The Year That Was: A Look Back at 2018 in Tech

It's been a year that will go down in history as one of the most tumultuous in tech, and our show has had the pleasure of being along for the ride. From the rise and fall of Pixel Ultra to the disappointment that was the Google Pixel 3XL, this year has seen its fair share of highs and lows.

The Pixel Ultra: A Conspiracy Theory Like No Other

It all started with a rumor that would go on to become one of the most enduring conspiracy theories of the year. The Pixel Ultra, a device that never actually existed, was said to be alive and well by yours truly. It was a wild ride, folks, as Google leaned into the story and teased us with hints of something big. But when it all came down to it, there was nothing. Just a bunch of hype and disappointment.

The Pixel 3XL: A Flagship Fail

But that wasn't the only disappointment we saw this year. The Google Pixel 3XL, a flagship device touted as the epitome of Android excellence, was a major letdown. With its ugly design and spotty software performance, it's safe to say that this one won't be remembered fondly.

A Year in Review: Honorable Mentions

So what else happened this year? Well, there were plenty of other notable mentions. But before we get to those, I want to take a moment to talk about our own community. The Facebook Phenomenon: A Cautionary Tale

Let's face it, folks. Facebook has been a disaster. From its role in spreading misinformation to its utter lack of regard for user data, this company has made a mess of things. And that's not even getting into the whole Cambridge Analytica debacle.

But I digress. As much as I'd love to just delete Facebook from my life and move on, there are some people who still deserve to be acknowledged. So here's to Rene Richie, one of the smartest minds in the industry today. This guy is a force to be reckoned with, and his work deserves your attention.

Discovering Rene Richie: A Year of Discovery

For those who don't know, Rene Richie is a YouTube personality who has made a name for himself by doing what I do best: breaking down complex technology concepts into easy-to-understand language. He's got a huge following now, and we're here to help him grow that base even further.

So if you're looking for someone new to check out, look no further than Rene Richie. His channel is packed with informative content, from the latest Android updates to in-depth analysis of Google's latest hardware releases. And as a special thank you to our community, we'll be doing everything in our power to help him reach 75,000 subscribers by the end of the year.

