TechStuff Reviews 2016 Part Two

It busted out all over and there's lots of tech news to talk about all the way up to current day, which I'm recording this on December fifteen, so technically there's still some time left in the year, and who knows what can happen between now and January one. I apologize for missing all those stories, but let's get to June. That's when E three happens. That's the big video game Expo in Los Angeles. Not the largest video game expo

in the world, but a pretty big one. Big stories out of three included details about Reside, Eeval seven, Legend of Zelda, Breath of the Wild, Crash, Bandicoot Remasters, a new Spider Man game for PS four, a new God of War game, Hideo Kajima's new game called Death Stranding, Kajima Kajima's departure from Konami was a big deal in two thousand fifteen, and there was an announcement about a remastered sky Rim or Scrim if you prefer, that's now available,

and word that Bethesda's working on a follow up to Skyrim, although whether it's a follow up to Skyrim or yet another Elder Scrolls game that remains to be seen. Nintendo also announced a mysterious uh mixed reality game called Pokemon Go, which would launch a bit later in the year, and then people went bonkers for it for at least a few weeks. The fat has largely died out since then,

although there's still some dedicated players out there. For several weeks, it was pretty much par for the course to walk around places and just see people staring at their phones trying to catch Pokemon uh and then ticking off landowners. That happened a lot too. Oh and and also at E three there were announcements about the Xbox One S and PS Pro, which got gamers talking about how the

consoles were taking a half step in console versions. It's not a true new one, it's an kind of beefier version of the existing consoles the current generation, plus Microsoft teased it's next big update codenamed Project Scorpio, which I sure hope looks like a Bond villain. This new console will run games at four K resolution at sixty frames

per second and launches in late twenties. Seventeen, Microsoft made available Windows Holographic, which is a variation of Windows ten and it is meant to run on the Hollow lens. This marked Microsoft's next big push to move into mixed reality devices. Microsoft also announced the intention to acquire linked In for twenty six point two billion dollars in cash YAWSA, and that deal closed in December, so it is official. In June, snapchats daily active users outpaced Twitter. Twitter averages

around a hundred forty million active users. Snapchat hit one hundred fifty million. And I'm still not very good at using it. Occasionally I remember that it's a thing that's on my phone, but honestly, I have so many different apps that take pictures or video and then share it that remembering there's one more is not something I'm great at. But June was also a big month for hackers exploiting vulnerability. Six hundred forty two million accounts were accessed across sites

like Tumbler, LinkedIn and my Space. That can't be right, people, people were still using my Space, and later on in June, a hacker group by the handle Tessa eight or hacker going by the handle Tessa eight shared more than thirty two million Twitter log in credentials, which Twitter executive said, we're evidence of people having alwear on their computers rather than Twitter's security itself failing. So in other words, it's not our fault that our users are not very secure.

The United States f a A warned pilots in June to stay away from a region over the Mojave Desert. Turned out the Naval Air Weapons Center was testing out a GPS interference device, which affects larger areas as it increases in altitude, So at forty feet this GPS interference device could affect areas from as far across as the border between California and Oregon, all the way all the way down to the Mexican border, and as far eastward

as Utah, which is pretty insane. Also, if you got lost in late June in that area, that might be why. The University of Sussex and June released a report. That's just having a phone conversation while driving, even if you're using a hands free system, is more distracting than talking to someone in the car or listening to the radio. And that's partly because you tend to visualize what the conversation is about, which takes your mind off the road.

So it while having hands free is slightly better than having the phone in your hand, still not as good as not talking on the phone at all. So do me a favor, don't don't use your phones in the car unless it's absolutely necessary. Just just listen to my show. That's fine, because I'm talking at you, not to you.

Gawker filed for Chapter eleven bankruptcy following the fallout of the lawsuit that was leveled against it by Hulk Hogan, which was funded by Peter Thiel, and that was leveled against the company earlier in the UH so Gawker's had a real rough year, and in fact, that entire situation caused a lot of debate in the tech sphere tech journalism sphere about the role of funding what amounts to

be a revenge lawsuit against the company. Uh There's also the the fact that Gawker, parts of Gawker have behaved in ways that are not particularly upstanding or professional. Not that that necessarily means they deserve to go bankrupt, but rather it makes it more complicated. It's not as easy as saying this person or this entity is clearly a victim and this other entity is clearly the bad guy. There was a lot of bad behavior on multiple sides of this issue, uh, and it has raised a lot

of interesting conversations out there. I recommend you go and check them out if you are so inclined. The Court of Appeals ruled against overturning the fccs reclassification of Internet service providers as common carriers. That all has to do in net neutrality. I did a full episode about it a couple of years ago, so you can check that out. It's also something we'll likely see change again with the upcoming transition and political administrations here in the United States.

