What we learned in 2015 – The Verge

Diversity is now the defining conversation of the entertainment industry

2015-12-31T09:30:02-05:00

This year, in lieu of the traditional "Best Of" lists, we thought it would be fun to throw our editors into a draft together and have a conversation. The last few years we've been made more aware than ever of systematic discrimination, everywhere from our law enforcement to our boardrooms. Silicon Valley has grappled, with halting progress, to correct its deeply entrenched sexism. But Hollywood has always been painfully behind when it comes to reflecting the changing times - until this year. As platforms and channels diversified exponentially so did the people on screen and behind the cameras. Asian Americans created and starred in criticall …

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Space took over the internet this year

2015-12-31T08:30:02-05:00

This year, in lieu of the traditional Best Of Lists, we thought it would be fun to throw editors and writers into a draft together and have a conversation. It was an exciting and eventful year for space news even before SpaceX landed its first Falcon 9 rocket. NASA found subsurface oceans on a bunch of different worlds and returned breathtaking pictures from ones we've never seen before (like Pluto and Ceres). SpaceX grew increasingly popular before suffering its most major setback in June, when one of its rockets exploded. And the United Launch Alliance - the private space industry incumbent, and SpaceX's biggest rival - celebrated making i …

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How Netflix and Amazon have changed the rules of TV

2015-12-30T11:45:02-05:00

This year, in lieu of the traditional Best Of Lists, we thought it would be fun to throw our writers into a draft together and have a conversation. This time, Ross Miller and Lizzie Plaugic discuss how streaming platforms became the first choice for critically adored and highly anticipated content. The Mindy Project moved from Fox to Hulu; Aziz Ansari's Master of None went straight to Netflix. This year, streaming platforms positioned themselves as stand-alone platforms rather than ones that complemented a cable subscription. And it was the year stodgy old networks began to see these platforms as a real threat.

Here's what we learned in 2015.

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2015 was the year ‘censorship’ lost all meaning

2015-12-30T11:00:02-05:00

This year, in lieu of the traditional "Best Of" lists, we thought it would be fun to throw our editors into a draft together and have a conversation. This is the year that censorship was either a big deal or lost all meaning. We got an error code for governments blocking web pages, a presidential candidate suggested we "close up" the internet, we spent a lot of time wondering whether college campuses were limiting free speech, and we got into a gigantic debate over whether Reddit's stricter policies constituted censorship. And of course we heard about whether all the things Gamergate and similar internet bottom-feeders hated last year - Twit …

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This was the last year of VR’s beta test

2015-12-30T10:37:45-05:00

This year, in lieu of the traditional Best Of Lists, we thought it would be fun to throw our editors into a draft together and just have a conversation. Chris Plante and Adi Robertson discuss how virtual reality's breakout year was delayed. While VR made headlines everywhere, only one headset - the Gear VR - reached consumers in time for the holidays. What does VR's slow road to store shelves say about the present state of the format, and should we be concerned about its future?

Here's what we learned in 2015.

Chris Plante: It's practically 2016, and the only regular contact I have with virtual reality is an Oculus Rift dev unit that I bor …

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Streaming is making the music industry more unequal

2015-12-29T11:30:01-05:00

This year, in lieu of the traditional Best Of Lists, we thought it would be fun to throw our writers into a draft together and have a conversation. Jamieson Cox and Micah Singleton talk about how the rise of streaming music is making one of the music industry's big problems even bigger. Apple is making a big investment in streaming, YouTube's joining the circus, and Google and Spotify's products keep getting bigger. Is any of the new money coming in trickling down to the artists who deserve it?

Here's what we learned in 2015.

Jamieson Cox: Micah, there's an idea I can't get out of my head when I think about the music industry in 2015: musi …

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Silicon Valley is confusing pseudo-science with innovation

2015-12-29T10:30:02-05:00

This year, in lieu of the traditional Best Of Lists, we thought it would be fun to throw our editors into a draft together and have a conversation. One of the biggest topics in tech this year was the ever-expanding bubble in startup valuations, fueled by an ever-expanding pool of increasingly less qualified investors. We brought together our business editor Ben Popper, and our science editor, Liz Lopatto, to discuss what happens when you mix a flood of dumb money eager to invest in anything "disruptive" with life science companies that can actually impact our bodies and health. Here's what we learned in 2015.

Ben Popper: This was the year t …

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Why is the media so afraid of Facebook?

2015-12-29T09:23:54-05:00

This year, in lieu of the traditional Best Of Lists, we thought it would be fun to throw our editors and writers into a draft together and have a conversation. Here are Nilay Patel and Casey Newton discussing the hopes and many anxieties felt by the media as their industry becomes increasingly reliant on platforms. This year we learned that everyone in media is afraid of Facebook, and Snapchat is still trying to grow up. How do we pay for media? How is it distributed? What is a media brand?

Casey Newton: By almost any measure, Facebook had an impressive year. Its revenue was up more than 40 percent in the last quarter, its stock price is a …

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2015 was the year we learned Silicon Valley is coming after the transportation industry

2015-12-28T13:00:20-05:00

Is it time to rethink the car, an iconic symbol of 20th-century economic prosperity? The notion of disrupting Detroit certainly isn't new - there's been a rising tide of interest in transportation from Silicon Valley pillars and newcomers alike for several years now. But 2015 felt like a transformational year: there are the inescapable rumors of an Apple car, the expansion of Google's testing, and newcomers like Renovo and Faraday Future, all of which made news this year and call California home. And then, of course, there's Uber. The San Francisco unicorn had another banner year marked by nearly unthinkable leaps in valuation, gangbusters e …

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2015 was the year big tech companies all started to look the same

2015-12-28T10:04:55-05:00

This year, in lieu of the traditional Best Of Lists, we thought it would be fun to throw our editors into a draft together and just have a conversation. For our kick-off chat, Lauren Goode and Dieter Bohn discuss how tech's biggest companies have essentially been copying each other's strategies. Google is making hardware, Apple is launching products faster than we can keep up, Microsoft is going all in on mobile. If this is the year everybody wants to be everybody else, does that make things more interesting or more boring than all-out war?

Here's what we learned in 2015.

Lauren Goode: There's one theme this year that seems to run horizont …

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