Gadgetory

as we get ready to say goodbye to 2018 it is time to look back on the years biggest tech stories and how events of this year will shape our future in 2019 there's probably no bigger story this year than the mess that is Facebook month after month reports highlighted the social networks mistakes with leadership making poor decisions and failing users trust the biggest blunder was the data breach tied to Cambridge analytic oh the political consulting firm exploited loopholes and used shady methods to collect personal data on 87 million Facebook users and that info was harvested to make targeted ads that would influence Trump's presidential campaign in the 2016 election and influence brexit in the UK we will enter the New Year questioning Facebook's influence in our lives and question our trust in the communication tool or if the tool needs to be treated more like a utility with the government regulation with all Facebook's mistakes we even saw Apple CEO Tim Cook speak out against Facebook calling for more government regulation and speaking of government oversight this year marked the start of the general data protection regulation in the European Union or gdpr for short at its core GD P R is a new set of rules designed to give you citizens more control of their personal data privacy and consent to what happens to their data and if there is a data breach Mulla company needs to promptly tell users or else face large fines as a penalty but GE PR didn't just make a difference for folks in the EU many large online companies that do business in the EU are applying some of these transparency standards to all their customers regardless of location just a month after the law was enacted reports of data breaches increased dramatically 2018 was also a big year for massive corporate mergers that will change her tech and media landscape 18:1 its case against the Justice Department to finalize its 85 billion dollar acquisition of Time Warner and Time Warner owns HBO CNN and other Turner networks so get ready for your ATT service to push more Khan from time warner programming Disney is buying up the rights to own 20th Century Fox film and TV studios along with some cable channels like FX all for seventy one point three billion dollars it means Disney is the majority owner now of Hulu streaming service you know right as Disney is also about to launch its own streaming service shareholders approved the acquisition this past summer the deal is expected to be completed the 1st of January and that means we are going to have to see how Fox's franchises like the x-men and The Simpsons fit into the Disney family and after four years of trying to hook up t-mobile and Sprint may finally get together with a twenty six billion dollar deal arguing that together they could be stronger to invest in a 5g network but it's not a done deal just yet although it receives shareholder approval the merger is currently on hold with the Federal Communications Commission as it needed more time to examine the transaction that's not the only thing changing in the mobile world Apple is changing our phones by leading the trend of the knotch you know the dart cut out in the top of the screen that holds the front-facing camera speaker and other sensors now of course the first phone with a notch in an edge-to-edge screen was from a lesser know start-up called essential founded by the former head of Android but apples the iPhone 10 was the first mainstream phone with a notch and many folks poked fun at it but this was just the start of a new movement this year in cell phone design the newest members of the knotch Club include the LG G 7 the Xiaomi me eight Asus zenfone 5 and the Google pixel three XL get ready for more notch action in 2019 but one technological achievement may change our lives more than we realize in the near future I'm talking about Google duplex a human sounding artificial intelligence system that can talk to people over the phone to do scheduling tasks for you like booking restaurant reservations and making hair appointments on your behalf in a demo during the Google i/o conference in May Google showed how duplex was so smooth and natural sounding filled with little quirks of conversation like comes and a hose and I gotcha that a human Nina no they're talking to a robot the wow factor became a creep factor and to answer concerns Google said going forward the system would include a disclosure maybe introducing itself as a Google assistant Google is currently testing the tech in the limited area but in 2019 you'll need to start questioning if the caller on the other line is a real human or a robot thanks for watching if you think I missed something on the list let me know in the comments until next time I'm Bridget Carey and I'll see you next year