There's a lot of worry in the text space that net neutral he could become a thing of the past once President Trump takes office. A committee in the EU submitted a proposal urging for some serious thought to be given to robots, including the possibility of extending robots the

status of personhood. The proposal focused on near future problems such as who do you hold accountable if a robot causes harm to a person or property, Because the more autonomous the robot is and the more it learns through experience, the harder it is to answer that question. I did a great episode with Scott Benjamin where we ended up talking a lot about robots and responsibilities, and I watched as he began to question everything he knows and holds.

Dear longtime listeners know, I love to have Scott on the show and then slowly try to break him because he's such a nice guy. Moving on to July, Verizon officially moved to acquire Yahoo for four point eight billion dollars. We're eisen had been in the running to purchase y'ah, whose core business since April at the earliest, or at the latest. Rather, Yahoo is set to merge with a O L. But this process is a slow one, and a later hacking scandal that unfolded in September that specifically

involved Yahoo ended up complicating matters. I'll talk more about that later. Pokemon Go launched in July and rapidly gained more users than Twitter. It was a runaway success, and you've got to catch them all unless you're like me and you haven't opened the app. Since August, Twitter began to experiment with a platform that allows for live streaming of content alongside tweets like NFL games and presidential debates. It's another attempt for Twitter to try and stay relevant

in a social media landscape that changes very rapidly. Twitter is one of those things that a lot of people use, but the company still finds it challenging to generate revenue or to actually make it a business as opposed to just a service. In the wake of a live video depicting the death of Philando Castile after he was shot by police, Facebook had to clarify it's live video policy. According to Facebook, the context for a video means absolutely everything.

So a video that is showing something newsworthy or that might help people identify, say a shooter in a different context, or something along those lines, is permissible. But videos that ridicule, mock, or celebrate violence with someone being victimized, those are not allowed. So it's kind of a judgment call on a case

by case basis. But we saw technology play a very important role in the continuing Black Lives Matter movement, showing that there are a lot of events that are happening that the mainstream population may not be aware of because it doesn't affect them directly. Um and so this was just one of several events throughout that challenged those assumptions. Nintendo announced the Nintendo Classic of video game console that comes with thirty Classic Anys titles pre programmed on it.

It plugs into your TV via hd M I and has controllers modeled after the original nes controllers. And I cannot find one of these things, to say, my life, gush, darn it. I've been looking occasionally now and then, not crazy serious, but once in a while, because we keep hearing reports of different vendors getting a few Nintendo Classics in their inventory, but I've yet to be able to

find one to actually purchase it. Uh So I probably will go without not the not a big deal it's but it's had another example of what appears to be uh kind of a false scarcity. Nintendo has been known for creating products that a lot of people want, but they're just way too few out on the market to support the demand, and this I think ultimately could hurt

the company. Don't know if it was something they had planned on doing or if it just happened that way, But the fact is it happens over and over when nintendos, so you would think they would get the message and get as many of these things out there as possible. Maybe that's what they're doing, and it's just that as many as are possible is just still too few for us. I shouldn't put all the blame on them, but gosh darn it, I want to. The Defense Innovation Unit, which

is an experimental division of the Department of Defense. I did not realize was a thing until I read this news report, began to look into using tech to improve military operations, including using VR and robotics. There's also research into what is called non invasive electrical stimulation. In other words, that involves zapp in the brain with a small amount of electricity in an effort to improve learning capabilities. People have been trying this out for a few years now.

