where can people find your work? You can find my work at c net dot com or Twitter dot com slash I s I Y e Z. That's where I post pretty much everything and anything, and a lot on Instagram these days. Same user name at I as I y e zy because I think and

I predict that Twitter, well, it's not long for this world. Yeah, that's I wish I could say that's a bold prediction. But yeah, every day when I come on and I log onto Twitter, I think, I guess it's not this day. Yeah. Interesting. Also, if you do follow Ias on Instagram, you might learn a little something about the wonderful profession of professional wrestling. You never know. Oh good gosh, yes you will. Yeah, oh man, and it's awesome. All right, Well, guys, thank

you so much for listening. If you have any predictions for two thousand seventeen that you want to share with me, send them my way. Uh. The email addresses tech stuff at how stuff works dot com, or drop me a line on Facebook or Twitter. The handle of both of those is text stuff H s W and I'll talk to you again. Releasing for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com, wh