We’re down to the last full week before Election Day–a point that seemed painfully distant just under four years ago. Note that for myself and more than 59 million other Americans (per the University of Florida’s United States Elections Project), the voting’s already happened.

Patreon readers got an extra post this week: a recap of things I’ve done to give a little less business to Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google.

10/21/2020: Can OpenRAN Hit its Stride?, CCA Convention

Last year, the opportunity to moderate a panel at the Competitive Carriers Association’s conference got me a free trip to Providence. This year, it got me some free time in front of my computer’s webcam to speak remotely with Dish Network executive vice president Jeff Blum, Mavenir senior vice president for business development John Baker, and OpenRAN Policy Coalition executive director Diane Rinaldo about the prospects for building next-generation radio access networks off open standards (aka, OpenRAN) instead of proprietary stacks.

10/22/2020: Why the 5G Pushiness? Because $$$, The New York Times

Shira Ovide, author of the NYT’s On Tech newsletter, quizzed me over e-mail about a reader’s concerns over possibly needing a 5G smartphone. My advice: no need to worry just yet.

10/23/2020: The Lucrative Google Business That The Justice Department’s Antitrust Suit Doesn’t Touch, Forbes

I took a little extra time to cover the Department of Justice’s antitrust lawsuit against Google–by which I meant, write about the Google chokehold on display advertising that goes unaddressed in the DoJ complaint.

10/25/2020: Emerging Media Platforms, S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications

After interviewing my long-ago Post colleague Dan Pacheco, now a professor at Syracuse University’s Newhouse School, for an upcoming story about augmented-reality interfaces, he asked if I could make a remote guest appearance for one of his classes. I talked a little bit about the state of freelance journalism about heard out his students’ pitches for upcoming projects (most frequent elements: drones, chatbots and voice assistants).