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I’m not sure that the mass market shares the tech industry’s vision for smart glasses
One recent change among early-adopter circles was plain on the faces of many fellow attendees of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Summit in Maui this week: “smart” glasses with cameras, microphones, speakers and sometimes screens. But then my flights home Friday reminded me that for the overwhelming majority of people, “eyewear” means electronics-free glasses.
Qualcomm’s invitation-only conference–that company paid my airfare and lodging, as it did on my prior trips to cover it in 2021, 2022 and 2024–allowed me to get some brief face time with Snap’s Spectacles ’24, running newer software than the version I tried at last year’s summit. The event also treated me to a parade of tech execs testifying that smart glasses were the next big computing platform.
But despite all those optimistic assurances and my own earlier, brief tryouts of such smart glasses as Meta’s camera-enabled Ray-Bans and a prototype set of Android XR glasses, I remain unsold on the entire concept. So, it seems, do most customers: A Forrester Research survey released in September found that 79 percent of respondents had no interest in buying smart glasses.
On one hand, smart glasses with cameras, speakers and microphones are not particularly cheap–the Ray-Ban-branded models from the conglomerate EssilorLuxottica cost $379 and up–but perform worse than phones at taking pictures and playing audio.
Plus, they have the potential to annoy friends and strangers who aren’t keen on the possibility of surreptitious photography.
On the other hand, more advanced smart glasses with built-in displays could finally make hands-free augmented-reality overviews of the world a reality, but first somebody has to bring them to market at a not-crazy price. Snap’s Spectacles, which require a $99/month developer subscription, are not there; Meta’s Ray-Ban Display glasses, available starting Tuesday for $799, aren’t that much closer.
And somebody also has to solve battery-life concerns: What’s my motivation to strap a computer to my face, however stylish it might get, if that electronic eyewear will only run six hours on a charge and therefore need recharging much more often than my phone?
Meta championing this cause gives me further cause. That company has shown a history of careless indifference to the consequences of its actions, including repeated episodes of bad-faith behavior towards my own industry, that does not make me want to give it my money.
But Meta has also been so spectacularly wrong about consumer-electronics trends–topped by Mark Zuckerberg renaming Facebook to “Meta” and losing tens of billions of dollars on the delusional notion that people want to spend prolonged time in virtual-reality environments–that Zuck pushing smart glasses itself seems reason to eye the concept skeptically. Through dumb, software-free glasses.
#AndroidXR #ARGlasses #faceComputer #GoogleGlass #GoogleGlasses #Hawaii #MarkZuckerberg #meta #metaverse #privacy #Qualcomm #RayBan #smartGlasses #SnapSpectacles #SnapdragonSummit
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I’m not sure that the mass market shares the tech industry’s vision for smart glasses
One recent change among early-adopter circles was plain on the faces of many fellow attendees of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Summit in Maui this week: “smart” glasses with cameras, microphones, speakers and sometimes screens. But then my flights home Friday reminded me that for the overwhelming majority of people, “eyewear” means electronics-free glasses.
Qualcomm’s invitation-only conference–that company paid my airfare and lodging, as it did on my prior trips to cover it in 2021, 2022 and 2024–allowed me to get some brief face time with Snap’s Spectacles ’24, running newer software than the version I tried at last year’s summit. The event also treated me to a parade of tech execs testifying that smart glasses were the next big computing platform.
But despite all those optimistic assurances and my own earlier, brief tryouts of such smart glasses as Meta’s camera-enabled Ray-Bans and a prototype set of Android XR glasses, I remain unsold on the entire concept. So, it seems, do most customers: A Forrester Research survey released in September found that 79 percent of respondents had no interest in buying smart glasses.
On one hand, smart glasses with cameras, speakers and microphones are not particularly cheap–the Ray-Ban-branded models from the conglomerate EssilorLuxottica cost $379 and up–but perform worse than phones at taking pictures and playing audio.
Plus, they have the potential to annoy friends and strangers who aren’t keen on the possibility of surreptitious photography.
On the other hand, more advanced smart glasses with built-in displays could finally make hands-free augmented-reality overviews of the world a reality, but first somebody has to bring them to market at a not-crazy price. Snap’s Spectacles, which require a $99/month developer subscription, are not there; Meta’s Ray-Ban Display glasses, available starting Tuesday for $799, aren’t that much closer.
And somebody also has to solve battery-life concerns: What’s my motivation to strap a computer to my face, however stylish it might get, if that electronic eyewear will only run six hours on a charge and therefore need recharging much more often than my phone?
Meta championing this cause gives me further cause. That company has shown a history of careless indifference to the consequences of its actions, including repeated episodes of bad-faith behavior towards my own industry, that does not make me want to give it my money.
But Meta has also been so spectacularly wrong about consumer-electronics trends–topped by Mark Zuckerberg renaming Facebook to “Meta” and losing tens of billions of dollars on the delusional notion that people want to spend prolonged time in virtual-reality environments–that Zuck pushing smart glasses itself seems reason to eye the concept skeptically. Through dumb, software-free glasses.
#AndroidXR #ARGlasses #faceComputer #GoogleGlass #GoogleGlasses #Hawaii #MarkZuckerberg #meta #metaverse #privacy #Qualcomm #RayBan #smartGlasses #SnapSpectacles #SnapdragonSummit
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Weekly output: Mark Vena podcast, Verizon customer service, AI fair use, Comcast ditches data caps, Aurora’s autonomous trucks, age verification for porn sites, Universal Service Fund, Trump tariffs
The first half of this year is almost in the books, which means I’m thinking of a few longer pieces that I’d meant to have seen published and paid for by now but instead have yet to start writing.
Patreon readers got an extra post from me this week: a recap of how Uber rides in Mexico City helped me realize how much trouble cheap Chinese EVs are going to cause for Tesla.
6/23/2025: Ep 112 SmartTechCheck Podcast — Apple WWDC 25, Apple Intelligence, OpenAI device, Trump phone, Mark Vena
I suggested that this podcast cover the exercise in commercialized cult worship that is Trump Mobile. Two days after we recorded the show, that site’s description of the T1 phone that it plans to sell changed from “proudly made right here in the USA” to “brought to life right here in the USA.”
6/24/2025: Verizon Touts Upgraded Customer Service Push: Will It Make a Difference?, PCMag
Put me down as a skeptic of the difference that customer service can make in broadband: I can’t remember when I last called either my wireless carrier or my Internet provider for help.
6/24/2025: Judge: It’s Fair Use to Train AI on Books You Bought, But Not Ones You Pirated, PCMag
I found this case interesting for two reasons: It did not involve any claims of AI plagiarism and it allowed for a distinction between training AI models on purchased content and training it on pirated material. That last point should have Silicon Valley nervious, since so many large firms–hi, Meta–could not resist taking that copyright-infringing shortcut.
6/26/2025: Comcast’s New Plans Dump the Data Caps, PCMag
This is a post I have wanted to be able to write for years. I guess seeing enough subscribers flee for unlimited-data offerings of fiber and fixed-wireless services had a persuasive effect on Comcast’s management that my own posts denouncing this exercise in abuse of market power did not.
6/27/2025: Aurora hits a self-driving trucking milestone, Fast Company
One of my editors suggested that Aurora launching commercial deliveries via its self-driving trucks meant it was time to revisit the company I’d profiled for Fast Co. last summer. Conveniently enough, Aurora’s president Ossa Fisher was one of the speakers at Web Summit Vancouver, allowing me to interview her IRL during that conference.
6/27/2025: Sorry, Pornhub Fans: Supreme Court Upholds Texas Age-Verification Law, PCMag
I had this case on my list of opinions to look for on the Supreme Court’s site Friday morning, with an idea that my lede would have to reference Avenue Q’s “The Internet Is For Porn” regardless of the outcome. I’m surprised nobody else seems to have gone with that. After publication, my editor added statements about the decision from a few interested parties.
6/27/2025: That ‘Universal Service Charge’ on Your Phone Bill Isn’t Going Away, PCMag
As I was working on a post about the Texas case, I saw this opinion pop up and realized that I should write about that as well. In the hours that passed, my inbox accumulated comments from a variety of groups–including telecom trade associations that in other scenarios want the government to butt out–applauding this decision.
6/28/2025: For Electronics Makers in Latin America, the Roller-Coaster Ride Is Worse Than Just Paying a High Tariff, PCMag
I started writing this piece from my hotel in Mexico City hours before my departure and then needed another week to check with NielsenIQ to see if they had any stats about the effects of tariffs on the country and then find time to finish and file the thing.