Bio hackers have been doing this where they will attach little electrodes to their heads to to send small amounts of electricity to try and boost their they're learning of capabilities. But this is a much more ambitious study to see if there's anything really there or if it's a you know, kind of a placebo effect where you think you are better at learning skills, but you aren't necessarily better. It's an interesting approach. Elon Musk proposed that Tesla Motors merge

with Solar City. Tesla produces the power Wall among all of its cars. It also creates the power Wall, which is a home system. It's essentially a battery that's meant to work with solar power generation its stores electricity. Solar City is a startup founded by Musk's cousins. Now later in the year this issue this this proposed merger is put up to vote, and Tesla shareholders would support the

move in a majority decision. We also later learn about a cool project in which solar City became the vendor for the American Samoa island of Taiou, which now receives nearly all its power needs from solar energy. It had been using diesel and had to import more than a hundred thousand gas islands of fuel per year. It won't have to do that anymore. So this is a great story in that it allows an island to become much

more self sufficient and environmentally friendly. And another issue Towo ran into was that sometimes the delivery of diesel would be late and people would have to start to ration their fuel in order to get by until the fuel arrived. So with solar power, you don't have to worry about that unless you go into a prolonged period without an appropriate amount of sunlight. So the power walls are there

to help store electricity. According to solar City, they allow for up to three days of electricity without being recharged. So assuming you don't go longer than three days without any sunlight, you'd be all right. And uh, the islands in American Samoa are pretty much covered in the sunshine department. So a pretty cool story. Now we've got tons more to talk about before we get through the end of But before we continue on, let's take a quick break

to thank our sponsor. In August, Samsung announced the Galaxy Notes seven. Now that device would end up being a huge problem for the company. More on that when I get to October, because man, that was a doozy. You guys already know what I'm talking about. I'm pretty sure. Instagram launched Stories, which is a Snapchat like feature that allows you to post ten second long videos and photos to a collection that exists for twenty four hours before

being deleted. Snapchat meanwhile introduced memories a bit earlier in the year, allowing you to save some of your snaps for posterity. In other words, everyone's kind of starting to look like everyone else. Facebook created a huge lab twenty two thousand square feet in size, and it called Area four oh four, and its primary purpose is to prototype new hardware, including stuff for VR equipment. So it's kind of weird to think of Facebook in the hardware business,

but that's what this lab is all about. Facebook also announced in August that it would tweak the algorithm for the news feed so that fewer articles would clickbait titles would pop up stuff like you won't believe what Facebook did to their news feed algorithm. I'd be out of luck if I if I posted that, or or less likely to get a lot of clicks anyway. Computer security experts identified malware that had been loose and active since two thousand eleven, and they dubbed it Projects Suron because

they are cool. It was super tricky to identify the malware because it was designed to hide in computer memory and never reused IP addresses, which made each attack unique. It was mainly found in computer systems in Russia, China, Sweden, Belgium, Italy and Iran, and it could log key strokes, steal passwords, and experts said that based on the sophistication and the wide deployment, it was likely a case of state sponsored malware,

but who was behind it? Also, the battle against ad blockers really ramped up in August, with Facebook designing a new anti ad blocking strategy that lasted about twenty four hours before a community of programmers found a way around it. But the experts on both sides pointed out that the criteria to identify and thus block ads would continuously change, making this a cat and mouse game. So you're gonna find workarounds for workarounds, and then workarounds for those, etcetera, etcetera.

Arianna Huffington, who was the founder of the Huffington's Post, announced she would leave the company to launch a new venture called Thrive Global. Huffington's Post as part of a o L and that was acquired by Verizon back in Whether she decided to leave because of issues around a o L and Yahoo merging is unknown, because, as I said earlier, rise and purchased Yahoo this year and plans

to merge AOL and Yahoo together. The University of College of London had some researchers who create an algorithm that can study and then replicate handwritten text, not just any text, but specific handwriting styles. It takes a while for the algorithm to get comfortable with a specific handwriting style, and it needs some guidance to understand where letters begin an end, but then it can create convincing replicas of handwriting. Now I want this so that I can send what appears

to be a handwritten letter to friends or family. Even though I'll still type everything out, It'll still look like it came from me with my chicken scratch. I'd be totally down for that. And right around this time in twenties sixteen, we started hearing talk about Twitter potentially looking

for a buyer. Over the next few months, companies like Alphabet which remember is Google's parent company, Salesforce, and even Disney were rumored to be interested, but as of this recording, no one has plopped down the money to buy Twitter. And Twitter head of tumultuous ear in part because many people criticize the company for its apparent reluctance to take harassment and worse seriously around the election. It was really

getting out of control. We have terrible stories throughout the year of harassment, especially on Twitter, and and it got particularly bad around the elections, but it's been bad all year long. And this has been a real issue with lots of people asking Twitter, when are you going to crack down on this? When are you going to actually make sure you are being responsible and standing up for people who are being abused via the voices on Twitter?

