Weekly output: inflight WiFi (x2), cheaper broadband, Google I/O, Texas social-media law, DEA data-portal hack, Twitter mourns Shireen Abu Akleh, SpaceX recap

Posted on May 15, 2022 by robpegoraro

BOISE–For the second year in a row, I’m on the road for PCMag’s Fastest Mobile Networks project. And this time the work has taken me much farther from home: After completing the network drive testing I started here after arriving Sunday afternoon, I’m heading to Seattle, Portland and then the Bay Area before flying home.

5/9/2022: Wi-Fi on the plane: Here’s how in-flight connectivity is changing (and costing), USA Today

I know everybody loves to complain about the unreliable state of inflight WiFi, but I see two positive trends worth a little applause: flat-rate pricing and free use of messaging apps.

5/9/2022: White House Lines Up 20 ISPs to Offer Free 100Mbps Broadband to Qualifying Households, PCMag

I wrote up the Biden administration’s announcement of a partnership with 20 Internet providers that will lower service costs to zero for households eligible for the Federal Communications Commission’s Affordable Connectivity Program–and noted how this deal’s ban on data caps make some of these companies’ existing broadband plans look even worse.

5/10/2022: Wi-Fi on the plane: Here’s how in-flight connectivity is changing (and costing), This Morning with Gordon Deal

The business-news radio show had me on talk about recent developments in using the Internet from a chair in the sky.

5/12/2022: Here are the 4 most surprising takeaways from the first day of Google’s I/O conference, Fast Company

Part of the keynote that opened Google’s I/O conference reminded me of today’s Apple, while another part evoked a previous decade’s Microsoft.

5/12/2022: US Appeals Court Rules Social Media Content Moderation Should Be Restricted, PCMag

I wrote about an unexplained and inexplicable ruling by a panel of federal judges that allowed a blatantly unconstitutional Texas law to take effect. My post had its own inexplicable error: I linked to the wrong one-page ruling and therefore named the wrong judges. No readers yelled at me about the mistake before I realized it on my own, but I feel stupid about it anyway.

5/12/2022: Hackers Reportedly Gain Access to Drug Enforcement Administration Data Portal, PCMag

My old Washington Post pal Brian Krebs had a scoop about what seems to be a massive data breach made possible by poor security practices, which I wrote up while adding some context about the White House’s recent moves to improve federal infosec.

5/12/2022: Twitter reactions to Shireen Abu Akleh’s death, Al Jazeera

The Arabic-language news channel had me on Thursday night to discuss how Twitter reacted to the horrible news of their correspondent being shot and killed, apparently by Israeli soldiers, while reporting in the West Bank.

5/13/2022: Here’s How Close We Came to Relying on the Russians for ISS Trips, PCMag

I spent Thursday afternoon in D.C. at Ars Technica’s Ars Frontiers conference, and an insightful interview of former NASA deputy administrator by that estimable news site’s space reporter Eric Berger yielded this recap.

Weekly output: Celona, streaming TV, social media moderation, Android 12, Google’s privacy pitch, Mark Vena podcast

Posted on May 23, 2021 by robpegoraro

This afternoon, I went to a baseball game for the first time since Oct. 27, 2019. I also brought a much better camera than usual, thanks to my neighbor across the street loaning me a Panasonic point-and-shoot model with a 30x zoom, and you can now see the results in the Flickr album I just posted.

5/18/2021: Celona unveils ‘edgeless enterprise’ architecture, Light Reading

My new trade-pub client asked me to write up embargoed news from this business-wireless firm, allowing me to reacquaint myself with that branch of industry jargon.

5/19/2021: Streaming Services, WWL First News with Tommy Tucker

I spent about 40 minutes talking about streaming-TV services with this New Orleans radio station. A major theme of the host’s questions: Why is all this so complicated?

5/19/2021: Social media moderation, Al Jazeera

I made a rare phone-only appearance on the Arabic-language news channel to talk about reports of social-media companies suppressing Palestinian and Arabic voices. I emphasized, as I have before, that on one hand, content moderation gets increasingly difficult as social platforms get larger; on the other hand, Facebook has a history of waiving its own rules only for right-wing voices in the U.S.