#ageVerification #AITraining #Anthropic #Aurora #autonomousTrucks #autonomousVehicles #Comcast #ComcastDataCaps #copyright #dataCaps #ElectronicsHomeMexico #FirstAmendment #LLMs #MarkVena #podcast #SupremeCourt #tariffs #UniversalServiceFund #USF #VerizonCustomerService #VerizonSupport #Vz #Xfinity
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This year began with one professional streak continuing, in the form of my covering CES in person for the 25th time in a row, followed by another ending: USA Today dropped my column after 11 years. And now it’s ending with my having written for multiple new clients, two more than once.
So I’ll call 2023 a story of growth, even if I’m a little irked at myself for slacking off on pitching some of these new outlets more often. It was also a story of growth at my most frequent outlet, PCMag, where I was able to share such interesting new experiences with readers as seeing a rocket launch up close for the first time since 2018, sampling Starlink broadband from a chair in the sky, and taking the helm of a battery-electric hydrofoil.
Among all the posts I wrote for various clients, these ones stand out for me:
- I used my perch at Fast Company to tee off on Twitter’s lapsed transparency reporting, one of many cases of blatant hypocrisy in Elon Musk’s incompetent stewardship of the social platform he has since renamed X and I have since quit supporting with new free writing.
- In my first piece for AARP, I drew upon the insight of information-security experts I’ve know for years to suggest that the threat models of most people don’t require paying for anti-virus software.
- After more than 15 years of reading Greater Greater Washington, I wrote something for that site beyond a comment: a post explaining why military flyovers keep taking people by surprise. For several months after, the District’s AlertDC system seemed to do a better job of notifying people of impending free airshows associated with Arlington Cemetery burials, and I’d like to think my story had something to do with that.
- A friend’s temporary stint editing at the New Republic led to my breaking down a judge’s reactionary ruling over alleged social-media censorship by the Biden administration; the piece aged vastly better than Judge Terry A. Doughty’s incoherent injunction, since reeled back under appeal and now awaiting the Supreme Court’s scrutiny.
- An extended test of the experience of running Windows on a Qualcomm processor inside a borrowed Lenovo ThinkPad x13s yielded a feature at PCMag reporting compatibility and performance issues arising from the interactions of software with that computer’s Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 chip that I hadn’t seen covered elsewhere.
- After years of pointing out the uselessness of 8K TVs for the vast majority of home viewers, I told PCMag readers about the emptiness of Samsung’s pitch for that format at the IFA trade show in Berlin–and about the Consumer Technology Association’s shriveling shipment forecasts for 8K TVs.
- Most of my Fast Company stories involve some extended reporting time, but I turned around a piece unpacking Facebook’s history of bad-faith behavior towards the media in a few days. It seems that being mad at a company can be a motivating factor for me.
- In a piece for the telecom trade pub Light Reading, I shared how even wireless-industry executives are already showing signs of weariness over early hype over “6G.”
Once again, speaking at conferences took me to some new parts of the world–but this time, they included a continent and an entire hemisphere I’d never visited before. My trip to Brazil for the new Rio de Janeiro edition of Web Summit was my favorite, treating me to the fascinating sight of constellations different from the ones I’ve known my entire life. (I’m saying that even after picking up a mild case of covid there that never felt worse than a cold and was gone within days–further proof that vaccines work–that I did not transmit to anybody at home.) It was also a treat to visit Croatia in September for Infobip’s Shift developer conference and see the country that one set of great-grandparents had left 110 years earlier.
And as ever, one of the best parts of every trip was landing at National or Dulles and then coming home.
(You can see a map of those flights after the jump.)
I created the map below at the Great Circle Mapper site, following the instructions Tiffany Funk first shared in 2016 at the One Mile At A Time blog. The predominant shade of blue represents flights on United and codeshare flights on Brussels Airlines and Swiss, while other colors, some of which may be impossible to differentiate, represent American and Turkish Airlines (various shades of red), Copa and Croatia Airlines (other hues of blue), Gol (orange), Icelandair (dark blue), and Southwest (yet another shade of blue).
Map generated by the Great Circle Mapper – copyright © Karl L. Swartz.
https://robpegoraro.com/2023/12/20/2023-in-review-changes-in-latitudes/
#2023InReview #businessDevelopment #businessTravel #conferences #Covid #freelancing #yearInReview
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The Washington Post’s site, apps and print edition featured many more anonymous sources than usual Thursday–in the form of generic “Washington Post Staff” bylines above previously-filed stories, reflecting the one-day strike called by the paper’s union to protest 18 months of unproductive bargaining with management over a new contract and the more recent threat by management of newsroom layoffs.
I know that union reasonably well. The Post Guild provided me an immense amount of help when the paper ushered me out the door almost 13 years ago–I still have the union card I didn’t get until the last few months of my tenure–and every year since has provided new evidence of journalism’s susceptibility to toxic management. Solidarity is a good thing.
So I honored the union’s request to avoid engaging with the Post’s output Thursday as best as I could (the print edition showed up on our front lawn anyway) by doing nothing that would make the paper any money that day. The exercise of shunning the Post reminded me that we do have other quality local news sources that often beat the Post to stories around here–ArlNow and Greater Greater Washington come to mind.
But watching an actual Post walkout also reminded me of how much things have changed since I was there.
We had a byline strike in 2002, but the last actual walkout had happened when I was four years old–and ended badly for the union. Seemingly endless rounds of buyouts that escalated from 2008 onwards, paid for by the unicorn of an overfunded retirement fund, did suck the joy out of the newsroom. But for years we could tell ourselves that the Graham family’s private ownership was our rock and protected us from indiscriminate layoffs to meet a quarterly-earnings number.
And then Don Graham shocked the entire extended Washington Post family by selling the paper to Jeff Bezos. The Bezos bucks made enough of a difference fast enough to make me think that the paper had turned a permanent corner–the staff grew, the paper reopened bureaus it had shuttered and stationed correspondents in places it had neglected, the CMS apparently became less toxic, and Posties I saw around town no longer had metaphorical rain clouds over their heads.
(Post journalists also didn’t let up on Amazon after Bezos put down his $250 million for the paper, regularly reporting serious problems with fake reviews and workplace safety at that company.)
It’s depressing to see that the paper’s prospects, at least in management’s eyes, have dwindled so badly that the Post is now planning layoffs and, from what other ex-Posties report, grotesque cutbacks to local coverage.
It’s dismaying to know how much worse things are at many other publications–my former client USA Today comes to mind–where journalists probably envy Post employees who are demanding raises, not just continued employment.
And it’s outright enraging to see that the entire online advertising ecosystem, the subject of federal and state antitrust lawsuits targeting Google’s alleged abuses of market power, continues to compensate publishers so poorly.
But I continue to think, possibly foolishly, that people don’t set out to make themselves dumber about current events, and that business models must exist to sustain journalism that makes people smarter. And I continue to pay for a Post subscription–which I hope will lead to more money going to the people whose valuable work I appreciated reading Friday.
https://robpegoraro.com/2023/12/08/solidarity-with-striking-posties/
#bylineStrike #DonGraham #JeffBezos #organizedLabor #PostGuild #Posties #solidarity #union #walkout #washingtonPost #WashingtonPostStrike
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DIY doings: components, cables and code
I’ve been playing with gadgets ever since my dad let me and my brother take apart an old calculator for fun, but until last week I had never wielded a soldering iron to connect electronic components.
My chance to remedy that oversight came at the end of a tour of a redone Radio Shack store across the street from the Verizon Center Phone Booth in downtown D.C.
After getting the company pitch about its screen-repair services, inspecting some Kodak camera modules made to clip onto phones, and playing with a littleBits synthesizer kit, I was invited to assemble a tiny LED flashlight by soldering the required parts to a small circuit board.
Dripping the molten flux onto the right contacts revealed itself to be a painstakingly precise, hold-your-breath task. I needed coaching from the rep manning that station, after which he had to redo some of my work–making me think this whole project was perhaps more like when our toddler puts together some arts-and-crafts project “with help.” But a few minutes later, I did have my own tiny, battery-powered flashlight.
I had also completed my first hardware tinkering in a while.
The last time I’d cracked a computer’s case was two years ago, when I doubled the memory in my iMac (Apple has since made that at-home upgrade impossible on newer models) and then swapped out my ThinkPad’s hard drive for a solid state drive. Either chore involved less work and anxiety than the multiple transplants I performed on my old Power Computing Mac clone in the ’90s, including two processor upgrades and a cooling fan replacement.
