Weekly output: QuaDream spyware, AI policy, commercial satellite imagery, Discord leaker

Posted on April 16, 2023 by robpegoraro

I think I have our taxes squared away with two more days until I have to file them–or file for an extension as I often do–so of course I’m worrying about what financial data points I’m overlooking and how they might cause us to pay more than required.

4/11/2023: QuaDream spyware, Al Jazeera

The Arabic-language news channel had me make a Skype appearance about this commercial spyware flagged by Microsoft and Citizen Lab. The week ended with news that the Israeli firm behind this iPhone hacking tool was shutting down.

4/12/2023: Worried About AI? The Feds Want Your Help Writing Rules to Keep It in Check, PCMag

I had missed the National Telecommunications and Information Administration’s announcement Tuesday of its request for comments about policies to hold artificial-intelligence applications accountable, but hearing Microsoft president Brad Smith commend this effort during an appearance at a conference Wednesday morning gave me something extra for a day-after story.

4/14/2023: Why the Feds Appreciate Private Satellite Images of Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine, PCMag

Beyond Smith’s quotes about the NTIA RFC, Planet Labs’ Planet Explore 2023 conference also yielded this story about how much the intelligence community has come to appreciate commercial satellite imagery even though it has its own, far more capable reconnaissance satellites in orbit.

4/14/2023: Discord leaker, Al Jazeera

I made a studio appearance to discuss the bizarre case of Massachusetts Air National Guard airman Jack Teixeira and his months-long sharing of classified documents in a Discord group. My comments boiled down to “this guy is going to go to jail for the dumbest possible reason, which is that he wanted to look cool on the Internet.”

Weekly output: OpenAI-enhanced customer support, fixed-wireless upgrades, MLS Season Pass, app-store competition report, FCC broadband map, Matter, Next Level Networks, Twitter offer to creators

Posted on February 5, 2023 by robpegoraro

I blew off work Friday to do something I hadn’t done in four years: go downhill skiing. Slope conditions were not awesome and I had snow guns blowing in my face most of the time, but it still easily beat spending those hours in a warm, dry home office.

1/31/2023: Can OpenAI Tools Help Customer Service Reps Sound More Human?, PCMag

The PR folks for Intercom gave me an advance on their news about adding GPT-based writing assistance to their widely-used customer-support platform.

1/31/2023: How MU-MIMO could change the FWA game for T-Mobile and Verizon, Light Reading

My editor at this trade pub asked me to summarize a rather technical report from Signals Research Group that found signs of a significant capacity upgrade in progress at T-Mobile–which that carrier had not talked up before but confirmed when I asked about it.

2/1/2023: Apple Invites Soccer Fans to Sign Up for MLS Season Pass, PCMag

After writing last summer about Apple signing this deal with Major League Soccer, I had to follow up with the pricing details Apple announced Wednesday.

2/2/2023: Feds Slam Apple, Google for Abusing App-Store Power (But Mostly Apple), PCMag

The lengthy report the National Telecommunications and Information Administration posted on Wednesday didn’t break any major news about the ways Apple and Google have run their mobile app stores, but its recommended remedies were still interesting.

2/3/2023: Is broadband available near you? This updated FCC map can tell you. Maybe., USA Today

I’d had this topic on my to-do list for a while, and then Federal Communications Commission chair Jessica Rosenworcel offered an update on the FCC’s connectivity-cartography efforts at an event Tuesday.

2/3/2023: With Matter, Apple HomePod 2 speaker aims to connect to devices no matter who makes them, USA Today

USAT publishing this post (a week and change after I filed it) wraps up my CES 2023 coverage.

2/3/2023: This startup aims to green broadband deserts with an old-school idea: Get customers to pay for the network up front, Fast Company

I first read about Next Level Networks from Ars Technica’s Jon Brodkin, then learned that this Bay Area startup was building a fiber network at a development in Sonoma County, Calif.–not far from where I was already spending the holidays with my wife’s family.

2/3/2023: Twitter offers ad revenue share to creators, Al Jazeera

I was able to jump on Skype to offer a value judgment about Elon Musk’s insultingly vague promise of a share of advertising revenue to undefined “creators” who also pay $8 a month for Twitter Blue because I got back from skiing maybe 25 minutes before scheduled airtime.