That's it for us this year, folks. We've had our ups and downs, but through it all, we've remained committed to bringing you the best tech news and analysis out there. So thank you, thank you, thank you to our amazing community. We couldn't do it without you.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: en2018 is over it's a new year yay get daily tech moves in a way that doesn't suck hit that subscribe button and turn on notifications so you don't miss the next episode what's going on guys welcome back to front page tech of course show that gives you all these tech news one geek that is me to another that is you special day special episode I missed your special faces we do this every single year annual thing that's what that means every single year we give you our list of the worst things that have happened in tech we are equal opportunity givers and if your company did a shrine thing we will check on you what now as always a quick disclaimer because disclaimers are fun this is our list based off of our opinion opinion is the word there so if you don't agree with this or there's something on the list we're like hey what that doesn't belong there who cares who cares Frank you make your own list this is powerless the worst in tech of 2018 coming in at hot number 10 we got air power I mean whoa we don't have it that's that's the problem Apple's air power a 2018 product announced in 2017 that in 2019 we still won't have apples beautiful magical wireless Qi charger that is the same as every other Qi charger but you get its three you could charge three things and Tim Cook put his hands on it or something so it's special with multiple different issues for this product the main thing being a problem with it overheating I mean it even had like a very dumb down watered down version of iOS on it to try to like mitigate insurance manage heat stuff but it didn't work apparently like they started they're like oh they we're confident this will start testing it here just Apple employees just put this on your desk and use it and then everyone's like wow this is nice get hot it's kind of is it broken yeah I think it's broken and it was such a problem that it basically forced Apple to go back to the drawing board like the engineers did this design this just wasn't gonna work so we've had no mention of air power since they announced it we haven't seen anything about it it's in fact they basically like canned it from their website aids they're just vanishing all of them they want you to forget that air power was everything and honestly that's probably for the best Apple no one needs this with all the other Cheech our geing alternatives that we have the companies that are doing it a lot better than you this is not an area that you need to come into unless you can actually provide something of value maybe it was like a slight sort of value maybe I would have thought about getting it when you announced it in 2017 but now like we just that that market has progressed while you're still like back there somewhere I don't even know where you're at it's like everyone else is playing the game and you're just on the field somewhere picking your friend knows their powers number 10 cuz it sucked and I don't even I never even saw it and it's our number 9 is from Microsoft and it's Windows 10 Oh Frank we should have put Windows 10 at number 10 because 10 track number nine is the October 2018 update Windows 10 bunch of issues there's a bunch of different issues now the main issue that we want to point out here is well people updated to the October update that I sacked oh my October update and it deleted their stuff files just poof gone just sorry hey at least got the new OS huh that's cool hope you didn't need any of that stuff that we just deleted you know just like priceless family memories that you'll never be able to give back or those business documents that are just gone now so Frank you the whole update was just bad like there was so many different issues in fact it got so bad that Microsoft pulled it completely they were just like you know it mmm never mind never mind if you want to learn more about this I highly recommend videos from a postbox I'll link them down in the description below Adam is great friend of ours but also those videos were frakkin good and listen let's be honest if you're not subscribed to each post box yet like why what are you doing yeah okay for real though uh Microsoft you see I had I had a notepad document that had like really important passwords them on the document thing one of them one of the passwords was my password to pornhub premium I downloaded your update and that notepad text file deleted so I haven't been able to like get into the websites that I visit if you could find a way to get that back to me that would be cool or I don't know just like reimburse me for the money I've spent on certain websites premium accounts on certain websites that I haven't been able to log into number eight is the Lenovo z5 what a mother freakin tragedy bothell atrocious thing that happened if you don't recall the Lenovo z5 was the future bezel is beautiful wonderful I mean look at this thing now keep in mind that these were renders straight from Lenovo not like concept images from some frightened fourteen-year-old youtuber in front of his webcam somewhere in the basement no this was from Lenovo this was advertising this was hype they were like oh no gave you oh my god it's gonna be amazing but ladies and gentlemen that is not what we got no this is what we got this piece of mmm this was not even close to what they said we were getting and no what can they didn't care that they did that to us they were just like yeah okay so what don't remember this caused me to have a complete and total mental breakdown on this show I mean I've had multiple mental breakdowns on the show this year but this caused one of us yeah I know I said that I just wouldn't give him the platform I would not mention Lenovo ever again in this show but I made an exception today cuz they're on the short list Lenovo you bunch of Frank French coming into number seven Apple's back we got the home pod here hahaha the home pod what a what a joke first of all as a speaker it's great it sounds good it sounds really good problem was wasn't just a speaker