Tag Archives: Twitter bots

Weekly output: dead hard drive, Mac Observer, Safari vs. Facebook Like and Share buttons, Twitter bots (x2)

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My last long-haul business travel for the first half of this year starts early Monday morning, when I head to National Airport to start my journey to Shanghai for CES Asia. Like last year, I’m helping emcee the Last Gadget Standing show there; unlike last year, I imagine I’ll be hearing more pronounced reactions in China to President Trump’s increasingly angry outbursts about international trade.

6/5/2018: This Morning with Gordon Deal June 05, 2018, This Morning with Gordon Deal

I talked to this show’s host about my experience destroying a dead backup hard drive with a crowbar, as recounted in my earlier USA Today column. My spot comes up about 13:30 into the show.

6/5/2018: TMO Background Mode Interview with Freelance Tech Journalist Rob Pegoraro, The Mac Observer

I talked to TMO’s John Martellaro about my experience doing a drive transplant on an old iMac, Google’s I/O news, the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation and more.

6/6/2018: Apple’s Safari to Facebook’s Like and Share buttons: Dislike, The Parallax

I wrote an explainer for my newest client about how Safari will block Facebook’s Like and Share buttons–along with those of other social networks–to stop a common form of Web tracking. Along the way, Apple might wind up boosting two of its own lines of business.

6/6/2018: Twitter bots, Al Jazeera

A late-in-the-day request from an AJ producer meant I had to do this interview via Skype off my laptop in the middle of attending a panel discussion at New America. For future reference, if you need to do a TV hit via Skype at that D.C. think tank: They have a couple of phone-booth-sized rooms with backdrops that look techie enough on TV, in which you can get a laptop webcam at a respectable angle by putting that booth’s trash can on its table and then raising its chair as high as possible.

6/7/2018: Twitter bots, Al Jazeera

Al Jazeera was sufficiently interested in this post on the Washington Post’s site about the use of Twitter bots by Qatar’s Gulf rivals that they had me on for a second day, where I had the chance to speak at a greater length and wear a solid-color, TV-friendly shirt. I don’t have a link to either hit because they roll off AJ’s site within two days, and I forgot to copy those links when I could.

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Weekly output: border device searches, airline angst, Twitter bots, German cybersecurity

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Happy Easter!

4/10/2017: The government might stop searching your phone at the border, but things could still get worse, Yahoo Finance

I haven’t had many reasons to worry about hangups returning to the United States since I got Global Entry, but any increase in the small chance that Customs and Border Protection officials might detain my devices for a search alarms me.

4/12/2017: The airline industry has never been better for customers, Yahoo Finance

You’ll get no argument from me that United Airlines screwed up by summoning police to drag a passenger off a plane to make room for a crew needed to work a flight the next day. But the idea that we’ve now descended into the worst era of commercial aviation is ridiculous. I’ll admit that the headline here may oversell the story slightly–but it’s nowhere as out-there as Wired’s “How United Turned the Friendly Skies Into a Flying Hellscape.”

4/13/2017: Twitter bots, Al Jazeera

The Arabic-language news channel had me on to discuss a recent study finding a strikingly high percentage of Twitter accounts did not seem to have a human behind them.

4/15/2017: Germany’s cyber corps, Al Jazeera

I appeared via Skype to discuss Germany’s move to launch a new cyber command. My main reaction: moderate confusion as to why did Berlin only decide now that they needed such a thing, when America set up its own cybersecurity branch in 2009 and Israel’s 8200 unit has become a talent pipeline to private industry.