5/20/2021: Here’s what’s new in Android 12, from big changes to subtle tweaks, Fast Company

Google’s I/O developer conference returned in an online-only form after last year’s pandemic-forced cancellation, and in this post I covered the key features in the next version of its Android mobile operating system. The screen grab you see here was taken in a loaner Pixel 4 XL phone on which I’d installed the beta release of Android 12; if you have any questions about how this release works, please ask and I’ll try to answer them here.

5/20/2021: Google touts ‘privacy by design’ at I/O conference, but privacy from whom?, USA Today

Two years ago, I wrote a USAT column about the somewhat nebulous privacy pitch at Google I/O 2019; this column advances that story and finds more cause for optimism in Android than in Chrome.

5/21/2021: SmartTechCheck Podcast (5-20-21), Mark Vena

This week’s edition of this podcast from my tech-analyst pal at Moor Insights & Strategy initially featured two other tech journalists, but John Quain’s Starlink satellite-Internet connection dropped out too many times, leading Vena to decide to continue the podcast with just me and my fellow tech journalist (and baseball fan) Stewart Wolpin.

Three more erased events: SXSW, Google I/O, Collision

Posted on March 7, 2020 by robpegoraro

Yet another set of travel plans got sucked into a coronavirus-fueled jet engine this week. On Tuesday, Google announced that it would cancel its annual I/O developer conference, Friday morning saw Web Summit pull the plug on the Collision conference in Toronto, after which Friday afternoon brought the cancellation of SXSW.

And now my business-travel schedule for the first quarter of the year looks as empty as it did back in Q1 of 2007.

I expected the I/O news. As an event that draws a global audience and is hosted by a large tech company with preexisting image problems, I/O seemed doomed the second Facebook said it would scrub the F8 developer conference that was set to happen a week before I/O. (Those of you still hoping to go to Apple’s WWDC developer conference would be well advised to book fully-refundable airfare and lodging.)

I was also prepared for the axe to fall on SXSW, just because of the overriding attention to it as one large conference this month that had yet gotten coronavirus-canceled–and all of the tech companies that had already bailed. But it still took an order from Austin’s government banned events of more than 2,500 people to kill this year’s festival and deprive me of my annual overdose of tacos and BBQ.

Collision, however, surprised me. That conference was scheduled for June 22 through 25, which in a strictly medical sense would have left plenty of time to gauge the situation. But I suspect that the organizers were already considering how many speakers had or would pull out after their employers banned employee travel, and so made the decision early to run the conference online instead.

I told them I’m willing to moderate whatever panels they need, but count me as a skeptic of this approach. A “digital conference”–more accurately read as “webinar”–is no substitute for the unexpected in-person connections you make at a good conference.

I would like to see this event-losing streak end. One of the things I treasure as a self-employed professional is the freedom to go to interesting places for work. I also count on conferences to offset all the Me Time that working from home full-time affords me.

But as the past few weeks have made clear, that’s not up to me. The only travel I have booked that isn’t subject to getting scratched by risk-averse tech corporations is a trip in early April to see my in-laws over our kid’s spring break. Taking off from Dulles that morning will feel like a victory.

From Pixel 1 to Pixel 3a

Posted on August 1, 2019 by robpegoraro

I changed smartphones this week without being forced to–my old phone hadn’t suffered any catastrophic failure or fallen into a weird cycle of malfunctions. Instead, I retired my first-generation Google Pixel because two years and change is a good run for a phone, and upgrading to a Pixel 3a with a better camera and superior network coverage would only cost $400 and change.

I could shop free of duress because my Pixel 1 has been the best smartphone I’ve ever owned. It’s taken a lot of great pictures, it’s had an almost-entirely crash-free existence, it’s benefited from every Google update almost as soon as each was released, its battery life has been fine (except for maybe the last few weeks, and obviously not at battery-devouring tech events like CES), and it’s survived multiple drops on hard floors that left all four corners scuffed.

