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#vegas — Public Fediverse posts

Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #vegas, aggregated by home.social.

  1. Aria Hotel, Las Vegas, Nevada, USA
    April 2025

    Camera: Ricoh GRIII

    #vegas #photography #ricoh

  2. Aria Hotel, Las Vegas, Nevada, USA
    April 2025

    Camera: Ricoh GRIII

    #vegas #photography #ricoh

  3. I've been to both places BTW. That's why I have the opinion I do, and I'm strictly talking east coast. West coast is an entirely different beast, and I've only been to #Vegas and #LosAngeles there.

  4. It's been a busy couple of weeks for me! Spent the last week in #vegas for #Defcon and #BSidesLV 🥰

    Had a blast! Partied hard, suited, drank all the booz, hacked all the things and wore stylish tinfoil hats 💜😆☺️

    📸 @[email protected]

    #FursuitFriday #furry #furries #fursuit

  5. Here’s why Black Hat meeting pitches are almost always doomed with me

    My seventh year of Black Hat is in the books, and once again I fought a losing battle with my own schedule. Which I would have lost by a much larger margin if I’d accepted more than a tiny fraction of the meeting requests I’d gotten from PR reps for various information-security companies exhibiting at that conference.

    This collective quest for my in-person presence seems to happen every year with Black Hat (see also: CES), regardless of whom I’m writing for or how recently I’ve done any extended writing on infosec. I have to assume that it must work for some journalists and companies, but it almost never does for me.

    First, there’s the onstage content of Black Hat: Most large conferences feature a lengthy series of panels, but Black Hat’s tend to be much more info-rich. That makes them easier to turn into posts and therefore into money–when I can find time to write.

    Second, there’s the short duration of this event: After some opening pleasantries on a Tuesday afternoon and evening, everything is crammed into Wednesday and Thursday.

    Third, this year’s edition of Black Hat gave me even less free time than usual because I was bouncing between that conference and another about two miles north on the Strip–Ai4, which ran from Tuesday through Thursday at the Venetian and paid me to moderate one panel Tuesday and another Thursday.

    And some publicists compound their clients’ problems when they wait until the run-up to Black Hat to try to introduce me to these companies instead of picking almost any other time of the year besides (ugh) CES Advent.

    Three weeks ago, I felt compelled to vent on LinkedIn: “PR friends, can y’all please explain this obsession with booking meetings at Black Hat? The conference only runs two days and change, with more than 100 generally info-dense talks and presentations filling the schedule Wednesday and Thursday while we’re also supposed to be writing and filing copy. How much free time do your clients think journalists have there?”

    The replies I got were more enlightening than I perhaps deserved. To paraphrase a few:

    • Well, some journalists do take meetings, so we have to ask.
    • Developing one-on-one connections means a lot to us.
    • Some of our clients insist on this, even if we tell them it’s a bad tactic.
    • You can always say no.

    About that last one: It is true that I can always reply to a PR pitch to say “sorry, no interest” and maybe even say why. But then I would spend a large fraction of my workdays doing just that–and no, I don’t trust Gemini, or at least the implementation of that AI service in the Google Workspace version of Gmail that I pay for, to send those replies for me. Sorry, but the lack of a reply remains the reply.

    And as I noted at the start of this post, I did accept a few meeting requests. All but one had one thing in common: They were for events in the evening. (I would have accepted breakfast invites too, but nobody sent me any.) Everybody has to eat, and while Black Hat provides a wealth of exhibitor-subsidized dining options, ones that allowed me to have a useful conversation with somebody at a company of interest got my attention over others.

    (Free advice to companies looking to get time with journalists at large conferences like Black Hat, CES or MWC: Most of us aren’t parachuting in for a single day of coverage, and you will vastly improve your odds of us going to your event if you don’t schedule it on the same peak evening as everybody else.)

    But no matter how well PR types optimize their meeting pitches, there’s no escaping one crazy-making aspect of this quest for journalists’ attention: how the volume of these requests keeps suggesting a far higher value for our time than our compensation indicates.