in a market that is highly competitive smart speakers with smart assistant virtual assistants that are on pre-loaded on these speakers that are way better than Siri this smart speaker home pod thing was actually just dumb just a dumb speaker just actually the dumbest one really it's like all the other ones graduated with highly sophisticated Harvard graduating adults functioning humans and apples home pod shipped with just a child basically they just put a child it's like they just walked into a factory and you know a factory with a bunch of little kids that they make they forced the little kids to make iPhones with their stretchy little kid fingers because child labor and stuff yeah they just took one of those kids and put them in the whole pond said yeah hey tell people what the weather is anyway it's too expensive it's too terrible and that's why it's number what number do we put numbers number seven yeah number seven this has been a very offensive episode so far I feel like whatever the whole the whole pod all right that was offensive the whole pod offended me all right outrage culture is here all right and it's me the home pod was bad number six the LG was 7w7 watch thing this was a $450 hybrid where OS Smart Watch and it was you know what no I'm not no doesn't deserve that it doesn't even deserve an explanation here this was it look at it that look at this look at this monster that's why it's on the list I don't need to tell you why just look at it like if that was my kid I wouldn't even be proud of it like I'd send it off to kindergarten but I'd drop it off like a block before the school so no kids knew that I was its dad you know I mean you know it's just okay I think so we're right at number five which means we're halfway through the episode I don't know I'm not the editor we're after through the numbers and that's good enough for me so money time we're gonna put a mid-roll ad here you watch the ad we make money that's how that works thank you for money and thank you some of you saw an ad some of you didn't ah okay number five is the red hydrogen one oh Jesus this is bad this was such a mess of a thing that happened like it's just it's just badness it's like if cancer and world hunger and poverty was rolled up into a convenient little smartphone package it's this that's it's all that this right here it's too expensive it took too long to debut and it kind of just misses the mark on a lot of the basics but hey it looks pretty just kidding hey that no no it's not though it's not it's not pretty and it doesn't even have a great personality so no I'm not going to take you to prom so I guess we just wait now we just be patient and await the upcoming red hydrogen - they try again just back to the drawing board try again red hydrogen - but I'll be honest I am just excited about that as I am about air power I think they should both not ship that's what I'm saying number four is article 13 this is just bad all around I at this point I hope that you know what article 13 is if you don't I guess I'll tell you briefly so in the EU they wanted to like update copyright law for the new modern Internet era because we're not surrounded by just radios and televisions anymore nope we got updated because the internet is there so they tried to like tweak old copyright law make it modern copyright law and make it all beautiful wonderful for everybody and within all of that new updated beautiful copyright law is article thirteen and there's two specific parts of article 13 that make this very scary for everyone number one there isn't any fair use here you just kind of have to not use any content that's not your own like no excuse no music no video clips nothing like it has to be you have to own all of the content and if that wasn't bad enough the other part of this probably the worst part about this is that the social media platforms themselves become liable for what you do so let's use YouTube for example you upload a video it has copyrighted content the Content ID like matching tool will identify that content and just like give you a strike on your channel be like hey you can't do that so that's on you that is your fault but in this case because of article 13 it would actually cause YouTube to be at fault so YouTube could be responsible for your wrongdoings for your actions and this goes for all social media companies like YouTube Facebook Twitter all of them Instagram all the things so for example that puts YouTube in a really tough position that puts them in a position where they have to protect their business and the option for just like blocking content period for the EU becomes a better option than suffering any of the consequences and allowing you to possibly upload something you shouldn't have so instead of taking any chances they would just be like no you cannot upload no sorry and the issue with big companies is they don't like to have different policies and different guidelines just for specific parts of the world especially if they are an international company worldwide company companies usually take the strictest laws from an area and just sort of blanket their entire guidelines their entire rules for the rest of the world in that it's convenient it's easier it's just what works and allows things to not get too complicated managing different rules for different areas of the world so that puts the rest of us in jeopardy as well listen this is really really bad I don't know if you are taking this like super seriously but it is a very very big deal if you have no idea what it is you aren't completely caught up to what's happening we're gonna leave links down in the description below make sure to learn about it make sure to figure your out and try to stop it number three is the pixel slate what this is just it's it's so bad you would expect something like this from just a shiny company making shiny stuff shipping it on Amazon like a 30 bucks but no this is Google it seems that a lot of the bad things that happen from Google this year are related to expectations because it is Google they should be better we should expect better but they don't care they do not care enough they're putting in minimal effort and this is a prime example the pixel slate it looks good alright it looks fine okay cool but the actual experience