hahaha it's that magical time of year again but who knew that the best present
you least expected was a special end of the year tech news roundup episode
that's right we're taking a look back at techlink's biggest tech stories of the
year and then looking to the future to see what technological and meme-worthy
delights 2020 will bring so put on the old 8k u-log yeah yeah
grab a cozy blanket and mug of hot cocoa
because it's the 2019 christmas special
but first i have to get rid of this how you saw the movie yep yeah you like it
nope look the holidays are all about happiness hope and hot cocoa but i'll
tell you who's probably not having the best time this year guesses
wrong Intel
because in 2019 AMD challenged Intel to
a match of fisticuffs that didn't turn out so good for team blue after being
the less powerful cheaper underdog for years AMD ryzen and threadripper
processors are starting to look like the no-brainer choice for not just
multi-threaded applications like creative stuff but also for gaming while
Intel started the year off strong with a 28 core high-end desktop part more
speculative execution vulnerabilities like spoiler and mds kind of pulled the
wind up from their sails i could have said spoiled it there pulled it right
out queen then AMD launched 3rd gen verizon
led by the excellent 16 core 3950x
forcing Intel to launch their 18 core core i9 10980xe
at 999 us james that was half the price
of its predecessor you knew that competition which didn't
even do much for it because it was more or less on par with the 3950x which is
150 bucks less it's too late
AMD also launched new epic cpus that were also awesome followed by the launch
of the high-end desktop threadripper 3960x and 3970x which solidified team
red's new position of dominance so far Intel's only real defense has been to
slash its prices and move its launch embargoes to six hours before AMD's
not to mention that Intel's desktop chips are still stuck on the 14
nanometer process and they don't have the PCIe 4.0 support added in AMD's new
chipsets look i could go on but that's just not in the
spirit of the season let's just hope Intel pulls it together a bit in 2020
because dr lisa sue seems fine when she's the underdog i do not want to see
her become her uncle jensen i mean jen's is he's he's actually not her uncle
they're related they're like second cousins once removed or something
but they're family and that's what christmas is all about
next up it's the u.s china trade war that huawei found themselves smack dab
in the middle of a story about a war but it's christmas james
chris there's a christmas war movie the the christmas war wonderful life kringle
versus the elves die hard ah
thank you edsel merry christmas so huawei has been suspected of sketchy
spy-ish behavior for years but last december things came to a head when the
daughter of huawei's ceo who was also the company's cfo meng won joo was
arrested here in vancouver at the request of u.s authorities in february a
huawei lab was raided by the fbi on suspicion of stealing trade secrets then
evidence surfaced that indicated the company had incentivized its employees
to steal apple parts and clone them and after that a series of reports emerged
about huawei having back doors in their network equipment
get out of there guys and even though the evidence was flimsy at best a number
of countries started banning huawei equipment from the rollout of 5g
networks but not the uk they still wanted to give huawei a
chance and data and to end their data that's
what i call the christmas spirit well as usual trump didn't have any of that and
he made an executive order to ban u.s companies from doing business with
huawei he does have a scrooge mcduck vibe the
ban meant players like google Intel and qualcomm had to scramble as they
reconfigured their deals business stuff had meetings plotted a
new trajectory for q4 what did businesses do
for their part huawei said they would accelerate work on their Android
alternative and they've already released a phone with no traces of google apps
that was so close i'm leaving it parts of the huawei ban
have since been lifted but relations between the us and china are still
pretty frosty i would say i hope things thaw out come spring but i don't really
trust huawei either so i guess we'll just have to leave this
one up to old santy claus cheers and you're not likely to find a
story with more twists in it than the saga of folding phones
it's not a twist i expect you to call me out on that it's like a bend it's not
this is your christmas gift thank you thank you so much i appreciate it a
chinese company called royal actually showed off the first real folding phone
the flex pie at ces last year and frankly
this year i guess frankly i don't think anyone was impressed but that didn't
deflate people's interest in the concept an Intel patent was later unearthed
showing a tri-fold design that's two two folds actually but three
it's a pure that folds out like a flower exactly samsung finally unveiled the
galaxy fold on february 20th with a price tag of 1980 us benjamin's followed
quickly by huawei's reveal of the mate x which seemed like a more advanced design
with a more advanced price tag to boot i've never seen one
me neither also oppo showed off an extremely similar design but swore that
it wasn't copied
in april the galaxy fold got sent out to reviewers who promptly tried to peel off
the screen protector and broke their phones because it wasn't a screen
protector it was just a part of the screen
don't you hate when that happens killed my screen off whoops between the fake
screen protector issue and the phone being vulnerable to dust and debris
there was too much negative press around the galaxy fold and samsung delayed the
launch to september people had much nicer things to say about it then
meanwhile we started to see rumors of foldable devices coming from microsoft
motorola even apple well some of those
rumors panned out as in october microsoft unveiled the surface duo a
