Tag Archives: Gene Steinberg

Weekly output: iOS 11 issues, Super Cruise, SESTA, Tech Night Owl

Posted on by
4

In recent years, late September has seen me jetting off to one city or another to attend the Online News Association’s annual conference, but this time around my ONA travel will consist of taking Metro–the conference starts Thursday at the Marriott in Woodley Park. And I’m also on the schedule for the first time: I’m speaking Saturday afternoon with veteran freelancer Katherine Lewis about survival skills for the self-employed.

Meanwhile, the Nationals host the Cubs sometime Friday and Saturday in the first two games of the division series, ensuring that I will be completely hoarse and sleep-deprived by Sunday. Go Nats!

9/26/2017: How to fix Apple iOS 11 battery and Outlook problems, USA Today

My editor opted to hold this post for a day to reduce the odds of it getting lost in USAT’s other iOS 11 coverage.

9/28/2017: What it’s like riding in Cadillac’s self-driving Super Cruise for 350 miles, Yahoo Finance

This account of having a 2018 Cadillac CT6 drive me along much of I-70 and the Pennsylvania and Ohio Turnpikes was the most interesting transportation-related piece I’ve written since this spring’s post about advances in Gogo’s satellite WiFi. The long drive from Washington to Cleveland also let me see parts of Pennsylvania and Ohio that I hadn’t glimpsed in years and take a detour to pay my respects at the Flight 93 National Memorial.

9/30/2017: Why the tech industry is worried about a bill targeting sex trafficking, Yahoo Finance

I should have had this post about the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act written earlier, but the delays allowed me to add some useful quotes from a panel I attended on the Hill Thursday.

9/30/2017: September 30, 2017 — Rob Pegoraro and Kirk McElhearn, Tech Night Owl

I talked with host Gene Steinberg about my Cadillac test drive, my iOS experience, and the macOS High Sierra install that was going on in the background but had not wrapped up by the time my roughly hour-long segment ended.

Advertisement

Weekly output: Emmanuel Macron, Ditch the Box, Tech Night Owl

Posted on by
Reply

This week wasn’t really this slow: I filed two other stories that have yet to get edited and posted.

6/19/2017: Why America should import France’s plan to become ‘the nation of startups’, Yahoo Finance

I wrote up this recap of French president Emmanuel Macron’s Viva Technology speech on the flight home last Saturday. I’m pretty sure this is the first time I’ve had to use my not-totally-rusty French for a story: Macron spoke mostly in French, and the simultaneous English translation offered at the time fell behind at a few points, so I had to replay the speech to transcribe and translate some key phrases myself.

6/23/2017: Big Cable broke its promise and you’re paying for it, Yahoo Finance

I’ve had this post on my to-do list for a while: One year after major cable operators had put forth a bold, reasonably consumer-friendly plan to offer subscribers free apps to take the place of rented cable boxes, I could point out how almost none of them have done any such thing. The 1,195 comments below the post suggest I may have struck a nerve.

6/24/2017: June 24, 2017 — Kirk McElhearn and Rob Pegoraro, Tech Night Owl

I talked with host Gene Steinberg about my bootlooped Nexus 5X, Apple’s new iMac, why I wish Apple would finally update the Mac mini, and a few other things.

Weekly output: Hackable “IoT” devices (x2), AMP, Tech Night Owl

Posted on by
1

I’m taking a week off from my USA Today column, this being a month that would have had me writing five Sunday pieces instead of the usual four. That ends a streak that had started in late 2011–but was probably never going to get close to the 566-week run of weekly Washington Post column-ization that lasted from September of 1999 through July of 2010.

yahoo-finance-hackable-iot-post10/20/2016: Hackers could use your smart home devices to launch web attacks, Yahoo Finance

This column benefited from some extraordinarily fortuitous timing: The day after it ran, unknown attackers used hacked “Internet of Things” gadgets to launch a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack against the domain-name-service firm Dyn that left large chunks of the Internet inaccessible through much of Friday.

10/22/2016: How Google is remaking the mobile web, Yahoo Finance

A co-worker suggested I write about Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) initiative, and that turned out to be a good idea. I don’t think Google realizes the level of annoyance some readers feel over seeing news stories served from a google.com cache, but I doubt this post alone will lead to any sudden enlightenment in Mountain View.

10/22/2016: October 22, 2016 — Rob Pegoraro and Jeff Gamet, Tech Night Owl

I talked about the long wait for Apple to ship some new Macs, my experience so far with macOS Sierra, WikiLeaks, Google’s Pixel phones, and a few other things.

10/22/2016: Consumer News with Michael Finney, KGO

I spent about 10 minutes talking to Finney about the risks posed by easily-hacked IoT devices. In a fit of blatant pandering to distant listeners, I compared DDoS attacks to traffic jams on the Bay Bridge’s toll plaza.