of this device is the worst the software experience itself is clunky it's bad the whole device is pretty clunky but the software experience is just god-awful like this would be maddening like I would want to kill nothing family friendly content okay like look at this video from mkbhd marques we love you a little bit of mark-ass Brownlee his video review of the pics of slate is like all you need to know just this part right here welcome to lag city population pixel slate like could you live with that no the answer's no you couldn't and if you think you could you're lying you're a monster listen again expectations that's the main issue here we expect better from Google they do you know how much money they have this is like this should be their thing they should set an example for the rest of the market running their software but they missed the mark Google can you just pretend can you pretend to care that'd be fantastic speaking of not caring expectations and not meeting them number two let's talk about number two number two as a twofer the Google pixel three in pixel three XL you saw this coming I do want to start off by saying this was the most fun we've ever had covering anything on this show throughout the years but that does not make this any less terrible the expectations were so high for this stuff and on top of that Google had some frackie backwards confusing marketing leading up to this first it all leaks like just thousands of devices just on the black market it was Jesus for months and funds we had seen these devices before we ever got to the actual event before Google announced - showed us anything we had seen the devices we had video reviews high quality video reviews reviews on blogs like it was just a mess which then of course led us to question what was actually happening just we didn't say this is what was happening I just brought up the possibility of a conspiracy theory put on our tinfoil hats I put out an episode saying hey yeah all this but what if and that was because a ruckus that started a crazy storm of pixel conspiracy theories the pixel ultra was alive and well again and I was the guy making it a thing I'd I'm the crazy conspiracy guy John Prosser definitely said there's a pixel ultra he definitely said that that then caused a ton of media coverage of us just like hundreds of articles about me about this story it was it was a mess that also cost a few mental breakdowns of mine on this show and then to top it all off towards the actual event Google started leaning into this theory teasing us making it seem like they definitely had something up their sleeve but inevitably when we got to the event it was the same old shrimp Google didn't care and it was just it's just bad and I wish I could say that was the end after they announced the products which by the way looked pretty bad the pixel 3xl looks awful once it actually started shipping and people got these devices in their hands once again we had a year riddled with bugs software issues double notches like the speakers sucked the thing was scratching it was all bad it was all bad again want to remind you this is Google we're talking about this is a flagship product this should be the prime example of what Android should run on this should be Google's baby but instead they didn't give a franc and we got a product that didn't give a friend and now Google congratulations because we are all out of France to give so next year you got a battle my friends you gotta try to convince us to care again and that's gonna be very very hard all your marketing things your little tricks little marketing videos you're like whoa water we've got this show you know you got the same track that you had last year in the year before you ain't got nothing you are full of it you're foolish right away and falling for it next year maybe I don't know probably well I'll probably make a lot of videos on it but that doesn't mean that I believe you I'm disappointed in you nobody cares about you or what you make all right let's go let's all just go to Samsung I'll wait that's all where we were anyway and now before we get to number one numero uno on this list it's time for an honorable mention we still can't edit tweets and I hate myself and a number one on this list the absolute worst in tech of 2018 goes to Facebook that's it just Facebook I don't think we need to explain this one you know you know why it's number one I think it's time kids I think it's time to delete I think it's time to let it go get rid of it remove it from your life it's like that one family member that sucks it they're just terrible and you dread being around them every single mother frackin holiday coming around making your life suck now you're old enough now you're old enough to be just like listen aunt Jo I just freaking hate you and I don't want you in my life so I'm just gonna not all right to leave Facebook is what I'm trying to say now wait before we go it has been a great year and we want to do one more thing for another special somebody this year we've used our platform a lot this show to help other creatives to help elevate creators that deserved it not even me like I don't deserve any of the credit I just stand here on this show in front of a green screen and make noises it's you the community you guys have helped a lot of creators that really really deserve it so today let's do it again my absolute favorite discovery of 2018 is Rene Richie he is one of the smartest motherfrakkers I have ever seen on this platform this man deserves your attention so if you don't know who he is we are fixing that right now Rene Richie is like one of the people that I respect the most in this industry not just on YouTube but in this industry period right now he said our is our night right now he's at 74,000 scribers let's get him to 75 in the next couple hours you know what no no what we need more than that he needs one that get him as many as possible fvt community where's the cult unite called sound the alarms this is not a drill top-down now's the time - now's the time to speak up click the link in the description right now go to Renee's channel and subscribe let your voice be heard and you will thank me for it that's the show hopefully like you learned something if you did hit that like funny thing my