Includes #Cuisinart, #ProctorAndGamble, #BoostMobile, #HersheysChocolates, #ChobaniYogurt, etc that donated to #Project2025
#BoostMobile
Boost Mobile Double Up commercial
#BoostMobile #abancommercials #commercial Video Boost Mobile Double Up commercial, actor, actress, girl, cast, song
https://abancommercials.com/boost-mobile/double-up-commercial/268330/
Boost Mobile Shower Thoughts commercial
#BoostMobile #abancommercials #commercial Video Boost Mobile Shower Thoughts commercial, actor, actress, girl, cast, song
https://abancommercials.com/boost-mobile/shower-thoughts-commercial/268115/
New Patreon Post (Subscribers only): Telstra’s buying Boost, but what will that mean for mobile prices in 2025?
Quick video time, as I ponder on what Telstra buying Boost Mobile will mean for its customers, as well as the wider Australian telco scene.
Weekly output: Boost Mobile, AI at BT, digital privacy, Elon Musk’s X agenda, Salt Typhoon breaches T-Mobile
I have more than enough practice at traveling to the other side of the Atlantic, but this week’s trip to Lisbon for Web Summit had me sandbagged by jet lag almost every night. It appears that I never got my head into Western European Time, to judge from my not feeling wiped out in a “do not operate heavy machinery” way after I got home Friday night.
11/11/2024: Boost Mobile Touts 5G Network Progress, Adds Sub-$100 5G Phone to Lineup, PCMag
The advance copies of Boost’s PR materials were vague about some key points, but the carrier’s press rep did get back to me to clarify that the $10 billion network-buildout expense shared in them was a total estimate, not a forecast of costs to come.
11/12/2024: Will Gen AI generate value for the corporate landscape?, Web Summit
My first panel at this conference had me interviewing Alex Bell, BT’s digital director of service, and Michael Park, a senior vice president and global head of AI go-to-market at ServiceNow, about how the former company had enlisted the latter to put AI to work in some important IT and customer-service systems.
11/12/2024: Secure swipe: protecting customer data, Web Summit
My second and final panel–fewer than I usually field at this conference–put me on stage with Brittany Kaiser, the Cambridge Analytica whistleblower turned Own Your Data advocate, and Marcus Räder, founder and CEO of the lodging-services firm Hostaway, to discuss how companies collect and keep data and how they would be better off not hoarding so much customer information.
11/14/2024: ‘Things Are Different for Elon’: Who Needs X When You Have Political Power?, PCMag
I only wrote up one Web Summit panel for PCMag, but it was a very good one: New York Times reporters Kate Conger and Ryan Mac talking about Elon Musk’s chaotic takeover of Twitter. They went beyond their recount of that in their book Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter to discuss our new oligarch-in-chief’s privileged perch in Donald Trump’s circles.
11/16/2024: Chinese State-Sponsored ‘Salt Typhoon’ Hackers Also Breached T-Mobile, PCMag
I usually try to avoid writing posts on the weekend, but a) this was news that had gone uncovered at my client and b) I had written less than usual over the rest of the week and c) I have bills coming that aren’t going to pay themselves.
#AI #BoostMobile #BrittanyKaiser #BT #ChineseHackers #ElonMuskTwitter #KateConger #Lisbon #oligarch #RyanMac #SaltTyphoon #TMobile #WebSummit
https://www.theverge.com/2024/11/11/24291655/boost-mobile-5g-dish-wireless
Boost Mobile has almost reached the FCC guidelines to be considered a full MNO (like Verizon or Sprint) rather than an MVNO it's current classification.
The Exact status of this is a little complicated, and has its roots in the T-Mobile/sprint merger. The article covers it in more detail.
Sunday started with Joe Biden as the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee and is ending with Kamala Harris as the increasingly likely Democratic presidential nominee. I am struck by the selflessness involved in somebody at the apex of political power assessing the circumstances and the stakes and deciding that they require taking himself out of contention–and how well that grace, however grudgingly it may have come, compares to Donald Trump’s incessant self-worship. As Tom Nichols writes in The Atlantic: “Biden’s decision reflected a determination to put the fate of his country ahead of his personal vanity, a choice Trump is inherently incapable of making.”
7/15/2024: Automation Lessens Zombie Account Risks, FedTech
I last wrote for this publication in 2017, but I must have left a decent reputation there for an editor to e-mail me in April to ask if I could do a story about how government-IT types can ease staff transitions between administrations.
7/17/2024: Boost Mobile Unwraps New Plans As 5G Network Buildout Chugs Along, PCMag
We had to correct this post because I had missed how Boost’s most expensive plan does not include mobile hotspot use, even though two of its three cheaper options include it. Which is a dumb pricing game for any wireless carrier to play, but especially one that touts “simplified pricing” in its pitch for its new plans.
7/17/2024: On Speed, T-Mobile Is First in Mobile Broadband, AT&T in Home Internet, PCMag
Ookla, the company behind the Speedtest family of apps, offered me an advance on their latest connectivity report. I’m still confused by how they assessed only AT&T’s fiber service next to all of Verizon’s broadband options.
7/18/2024: Google Ships Fourth And (We Hope) Last Android 15 Beta, PCMag
This was the fifth time this year that I’ve written a short post about an incremental step in Android 15’s development cycle for PCMag.