While we’re keeping score, I last seriously messed with wiring when I strung some Ethernet cable from the basement to an outlet behind our TV to prepare for our Fios install in 2010. Going to that trouble, including terminating the bulk cable and attaching plugs myself, allowed me to use my choice of routers on our Internet-only setup.
The crimping tool I used for that task hasn’t seen much use since, but I’d like to think I’m still capable of moving a phone, power, or coax cable outlet. Especially if given a spare length of cable on which to practice first.
My DIY credentials are weakest when it comes to code. I learned entry-level BASIC in grade school but now recall little of the syntax beyond IF/THEN and GOTO. I used to lean on AppleScript to ease my Mac workflow, but now Automator lets me create shortcuts without having to remember the precise phrasing required after AppleScript statements like “tell application ‘Finder’.” My HTML skills now stretch little further than writing out the “<a href=” hypertext link.
I do, however, still grasp such important basics as the importance of valid input and proper syntax, how easy errors can crop up and how much time it can take to step through functions to figure out what threw the error. For anything more complicated, the usual reporting technique comes into play: Ask as many dumb questions as needed to get a little smarter on the subject.
#AppleScript #BASIC #coding #crimpingTool #DIY #EthernetCable #hardwareUpgrade #solderingIron #SSDUpgrade
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DIY doings: components, cables and code
I’ve been playing with gadgets ever since my dad let me and my brother take apart an old calculator for fun, but until last week I had never wielded a soldering iron to connect electronic components.
My chance to remedy that oversight came at the end of a tour of a redone Radio Shack store across the street from the Verizon Center Phone Booth in downtown D.C.
After getting the company pitch about its screen-repair services, inspecting some Kodak camera modules made to clip onto phones, and playing with a littleBits synthesizer kit, I was invited to assemble a tiny LED flashlight by soldering the required parts to a small circuit board.
Dripping the molten flux onto the right contacts revealed itself to be a painstakingly precise, hold-your-breath task. I needed coaching from the rep manning that station, after which he had to redo some of my work–making me think this whole project was perhaps more like when our toddler puts together some arts-and-crafts project “with help.” But a few minutes later, I did have my own tiny, battery-powered flashlight.
I had also completed my first hardware tinkering in a while.
The last time I’d cracked a computer’s case was two years ago, when I doubled the memory in my iMac (Apple has since made that at-home upgrade impossible on newer models) and then swapped out my ThinkPad’s hard drive for a solid state drive. Either chore involved less work and anxiety than the multiple transplants I performed on my old Power Computing Mac clone in the ’90s, including two processor upgrades and a cooling fan replacement.
While we’re keeping score, I last seriously messed with wiring when I strung some Ethernet cable from the basement to an outlet behind our TV to prepare for our Fios install in 2010. Going to that trouble, including terminating the bulk cable and attaching plugs myself, allowed me to use my choice of routers on our Internet-only setup.
The crimping tool I used for that task hasn’t seen much use since, but I’d like to think I’m still capable of moving a phone, power, or coax cable outlet. Especially if given a spare length of cable on which to practice first.
My DIY credentials are weakest when it comes to code. I learned entry-level BASIC in grade school but now recall little of the syntax beyond IF/THEN and GOTO. I used to lean on AppleScript to ease my Mac workflow, but now Automator lets me create shortcuts without having to remember the precise phrasing required after AppleScript statements like “tell application ‘Finder’.” My HTML skills now stretch little further than writing out the “<a href=” hypertext link.
I do, however, still grasp such important basics as the importance of valid input and proper syntax, how easy errors can crop up and how much time it can take to step through functions to figure out what threw the error. For anything more complicated, the usual reporting technique comes into play: Ask as many dumb questions as needed to get a little smarter on the subject.
#AppleScript #BASIC #coding #crimpingTool #DIY #EthernetCable #hardwareUpgrade #solderingIron #SSDUpgrade
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DIY doings: components, cables and code
I’ve been playing with gadgets ever since my dad let me and my brother take apart an old calculator for fun, but until last week I had never wielded a soldering iron to connect electronic components.
My chance to remedy that oversight came at the end of a tour of a redone Radio Shack store across the street from the Verizon Center Phone Booth in downtown D.C.
After getting the company pitch about its screen-repair services, inspecting some Kodak camera modules made to clip onto phones, and playing with a littleBits synthesizer kit, I was invited to assemble a tiny LED flashlight by soldering the required parts to a small circuit board.
Dripping the molten flux onto the right contacts revealed itself to be a painstakingly precise, hold-your-breath task. I needed coaching from the rep manning that station, after which he had to redo some of my work–making me think this whole project was perhaps more like when our toddler puts together some arts-and-crafts project “with help.” But a few minutes later, I did have my own tiny, battery-powered flashlight.
I had also completed my first hardware tinkering in a while.
The last time I’d cracked a computer’s case was two years ago, when I doubled the memory in my iMac (Apple has since made that at-home upgrade impossible on newer models) and then swapped out my ThinkPad’s hard drive for a solid state drive. Either chore involved less work and anxiety than the multiple transplants I performed on my old Power Computing Mac clone in the ’90s, including two processor upgrades and a cooling fan replacement.
While we’re keeping score, I last seriously messed with wiring when I strung some Ethernet cable from the basement to an outlet behind our TV to prepare for our Fios install in 2010. Going to that trouble, including terminating the bulk cable and attaching plugs myself, allowed me to use my choice of routers on our Internet-only setup.
The crimping tool I used for that task hasn’t seen much use since, but I’d like to think I’m still capable of moving a phone, power, or coax cable outlet. Especially if given a spare length of cable on which to practice first.
My DIY credentials are weakest when it comes to code. I learned entry-level BASIC in grade school but now recall little of the syntax beyond IF/THEN and GOTO. I used to lean on AppleScript to ease my Mac workflow, but now Automator lets me create shortcuts without having to remember the precise phrasing required after AppleScript statements like “tell application ‘Finder’.” My HTML skills now stretch little further than writing out the “<a href=” hypertext link.
I do, however, still grasp such important basics as the importance of valid input and proper syntax, how easy errors can crop up and how much time it can take to step through functions to figure out what threw the error. For anything more complicated, the usual reporting technique comes into play: Ask as many dumb questions as needed to get a little smarter on the subject.
#AppleScript #BASIC #coding #crimpingTool #DIY #EthernetCable #hardwareUpgrade #solderingIron #SSDUpgrade
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DIY doings: components, cables and code
I’ve been playing with gadgets ever since my dad let me and my brother take apart an old calculator for fun, but until last week I had never wielded a soldering iron to connect electronic components.
My chance to remedy that oversight came at the end of a tour of a redone Radio Shack store across the street from the Verizon Center Phone Booth in downtown D.C.
After getting the company pitch about its screen-repair services, inspecting some Kodak camera modules made to clip onto phones, and playing with a littleBits synthesizer kit, I was invited to assemble a tiny LED flashlight by soldering the required parts to a small circuit board.
Dripping the molten flux onto the right contacts revealed itself to be a painstakingly precise, hold-your-breath task. I needed coaching from the rep manning that station, after which he had to redo some of my work–making me think this whole project was perhaps more like when our toddler puts together some arts-and-crafts project “with help.” But a few minutes later, I did have my own tiny, battery-powered flashlight.
I had also completed my first hardware tinkering in a while.
The last time I’d cracked a computer’s case was two years ago, when I doubled the memory in my iMac (Apple has since made that at-home upgrade impossible on newer models) and then swapped out my ThinkPad’s hard drive for a solid state drive. Either chore involved less work and anxiety than the multiple transplants I performed on my old Power Computing Mac clone in the ’90s, including two processor upgrades and a cooling fan replacement.
While we’re keeping score, I last seriously messed with wiring when I strung some Ethernet cable from the basement to an outlet behind our TV to prepare for our Fios install in 2010. Going to that trouble, including terminating the bulk cable and attaching plugs myself, allowed me to use my choice of routers on our Internet-only setup.
The crimping tool I used for that task hasn’t seen much use since, but I’d like to think I’m still capable of moving a phone, power, or coax cable outlet. Especially if given a spare length of cable on which to practice first.
My DIY credentials are weakest when it comes to code. I learned entry-level BASIC in grade school but now recall little of the syntax beyond IF/THEN and GOTO. I used to lean on AppleScript to ease my Mac workflow, but now Automator lets me create shortcuts without having to remember the precise phrasing required after AppleScript statements like “tell application ‘Finder’.” My HTML skills now stretch little further than writing out the “<a href=” hypertext link.
