Tag Archives: FAA

Weekly output: Joe Rogan apology, Pozio Cradle, C-Band 5G and air safety (x2), broadband and real estate, foreign-app risks, Amazon earnings, competitiveness bill

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One of this week’s stories is not like the others.

1/31/2022: Joe Rogan Apologizes (Sort Of) for Hosting Guests Who Spout Pandemic Misinformation, PCMag

I did a quick writeup of the podcast host’s quasi-apology and had to think about the complete absence of any such contrition at other places with a history of providing a platform for anti-vaccine quacks–like Substack and Fox News.

2/2/2022: What a phone-jamming cradle says about our privacy fears, Fast Company

After seeing the Pozio Cradle’s ability to jam a smartphone’s microphone demoed at CES, I had to put this thing through my own tests.

2/2/2022: More C-band uncertainties show up in 5G’s radar, Light Reading

One surprise in reporting this story about what might come next in the inter-industry dispute over possible interference with radio altimeters from C-Band 5G: Nobody I talked to could point to any confirmed cases of such interference happening.

2/2/2022: Resolving C-Band 5G Mess Will Take at Least Another Year, FAA Says, PCMag

Federal Aviation Administration administrator Steve Dickson’s two-hour appearance at a House hearing yielded one bit of news: He doesn’t think we’ll have standards for C-Band-resistant altimeters until early 2023.

Photo of the story as it appeared in the Post's print edition Saturday2/3/2022: Does the home you want to buy have good high-speed Internet? You may have to do some sleuthing to find out., The Washington Post

After years of writing about the problem of inadequate rural broadband for other outlets, I finally thought to pitch my old shop on a feature unpacking this situation and offering advice to home shoppers. I’m glad I did: The piece ran as the cover story in Saturday’s Real Estate section, a few days after being published on the Post’s site.

2/3/2022: Commerce Department’s foreign-apps study, Al Jazeera

The Arabic-language news network had me to discuss a Commerce initiative focused on the risks posed by apps that could be subverted by foreign adversaries–by which I mean, the hosts mostly asked me about TikTok.

2/3/2022: A limited media message in Amazon Q4 earnings: be content with our content, FierceVideo

I filled in at my trade-pub video client to cover Amazon’s latest earnings, which reminded me of how much effort Amazon is putting into original video and how little time I’ve been able to devote to watching that output.

2/4/2022: House OKs Sprawling Competition Bill That Aims to Boost US Chip Manufacturing, PCMag

The House passed a Christmas tree of a tech-competitiveness bill months after the Senate voted by larger margins for a narrower competition bill; this post noted one problematic component of the House bill that isn’t in the Senate legislation.

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Weekly output: FAA vs. C-Band 5G, CES cancellations, Mark Vena podcast

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For all of the stress 2021 has inflicted, its final days still represent a vast improvement over what the end of 2020 felt like.
 

Screenshot of USA Today column as seen on a Pixel 5a's copy of Chrome12/21/2021: How 5G could make a mess of your next flight, USA Today

The latest in a very long series of 5G explainers was more of an aviation-safety story than a mobile-broadband item, so I talked to a different set of sources. And they convinced me that there’s more to this than the Federal Aviation Administration getting persnickety at the last minute. 

12/22/2021: Some Tech Companies (and Tech Journalists) Scrap Plans for In-Person CES 2022 Visit, PCMag

I wrote about the cast of characters–mostly side-stage exhibitors so far, but also a lot of my tech-journalism friends–that had decided to sit out CES 2022 due to concern over the Omicron variant of the novel coronavirus. After this ran, Lenovo announced that it, too, was canceling plans to show up in Vegas.  

12/23/2021: S01 E23 – SmartTechCheck Podcast, Mark Vena

I joined this podcast for one last time this year to discuss some Apple-shareholder activism, the log4j server vulnerability, the C-Band 5G fracas, and the status of CES.

Weekly output: CES (x2), T-Mobile BingeOn, OLED TVs, Samsung Family Hub fridge, FAA and drones, UHD TV, patent trolls

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As the following inventory of stories should suggest, I was pretty busy at CES. If you need further proof: My notes from the show exceed 8,000 words. I had delusions that I’d have the energy today to go through my photos from the show and caption, edit and upload the best of them, but that’s just not happening this evening.