7/19/2024: Prior to Microsoft Meltdown, CrowdStrike Exec Warned of ‘Single Point of Failure’, PCMag
As I read about the worldwide IT meltdown sparked by CrowdStrike’s epic failure of a driver update, I remembered seeing a CrowdStrike executive declaring at a Washington Post event in early June that “A resilient digital architecture should be able to weather a storm.” Awkward!
Patreon readers got a bonus post related to this story, in which I recounted the continuing utility of keeping notes in a searchable digital format but also revealed that I still have paper notepads from more than 25 years ago–and recently got some unexpected use out of one.
7/19/2024: Ep 103 SmartTechCheck Podcast–CrowdStrike, innovation drought, foldable phones and robotaxis, Mark Vena
I joined my industry-analyst friend’s podcast to talk about a grab-bag of tech topics, one of them being Waymo’s robotaxis as I experienced them in Los Angeles a few weeks ago.
#5G #Android15 #ATTFiber #BoostMobile #CrowdStrike #federalIT #MarkVena #Ookla #Speedtest #TMobile #wirelessCarriers #zombieAccounts
1/2
#Telstra #BoostMobile doing the standard customer fuckage.
I try to recover my account.
Page says an email will be sent.
No email arrives.
I wonder why, try alternative address, retry original etc, etc
So eventually I contact Support.
See next Toot for why I never received the promised emails.
#Telstra's #PrepaidMobile subsidiary #BoostMobile tells me my current plan $230/170Gb/365days has been discontinued.
The only reasonable replacement is $300/240GB/365days. No use for the data, using only ~5GB/mth
And today I find that, contrary to what technical support told me, voicemail has not been switched off. So I had multiple messages that I hadn't responded to. :knitting: [guillotine emoji]
I've got some 10 months to find a less-ripoff mobile phone provider.
Took some speed tests today, and with #BoostMobile, I'm getting roughly ⅔ the download speed and ⅓ the upload speed of #Vodafone around the places I do my shopping.
Will be interesting to see how Boost performs in the city and at work.
Also, Boost was connected to Telstra 5G whilst Vodafone was still 4G, and the speeds were still better. Although in the car park, Vodafone had difficulty getting reception vs Boost.
Giving #BoostMobile a try, in an attempt to check #Telstra reception at the places I normally go to.
0 bars inside my apartment. #Optus has 2 bars, whilst #Vodafone has 3.
Let's hope the other places I frequent have better reception.
Phone update. I deleted the Google Voice app, and now I can place and receive calls/texts. I did a force stop on my phone app, started it up again, and now the microphone works. I fixed my phone by myself, after two weeks of #BoostMobile "support."
However, when I login to my Boost account online or the app, it's full of the previous number owner's personal information, and her account was suspended, so I suspect that was part of the problem.
New depths for #BoostMobile. Twice they lied to me today. When I called to get my account number and transfer PIN, the service staff said they couldn't give it to me without calling me on my phone (which is of course out of service, thanks to them), so I had to go to the Boost Mobile store for confirmation. Went through the whole "escalation" thing again, but this time they let slip they weren't forwarding me to Tech Support but to Retention, each time, just to make it hard for me.
Another phone call to #BoostMobile. The operator insisted my phone can't make/receive calls/texts because of faulty cell phone towers. I pointed out I'm calling from my wife's phone, also a Boost customer, who experiences no such troubles.
I told the operator to try calling my number and seeing what message she gets. First she called my wife's phone, then hung up on me. Called back, got tech support, he gave me the same excuse and told me to wait 24–72 hours.
Filed another BBB report.
Progress on my phone!
And by that, I mean no progress has been made.
I was told to wait 24 hours for my phone to reset. I waited 48 hours and nothing improved.
I called now and the support tried to insist I can't send/receive calls/texts because of an issue with the cell phone towers. Twice I demanded that she escalate the issue; instead, she opened up tickets with tech support (locked phone) and IT (can't login to #BoostMobile website).
The incompetence is thick, deep, and wide.
See, #BoostMobile and #MintMobile were merely incompetent. They lost my phone number through incompetence, I fought them for three weeks over incompetence.
#RealID is a #conservative conspiracy to obstruct, harass, and create criminals where there were none. All my paperwork (driver's license, social security, tax returns, military record, etc.) except my birth certificate (clerical error) list my legal name as W, so the MN DPS-DVS has decided my court order for name change is invalid.
Phone issues aren't improving. #BoostMobile still hasn't unlocked my phone. I'm on my fifth phone call with them and the second call facilitated by #MintMobile. I haven''t had a working phone for a week. And it seems that if someone's working too long on a task (more than three minutes), Boost just cuts the call.
Update: Not this time. The second Boost operator simply hung up on us in the middle of the conversation.
Progress and No Progress: #BoostMobile still insists my phone is unlocked and Mint needs to activate the SIM card. #MintMobile still insists Boost has locked my phone and they can't continue processing my new account. Even with both representatives on a party line, they insist this.
Boost told me it would take 48 hours to unlock my phone; it's been 72 hours, and they've asked for another day to process this request.
I fly out in three days. I need my working number for calls and to use Square.
Client Info
Server: https://mastodon.social
Version: 2025.04
Repository: https://github.com/cyevgeniy/lmst