Weekly output: Ford’s EV strategy, Open RAN security risks, Waymo + Spotify
After a week and a half on the West Coast that began with Black Hat, I can now turn my attention to catching up on the talks I had to skip at that conference, since on-demand video is now available for all but a handful of its sessions. Video of some DEF CON talks is also now starting to pop up, and I’m looking forward in particular to seeing the Voting Village talks that I missed because I bugged out of Vegas Friday afternoon of that week.
Patreon readers got a recap of Black Hat that included some observations about Washington’s wilted presence at this security conference and the generally skeptical take of conference speakers on AI hype.
8/11/2025: Ford Announces $5B Plan to Make EVs Cheaper, Starting With $30,000 Pickup, PCMag
With PCMag’s automotive writer traveling, I stepped in to write this breakdown of the automaker’s ambitious plan to reinvent electric-vehicle production. I hope Ford can deliver on this, and I hope the coming family of cheaper EVs will include a four-door hatchback (even if they call it an SUV or a crossover because it’s a little taller than a sedan).
8/14/2025: Researchers recap some security downsides to open RAN, Light Reading
This Black Hat briefing on Thursday of the previous week about possible vulnerabilites in Open RAN (Radio Access Network) sites went much deeper in the weeds than I usually get when covering telecom infrastructure. So I took an extra couple of days to look over the presentation again, read the reports linked to from it, listen again to my recording of the session, and briefly quiz researchers Tianchang Yang and Kai Tu over e-mail. And then I somehow typed two numbers wrong in the same graf, both of which I’d had correct in my notes. Fortunately, my editor quickly fixed those flubs after Yang brought them to my attention.
8/16/2025: Waymo Picks Up Spotify: Cue Up Personal Playlists on Robotaxi Rides, PCMag
I found out about this change to the Waymo ride experience not from one of that Alphabet subsidiary’s social-media posts, a note from any of its publicists, or an announcement on its site, but from an e-mail I got as a Waymo customer Friday morning. I felt a little bad learning that Waymo had posted this news on four different social platforms Tuesday, but then I realized that earlier news coverage had not mentioned Waymo’s removal of online documentation about an older, jankier way to play music from your phone through a Waymo robotaxi’s speakers.
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