    #Ai4 #BlackHat #BlackHatMeetings #conferences #cybersecurity #hackerSummerCamp #informationSecurity #infosec #LasVegas #techJournalism #techPr #Vegas
  6. 𝗛𝗮𝗻𝘀 𝗞𝗹𝗼𝗸 𝗱𝗿𝗼𝗼𝗺𝘁 𝘄𝗲𝗲𝗿 𝘃𝗮𝗻 𝘁𝗲𝗿𝘂𝗴𝗸𝗲𝗲𝗿 𝗻𝗮𝗮𝗿 𝗩𝗲𝗴𝗮𝘀

    Hans Klok heeft de hoop om ooit weer op te treden in Las Vegas nog niet opgegeven. Vrijdag gaf de illusionist in De Oranjezomer op SBS6 aan dat het er mogelijk weer van gaat komen.

    rtl.nl/boulevard/artikel/56365

    #HansKlok #terugkeer #Vegas

  7. Just arrived in Vegas and we’re cooking in this 115° heat, but the mesh is cooking too 😎🔥 Looking forward to meeting everyone at DEF CON! #Meshtastic #DEFCON #Vegas

  8. got my #bsideslv #hackertracker planned out. alao have stickers coming in for #Glassof0J

    i might do some interviews and maybe get a fun panel together to digest and talk about what we learned at the conference. Or who had the best Hacker Karaoke performance?

    likely not hitting DEFCON up unless i bum a badge for a but to check it out and maybe hold court for a bit. Plenty to do and catch up on in #Vegas.

    Night Clubs (suggestions)
    DryBar
    Mob Museum
    Freemont Street
    Cirque du Soleil
    Shopping

    Any other fun suggestions for my Thursday through saturday?

  9. Workshop registration is open! 💀🕺

    Get hands-on at AppSec Village @ DEF CON 34 with workshops covering prompt injection, container escapes, Burp extension and Bambda development, software supply chain defence, open-source cloud security and AI-enhanced threat modeling.

    Places are limited, so explore the lineup and book your workshops now.

    Register ➡️ buff.ly/7meD6qj

    See you in Vegas!!

    #DEFCON34 #AppSec #Workshops #Vegas

  10. So many Vegas visits, still so few for fun

    Landing at Dulles Wednesday evening closed out my 45th work trip to Las Vegas. That number alone is not something to take pride in and probably constitutes evidence of some character defect, but what’s even more disturbing is that since my first trip to Vegas in 1998–for CES, of course–I have still only been there three times for fun.

    This lifestyle long ago rendered me incapable of dealing with that city however normal people do. Instead, having the event formerly known as the Consumer Electronics Show dominate my experience of Vegas–I’m now at 28 trips there just for the Consumer Technology Association’s convention, still one of the most important events on my work calendar–keeps subjecting me to the place at its most expensive and least efficient.

    Even smaller-scale conferences like Black Hat (with six trips so far, it’s become about as essential as CES but easier to monetize) and the NAB Show (where I moderated a panel this week, with the National Association of Broadcasters covering airfare and lodging) leave me happier to take off from LAS than to land there.

    It’s not that I can’t enjoy a little time in the glitziest corner of Nevada. You can eat exceedingly well there, and Vegas service-industry folks are some of the best in the world. Blackjack can be fun, as long as you remember that you should at least try to lose slowly.

    If you drive far enough off the Strip, you can see some striking natural scenery. It took CES to remind me of that last bit, in the form of an outing in 2025 to Lake Mead to experience an electric sport boat.

    And there is some exceptional lodging in Vegas, although I’ve also stayed at some of the crummier ones. I started trying to inventory the hotels I’ve stayed at from the Strip up to the convention center (thus excluding off-strip properties like the Palms and a few places in downtown Las Vegas as well as two Airbnbs) and quickly realized they exceed the number of ballparks I’ve visited.

    From south to north: Mandalay Bay, Luxor, Excalibur, New York New York, MGM Grand, Monte Carlo (today Park MGM), Cosmopolitan, Hilton Grand Vacations, Bally’s (now the Horseshoe), Aladdin (now Planet Hollywood), Palms, Flamingo, Westin, Imperial Palace (the worst among the lot, fortunately now the Linq), Harrah’s, Mirage (demolished, being replaced by a Hard Rock Hotel in the shape of a guitar), Treasure Island, Wynn, Renaissance, Westgate, Fontainebleau (I’d rank that the best). 