And it's continuing to be a problem. Uh and and a big I would I would say there was a debate, except I don't hear anything back from Twitter, so it's not so much a debate as it is a bunch of people who are getting increasingly frustrated and upset at how Twitter is failing to, in their eyes, act appropriately. Now. Uber around this time began to test self driving cars

in Pittsburgh. Each car still has a human driver ready to take over if the autonomous car goes all wonky, and the rides are free of charge, though they are randomly assigned, so you can't just use your Uber app to call a ride in Pittsburgh and specify you wanted an autonomous car. Uber has made no secret that its goal is to see fully autonomous cars become a reality by one presumably so they could switch to robo cars and sack all the human drivers, and then you just

got a bunch of robots driving around. You don't have to worry about humans taking home a portion of the money for the rides. UH. I go back and forth on that. I think that it's great that a lot of people can get employment or at least some extra cash being an uber driver or a lift driver, So it's upsetting to think about those people no longer having that access. But at the same time, I think that driverless cars tend to be safer and more efficient, So

I'm torn on this one. In late August, the FBI Cybersecurity Division noted that there was evidence of foreign hackers gaining access to voter databases here in the United States. This would be the beginning of a long story that is still playing out as I record this. The effect and the extent of foreign hackers interfering with the US election is still a huge deal. We don't really know to what extent it affected the US election. UH. It has clearly created a lot of anger and anxiety in

the political landscape a lot of denialism as well. Uh, it is not pretty, and I suspect that either it will get even uglier or through a massive effort of sweeping it under the ru we'll stop talking about it. I hope, I hope. Actually it's the first one, because even though I don't want to see it get uglier, I think that this is absolutely something we have to talk about anytime any country has another country interfering with its Uh, it's it's legal transition of power that's a problem.

And yes, I include the times when the United States has done that to other countries. I don't think that we are we should be exempt from that rule. Everyone should be respectful of the legal transition of power, assuming that the legal transition of power is actually according to the rules that that nation follows, and not you know, not a shell game. Anyway, Off my soapbox, because it's

time to go to September. September has become the time when the world turns its eyes to Apple to see if anything spectacular is announced during the annual product event, especially especially the iPhones. This year we saw a few in sting and somewhat controversial announcements. The new iPhone has no headphone jack. I'm sure you heard enough of that this year. That drove a lot of people nuts though

the fact that the headphone jack was gone. The new MacBook Pro, which was announced the following month, on the other hand, has only USB C ports and a headphone jack, but no lightning ports, which also drove people nuts, although the USBC and lightning thing is a little different. The second generation of the Apple Watch came out and boasts a better battery life and a few other enhancements. Generally speaking, I saw a lot of people kind of feeling, not

really feeling the Apple announcements. They didn't really think that they were exciting, but that may be more due to keynote burnout than anything else. And besides, next year marks the tenth anniversary of the iPhone, so we can probably expect something big will happen next year, and maybe that's one of the reasons why this year was not quite

as as big of a breakout. In early September, Samsung announced it was delaying shipments of the Galaxy Note seven after receiving reports that some devices had While the technical term is caught all on fire, the official company statements said that the problem was traced to the battery and affected only point one percent of all handsets. Samsung's market value took a hit, dropping seven billion dollars after the

initial reports. Samsung also halted sales of the Notes seven and identified thirty five cases that were reported globally By early September, and in non phone news, Samsung also announced it would sell off its printer business to HP for a cool one point oh five billion dollars. Now this is an important story. This next one. Alphabet partnered with Chipotle to deliver burritos by drone to students of Virginia Tech, one of the most important stories of Dylan agrees with me,

