#edzitron — Public Fediverse posts

Weekly output: Uber and Lucid’s robotaxi, Craig Newmark on dodging scams, Jensen Huang on engineering, Better Offline podcast

I got back from CES Friday morning, which means I’ve now more or less caught up with my sleep deficit from those frenetic five days in Las Vegas but still have a lot of writing to do.

1/5/2026: This Is the Robotaxi That Lucid and Nuro Are Building for Uber, PCMag

I wrote the first version of this off an embargoed copy of Uber’s announcement, then did an in-person inspection of Uber’s forthcoming self-driving version of the Lucid Gravity electric vehicle and updated the story two days later.

1/7/2026: Craiglist’s founder has some simple rules for not losing your mind—or money—on the internet, Fast Company

My video interview with Craig Newmark happened back in December–without any PR minder on the call–but online scams are an unfortunately evergreen topic.

1/7/2026: Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang: This Is Why I’m Lucky to Be an Engineer, PCMag

It was a treat to see Huang accept the engineering group IEEE’s annual medal of honor at a private event and gush a little about his chosen profession–the same one that my dad picked in college.

1/8/2026: CES 2026: Part Seven (Thursday), Better Offline

As I did last year, I wrapped up CES by joining tech gadfly Ed Zitron’s Better Offline podcast at the hotel suite he booked in Vegas for a lengthy conversation about what we saw at the show and what that says about the state of technology. My fellow guests in this Thursday night recording session: standup comedian Chloe Radlciffe and fellow writers Garrison Davis, Robert Evans, Westin Lee, and Ed Ongweso. After some post-recording banter, I went from there to the airport and fell asleep within maybe 10 minutes of takeoff.

#autonomousVehicle #BetterOffline #ces #CraigNewmark #Craiglist #EdZitron #IEEE #JensenHuang #LasVegas #LucidGravity #Nvidia #onlineScams #PauseTake9 #podcast #robotaxi #selfDrivingCar #Take9 #Uber #Vegas

Weekly output: Uber and Lucid’s robotaxi, Craig Newmark on dodging scams, Jensen Huang on engineering, Better Offline podcast

I got back from CES Friday morning, which means I’ve now more or less caught up with my sleep deficit from those frenetic five days in Las Vegas but still have a lot of writing to do.

1/5/2026: This Is the Robotaxi That Lucid and Nuro Are Building for Uber, PCMag

I wrote the first version of this off an embargoed copy of Uber’s announcement, then did an in-person inspection of Uber’s forthcoming self-driving version of the Lucid Gravity electric vehicle and updated the story two days later.

1/7/2026: Craiglist’s founder has some simple rules for not losing your mind—or money—on the internet, Fast Company

My video interview with Craig Newmark happened back in December–without any PR minder on the call–but online scams are an unfortunately evergreen topic.

1/7/2026: Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang: This Is Why I’m Lucky to Be an Engineer, PCMag

It was a treat to see Huang accept the engineering group IEEE’s annual medal of honor at a private event and gush a little about his chosen profession–the same one that my dad picked in college.

1/8/2026: CES 2026: Part Seven (Thursday), Better Offline

As I did last year, I wrapped up CES by joining tech gadfly Ed Zitron’s Better Offline podcast at the hotel suite he booked in Vegas for a lengthy conversation about what we saw at the show and what that says about the state of technology. My fellow guests in this Thursday night recording session: standup comedian Chloe Radlciffe and fellow writers Garrison Davis, Robert Evans, Westin Lee, and Ed Ongweso. After some post-recording banter, I went from there to the airport and fell asleep within maybe 10 minutes of takeoff.

#autonomousVehicle #BetterOffline #ces #CraigNewmark #Craiglist #EdZitron #IEEE #JensenHuang #LasVegas #LucidGravity #Nvidia #onlineScams #PauseTake9 #podcast #robotaxi #selfDrivingCar #Take9 #Uber #Vegas

Weekly output: Qualcomm’s connected-home vision, BMW’s Panoramic iDrive, Zoox’s robotaxis, Delta at the Sphere, Better Offline, Red Bull Ford Powertrains

This would have been a long week with CES alone, but nine hours after my flight back from Vegas touched down at Dulles I was on my way into D.C.  for ShmooCon. How could I not? I’ve learned an enormous amount since I first covered that security conference in 2019–and this weekend’s edition was the con’s final go-round.

1/6/2025: Qualcomm’s Smart Home Vision Includes TVs That Read Your ‘Emotional State’, PCMag

I got a head start on my CES coverage with this post I filed from home after getting embargoed copies of Qualcomm’s CES announcements.

1/8/2025: BMW Unveils Smartphone-Inspired Panoramic iDrive Dashboard, PCMag

I started Tuesday by going to the German automaker’s introduction of this driver interface, which featured comedians Tim Meadows and Ken Jeong leading a schtick in which they, the BMW executives onstage and those of us in the stands had all been shrunk down to about smartphone size.

1/8/2025: Taking a Robotaxi From Amazon-Owned Zoox for a Spin on the Vegas Strip, PCMag

My second stop in Vegas, after a quick check-in at my hotel, was to this robotaxi service’s offices to get a test ride in its autonomous vehicle–where I was delighted to see that the other journalist joining me in the car would be my long-ago Yahoo colleague Dan Howley. This became my second story datelined from Vegas this week after I needed clarification on a couple of points from Zoox.

1/8/2025: Delta Tips AI-Powered Concierge, In-Flight YouTube, More at Flashy CES Event, PCMag

The Delta Air Lines keynote introduced me to the Sphere, but only after getting to that venue reintroduced me to how utterly awful Vegas traffic can be during CES–the “Tech Express” shuttle needed more than 50 minutes to crawl the 1.3 miles from the Las Vegas Convention Center to the Venetian. The production values of Delta’s event were fantastic, but the substance of the announcements didn’t live up to that standard. Two aviation journalists who have covered the airline far longer than I have, Brett Snyder and Seth Miller, came away almost entirely unimpressed.

1/9/2025: Better Offline CES 2025: Day 4 – Pt. 2, Ed Zitron

Ed, a longtime tech publicist and more recent scourge of how growth-at-all-costs tech companies are ruining the digital world, invited me to join his podcast sometime when I was at CES, and I picked the last slot available–4:30 to 5 p.m. Thursday. Skip ahead to almost the 1:11 mark to hear my conversation with Ed and fellow CES journalists Ed Ongweso, Jr. and David Roth.

1/10/2025: Red Bull and Ford are building a new F1 hybrid race car engine—first as bits, then atoms, Fast Company

I started work on this piece months ago and then kept putting it off as I had other Fast Company projects with less flexible deadlines demand my attention first, then finally wrote and filed it the day after Christmas–just in time for it to get caught up in the publication’s winter break.

#Amazon #BMW #ces #connectedHome #Delta #DL #EdZitron #F1 #FordRedBullPowertrains #Formula1 #iDrive #LasVegas #NeueKlasse #Oracle #Qualcomm #RedBullFord #robotaxi #smartHome #Sphere #Vegas #Zoox