Hey, what’s up, everybody.
My name is Michael Nuñez, deputy tech editor of Mashable.
We’re here at the NASDAQ in Times Square, and this is Technically Speaking.
First up: The month of “Techtober” is finally over, and this year, like many before,
all of the biggest hardware-makers have released big, new gadgets ahead of the holiday shopping
season.
There was plenty to be excited about this time around, like the new Google Pixel, which
we called the best available Android phone, or the OnePlus 6T, which has a fingerprint
sensor under the display and costs only a fraction of an iPhone or a Galaxy phone.
But in addition to this awesome roster of best-of-class gadgets, we also saw a lot of
questionable releases too.
Barnes & Noble, for example, is reviving its Nook tablet brand this year — apparently
because it thinks there’s still room to compete against Amazon in the bookstore industry.
We also saw Red Digital Cinema, a brand best known for making $60K cinematic cameras, release
a massive — and ridiculously expensive — $1,600 smartphone with a 3D holographic display.
And another surprise contender, Palm, rose from the dead to give us a brand new …
Palm phone.
This year, Techtober has been a great reminder that even though there are plenty of gadgets
to get excited about, there are also dozens of devices that will wind up in landfills
only after a couple of years.
A Nook tablet, for example, is a bad purchase by almost any measure.
It costs more than the Kindle, won’t last nearly as long, and offers a smaller book
collection to choose from.
It’s even worse for your eyes, since it has a backlit display.
The Palm phone similarly makes almost no sense.
It’s being marketed as a device for people who are trying to untether themselves from
their phones, which seems like an outright contradiction.
That’s like trying to quit smoking by taking up a chewing tobacco habit.
The idea that owning an additional device might combat cell phone addiction is just
plain ridiculous.
So this year when you’re shopping for holiday gifts, please think to yourself: Will I own
this device in two years?
In three years, will I still be using it?
In most cases, you won’t, and that means you’re probably better off spending your
money elsewhere.
So rather than buying the $130 Nook tablet, maybe try buying a $15 hardcover book instead.
The environment and your wallet will thank you.
OK, next up: The midterms finally arrived and election fever has been almost palpable.
While many will be looking out for the winners in key races, we already know the biggest
losers: social media companies.
Facebook and Twitter have spent literally two years waging war against bots and trolls
and misinformation on their networks, and to little avail.
If the lead-up to this election has been any indication, Facebook and Twitter still have
very little control over what is posted on their networks and how people are targeted.
Only four days before the election, Twitter announced it deleted 10,000 accounts posting
messages that discouraged people from voting.
And Facebook suspended more than 100 accounts one day before the election and tens of thousands
in the months leading up to it.
What’s scarier, Politico reports that American trolls are a growing force behind efforts
on Facebook and Twitter to suppress voter turnout.
So we’re no longer just fighting against foreign adversaries who are trying to upend
our elections — this activity is coming from within the country.
This is all to say that maybe it’s time we start thinking about social media differently.
Twitter and Facebook may be the largest distributors of news in history — but they are far from
the best sources of information.
Like other forms of social media that predated both Twitter and Facebook — whether it was
an AOL chat room or a random image-board website — you simply can’t believe everything
you read.
In fact, you should inherently distrust the things that you see on most of these sites.
Facebook and Twitter have become battlegrounds for a new type of cyber warfare that we have
yet to fully understand.
This is where foreign adversaries sow discord and make Americans hate each other — by
creating fan pages both FOR and AGAINST things like immigration and gun control.
We’re being manipulated on these networks, and if you don’t decide to delete your account,
at least remember this old adage: You can’t believe everything you read on the internet.
And finally:
Amazon has some explaining to do.
The e-commerce giant will reportedly split its highly coveted second headquarters between
two locations rather than just one city, according to a Wall Street Journal report.
The company conducted a reality-TV-show, “Bachelorette”-style search over the past year to determine which
city would inevitably “win” the location of its newest headquarters.
But the way this is playing out is a little messed up.
Amazon first announced a nationwide contest for its HQ2 location.
And the announcement inspired several cities to offer the company billions of dollars in
tax breaks.
Some small towns went to great lengths to impress the tech giant, such as Stonecrest,
Georgia, which offered to rename the town after Amazon.
The more cities that participated, the higher the tax break offers climbed.
And now, Amazon is using these offers to leverage millions of dollars in subsidies from New
York and D.C. — which typically have high tax rates compared to smaller, middle American
towns.
And of course, in the end, Amazon is reportedly going to be picking New York and Washington,
D.C., as the shared location of its HQ2.
The company says it plans to move 50,000 employees into these new locations.
So was this reality TV–style reveal worth all of the hype?
Not really.
It’s starting to look like this was just an elaborate ploy to build sprawling new offices
in some of the most expensive cities in America — all without having to play by the same
rules as everyone else.
It’s a shady move, but when you’re a company that’s worth more than 800 billion dollars
and makes more than 100 billion dollars annually — I guess you just don’t have to play
by the same rules as everyone else.
That’s it for this episode of Technically Speaking.
Join us again next week, and check out Mashable.com for more of the latest in tech news.