I do, however, still grasp such important basics as the importance of valid input and proper syntax, how easy errors can crop up and how much time it can take to step through functions to figure out what threw the error. For anything more complicated, the usual reporting technique comes into play: Ask as many dumb questions as needed to get a little smarter on the subject.
#AppleScript #BASIC #coding #crimpingTool #DIY #EthernetCable #hardwareUpgrade #solderingIron #SSDUpgrade
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DIY doings: components, cables and code
I’ve been playing with gadgets ever since my dad let me and my brother take apart an old calculator for fun, but until last week I had never wielded a soldering iron to connect electronic components.
My chance to remedy that oversight came at the end of a tour of a redone Radio Shack store across the street from the Verizon Center Phone Booth in downtown D.C.
After getting the company pitch about its screen-repair services, inspecting some Kodak camera modules made to clip onto phones, and playing with a littleBits synthesizer kit, I was invited to assemble a tiny LED flashlight by soldering the required parts to a small circuit board.
Dripping the molten flux onto the right contacts revealed itself to be a painstakingly precise, hold-your-breath task. I needed coaching from the rep manning that station, after which he had to redo some of my work–making me think this whole project was perhaps more like when our toddler puts together some arts-and-crafts project “with help.” But a few minutes later, I did have my own tiny, battery-powered flashlight.
I had also completed my first hardware tinkering in a while.
The last time I’d cracked a computer’s case was two years ago, when I doubled the memory in my iMac (Apple has since made that at-home upgrade impossible on newer models) and then swapped out my ThinkPad’s hard drive for a solid state drive. Either chore involved less work and anxiety than the multiple transplants I performed on my old Power Computing Mac clone in the ’90s, including two processor upgrades and a cooling fan replacement.
While we’re keeping score, I last seriously messed with wiring when I strung some Ethernet cable from the basement to an outlet behind our TV to prepare for our Fios install in 2010. Going to that trouble, including terminating the bulk cable and attaching plugs myself, allowed me to use my choice of routers on our Internet-only setup.
The crimping tool I used for that task hasn’t seen much use since, but I’d like to think I’m still capable of moving a phone, power, or coax cable outlet. Especially if given a spare length of cable on which to practice first.
My DIY credentials are weakest when it comes to code. I learned entry-level BASIC in grade school but now recall little of the syntax beyond IF/THEN and GOTO. I used to lean on AppleScript to ease my Mac workflow, but now Automator lets me create shortcuts without having to remember the precise phrasing required after AppleScript statements like “tell application ‘Finder’.” My HTML skills now stretch little further than writing out the “<a href=” hypertext link.
I do, however, still grasp such important basics as the importance of valid input and proper syntax, how easy errors can crop up and how much time it can take to step through functions to figure out what threw the error. For anything more complicated, the usual reporting technique comes into play: Ask as many dumb questions as needed to get a little smarter on the subject.
#AppleScript #BASIC #coding #crimpingTool #DIY #EthernetCable #hardwareUpgrade #solderingIron #SSDUpgrade
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Inteligentne oprawki od optyka. Meta szykuje nowe Ray-Bany specjalnie dla okularników
Obecna generacja inteligentnych okularów od Marka Zuckerberga okazała się sporym sukcesem, ale firma ma apetyt na znacznie więcej.
Z najnowszych przecieków wynika, że Meta przygotowuje dwa nowe modele Ray-Banów, stworzone od podstaw z myślą o rynku osób z wadami wzroku. Wprawdzie już teraz można zamontować soczewki korekcyjne w standardowych wariantach Meta Ray-Ban, jednak nadchodzące nowości mają być zoptymalizowane specjalnie pod ten konkretny scenariusz. Wejście w świat tradycyjnej optyki to logiczny krok w strategii firmy, która chce, aby sztuczna inteligencja towarzyszyła nam na każdym kroku.
Technologia dopasowana do wady wzroku
Z informacji opublikowanych przez zachodnie serwisy technologiczne wynika, że nowe modele ukrywają się pod nazwami kodowymi „Scriber” oraz „Blazer”. Zaoferują one odpowiednio prostokątny i zaokrąglony kształt oprawek. Choć producent nie ujawnił jeszcze szczegółów technicznych, branżowe źródła sugerują, że inżynierowie mogli przeprojektować rozkład masy, grubość ramek oraz system zarządzania baterią. Wszystko po to, aby sprzęt lepiej sprawdzał się jako podstawowe okulary noszone bez przerwy przez kilkanaście godzin.
Co istotne z rynkowego punktu widzenia, nowe warianty mają być sprzedawane przez tradycyjne kanały dystrybucji optycznej. Oznacza to, że po inteligentne Ray-Bany udamy się do lokalnego salonu, gdzie specjalista od razu dobierze odpowiednie szkła (o ile nowy model trafi do Europy)
Szybszy transfer i certyfikacja sprzętu
Dokumenty z amerykańskiej agencji FCC potwierdzają, że mówimy o wersjach produkcyjnych, a nie wczesnych prototypach. Premiera zbliża się więc wielkimi krokami. Z wniosków certyfikacyjnych dowiadujemy się również, że wariant „Blazer” będzie dostępny w zauważalnie większym rozmiarze, co rozwiąże problem wielu użytkowników narzekających na ciasne oprawki obecnej generacji.
Oba modele otrzymają wsparcie dla szybkiego pasma Wi-Fi 6 UNII-4. Ten niepozorny, techniczny detal to spora zmiana – lepszy i stabilniejszy transfer danych powinien sprawdzić się chociażby podczas prowadzenia transmisji wideo na żywo, z których słyną okulary Mety. Zgodnie z przewidywaniami, sprzęt nadal nie będzie posiadał wbudowanego wyświetlacza, stawiając w całości na dyskretne kamery, głośniki i interakcje głosowe z asystentem AI.
Celowanie w miliardy użytkowników
Podczas ostatniego spotkania z inwestorami Mark Zuckerberg bardzo jasno nakreślił swoją wizję przyszłości. Przypomniał, że miliardy ludzi na świecie noszą na co dzień okulary lub soczewki kontaktowe, a za kilka lat trudno będzie wyobrazić sobie sytuację, w której większość z tych oprawek nie będzie pełnić funkcji inteligentnych asystentów.
Wprowadzenie wyspecjalizowanych modeli do klasycznych salonów optycznych to strategiczny ruch. Meta nie chce już tylko sprzedawać modnych gadżetów na wakacje – zamierza przenieść technologię wearable z niszy wprost na nosy zwykłych, wymagających użytkowników.
#inteligentneOkulary #MarkZuckerberg #MetaRayBan #MetaSmartGlasses #okularyKorekcyjneAI #RayBanBlazer #RayBanScriber #technologiaUbieralna #wearablesPierwsze wrażenia z Meta Ray-Ban Wayfarer – rób zdjęcia, wideo lub livestreamuj
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Nie chcesz kamery na twarzy? Te inteligentne okulary stawiają na dyskrecję i sterowanie pierścieniem
Podczas gdy Ray-Ban Meta zamieniają nasze twarze w chodzące kamery, firma Even Realities idzie w zupełnie przeciwnym kierunku.
Ich nowe okulary Even G2 nie mają ani kamery, ani głośników. Zamiast tego oferują większy wyświetlacz micro-LED i nowy sposób sterowania: inteligentny pierścień R1.
Firma Even Realities zaprezentowała właśnie drugą generację swoich inteligentnych okularów oraz – po raz pierwszy – pierścień R1, który służy do ich obsługi. To propozycja dla tych, którzy chcą dyskretnego rozszerzenia smartfona, a nie komputera na twarzy.
Even G2: lżejsze i z lepszym ekranem
Nowe G2 wizualnie przypominają poprzedni model, co jest zaletą, bo nadal wyglądają jak luksusowe, stylowe oprawki. Są jednak znacznie lżejsze od poprzednika (tylko 36 gramów) i wykonane ze stopu tytanu i magnezu. Zyskały też oficjalną wodoodporność IP67.
Najważniejszą zmianą jest jednak wyświetlacz. Nowa generacja (Even HAO 2.0) wykorzystuje projektory micro-LED, które oferują obraz o 75% większy, ostrzejszy i jaśniejszy niż w modelu G1. Dziennikarz WIRED, który miał okazję je przymierzyć, potwierdza, że poprawa jest zauważalna. Okulary kosztują 599 dolarów.