The Pixel 3a I bought last week–after spending a couple of months trying out a loaner picked up at Google I/O in May–should share most of those virtues. It also cost about two-thirds the Pixel 1’s list price (although I was able to buy mine at a substantial discount when Google refunded the purchase price of the Nexus 5X that succumbed to a fatal bootloop cycle). And like the Pixel 1 but unlike the Pixel 2 and Pixel 3, this device includes a headphone jack, so I didn’t have to underwrite the gadget industry’s latest idiotic design-minimalism fetish.

The obvious upgrade with the 3a is its camera, which includes most of the optical hardware of the far more expensive Pixel 3. But because it also supports the low-frequency LTE band that T-Mobile has lit up over the past few years, this device should also deliver much better connectivity.

(I really hope I haven’t jinxed this purchase with the preceding two paragraphs.)

Finally, after struggling with earlier Android migrations, I have to give Google credit for easing this path. This time around, I only had to connect the two devices with a USB-C cable, start the migration process, and see some 13 minutes later that my app-icon layout had been copied over, after which I could sit through a tedious app-download process. That’s still not close to the simplicity of swapping iOS devices–like, why did my screen wallpaper not copy over?–but I’ll accept that added inconvenience if it means I can still have a phone with a headphone jack.

(No, I’m never letting that go. Why did you ask?)

Six weeks in a row of travel

Posted on May 25, 2019 by robpegoraro

When I unlocked the front door on our darkened porch Thursday night–and, as if by magic, the power came back on–six consecutive weeks of travel went into the books.

It all seemed like a reasonable idea upfront, not least when it appeared I’d have a couple of weeks at home over that period.

In an alternate universe, a spring break trip to see Bay Area and Boston relatives and then the IFA Global Press Conference in Spain would have been followed by week at home, then more than a week of additional downtime would have separated Google I/O in Mountain View and Collision in Toronto.

But then I got invited to moderate a panel at the Pay TV Show in Denver, with the conference organizers covering my travel expenses, and my Uncle Jim died. The results: 4/13-4/21 spring break, 4/24-4/28 IFA GPC, 4/29-4/30 in Ohio for my uncle’s funeral (I had about nine hours at home between returning from Spain and departing for Cleveland), 5/6-5/9 Google I/O, 5/13-5/16 Pay TV Show, 5/20-5/23 Collision.

I’d thought having the last three trips only run four days, with three days at home between each, would make things easier. That didn’t really happen, although I did appreciate having time to do all the laundry, bake bread and cook a bunch of food during each stay home, then be able to check the status of my flight home the morning after arriving at each destination.

In particular, my ability to focus on longer-term work and try to develop new business took a hit during all this time in airports, airplanes and conference venues. And because Yahoo Finance elected to have staff writers cover I/O and Collision remotely, so did my income.

Meanwhile, I can’t pretend that I’ve been following the healthiest lifestyle, thanks to all of the eating and drinking at various receptions. Consecutive days of walking around with my laptop in a messenger bag left a softball-sized knot in my left shoulder to complement my sore feet. And I’ve woken up in the middle of the night too many times wondering where I was–including once or twice in my own bed at home.

So while the past six weeks have taken me to some neat places and connected me to some interesting people, I don’t need to repeat the experience.

Weekly output: 8K TV, privacy at Google I/O, Waymo

Posted on May 12, 2019 by robpegoraro

A week after taking off for the Bay Area to cover Google’s I/O conference, I’m departing for Denver early Monday afternoon. This week’s excuse for propping up the airline industry: moderating a state-of-the-industry panel at the Pay TV Show, in return for which the conference organizers are covering my travel costs.

5/6/2019: Dark clouds invade forecast for 8K TV shipments, FierceVideo

My big takeaway from the IFA Global Press Conference two weeks ago was a dramatically more pessimistic forecast for 8K TV shipments from the research firm IHS Markit. It was refreshing to see analysts decline to get in line behind industry hype over a new product category.

