Tag Archives: passwordless security

Weekly output: Android 14, Qualcomm and “5G NR-Light,” SpaceX COO, 1Password, Mark Vena podcast

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All of my writing this week appeared over two days, and I wrote most to all of three of them on a single day–a pace that may have contributed to a couple of dumb mistakes in one of them.

2/8/2023: Google Releases First Android 14 Developer Preview, PCMag

Google gave me an advance on the announcement of the first developer-preview release of the next major version of Android. I took care to remind readers that their own Android phones might see Android 14 some time after it lands on Google’s Pixel phones–or might not ever see it.

Screenshot of story as seen in Safari on an iPad mini 62/8/2023: Qualcomm starts connecting the dots on 5G NR-Light, Light Reading

I got another advance briefing for Qualcomm’s news of an upcoming lower-power, cheaper and smaller X35 modem intended for connected gadgets that don’t need full 5G speeds. But Qualcomm was weirdly stingy on details about this hardware, such as any hard numbers for its size or power consumption.

2/8/2023: SpaceX COO Teases Starship 33-Engine Test Fire on Thursday, PCMag

I spent Wednesday and Thursday at the Commercial Space Transportation Conference, where SpaceX chief operating officer and president Gwynne Shotwell shared some news about that company’s giant Starship rocket during an onstage interview. I rushed to write that up but in the process I identified Shotwell’s onstage interlocutor as former congressman Mike Rogers of Alabama, not the Mike Rogers of Michigan who did the honors. And between writing the first paragraph and the third one, I somehow decided that Starship had 31 engines in its first stage, not the correct 33.

2/9/2023: 1Password to Offer Passkey-Only, No-Password Logins, PCMag

The PR people at 1Password gave me an exclusive on their news of an upcoming move to offer subscribers the option of authentication via the new passkeys standard–with no master password needed for this password-manager service.

2/10/2023: S03 E45 – SmartTechCheck Podcast, Mark Vena

My contribution to this week’s edition of my industry-analyst friend’s podcast was to discuss Washington’s escalating conflict with large tech companies, as seen in such developments as the Department of Justice’s antitrust lawsuit against Google and President Biden’s (brief) calls for digital-privacy regulations in the State of the Union address.

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Weekly output: Rocket Lab booster catch, passwordless logins, Mark Vena podcast, Chris Krebs cybersecurity-policy assessment, Facebook to end background location tracking

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Friday marked two years since we adopted our cat. Abel still ignores us when we tell him not to jump on the dining-room table but is a sweetie in most other ways. And every time I expand the online world’s inventory of cat photos by posting one of him, I feel like I am being a good citizen of the Internet.

Screenshot of the PCMag post in Safari for iPadOS, showing the screengrab I took of Rocket Lab's stream showing the Electron booster and its parachute at right, with the helicopter's cable at left.5/3/2022: Watch a Helicopter Catch an Electron Booster Rocket, PCMag

I watched a helicopter catch and briefly hold a spent first stage of a rocket as it descended under a parachute, a first-time experience for me, and then tuned into Rocket Lab’s press conference hours later to get some quotes from Rocket Lab CEO Peter Beck for this story.

5/5/2022: Google lines up with Apple and Microsoft to nix passwords in favor of nearby-device authentication, Fast Company

I got an advance on this three-company news announcement from Google, so all the quotes in this post are from two Googlers. If you’d like to read more about this initiative, please turn your attention to Dan Goodin’s writeup at Ars Technica.

5/5/2022: S02 E19 – SmartTechCheck Podcast, Mark Vena

I rejoined this podcast after missing it last week due to travel.

5/6/2022: Ex-CISA Chief: Biden Cybersecurity EO ‘Raises the Standard’ on IT Vendors, PCMag

I wrote up the closing session at the Hack the Capitol event in D.C., in which former Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Administration director Chris Krebs shared his insights about the state of information-security policy.

5/6/2022: Facebook Unfollows ‘Nearby Friends,’ Other Background Location Features

Facebook bulk-erasing everybody’s location history will be its biggest data-minimization move since scrapping its facial-recognition database. And yet the company’s sole announcement of this move Friday was in-app prompts and e-mails for some users.