Gadgetory

it's Facebook friends day which is the time to ask ourselves are any these people really are friends I'm Bridget Carey this is your cnet update if you've logged into Facebook recently then I'm sure you've seen a bunch of videos in your timeline about friends day it's a made-up holiday by Facebook to mark its 12th anniversary Facebook auto generates a video montage of random photos of people who are your friends because nothing says friends day like seeing a photo of someone you don't talk to anymore but with this gimmick facebook also published a report about our friends the network looked at the 1.5 9 billion people active on Facebook and says we are all connected to everyone by just three and a half other people not six people as with scholars have long proposed Facebook is just doing this to troll poor Kevin Bacon and I for one won't stand for it also I'm not sure how you could have just half a friend be a connection but based on what I'm seeing in my feed lately I know plenty of people who are half-wits so yeah that's probably the key but in the end friends on Facebook really don't mean anything a study by oxford university published a few weeks ago shows that even if you have a huge social circle with hundreds of Facebook friends you can only really count on three of them maybe for to help you out in a crisis so let this Facebook friends day be a reminder that we are all basically alone in the world and since it is just us and our meaningless social networks and our cold gadgets you might as well cat the most out of your tech if you rather talk to your gadgets that hold conversations with people then you will be interested to hear the Amazon echo smart speaker can now play music off Spotify accounts but it only works if you pay for a premium spotify account you would say things like Alexa play a dell on Spotify or alexa play my playlist dancing with myself you can now also use a voice command to order your favorite dominos pizza because cooking for one is no fun and just think friends won't even call you for a ride when we have self-driving cars in the future Google's self-driving cars have graduated from the sunny streets of California and Texas and will now be tested on the dreary rainy roads of Kirkland Washington google wants to give the program more experience with different environments like the wet and slushy conditions of the Northwest United States well that's it that's the end but if you feel like you need more news to build the emptiness you can head to cnet com for more from our studios in New York I'm Bridget Carey