Weekly output: Huawei’s IFA pitch, broadband buildout, Verizon One Unlimited for iPhone, iPhone 12 and 13 discounts, pay-TV warnings, Super Bowl ads, Mark Vena podcast

Posted on September 11, 2022 by robpegoraro

A week after I got back from Berlin, I finished my Flickr album of photos from the event, plus another one of Berlin scenery. That comes just in time for me to get back on a plane to Europe: Monday night, I fly to Copenhagen for the TechBBQ conference, at which I’ll be one of the judges at a startup pitching session.

9/5/2022: Huawei exec generates reality distortion field in IFA keynote, Light Reading

The head of Huawei’s Western European consumer business gave some answers in this onstage Q&A that seemed not just detached from reality but delusional.

9/6/2022: NTIA Head: At First, New Broadband Maps Are ‘Not Going to Be as Good’ as We Want, PCMag

While the federal government will soon have much more accurate maps of broadband availability, it apparently won’t use them to distribute broadband-buildout subsidies until localites get a chance to challenge perceived inaccuracies.

9/7/2022: ‘One Unlimited for iPhone’ Is Verizon’s Sixth Unlimited-Data Phone Plan, PCMag

The lede here wrote itself: “Verizon now needs both hands to count all its unlimited-data smartphone plans.”

9/7/2022: Why now’s a great time to grab an iPhone 12 or 13 at a discount after iPhone 14 launch, USA Today

This explainer of the potential appeal of the newly-discounted iPhone 12 and 13 got a quick update after AT&T clarified that only the new iPhone 14 would be supported on the 3.45 GHz 5G spectrum it’s now deploying (which is not the same as its C-band 5G but also significant to its network plans).

9/8/2022: MoffettNathanson raises red flags about cord cutting, Fierce Video

On another day when I was filling in at my trade-pub client, I wrote up a research report warning media firms and pay-TV providers that cord cutting and advertising revenue each stood to get a good deal worse, while sports-rights deals would probably get even more expensive.

9/8/2022: Fox says Super Bowl spots are going, going, almost gone, Fierce Video

And speaking of sports-rights deals and advertising revenue, Fox Sports says it’s sold almost all of the spots for the next Super Bowl.

9/9/2022: S02 E35 – SmartTechCheck Podcast, Mark Vena

I rejoined this industry-analyst host and my fellow tech journalists John Quain and Stewart Wolpin to discuss IFA (Vena and Quain also covered it in Berlin) and Apple’s product-launch event Wednesday. One point I made about the latter: While Apple’s satellite-SOS feature looks fascinating, Apple requiring a subscription after the first two years raises a risk that somebody will set out for a wilderness hike with an iPhone that just turned two years old, then realize they can’t use that feature to summon help.

Weekly output: Starlink, spectrum coordination, flight delays (x2), T-Mobile and Verizon 5G home broadband, Mark Vena podcast

Posted on August 7, 2022 by robpegoraro

About one year later than I’d planned, I’m flying to Las Vegas Tuesday to cover the Black Hat information-security conference. Two big factors in my deciding to go ahead with that trip this year: My kid is now vaccinated and boosted, while I had Covid barely seven weeks ago.

8/2/2022: SpaceX’s Starlink has soared, but a course correction may be on the horizon, Fast Company

More weeks ago than I’d like to admit, one of my editors asked if I could do a more in-depth look at the progress of SpaceX’s Starlink low-Earth-orbit broadband constellation. A day after this piece ran, Reddit’s ever-informative r/starlink served up new evidence of capacity issues at this service: a new rate plan in France that cuts the monthly rate in half but imposes a 250 GB threshold for possible speed deprioritization.

8/2/2022: 2 Key Federal Telecom Agencies Promise to Play Nice With Wireless Spectrum, PCMag

Two federal offices about two miles apart in D.C. pledged to work better together in spectrum planning. That might seem like an obvious thing to do, but the Federal Communications Commission and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration last updated this memorandum of understanding in 2003.

8/3/2022: Don’t Get Stranded: How to Watch for Flight Delays and Get Around Them, PCMag

A discussion on PCMag’s Slack workspace about coping with travel hiccups led to me asking if I could write this story, and not just because I’d like to recoup my added travel costs from my unplanned extra night in Toronto in June.