5/8/2019: Google attempts a pivot toward privacy at I/O developer conference, USA Today

For the first time in my experience, USAT didn’t send any of its own reporters to Google’s developer conference, leaving this piece my client’s sole dateline from that event.

5/10/2019: Waymo Doesn’t Mind Being Boring, CityLab

I took a break from I/O Wednesday morning to attend a press event hosted by Waymo, the self-driving-car subsidiary of Google’s parent firm Alphabet. Said event did not feature any time as a passenger in one of Waymo’s autonomous Chrysler Pacifica minivans, because the company apparently still doesn’t have the California permit needed to offer rides to non-employees.

On top of those stories, I also launched a page on the Patreon crowdfunding site. Despite getting no more publicity than a post here Saturday evening and one appreciative tweet afterwards, this experiment already has a non-zero number of supporters pledging to chip in a couple of dollars a month. So I’ve got that going for me, which is nice.

Weekly output: cable-ISP data caps (x2), how long wireless carriers keep your cell-site location history, Facebook banning extremists, IFA GPC

Posted on May 5, 2019 by robpegoraro

Tomorrow kicks off three weeks in a row of travel: first Google I/O in Mountain View, Calif., which I’ll be covering for as many of my clients as feasible; then the Pay TV Show outside of Denver, at which I’m moderating a panel discussion between two industry analysts; then the Collision conference, newly relocated to Toronto and once again involving me speaking on a few panels. Fortunately, I have four nights at home between each of these trips.

5/1/2019: Why your cable company might be happy to see you stop subscribing to its TV service, USA Today

After seeing a research note from MoffettNathanson highlighting how some smaller cable operators have made their peace with video subscribers cancelling cable TV and switching to streaming TV services, I noticed that both firms spotlighted in that note–Cable One and Mediacom–had some stringent data caps in place that should allow them to profit handsomely from their Internet subscribers pivoting to online video.

5/2/2019: This Morning with Gordon Deal May 02, 2019, This Morning with Gordon Deal

I talked about my latest USAT column with this business-news radio show; my spot starts at the 14-minute mark.

5/3/2019: Why carriers keep your data longer, TechCrunch

I’ve been reading TC for years and going to their events for almost as long, but this is my first byline there. This post is also my first paywalled work in a while, requiring an Extra Crunch subscription ($150 a year, two-week free trial available). Here’s my one-sentence summary of this roughly 1,500-word piece: The four nationwide wireless carriers keep your cell-site location history for as long as five years and as little as one year, but none of them act as if these retention periods are information you’d want to know.

5/3/2019: Facebook banning extremists, Al Jazeera

I had my first appearance in a few weeks at the Arabic-language news channel to talk about Facebook’s recent move to ban such extremists as InfoWars conspiracy-theory liars Alex Jones and Paul Joseph Watson, Islamophobic loon Laura Loomer, and Nation of Islam anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan.

5/4/2019: Moor Insights & Strategy Podcast (5-4-19), What’s Hot in Tech?

If you thought the people giving you advice about what gadgets to buy could get said gadgets to work every time: My Saturday-afternoon conversation with analyst Mark Vena and my fellow tech freelancer John Quain recapping the IFA Global Press Conference was the third take of this podcast. The first attempt at the IFA GPC went awry when Mark’s iPhone overheated in the heat of a Spanish afternoon, then a second try a few days later fell prey to a corrupted audio recording.

Weekly output: Android P, crytocurrency security, Android Things, Sprint-T-Mobile

Posted on May 13, 2018 by robpegoraro

My eighth Google I/O conference–and my seventh in a row–is in the books. Once again, I came home from the Bay Area with way more in my notes than I could put into stories at the time. (See my Flickr album to get a sense of the event.) This Tuesday will continue another streak: My third consecutive week of work travel has me heading to Toronto that morning for Access Now’s RightsCon conference, at which I’m moderating two panels.

5/8/2018: New in Android P, Tools to Help You Put Down Your Phone, Consumer Reports

I made my first appearance in CR in months with this recap of the major features in the next version of Android–which I expect get on my Pixel phone within days of its debut later this year, but which many other Android users may not see so quickly.