    But however nice the hotel may have been, there’s no getting around how much I dislike the auto-centric, pedestrian-hostile nature of the streets outside. Unless you can start and end a conference commute on the monorail–this week’s trip, unlike most, allowed that–you will sit in traffic.

    The only improvements to Vegas transportation since 1998 have been on the margins: the monorail, Uber and Lyft liberating visitors from taxis that charge $3 extra for credit-card payment, the Vegas Loop’s tunnels, and the advent of autonomous vehicles from Zoox and, soon, Waymo.

    Even walking up and down the Strip is less efficient than it should be once you enter a building, since casino floors are where readable layouts and clear signage go to die.

    I grew up someplace where you had to drive everywhere; I never want to live like that again and don’t enjoy visiting places that seem intent on making that a perpetual default. I am much happier to have my travel destination be a more human-scaled city where it’s normal and enjoyable to get around by walking and transit; the contrast between CES in Vegas and MWC in Barcelona is glaring and entirely in Spain’s favor.

    I think of that every time one industry-analyst friend who moved from the Bay Area to a Vegas suburb tries to sell me on the same move. My response is always some version of “there is nothing you could say to make me ever want to do that.”

    And yet work keeps pulling me to Vegas anyway. This week’s trip was my third this year, with one more planned, and I already know next year will feature at least three. I should probably seek treatment for this condition at some point.

    #BlackHat #ces #hotels #las #LasVegas #LasVegasConventionCenter #LasVegasMonorail #LV #lvcc #NABShow #Nevada #pedestrian #rideHail #traffic #transit #Vegas #walkable
  11. So many Vegas visits, still so few for fun

    Landing at Dulles Wednesday evening closed out my 45th work trip to Las Vegas. That number alone is not something to take pride in and probably constitutes evidence of some character defect, but what’s even more disturbing is that since my first trip to Vegas in 1998–for CES, of course–I have still only been there three times for fun.

    This lifestyle long ago rendered me incapable of dealing with that city however normal people do. Instead, having the event formerly known as the Consumer Electronics Show dominate my experience of Vegas–I’m now at 28 trips there just for the Consumer Technology Association’s convention, still one of the most important events on my work calendar–keeps subjecting me to the place at its most expensive and least efficient.

    Even smaller-scale conferences like Black Hat (with six trips so far, it’s become about as essential as CES but easier to monetize) and the NAB Show (where I moderated a panel this week, with the National Association of Broadcasters covering airfare and lodging) leave me happier to take off from LAS than to land there.

    It’s not that I can’t enjoy a little time in the glitziest corner of Nevada. You can eat exceedingly well there, and Vegas service-industry folks are some of the best in the world. Blackjack can be fun, as long as you remember that you should at least try to lose slowly.

    If you drive far enough off the Strip, you can see some striking natural scenery. It took CES to remind me of that last bit, in the form of an outing in 2025 to Lake Mead to experience an electric sport boat.

    And there is some exceptional lodging in Vegas, although I’ve also stayed at some of the crummier ones. I started trying to inventory the hotels I’ve stayed at from the Strip up to the convention center (thus excluding off-strip properties like the Palms and a few places in downtown Las Vegas as well as two Airbnbs) and quickly realized they exceed the number of ballparks I’ve visited.

    From south to north: Mandalay Bay, Luxor, Excalibur, New York New York, MGM Grand, Monte Carlo (today Park MGM), Cosmopolitan, Hilton Grand Vacations, Bally’s (now the Horseshoe), Aladdin (now Planet Hollywood), Palms, Flamingo, Westin, Imperial Palace (the worst among the lot, fortunately now the Linq), Harrah’s, Mirage (demolished, being replaced by a Hard Rock Hotel in the shape of a guitar), Treasure Island, Wynn, Renaissance, Westgate, Fontainebleau (I’d rank that the best). 

    But however nice the hotel may have been, there’s no getting around how much I dislike the auto-centric, pedestrian-hostile nature of the streets outside. Unless you can start and end a conference commute on the monorail–this week’s trip, unlike most, allowed that–you will sit in traffic.

    The only improvements to Vegas transportation since 1998 have been on the margins: the monorail, Uber and Lyft liberating visitors from taxis that charge $3 extra for credit-card payment, the Vegas Loop’s tunnels, and the advent of autonomous vehicles from Zoox and, soon, Waymo.

