A year ago this week, we celebrated the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing. These days, touting America’s ability to apply technology towards a national purpose is a harder sell.

7/20/2020: Woven City: Toyota’s Planned Proving Ground in Japan, Urban Land

This feature about the smart-city project Toyota touted at CES grew out of the piece I wrote for the Urban Land Institute’s magazine from that show. The piece is also supposed to run in Urban Land’s Japanese-language edition, but I don’t have a link to that yet.

7/23/2020: Finally: Every Baseball Team’s Sports Network Is Available On At Least One Streaming Service, Forbes

Two days before baseball’s belated Opening Day, I thought five teams would once again shut out cord cutters because their regional sports networks would not be available on any streaming-TV services. Then all five got on board–yes, even the mismanaged Mid-Atlantic Sports Network that carries Nationals and Orioles games.

7/24/2020: The Feds Want You To Freak Out Over TikTok. You Shouldn’t, And They Can’t Ban It Anyway., Forbes

The two business trips I made to China to attend the (now-scrapped) CES Asia show helped inform my perspective on TikTok–having poked around WeChat after having to use it during both trips, I can’t see the video-clip app being anywhere in the same league in terms of data thirstiness.

7/26/2020: Broadbanned: Still no affordable fix for a broadband internet connection just out of reach, USA Today

This story started when a reader saw the piece I did in 2015 about a reader who found himself out of reach of the nearest broadband connection. This piece set off a vigorous conversation on Twitter and has already led to four more reader e-mails about similar cases of ISPs asking for tens of thousands of dollars to extend broadband to their homes.

Speaking of topics that become self-replicating through a steady stream of reader requests, on Patreon I noted that writing once about password-reset problems with Google accounts has apparently ensured I will get pleas for help with that problem from readers for the rest of my life.