TechStuff Looks Back at 2013 Part Two

were sitting on the edge of your seat. How is two thousand thir taking It turned out? Well, June follow me, Yes it did, So we're picking up in June two thirteen. Uh, this is the first story we have is one that amused me because I was very curious to see how it would play out. And I'm still perplexed. Um, and we're talking about the my Space relaunch. So my Space

obviously a huge social media platform back in the day. Yeah, I think as of what would that have been like two thousand Yeah, Like you know, there was a time where everyone was on my Space. Facebook had just started as yeah, and and Facebook was just for college students when it first started, I couldn't. By that time, I was out of college, so I was not I was

not admitted into Facebook. I didn't fit that that criterionographic. Yeah, so I was, but I was on my Space, and I remember seeing Facebook opening up to the public and thinking this upstart social platforms. Never, why are they even trying? My Space already dominates the space. But then over time, you know, I got a little tired of everyone turning their profile pages into sparkly unicorns that play music at you no matter what you try to do. That was

the best part of my Space. Yeah, when it became Geo City's part two. So anyway, long story short, they decided to uh, new owners came in and bought up the company. They rebranded, they relaunched, They had a twenty million all our ad campaign. Yeah, and it's really more about I mean, it was always a big place for music discovery, but now that's almost all it's about. And it's just about music discovery. But I don't know that that many people care about it. I think it was

a little it was too little, too late. You had already lost a great deal of your audience, and the ones who remain are are die hards, but you're not really. I don't think that my space is attracting new audience the way they need to. I think that I think that young bands are probably going to something like Tumbler or SoundCloud or making their own um, their own blog to launch that where you can get all that stuff and or or a little bit on Facebook. Still. Yeah, yeah,

so that's a that was a tough one. Also, in June, that's when we first learned about Google's Project Loon. We talked about, right, those are those um kind of internet weather balloons. Yeah, balloons that provide WiFi to remote locations and they float in the stratsphere to do it. Yeah. We did a whole episode on that on November twenty called The Louns at Google. If you would like to

go check that out. Yeah. My favorite part of that story is the Australian couple who were one of the early early alpha testers, who were approached by the Google men in black. Can we put this on your house? We can't tell you what it is or what it does or how long it will be there, And they said, okay, apparently it's very laid back on the outback. So uh, then we've got another big story. This is really we joked last last in the last episode about the biggest

story of the year being Gift or Jeff. This I think is truly the biggest story of the year. Would be hard to say it's not. Absolutely. The ramifications of this one are are huge. We are, of course, talking about the story that was first broken by The Guardian and the Washington Post that coordinated together to reveal that the n s A was having a surveillance program that stretched across the Internet and was incredibly deep, to the point where it was it was farming out information from

major providers like Google. It was you know, essentially tapping into that stream and seeing all the stuff that was going through UM in an attempt, at least from the NSA's point of view, to stop foreign threats against the

United States. The idea of being that this was really only supposed to apply to communications between agents of foreign nations, whether that is a citizen who's working on the United States is and working on behalf of a foreign nation, or some person of uh, you know, some somewhat a foreigner who was working on behalf of a nation. UM. However, because of the way the Internet works and the way that data centers work. We it's really a quite widespread

surveillance program. And not only that, but they have a very low threshold of certainty that they felt they needed to hit in order for them to identify someone as a foreign agent. In other words, you know, like if they felt fift sure that someone was a foreign agent, they would go ahead of start, which yeah, they they instructed their their operators to go a little more than

a coin flip. And on top of that, there were some stories about n s A employees abusing the system, people who are using it to spy on like ex girlfriends or ex boyfriends, or people who were using it for other means, where you know, clearly this is not a foreign agent. This is people being people. And even this is a good example of how even if your system was designed to do a specific thing really well, it's really only as good as the people who are

using it. So even if we were to take the n s A at their word that everything was on the up and up and everything is legal, and that's questionable to according to your point of view. I mean, the whole thing was approved by a secret court whose findings are under under a court order, so that you can't see them, you know, we we aren't allowed to actually look in on the process, but we're told that

