Weekly output: Starlink on United, spectrum policy, Google updates (x3), Ecosia, Charter to buy Cox, user-groups talk

I’m flying to San Francisco tomorrow evening only to turn left at SFO so I can spend the next two days in Mountain View for Google I/O–my 12th trip to cover Google’s developer conference.

(This past week also involved flying, but only for fun; Patreon readers got a breakdown of the long miles-and-points game that led up to my bucket-list 747 flight.)

5/13/2025: I Tested Starlink on a United Airlines Flight: It’s Fast and Steady Once You Get Past the Ads, PCMag

The strange sequence of airports on my calendar two Thursdays ago–DCA-ORD, ORD-ORD, ORD-IAD–yielded this recap of my experience trying out Starlink inflight broadband on a United Airlines-marketed Embraer 175 regional jet.

5/14/2025: CTIA conference shows how FCC spectrum auction authority is becoming telecom’s Groundhog Day, Light Reading

This post also started with reporting the week before from the wireless trade group CTIA’s 5G Summit in D.C., which I continued by quizzing Public Knowledge’s walking telecom-policy database Harold Feld.

5/14/2025: Google Unwraps Android 16 Design Details: Springier Animations, With a Side of Improved Battery Life, PCMag

I got an advance briefing from Google about its I/O announcements, which turned into three posts–the first covering some of the more important user-facing parts in Android 16 and Wear OS 6.

5/14/2025:Google Tips Big Security Upgrade for Your Phone in Android 16, PCMag

The second part of my coverage focused on the security changes in Android 16. If you’d like to know more, Citizen Lab researcher ‪John Scott-Railton took a closer look at them in a Bluesky thread.

5/14/2025: Gemini Everywhere: Google Expands Its AI to Cars, TVs, Headsets, PCMag

Of course AI will figure in Google’s I/O news, so part three of my advance coverage outlined Google’s ambitions to put its Gemini AI platform on some less-obvious screens.

5/16/2025: This Search Engine Uses Its Earnings to Help the Environment. New Dashboard Lets You Track Your Impact, PCMag

I’ve written about the environment-minded search site Ecosia a few times over the past few years, which was apparently enough times to get their PR folks to offer me a heads-up about this announcement.

5/16/2025: Charter to Buy Cox: We Have Questions About What This Means for Your Plan, PCMag

This was the one post I didn’t have anywhere on my cloud of probabilities for this week, but I had enough free time Friday to write up Charter Communications’ deal to buy Cox Communications and turn the second- and third-biggest cable broadband providers into the biggest cable ISP.

5/17/2025: May 2025: Rob Pegoraro: 2025 in Tech: what fresh hell is this?, Washington Apple Pi/Potomac Area Technology and Computer Society/Osher Lifelong Learning Institute Personal Computer User Group

I made my more-or-less annual appearance before these three user groups (last summer’s was via Zoom), unpacking some serious concerns I have about the state of tech but also sharing some reasons for optimism. And as I’ve done in earlier IRL appearances, I showed up with a bag of tech-event swag and gave away almost all of it.

#5GSpectrum #Android16 #BrendanCarr #CharterCommunications #Cox #CTIA #Ecosia #google #GoogleIO #IO #OLLI #PATACS #spectrum #spectrumAuctionAuthority #Starlink #UnitedAirlines #userGroup #WashingtonApplePi #WearOS6

After a weekend spent mostly indoors to avoid temperatures that hit or neared triple digits Saturday and Sunday, I’m flying to Los Angeles Tuesday for a grab-bag of reasons that include trying out Waymo’s robotaxi service there (which may make me feel like I’m living in the future), covering VidCon Anaheim (which is all but assured to make me feel old).

Patreon readers got an extra post from me Friday: my thoughts on reading Siddharth Kara’s brutal report on cobalt mining in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives, and then comparing that to Apple and Tesla’s supply-chain transparency reports.

6/18/2024: Google’s Third Beta of Android 15 Is Out, and It Has Some Handy New Security Features, PCMag

The fourth piece I’ve writen about the next version of Android had the least news about new features, because at this point in the development cycle Google is basically done announcing new features.

6/19/2024: Billionaire Frank McCourt Shares His Vision for a Decentralized, User-Owned TikTok, PCMag

I had thought this session could yield a good post, and it did not disappoint–even if McCourt’s answers onstage glossed over large parts of his “Project Liberty” proposal.

6/19/2024: What does AI mean for remote work?, Collision

My first panel at Collision–featuring Bhavin Shah, founder and CEO of Moveworks, and Jenny Fielding, co-founder and managing partner at Everywhere Ventures–was the last one added to my schedule and featured the largest audience, thanks to its spot on the event’s center stage.

6/20/2024: 1Password Adds New Account Recovery and Device Addition Options, PCMag

I need to revise this post with some extra details about the new device-addition user experience that 1Password’s PR folks provided Friday afternoon.

6/20/2024: Robots and humans: Partners in progress, Collision

Clock management can be tricky with three other speakers on stage (Erik Nieves, CEO of Plus One Robotics; Tessa Lau, co-founder of Dusty Robotics; and Etienne Lacroix, founder and CEO of Vention), but I managed to end this thing within 10 seconds of schedule. My fellow speakers helped immensely by sharing some enlightening anecdotes (for instance, Lau noting that Dusty’s construction-site-markup robots often get nicknamed “WALL-E” by human co-workers) and not stepping on each other’s lines.

6/20/2024: Revolutionizing email collaboration, Collision

At 25 minutes, this session was unusually long by Web Summit standards. And Superhuman founder and CEO Rahul Vohra was unusually poised and on-message in his answers to my questions about this paid e-mail service’s new AI features.

6/21/2024: Ep 101 SmartTechCheck Podcast — Qualcomm, Surgeon General warning, Apple WWDC recap, TikTok, Mark Vena

I had just enough time after getting home from Dulles to get lunch and get in a nap before joining this podcast recording.

6/22/2024: Rob Pegoraro Visits Washington Apple Pi, Washington Apple Pi

I had expected this would be an in-person talk like the one I did last June, but instead I spoke to the members of this longtime computer user group via Zoom. That meant I could not give away any tech-event swag but did allow me to share links to the stories I mentioned in Zoom’s chat window.

https://robpegoraro.com/2024/06/23/weekly-output-android-15-project-liberty-and-tiktok-ai-and-remote-work-1password-robots-and-humans-superhuman-e-mail-mark-vena-podcast-washington-apple-pi/

#1Password #Android15 #Collision #DustyRobotics #EverywhereVentures #FrankMcCourt #MarkVena #Moveworks #PlusOneRobotics #ProjectLiberty #remoteWork #Superhuman #TikTok #Toronto #userGroups #Vention #WAP #WashingtonApplePi #Waymo #WebSummit