The BIGGEST Tech Stories of 2019 - A TechLinked Christmas Special
TechLinked
·TechLinked
·2020-05-05
·
2,326 words · ~11 min read
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hahaha it's that magical time of year again but who knew that the best present
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you least expected was a special end of the year tech news roundup episode
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that's right we're taking a look back at techlink's biggest tech stories of the
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year and then looking to the future to see what technological and meme-worthy
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delights 2020 will bring so put on the old 8k u-log yeah yeah
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grab a cozy blanket and mug of hot cocoa
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because it's the 2019 christmas special
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but first i have to get rid of this how you saw the movie yep yeah you like it
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nope look the holidays are all about happiness hope and hot cocoa but i'll
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tell you who's probably not having the best time this year guesses
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wrong Intel
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because in 2019 AMD challenged Intel to
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a match of fisticuffs that didn't turn out so good for team blue after being
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the less powerful cheaper underdog for years AMD ryzen and threadripper
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processors are starting to look like the no-brainer choice for not just
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multi-threaded applications like creative stuff but also for gaming while
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Intel started the year off strong with a 28 core high-end desktop part more
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speculative execution vulnerabilities like spoiler and mds kind of pulled the
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wind up from their sails i could have said spoiled it there pulled it right
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out queen then AMD launched 3rd gen verizon
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led by the excellent 16 core 3950x
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forcing Intel to launch their 18 core core i9 10980xe
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at 999 us james that was half the price
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of its predecessor you knew that competition which didn't
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even do much for it because it was more or less on par with the 3950x which is
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150 bucks less it's too late
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AMD also launched new epic cpus that were also awesome followed by the launch
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of the high-end desktop threadripper 3960x and 3970x which solidified team
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red's new position of dominance so far Intel's only real defense has been to
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slash its prices and move its launch embargoes to six hours before AMD's
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not to mention that Intel's desktop chips are still stuck on the 14
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nanometer process and they don't have the PCIe 4.0 support added in AMD's new
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chipsets look i could go on but that's just not in the
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spirit of the season let's just hope Intel pulls it together a bit in 2020
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because dr lisa sue seems fine when she's the underdog i do not want to see
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her become her uncle jensen i mean jen's is he's he's actually not her uncle
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they're related they're like second cousins once removed or something
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but they're family and that's what christmas is all about
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next up it's the u.s china trade war that huawei found themselves smack dab
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in the middle of a story about a war but it's christmas james
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chris there's a christmas war movie the the christmas war wonderful life kringle
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versus the elves die hard ah
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thank you edsel merry christmas so huawei has been suspected of sketchy
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spy-ish behavior for years but last december things came to a head when the
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daughter of huawei's ceo who was also the company's cfo meng won joo was
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arrested here in vancouver at the request of u.s authorities in february a
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huawei lab was raided by the fbi on suspicion of stealing trade secrets then
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evidence surfaced that indicated the company had incentivized its employees
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to steal apple parts and clone them and after that a series of reports emerged
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about huawei having back doors in their network equipment
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get out of there guys and even though the evidence was flimsy at best a number
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of countries started banning huawei equipment from the rollout of 5g
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networks but not the uk they still wanted to give huawei a
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chance and data and to end their data that's
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what i call the christmas spirit well as usual trump didn't have any of that and
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he made an executive order to ban u.s companies from doing business with
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huawei he does have a scrooge mcduck vibe the
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ban meant players like google Intel and qualcomm had to scramble as they
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reconfigured their deals business stuff had meetings plotted a
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new trajectory for q4 what did businesses do
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for their part huawei said they would accelerate work on their Android
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alternative and they've already released a phone with no traces of google apps
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that was so close i'm leaving it parts of the huawei ban
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have since been lifted but relations between the us and china are still
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pretty frosty i would say i hope things thaw out come spring but i don't really
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trust huawei either so i guess we'll just have to leave this
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one up to old santy claus cheers and you're not likely to find a
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story with more twists in it than the saga of folding phones
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it's not a twist i expect you to call me out on that it's like a bend it's not
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this is your christmas gift thank you thank you so much i appreciate it a
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chinese company called royal actually showed off the first real folding phone
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the flex pie at ces last year and frankly
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this year i guess frankly i don't think anyone was impressed but that didn't
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deflate people's interest in the concept an Intel patent was later unearthed
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showing a tri-fold design that's two two folds actually but three
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it's a pure that folds out like a flower exactly samsung finally unveiled the
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galaxy fold on february 20th with a price tag of 1980 us benjamin's followed
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quickly by huawei's reveal of the mate x which seemed like a more advanced design
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with a more advanced price tag to boot i've never seen one
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me neither also oppo showed off an extremely similar design but swore that
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it wasn't copied
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in april the galaxy fold got sent out to reviewers who promptly tried to peel off
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the screen protector and broke their phones because it wasn't a screen
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protector it was just a part of the screen
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don't you hate when that happens killed my screen off whoops between the fake
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screen protector issue and the phone being vulnerable to dust and debris
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there was too much negative press around the galaxy fold and samsung delayed the
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launch to september people had much nicer things to say about it then
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meanwhile we started to see rumors of foldable devices coming from microsoft
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motorola even apple well some of those
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rumors panned out as in october microsoft unveiled the surface duo a