the process works. It's a complicated and frankly terrified ing story, and it's one that's played out over the entire year since then. Yeah, and and especially I mean, you know, it's the fact that we learned about all of this from a former n s A contractor, Edward Snowden, kind of proves the point of of the system is only as good its operators. Yes, because Snowdon was not like an n Essay spy. Snowdon was someone who worked on the system side of it, saw stuff that he felt

the public need to. Yeah, he's he was like, this is not right, and I don't know how to act on this other than to hand this information over to the press. And so that's what Snowton did. And of course, depending upon how you view Snowden, you may think that he's a trader or you may think he's a hero. He's currently living in temporary asylum in Russia because he's essentially in exile. If he were to come back to

the United States, he would immediately be arrested. So, yeah, complicated story, that's still playing out, and it's it's got a lot of ramifications outside of just this story. It's it's raised awareness about everything from online privacy to what is our expectation for uh for our government looking in on not just US, but other countries, other countries of course looking at the United States saying even if all of your citizens are cool with this, we're totally not

cool with this. Yeah, and especially since you know they're they're they're monitoring so much information from so many people that that use services that either porth to America are owned by American companies that that normal citizens in many other countries are being affected by this as well. So, yeah, big, big story. Yeah, we we did. We did a two part about prison, which is that that main program that the n s A is running. Those episodes ran on

July first. Excellent, so go check those out if you want to hear more about this story. Next, we have a little more lighthearted story. That was when the Uyah console launched on Amazon for it sold out basically immediately. Uh So, this was the console that had a Kickstarter campaign in two thousand twelve and was overwhell mainly successful. This was one of those stories like the Pebbles smartwatch that just you know, it just skyrocket and it really

hit a nerve. However, from the at least the initial reviews of the system, a lot of people felt that um, it had a lot of potential but didn't live up to it yet it was a little bit half banked. So it may it may turn out that in the long run it turns into a console that people but are consider one of the beloved consoles. But right now, I mean a lot of those earlier reviews were pretty harsh. I remember even seeing an unboxing video where a person unboxed and showed it off to the camera and then

immediately put it in a garbage can. Yeah, which I thought was you know that, come on, stay classy. But still you get the wa wait, we're on the internet. I do you know how the internet works? What's the what's the internet? I'm still on the arpanet and no one talks to me. I think I've isolated your problem. Let's move on to July, shall we. Yes? Um that's when the director of Microsoft's Xbox program, Don Matric, left

the company to become the new CEO of Zenga. Yeah, which was one of those things that caused a lot of analysts to say, wait what because because because Xbox, you know, one like arguably at that point in the year, the largest gaming company. Yeah, I mean Xbox had been selling like crazy. Some people would argue that the Xbox division was the one division in Microsoft that really was

doing a great job. And then Matric leaves that to go help Zinga, which had was a company that was known to be in a kind of weird spiral continual weird state of flux and Zinca of course, being that mobile gaming app company, um, that that has done things like Farmville and Words Friends, Yeah, stuff that is on mobile platforms and also on on social media platforms. And uh, I mean Zinga's old CEO actually essentially fired himself and then hired Metric, So that was an interesting story. And

then uh, you know Xbox got a new director. Yeah, that would be Julie Larson Green. She is officially the executive vice President of Devices and Studios, which means that she's in charge of all Xbox hardware, devices, games, music, and entertainment. Um. This was scene is a pretty good choice by most people because she, I mean she she got her start at Microsoft overseeing the development of Visual c plus plus. She helped create the ribbon for Office

two thousands. She's the previous co leader of Windows. She led the planning on Windows seven. Um, so she had some chops, some serious chops. Let me guess what the problem was. She was a she. She was a she and some really sexist gamers and she, I mean, she happens to be like more or less like symmetrical in her face, and so therefore a lot of really sexist gamers were like that pretty lady can't possibly be a gamer or know enough about games to do stuff and things.

