Tag Archives: NSO Group

Weekly output: White House commercial-spyware limits, Amazon opens Sidewalk to developers, MLB’s tech upgrades

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This week involved my having to finish a whole more writing than what you see below, so you can imagine my relief at still being able to step away from the keyboard in time to see the Dungeons & Dragons movie with friends Friday evening.

3/27/2023: White House Exec Order Bans Government Use of Most Commercial Spyware, PCMag

I wasn’t sure there was a story in this executive order until I saw enough tech-policy types (with no pattern of cheerleading for the Biden administration) say that, yes, it was a big deal.

Screenshot of the story as seen on an iPad mini 6's Safari browser3/28/2023: Amazon opens Sidewalk network to outside developers, Light Reading

This story ran under a different headline: “Amazon opens Sidewalk mesh network to outside developers.” After it ran, the Amazon PR rep who offered me an advance on the story emailed to say that Amazon doesn’t regard Sidewalk as a mesh network, since clients on it can only connect to Sidewalk nodes and can’t extend the network on their own. That is a valid point, but it’s also come after three years of everybody calling Sidewalk a mesh network.

3/28/2023: With MLB’s 3D Version of Gameday, Watch Plays From Any Angle Like a Video Game, PCMag

Major League Baseball hosted a press preview Tuesday at its New York offices (which I watched via Zoom) of tech changes coming to its systems and apps. MLB’s online presentation of games has come a mighty long way since I first covered it in 2005.

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Weekly output: sustainability, Project Kuiper, Frances Haugen, AI benefits, wellness UX, Amazon Sidewalk, less Facebook, Microsoft vs. climate change, Apple vs. sideloading, HBO Max, Nothing, Tim Berners-Lee, Facebook at Web Summit, U.S. vs. NSO Group

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Looking at this list makes me feel tired… or maybe that’s just the jet lag talking.

Photo shows the Corporate Innovation Summit program in the library of the Academy of Sciences.11/1/2021: How technology is driving sustainability, Web Summit

My first of four Web Summit panels took place at the Corporate Innovation Summit, an offsite gathering at the Lisbon Academy of Sciences Monday. There, I quizzed Rebecca Parsons, chief technology officer at Thoughtworks; Vincent Clerc, chief executive officer for ocean and logistics at Maersk, and Tolga Kurtoglu, chief technology officer at HP, about how their firms were working to slow global warming.

11/1/2021: Amazon is gearing up to take on Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite internet, Fast Company

I got an advance on the news that Amazon’s Project Kuiper low-Earth-orbit satellite broadband plans to launch its first two prototype satellites towards the end of next year–which will still leave it years behind SpaceX’s Starlink satellite constellation.

11/1/2021: Facebook Whistleblower: ‘I Don’t Hate Facebook’ (But Zuckerberg Should Step Down), PCMag

Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen helped open Web Summit with an onstage talk Monday night; writing that up led to me not having dinner until 10 p.m.

11/2/2021: Beyond the bottom line: The extra benefits of AI, Web Summit

Tuesday morning, I interviewed David Kiron, editorial director at MIT Sloan Management Review, and François Candelon, managing director and senior partner at Boston Consulting Group, about research they’d done in how artificial-intelligence software can make organizations smarter.

11/3/2021: How to win at wellness UX, Web Summit

Talking to executives at two health-tech startups–Nevada Sanchez, co-founder and vice president of core technology at Butterfly Network, and Alison Darcy, founder of Woebot Health–I had to ask “How do you convince people that you’re not the next Theranos?” I thought these two people fielded that query well.

11/3/2021: Amazon Sidewalk quietly walks on, Light Reading

This assessment of Amazon’s mesh-network project reflects a correction I requested Saturday after Amazon pointed out that the setup process on a new Echo device now gives people a chance to opt out of Sidewalk.

11/3/2021: Stop bothering me, Facebook: Not ready to quit? Try these 3 tips to quiet it down, USA Today

The last time I wrote a Facebook-diet column for USAT, the social network had yet to give its users a way to opt out of having it analyze their reading habits across the rest of the Web for advertising-tracking purposes.

11/3/2021: How Do You Hit Net Zero? Microsoft President Brad Smith Has an Idea, PCMag

Microsoft president Brad Smith used a Web Summit keynote to explain how the company plans to make itself not just a carbon-neutral operation, but to zero out all the carbon dioxide it’s put into the air since its founding.