foldable Android phone and the surface neo a foldable Windows device both
slated for release next year although they don't actually have bendy displays
their laptops so they're laptops it's technically cheating they're not
actually foldable phones but i'll let it slide because
happy hanukkah yay something
wow and also in october motorola took the wraps off their modern razer and
although the phone looks sick the specs do not and it's actually been delayed i
just heard about that today will we get more and better phones in
2020 probably
it's time for the christmas stuffer that's a i should have called it that
idea now it's time for the stocking stuffers brought to you by drop.com yeah you can
hope for a great present or you can just buy what you want right now
get it in there and drop wants to help you out grab something for yourself or
that audio file in your nice list with their deals of the decade
like the open back hd58x for 130 bucks
down from 150 or the massdrop sennheiser pc37x gaming headset for just 90. down
from 120. you really want to treat yourself well the mr speaker ether
closed headphones normally 900. are 750
bucks these deals won't last long so give yourself some love and check them
out at the link below on to the stocking stuffers 2019 saw a bunch of companies
get delusions of netflix and pour a ton of effort into making cloud game
streaming a mainstream thing microsoft started talking big about project xcloud
and we even got rumors that xbox games might be streamable on the nintendo
switch in the future other rumors initially made it seem like google was
developing a game console until they revealed that it was in a box the future
of gaming isn't a box james get your
think outside of it way outside wow
that's right it was actually stadia a netflix for games type thing but wait
you still needed to buy games ah
it was as confusing as that light just was but you wait you didn't need the
controller unless you were playing on tv it
it was a confusing mess at launch but thankfully they cleared things up by
claiming stadia would have negative latency
while we were waiting to test that claim microsoft and sony announced a shocking
and vague cloud gaming partnership that we have yet to see the fruits of now
google's promising many more games features and quality improvements for
stadia in 2020 but what the heck is steam cloud gaming steamy pile of games
more steaming
5g technology actually started rolling out in 2019 with sprint verizon and at t
using a mix of existing spectrum and new millimeter wave tech to bring super fast
wireless speeds to a few dozen cities across the us provided you're standing
in the exact right spot in the middle of the street at t kind of jumped the gun
in the early game trying to convince people that it's 5ge network was
actually 5g instead of just the rebranded 4g that it definitely was and
they got sued for it those rascals
come on guys t-mobile on the other hand rolled out what they call a nationwide
5g network covering 5 000 cities with sub gigahertz while only six cities got
the fancier millimeter wave stuff there's a pretty short list of phones that can actually use 5g right now but
rich people will be getting more in 2020. facebook didn't have as bad a year
as they did in 2018 but there were still enough sketchy security incidents for
the company to maintain their reputation as being probably the worst of the
silicon valley crew sucker oh you're just coming out with these
puns today friends call them suck call me suck
in april facebook was caught asking new users to disclose their passwords for
their email accounts and mark zuckerberg
actually asked governments to help regulate the company which is fine
because everybody and their dog is now investigating facebook for various
reasons in july facebook both launched their libra cryptocurrency and paid a 5
billion fine to the ftc for its security breaches
facebook what a parry
facebook seems to know now that being the biggest social network in the world
comes with some baggage and if they're gonna survive they're gonna need to be a
bit better at concealing the fact that mark is actually a reptilian from the
planet dada grab god
that was stupid but he still deserves a mug of hot cocoa just as much of the
rest of us james that's the best of a spirit have you seen him drink
see him drink i gotta even imagine
and our last story is the controversial one of the epic game store it launched
last december with epic pledging to only take a 12 cut from games revenue leaving
an 88 cut for developers valve takes a
30 cut by default with that number going down as a game sells more copies epic
then started buying up exclusives like they were hoarding for a long winter and
they even bought psionics the developer of rocket league now this would have
been slightly less annoying to the gaming public if egs had even a fraction
of the feature set that steam has but after a year the store is still pretty
bare bones the backlash seems to have died down a bit and it seems like epic
is playing it safer now i guess they snagged enough users to meet tim
sweeney's objective of shaking up the industry i'm shocked
we're shook it might not have been the gift that everyone wanted but he did
also give out a crapload of free games he's kind of like a incredibly smug very
stubborn santa claus oh and i almost forgot cyber truck that happened this
year remember that
it was just like that best part of 2019 hands down well we
could go on talking about our favorite tech moments of 2019 forever but then i
wouldn't have time to dip ginger schnapps in my hot cocoa or roast
chestnuts by an open fire get out of here
it's time for a new year oh that was bad keep that
red keep it okay have you ever rose to chestnuts by
an open fire you ever played with this giant flashlight oh here shining my eyes
it's really fun oh god that sucks i don't like do no
that's not the christmas spirit oh no all right whatever you guys are
celebrating this holiday season happy holidays and jingle bells all the way
home say hi to rudolph for me
season's eatings