And to be fair, she's she's self professed like not huge into gaming. But I don't think we're not talking about the business side of things. It's it's not like the president of the Xbox division is the person who decides which games get made and which ones don't. This is someone who's got a vision for the overall consoles direction. And also, I would like to posit that if in fact we chose Xbox is president by like the person who got the best gamer score. Uh yeah, it would

be terrible. These would be these companies would be in shambles. So come on, guys, all right, at any rate. So Also in July, Google unveiled Chrome Cast, which is a cute little dongle that can connect to a television's h d M I port and over WiFi. It can pick up signals from your laptop or mobile device and stream from the content on your computer or a mobile device

to the television. So, in other words, if you don't have something like a game console or some other set top box that brings in web content, or you've got one but it's really limited, like it only brings in web con tip from very specific sources, this would give you more flexibility. I actually own one of these, and uh, and I've got a lot of different options when it comes to getting web content on my TV because I'm

I don't know if you know this. I like technology, so but I got one of these, and it turns out that I love this because if you want to look for something specific on let's say YouTube, Let's say, as you want to you want to look at a YouTube video on your large screen, UM, this would be a way of being able to do a search very quickly, whereas a lot of the different consoles and set top

boxes out there have very clunky search features. If you're not using something that has voice command where you can say, look for that funny video where the cat falls asleep, then you're gonna have some trouble. But if you're able to go to your laptop and just do a quick search by typing out a few keywords and then casting it, you know, streaming it from your computer to the TV, it makes it much simpler. And it's also a super relatively speaking, a super cheap device. Yeah, it retails for

like thirty five bucks. I think thirty five bucks. I was on a waiting list because by the time I ordered it, it it already I had been announced and then initially sold out. But even on the waiting list, I think I had to wait maybe two weeks and then I got mine and that was when it first came out. So speaking of waiting lists, though, hey, oh yeah, this is a story that fills me with joy. And this one was not perhaps one of the largest stories of the year, but but it is very, very close to

Jonathan's heart if you've listened to that. I can't remember what episode it was where I totally lost it on this particular story. I do remember doing that, and whether we edited most of that out or not. But but in in July, best Buy began stalking Pebble smart watches, um uh, slightly before all of the Kickstarter backers of of the Pedal Project had received their own right, I was not a Kickstarter project backer, so I was not

expecting pre order. Yeah I was. I was a pre order, But yeah, I I like to think that when you pre order, I'm gonna have the same brand. I'm not gonna do it. I'm not gonna do it. You pre ordered a special color and they had not manufactured that color yet, that the ones available best Buy were only the black. That's true. And I got the I got the very style. Only that on the back of it it says Kickstarter Edition. And I was not a Kickstarter backer, and yet I got a Kickstarter edition watch, so I

cannot really complain. Also, I love that watch. I'm not wearing it right now. I accidentally left it at home. I had that he usually is I usually do wear it. Um. I love it. It is one of my favorite gadgets that I've picked up in the last couple of years. And it's you know, people say, well, the Pebble smart watch is kind of limited what it can do, which is true. But what it does do, it does really

well and I like the things that it does do. So, um, I've really had If you ever watch any of my forward thinking videos, anyone I shot after the I got that watch, you'll see that watch on my wrist. So but yes, there was a moment where I was I was curssing pebble. Uh. Next, we have a story that developed and we also covered this in an episode of tech Stuff. This was a special episode of tech Stuff

that Lauren you you you weren't there. Yeah, I was out at one of my two best friends got married two weekends in a row in October, So I missed a little bit of things due to insanity and travel plans. And Ben Bolan was kind enough to step in and do this episode with Jonathan about Elon Musk's hyper loop yep, and Elon Musk, of course, founder of Tesla Motors, founder

of SpaceX. Everyone has acknowledged that this dude is really smart and really good at the business, and so he had been teasing for a while that he had this this cool idea for a new kind of transportation system, and eventually he leaked that it was going to be called the hyper loop, or that His concept was called hyper loop, right, not that it was going to be called because we're not really positive that this is going to come to fruition ever. Yeah, no one has any