8/3/2022: How Verizon ‘fixed wireless’ and T-Mobile home broadband is converting cable customers, USA Today

After a reality-check interview with an analyst who reminded me that fiber scales so much better to meet demand than fixed wireless can, this column on the progress of T-Mobile and Verizon’s 5G-based home broadband got a bit less enthusiastic about its potential.

8/4/2022: S02 E32 – SmartTechCheck Podcast, Mark Vena

My main contribution to this discussion was talking about my Starlink story, but if you watch the video of the podcast you can also see me scowl at a Lightning cable.

8/5/2022: DOT Moves to Strengthen Rules on Refunds for Flight Changes, Cancellations, PCMag

Speaking of travel delays, I returned to the subject to cover a set of proposed Department of Transportation rules that would clarify what counts as a significant schedule change and a cancelled flight–and require either non-expiring trip credits or straight-up refunds for travel canceled because of a future pandemic.

Weekly output: EU copyright, ICANN, self-driving cars (x2), MacBook battery

Posted on September 26, 2016 by robpegoraro

I could have had two other items on this list–Thursday, two different news networks asked if I could comment on camera about Yahoo’s data breach. I told each booker that as somebody who writes for a Yahoo site, it would be just a bit awkward for me to opine on camera about that issue. (Besides, it’s not like I had much free time that day in the first place.)

9/19/2016: The EU’s new copyright reforms could change the internet, Yahoo Finance

I filed this piece–a sequel of sorts to a post I did in 2012 for the Disruptive Competition Project about Europe’s doomed dream of getting search engines to pay newspapers for showing snippets of stories in search results–from the Online News Association’s conference Friday afternoon of the prior week. That scheduling seems to be the only consistently reliable way for me to get a post up on a Monday morning.

9/20/2016: No, Ted Cruz, the US isn’t giving away the internet, Yahoo Finance

I’d had this story on my to-do list for weeks, but finally writing it this week turned out to be good timing: The next day, Donald Trump came out against the planned handover of supervision of the domain name system, doing so with his characteristic lack of knowledge.

9/22/2016: Stocks extend Fed-fueled rally, Yahoo Finance

I made my debut on Finance’s 4 p.m. “The Final Round” live show not to talk about the stock market, but to discuss the legal prospects for self-driving cars. I’m on from about 5:00 to 8:00 in the video, talking to host Jen Rogers about things like who might be likely to sue whom when one autonomous car hits another.

9/22/2016: How the government plans to make your self-driving car safer, Yahoo Finance

I wrote about half this story on the train up from D.C., with the remaining half done after watching a panel of lawyers debate this topic at the MarketplaceLive conference in New York. Because I was in Yahoo’s newsroom, I could go over the edits the old-fashioned way: by sitting down next to my editor instead of bouncing messages back and forth in Slack.

9/25/2016: How to prolong your MacBook’s battery life, USA Today

Not for the first time, my own hardware served up a good column topic that helped me learn a new troubleshooting step, which is always nice.

Weekly output: smartwatch etiquette, Kojo Nnamdi Show, Android tips, finding an ISP

Posted on August 3, 2014 by robpegoraro

With the arrival of August, I’m supposed to be able to slack off now that everybody with more sense temporarily flees D.C. Somehow I doubt things will work out that easily.

7/29/2014: Smartwatch Etiquette: We’re Making It Up as We Go, Yahoo Tech

Does wearing a smartwatch mean I no longer have to be the annoying person who’s always checking his phone, or does it turn me into the annoying person who’s always checking his smartwatch?

7/29/2014: A Short History of Gadget Hate, Yahoo Tech

I enjoyed putting together this sidebar listing past denunciations of wearable technology, from the watch itself to the Sony Walkman.

7/29/2014: Travel Tech for a Great Vacation, The Kojo Nnamdi Show

I talked about airfare- and hotel-search sites, out-of-town bandwidth, navigation apps and other travel-tech topics with National Geographic Traveler editor Keith Bellows and Washington Post travel writer Andrea Sachs.

8/1/2014: 9 Things You Probably Didn’t Know About Android, Yahoo Tech

The little Android crash-test-dummy toy in the picture atop this post was a giveaway at last year’s Google I/O conference. More interesting than yet another screen shot, don’t you think?