Even R1: pierścień, który jest kontrolerem i trackerem
Okularami można sterować dotykowo, ale prawdziwą nowością jest pierścień Even R1. To wykonany ze stali i ceramiki sygnet, który pozwala na przewijanie i wybieranie opcji na wyświetlaczu okularów.
Co ciekawe, R1 to także pełnoprawny tracker zdrowia. Monitoruje kroki, tętno, sen, a nawet natlenienie krwi (SpO2). W przeciwieństwie do innych pierścieni, dane te można wyświetlić bezpośrednio na ekranie okularów G2. Cena pierścienia to 249 dolarów.
Do czego to służy?
Skoro nie ma kamery, okulary skupiają się na produktywności i informacjach. Główne funkcje to:
- Wyświetlanie powiadomień.
- Tłumaczenie rozmów na żywo.
- Wskazówki nawigacji pieszej.
- Listy zadań i notatki.
Ciekawą funkcją jest Teleprompter – Palmer Luckey (założyciel Oculusa) przyznał, że używał pierwszej generacji tych okularów podczas wystąpienia na TED, by dyskretnie zerkać na notatki.
Nowością jest też funkcja AI o nazwie „Conversate”. Po jej włączeniu, asystent kontekstowo analizuje rozmowę (tylko transkrypcję, audio nie jest zapisywane), sugerując pytania lub podsumowując spotkanie.
Julian Chokkattu z WIRED studzi jednak entuzjazm – w jego egzemplarzu testowym oprogramowanie pierścienia R1 wciąż miało sporo błędów, a dane zdrowotne nie zawsze się synchronizowały. To pokazuje, że Even Realities to wciąż mały gracz rzucający wyzwanie gigantom, który musi dopracować swoje produkty, niemniej ich wizja „okularów bez szpiegowania” jest kusząca.
Pierwsze wrażenia z Meta Ray-Ban Wayfarer – rób zdjęcia, wideo lub livestreamuj
#alternatywa #evenG2 #evenR1 #inteligentneOkulary #inteligentnyPierscien #metaRayBan #news #smartGlasses
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Sometimes I can make an expensive hardware purchase quickly
I won’t say that I always research potential purchases to an obsessive degree, because first I’d have to fact-check that statement by researching my Web history to an obsessive degree. But I can say with reasonable certainty that I usually don’t buy anything with a four-figure price without first reading more than one review of the device in question.
Except when I don’t, which this week started with my plucking a jar of leftover bacon fat (what, you don’t have one?) out of the fridge and realizing it was not quite its usual cold self.
I grabbed our ThermoWorks remote infrared thermometer (what, you don’t have one?) and realized that our barely 10-year-old Samsung had developed a series of microclimates–warmer at the top, normally-cold temps at the bottom–that should not exist in a functioning refrigerator.
The French-door model we’d bought at the end of 2014 after extensive reading of Wirecutter and Consumer Reports review had already been aging badly, like those of other Samsung purchasers. The front-door icemaker had stopped working a couple of years ago even as the fridge had started growing icebergs at the bottom and back of its refrigerator compartment.
Instead of paying for yet another repair that would push off this decision, one longer-term risk and one short-term factor pushed me to pick a replacement.
First, Trump’s tariff schemes already look to be making a lot of household appliances more expensive. I suppose they might miraculously inspire trade deals that leave imports cheaper–but after all the opening economic chaos of this administration, why would I want to take avoidable financial chances on the tumbling Trump dice?
Second, Bosch held a sale. I’d already been thinking of that company as a possibility after months of satisfactory experience with the Bosch dishwasher and induction range we got as part of last year’s overdue kitchen renovation, and a hands-on inspection of that German firm’s latest hardware at CES 2025 gave me a little more confidence.
And that steered my choice of which fridge to get, even with inexact advice from reviewers.
Consumer Reports’ guidance was a little behind, while Wirecutter’s advice focused on fridges without in-door icemakers. And neither had reviewed the Bosch model I had in mind. But CR’s owner-satisfaction metrics revealed long-term confidence in Bosch’s work that was not matched in reader assessments of LG and Whirlpool, two other brands I’d considered.
So I went ahead with the purchase–after first chiseling away at our costs by buying some AARP-discounted Best Buy gift cards–and now I can look forward to the results being delivered and set up next weekend. I hope that they live up to my expectations, at least enough to make me not regret this post in a year or five or 10.
I also hope that our car can hold out until 2026, because after also having our house’s roof replaced, we’ve spent quite enough on household capital expenditures this year.
#applianceReviews #appliances #Bosch #capex #capitalExpenditures #ces #fridge #LG #refrigerator #Samsung #TrumpTariffs #TrumpUncertainty #Whirlpool
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@ber @GnuPG @rob Thanks! I'll point the lurkers to the mailing list for my full response, which I agree is better in long form: https://lists.gnupg.org/pipermail/gnupg-users/2026-April/068288.html
The tl;dr though is simple: the burning issue is a power struggle between a collective governance model (#OpenPGP) and a BDFL governance model (#LibrePGP). There isn't room for both. And while we can all try to be more civil, calling out bad behaviour will always have the appearance of incivility.
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Weekly output: Mozilla Firefox CEO, AI crawlers vs. publishers and creators, teenage AI chatbot use, Android Live Emergency Video, PCMag’s best tech bought in 2025, World App
Somehow I’m down to the last full workweek of the year–and yet my writing and gift shopping seem to have more than a week’s worth of work remaining.
12/8/2025: Mozilla is doing a delicate dance with AI, Fast Company
I spoke with Mozilla CEO Laura Chambers at a Web Summit event for the second time this year. One thing Firefox’s management no longer needs to worry about, unlike when I met with Chambers at Web Summit Qatar in February: the threat of Google being forced to stop paying browser developers to keep its search engine as the default.
12/9/2025: AI Platforms Are Paying (Some) Big Publishers, Leaving Smaller Ones Behind, PCMag
This post began with me taking notes from a Web Summit panel featuring Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince talking about that Internet infrastructure company’s Pay Per Crawl initiative to push AI providers to pay Web publishers for access to their content, then I did some follow-up reporting that included setting up Cloudflare’s AI Crawl Control bot-blocking filter on this blog, and then I had to update the post the morning it was published after the European Commission opened an investigation into how Google runs its AI Overview search feature.
12/9/2025: 28% of Teens Use Chatbots Daily. You Can Probably Guess Which One They Like Best, PCMag
The latest survey by the Pew Research Center surfaced some interesting statistics about how much teenagers use AI chatbots and which ones they use the most.
12/10/2025: Need Help? Android Phones Can Now Share Live Video With 911 Dispatchers, PCMag
Google is shipping this feature a year after Apple did, but its emergency live video implementation works on far more devices than Apple’s.
12/11/2025: The Best Tech PCMag Editors Bought in 2025, PCMag
I wrote a short graf lauding the compact, quick-charging (and Wirecutter-endorsed) USB-C charger that I bought after losing the considerably bulkier model that came with my laptop.
12/13/2025: App That Verifies Your Existence Adds Encrypted Messaging, PCMag
Tools for Humanity announced an update to its World App that adds an end-to-end-encrypted chat feature and expands its cryptocurrency tools. I took advantage of this news peg to try out the app’s ability to verify a “World ID” by scanning the NFC tag on my U.S. passport; that did not go well at all for me.
12/15/2025: Updated to add the PCMag best-tech package that I forgot to check for on Sunday.
#AIChatbot #AIOverview #AISearch #ChatGPT #Firefox #GoogleZero #Mozilla #PayPerCrawl #PewResearchCenter #ToolsForHumanity #WebSummit #WorldApp #WorldID
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“It is not a romantic Tale that the Reader is here presented with, but a real History. Not the Adventures of a Robinson Crusoe, a Colonel Jack, or a Moll Flanders, but the Actions of the HIGHLAND ROGUE…”
Rob Roy MacGregor was baptised #OnThisDay, 7 March, 1671. Walter Scott’s novel made the #Scottish #outlaw internationally famous – & created the model for today’s roguish antiheroes
#SirWalterScott #literature #history #RobRoy
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Since March, stovetop cooking hasn’t sounded the same in our kitchen. Instead of the click-click-click-poof of a gas burner igniting, turning recipe ingredients in a pan or pot into a meal begins with the beeps of buttons on a touch-sensitive display and then the pulsing buzz of an induction coil.