plans of actually building this. In fact, even Musk was saying like it would be great if someone took this on, suggesting that he himself was not going to be that person. And to be fair, Musk has a lot on his plate. So anyway, little bit busy with you know, to Tesla motors and space. Little things like getting people into space and getting electric super fast cars on the road does

take a lot of time. What what would not take a lot of time if Hyperlooper built would be a trip between San Francisco and Los Angeles, which would be only thirty five minutes in duration. Right, Uh, yeah, these this is a electromagnetic train kind of thing. And yeah, each each car is its own little capsule. It would

float on a cushion of air. Those electromagnetic motors would provide the push that would allow it to go around this loop track between San Francisco and l A and um and supposedly you would travel at at a top be that would be faster than what most commercial jets travel at Uh. You know, it remains to be seeing whether this is even feasible because no one has an actual example of this to show that it truly would

work efficiently. If you listen to the hyper loop episode we did, you will, Yeah, that one, that one published on NOVEM. You're looking for it, so just go back and check that one out. Let's move on to August. Big story. We only have one story for August, but it's a big one. Yeah. That was when Microsoft CEO Steve Balmber announced that he was going to step down. Yeah, which you know, some people had been calling for for

Balmer to step down for a couple of years. Developers, developers, developers. I think the developers liked them, but I'm not sure that anyone else did. Um No, I'm not. That's being unfair, but there were there have been people who have said that Microsoft suffers from a lack of true leadership. I

was never one of those people. I thought that Balmber certainly was a powerful leader, but I didn't I wasn't always sure that his vision of Microsoft was something that aligned with what a lot of us the rank and file, would consider, you know, really to be memorable or or relevant. Now he was trying to to to straddle that line between enterprise and consumers, and that's tough to do. That

is very tough to do. I also think that he just has some a little bit of like charisma within the press issues going on, where he kind of frequently doesn't come off I think as well as he wants to, or he could. He certainly comes off as enthusiastic, yes, but perhaps not as a suave or like Steve Jobs could come out and in just a super cool kind

of way for for geeks, super cool for geeks. Okay, we're talking about a niche audience here, but in a super cool kind of way, really drum up your excitement for something. Uh, and Balmer could come out and you'd be afraid he'd throw a chair at you. But but you know, to be fair to Balmer, I mean, he really obviously loves Yeah, so he um and his responses in the wake of the announcement, it seemed to me that it didn't sound like it was entirely his decision

to step down. It seemed to be like he was someone who, you know, was really passionate about this company and doesn't necessarily have a vision for what comes next. For him UM, and the question of who will be Microsoft's next CEO remains unanswered as of the recording of this podcast. We are recording on December twelve, so it is possible that before the end of the year that

that decision has been made. But right now they're looking at a couple of different candidates, Um, some of whom are people who are known to be great leaders but have no experience in the computer or software industries. Yeah, we're going to talk a little bit about that, I think and predictions episode. Yeah. So, anyway, that was that was a big story for August and we have gotten through a Q three, so we want to hit SHU four. But before we do that, let's take a quick break

to thank our sponsor. You know, try to remember the kind of September when grass was green and grain was yellow. We're talking September. I'm quoting from the Fantastics. If you recognize that, you are awesome. So September, that's traditionally when a company that rhymes with schmapple comes out and uh and and whips the crowd into a rabid fervor of joy and consumption. Right. Yeah, and they did tuberculosis consumption. They certainly. I hope not. I've forgotten that from my iPhone.

