Who Has Your Back | Rob Pegoraro

I’m at the start of two weeks of a ridiculous travel schedule. I flew to Boston this afternoon to cover the cable industry’s INTX convention, Tuesday night I’m off to SFO to spend the rest of the week at Google’s I/O conference in Mountain View, Saturday I come home… and I won’t spend much time there before getting back on a plane. More about that in next Sunday’s recap.

5/9/2016: Flash makes one of its last stands on Facebook Live, USA Today

As I wrote in my Facebook post advertising this story, I’ve yet to do anything with Facebook Live video. Should I?

5/10/2016: Facebook Trending news, Al Jazeera

The Arabic-language news channel had me on to discuss the Gizmodo report that Facebook’s Trending list of headlines suppressed some conservative sites. My first take was that the sorry record of accuracy at the likes of Breitbart.com and the Drudge Report invited skeptical treatment, but talking about this on camera got some wheels turning in my head.

5/10/2016: Some sharing economy companies share too much of your information, Yahoo Finance

I always enjoy reading the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s annual “Who Has Your Back?” accounting of how tech firms say they’ll answer government requests for your data (see my writeup of last year’s report), and this year’s mostly-uncomplimentary look at “sharing economy” firms was more interesting than usual.

5/11/2016: There are worse things than manipulated ‘Trending’ stories lists, Yahoo Finance

This is the post that resulted from those wheels turning in my head. The comments, as you can see, were neither friendly nor persuasive. There’s a broader conversation to be had about the detachment many Republicans seem to be having from observed reality on subjects like climate change and evolution, but I guess a story’s comments thread is not the place for it.

5/14/2016: May 14, 2016 — Adam Engst and Rob Pegoraro, Tech Night Owl

I talked with host Gene Steinberg about Facebook’s Trending list and Apple’s lagging computer-hardware updates, among other issues.

5/15/2016: How to use or avoid hidden iPad keyboard options, USA Today

Once again, my own computing malfunctions served as column fodder. Writing this allowed me to offer a first-look review of Google’s Gboard iPad-keyboard app; as I type this, it’s the default keyboard on my iPad.

Beyond a trip to New York for CE Week, the last seven days also brought me back to 1150 15th Street NW for a Washington Post alumni reunion Thursday night. That will be the last such gathering at that address, because the paper is moving to rented space in a much better-looking building on K Street.

6/23/2015: Tech Firms Trust Our Government Even Less Than You Do, Yahoo Tech

I though the fifth release of the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s annual “Who Has Your Back?” report on how tech companies stand up to government requests for data about their customers was a newsworthy moment. I did not realize until starting to write this piece how much the tech industry has moved since just 2013, as I realized when I re-read some of my first Disruptive Competition Project posts.

6/24/2015: The March of the Robots, CE Week

I enjoyed talking about the progress and continued problems of the consumer robotics business–from floor-cleaning robots and toys for kids to driverless cars and drones–at this CE Week panel with Engadget editor Devindra Hardawar, Spin Master designer Andres Garza, Ozobot CEO Nader Hamda, and WowWee CTO Davin Sufer. As the screengrab shows, I was checking my phone pretty often to consult my notes and look for any Twitter feedback; I don’t know how annoying that looked from the seats.

6/24/2015: CE Week TV: Rob Pegoraro, CE Week

Later that afternoon, I did a quick interview about our robotics discussion with Judie Stanford.

6/27/2015: Rob Pegoraro on personal technology, Washington Apple Pi

I returned to this Apple user group for the first time since 2013 and talked about the increasing amount of convergent evolution between iOS and Android and how that doesn’t seem to have cooled down the usual mobile-OS bigotry. Most of the questions I got from the audience afterward were not about those issues; instead, people wanted to know about their choices in broadband Internet access and what they could do to get away from traditional pay-TV subscriptions.

6/28/2015: Wi-Fi wrongly blocking sites? Blame humans, USA Today

I enjoyed the irony of using my column to unpack a problem that a longtime competitor (re/Code’s outstanding Walt Mossberg) had complained about on Twitter.

Rob Pegoraro

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

Tag Archives: Who Has Your Back

Weekly output: Who has your back, robots, CE Week, Washington Apple Pi, travel WiFi blacklists