because come on, it's burritos, Sky Burritos. The drones were self guided, but they also had human operators who were capable of taking control if the drone started, you know, going crazy and began to chuck burritos forcifully at students heads, which would have been hilarious, but unfortunate. The f a A itself gave its approval for this experiment. They actually had to ask permission of the f a A and

they got the thumbs up. And I'm guessing the f a A approved it because they were hungry and hey, sky burritos right. Apple CEO Tim Cook gave an interview on Good Morning America in which he said that he believed augmented reality would be much bigger than virtual reality. He said that VR was limited in that it closes people off to the real world, and he said VR experiences can be super cool, but he felt that they had a limited shelf life as far as consumer interest

is concerned. And I can kind of see his his criticisms. I don't fully necessarily agree. I think that there could be some killer VR apps and hardware that are just down the line that could change that game. But considering how heavy and bulky most VR sets are even now, even the lighter ones um and how limited the experiences are, I can see where what he's saying if we don't

see improvements in those areas. Absolutely, I think augmented reality is going to be the bigger story of the two UH election debates were streamed across multiple services, making the Internet and even more important component in US politics this year. The same must be said for candidates use of platforms like Twitter and Facebook. President Trump's use of Twitter is legendary and not necessarily in a good way. That's not a judgment based upon his politics. That's purely based upon

the stuff he has tweeted out. I mean, I've tweeted out some dumb stuff, but I also have never run for president. Yeah, who revealed it had been hacked inten though it had only just recently discovered that fact in, and that five hundred mill lien user accounts were compromised on at least some level. That number grew as months went on. The most recent account I saw was more

than a billion, which is not good. The company said suspected the attacks were state sponsored, meaning that this was an attack from some hackers that were getting official government backing which government they didn't say. Security researcher Brian Krebs reported that the company that hosted his website that is All about Cybersecurity was hit by a massive distributed denial

of service attack a di DOS attack. Now, the basic type of de DOS attack usually you get an army of Internet connecting machines and you have them all send messages to a target computer, and that target computer gets overwhelmed by all those data requests. So I kind of imagine that you walk into a room full of people and they all know you, and they all start trying to talk to you at the same time. You can't make out what anyone is saying. You're being bombard it

by small talk from all corners. Well, that's why ad DOS attack is except even larger and faster. This attack was a little bit different from some earlier ones and that it appeared much of the traffic came from compromised

Internet of Things devices. So we'd see many more attacks like that using that same malware that allowed this hacker to direct machines against Brian Krebs's website throughout the rest of twenty sixteen, including attacks on dines servers d y N that limited user access to sites like Netflix, Reddit, and Spotify across regions of the United States, largely the East Coast, but other areas throughout the day in late October, and we would also see two apartment buildings in Finland

get hit by ad DOS attack, shutting down those buildings heating systems. So that's not good. It's really brought up a lot of discussion about how we have not done a great job at a king a secure Internet of things. Uh, Adding security to Internet of things devices is a bit of a hassle because it adds another step between getting

the thing and plugging it into your network. But on the flip side, if you don't have a secure system in place, then hackers can get access to it and start to use it to their own ends, which are nearly always not great. As part of his Space ex duties, Elon Musk announced his desire to see a ship sent to Mars by three, which I think would be pretty nifty and also crazy ambitious. BlackBerry CEO John Chen said that the company would end all internal hardware development and

would only outsource hardware development from that point forward. That was in the wake of a pretty disastrous year for BlackBerry, which had seen a loss of three seventy two million. Now last year they saw a profit of fifty one million, so going from profit to loss so dramatically was a pretty rough transition. Moving on into October, officially, Sony released

the PlayStation VR formally known as Project Morpheus. US customers can buy the peripheral for about four dollars, but that does not include a Sony Eye camera or the move controllers, both of which can enhance the VR experience and are required for some games but not all of them. However, the PSVR works with existing PS four consoles as well as the PS pro, which means the PSVR has a leg up on the install base. They don't have to convince people to go out and buy an expensive new computer.