stupid face hit the dislike button guys girls thank you thank you for a great year you are the best community we could ever ask for we will see you next year2018 is over it's a new year yay get daily tech moves in a way that doesn't suck hit that subscribe button and turn on notifications so you don't miss the next episode what's going on guys welcome back to front page tech of course show that gives you all these tech news one geek that is me to another that is you special day special episode I missed your special faces we do this every single year annual thing that's what that means every single year we give you our list of the worst things that have happened in tech we are equal opportunity givers and if your company did a shrine thing we will check on you what now as always a quick disclaimer because disclaimers are fun this is our list based off of our opinion opinion is the word there so if you don't agree with this or there's something on the list we're like hey what that doesn't belong there who cares who cares Frank you make your own list this is powerless the worst in tech of 2018 coming in at hot number 10 we got air power I mean whoa we don't have it that's that's the problem Apple's air power a 2018 product announced in 2017 that in 2019 we still won't have apples beautiful magical wireless Qi charger that is the same as every other Qi charger but you get its three you could charge three things and Tim Cook put his hands on it or something so it's special with multiple different issues for this product the main thing being a problem with it overheating I mean it even had like a very dumb down watered down version of iOS on it to try to like mitigate insurance manage heat stuff but it didn't work apparently like they started they're like oh they we're confident this will start testing it here just Apple employees just put this on your desk and use it and then everyone's like wow this is nice get hot it's kind of is it broken yeah I think it's broken and it was such a problem that it basically forced Apple to go back to the drawing board like the engineers did this design this just wasn't gonna work so we've had no mention of air power since they announced it we haven't seen anything about it it's in fact they basically like canned it from their website aids they're just vanishing all of them they want you to forget that air power was everything and honestly that's probably for the best Apple no one needs this with all the other Cheech our geing alternatives that we have the companies that are doing it a lot better than you this is not an area that you need to come into unless you can actually provide something of value maybe it was like a slight sort of value maybe I would have thought about getting it when you announced it in 2017 but now like we just that that market has progressed while you're still like back there somewhere I don't even know where you're at it's like everyone else is playing the game and you're just on the field somewhere picking your friend knows their powers number 10 cuz it sucked and I don't even I never even saw it and it's our number 9 is from Microsoft and it's Windows 10 Oh Frank we should have put Windows 10 at number 10 because 10 track number nine is the October 2018 update Windows 10 bunch of issues there's a bunch of different issues now the main issue that we want to point out here is well people updated to the October update that I sacked oh my October update and it deleted their stuff files just poof gone just sorry hey at least got the new OS huh that's cool hope you didn't need any of that stuff that we just deleted you know just like priceless family memories that you'll never be able to give back or those business documents that are just gone now so Frank you the whole update was just bad like there was so many different issues in fact it got so bad that Microsoft pulled it completely they were just like you know it mmm never mind never mind if you want to learn more about this I highly recommend videos from a postbox I'll link them down in the description below Adam is great friend of ours but also those videos were frakkin good and listen let's be honest if you're not subscribed to each post box yet like why what are you doing yeah okay for real though uh Microsoft you see I had I had a notepad document that had like really important passwords them on the document thing one of them one of the passwords was my password to pornhub premium I downloaded your update and that notepad text file deleted so I haven't been able to like get into the websites that I visit if you could find a way to get that back to me that would be cool or I don't know just like reimburse me for the money I've spent on certain websites premium accounts on certain websites that I haven't been able to log into number eight is the Lenovo z5 what a mother freakin tragedy bothell atrocious thing that happened if you don't recall the Lenovo z5 was the future bezel is beautiful wonderful I mean look at this thing now keep in mind that these were renders straight from Lenovo not like concept images from some frightened fourteen-year-old youtuber in front of his webcam somewhere in the basement no this was from Lenovo this was advertising this was hype they were like oh no gave you oh my god it's gonna be amazing but ladies and gentlemen that is not what we got no this is what we got this piece of mmm this was not even close to what they said we were getting and no what can they didn't care that they did that to us they were just like yeah okay so what don't remember this caused me to have a complete and total mental breakdown on this show I mean I've had multiple mental breakdowns on the show this year but this caused one of us yeah I know I said that I just wouldn't give him the platform I would not mention Lenovo ever again in this show but I made an exception today cuz they're on the short list Lenovo you bunch of Frank French coming into number seven Apple's back we got the home pod here hahaha the home pod what a what a joke first of all as a speaker it's great it sounds good it sounds really good problem was wasn't just a speaker in a market that is highly competitive smart speakers with smart assistant virtual assistants that are on pre-loaded on these speakers that are way better than