Leo Says 34: Recap over 2018, Intel, AMD, Nvidia, Financials & more !

Leo ends the year on a high – he has a lot to say in his last video before he heads to CES with the team to give you guys the best coverage. He discusses Intel, AMD, The Xeon W3175X, Mainstream media and their bad 2018, Cambridge Analytica, The Gatwick Airport Drone fiasco and if you should let technology companies change the way you think. He also gives a shout to Steve Burke at GamersNexus – who get his vote for tech channel of 2018.

00:15 Introduction
00:35 The 2018 Financials
03:50 The Intel Discussion
05:10 Amazon ARM Server Chips – Graviton
07:11 Intel going round and round in circles / Intel Architecture Day
09:28 Intel Xeon W-3175X will be priced around US$5,000
10:15 Mainstream Media – had a bad 2018
11:36 Gatwick airport shut by drones – How did this cause such chaos?
15:04 Cambridge Analytica – recap
17:31 Should tech companies tell you what to think?
18:39 The standard for success or failure will be the result of the 2020 US Presidential Election
19:54 Netgear Orbi kit – Orbi Voice and Alexa
21:02 Best Prospect for 2019 – AMD Processors!
22:12 Best Tech Site 2018- GamersNexus.
Steve Burke and Team
23:05 Biggest laughs of the year!

Leo Says 34

I spent some time at the end of 2018 looking at stock prices and reached the view the following tech companies:

Had a good year
Adobe (ADBE) started at $185, finished at $209, peak $275, Cap $102Bn
AMD started year at $12 and is now $17, peak was $33, Cap $17Bn
Amazon (AMZN) started at $1,229, ended at $1,377, peak $2,013, Cap $674Bn

Had an OK year
Alphabet (GOOGL) started at $1,110, finished at $991, peak $1,253, Cap $685Bn
Intel (INTC) started and finished at $45, peak was $57, Cap $205Bn
Facebook (FB) started $134, ended $125, slid all year, Cap $359Bn
Microsoft (MSFT) started $101, ended $98, peak $103, Cap $754Bn
Seagate (STX) started and ended $36, peak $37, Cap $10Bn
TSMC (TSM) started $42, ended $36, peak $46, Cap $185Bn
Western Digital (WDC) started $37, ended $36, peak $38, Cap $10Bn

Had a bad year
Apple (AAPL) started at $175, finished at $151, peak of $226, Cap $715Bn
Baidu (BIDU) started $245, finished $157, peak $273, Cap $55Bn
Nvidia (NVDA) started year at $215 and is now at $130, peak was $280, Cap $79Bn
Qualcomm (QCOM) started at $66, finished at $55, peak of $75, Cap $66Bn

Apple is no longer a Trillion Dollar company but is now worth around US$715 Billion, which is slightly less than Microsoft at US$754 Billion.

Nvidia stands out in that list as a company that is dominant in its field yet has suffered from the collapse of Crypto mining and a subsequent overstock of 10-series graphics. It seems the buying public is unimpressed by 20-series RTX graphics and in particular by the price of these graphics cards.

Most of us would judge that Intel had a terrible 2018, however they are still the dominant company for x86 CPUs and absolutely rule the laptop market.
Intel rules the server market with Xeon, however AMD EPYC is on the rise and Amazon has begun using its own Graviton ARM chip in servers.
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/11/27/amazon_aws_graviton_specs/
This ARM chip, was supposed to have been delivered by AMD however in 2015 the project failed so Amazon bought Annapurna Labs and did the job itself.
Amazon is a scary company that knows where it is going and has the resources to get there.

By contrast Intel seems to be going round and round in circles.
They have previously failed to put chips in phones, appear to have major problems with 5G and their on-going 10nm drama is holding them back.

Intel Architecture Day
Sunny Cove
10nm Ice Lake in H2 2019?
11th Gen graphics
Intel Xe add-in graphics are due to arrive in 2020.
How swiftly can Intel advance their laptop chips to prevent Apple shifting to ARM?

Intel Xeon W-3175X will be priced around US$5,000 but surely will launch at CES, rather than in 2018 as promised.

Mainstream media had a bad 2018. Here in the UK the BBC is among the best of the broadcasters but pretty much everywhere you look you will see that TV, Radio and newspapers do a fairly lousy job as they adapt to a world where advertising is gulped by Facebook and Google.

In the run-up to Christmas Gatwick airport was impacted by an idiot or idiots using drones to threaten the air space. This caused all flights to be suspended for a whole day
Media coverage showed a series of people stuck at the airport who were missing their holiday, wedding, or some other event while missing the wider picture.

How did this cause such chaos?
DJI released the original Phantom in January 2013 so the idea the authorities could not predict that people would fly drones in the wrong places and prepare counter measures is just depressing. It gives you very little hope that our Government has any ability to tackle technical and privacy issues posed by Amazon Echo/Alexa, Apple HomePod/Siri and Google Home/Assistant.

It is now just over a year since we first heard about Cambridge Analytica apparently swinging the US Election. It is clear a large part of US society was appalled by the result of the 2016 election and wanted an explanation about what had happened. There were many likely answers but the one they chose to go for was that the idiot public had been brainwashed. This has a number of advantages as it allows Facebook, Google and the rest to stand by their claim they are the dominant forces when it comes to forming opinions and therefore deserve their massive income from advertising.

The tech companies in Silicon Valley consider it is their place to guide how we think. Tim Cook, CEO of Apple Inc. recently said
The future should belong to those who use technology to build a better, more inclusive and more hopeful world
I believe the most sacred thing each of us is given is our judgement, our morality. Choosing to set that responsibility aside at a moment of trial is a sin.

These may be wise words, but what does that have to do with selling phones, tablets and music downloads?

Presumably their standard for success or failure will be the result of the 2020 US Presidential Election. If they get the result they want they will have proved they can change the direction of America but if they lose they will presumably accept their loss gracefully and give up.

Of course not! they will double down and try even harder to push their views about what is and is not acceptable. I have no intention of asking Alexa or Siri how I should vote but the fact that thought is even possible makes me very uncomfortable.

When I bought my Netgear Orbi kit this year I chose to avoid the option that comes with Orbi Voice and Alexa. This year its an option but when will it become compulsory?

Best prospect for 2019:
AMD with Rome EPYC and Zen 2/Ryzen 3000. Navi graphics may also turn out well.

Best Tech site of the year
Gamers Nexus. Stephen Burke and team.

Biggest laughs of the year
Intel commissioning Principled Technologies to produce a white paper to boost Core i9-9900K.
The Verge's awful PC Build
along with Bit Wit Lyle' s response to both

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