There's no app for that. I no, No, that's that's when they unveiled the iPhone five C and five S. And it's funny because one of your predictions was all about the US and you were and one of my predictions was kind of about this. I think either way, one of us predicted this and we were around the money. I think I think that was you. I want to I want to say that you said that there was going to be a new iPhone and that you were the one who called it iPhone five. Say it was

a tag team victory. Excellent. Now now it all comes back to me, high fives. Um. So the five S was the slightly more hardware update update. Yeah, faster processor, better screen, biometric fingerprints, scanner, some all a little cool bells and whistles were added to that one. The five C was basically just a cheaper version of the of the five of the original five. Get it in a different color than wide or black, in in multiple kind

of awful colors. Stupid color. I don't know. I'm sure there are people out there who accessorize everything, and you've got you know, your gorgeous phone. That's a gorgeous color. I'm a simple I just want a black phone. It's it's for me personally, that's what That's what cases are for. But I can certainly understand the cheaper part being a big draw. Yeah. Sure. September was also the month when

Blockbuster Incorporated declared bankruptcy, which followed Blockbuster UK. They had declared bankruptcy back in January, but in the United States the main company didn't declare until September. Yeah. By November they would have closed all of their US brick and mortar stores, right right that they announced that they would do that by January. Yeah, So no longer will you walk into a neighborhood Blockbuster and look at the multiple copies of Parent Trapped two and say, yeah, I just

don't know what to watch. Now you can do that from the convenience of a red box, yes, or streaming or streaming. So, in fact, Blockbuster still does have a streaming service. Although I've read some pretty critical reviews of that cular service, I have not used it, so I am I'm not sure what the quality is because I've

never personally used it. It's in partnership with Dish though, which is you know, big enough that I think, you know, it certainly has the potential to live on Dish essentially bought Blockbuster um and has decided to shut down all the retail because it just looks like that's you know, that's that's in the past. It everything seems to be moving toward online distribution, which is not a big surprise to anyone who's been paying attention to the last few years.

Oh sure. And also, I mean even for for offline distribution, I think that just when you're competing with a company like red Box that has these you know, I mean basically zero footprint machines instead of large retail spaces that you have to build out and and and pay, you know, even if you're competing against like Netflix's DVD service, which a lot of us forget about but still exists. So yeah, it's a tough story for them. That brings us into October, right.

That's more Apple news Maple Yep, that's when they So they had already updated their iPhones, but that's not good enough for Apple. They have to update lots of stuff. They updated their iPad line. They introduced the iPad air, which is I will admit a gloriously beautiful looking device. Apple is pretty good at that. I don't own one. I don't think I'll be buying one anytime soon, but

I can certainly see the appeal of it. Yeah. Um. They also introduced a new MacBook Pro YEP, a couple of different models of that, and they introduced they had already announced the new operating system, but this is when they actually were launching Mavericks, which was that was a big departure, right, Yeah, well a it's not named after a big cat, um, so that was that was weird there. But but also that it would be a free download

for current Mac os owners. Yeah, so it wasn't something where you'd have to go and purchase this operating system update. You could download it for free, which is a new model. Is essentially kind of sends a message saying that Apple is getting into more and more of the hardware side of thing as their main revenue generation point and not the operating system side. Also, I think it was a huge bite of the thumb in the face of Microsoft

and all of their all of their Windows eight problems. Yes, Apple was the montague to Microsoft's capulet, and they did bite their thumb at them. Uh yes, yes, sah, yes, indeed. Um, yeah, that was a that was a big story actually because again, you know, Microsoft, we didn't really cover it in this in this uh look back a but Microsoft didn't have a whole of success with Windows eight. And yeah, that's kind of why we don't have to have a bullet

in here because nothing happened with it. Yeah, just it was one of those things where people who liked it really liked it, but there weren't that many people. A lot of people just didn't try it. So it could be that the potential audience is huge, but the actual audience is pretty small. So you know, offering up your os for free was again thumbing the nose or biting the thumbs somewhere. That hand is somewhere in front of the face and things are not polite. Thumbs are involved.