Siri this smart speaker home pod thing was actually just dumb just a dumb speaker just actually the dumbest one really it's like all the other ones graduated with highly sophisticated Harvard graduating adults functioning humans and apples home pod shipped with just a child basically they just put a child it's like they just walked into a factory and you know a factory with a bunch of little kids that they make they forced the little kids to make iPhones with their stretchy little kid fingers because child labor and stuff yeah they just took one of those kids and put them in the whole pond said yeah hey tell people what the weather is anyway it's too expensive it's too terrible and that's why it's number what number do we put numbers number seven yeah number seven this has been a very offensive episode so far I feel like whatever the whole the whole pod all right that was offensive the whole pod offended me all right outrage culture is here all right and it's me the home pod was bad number six the LG was 7w7 watch thing this was a $450 hybrid where OS Smart Watch and it was you know what no I'm not no doesn't deserve that it doesn't even deserve an explanation here this was it look at it that look at this look at this monster that's why it's on the list I don't need to tell you why just look at it like if that was my kid I wouldn't even be proud of it like I'd send it off to kindergarten but I'd drop it off like a block before the school so no kids knew that I was its dad you know I mean you know it's just okay I think so we're right at number five which means we're halfway through the episode I don't know I'm not the editor we're after through the numbers and that's good enough for me so money time we're gonna put a mid-roll ad here you watch the ad we make money that's how that works thank you for money and thank you some of you saw an ad some of you didn't ah okay number five is the red hydrogen one oh Jesus this is bad this was such a mess of a thing that happened like it's just it's just badness it's like if cancer and world hunger and poverty was rolled up into a convenient little smartphone package it's this that's it's all that this right here it's too expensive it took too long to debut and it kind of just misses the mark on a lot of the basics but hey it looks pretty just kidding hey that no no it's not though it's not it's not pretty and it doesn't even have a great personality so no I'm not going to take you to prom so I guess we just wait now we just be patient and await the upcoming red hydrogen - they try again just back to the drawing board try again red hydrogen - but I'll be honest I am just excited about that as I am about air power I think they should both not ship that's what I'm saying number four is article 13 this is just bad all around I at this point I hope that you know what article 13 is if you don't I guess I'll tell you briefly so in the EU they wanted to like update copyright law for the new modern Internet era because we're not surrounded by just radios and televisions anymore nope we got updated because the internet is there so they tried to like tweak old copyright law make it modern copyright law and make it all beautiful wonderful for everybody and within all of that new updated beautiful copyright law is article thirteen and there's two specific parts of article 13 that make this very scary for everyone number one there isn't any fair use here you just kind of have to not use any content that's not your own like no excuse no music no video clips nothing like it has to be you have to own all of the content and if that wasn't bad enough the other part of this probably the worst part about this is that the social media platforms themselves become liable for what you do so let's use YouTube for example you upload a video it has copyrighted content the Content ID like matching tool will identify that content and just like give you a strike on your channel be like hey you can't do that so that's on you that is your fault but in this case because of article 13 it would actually cause YouTube to be at fault so YouTube could be responsible for your wrongdoings for your actions and this goes for all social media companies like YouTube Facebook Twitter all of them Instagram all the things so for example that puts YouTube in a really tough position that puts them in a position where they have to protect their business and the option for just like blocking content period for the EU becomes a better option than suffering any of the consequences and allowing you to possibly upload something you shouldn't have so instead of taking any chances they would just be like no you cannot upload no sorry and the issue with big companies is they don't like to have different policies and different guidelines just for specific parts of the world especially if they are an international company worldwide company companies usually take the strictest laws from an area and just sort of blanket their entire guidelines their entire rules for the rest of the world in that it's convenient it's easier it's just what works and allows things to not get too complicated managing different rules for different areas of the world so that puts the rest of us in jeopardy as well listen this is really really bad I don't know if you are taking this like super seriously but it is a very very big deal if you have no idea what it is you aren't completely caught up to what's happening we're gonna leave links down in the description below make sure to learn about it make sure to figure your out and try to stop it number three is the pixel slate what this is just it's it's so bad you would expect something like this from just a shiny company making shiny stuff shipping it on Amazon like a 30 bucks but no this is Google it seems that a lot of the bad things that happen from Google this year are related to expectations because it is Google they should be better we should expect better but they don't care they do not care enough they're putting in minimal effort and this is a prime example the pixel slate it looks good alright it looks fine okay cool but the actual experience of this device is the worst the software experience itself is clunky it's bad the whole device is pretty clunky but the software experience is just god-awful