    Even walking up and down the Strip is less efficient than it should be once you enter a building, since casino floors are where readable layouts and clear signage go to die.

    I grew up someplace where you had to drive everywhere; I never want to live like that again and don’t enjoy visiting places that seem intent on making that a perpetual default. I am much happier to have my travel destination be a more human-scaled city where it’s normal and enjoyable to get around by walking and transit; the contrast between CES in Vegas and MWC in Barcelona is glaring and entirely in Spain’s favor.

    I think of that every time one industry-analyst friend who moved from the Bay Area to a Vegas suburb tries to sell me on the same move. My response is always some version of “there is nothing you could say to make me ever want to do that.”

    And yet work keeps pulling me to Vegas anyway. This week’s trip was my third this year, with one more planned, and I already know next year will feature at least three. I should probably seek treatment for this condition at some point.

    #BlackHat #ces #hotels #las #LasVegas #LasVegasConventionCenter #LasVegasMonorail #LV #lvcc #NABShow #Nevada #pedestrian #rideHail #traffic #transit #Vegas #walkable
  12. So many Vegas visits, still so few for fun

    Landing at Dulles Wednesday evening closed out my 45th work trip to Las Vegas. That number alone is not something to take pride in and probably constitutes evidence of some character defect, but what’s even more disturbing is that since my first trip to Vegas in 1998–for CES, of course–I have still only been there three times for fun.

    This lifestyle long ago rendered me incapable of dealing with that city however normal people do. Instead, having the event formerly known as the Consumer Electronics Show dominate my experience of Vegas–I’m now at 28 trips there just for the Consumer Technology Association’s convention, still one of the most important events on my work calendar–keeps subjecting me to the place at its most expensive and least efficient.

    Even smaller-scale conferences like Black Hat (with six trips so far, it’s become about as essential as CES but easier to monetize) and the NAB Show (where I moderated a panel this week, with the National Association of Broadcasters covering airfare and lodging) leave me happier to take off from LAS than to land there.

    It’s not that I can’t enjoy a little time in the glitziest corner of Nevada. You can eat exceedingly well there, and Vegas service-industry folks are some of the best in the world. Blackjack can be fun, as long as you remember that you should at least try to lose slowly.

    If you drive far enough off the Strip, you can see some striking natural scenery. It took CES to remind me of that last bit, in the form of an outing in 2025 to Lake Mead to experience an electric sport boat.

    And there is some exceptional lodging in Vegas, although I’ve also stayed at some of the crummier ones. I started trying to inventory the hotels I’ve stayed at from the Strip up to the convention center (thus excluding off-strip properties like the Palms and a few places in downtown Las Vegas as well as two Airbnbs) and quickly realized they exceed the number of ballparks I’ve visited.

    From south to north: Mandalay Bay, Luxor, Excalibur, New York New York, MGM Grand, Monte Carlo (today Park MGM), Cosmopolitan, Hilton Grand Vacations, Bally’s (now the Horseshoe), Aladdin (now Planet Hollywood), Palms, Flamingo, Westin, Imperial Palace (the worst among the lot, fortunately now the Linq), Harrah’s, Mirage (demolished, being replaced by a Hard Rock Hotel in the shape of a guitar), Treasure Island, Wynn, Renaissance, Westgate, Fontainebleau (I’d rank that the best). 

    But however nice the hotel may have been, there’s no getting around how much I dislike the auto-centric, pedestrian-hostile nature of the streets outside. Unless you can start and end a conference commute on the monorail–this week’s trip, unlike most, allowed that–you will sit in traffic.

    The only improvements to Vegas transportation since 1998 have been on the margins: the monorail, Uber and Lyft liberating visitors from taxis that charge $3 extra for credit-card payment, the Vegas Loop’s tunnels, and the advent of autonomous vehicles from Zoox and, soon, Waymo.

    Even walking up and down the Strip is less efficient than it should be once you enter a building, since casino floors are where readable layouts and clear signage go to die.

    I grew up someplace where you had to drive everywhere; I never want to live like that again and don’t enjoy visiting places that seem intent on making that a perpetual default. I am much happier to have my travel destination be a more human-scaled city where it’s normal and enjoyable to get around by walking and transit; the contrast between CES in Vegas and MWC in Barcelona is glaring and entirely in Spain’s favor.