Also in October, that's when um, Jeff Bezos, the CEO of course of Amazon, officially took over as the owner of the Washington Post newspaper, which was a big shake up in the in the newspaper industry. Oh yeah, well, I mean the paper had been owned by the same the same family, um, the Graham family for eighty years. Yeah, that's a long time. So he paid a cool two fifty million for that, which some people had suggested was actually too much, saying that you know, print is on

the way out. Sure, but you know, I think that it's interesting, um for for Amazon to absorb that kind of news service, especially when you compare them to uh to to say, the Apple family of of of iTunes news distribution like that. Um. But for for more of the crazy things that um, Amazon and Bezos do, we did a two part series on on them that aired February of this year. Yep, so of course that pre

dates this particular story. But and also I should point out that, uh, I believe it's Bezos who owns Washington Post and it's separate from Amazon entirely, which well, I don't know how long that will last or exactly. I wonder if Bezos is just positioning himself to be the next Hearst newspaper bar and if he builds a castle, and then if he buys a sled, just watch out. That's all I'm saying, no spoilers, but watch out other things to kind of watch out for a mysterious barge

off the coast of San Francisco. Gosh. I remember hearing this story and I was immediately enthralled the idea that there was a barge and no one was really sure why it was there, and it had canisters aren't that made it four stories tall? And it was off Treasure Island off the coast of San Francisco. And I'm like,

is this is this a pirate story that's happening? I mean, you know, granted it's not a Spanish War galleon or anything, but still, and turned out, uh well, eventually people figured out that was connected to Google, although Google was being very sly and not saying anything about it. And then

the question was, well, what is it? Some people thought that perhaps it was gonna be one of those floating data centers that Google had created a patent four years ago, where the idea would be that you would use the ocean water to help keep the data center cool and you and harness even the power of the tides to to get power for your data center, and that maybe

this was going to be the first one. And other people are saying, no, it's just gonna be a giant floating mall for really rich people to buy their Google glass and as it turns out it looks like it's a really giant mall for really rich people to buy their Google Glass and other Google x projects. So assuming that Google can pull together all of the correct regulation kind of kind of paperwork, yeah, it might be open sometime. Yeah.

It turns out that a lot of different entities began to say, you know, Google, We're gonna need a little proof that you can operate this safely and within the laws of the United States. So the Coast Guard got interested, among other entities. So there's gonna be some price, some forms to fill out before this ever opens. Um. I am curious to find out if only like the super Google stuff is ever sold there. Like you can buy Google Glass and an autonomous car and that's it, and

you have to drive that car back over. It's like bang bang um. Also in October, the the Affordable Care Acts website went into um healthcare dot gov. Yeah, this was one of those things that now it had garnered a lot of criticism before it even launched. Uh. Well, first of all, there's a political side of it, huge political controversy and lots of back and forth and many many many months of lots of tiresome arguments on that

are still going on. But even apart from all the political arguments, there were some people who they divorced themselves

from the whole political side. They just said, you announced us back, you know, in the spring of and you plan on launching it in the fall of That's not enough time to design and quality do do q A testing for a major operation like this website that millions of people are going to be trying to access potentially at the same time, right, and uh so, there were a lot of critics who were saying, like, you really,

this this, this deadline is far too ambitious. Don't you want to actually have that or But but they went ahead and tried to launch it, and sure enough, there were technical problems early early on. The site suffered some for a couple of months. Really, I mean, I I kind of just heard within recent weeks that they put out a redesign early in December, I want to say, and and I've heard that people have been having more

success with that. There's still some technical problems that pop up, but it was it was one of those things that it certainly didn't help the debate, you know, people pointed to the to that as being another another talking point in time, they got into an argument about the Affordable Care Act. Uh, it does seem like it is working better now than it was before, although you know, your mileage may vary on any given day. So but still that's one of the stories that we had to cover.