If you have a PS four, then you've got the console that will support it. Out of the gate um all the major VR headsets, it probably well does. It has the lowest resolution. After numerous fire incidents, yes, we're going back to Samsung. One of those fire incidents, by the way, happened on a plane. Samsung issued a recall on the Galaxy Notes seven smartphone. Now that came after the company attempted to do an exchange program where they would send out new handsets that in theory no longer

posed a danger. They would only allow charging up to six of the battery and some other limitations, but the new phones appeared to suffer the same problem, and so Samsung issued a full recall. In addition, major airlines made a move to discourage travelers from bringing a Note seven on board at all, going so far as to have exchange table set up in airports to swap out the Note seven for a different phone. Now, this whole thing

was a huge pr disaster for Samsung. Also in October, Samsung would acquire an AI assistant called Viv, designed by the same team that created Sirie for Apple. The Nobel Prize for Chemistry would be awarded to Jean Pierre Savage, Sir Fraser Stoddart, and Bernard Feinga. That was for their work in designing and synthesizing nanoscale machines. Savage led a team that designed a control system to make a molecule rotate around another molecule so you could actually control that revolution.

Stoddard's group created a molecular sized axle, and for Inga's group create a molecular motor. Nintendo announced the Switch, but gave us not that much information about the actual console. This is the new console from Nintendo. It was formerly known as the n X. It's kind of part home console, part handheld device, kind of like the we You in

a way. There's a tablet like screen that you can detach from a docking station and use as a portable gaming system, as detachable wireless controllers that you can use with the tablet, as well as other controls you can use when it's in its console form, but Nintendo gave very few details about how many configurations the system will have, or when it will be available, or how much it

will cost, but we're gonna learn more about that. On January twelve, two seventeen, Atari co founder Nolan Bushnell launched a VR company called Modal VR. The VR system is portable and can include full body tracking suits, but it may not end up being a consumer product, but rather an experience you pay to have, sort of like an amusement park. So instead of going out and buying the system, you might go to an amusement facility of some sort,

like an arcade, and pay to do it. A Russian scientist named Dr Igor Asher Bailey announced plans to create a space based nation called as Guardia. The nation would consist of satellites in orbit. It would also be meant to help with early detection of possible dangerous to Earth, like an incoming meteor, and possibly serve to help deflect the object or otherwise protect our planet. You can apply for citizenship and contribute funds at as Guardia dot space.

And I think this idea is a bit wackadoodle but interesting. Bill Belichick, who I am told, coaches a team called the New England Patriots in a sport called football, declares that he is done with tablets. After one too many technological failures using a Microsoft surface, he said he's going to go back to paper. He said there just wasn't enough consistency and performance with tablets. His frustration is felt by many, although there are plenty of other NFL coaches

who are still using paper. Tesla announced that all future vehicles in production would include the hardware needed for full self driving capability. This despite the issues they had had with their autopilot system. A T and T announced the intention to acquire time Warner for a cool eighty five

point six billion dollars. That deal is going to take most of seen to complete, and near the end of October, Google announced it would pause its activities in ten cities where it had not already fully committed to installing Google Fiber, and then they laid off or reassigned about nine percent of Google fibers staff. Big sad story for those that were going to get Google Fiber but had not actually

started the process. The company did say was still committed to serving the cities it would already really began to lay cable in, including Atlanta and Austin and others. Speculation rose that Google is looking more into wireless solutions rather than laying physical fiber. Google also created AI programs that can invent their own cryptography to prevent eavesdropping, which I thought was pretty darn cool. Okay, we're into the home stretch,

last couple of months left to go. But before we jump into that, let's take another quick break and thank our sponsor. Okay. November, Samsung announced it intended to acquire Harmon International Industries Incorporated for about eight billion dollars. Harmon's best known for creating in vehicle technologies, so this is Samsung's move to get into the smart car field. But

the company's woes still were not over. With the Notes seven debuckle, Samsung also issued a voluntary we call of two point eight million washing machines in addition to those Notes seven issues. The washing machines, however, weren't bursting into flame, but they did have a problem with excessive vibration. The video game company Blizzard launched a new East sports venture

in November called Overwatch League. Teams will be drafted in North and South America, Europe, China, Korea, and the South Pacific, and I don't think they're gonna pick me because I'm a bullet sponge. But I do play a mean Lucio. By mean, I mean I'm a good support character. I don't do so well with the shooty shooting snap The makers of Snapchat introduced vending machines containing a hundred twenty nine dollars sunglasses called Spectacles, which are designed to work

