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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Technology
Ian Tucker

The Observer tech quiz of 2014 – part 2

Facebook logo among iPhone apps
Facebook: in the service of ‘narcs’? Photograph: Mikael Damkier/Alamy

Who said what?

21. “I think we should be very careful about artificial intelligence. If I had to guess at what our biggest existential threat is, it’s probably that.”

22. “I feel that what we have right now is just a giant piece of shit. Like, it’s just terrible and we should be humiliated that we offer this to the public.”

23. “Every time you go to a party and take a picture and post that picture to Facebook, you’re being a rat. You’re being a narc.”

24. “Wherever I am in the world I am always within a few feet of a BlackBerry and an ability to manage things should they need to be managed.”

25. “I’m proud to be gay, and I consider being gay among the greatest gifts God has given me.”

26. “The US government should be the champion for the internet, not a threat. They need to be much more transparent about what they’re doing, or otherwise people will believe the worst.”

27. “I’m not a pirate, I’m an innovator.”

28. “Why do we let 2 million children die every year around the world for not having clean water? Because they’re faceless and nameless. So, for me, Facebook looked like it was going to solve the problem of the invisible victim.”

29. “I wouldn’t want GCHQ to rummage in my front room and that is how I feel about whatever device I am using.”

30. “When you’re doing something for the first time, you don’t know it’s gonna work, you spend seven or eight years working on something, and then it’s copied. I think it is really straightforward. It is theft and it is lazy.”

Question time

31. An executive from which Silicon Valley company outlined a plan to spend “a million dollars” to dig up dirt on journalists who had written critically of his business?

32. Which tech boss said it was good karma for women not to ask for a pay rise?

33. The founder of which dating app was asked to step down as boss because of a sexual harassment lawsuit?

34. When Christian Bale bailed, who stepped in to the title role in the forthcoming Aaron Sorkin/Danny Boyle Steve Jobs biopic?

35. Which US magazine erroneously reported that Dorian Prentice Satoshi Nakamoto was the mysterious creator of Bitcoin?

36. Which Hollywood megastar launched his own typewriter app?

37. According to Ofcom, which broadband provider had the lowest proportion of subscribers who opted into David Cameron’s much-trumpeted “porn filters”. Virgin, Sky or BT Broadband?

38. Condoleezza Rice joined the board of which cloud computing company?

39. Which country banned both Twitter and YouTube at some point this year?

40. Which singer removed her entire back catalogue from Spotify?

41. Which European country passed a copyright law which forces Google and other online news aggregators to pay a royalty to print media?

42. Which literary agent described Amazon as an “Isis-like distribution channel”?

43. Who tweeted: “I’ve just bought an iPhone!” some days after they had died?

44. Which Chinese tech firm’s flotation valued it higher than Amazon or eBay?

45. Mojang was sold to Microsoft for $2.5bn. Which game does the company produce?

46. Which YouTube star switched off comments, describing them as “mainly spam”?

47. Which European country made the most right-to-be-forgotten requests?

48. Which tech firm’s logo was Gizmodo talking about when it asked: “Is it balls? Is it a vagina? Is it balls in front of a vagina?”

49. What were described as “a new pain in the arse” for riders in the Tour de France?

50. Who described the Internet as a “CIA project”?

Click here for the answers to Part 2 and Part 3. If you would rather tackle the questions in Part 3 first, click here

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