If you think an orange-faced, New York billionaire has the common peoples’ interests in mind I have some things I’d like to sell you.

Trump voter lost home, blames incoming Treasury secretary:

When Donald Trump named his Treasury secretary, Teena Colebrook felt her heart sink.

She had voted for the president-elect on the belief that he would knock the moneyed elites from their perch in Washington. And she knew Trump’s pick for Treasury — Steven Mnuchin — all too well.

OneWest, a bank formerly owned by a group of investors headed by Mnuchin, had foreclosed on her Los Angeles-area home in the aftermath of the Great Recession, stripping her of the two units she rented as a primary source of income.

This woman’s face — along with every other person who voted for Trump and truly thought he’s a “Washington outsider” who’ll “shake up the establishment” — is now in the dictionary under the word ‘gullible’.

Seriously, how much of a sucker can you be? You think an orange-faced, New York billionaire has the common peoples’ interests in mind? If so, I’d like to sell you some things after I get off the phone with the Tooth Fairy.

Categories:

Business, Politics

Smartwatches

Moto pushes off smartwatches indefinitely:

Lenovo Moto today confirmed that it will not be releasing a new smartwatch for the launch of Android Wear 2.0, due early next year. The company had earlier said it would not be releasing a new smartwatch in 2016, but it is now saying that it doesn’t plan to put out a new device timed to the arrival of Google’s newest wearable platform, either.

I’ll never understand why they launched the Moto 360 with a circular display that was cut off at the bottom like a flat tire (aka the Moto 270). Supposedly Moto needed an area to place hardware components? I call bullshit.

This is happening only 2 months after the Verge reported Microsoft was ending sales of its wearable, the Band.

At the same time, yesterday I posted the news FitBit was acquiring Pebble Technology. Fitness trackers seem much more popular than smartwatches. The batteries usually last a whole week, they’re cheaper than smartwatches, and more people have them.

Before my wife and I got Apple Watches in October she wore her Fitbit all the time. The other day she mentioned she missed being able to track the progress with her friends. Apple Watch lets you easily share your fitness info with friends, but there just aren’t as many people with Apple Watches.

After wearing my Apple Watch for 2 months and from what I’ve seen of Android Wear it seems to me Apple is the only company putting serious thought into what a smartwatch should do.

Let’s take my favorite company to beat up on, Samsung. Look at the hero image on their smartwatch landing page:

This is Samsung’s opportunity to showcase what a smartwatch can be and they decide to disguise every one of them as a traditional watch. “Call. Text. Play.” Where, exactly?

No wonder Android Wear isn’t catching on.

Google created their Pixel Phone to showcase what they feel is the best Android phone you can make—and blantantly rip off the hardware design of the iPhone, sans Home button.

Perhaps they should do the same with smartwatches.

Categories:

Product, Technology

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Holy shit, Facebook Messenger has Pac-Man

Facebook Messenger launches Instant Games:

Bored while you wait for someone to text back? Now you can challenge friends for high scores on Facebook Messenger’s new Instant Games, like Pac-Man, Space Invaders, and Words With Friends Frenzy. Available right from your message threads, they load in seconds since they’re built on the HTML5 mobile web standard, rather than having to be downloaded like clunky native apps.

Pac-Man and Space Invaders?

I grew up with these games over 30 years ago (ow, that hurt) and I can appreciate that it’s more important how fun a game is, not how high the graphics resolution is, but does bragging you have Atari games help your sales pitch?

Categories:

Games

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FitPebbles

Pebble Supporters Are Pissed Over Rumors It Will Sell Itself:

Pebble, the maker of the original e-ink smartwatch, has a lot of passionate and loyal customers, and those customers are pissed. Following the rumors that Pebble is about to crumble under the heel of Fitbit, the company’s many Kickstarter backers are in an uproar.

As we shared earlier today, rumor has it fitness tracker maker Fitbit is in talks to buy Pebble, dismantle the business, and take all the tech. It’s a smart move for Fitbit, and an ouch move for Pebble, which would be selling for a tenth of what watch maker Citizen offered it last year.

Hey, this is business. Too bad. I was never a fan of Pebble. The design of the user interface is interesting, but I still think the hardware designs are ugly.

I always like it when greedy startup founders reject huge offers only to end up settling for a fraction of the amount later on. At the same time I can understand why Pebble rejected the offer. Citizen would have had no idea what to do with Pebble if they had acquired them.

This detail about the yet-to-be-shipped Pebble 2 Kickstarter rewards is infuriating:

Things are bleaker for Pebble Time 2 backers. Those backers were expecting an update in November with an anticipated ship date of January 2017. Instead, many woke up this morning to find that there was still no news on shipments. (Pebble last communicated to backers October 26.) However, there was news of Pebble possibly disappearing completely.

They raised $12.7 million dollars and still have unfulfilled rewards.

That’s bullshit.

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Business, Product

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