    I think of that every time one industry-analyst friend who moved from the Bay Area to a Vegas suburb tries to sell me on the same move. My response is always some version of “there is nothing you could say to make me ever want to do that.”

    And yet work keeps pulling me to Vegas anyway. This week’s trip was my third this year, with one more planned, and I already know next year will feature at least three. I should probably seek treatment for this condition at some point.

    #BlackHat #ces #hotels #las #LasVegas #LasVegasConventionCenter #LasVegasMonorail #LV #lvcc #NABShow #Nevada #pedestrian #rideHail #traffic #transit #Vegas #walkable
  13. So many Vegas visits, still so few for fun

    Landing at Dulles Wednesday evening closed out my 45th work trip to Las Vegas. That number alone is not something to take pride in and probably constitutes evidence of some character defect, but what’s even more disturbing is that since my first trip to Vegas in 1998–for CES, of course–I have still only been there three times for fun.

    This lifestyle long ago rendered me incapable of dealing with that city however normal people do. Instead, having the event formerly known as the Consumer Electronics Show dominate my experience of Vegas–I’m now at 28 trips there just for the Consumer Technology Association’s convention, still one of the most important events on my work calendar–keeps subjecting me to the place at its most expensive and least efficient.

    Even smaller-scale conferences like Black Hat (with six trips so far, it’s become about as essential as CES but easier to monetize) and the NAB Show (where I moderated a panel this week, with the National Association of Broadcasters covering airfare and lodging) leave me happier to take off from LAS than to land there.

    It’s not that I can’t enjoy a little time in the glitziest corner of Nevada. You can eat exceedingly well there, and Vegas service-industry folks are some of the best in the world. Blackjack can be fun, as long as you remember that you should at least try to lose slowly.

    If you drive far enough off the Strip, you can see some striking natural scenery. It took CES to remind me of that last bit, in the form of an outing in 2025 to Lake Mead to experience an electric sport boat.

    And there is some exceptional lodging in Vegas, although I’ve also stayed at some of the crummier ones. I started trying to inventory the hotels I’ve stayed at from the Strip up to the convention center (thus excluding off-strip properties like the Palms and a few places in downtown Las Vegas as well as two Airbnbs) and quickly realized they exceed the number of ballparks I’ve visited.

    From south to north: Mandalay Bay, Luxor, Excalibur, New York New York, MGM Grand, Monte Carlo (today Park MGM), Cosmopolitan, Hilton Grand Vacations, Bally’s (now the Horseshoe), Aladdin (now Planet Hollywood), Palms, Flamingo, Westin, Imperial Palace (the worst among the lot, fortunately now the Linq), Harrah’s, Mirage (demolished, being replaced by a Hard Rock Hotel in the shape of a guitar), Treasure Island, Wynn, Renaissance, Westgate, Fontainebleau (I’d rank that the best). 

    But however nice the hotel may have been, there’s no getting around how much I dislike the auto-centric, pedestrian-hostile nature of the streets outside. Unless you can start and end a conference commute on the monorail–this week’s trip, unlike most, allowed that–you will sit in traffic.

    The only improvements to Vegas transportation since 1998 have been on the margins: the monorail, Uber and Lyft liberating visitors from taxis that charge $3 extra for credit-card payment, the Vegas Loop’s tunnels, and the advent of autonomous vehicles from Zoox and, soon, Waymo.

    Even walking up and down the Strip is less efficient than it should be once you enter a building, since casino floors are where readable layouts and clear signage go to die.

    I grew up someplace where you had to drive everywhere; I never want to live like that again and don’t enjoy visiting places that seem intent on making that a perpetual default. I am much happier to have my travel destination be a more human-scaled city where it’s normal and enjoyable to get around by walking and transit; the contrast between CES in Vegas and MWC in Barcelona is glaring and entirely in Spain’s favor.

    I think of that every time one industry-analyst friend who moved from the Bay Area to a Vegas suburb tries to sell me on the same move. My response is always some version of “there is nothing you could say to make me ever want to do that.”

    And yet work keeps pulling me to Vegas anyway. This week’s trip was my third this year, with one more planned, and I already know next year will feature at least three. I should probably seek treatment for this condition at some point.