8/3/2014: How to find the best Internet service provider, USA Today

A friend’s question about replacing his wretched EarthLink DSL led me to realize how the lack of competition in broadband seems to have dried up the market for find-an-ISP sites. (Not that I miss the insane amount of work I sank into compiling directories of local ISPs for the Post.)

Weekly output: tax prep, Google Glass, Heartbleed, Nearby Friends, online banking

Posted on April 20, 2014 by robpegoraro

This was a multiple-microphone week, and two of my three broadcast appearances involved shows that hadn’t booked me as a guest before. That’s good.

In other news: Happy Easter!

4/15/2014: The Strange and Successful Campaign to Make Taxes More Taxing, Yahoo Tech

A lot of material had to get left out of this already-long column denouncing the crony-capitalism campaign by Intuit and such Washington groups as Americans for Tax Reform and my former client CCIA to stop governments from letting citizens file and pay taxes at their own sites. (For example, these direct-filing sites cost little to run–$80,000 a year at California’s ReadyReturn, $150,000 for Pennsylvania’s soon-to-be-shuttered padirectfile.) Comments debuted at Yahoo Tech late Tuesday afternoon, and as you can see I did not wait long to show up in them myself.

Speaking of feedback, you might as well see ATR’s latest post opposing IRS-run tax prep and stories, mine included, that suggest it would be a good thing… which, in a coincidence too weird for me not to disclose, was written by the guy who’s done my taxes since 2012.

4/16/2014: Google Glass and privacy, Al Jazeera

The news network’s Arabic-language channel had me on the air to talk about Google Glass and privacy issues. Since I was being translated into Arabic in real time, the producer emphasized that I speak slowly and simply–a challenge when my usual habit is to speak too fast on the air.

4/16/2014: Heartbleed and Internet Security, To the Point

KCRW’s news show had me on to discuss the Heartbleed bug and how open-source development broke down in this case. I wish I’d thought to compare major tech companies’ unwillingness to kick in any money to the OpenSSL Foundation with all the effort they’ve put into finding ways to pipe income to shell corporations in overseas tax havens.

Most of my input happened in the first 20 minutes or so, but keep listening to hear Internet Governance Project founder Milton Mueller discard some silly objections from the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation’s Daniel Castro to the government’s proposal to hand over supervision of the DNS root zone.

4/18/2014: Nearby Friends, WTOP

D.C.’s news station had me on the air for a few minutes via Skype to talk about Facebook’s new location-based option, its privacy implications and how it competes with such existing apps as Foursquare and the D.C. startup SocialRadar.

4/20/2014: Safety you can bank on: Chromebook, Linux, phone, USA Today

A relative’s question about whether he should buy a Chromebook for his online banking gave me an opportunity to note a couple of cheaper options to separate your Web financial transactions from your regular use: booting your computer off a Linux CD or flash drive, or using your bank’s app or the built-in browser on your phone or tablet.

Weekly output: Internet governance, Kojo Nnamdi Show, old camcorders

Posted on March 23, 2014 by robpegoraro

For once, the combined universe of smartphones and tablets did not constitute the majority of my coverage over a week.

3/18/2014: No, the U.S. Isn’t Really Giving Up the Internet—It Doesn’t Own It Anyway, Yahoo Tech

This story was not the easiest one to write, courtesy of Monday being a snow day in which most of my queries went unanswered while my wife and I had to keep our daughter entertained. DNS root-zone supervision is an exceedingly wonky topic; did I keep my explanation of it out of the weeds, or is mine too far above the ground to provide enough understanding of the topic?

Kojo Nnamdi Show on wireless service

3/18/2014: Choosing A Cell Phone And Mobile Data Plan, The Kojo Nnamdi Show

WAMU host Kojo Nnamdi, CNET columnist Maggie Reardon and I discussed the changing shape of the wireless market–in particular, T-Mobile’s hanging up on subsidized handset pricing. T-Mo marketing v.p. Andrew Sherrard joined us via phone for part of the show and provided a number I hadn’t seen before: From 10 to 20 percent of its customers now bring their own devices to the carrier.

3/23/2014: How to rescue vintage camcorder footage, USA Today

As it has before, my neighborhood’s mailing list proved to be a fruitful source of Q&A column material–and this time around, my research into a neighbor’s problems getting video off an old MiniDV camcorder involved a house call.

Rob Pegoraro

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

Tag Archives: NTIA