Replacing the gas range that had come with our house when we moved in 20 years ago, and which had become increasingly iffy about having two of its burners light, was an unquestionable part of finally getting the kitchen redone. Getting an induction range did not seem as obvious until some contemplation about how we’d want to end the need to burn fossil fuels in the house every day1 and learning more about the health risks of gas burners in unventilated kitchens.
Five months into cooking with the Bosch induction range2 we picked out, several impressions stand out:
- The cooking surfaces really do heat up quickly–I almost botched one of the first pots of rice I cooked when I didn’t realize the water was already boiling. If you cook pasta with any regularity, an induction cooktop is your new friend.
- Induction surfaces are also responsive in a way no gas burner is, almost immediately cooling down when you turn down or turn off the heat. They also let you keep a pan on minimal heat without worrying about gas flames blowing out.
- That buzzing noise can sound weird, especially when it’s louder with particular pieces of cookware for reasons that I have yet to figure out. On the other hand, I’ve decided that I like the beeps the touch controls make as I tap them; the experience feels a little like cooking on the bridge of NCC-1701-D.
- Not every pot or pan heats up as quickly. The All-Clad stainless-steel cookware we got with our wedding works great, as does the Wirecutter-endorsed nonstick pan we bought to replace one that wasn’t induction compatible (determined by a magnet not sticking to its underside). But the griddle pan we bought to retire another induction-incompatible model takes longer to heat up than I’d like.
- Because the cooktop is so smooth, a pot or pan will spin around or slide away from the induction element very easily. That unbroken surface, however, is also super-easy to clean.
- As you might expect with any stove swap, it takes some time to adjust muscle memory for one range’s output for another’s, which can be a issue for particularly temperature-sensitive recipes.
- The embedded electronics in an induction cooktop may make fussy moments possible, and I may have seen one happen after our kid left the oven on for too long after baking cookies. That apparently heated up the cooktop enough for it to balk at turning on a cooktop coil for a few minutes.
After those five months, I not only don’t miss cooking with gas but have been reminded of what I don’t miss when I’ve used other people’s gas stovetops where some burners don’t light up reliably. But it’s also easy for me to say that when we still have a gas grill on the back patio for the not-everyday experience of cooking with fire.
- Replacing the 2018-vintage gas furnace and water heater with more efficient heat-pump units will be a task for another year. ↩︎
- Yes, that is an expensive piece of hardware. And well worth it considering all of the time I spend in the kitchen! ↩︎
https://robpegoraro.com/2024/08/16/home-on-the-induction-range/
#Bosch #cookingWithGas #hob #homeElectrification #induction #inductionCooktop #inductionRange #inductionStove #magnetic
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Forest-fire model in #dusa+#p5js
https://editor.p5js.org/robsimmons/sketches/nLlyYX9E4
I think the way-too-slow problem was a combination of both of the upthread-listed issues. I'm sure I can still make this 100x faster, but pulling out the RNG to the JavaScript level makes this work not-terribly.
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Years later than you might have expected, given my line of work, I’ve finally hit the dubious milestone of owning a major appliance with its own Internet Protocol address and mobile app–the Bosch dishwasher we procured as part of an overdue and immensely-appreciated kitchen renovation.
I didn’t pick this 300-series SHE53C85N model because of that connected-home possibility. (I try not to use “smart” as an adjective when describing non-computer devices that can now be monitored and commanded over the Internet, because that’s giving a compliment that may not be earned.) I bought this dishwasher because Wirecutter recommended it, and I know the attention to detail practiced by the staff at my client.
But having flipped through the dishwasher’s manual and seen a note that some dishwashing cycles were only available through Bosch’s Home Connect app, I had to see if this corner of the connected-home future would live up to the glitzy presentations I see at trade shows like CES and IFA.
After installing the Home Connect on my Android phone, the app greeted me with a picture of a woman (note to Bosch: guys do dishes too) surrounded by appliance icons and this headline: “Infinite possibilities. Take full control of your home appliances.” But before I could take control of anything, the app first had me create a “SingleKey ID” account (skimming the privacy policy revealed that Bosch could use IP-derived location data to adjust appliances to match local water hardness), secured by default only with a password (the SingleKey site let me add two-factor authentication but only via text messaging, an underdone security UX that needs to go back in the oven).
Pairing the dishwasher with my phone took three tries, either because I didn’t wait long enough after turning the dishwasher on to press the “Remote start”/WiFi button or because I didn’t press the WiFi button long enough, or because the setup was just finicky. But then it worked, rewarding me with a “Congratulations!” screen.
My WiFi router’s app promptly notified me of the new device’s appearance on our home network, then disappointed me by not including a dishwasher icon among its lengthy list of connected-home devices that I could apply to the new device’s listing in that Synology app.
The Home Connect app’s onboarding sequence then had me select a default rinse-aid setting, decline or accept an Extra Dry default, set the volume for the dishwasher’s beeps, name the dishwasher (because it was late, I opted for “Dishwasher”), and choose what sort of remote control I’d allow.
The default for that last item was “Manual remote start,” where you have to press the dishwasher’s Remote start button before it will take commands from the app; I opted for “Monitoring,” then was confused to see no option in the app to select any of these app-only wash cycles.
Switching back to “Manual remote start” revealed that I can set custom cycles by selecting what I’m going to put in the dishwasher, how dirty those items are, and what my priorities are between cleanliness, efficiency, dryness, sanitization, silence and speed, then save that as a customized cycle. The last page of that setup interface reports the cycle’s estimated water temperature, time, and energy and water inputs, which for the app-only Eco cycle would be 113° F, an hour and 20 minutes, four gallons of water and .65 kilowatt hours.
I can’t lie: Getting that level of usage detail does appeal to my nerdy side. I can also see myself setting a custom cycle optimized for quiet when we have guests over, then adding another the next time I need to sanitize several dozen empty beer bottles for a future batch of homebrewed beer. So although this makes me feel a little dirty in a way that no connected dishwasher can make clean, I suppose I’ll keep this app around for a bit longer.
#Bosch #BoschSHE53C85N #connectedHome #dishWashCycle #dishwasher #HomeConnect #SingleKeyID #smartHome #Wirecutter
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WAILEA, Hawaii–I’m spending the next four days here in the middle of the Pacific, but not for fun. Instead, Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Summit has called me here as it did in 2023, with Qualcomm once again covering airfare and lodging. I’ll be covering the event for PCMag, and a disclosure about that in all the copy that I file from here.
Patreon readers got a bonus post this week about the lengths to which I went to chisel away at the cost of a new Brother multi-function color laser printer, ultimately knocking $130 off the $369.99 list price of this model.
10/15/2024: Google Ships Android 15, Unwraps New Pixel Drop for Recent Devices, PCMag
Eight months after my first post for PCMag about Android 15, I wrote about its official release. I installed it on a Pixel 8a four days later and, as I wrote here Saturday evening, found it an initially unremarkable upgrade. To repeat a reminder I offered in that post: Don’t forget to activate the new anti-theft features in this update that are not enabled by default.
10/18/2024: X’s New Rules: Blocked Posts Will No Longer Be Hidden, Your Tweets Will Train Grok AI, PCMag
The upcoming terms of service allowing AI scraping, the first change I noticed, seemed like it might not be newsworthy since X has been doing that for months. But then I also spotted the weird “liquidated damages” provision and and another requiring that any lawsuits against the company be brought in courts in a different part of Texas–and I realized that my client had not yet covered how X has begun notifying its users that the block function is about to be downgraded to a mute tool.
10/18/2024: Bluesky Boom: X Alternative Sees Surge Of Signups, PCMag
Before PCMag had gotten around to publishing my “ToS” piece, I saw another post emerging in what looks like a serious flight of users from X to Bluesky. The growth in user numbers–the decentralized platform crossed the 12-million-account line Friday–isn’t nearly as impressive as the way Bluesky’s apps have skyrocketed up the charts in the Android and iOS app stores. As of Sunday evening, Bluesky’s iOS app is ranked 19th in free apps and fourth in social apps, while its Android client is fourth and third, respectively.