    #BlackHat #ces #hotels #las #LasVegas #LasVegasConventionCenter #LasVegasMonorail #LV #lvcc #NABShow #Nevada #pedestrian #rideHail #traffic #transit #Vegas #walkable
  14. Weekly output: Internet Archive, Roblox parental controls, Google travel-search tools, T-Mobile yanks free WiFi from United flights, Mark Vena podcast, talking to local user groups, AST SpaceMobile

    LAS VEGAS–I’m typing this from a press room in the Las Vegas Convention Center barely three months after I spent too much time in that facility for CES. Credit or blame for this trip goes to a different Washington-area trade group, the National Association of Broadcasters. Tuesday, I will be moderating an NAB Show panel about the state of content creation that features two people who are better at Instagram than me: Juliana Broste and my fellow former USA Today columnist Jefferson Graham.

    4/13/2026: Journalists Applaud the Internet Archive’s Role In Preserving the Public Record, Fight for the Future

    A staffer with Public Knowledge e-mailed me a few weeks ago to ask if I would be willing to sign a letter supporting the Internet Archive’s efforts to preserve the history of the Web and possibly provide a quote about how I’d used the Archive. Having repeatedly relied on the Archive’s Wayback Machine to link back to my own past published work, I said I would be happy to do that–having already donated $100 to that San Francisco non-profit in January.

    4/13/2026: Roblox Adds Account Restrictions for Younger Users, Expands Age Verification, PCMag

    I attended a press roundtable Monday morning featuring some Roblox trust-and-safety executives, allowing me to enrich this writeup of the platform’s changes with quotes from that conversation.

    4/15/2026: T-Mobile Grounds Free In-Flight Wi-Fi Benefit for United Airlines Passengers, PCMag

    I had the dumb luck to see this change firsthand on a flight from Denver to San Jose Tuesday, then needed the rest of that day to get some responses from T-Mobile and United. The airline’s switch to free Starlink connectivity will fix this problem, but we are months away from that rollout reaching a significant fraction of United’s mainline fleet.

    4/17/2026: Like It or Not, Google Wants to Be Your AI Travel Buddy This Summer, PCMag

    I wrote up this post off an embargoed copy of Google’s announcement that we had to correct the next day because I had missed two of the finer points of this bundle of news. In my halfhearted defense, it is more work than you might realize keeping track of Google’s ongoing efforts to infuse AI into its existing services.

    4/17/2026: How NTT Research’s Upgrade 2026 Helps Silicon Valley Get Ready for The Future, Mark Vena

    My industry-analyst pal had do a quick video from NTT Research’s Upgrade conference in San Jose, Calif.–with that firm covering my travel costs–about some of its initiatives.

    4/18/2026: 2026 Consumer Electronics Show and Lots More!, Potomac Area Technology and Computer Society/Osher Lifelong Learning Institute Personal Computer User Group/Washington Apple Pi

    Despite that title–picked by the organizers at PATACS, pronounced “Pat-Aces”–I spent more time talking about other topics. Among them: my switch from Evernote to Obsidian just in time for CES, the sad state of tech policy in Washington, and my takes on self-driving cars and what’s befallen the Washington Post. As I have in previous appearances before these folks, I showed up with a bag of trade-show swag and gave away all of it.

    4/19/2026: Blue Origin Rocket Launches, Then Loses AST SpaceMobile BlueBird Satellite, PCMag

    I watched the third launch of Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket on my phone as I was walking up to the security checkpoint at Dulles early Sunday morning, started writing up what I thought was a successful launch, then learned–via painfully slow inflight WiFi–that New Glenn’s second stage had failed to deliver AST’s mobile-broadband BlueBird satellite to the intended orbit. This is a real black eye for Blue that should outweigh its achievement in reflying a New Glenn booster and then landing it on a barge in the Atlantic.

    #ageCheck #ageGating #ageVerification #ASTSpaceMobile #BlueOrigin #contentCreation #GoogleAIMode #InternetArchive #JeffersonGraham #JulianaBroste #las #LasVegas #lvcc #NABShow #NewGlenn #NTT #NTTUpgrade #NTTUpgrade2026 #Roblox #RobloxKids #SanJose #satelliteToPhone #SJC #swag #TMobile #TMobileInflightWiFi #travelTools #UA #UnitedAirlines #userGroups #Vegas #WaybackMachine
  15. Southwest Airlines prices are utterly stupid. $950 for 2 people roundtrip from LA-to-Vegas? And now they're nickeling & diming for "selected seats". Geez, how did they get this bad?