like this would be maddening like I would want to kill nothing family friendly content okay like look at this video from mkbhd marques we love you a little bit of mark-ass Brownlee his video review of the pics of slate is like all you need to know just this part right here welcome to lag city population pixel slate like could you live with that no the answer's no you couldn't and if you think you could you're lying you're a monster listen again expectations that's the main issue here we expect better from Google they do you know how much money they have this is like this should be their thing they should set an example for the rest of the market running their software but they missed the mark Google can you just pretend can you pretend to care that'd be fantastic speaking of not caring expectations and not meeting them number two let's talk about number two number two as a twofer the Google pixel three in pixel three XL you saw this coming I do want to start off by saying this was the most fun we've ever had covering anything on this show throughout the years but that does not make this any less terrible the expectations were so high for this stuff and on top of that Google had some frackie backwards confusing marketing leading up to this first it all leaks like just thousands of devices just on the black market it was Jesus for months and funds we had seen these devices before we ever got to the actual event before Google announced - showed us anything we had seen the devices we had video reviews high quality video reviews reviews on blogs like it was just a mess which then of course led us to question what was actually happening just we didn't say this is what was happening I just brought up the possibility of a conspiracy theory put on our tinfoil hats I put out an episode saying hey yeah all this but what if and that was because a ruckus that started a crazy storm of pixel conspiracy theories the pixel ultra was alive and well again and I was the guy making it a thing I'd I'm the crazy conspiracy guy John Prosser definitely said there's a pixel ultra he definitely said that that then caused a ton of media coverage of us just like hundreds of articles about me about this story it was it was a mess that also cost a few mental breakdowns of mine on this show and then to top it all off towards the actual event Google started leaning into this theory teasing us making it seem like they definitely had something up their sleeve but inevitably when we got to the event it was the same old shrimp Google didn't care and it was just it's just bad and I wish I could say that was the end after they announced the products which by the way looked pretty bad the pixel 3xl looks awful once it actually started shipping and people got these devices in their hands once again we had a year riddled with bugs software issues double notches like the speakers sucked the thing was scratching it was all bad it was all bad again want to remind you this is Google we're talking about this is a flagship product this should be the prime example of what Android should run on this should be Google's baby but instead they didn't give a franc and we got a product that didn't give a friend and now Google congratulations because we are all out of France to give so next year you got a battle my friends you gotta try to convince us to care again and that's gonna be very very hard all your marketing things your little tricks little marketing videos you're like whoa water we've got this show you know you got the same track that you had last year in the year before you ain't got nothing you are full of it you're foolish right away and falling for it next year maybe I don't know probably well I'll probably make a lot of videos on it but that doesn't mean that I believe you I'm disappointed in you nobody cares about you or what you make all right let's go let's all just go to Samsung I'll wait that's all where we were anyway and now before we get to number one numero uno on this list it's time for an honorable mention we still can't edit tweets and I hate myself and a number one on this list the absolute worst in tech of 2018 goes to Facebook that's it just Facebook I don't think we need to explain this one you know you know why it's number one I think it's time kids I think it's time to delete I think it's time to let it go get rid of it remove it from your life it's like that one family member that sucks it they're just terrible and you dread being around them every single mother frackin holiday coming around making your life suck now you're old enough now you're old enough to be just like listen aunt Jo I just freaking hate you and I don't want you in my life so I'm just gonna not all right to leave Facebook is what I'm trying to say now wait before we go it has been a great year and we want to do one more thing for another special somebody this year we've used our platform a lot this show to help other creatives to help elevate creators that deserved it not even me like I don't deserve any of the credit I just stand here on this show in front of a green screen and make noises it's you the community you guys have helped a lot of creators that really really deserve it so today let's do it again my absolute favorite discovery of 2018 is Rene Richie he is one of the smartest motherfrakkers I have ever seen on this platform this man deserves your attention so if you don't know who he is we are fixing that right now Rene Richie is like one of the people that I respect the most in this industry not just on YouTube but in this industry period right now he said our is our night right now he's at 74,000 scribers let's get him to 75 in the next couple hours you know what no no what we need more than that he needs one that get him as many as possible fvt community where's the cult unite called sound the alarms this is not a drill top-down now's the time - now's the time to speak up click the link in the description right now go to Renee's channel and subscribe let your voice be heard and you will thank me for it that's the show hopefully like you learned something if you did hit that like funny thing my stupid face hit the dislike button guys girls thank you thank you for a great year you are the best community we could ever ask for we will see you next year\n"