So that brings us into November. Now we're getting into the recent past for for us, because pretty soon we're gonna be talking about the future because there's one one, one item on our list that has not yet happened. But anyway, as of the recording of this podcast, anyway, so November that's when, uh, well big big news for people who like to fly right right, the f a A announced that they were going to relax restrictions um almost immediately after we published an episode about their restrictions

on using electronics during flight. I'd like to think that we caused them to really examine their policies and question whether or not they were actually useful. I think that had to have been at Jonathan. I think that we're

doing really important work. My ego demands that that's the truth. Anyway, But so so at this point, you can, well, okay, it depend on any given airline providers regulations most airlines are going to probably fall right in line with it quickly, because no one wants to be the airline the one airline that doesn't allow their customers to do that, and then everyone's like, well, I'm just gonna go fly on

this other one from now on. Yeah. But but so for it's already rolling out in many airlines, and for the most part, you can use electronic devices as long as it's not using a cellular phone signal. Right, Um, while you know, I mean from you know, the moment that you are seated until the moment that you land ready to get off the plane, so you can just keep that, don't need to shut it down during takeoff

and landing, and keep that creative. Was it a creative labs uh MP three player that weighs four hundred pounds going the entire time? I do have one of those somewhere. But yeah, you still you still cannot use cell phone signals. Um, although that's also up for debate. Now that's up for debate. UM. It's It's also part of the problem is that it's uh that's tied up in the Federal Communications Commissions. So it's not just it's also the FCC much more complicated. Yeah.

Um and and again yes, we we did a full episode on that on September if you would like to listen to exactly why we thought that they should do what they announced that they were going to do. Yeah, which clearly happened afterwards. Because we're talking November now, so I mean correlation, causation, same thing, right, all right, moving on.

Also in November, a certain company held its initial public offering or I p O. Yeah, Twitter, Yeah, big, big, crazy news is it's kind of in the footsteps of Facebook's about a year previous I p O sort of kind of. Um. They their IPO launched with an offer of twenty six dollars per share. Yeah, that was the offer price that was before went on on actually the market, but they said the offer price was gonna be twenty

six dollars per share. As it turns out, once the market actually opened, the opening price, which is not the same the offer price head was a little higher. Yeah. I had jumped all the way to uh forty five dollars and ten cents, and the peak that day was fifty dollars and nine cents per share. However, that's not

what it closed at. It settled back down at Yeah, so that means that it was actually by the end of the day a little lower than what it was when it first started, which meant that if you bought it at the very beginning of the day and you were holding onto it at the end of the day, you technically lost cents. But share per share per share

right now importantly. Um. You know however, uh no, I mean, that's that's great for you know, for for for a company that is still way behind say Facebook in users. It doesn't have a billion users, certainly not um but

but you know, that's that's great. I was excited for him, and it's It's interesting because this is one of those I remember I was doing research for this podcast, and uh and I pulled up information about Twitter and the i p O and what reactions were to it, and two results back to back, where one was a person who wrote about how the Twitter i p O was a huge success for Twitter, and the other one was that Twitter i PO was a huge failure for Twitter.

And thought, oh, finance, no wonder, I don't understand you. You're like quantum mechanics. It's in super position. It's both failing and succeeding at the same time, I think it's one of those time will tell kind of stories. And it's still it's still early. We'll still find out another another thing currently in weird financial development. Um, the value

of bitcoins did did some crazy things this year. At the beginning of the year, they were pretty cheap, like twelve to thirteen bucks, yeah, right around you know, right at the very top end of twelve dollars, a low in the thirteen dollars depending upon the day you were

looking at it. But yeah, throughout the year the value changed, uh, significantly all the way to the point on November twenty nine, the currency hit it's all time high so far as of the recording of this podcast of one thousand, two hundred forty two dollars per coin, which is a ten thousand, more than ten percent increase in value. Uh. It's since then dropped down to a little bit below a thousand dollars,

it's sixty or something. Yeah, But um, I mean, oh see, this is why I say it's not I can't think of it as a currency because investment. Yeah, because you can't, like, how would I price something so that you could buy it with bitcoin? Knowing that the next day I could have potentially lost out on thousands of dollars, or that your your buyer could have lost out on thousands of dollars if they were buying, you know, a key chain

from you. Then suddenly that key chain is worth yea, like like I paid what I thought was going to be three dollars for this key chain, but now it turns out I paid three thousand dollars for this key chain. Yeah, I mean it's it's that's why I say it's hard to call it a real currency because the volatility means