    Welp, "Skyscanner" airfare finder to the rescue!
    skyscanner.com/
    #southwest #skyscanner #vegas

  16. Weekly output: teens + AI chatbots, Android updates, Trump on data-center energy use, Archer + Starlink, balcony solar, customer feedback, CDA 230 + AI, Bluetooth updates

    BARCELONA–It’s a treat to be able to start off a post with this dateline. This is the 13th trip that’s afforded me that opportunity and the 12th involving MWC. But this trip isn’t like the ones before it in one way; on my way across the Atlantic, my country started a war of choice because the president felt like it. The world is better without Iran’s worthless, murdering theocrat Ali Khameni, but I have little confidence in the Trump administration’s ability to do the right things for that long-suffering country.

    In addition to the links you see below, Patreon readers got a bonus post from me in which I shared lessons learned from more than 10 years of booking Airbnbs.

    2/24/2026: Most Teens Use AI for Homework Help. 10% Let It Do Everything, PCMag

    Getting an advance copy of this new study from the Pew Research Center gave me a chance to note a new student-understudy chatbot called Einstein and quiz the CEO behind that app.

    2/25/2026: Android Update Puts Gemini AI In the Driver’s Seat for Ride-Hail, Food Orders, PCMag

    I have somehow become PCMag’s Android-updates guy. This report included a little testimony about Google’s call-scam-detection feature misfiring for me, an important bit of context to include in a post telling readers about Google bringing that tool to Samsung’s new Galaxy S26 series of phones.

    2/25/2026: As Energy Costs Soar, Trump Pushes AI Giants to ‘Produce Their Own Electricity’, PCMag

    I didn’t watch the entire State of the Union address because self-care is an important thing, but after reading about President Trump’s call for data-center operators to pay for their electricity and power infrastructure, I knew I’d have to write about that initiative.

    2/27/2028: Archer Aviation Taps Starlink for Air Taxi Connectivity, PCMag

    I still don’t quite get the point of adding Starlink connectivity to aircraft that won’t fly longer than 15 minutes or higher than 4,000 feet above major cities, but this was an easy post to crank out Friday morning before heading to Dulles that afternoon to start my journey to Spain.

    2/28/2026: After Years of Shining in Europe, Balcony Solar Comes Out of the Dark in the US, PCMag

    This story had been in the works for literally months–I took the photo you see at the top of the piece on the afternoon that I arrived in Berlin for IFA in September–but the policy picture has also changed dramatically, and for the better, over the intervening months.

    2/28/2026: What’s the Best Way to Get Customer Feedback in 2026? Hint: It’s Not Email, PCMag

    Two weeks after the customer-experience firm Medallia had me at its annual conference in Vegas (with my hotel covered upfront and my airfare to be reimbursed), PCMag ran my recap of what I learned there.

    3/1/2026: Online Platforms Are Not Liable for What Users Post. Should That Include Gen AI?, PCMag

    I spent Thursday at the Cato Institute for this enlightening conference marking the 30th anniversary of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, the 1996 act that bars you from suing an online platform for something that one of its users posted.

    3/1/2026: Bluetooth Is Getting an Upgrade. Here’s What It Means for Your Devices, PCMag

    I took almost all of the notes for this at CES in January, but I needed more time to confirm some details and then write the post, after which its lack of a news peg left it easy to set aside for a bit.

    #AIChatbots #android #ArcherAviation #balconySolar #Barcelona #Bluetooth #Catalunya #CatoInstitute #CDA230 #ces #customerExperience #customerSatisfaction #cx #dataCenters #eVTOL #GeminiAI #IFA #LasVegas #Medallia #MWC #PewResearchCenter #plugInSolar #PresidentTrump #RatepayerProtectionPledge #SOTU #Spain #Starlink #StateOfTheUnion #travel #TrumpEnergyPolicy #Vegas
  17. Tuesday? More like Boozeday! Another action packed night at In Pour Taste: A Comedy Wine Tasting Experience inside the Lighthouse ArtSpace Las Vegas! Here's some pics! 🍾 Follow our pro sommelier: Kirk Peterson 🍷 Buy some tickets: inpourtastevegas.com 🎟️ #wine #vegas #lasvegas #comedy #sommelier

  18. 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 EvansWestin 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

  19. Weekly output: 5G platforms, AI in financial services, AI and supply chains, Kamala Harris on AI, AI infrastructure, Gmail’s AI calendar integration, Android 16, AI and information security

    It’s a rare week when my work doesn’t touch on AI at all, but moderating panels at a conference devoted to that subject–and writing up two other talks there–helped ensure that AI figured in all but two of the items below.