with Snapchat. The glasses include a camera that can record short videos that you can then upload to Snapchat. So it's kind of a super simplified version of what Google Glass was, and it's specific to Snapchat. By mid November, both Google and Facebook revised their policies to help discourage the spread of fake news. Google hits fake news sites

where it hurts in the wallet. Google said it would restrict ad serving on sites that misrepresent, misstate, or conceal information about the publisher, the publisher's content, or the primary purpose of the web property. So those fake news sites that have a statement hidden deep down that they are technically a quote unquote satire site maybe in for a rude awakening. By the way, satire is only satire if you are aware that it is satire. If you cannot tell that it is satire. It is what we call

a lie, and lies are not journalism. That's not that's not even bias there, that's just plain old fact from a grouchy, bald guy talking into a microphone. Darn it. SpaceX requested permission from the United States FCC to launch more than four thousand satellites in an effort to create a global high speed in net network. Honestly, at this point, I don't care who gets to me first, if it's

Space Internet or Google Fiber. Just someone please come out to my house so that I can have reliable Internet access. Thank you. Hackers gained access to San Francisco's Muni transportation system, infecting it with ransomware and then encrypting the system. They claimed they would release the data only upon being paid a ransom. Then the hacker who created the hack was hacked as their email wasn't properly secure, so someone else hacked the hacker by tracing back the email that had

the ransom demand in it. Why why. The Internet Archive announced it will create a backup of its backup and store it in Canada just in case, you know, just in case things go pear shaped. With a new US political administration, which is both sad and terrifying that that could actually be a possibility getting into December. By mid December, Facebook's Oculus VR division got the old shuffle treatment. Brendan arrived stepped down as CEO in order to run the

pc VR division of Facebook's company. So now there are two main divisions within Facebook VR. There's PCVR and Mobile VR, and then Oculus VR is kind of the the overall arching organization that's both PCVR and Mobile VR. They're looking for a new CEO, or at least they were as of the recording of this podcast, to actually be the top dog. Both divisions will answer to this new Oculus CEO,

and um, I'm right here is all I'm saying. Fit that would go on to acquire Pebble, But I think I mentioned that in the last episode, So I'm not going to dwell on it here other than to say we're very curious to find out if this means success for both companies or if it's a last gasp. I'm hoping for success. I don't want to see a company fail. Amazon introduced Amazon Go at a test low cation in Seattle.

It's a physical store where you can walk in. You use an app called Amazon Go, and you just start picking up stuff in the store, and the store has got cameras and sensors to detect you and computer vision algorithms to track you and to figure out what it is that you're picking up. So once you do it, you can just walk out of the store with the stuff you want, and Amazon bills your Amazon account for you, so you don't have to go and stop at a

cashier or anything like that. You literally just pick it up and go. If you put something back while you're in the store, the store actually detects it and you're not charged for that item. And it's currently open for Amazon employees in Seattle, but will open to a broader public next year. Google announced it will purchase enough renewable energy in Seen to power all of its offices and

data centers. That is huge, uh, They already purchased quite a bit of renewable energy, but by Seen, they made this commitment that they would purchase enough energy from renewable sources to power all of their their offices and data centers um there primarily depending upon wind energy, by the way, not solar. Solar makes up a part of it, but wind is the primary way that they are generating electricity. At this point, Samsung sent out an update to all

remaining US Galaxy Notes seven devices. That update disables the phone's ability to charge, as well as disabling its ability to even be a mobile device, So it just becomes a brick. And seeing is how more than a hundred thirty thousand of these devices are still out in the wild. That's an important thing. However, Verizon said it wasn't going to publish the update to its customers. Later on it said, okay,

we'll do it, but not until January seven. So if you're a Verizon customer with a Note seven, just be careful between now in January, or go and trade your phone in for something that doesn't burst into flames. A computer science lab in Toronto used machine learning to feed a computer hundreds of hours of music. Then they showed the computer a picture of a decorated Christmas tree, and by showed them that, they had the computer analyze the picture.

