The rise of deep learning. The fall of bitcoin. The moxie of Satya Nadella.
Here at WIRED Enterprise, we chronicle the people and the ideas and the technology that sit at the heart of the computer world, and we're happy to say that it was a year of constant change---as usual. Sure, some things stayed the same---machines still can't beat humans at Go---but mostly, the hardcore-tech universe is in serious flux.
The tech we use to build tech---the stuff that programmers use, the stuff in the massive data centers that drive our online services, the stuff that provides the very foundation of the internet---is moving towards the future. And it's moving faster than ever before. Just look at what Mr. Nadella is doing over at Microsoft.
Nadella realizes that if Microsoft is going to keep up with all these changes, it must change just as quickly. Yes, the new Microsoft is still the old Microsoft in some ways---witness its takedown of a tiny company called No-IP---but in so many other ways, it's not.
Our Nadella profile is our top story of the year. But there are nine others close behind.
Why Microsoft Got It Right With New CEO Satya Nadella
Following widely reported rumors, Nadella was officially named the new CEO of Microsoft in February, and he couldn't have taken the reins at a more critical time. Though still pulling in an awful lot of money under Steve Ballmer, Microsoft was struggling to match the commercial success of rivals like Apple, Google, and Amazon in the technological areas most likely to define the future, including cloud computing and the rapidly growing world of mobile devices. We argued that Nadella---a 22-year Microsoft veteran steeped in the cloud computing world---was the the perfect choice for the job. And we were right.
How Microsoft Appointed Itself Sheriff of the Internet
But as quickly as Nadella is changing Microsoft, some of the old attitudes remain. Take the story of Microsoft and No-IP. Ever since its Windows operating systems were seriously attacked by malicious internet worms over a decade ago, Microsoft has taken a strong stance on security, and in many respects, this has helped make the internet a better place. But in shutting down No-IP, the company may have gone too far, exhibiting some of the hubris of old.
The Inside Story of Mt. Gox, Bitcoin’s $460 Million Disaster
When Mt. Gox, once the world’s largest bitcoin exchange, went bankrupt in February, it was an implosion of epic proportions. Hackers, the company said, had stolen the equivalent of $460 million from the company. As the company spiraled out of control, Mt. Gox insiders discussed its woes with WIRED, exposing a messy combination of poor management, neglect, and raw inexperience. At the center of it all was CEO and majority stakeholder Mark Karpeles---a man who was more of a programmer than a chief executive, a geek with little practical knowledge of the business world.
Meet Patrick Byrne: Bitcoin Messiah, CEO of Overstock, Scourge of Wall Street
The story of Mark Karpeles is pretty amazing. But it's nothing compared to the story of Patrick Byrne. For years, the Overstock CEO waged a quixotic campaign against just about everyone on Wall Street---including banks, hedge funds, analysts, regulators, even reporters---insisting that our financial system was broken and, well, corrupt. When the 2008 crash hit, he was proven right (at least in some ways), and now he's battling the system all over again---with bitcoin.
The Fierce Battle for the Soul of Bitcoin
Yes, bitcoin is the domain of libertarians, hackers, drug dealers, and dudes like Mark Karpeles. But at long last, the digital currency is also pushing into the mainstream. You can now use it to buy a mattress on Byrne's Overstock.com or some music from Microsoft, and some big-name Silicon Valley venture capital is now firmly behind the technology. The trouble is that the libertarian set doesn't want bitcoin to change, and that means there's a battle for the future of this rather remarkable creation. We take you inside the clash of ideologies.
Facebook Paper Has Forever Changed the Way We Build Mobile Apps
Facebook Paper was a flop. Though it was supposed to reinvent Facebook as a new-age reading app, it quickly tumbled down the leaderboard at the Apple App Store. But whatever the fate of Paper, the tools used to build the thing represent the future of software design and development. We take you behind the scenes with the team that conceived and built the app---a news reader that feels an awful lot like a 3D game---and their story shows just how much the engineering world is changing.
The Next Big Programming Language You’ve Never Heard Of
People are always building new programming languages. But most of them don't go anywhere. We already have too many languages, and coders only have so much time to learn new tricks. Walter Bright and Andrei Alexandrescu were well aware of this, but they built their new language anyway, and it just might defy the odds. It's called D. And Facebook uses it---sort of.
Forget GMOs. The Future of Food Is Data---Mountains of It
Inside a squat building on San Francisco’s 10th Street, packed into a space that looks a lot like a high school chem lab, Hampton Creek is redesigning the food you eat. The tiny startup has already created a reasonable facsimile of the chicken egg that’s significantly cheaper, safer, and possibly healthier than the real thing, and now, it’s working to overhaul so many other foods in much the same way. That's a massive undertaking. But the company has a trick up its sleeve. His name is Dan Zigmond, and he used to analyze data at Google. With a team of data scientists---and maybe even a new form of artificial intelligence called deep learning---he aims to model the creation of new foods with software.
It's Time to Encrypt the Entire Internet
So, it turns out, there was this hole in the software everyone uses to encrypt traffic on the internet. And it made us realize just how important it is to keep our communications safe from prying eyes---all our communications. We think it's time the web took a good hard look at a new idea: encryption everywhere.
The Mystery of Go, the Ancient Game That Computers Still Can’t Win
Computers have matched or surpassed top humans in so many classic games: checkers, chess, Othello, Scrabble, backgammon, poker, even Jeopardy. But so far, no machine has beaten a human champion at Go---that Eastern version of chess beloved by emperors, generals, intellectuals and child prodigies alike. Rémi Coulum and a small community of computer scientists want to change this. And one day, they just might get there.