5/9/2018: Your crypto exchange may be less secure than your email account, Yahoo Finance

I wrote this recap of Chris Wysopal’s talk at Collision last week, but for reasons not quite clear to me it didn’t get posted until this week.

5/10/2018: Google is trying to make your smart home safer, Yahoo Finance

My I/O coverage continued with this explanation of Google’s Android Things connected-device platform and the broader “IoT” security problem that needs fixing.

5/11/2018: Could the Sprint-T-Mobile merger mean higher bills for Boost or MetroPCS customers?, USA Today

All the time I’ve spent poring over the pricing of prepaid and resold wireless service informed this assessment of how Sprint and T-Mobile’s proposed merger might affect those markets.

Conference-app feature request: block out my schedule as I pick panels

Posted on May 3, 2018 by robpegoraro

NEW ORLEANS–My calendar includes a lot of conferences (especially this month), and as a result my phone features a lot of conference apps.

Collision app scheduling The conference that has me here, Collision, has one such app. As these things go–meaning, let’s set aside how many of their features could be done just as well by Web apps–it’s not bad. But the personalization tool that lets you cobble together a schedule of talks that appeal to you is deeply broken.

The schedule at Collision, as at other conferences with multiple stages and venues, is packed with events that happen at the same time. The app should clear up that clutter by not letting me be in two places at once–meaning, when I add a talk to my schedule, it should gray out every other talk overlapping with that timeslot.

That way, I’d immediately see the opportunity cost of going to one talk versus another. But the Collision app does not do that. And although it is smart enough to stick an orange “Priority” label next to my own panels, it doesn’t even block out talks overlapping with the most important items on my agenda.

This is a common failing with conference apps. I don’t recall the SXSW app doing this kind of schedule triage, even though that’s even more vital at an event with so many more overlapping tracks. The app for Google I/O, my destination next week, definitely omits this function. And since the Web Summit app is built from the same template as the Collision app, it will repeat this omission… unless somebody in management is sufficiently moved by this post. Can y’all hear me out on this?

Covering conference costs

Posted on March 17, 2018 by robpegoraro

My travel for work often involves a four-word question with a one-word answer. As in, somebody asks me “Who’s sending you here?”, and I reply by saying “me.”

Self-employment usually means self-financing of travel. Except for when speaking somewhere gets my travel comped or a conference organizer offers a travel subsidy (or the very rare times that a client covers my travel costs), I have to pay my own way.

When I started freelancing in 2011, I didn’t worry too much about how. I was blessed with clients overpaying me, and I was so tired of having the Post deny my travel requests–like the three years in a row they wouldn’t send me to South By Southwest–that I chose to spend some money to see what I’d missed.

I’m more practical these days: If I go somewhere, I should sell enough work based on things I learn during that trip to cover my costs. As long as I can find a scarcity to exploit, that should be doable. Google I/O and Mobile World Congress, for example, either limit press access or take place in locations where tech-news sites don’t have anybody based full-time–leaving me less competition. So did the Falcon Heavy launch.

To be honest in my accounting, I also have to consider how much I would have written and sold on a normal week at home, when my expenses amount to Metro fare and part of the utilities bills. In other words, I didn’t write five Yahoo posts from CES just for my health.

Most of the time, I do sell enough from out of town to get my above-baseline income to meet travel costs that I already try to ratchet down with my Airbnb and public-transit habits. What I still need to address: not slacking off the week after a mega-gathering like CES or MWC, a pattern you’ve probably noticed in my weekly recaps of my work.

Some trips, however, are worth doing even at a loss, and I appreciate that self-employment lets me make that choice.

For example, the XOXO conference in Portland was so mind-expandingly great in 2013 and 2015 that I paid not just for airfare and lodging but even for the conference pass–and I only sold a single post from it each time. Friday, the organizers tweeted that after taking 2017 off, the conference would return this September… so, you know, my financial realism may have to take a break that week.

Rob Pegoraro

Occasional shop talk about journalism, technology and a few other things

Tag Archives: Google I/O