In the fast-paced world of innovation, every innovation carries the risk of mistakes, miscalculations, or under-delivered promises.
The biggest tech story of 2024, the CrowdStrike outage that affected businesses and consumers across the country was also one of the year’s most notable failures. But the CrowdStrike story is more than just a story of failure. It is also a testament to resilience and recovery.
TechRepublic compiled the year’s most significant tech failures to explore how they were solved or left unresolved.
Note: These are the most popular cybersecurity news stories of 2024.
A CrowdStrike bug has left travelers stranded with numerous blue screens of death.
On the morning of Friday, July 19, the CrowdStrike cloud security platform released a content configuration update for Windows. A bug in the content validator used in the update caused a cascade of errors among CrowdStrike customers. That customer group included approximately 8.5 million Windows devices in businesses, airports, and emergency services.
CrowdStrike fixed the issue 78 minutes after the update. However, affected computers had to be manually rebooted, which caused a lot of work for the team over the weekend.
Major data breaches have taken a toll on telecommunications networks and personal data.
Two major data breaches have left cybersecurity professionals on high alert. Last August, the UK’s National Public Data, a consumer background check service, suffered a breach that exposed Social Security numbers among 2.7 billion data records. These exploits have sparked discussions about the legal protection of personal data.
Last September, the Wall Street Journal reported that a group of threat actors linked to China had accessed U.S. broadband networks specifically through Cisco routers. Both U.S. and international cybersecurity agencies have issued warnings about the threat group known as Salt Typhoon.
Google AI overview faces ‘rocky’ launch
Google introduced AI-powered answers to search this year, with mixed success. Last May, when Google recommended “eat at least one small rock a day” and confidently repeated a political conspiracy theory, AI’s response went viral. The comments about the rock were taken from a satirical site, and the conspiracy theory was taken from Reddit. In response, Google has worked to limit user-generated content and detect “meaningless queries” in its AI overview.
This situation highlighted the limitations of how generative AI pulls information from the internet.
Microsoft’s Recall for Cloud Privacy Concerns
2024 was the year of the AI PC, and various technology companies are competing to figure out which AI features will garner the most attention.
Microsoft has invested in using AI to control your PC or use natural language to search for files. The Recall feature promised to intuitively answer questions like “Where did I put my restaurant confirmation email for Saturday?” But this convenience comes at a price. Recalling captured screenshots of the active window every few seconds and saving them as a timeline raises privacy and data usage concerns.
Microsoft delayed making the recall public. Starting December 6, Recall will be available in preview to Windows Insiders.
The rise and fall of wearable AI
This year, two new AI products were experimented with form factors.
The Humane pin is designed as an AI assistant that you attach to your clothes, and the makers of the Rabbit R1 pitch it as a smartphone replacement. The pin received generally negative reviews and received a fraction of the sales expected. Rabbit R1 followed a similar path. These devices are clever because generative AI can open up new possibilities for form factors.
Both the Humane and Rabbit devices are still for sale. But widespread adoption of these form factors, including smart glasses, has been a tough road even for the tech giants. Ultimately, wearable, AI-first devices are a dead end in 2024.
Intel has had a difficult year
Intel Core 13th and 14th generation desktop processors have suffered from widespread instability and crashes for several years. Intel discovered a faulty microcode algorithm that caused the problem this summer. They eventually delivered a patch. Intel stock and market share fell as rivals NVIDIA and AMD took advantage of the generative AI boom. Intel may recover next year when CPU sales improve, but for now it has missed the boat on the AI hardware boom despite a credible product portfolio.
Tesla’s self-driving products are in a precarious position.
Tesla’s ambitious self-driving mode has suffered several setbacks since a mass recall last year. Among them: The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is investigating four specific accidents. Another investigation linked self-driving modes to dozens of deaths. According to Tesla’s fourth quarter vehicle safety report, Autopilot causes fewer accidents per million miles than the average U.S. vehicle.
Meanwhile, additional reports have shown that many humanoid Tesla robots are operated by humans. Tesla doubled down and released a video of its Optimus robot operating “on its own” in its factory.
Electric vehicle sales may decline in 2024 as other automakers mature in the “green” market, but Tesla remains a strong competitor.