that you cannot have a stable economy. You can't as a vendor, it's very dangerous for you to create any price for your items unless those are dynamically priced so that they reflect whatever the current value of bitcoin is, which means anytime anyone visits your store, the prices are going to look very different day to day. So it makes it really hard to have a stable economy. Absolutely, And I am not a finance person, but that's that just seems it seems like logic that brings us up

to December. Yeah, and I think that we only have one bullet point. Technically we have to add yes, So anarchy is this first there's the the biggest, the other big announcement that Jeff Bezos was involved in where he went on sixty minutes um right before Cyber Monday, he went on sixty minutes and talked about his plans to launch Amazon Prime Air launch. I like what you did there, Laurence. I didn't mean to what you did. Well, I'll remember

this day, Okay. So anyway, so Amazon Prime Air is a drone delivery service, or will hypothetically be a drone delivery service, assuming that many things and including technology, pricing, and regulations all fall into place, right, and it would it would all that's like a pun too. It would end up taking off four to five years if the idea fly. But it may turn out that, you know something that maybe one or multiple factors caused this idea to drop like a stone and not glide on by.

I'm I'm running out, I'm running out. So yeah, Amazon Prime Air, if it happens, that means that, you know, we might have robots delivering our our our stuff. Are are our stuff under five pounds? Yeah? If we live within ten miles of a fulfillment center, and I'm guessing there's going to be potentially a hefty delivery fee. I would certainly guess that personally, Yeah, yeah, I would. I've seen people say like, is this going to put people

of a job. My guess is that to make this make economic sense, there would have to be an additional delivery fee if you had to have something within half an hour, which would mean that a lot of people would opt out of it and say, you know what, I'm just gonna wait for it to get to meet through regular means. I would suspect that it would be pricing on on par at least with overnight delivery pricing. Yeah, but at least Yeah. So here's my final bullet, the

one that does not appear on your notes. Technically, the reason why it doesn't appear on your notes is I added it at the last minute. And also today, as we said, is December twelve when we're recording this. Yeah, this, this news refers to something that should happen on the thirteenth, So by the time you, dear listener, are listening to this episode, it will have already happened, unless it didn't. And uh that is that the Steam operating system is

supposed to be available starting tomorrow, December Friday. I'll be right back. Uh that uh, you know, so assuming that that all goes well, we're going to have this new operating system on the market, which potentially could end up being down the line a real competitor against some of the next generation consoles that have just come out current generation. I keep saying next generation now they're current, but Xbox one and PS four, oh and also Nintendo. We you,

I don't know, we keep forgetting about that. Everybody else anyway, So if that in fact happened or did not happen, we don't know yet, So you guys should write us and let us know. Actually we're gonna go ahead and wrap up this whole conversation. So yeah, yeah, I mean, you know, overall, I I hope that this has been

an enjoyable look back at twenty. It's always fun to remember, like like their stories here, they're like, oh, yeah, that did happen to happen, and you know, just it's weird for perspective purposes of of how quickly some things went out or failed to go out. And yeah, yeah, this also marks a full year of you podcasting on tech stuff. Oh my goodness, how does that feel? That feels very strange? Ye yep. So I hope, I hope that that you

have enjoyed my learning curve. Y'all, Well, it certainly didn't take you very long to get the grasp of it, so so I think the listeners agree with me. And if you don't keep it to yourself yet, so and so's all right. But for the rest of you guys who want to chime in with constructive things to say,

like suggestions for future episodes. Maybe there's something about fourteen that really has you excited and that's something you want us to talk about, Or maybe there's something that happened in ten fourteen and you're like, I wanted to hear a podcast about that. We've been known to do those kind of things. Write us and let us know our email addresses tex stuff at Discovery dot com, or drop us a line on Facebook, Twitter or Tumbler. You can

find us there. Our handle is text stuff hs W and Laren and I will talk to you again in two thousand and fourteen. For more on this and thousands of other topics. Does it how staff works dot com