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foldable Android phone and the surface neo a foldable Windows device both
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slated for release next year although they don't actually have bendy displays
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their laptops so they're laptops it's technically cheating they're not
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actually foldable phones but i'll let it slide because
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happy hanukkah yay something
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wow and also in october motorola took the wraps off their modern razer and
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although the phone looks sick the specs do not and it's actually been delayed i
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just heard about that today will we get more and better phones in
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2020 probably
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it's time for the christmas stuffer that's a i should have called it that
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idea now it's time for the stocking stuffers brought to you by drop.com yeah you can
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hope for a great present or you can just buy what you want right now
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get it in there and drop wants to help you out grab something for yourself or
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that audio file in your nice list with their deals of the decade
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like the open back hd58x for 130 bucks
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down from 150 or the massdrop sennheiser pc37x gaming headset for just 90. down
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from 120. you really want to treat yourself well the mr speaker ether
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closed headphones normally 900. are 750
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bucks these deals won't last long so give yourself some love and check them
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out at the link below on to the stocking stuffers 2019 saw a bunch of companies
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get delusions of netflix and pour a ton of effort into making cloud game
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streaming a mainstream thing microsoft started talking big about project xcloud
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and we even got rumors that xbox games might be streamable on the nintendo
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switch in the future other rumors initially made it seem like google was
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developing a game console until they revealed that it was in a box the future
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of gaming isn't a box james get your
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think outside of it way outside wow
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that's right it was actually stadia a netflix for games type thing but wait
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you still needed to buy games ah
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it was as confusing as that light just was but you wait you didn't need the
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controller unless you were playing on tv it
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it was a confusing mess at launch but thankfully they cleared things up by
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claiming stadia would have negative latency
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while we were waiting to test that claim microsoft and sony announced a shocking
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and vague cloud gaming partnership that we have yet to see the fruits of now
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google's promising many more games features and quality improvements for
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stadia in 2020 but what the heck is steam cloud gaming steamy pile of games
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more steaming
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5g technology actually started rolling out in 2019 with sprint verizon and at t
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using a mix of existing spectrum and new millimeter wave tech to bring super fast
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wireless speeds to a few dozen cities across the us provided you're standing
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in the exact right spot in the middle of the street at t kind of jumped the gun
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in the early game trying to convince people that it's 5ge network was
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actually 5g instead of just the rebranded 4g that it definitely was and
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they got sued for it those rascals
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come on guys t-mobile on the other hand rolled out what they call a nationwide
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5g network covering 5 000 cities with sub gigahertz while only six cities got
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the fancier millimeter wave stuff there's a pretty short list of phones that can actually use 5g right now but
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rich people will be getting more in 2020. facebook didn't have as bad a year
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as they did in 2018 but there were still enough sketchy security incidents for
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the company to maintain their reputation as being probably the worst of the
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silicon valley crew sucker oh you're just coming out with these
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puns today friends call them suck call me suck
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in april facebook was caught asking new users to disclose their passwords for
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their email accounts and mark zuckerberg
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actually asked governments to help regulate the company which is fine
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because everybody and their dog is now investigating facebook for various
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reasons in july facebook both launched their libra cryptocurrency and paid a 5
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billion fine to the ftc for its security breaches
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facebook what a parry
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facebook seems to know now that being the biggest social network in the world
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comes with some baggage and if they're gonna survive they're gonna need to be a
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bit better at concealing the fact that mark is actually a reptilian from the
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planet dada grab god
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that was stupid but he still deserves a mug of hot cocoa just as much of the
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rest of us james that's the best of a spirit have you seen him drink
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see him drink i gotta even imagine
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and our last story is the controversial one of the epic game store it launched
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last december with epic pledging to only take a 12 cut from games revenue leaving
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an 88 cut for developers valve takes a
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30 cut by default with that number going down as a game sells more copies epic
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then started buying up exclusives like they were hoarding for a long winter and
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they even bought psionics the developer of rocket league now this would have
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been slightly less annoying to the gaming public if egs had even a fraction
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of the feature set that steam has but after a year the store is still pretty
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bare bones the backlash seems to have died down a bit and it seems like epic
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is playing it safer now i guess they snagged enough users to meet tim
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sweeney's objective of shaking up the industry i'm shocked
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we're shook it might not have been the gift that everyone wanted but he did
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also give out a crapload of free games he's kind of like a incredibly smug very
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stubborn santa claus oh and i almost forgot cyber truck that happened this
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year remember that
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it was just like that best part of 2019 hands down well we
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could go on talking about our favorite tech moments of 2019 forever but then i
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wouldn't have time to dip ginger schnapps in my hot cocoa or roast
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chestnuts by an open fire get out of here
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it's time for a new year oh that was bad keep that
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red keep it okay have you ever rose to chestnuts by
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an open fire you ever played with this giant flashlight oh here shining my eyes
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it's really fun oh god that sucks i don't like do no
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that's not the christmas spirit oh no all right whatever you guys are
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celebrating this holiday season happy holidays and jingle bells all the way
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home say hi to rudolph for me
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season's eatings