drone delivery | Rob Pegoraro

This week allowed me to dust off (literally!) the suit that I think I last wore in April of 2019, thanks to the Consumer Technology Association’s Digital Patriots dinner. The event was great, but I did realize that I’d forgotten how that kind of outfit adds two more pockets in which you can forget where you stashed your glasses.

4/4/2022: Drone Deliveries From Alphabet’s Wing to Take Flight Around Dallas, PCMag

I covered this announcement about the start of drone deliveries for some residents of some Dallas suburbs.

4/5/2022: Amazon’s Project Kuiper Tips Massive Satellite Launch Deal, PCMag

Writing about this enormous launch contract allowed me to use some quotes from the notes I took at the Satellite 2022 show in D.C. last month.

4/7/2022: Peacock Gets Exclusive Lineup of 18 Sunday Morning Baseball Games, PCMag

Baseball fans may need to sign up for yet another streaming service to see their team’s games–or, as I noted in this post, they can “watch” a game on the radio.

4/9/2022: S02 E15 – SmartTechCheck Podcast, Mark Vena

Baseball streaming video figured heavily in this week’s episode of the podcast, which is itself available in video form.

My published work this week includes one story about people in space and another about robots in the sky.

3/28/2022: Will SpaceX, Blue Origin, or Virgin Galactic ever be affordable?, Fast Company

Covering the Satellite 2022 trade show in D.C. two weeks ago both allowed me to interview somebody who’s experienced suborbital space flight and write this post about the prospects of more people being able to have that experience–if they can write a sufficiently large check.

3/29/2022: Using Someone Else’s Netflix Account? You’re Not Alone, PCMag

I wrote up a survey that found that 15 percent of Netflix viewers watch for free on somebody else’s subscription.

3/30/2022: FedEx Teases Texas Drone-Delivery Demo, PCMag

The embargoed copy of this announcement specified a flight test around Dallas, but the final copy of the release left out that geographic detail.

3/30/2022: The new trans-Atlantic data agreement puts E.U. priorities first, Fast Company

This explainer went farther into the policy weeds than I’ve gone in a while.

3/30/2022: Dutch Class-Action Seeks Almost $5.6B From Apple for App Store Overcharges, PCMag

The first of two posts about Apple’s App Store control covered a pending class-action lawsuit in the Netherlands–where Apple is asking for trouble with insultingly greedy responses to regulators’ demands that it let dating apps opt out of Apple’s in-app billing and its cut of 15 or 30 percent.

3/31/2022: Apple Finally Lets ‘Reader’ Apps Link Out to Sign-Up Pages, PCMag

The second post covered an overdue and still inadequate App Store liberalization move by Apple. Yes, I enjoyed the chance to throw in a comparison to 1995-vintage AOL.

4/1/2022: New deals for existing customers? AT&T, Charter and Spectrum make getting better rates hard., USA Today

This column originally ran with a headline that named Comcast; although large and seemingly unfeeling telecom conglomerates can start to look alike, that cable company did not figure in my story.

4/2/2022: Biden Admin May Roll Back Trump Policy on Military Cyber-Offensive Operations, PCMag

Writing this got me up to speed with an episode of questionable executive-branch conduct under the previous administration that I’d missed.