Tag Archives: Elon Musk AI

Weekly output: AirDrop harassment, killer AI, Verizon “unlimited” data (x2), Washington Apple Pi

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This week started better than it ended. Monday brought the magical sight of a partial solar eclipse–something I’d only seen before through thick clouds in 1994 in D.C., and which our daughter pledged to remember forever–but Friday saw my wife sent to the disabled list with a broken clavicle, courtesy of an idiot driver who almost ran into her.

And Monday I’m off to Berlin for the IFA electronics trade show. I offered to cancel the trip, but my wife declined. Why? We live in an eminently walkable neighborhood, and we have a great support system in our neighbors. Now if the cops could only catch the asshole who thinks he/she has priority access to every road before their wheels…

8/21/2017: How to prevent creeps from using Apple’s AirDrop to ‘cyber flash’, USA Today

This column started with a Facebook post frsm a friend of mine; closer inspection led me to wonder if this isn’t yet another case of a tech company being oblivious to the fact that bad people exist on the Internet. Bonus question to anybody reading this who works at Apple: What was the gender breakdown on the AirDrop development team?

8/22/2017: Killer AI, Al Jazeera

I got called in to offer some insight on Elon Musk’s call for a ban on killer artificial-intelligence robots, which led me to note that we’ve had autonomous killing machines for decades in the form of land and sea mines, not to mention the IEDs that I’m happy didn’t kill two of my cousins on their tours of duty in Iraq. FYI, there’s no link to the interview itself, as it was overdubbed live into Arabic and not archived.

8/23/2017: Verizon’s cheaper ‘unlimited’ data plan means serious tradeoffs, USA Today

Verizon’s unexpected move to gut its unlimited-data plan led my editor to ask me to write this weekend’s column early. I had to revise it when I realized that I’d missed Verizon’s sneaky move to limit the resolution of streaming video on existing plans.

8/24/2017: Making sense of Verizon’s new wireless plans, USA Today

I talked to USAT’s Jefferson Graham about Verizon’s new plans for the paper’s podcast.

8/26/2017:  Rob Pegoraro: What’s next for Apple?, Washington Apple Pi

I talked to the D.C. area’s Apple user group about what I think Apple is doing right and wrong. Attendees got a hardware bonus: random trade-show swag that I gave away during the Q&A part of my talk.

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Weekly output: AI anxiety, iOS VPNs in China, side effects of unlimited data, Googling Islam, GDPR and data portability, leaving family wireless plans

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I take a little pride in having made it through all of July without once writing about iPhone 8 rumors.

7/31/2017: AI worries, Al Jazeera

I talked about the recent argument between Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg about the possible threat of highly competent, extraordinarily capable artificial intelligences. My take: The machines probably won’t kill us, but they may take some of our jobs.

Yahoo iOS VPN apps post7/31/2017: Apple’s decision to drop privacy apps in China might not be the last of its kind, Yahoo Finance

The eviction of VPN apps from the Chinese-market App Store is something anybody could have seen coming. And as long as Apple leaves itself as the only judge of which apps most users can install on iOS devices, we’ll keep seeing this kind of story play out.

8/2/2017: Study shows unlimited data plans are slowing wireless carrier speeds, Yahoo Finance

A lot of other sites ran with OpenSignal’s new study finding slower speeds at AT&T and Verizon Wireless after their belated reintroduction of unmetered-data plans, but most others didn’t try to compare that firm’s findings with those of other recent tests of the big four wireless carriers.

8/2/2017: Google and searches on Islam, Al Jazeera

My producer asked if I could talk about some recent controversy over Google favoring Islamophobic pages in results for some common queries about Islam. I have to admit I’d missed some of that news, but on closer inspection it fit with past episodes of Holocaust denial creeping up in Google results.

8/2/2017: A massive EU privacy rule could bring an unexpected benefit for US consumers, Yahoo Finance

I hadn’t paid much attention to the European Union’s upcoming General Data Protection Regulation until moderating a panel about privacy issues at CES. But once I started looking at “GDPR” I realized that these EU rules could make a difference here by requiring social networks–hi, Instagram and Tumblr–to let their users take their data with them. I can only hope that this data-portability angle resonated with some readers.

8/6/2017: Options available when it’s time to leave the wireless-family-plan nest, USA Today

I would have filed this column a little earlier if AT&T still had the simple rate-planning tool that let visitors get estimates of different wireless plans; now, you have to step through signing up for service to see what you might pay.