From the Editor’s Desk: Noise ⭐

I get up each morning, turn on the lights, open the window shades, make an espresso, and sit down to read the news and my tech feeds. By which I mean that I get up each morning, turn on some lights, open the window shades, make an espresso, and become instantly infuriated by the low quality of my own industry. The signal to noise ratio is now skewed decidedly into the noise end of the spectrum. The needle is stuck.

Certain times of year can be particularly bad. This week, for example, CES is underway in Las Vegas and we are already being inundated by a pointless tsunami of headlines about new products, most of which no one needs or should even consider buying, not to mention headlines about how you can watch some pointless CES product unveiling. The Black Friday and other holiday selling periods are likewise grim, full of grifty headlines about sponsored product links masquerading as news.

But it could be any given day. It doesn’t matter.

Some publications seem to consist entirely of ads, like Mashable, which today told me about sales on JBL earbuds, a Magic: The Gathering box set, a robot vacuum, Apple AirTags, an Anker power station, Shokz headphones, and Beats Solo 4 headphones. And, oh, yeah, a 4K smart hummingbird feeder one of its idiots saw at CES. Great stuff.

This is a real PC World headline. “Apparently hackers are targeting Windows 10! Upgrade to Windows 11 Pro for $9.97 ASAP.” The Windows 10 part isn’t true and that $9.97 Windows 11 Pro pricing is always available somewhere. It’s not new and it’s not going away.

I’m also a huge fan, he writes sarcastically, of the ads masquerading as news stories that are selling you something you already get for free. PC World “reports” on a $24 app that can edit, convert, and organize PDFs. And then about another app that will make PDF editing easy forever for just $40. And then about yet another PDF editor with a lifetime license for $25. But Mashable wins this round, as always, with its “lifetime PDF editor for Mac” that “just dropped to $79.” Apple users will always pay more, I guess. And there are apparently a lot of people who need PDF tools and never figured out how to Google “edit PDF for free.”

Also in this category, scanning apps. For example, “you don’t need to be tethered to your scanner,” MacWorld tells us, though I have a difficult time imagining that being a common problem. “The iScanner [iPhone] app is now just $28.” You have a phone, right? That scans for free.

As per the $9.97 Windows 11 upgrade noted above, there are similar headlines everywhere for various standalone Office suite versions. These are amusing on multiple levels, but my favorite (cough) here is when they advertise Office versions that are no longer supported. For example, Mashable (always game to foist ads) tells us we can get a “lifetime Windows license” for Office 2019 for just $29.97. Which makes sense, since Microsoft stopped supporting that product in October. PC Mag has a similar, er...