It’s been equally striking to see so many old friends from Twitter who had set up Bluesky accounts start using them–especially among avgeek circles, something that’s on my mind more than usual having spent so much of this month and this day on airplanes. I’m now waiting/hoping to see more people in Virginia and Arlington politics do likewise–and if the Harris-Walz campaign will start posting on Bluesky.
https://robpegoraro.com/2024/10/20/weekly-output-android-15-x-changes-the-rules-again-bluesky-boom/
#Android15 #Bluesky #ElonMuskTwitter #GrokAI #Hawaii #PixelDrop #Qualcomm #SnapdragonSummit #TwitterBlock #X #XTerms
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Want to know what is new in GitHub Copilot with the new GPT4o-Copilot model becoming the standard model? @FokkoVeegens has got you covered! From the Xebia Copilot Videos site: https://github-copilot.xebia.ms/detail?videoId=41
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Weekly output: Mozilla Firefox CEO, AI crawlers vs. publishers and creators, teenage AI chatbot use, Android Live Emergency Video, PCMag’s best tech bought in 2025, World App
Somehow I’m down to the last full workweek of the year–and yet my writing and gift shopping seem to have more than a week’s worth of work remaining.
12/8/2025: Mozilla is doing a delicate dance with AI, Fast Company
I spoke with Mozilla CEO Laura Chambers at a Web Summit event for the second time this year. One thing Firefox’s management no longer needs to worry about, unlike when I met with Chambers at Web Summit Qatar in February: the threat of Google being forced to stop paying browser developers to keep its search engine as the default.
12/9/2025: AI Platforms Are Paying (Some) Big Publishers, Leaving Smaller Ones Behind, PCMag
This post began with me taking notes from a Web Summit panel featuring Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince talking about that Internet infrastructure company’s Pay Per Crawl initiative to push AI providers to pay Web publishers for access to their content, then I did some follow-up reporting that included setting up Cloudflare’s AI Crawl Control bot-blocking filter on this blog, and then I had to update the post the morning it was published after the European Commission opened an investigation into how Google runs its AI Overview search feature.
12/9/2025: 28% of Teens Use Chatbots Daily. You Can Probably Guess Which One They Like Best, PCMag
The latest survey by the Pew Research Center surfaced some interesting statistics about how much teenagers use AI chatbots and which ones they use the most.
12/10/2025: Need Help? Android Phones Can Now Share Live Video With 911 Dispatchers, PCMag
Google is shipping this feature a year after Apple did, but its emergency live video implementation works on far more devices than Apple’s.
12/11/2025: The Best Tech PCMag Editors Bought in 2025, PCMag
I wrote a short graf lauding the compact, quick-charging (and Wirecutter-endorsed) USB-C charger that I bought after losing the considerably bulkier model that came with my laptop.
12/13/2025: App That Verifies Your Existence Adds Encrypted Messaging, PCMag
Tools for Humanity announced an update to its World App that adds an end-to-end-encrypted chat feature and expands its cryptocurrency tools. I took advantage of this news peg to try out the app’s ability to verify a “World ID” by scanning the NFC tag on my U.S. passport; that did not go well at all for me.
12/15/2025: Updated to add the PCMag best-tech package that I forgot to check for on Sunday.
#AIChatbot #AIOverview #AISearch #ChatGPT #Firefox #GoogleZero #Mozilla #PayPerCrawl #PewResearchCenter #ToolsForHumanity #WebSummit #WorldApp #WorldID
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#ThursdayFiveList #TheLastFive (songs you listened to)
1. New Model Army - 51st State 🇬🇧 folk punk
https://song.link/y/Xpo2-nVc27I
or live from November 2025 here:
https://song.link/y/2S_x0tOLelI2. Royal Republic - Full Steam Spacemachine 🇸🇪 rock
https://song.link/y/ClEnbAeiYDM3. PsychoFace - Feelings Became An Aesthetic 🇺🇸 metal
https://song.link/y/Gvj1IhnCYLg4. Rob Zombie - Heathen Days 🇺🇸 industrial metal
https://song.link/y/XIF7abO5Als5. Gotz Widman - Kamikazefraun 🇩🇪 folk
https://song.link/y/NgqbQD1kJIw -
CES 2024 travel-tech report: a new laptop and an old phone
My messenger bag had less hardware than usual for a CES trip when I flew out Sunday morning–only one laptop and only one phone, plus their charging accessories, and no WiFi hotspots or any other review hardware to back up my own devices. In other words, I was gambling a little in Vegas.
The laptop, a 2022-model HP Spectre x360 that I purchased at about 30% off in August to replace the 2017 model that died at the end of 2021, made battery life one of my lesser worries at the show. I only recall it going into power-saving mode once, at the end of a long day that hadn’t allowed any recharging breaks.
But the HP’s fingerprint sensor became one of my bigger annoyances when it would mysteriously stop working. I’ve seen this happen before and know the fix (the old-school two step of deleting it in the Device Manager app and then having the app scan for hardware changes to restore it), but at CES this happened multiple times in a day because every tech problem gets worse at the show.
I assume that reinstalling Windows would fix this, but CES is also no time for complicated troubleshooting.
Fortunately, none was needed for the other glitch I saw: a confusing minute or two of this convertible laptop acting as if it had been folded up to use in tablet mode, ignoring physical keyboard input, that ended when I rebooted the machine.The phone was the Google Pixel 5a I had brought to the two previous CESes. It’s aged extraordinarily well overall, thanks to Google software updates that have added such useful new features as Live Transcribe–a kind of magic for interviews and press conferences.
But two years and change is a lot of charge cycles for a smartphone’s battery–on top of which, I kept using the phone as a mobile hotspot to work around spotty or nonexistent WiFi. That left me worrying about recharging this more than the laptop. At least the 5a, like most new phones, also charges quickly, so 2024 battery anxiety isn’t like the 2014 kind.
I took all of my notes at the event in Evernote, having somewhat reluctantly renewed my subscription at the new, much higher rate. (I had thought of switching to Microsoft’s OneNote, but seeing Microsoft make it harder to switch by retiring its importer app did not make me want to fuss through moving over my notes via third-party tools.) Evernote’s new management seem to have fixed this app’s sync-conflict problems, which is great, but on the phone the app would struggle to load my increasingly long CES notes in lower-bandwidth situations.
Which came up often, between T-Mobile’s 5G network appearing over capacity in some places and various WiFi networks dropping my laptop or phone randomly. I was glad I’d brought my ancient USB-to-Ethernet adapter, which let my connect the laptop to a press-room cable instead of having to edit the saved press-room WiFi network setting to add the day’s password.
I tucked one other form of old-school hardware into my bag that I found useful at CES: business cards, a form of analog data exchange that’s stayed in style at this show even as networking at other tech events has been compressed to on-the-spot LinkedIn invitations.
#batteryLife #businessCards #ces #CES2024 #CESTravelTech #Ethernet #fastCharging #LasVegas #Pixel5a #SpectreX360 #TMobile5G #USBC #Vegas
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Weekly output: Mozilla Firefox CEO, AI crawlers vs. publishers and creators, teenage AI chatbot use, Android Live Emergency Video, PCMag’s best tech bought in 2025, World App
Somehow I’m down to the last full workweek of the year–and yet my writing and gift shopping seem to have more than a week’s worth of work remaining.
12/8/2025: Mozilla is doing a delicate dance with AI, Fast Company
I spoke with Mozilla CEO Laura Chambers at a Web Summit event for the second time this year. One thing Firefox’s management no longer needs to worry about, unlike when I met with Chambers at Web Summit Qatar in February: the threat of Google being forced to stop paying browser developers to keep its search engine as the default.
12/9/2025: AI Platforms Are Paying (Some) Big Publishers, Leaving Smaller Ones Behind, PCMag
This post began with me taking notes from a Web Summit panel featuring Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince talking about that Internet infrastructure company’s Pay Per Crawl initiative to push AI providers to pay Web publishers for access to their content, then I did some follow-up reporting that included setting up Cloudflare’s AI Crawl Control bot-blocking filter on this blog, and then I had to update the post the morning it was published after the European Commission opened an investigation into how Google runs its AI Overview search feature.
12/9/2025: 28% of Teens Use Chatbots Daily. You Can Probably Guess Which One They Like Best, PCMag
The latest survey by the Pew Research Center surfaced some interesting statistics about how much teenagers use AI chatbots and which ones they use the most.
12/10/2025: Need Help? Android Phones Can Now Share Live Video With 911 Dispatchers, PCMag
Google is shipping this feature a year after Apple did, but its emergency live video implementation works on far more devices than Apple’s.
12/11/2025: The Best Tech PCMag Editors Bought in 2025, PCMag
I wrote a short graf lauding the compact, quick-charging (and Wirecutter-endorsed) USB-C charger that I bought after losing the considerably bulkier model that came with my laptop.