Weekly output: MLB regional blackouts, Sprint and T-Mobile “unlimited” plans (x2), Tech Night Owl

Posted on by
Reply

This week brought the unusual experience of a story getting taken down a few hours after its appearance. The post in question covered the regional blackouts that prevent MLB.tv subscribers from watching their home team online and my use of an alternative domain-name service called Unlocator.com to work around them. I’ve expressed my annoyance at the fan-hostile nature of regional blackouts before, but this story was my first to document how to defeat them… and Yahoo Finance’s editor-in-chief thought it went too far in telling people just how to break the rules, so he decided to take it down.

Facebook share of Yahoo Finance postBefore you ask, I don’t know what Major League Baseball thinks of the story, as I haven’t heard anything from anybody there since the background conversation I had with a publicist Monday afternoon in which I recounted my Unlocator use. I do know that I’m nowhere near the first person to write a how-to about beating blackouts–see, for example, this April piece from the Los Angeles Times’ Chris Erskine. I’m going to chalk this up to my not reading my client correctly.

8/19/2016: T-Mobile and Sprint’s new unlimited plans aren’t exactly unlimited, Yahoo Finance

As part of August’s stubborn refusal to act like the slow news month it’s supposed to be, Sprint and T-Mobile each introduced new, cheaper “unlimited” data plans that each contain significant limits (like an absence of usable tethering at T-Mo). Most subscribers should avoid these offers, but many may find them tempting because their own phones make it difficult to track how much data they use.

8/20/2016: August 20, 2016 — Rob Pegoraro and Jeff Gamet, Tech Night Owl

I talked with host Gene Steinberg about those new price plans, the state of municipal broadband, and Windows 10’s first anniversary. I would have sounded less positive about Win 10 had I known before the recording of this podcast that the Windows 10 Anniversary Update broke many third-party webcams.

8/21/2016: Unlimited plans at Sprint, T-Mobile have limited appeal, USA Today

My editors at USAT wanted me to compare these two new offerings to the unlimited-data deals they replaced and to the other plans available at each carrier. Sprint’s all-you-can-browse deal came out of this exercise looking a good deal better than T-Mobile’s.

Weekly output: defective touchscreen digitizers, the future of video content, Google Books, Tech Night Owl, Verizon Wireless privacy

Posted on by
Reply

I had one of my shortest stays in San Francisco this week–I arrived Sunday night, then flew home Wednesday morning. Three days in, jet lag still had me waking up so early that getting to SFO for a 7:25 a.m. departure was no trouble at all.

10/19/2015: Phone with mind of its own may not be hacked or haunted, USA Today

My Sunday column went up a day late. After all the deadlines I’ve shredded, I can’t complain.

Comptel Plus panel10/20/2015: Looking Ahead: The Future of Content, Comptel Plus

I moderated this panel about online video services in San Francisco at the annual conference of the Washington trade group that just renamed itself from Comptel to Incompas. My fellow panelists: Netflix public-policy director Corie Wright, Verizon Wireless v.p. and associate general counsel William H. Johnson, and Zander Lehmann, writer and creator of the Hulu series “Casual.” Almost all of the questions we got from the audience focused on something neither Hulu nor Netflix offer, and which is only available in limited quantities on VzW’s Go90 service: live sports.

10/20/2015: Google’s Fair Use Victory Is a Win for Us All, Yahoo Tech

It had been years since I last wrote about Google Books and the Authors Guild lawsuit against it, but Friday’s ruling in favor of Google allowed me to return to the topic–and offer some thoughts on the fuzzy definition of “fair use” in copyright law. Fun fact: the books in that photo fill a shelf in the lobby of the Marriott Courtyard Union Square, where I stayed Sunday night.

10/24/2015: October 24, 2015 — Josh Centers and Rob Pegoraro, Tech Night Owl

I talked about Apple’s new iMac and my old one, the state of software quality in Cupertino, and the prospect of an Apple car (I think Apple’s talents would be better placed in imitating Tesla by developing a competitor to the Powerwall home battery).

10/25/2015: Verizon’s AOL deal brings new privacy worries, USA Today

The impending combination of Verizon and AOL’s advertising machinery will bring one improvement in privacy: Verizon Wireless will stop stamping its “UIDH” tracker all of its subscribers’ unencrypted Web traffic. But the company’s privacy notice is sufficiently vague on this point that I missed it in a first draft.

Weekly output: owning versus renting music, Tech Night Owl, DSL without phone service

Posted on by
Reply

This week was relatively easy on my schedule. One result: I finally edited and posted the photos I took at CE Week three weeks ago.

Yahoo Tech owning or renting music post7/7/2015: Sorry, Apple Music —I Want to Own My Tunes, Not Rent Them, Yahoo Tech

I started writing this post in 2005, when I dismissed the rent-your-music argument of Napster To Go and then found similar sales pitches from Rhapsody and Yahoo Music Unlimited (remember that?) only slightly more appealing.

7/11/2015: July 11, 2015 — Rob Pegoraro and Bryan Chaffin, Tech Night Owl

I talked about Apple Music’s resurrection of DRM, among other things, with host Gene Steinberg.

