Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “What 2020 Taught Us – A Techlinked Christmas Special”.
Here we go, you ready, colton, i’m ready for whatever do you love christmas? I love christmas wow, it’s the best, hey everybody! It’S christmas day, the day people have celebrated for over two millennia by gathering together and going through the biggest tech stories of the year. That’S right, colton james, isn’t here right now he doesn’t believe in christmas there’s nothing that makes me feel warmer inside than repeating traditions for no other reason than people have repeated them many times before, except perhaps for a mug of hot cocoa. This is what this episode is cold and in case you were wondering, i didn’t know christmas, so christmas so grab a cup of hop, coco yourself and snuggle up with your favorite squishy, blanket next to the aku log, because it’s the 2020 christmas special and you know What i’m bringing the star wars? Mug back nice! You haven’t watched the mandalorian. I haven’t watched season two, but you will you oh yeah. It’S the only reason you should get disney, plus or whatever skip the last five minutes: yeah. Okay, now, in a normal year we talk about stuff, like companies one-upping each other, with misleading marketing, product releases and price drops and we’ll get to that. But in 2020 the tech world went through more changes than i did in seventh grade, which isn’t saying much real late bloomer.
The global pandemic caused by the covet-19 coronavirus ever heard of it caused tech giants like apple and google, to close offices and stores worldwide, and also caused the cancellation or virtualization of nearly every tech event scheduled for this year. That includes mwc gdc, gtc pax east e3. F8, google, i o sxw, wwdc, computex and even ltx the linus tips expo, which is even more of a shame, because those tips are even better in person. You that you were sad about that. I’M very sad! You went all by yourself just when just went to the venue we rented hey. Where is everybody? Come on where’s? Everyone movies delayed their theatrical releases on mass, causing a huge boost in streaming service usage, which in turn caused them to reduce streaming quality for a bit before they realize the series of tubes can handle it.
Just fine. In fact, many internet service providers lifted data caps, proving that they’re not really necessary before slapping them back on, since they realized ooh. This uh virus thing is gon na it’s gon na keep going. I guess their profits are profits. Zoom came out of nowhere to become the kleenex of video chat. Apps.
Do you know what i mean by that yeah, the brand name becoming a generic yeah? It’S pretty straightforward, but all video chat apps got a boost, as did tech giants as a whole. Google and facebook both saw healthy bumps in profits, but amazon, more than tripled their net income from 2.1 billion in q3, 2019 to 6.3 billion this year. Wow just imagine how hard jeff must be working to make that much money.
He must be exhausted, he’s just at the money crank all day. You know what i don’t want to think about that. Let’S end this story on a positive note: folding the process of donating your spare computing power to scientists working on medical research surged in popularity to the point where the folding at home network is now over 16 times more powerful than the world’s most powerful super computer And that project has directed their power towards researching therapies for coven 19., see even when things suck technology can help make things better before it makes things worse again and that’s what christmas is all about.
Next up, it’s the battle between epic games and apple for the hearts and souls of fortnite players who probably don’t care about any of this and just want to play fortnite to be fair, that’s an admirable goal! I’M with you, however, before epic went and made a scene developers and litigators were already drawing attention to the 30 revenue cut and myriad restrictions and guidelines that apple that happle. That’S what i like to call them apple has in place in its ios app store, but epic really blasted the issue open when it added a direct payment option to both the android and ios versions of fortnite, bypassing the so-called apple tax apple and google removed fortnite. From their app stores, but epic was ready with lawsuits against both of them and a parody of apple’s infamous 1984 ad. What fun epic apparently wants apple to either reduce the 30 cut or to open up ios to alternative app stores and payment methods and they’re not alone in their quest, either.
News conglomerates, microsoft and other devs criticized apple’s app store policies and all the pressure apparently had some effect and apple allowed developers to challenge app store rules and drop. The stores cut to 15 for devs, who made less than 1 million in 2019., epic and apple, have a trial set for may 2021. So we’ll have to wait till then to see whether the industry shattering effects that epic wants will actually happen, or whether this was all the multi-billion dollar company equivalent of a reality show yelling match. That’S all it turned out to be well, thanks for the laughs is apple scrooge, [ Applause, ]. Sorry, i’m sorry is apple scrooge. I think there’s two scrooges in that story and there wasn’t much tech lovers – could do except laugh if they were in the market.
For a new graphics card or console this past fall because literally all of them suffered from stock shortages, both due to the pandemic and scalpers. The playstation 5 took the brunt of fan criticism early on, because retailers launched pre-orders early, confusing all those gamers who set their alarms an hour too late and mashed f5 on the product page to no avail. Scalpers bought up a ton of stock and while microsoft said that wouldn’t happen during the xbox series xn series s launch, it did nvidia’s. Rtx 3000 series cards also got scalped big time. God you got scalped dude.