12/13/2025: App That Verifies Your Existence Adds Encrypted Messaging, PCMag
Tools for Humanity announced an update to its World App that adds an end-to-end-encrypted chat feature and expands its cryptocurrency tools. I took advantage of this news peg to try out the app’s ability to verify a “World ID” by scanning the NFC tag on my U.S. passport; that did not go well at all for me.
12/15/2025: Updated to add the PCMag best-tech package that I forgot to check for on Sunday.
#AIChatbot #AIOverview #AISearch #ChatGPT #Firefox #GoogleZero #Mozilla #PayPerCrawl #PewResearchCenter #ToolsForHumanity #WebSummit #WorldApp #WorldID
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Weekly output: Mozilla Firefox CEO, AI crawlers vs. publishers and creators, teenage AI chatbot use, Android Live Emergency Video, PCMag’s best tech bought in 2025, World App
Somehow I’m down to the last full workweek of the year–and yet my writing and gift shopping seem to have more than a week’s worth of work remaining.
12/8/2025: Mozilla is doing a delicate dance with AI, Fast Company
I spoke with Mozilla CEO Laura Chambers at a Web Summit event for the second time this year. One thing Firefox’s management no longer needs to worry about, unlike when I met with Chambers at Web Summit Qatar in February: the threat of Google being forced to stop paying browser developers to keep its search engine as the default.
12/9/2025: AI Platforms Are Paying (Some) Big Publishers, Leaving Smaller Ones Behind, PCMag
This post began with me taking notes from a Web Summit panel featuring Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince talking about that Internet infrastructure company’s Pay Per Crawl initiative to push AI providers to pay Web publishers for access to their content, then I did some follow-up reporting that included setting up Cloudflare’s AI Crawl Control bot-blocking filter on this blog, and then I had to update the post the morning it was published after the European Commission opened an investigation into how Google runs its AI Overview search feature.
12/9/2025: 28% of Teens Use Chatbots Daily. You Can Probably Guess Which One They Like Best, PCMag
The latest survey by the Pew Research Center surfaced some interesting statistics about how much teenagers use AI chatbots and which ones they use the most.
12/10/2025: Need Help? Android Phones Can Now Share Live Video With 911 Dispatchers, PCMag
Google is shipping this feature a year after Apple did, but its emergency live video implementation works on far more devices than Apple’s.
12/11/2025: The Best Tech PCMag Editors Bought in 2025, PCMag
I wrote a short graf lauding the compact, quick-charging (and Wirecutter-endorsed) USB-C charger that I bought after losing the considerably bulkier model that came with my laptop.
12/13/2025: App That Verifies Your Existence Adds Encrypted Messaging, PCMag
Tools for Humanity announced an update to its World App that adds an end-to-end-encrypted chat feature and expands its cryptocurrency tools. I took advantage of this news peg to try out the app’s ability to verify a “World ID” by scanning the NFC tag on my U.S. passport; that did not go well at all for me.
12/15/2025: Updated to add the PCMag best-tech package that I forgot to check for on Sunday.
#AIChatbot #AIOverview #AISearch #ChatGPT #Firefox #GoogleZero #Mozilla #PayPerCrawl #PewResearchCenter #ToolsForHumanity #WebSummit #WorldApp #WorldID
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THE POSTHOLE
Monday, 11 May 2026 · Night Edition · Vol. 1 No. 152
MJD 61172.12LEAD — INTERNATIONAL
‘It’s our kinship’: can Australia learn to coexist with dingoes?
-- The GuardianAs dingoes vanish from parts of Australia, a new documentary is calling on governments to move away from eradication and towards solutions that benefit both farmers and animals Carol Pettersen was a small child when her family moved deep into the bush...
INTERNATIONAL
▸ Ukraine war briefing: EU sanctions officials for child abductions; Kyiv under drone attack as ceasefire expires
-- The Guardian
About 20,500 children unlawfully deported or forcibly transferred to Russia or Russian-held territory; alert sirens sound in...▸ Macron at Africa summit seeking allies and a foreign policy less tied to France’s colonial past
-- The Guardian▸ Mayor of California city resigns over charges of being a foreign agent of China
-- The GuardianSTATE & LOCAL
▸ Aaron Gleeman, World’s Best MN Twins Writer, Goes Indie After The Athletic Eliminates His Twins Beat
-- Racket
Plus teen reporters fight ICE, reluctant mystery amphitheater deets, and a rare look inside the ol' Zimmerman place in today's...IN BRIEF
• GM agrees to $12.75M California settlement over sale of drivers’ data -- BleepingComputer
• Official CheckMarx Jenkins package compromised with infostealer -- BleepingComputer
• New GhostLock tool abuses Windows API to block file access -- BleepingComputer
• Cangjie, a New Open-Source Compiled Language with Native Effect Handlers and Algebraic... -- InfoQ
• Coder Agents Enable Running AI Coding Workflows on Self-Hosted Infrastructure -- InfoQSECTIONS
Tech Talk: Fake building: Claude wrote 3k lines instead of import pywikibot #tech
Account Avoidance: My dog wanted to show you her custom stairs she uses to look... #opensource
Gaming Greatness: The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom – Mineru’s Construct... #gaming
Tinseltown Tour: Why Misery Director Rob Reiner Cut The Gore From The Stephen... #film
Music Hotline: Today’s Wordle answer and hints for #1788 on May 12 #music
Travel Trail: Inside London's new luxury wellness retreat: Six Senses London #travel
Science Showcase: Sucker fish are hiding in manta rays’ ‘butthole,’ new study... #science
Delicious Dining: This Cheesy Chicken Crust Pizza Packs Over 34g Protein Per... #food
Fascination Station: Flannery O’Connor Childhood Home in Savannah, Georgia #culture
Guns Galore: [Remington Model 17 Police Special: The Shockwave a Century ... -
Maybe you shouldn’t take WiFi advice from me
Sunday, I set up a new wireless router at home–the second time I’ve done that in less than two years. I am not proud of that fact, even if the most recent WiFi router cost us nothing and even knocked $5 a month off our broadband bill.
That cost savings–the product of a June 2024 Verizon Fios pricing revamp that I took embarrassingly long to capitalize on–would have been motivation enough to take that company up on its offer of a zero-cost WiFi 6E Verizon Router. But I was also tired of seeing wireless reception in my home office flicker in and out.
That was a problem I’d hoped to solve with my December 2023 purchase of a Synology WRX560 WiFi 6 router, which itself was an attempt to fix reception problems that had persisted after I’d bought an Asus RT-AX3000 in April of 2020. That, in turn, was a response to the pandemic overloading an older Asus router that I’d somehow kept in service since 2012.
But the bandwidth that makes its way to the Mac mini and other computers in my home workspace, about the farthest point in our small, old house from the router behind the living-room TV, remains a tiny fraction of our 300 Mbps fiber-optic connection. Even if the latest wireless link seems slightly less likely to glitch out during a Zoom call.
I tried dusting off the 2012-vintage Asus model that I’d somehow kept around to set it up as a wireless bridge that would pick up my WiFi with (presumably) better antennas than whatever Apple has tucked inside the Mac mini and then relay it to that computer via Ethernet. But that option, apparently unavailable on the Synology router, has only yielded a modest improvement… which means that everybody who has been telling me all along to set up a mesh WiFi network should go ahead and laugh at my unwillingness to take their advice.
In my defense, our house still seems too small to require a mesh network. But there must be enough plaster walls with enough metal inside them between downstairs and upstairs to bog down reception this badly.
While I research my options–inconveniently enough, Wirecutter and PCMag don’t recommend the same sets of mesh routers–I have appreciated the opportunity to inspect the WiFi experience Verizon provides for its customers.
Overall: not bad. The router could use a fourth Ethernet port, but the companion Verizon Home app does a lot to simplify network management by surfacing more detailed identifications of devices on the network than Synology’s DS router app could. Verizon’s app also requires fewer taps to rename those gadgets (but not change their icon), group them by room, and apply time limits.
And then the app clearly identifies problem performers by adding a red “Weak signal” label to devices with poor connectivity. One consistent example: this Mac.
#AsusRouter #Ethernet #Fios #FiosRouter #meshNetwork #meshWiFi #SynologyRouter #SynologyWRX560 #verizon #VerizonHomeApp #WiFi #WiFi #WiFi6 #WiFi6E #wirelessBridge
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Rob, my teammate at Dylibso, wrote about what makes Wasm integration difficult today & how Extism makes it easier.
(It also nods to the component model – which we're looking at how best to support!)