1/5/2016: What Is CES, Anyway? A Quick Guide for the Perplexed, Yahoo Tech

This was the one post out of all these that I filed before making my journey to Vegas.

1/6/2016: Tip: How to Quit T-Mobile’s BingeOn Service, Yahoo Tech

And this is the post that I should have also written in advance. Instead, I finished it in the Mandalay Bay press room Tuesday afternoon.

CES 2016 OLED report1/6/2016: LG’s See-Through, Rollable OLED Screens: Here, But Not Cheap (Yet), Yahoo Tech

This wasn’t on my original story budgets, but LG’s presentation–and the broader issue of OLED’s long-term relevance–was interesting enough for my editors to accept my suggestion that I file an extra post about this.

1/7/2016: Samsung’s Family Hub Smart Fridge: Would You Believe It Keeps Beer Cold, Too?, Yahoo Tech

The headline came to mind almost right away, and the rest of the post (for once) mostly wrote itself. In the interest of full disclosure, we own a 2014-model Samsung fridge that has no connected apps onboard but which also does a fine job of keeping beer cold.

Make drone-registration post1/8/2016: FAA: Over 181,000 Of You Have Registered Your Drones So Far, Make:

This is the first thing I’ve written for Maker Media’s site. It went up later than I wanted because a) I took my time writing it and b) the newsroom got hit with a round of layoffs. Ugh.

1/8/2016: The State of Ultrahigh-Definition Television: Will This Be the Year It Makes Sense to Upgrade?, Yahoo Tech

My annual state-of-the-TV report from CES had me feeling more charitable about UHD’s prospects than before–but still not interested in upgrading until at least next year.

1/8/2016: Consumer Electronics Industry to Government: Do Something About Patent Trolls, Yahoo Tech

This panel Friday morning had a great lineup (hint: anytime you can hear NewEgg’s Lee Cheng rant about patent trolls, show up), and then I had the chance to quiz U.S. Patent and Trademark Office director Michelle Lee afterwards.

1/8/2016: CE-NO thank you: 5 things I could do without from CES, USA Today

My thanks to my editor for suggesting a CES angle that hadn’t already been completely picked over; my apologies to the guy whose name I misspelled in the piece for reasons I completely don’t understand (see my comment on the story for the details).

Weekly output: drones (x2), White House Maker Faire, proxy servers and online video

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I went to the White House this week for the first time since visiting it as a tourist sometime in high school–this time around, with a press pass. That was kind of neat.

6/17/2014: Regulations Could Ground Drones Before Takeoff, Yahoo Tech

I wrote about the completely inconsistent regulatory climate around drones–recreational use is essentially wide open below 400 feet altitude, but commercial use is banned outright. The fearful if not paranoid nature of many readers’ comments bugged me, as you may tell from the tone of my replies. Thought I had afterwards: “I’ve been around drones enough, and all of the drone users I know play by the rules. Is this what it’s like to be a responsible gun owner and have strangers see you as a loon like Wayne LaPierre?”

6/17/2014: 4 Ways to Use Drones for Good (None of Which Is Amazon Delivery), Yahoo Tech

I talked to a few people–including my long-ago Washington Post colleague Dan Pacheco, now a journalism professor at Syracuse–about peaceful, profitable uses for drones that tend to get overlooked as people throw around the specter of snooping in people’s backyards.

Yahoo Tech White House Maker Faire report6/18/2014: White House Hosts Its First Maker Faire, with Robotic Giraffe in Attendance, Yahoo Tech

I covered the White House’s debut Maker Faire–somehow, also the first story I’ve written around a presidential speech–with this photo gallery. There’s more in my Flickr album.

6/22/2014: Geo-fakeout: Use a proxy for online video, USA Today

A neighbor wanted to know how he could have watched Netflix during a recent trip to Morroco; answering that also allowed me to give a tutorial in using proxy servers to watch World Cup coverage online. There’s also a tip about checking for “TLS” encryption at your mail service (something I covered at greater length at Yahoo Tech the other week), making this one of the more technically involved columns I’ve written for USAT.