7/12/2015: How to get DSL without the phone service, USA Today

I got an update from the reader behind this question on late Saturday night, well after I’d filed the story: He had dumped Verizon, switched to EarthLink DSL, somehow doubled his speed, and finally ported his home number to Ooma. In the bargain, he only had to do without wired Internet access for a couple of days.

Weekly output: flash storage pricing, Tech Night Owl, uninstalling Windows 8.1, Win 8 recovery drives

Posted on by
Reply

One of the highlights of my week was not having to write a single story about Twitter’s IPO–a financial story I’m not especially qualified to report, and a financial opportunity in which I can’t ethically participate anyway. I had meant to use some of the time freed up by not blogging obsessively about $TWTR to get another post done… and that didn’t happen.

DisCo flash-memory pricing post11/5/2013: In A Flash, You’ve Overpaid For A Storage Upgrade, Disruptive Competition Project

This post started with some lingering frustration of my own and then seemed confirmed by a Facebook thread about friends about the same topic–but then I had to give the draft another run through the typewriter when it came out as too simplistic and repetitive. (I hope that’s not still the case.)

11/9/2013: Bryan Chaffin, Rob Pegoraro, and Kirk McElhearn, Tech Night Owl

I was one of the guests on Gene Steinberg’s podcast. We talked about Microsoft’s future, OS X Mavericks and its Gmail-sync issues, and the state of the Web-mail market.

11/10/2013: How to uninstall Windows 8.1, USA Today

Reader e-mail after an earlier USAT column about Win 8.1 led to this one. I enjoyed borrowing some insight for this post from my friend Ed Bott, ZDNet’s longtime Windows expert.

On Sulia, I complained yet again about the WinVote electronic voting machines that apparently refuse to die in my county, complimented Apple for posting a detailed transparency report, noted the unexpected emergence of Google+ as Googlers’ favorite place to rant about the NSA, confirmed that an Apple update fixes Gmail synchronization in Mavericks, and revisited HealthCare.gov with unsatisfying results.

Weekly output: new iPhones (x3), Kyocera Hydro Edge, Samsung Gravity Q, Motley Fool Money, Tech Night Owl, saved WiFi passwords, Outlook.com IMAP

Posted on by
Reply

Apple’s introduction of two new iPhone models (one of which isn’t all that new) had me in front of microphones more often than usual this week. That’s less likely to happen next week, when I’ll be out of town for the Privacy Identity Innovation conference in Seattle and then the XOXO festival in Portland.

9/10/2013: The new iPhone, WTOP

For the first time, I did a WTOP interview not over the phone but in person at its studio–er, glass-enclosed nerve center–in Northwest D.C. Radio is easier when you can see from a host’s facial expressions that it’s your turn to talk.

Fox 5 new-iPhones spot9/10/2013: iPhone 5s And iPhone 5c Revealed, Fox 5 News

Then I drove a little farther north to talk about the new iPhone’s with Fox 5’s Laura Evens Evans on the 5 o’clock evening news. Hopping from one studio to another to talk about the same breaking-news subject was kind of a new thing for me.

9/11/2013: Kyocera Hydro Edge (Boost Mobile), PCMag.com

I first inspected this waterproof phone at the CTIA trade show in May. It seemed more impressive before I’d had a chance to study its slow 3G connection and lack of storage space.

9/11/2013: Samsung Gravity Q (T-Mobile), PCMag.com

My other contribution to PCMag was a review an old-school feature phone–a “cellular coelacanth,” as I put in a lede that the editors were kind enough to keep–that didn’t do much to argue for the relevance of that market segment.

9/11/2013: “Cheap iPhone” Coverage Shows The Pernicious Persistence of Price Shifting, Disruptive Competition Project

I returned to Apple’s news in this post unpacking press coverage that failed to indicate that the iPhone 5c doesn’t actually offer much of a discount from the iPhone 5 or the 5s.

9/13/2013: Apple’s Weak Reception, Motley Fool Money

I talked about Topic A on the Motley Fool’s podcast but also revisited some of the gadgets I saw at IFA.

9/14/2013: September 14, 2014 — Daniel Eran Dilger, Leith Speights, and Rob Pegoraro, Tech Night Owl

Gene Steinberg and I chatted about you-know-what but also Samsung’s recent announcements, the potential for NFC wireless and a few other items.

9/15/2013: How to find a Wi-Fi network password on your device, USA Today

This column started with a question from another reporter in the IFA pressroom. Looking up saved WiFi passwords isn’t quite a new-iPhone story in terms of grabbing readers’ attention, but it’s also the kind of topic that should draw steady search traffic over time.

On Sulia, I recounted my experience using Lufthansa’s satellite-based WiFi over the Arctic Ocean, tried out the “what cheap iPhone?” thesis that became Wednesday’s DisCo column, forecast an unpleasant future for activity-tracking gadgets based on what’s coming in Android and on the iPhone 5c, reported on my initial experiences with Outlook.com’s new IMAP synchronization option and called out author Jonathan Franzen for being a bit of hypocrite about Amazon.