You got hardcore scalp for some reason that conjugation of the verb that led to ebay listings for the cards getting inflated into the tens of thousands of dollars for a single unit. Similar things happened during the launch of the ryzen 5000 series, cpus and radeon 6000 series. Graphics cards, a story about one scalper group made up of 12 people making off with over 2400 ps5s, made it clear who the bad guys were here, sony. What no colton scalpers got robbed at meetups and things got so bad people were watching a stock, checker bot stream, a never-ending list of product skus, hoping to snag a gpu the moment it was available. I mean if they didn’t get a new model. How are they supposed to play the most anticipated game of the year, cyberpunk 2077, when it launched a rave reviews? Oh, what a cliffhanger and we’ll get back to it right after this now it’s time for quick bits brought to you by curiosity, curiositystream, the streaming service with thousands of documentaries and non-fiction tv shows, if you like me, are as curious as a cat. You’Ll love their award-winning, exclusives and originals on topics like history, nature, science, food technology, travel and more, with 35 collections of curated programs hand-picked by their experts, plus it’s available on tons of devices, including android, ios and even samsung, and sony smart tvs. That is curious. I can tell you’re curious, so why don’t you click the link in the description below and use code tech linked to get a year-long subscription for just 14.99? How is this possible? You can find out quick bits, drop them in a mug of hot cocoa and you’ll.
Definitely get a tingle in your mistletoes yep after being delayed multiple times, cyberpunk 2077 launched in december to mostly grade reviews. That mentioned the game had a few bugs, but it quickly became apparent. This was about to get ugly while those blessed with high-end rigs could run the game all right for many players, it was unplayable and some were even getting seizures from flashing light sequences, with no explicit epilepsy warning what a mess, what an absolute mess beat the entire Game, did you beat it? I did. I know life did i play on ps4? No, oh dear lord, no initially cd project red offered refunds that players couldn’t get because there was no refund agreement in place and sony ultimately removed the game from the playstation store in order to fill some of those refunds. Now the developer is facing lawsuits from investors and, on top of all, that, they’ve also been criticized for promising to host the controversial taiwanese game. Devotion then giving in to what is clearly pressure from china who has suppressed the game’s release on other platforms turns out that this tweet from july 2018 was actually pretty prophetic. 2020 will be remembered as the year apple got in some big fights, but it’s also the year. They won a big victory because the company’s new max powered by the custom-designed arm-based m1 chip got even the most step. Skeptical step to pill, pc diehards, to admit that arm processors may just yet have a future on desktop, including colton. You hated those things yup, but it seems the rest of the industry has already taken the hint amazon. Google and microsoft are all developing their own arm-based chips. Meanwhile, arm the actual company had an interesting year as well, they were bought by nvidia for 40 billion, and the ceo of the chinese division went rogue.
Refusing to leave his office after he was fired, come to think of it. I never heard that story resolved next up. The tick tock band. Remember that everyone was talking about it, at least until president trump remembered there was an election coming up.
Yes, the u.s government was concerned about the app’s ties to china, so starting around august, the us government tried to force tick-tock’s chinese parent company bike dance to sell the app to microsoft within 45 days. Well, that deadline passed as microsoft seat at the table was taken over by oracle and not the lady from the matrix. China wasn’t a fan of the whole scheme, obviously, and called what the us was doing: theft well, the us doubled down and added wechat to the band, which was a bigger deal, because wechat is owned by 10 cent and they’re a big deal they’re worth a lot More than 10 cents i’d looked it up, another deadline was largely ignored and, while tick tock did end up making a deal with oracle as part of a new partnership, people seem to have largely forgot about the whole thing, which is fine by me. Frankly, the less time i spend thinking about tick-tock the more time i have just hit my coco.
That is very good. What’S in that, what are you drinking quick bits? The tail end of 2020 saw the u.s discover that it had been the victim of one of the biggest cyber attacks in history, and it had been ongoing. Since march hackers believed to be a part of the cozy bear group which has ties to the russian government. Were able to exploit a flaw in the orion it software made by a company called solarwinds that gave them access to the internal networks of multiple us government agencies and corporations, including microsoft.
As of filming this episode, the breach is still being investigated, but you know what i’m tired of all this negativity same. Stop hacking things colton leave it alone. You know what, let’s end up by celebrating one of the weirdest most wonderful trends to emerge in 2020, installing the game doom where it doesn’t belong. Programmers and tinkerers have figured out how to play doom on a pregnancy test, a smart fridge and even nintendo’s brand new game and watch thing that takes hope that takes courage.
It takes knowledge and it takes a lot of free time. So i guess in the end maybe 2020 was sort of a gift. After all sort of that’s big, that’s a big sort of that sort of is doing a lot of work in that sentence. Prob, basically not i take it back, and this is a lot of work. So it’s time to go to bed everybody thanks for watching. I hope we all do a little better in 2021 and from my tech news to yours and for even from colton’s brandon. Do you have any tech news to give? Thank you merry christmas and a happy holla longer days. I moved things over well there we go.
You look like my dad trying to use the remote well. I am a dad now i, as soon as you become one, you forget how to use remotes watch out the best part about editing yourself, though, is that you don’t have to apologize to the editor. It’S just me yeah did i have it tied up.
I did two seconds you tie these up. You should once you’re degenerate unless you’re some kind of cyberpunk .