    3/10/2025: Practical means profitable: Telco talk about building services on 5G’s framework, Light Reading

    My MWC Barcelona coverage for outside clients closed out with this writeup for this trade-pub client–my first there in a few months–of a panel in which telco executives talked about how they were building new lines of business on their 5G platforms.

    Patreon readers, however, got one more post about MWC in which I shared three other highlights from the show.

    3/10/2025: Banking on AI for personalized customer experiences, HumanX

    The first panel I did at this conference–in Las Vegas for its first year, moving to San Francisco next year–had me quizzing Better.com’s Vishal Garg, Clearcover’s Kyle Nakatsuji, Honeybook’s Colleen Stauffer, Sunrise AI’s Deepak Shrivastava and S&P Global’s Bhavesh Dayalji about how they see AI changing customer service.

    3/10/2025: AI-powered supply chains: From farm to table and beyond, HumanX

    Since this panel–featuring Altana’s Peter Swartz, Fusion Fund’s Lu Zhang and Choco AI’s Daniel Khachab–focused on agriculture, I opened it by telling the audience that I found the subject particularly interesting because I eat food.

    3/11/2025: Kamala Harris Urges Those Working on AI to Consider Trust, Empathy, PCMag

    The former vice president–whom I last saw in person in October from much farther away–was a late addition to the conference agenda. I hustled to get from the airport to the conference hotel, check in, drop by bag and get over to the event in time to get a seat in the third row for the Sunday-evening program that ended with Harris.

    3/11/2025: Rethinking infrastructure: Custom solutions for the AI era, HumanX

    My big takeaway from the conversation I had onstage with Sid Sheth of d-Matrix and Ami Badani of Arm: Industry hype about AGI (“artificial general intelligence” that could replicate a human brain) is a distraction, and not a particularly helpful one at that.

    3/11/2025: Gmail Gets AI Calendar Feature That Apple Added to Its Mail App in 2007, PCMag

    I missed this Google announcement Monday but had to write about it once I realized that the feature Google touts as an AI advancement is something that Apple delivered with plain old software in Mac OS X Leopard 18 years ago.

    3/13/2025: Android 16 Inches Toward a Launch With Accessibility-Focused Third Beta Release, PCMag

    Google PR gave me an advance on the news of third beta release of Android 16.

    3/14/2025: Ex-Facebook CISO Warns: 95% of Bugs in Your AI System Haven’t Been Invented Yet, PCMag

    I always learn something when Alex Stamos talks about information security, and I was happy to share that with PCMag readers.

    #5G #AI #AIInfrastructure #AlexStamos #Android16 #AppleDataDetectors #Barcelona #customerService #cx #dataCenters #GoogleGemini #HumanX #informationSecurity #infosec #KamalaHarris #LasVegas #MacOSXLeopard #MWC #MWC2025 #supplyChains #Vegas

  20. 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

  21. Mo and I will be hanging out everyday with the teachers and student body on the University of Las Vegas campus until the end of the semester which is in a week or two. I could really use help with fundraising and awareness and donations to keep going because... there is no question... this is going to end if more sustainable contribution to continue does not happen. I cannot fundraise while I work because that would taint and confuse the works intent. Check this out... ragginpianoboogie.com/donate.p Create a monthly contribution to help us! #lasvegas #vegas #vegaslife #vegaslocals #vegasfun #vegascommunity #community #communityoutreach #sharing #contribution #giving #support #realphoto #realpicture #dannykean #travelingpianoman #travelingpiano #travellingpiano #pianoman #pianoplayer #thetravelingpianoman #music #musical #improvisation #improv #fun #friendship #respect #journey #travel #roadtrip #adventure #syncronisity #spontenaiety #empowerment #inspiration #truck #piano