11/3/2021: Apple Exec to the EU: Hands Off Our App Store, PCMag

Apple software executive Craig Federighi gave what I thought was a remarkably disingenuous speech at Web Summit urging the European Union to back off on a proposal to require that Apple allow “sideloading” of apps in iOS.

11/4/2021: HBO Max exec emphasizes curation and localization, FierceVideo

I wrote up an interview of HBO Max product-planning senior vice president Melissa Weiner, that took place at a virtual conference hosted by Fierce’s parent firm. I thought I’d have more free time in my calendar when I accepted the story assignment, but an early start to my Thursday allowed me to get this written without putting a dent in my Web Summit schedule.

11/4/2021: Can Europe compete in consumer hardware?, Web Summit

This interview of Akis Evangelidis, co-founder of the gadget startup Nothing, provided me with my introduction to Web Summit’s main stage.

11/4/2021: Tim Berners-Lee Wants to Put Online Privacy on a Solid Foundation, PCMag

Web Summit closed out with the Web’s inventor making a pitch for his privacy-optimizing startup Inrupt.

11/4/2021: Facebook finds few friends at Web Summit as techies turn out to hear from whistleblower, USA Today

I wrote a recap of how so many speakers at this conference teed off on Facebook–er, Meta–even as the social network now recasting itself as a “metaverse” company limited its presence at Web Summit to glitchy appearances via streaming video.

11/7/2021: U.S. blacklists NSO Group, Al Jazeera

The Arabic-language news network had me on Sunday to discuss the Department of Commerce putting the Israeli surveillance-software firm NSO (and three other offenders) on its Entity List of banned firms for its role in eroding human rights.

Weekly output: Sprint + T-Mobile, WhatsApp vs. NSO Group

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This week put me in the unusual position of unwinding travel arrangements that I’d made months ago–then figuring out what to do with the time I would not be spending at the now-canceled MWC trade show. At least I’m getting out of that debacle with almost no money lost (United offered to waive the change fee I’d otherwise owe when applying the credit from my scratched booking), unlike some people I know.

Speaking of trade shows, subscribers at Patreon got to read yesterday about the thought process I put into deciding which company or companies to put on my badge for an event. The answer isn’t always obvious; sometimes, I prefer to go with a more obscure affiliation.

2/12/2020: The Sprint/T-Mobile merger has some real upsides—and plenty of unknowns, Fast Company

Here’s an example of where reporting has led me to change my mind. Several years ago, I didn’t see much upside in combining the networks of those two wireless carriers. But as I’ve spent more time immersing myself in the finer points of 5G, I’ve come around to the idea that lighting up Sprint’s 5G spectrum across T-Mo’s 5G coverage will yield a serious improvement. Other potential upsides of this merger, however, remain less clear to me.

2/13/2020: WhatsApp vs. NSO Group, Al Jazeera

I was on the Arabic-language news network (overdubbed live into Arabic, as usual) to talk about WhatsApp’s lawsuit against the Israeli cybersecurity surveillance firm NSO Group for allegedly hacking into the encrypted communications of journalists and activists using the Facebook-owned messaging application.

Weekly output: talking tech to non-techies, Off-Facebook Activity, Starlink, Bezos hacking

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After spending the last three weeks at home, I’m off to New York Thursday morning to speak at a conference. I’m glad that the Greater Good Gathering saw fit to invite me for a second year, and I’m looking forward to spending a couple of days around my dad’s college neighborhood.

1/29/2020: How to deliver a technical presentation to a non-technical audience, Functionize

My friend Wayne Rash interviewed me for this piece about conveying technical points to a non-technical audience; in my answers, I leaned heavily on my experience talking about information security to a user group in November.

1/30/2020: Off Facebook Activity, Al Jazeera

I explained Facebook’s overdue introduction of a tool that lets you check its tracking of you across other sites and apps.

1/31/2020: SpaceX’s fast broadband satellite just got a little closer to reality, Fast Company

I’m always happy to have an excuse to write about space. This time around, the subject was SpaceX’s constellation of Starliink satellites, each of which might bring always-on broadband to far more places than today. Emphasis on “might”: SpaceX has yet to talk about the cost of this service or even if it will require living with data caps.

1/31/2020: Bezos iPhone hack, Al Jazeera

For the second week in a row, I talked about reports of Saudi Arabia hacking the phones of people that government doesn’t like, in particular the iPhone of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos.