Tech's Last Call | Podcast

We do this every year, but this time, we have published our deliberations to the podcast feed. It is not your usual podcast, or your usual audio quality. Instead, these are the unfiltered process of how we came up with our Worst Device of the Year, Story of the Year, Top 5 Devices of the Year, and Top 5 Games of the Year for 2015. Rather than spoil it here, you'll have to tune in to find out who wins. Your normal audio quality will be back next episode. We promise. 

It's hard out there for a YouTuber. No, really, it is. This week, we got a meaningful view into that world. Meanwhile, Governments are making it harder to internet in general. Brazil shut off access to WhatsApp for like 12 hours. Keep in mind, 90% of Brazilian Internet users use that service. The House of Representatives seems on the brink of pushing through CISA, so goodbye privacy, maybe. At least they got the drone thing kind of right? $5, your name, an address, and an email is all you need. Still, pay your YouTubers because the Internet seems to only get a rougher place as time goes on. 

Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? Wired and Gizmodo think they know, but the rest of the Internet remains skeptical of that. What will happen to Yahoo? Its Board seems to think that spinning out the Yahoo part makes the most sense. Many of skeptical of this. The HTC Vive isn't coming out until next year. Many were skeptical of their original release day anyways. Jeff Bezos is beefing with Donald Trump. I'm skeptical there is any share humanity there. Welcome to the Internet. Everyone is skeptical of everything. 

In the season of light or many small gifts or acting passive aggressively towards your relatives, take time to think of the children and the future that we are creating for them. Certainly, this is what Mark Zuckerburg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, did. They set aside $45 Billion, so that their child, Max, can live in a better world. Amazon is thinking of this - although, their future is a massively obese one where everything gets delivered by drones. vTech on the other hand did not think of the children. They allowed five million parents and two hundred thousand children get hacked and potentially doxed. This holiday season, join the cause. BOYCOTT VTECH! (Also, maybe think twice about Hello Barbie) 

As companies and products mature, they tend to wander from their core purpose. This may be feature creep, like iTunes, where a whole bunch of crap keeps getting added, or it might be a move away from a core mission because of reasons. Microsoft had one such moment this week where they made their key cloud service, OneDrive, substantially worse and reneged on a promise to consumers to boot. Activision Blizzard may have crept into one too many gaming segments by spending $6 billion on mobile developer King, and Amazon is certainly mission creeping by opening bookstores. Also, a Google employee is on a one man crusade against bad cables. With this lack of focus, it's a wonder anything ever gets done. 

Not to say, "I told you so," but someone on the team might have mentioned the Chromebooks were a pretty stupid idea anyways. Now, it might seem like Google has agreed. The phrase it that they are "merging" Android and Chrome OS, but how to merge a traditional on hard drive OS with a web based terminal one? You get rid of the always online terminal one aka Chrome OS of course. In other news of shutdowns, Congress may be shutting down your digital rights. SXSW tried to shutdown discussion of online harassment then didn't, and Twitch decided to shutdown less of the content on their site. At least you will be able to find solace with your new friends on Miitomo, right? RIGHT?

As people, we get really used to the way things are. The sun comes up every morning. You have to pay taxes. Your daughter's boyfriend is in some way disappointing. YouTube is funded by advertising. These are constants. Except, with the announcement of YouTube Red, you can now pay for no more ads on YouTube. This could actually fundamentally change a part of the Internet - much in the same way that Facebook having a functional search product and Nintendo releasing a high powered gaming console. Don't worry. Your daughter's boyfriend is still disappointing. That never changes. 

The holiday device march continues on at an inconceivably faster pace. Microsoft announced the Band 2, 2 Lumias, one Surface, and a Surface Book that few even knew existed. They had more to show than Apple and Google combined. It's almost like the take the devices part of their company seriously.  Roku threw in a Roku 4. Facebook gave us emojis. All of this is great, but it may not matter because the EU seems determined to stop the Internet from working anymore. Hopefully, we'll still be able to see you for our next show. 

The tech industry is ramping up for the Christmas season. As such, we are in the middle of non-stop announcements. Google rolled out six new products - two phones, two dongles, one tablet, and a slick keyboard for said tablet. Tivo mostly announced that they still exist and that they let their design department go wild. Amazon announced that it was no longer friends with Apple or Google. Tesla announced a car that many want to speed right under their Christmas Tree, and Edward Snowden got the gift of 47 gigs of Twitter bacon. Yum!

This week the news seems to revolve the law and the continent of Europe. VW, a European company, sold 11 million cars that lied about their real world emissions. France is really determined to make Google censored everywhere. The EU Courts really don't want their data going to the US because the NSA might get it. Not that this prevents GCHQ from getting, while it's still in Europe. On the home front, Pebble now comes in round, and you can sing all the Happy Birthday that you want. At least someone finally understands?