Then they asked the machine to compose a song inspired by the picture, and it did, and it is not good. It's vaguely creepy, but that's largely because the voice that's also chosen to sing the song. It's an electronic voice. It reminds me a bit of the YouTube video I Feel Fantastic, but not the Jonathan Colton song. I'm talking about the creepy robot mannequin that sings I Feel Fantastic over and over and over again. That's kind of what

it reminds me of. Not quite as creepy as that, but I doubt that it's going to replace you know, Baby, it's cold outside or anything like that. National Geographic became the first content creator to post a live three sixty degree Facebook video showing scientists walking out of a Mars Desert research station in Utah. Uh. This is the thing where you can actually control a camera and look in all directions because the setup uses cameras that face outward

in all directions. It's either a special camera that can capture a three D sixty degree view, or it's an array of cameras that are stitched together so that digitally you can pan across and keep panning until you can turn three sixty degrees. Uh. The National Geographics the first one to do a Facebook live that way. Pretty cool. It's got some limited applications because Generally speaking, when you are shooting video or photographing something, the stuff that's behind you,

you don't want people to focus on that. You want people to focus on the subject of your video or or your photography. But if it's something where you're really literally in the middle of an interesting landscape or an interesting event, it's pretty cool. Alphabet created a new company to spend off the autonomous car project previously that under Google X. So you know Alphabet again. Google's parent company, Google x is kind of the the research and development

arm that does the super duper high tech stuff. Well, they took the autonomous car project out of there and they turned it into a company called Weymo w A y m O. John kraft Sick is named CEO of Weymo, and Google is partnering with Fiat Chrysler and there are rumors that the company hopes to have a ride sharing service available by the end of twenty sev So you

remember I was talking about that Amazon Ghost store. There's another piece of technology, this one from Panasonic that is a special checkout system and it rings up your purchases and even bags them up for you. Being used in the convenience store in Osaka, Japan. It's kind of a

testing ground for the technology. I love all these because I'm the guy who gets to the self checkout area, and then I feel like I'm taking way too long to use very simple technology, even though I'm using it all properly, i just feel like I'm not being terribly efficient with my scanning and bagging approach. So if someone could take that off of my shoulders so that I

could feel like a decent human being again, I'd like that. Meanwhile, the California Department of Motor Vehicle sent a letter to Uber and said, knock it off with those autonomous card tests. Uber had been doing these tests in San Francisco, but did not have a permit to do that, and so the California Department of Motor Vehicle said, Hey, the DMV is gonna get all up in your face if you

don't back off. And Uber said, hey, relax, our cars won't work unless a human driver is present in the first place, even if that human driver isn't, you know, actually driving, So that has not yet resolved as the recording of this podcast. Florida's Court of Appeals Second District ruled that UH police can compel someone to provide a pass code to an iPhone five if they have a

search warrant. Now, courts in Vermont, California, and Michigan had previously ruled against that, saying that that would fall under the category of self incrimination, which technically U. S. Citizens shouldn't have to worry about because we have a whole amendment in the Constitution protecting us against it. It's called the fifth one. So yeah, you have to read all

the way down to five. If you gave up at three or four, I mean, I understand that you don't don't know about it, but just keep reading because when you get five, it's pretty clear that a person is not cannot be compelled to incriminate themselves. UM, very important, important right there, but not in Florida, at least right now. So that is it. That is all the stories that I collected for now. Clearly a lot more happened that year than just the stories I covered, but to go

through all of those would take ages. And uh, I think that, um, it's important that we turn our eyes forward prepare ourselves for next year, which is why I am so excited to announce that I will soon be recording my predictions for yes, that time of year where I hate myself and try to make wild guesses about what the future of tech is going to be like and then hopefully forget about them for twelve months until I have to revisit it and then realize how far

off I was. But I'm going to make a promise to you guys. I'm gonna try again to make big, bold guesses so that, uh, at least we have something to talk about when the year is over. Even if what I'm talking about is that how wrong I was, at least that's interesting as opposed to say, you know, uh, there'll be a new Call of Duty game that's not exciting, So I will do that soon. I hope you guys enjoyed this episode. Thank you so much for sticking with

us throughout. I hope that you guys have a happy and safe New Year's Eve, and happy New Year to you guys. I will see you in Remember. If you want to get in touch with me, you can email me the addresses tech Stuff at how stuff works dot com, or you can drop me a line on Twitter or Facebook at both of those. We are tech Stuff hs W and I'll talk to you next year. For more on this and thousands of other topics. Is It How stuff Works dot com