Weekly output: Robust.ai, United Airlines Starlink rollout, Ookla speed test rankings, UpScrolled, Shop with Points fraud risk, commercial space stations

This past week had me flying a long distance to trade snow for sand, in the form of Web Summit Qatar. This coming week will also have me flying from snow to sand, but not nearly as far: I’m headed to Las Vegas for the customer-experience company Medallia’s annual conference. (The organizers of each event are covering my travel costs.)

2/2/2026: Automation in the wild: Why real environments break perfect models, Web Summit Qatar

My one panel at Web Summit’s Qatar conference had me quizzing John Spinale, chief strategy officer at Robust.ai, about how that company has gone about designing robots to help ease the work of humans in warehouses.

2/2/2026: United Airlines: More Than 25% of Our Daily Departures Now Offer Starlink Wi-Fi, PCMag

I was able to add some context to this post because I’m an avgeek and know there’s a volunteer-run site tracking the state of United’s fleet–a site that I wrote about nine years ago.

2/3/2026: Latest Speed Tests Put T-Mobile Ahead of Rival Carriers, PCMag

I’ve been wondering why Ookla issues scores for AT&T’s fiber broadband, ignoring the rest of that company’s residential broadband services, while it grades other providers on a company-wide basis, and this time I asked Ookla far enough ahead of time to get a clear answer to include in my writeup of this survey.

2/4/2026: CEO of Would-Be TikTok Rival UpScrolled: We Won’t Censor Anybody, PCMag

Watching UpScrolled founder and CEO Issam Hijazi go on at Web Summit Qatar’s opening night about how that social platform would not practice censorship reminded me of all of the other times I’ve seen other social-networking executives say versions of that and then be proved wrong by reality.

2/4/2026: Shop on Amazon? Watch Out for This Sneaky Credit Card Points Scam, PCMag

I had started reporting this post in late December, then had to set it aside for CES, then had to set it aside for other pressing deadlines, and finally filed it on the last day of January.

2/6/2026: Space Startups to NASA: Hurry Up and Pick Someone to Build ISS Replacement, PCMag

Appropriately enough, considering a prior topic of my coverage this week, I finished and filed this post via Starlink from my Qatar Airways flight back to Dulles.

iHeartMedia goes LIVE at Web Summit Qatar 2026! 🎙️

Official podcast partner + live recordings + the launch of iHeartArabi—a new era for Arabic audio storytelling!

👉 https://thepodcasting.org/iheartmedia-brings-live-podcasts-to-web-summit-qatar-2026-launches-iheartarabi/

#iHeartMedia #WebSummitQatar #Podcasting #LivePodcasts #iHeartArabi #PodcastTrends #AudioRevolution #DigitalMedia2026

Weekly output: RootMetrics wireless network report

DOHA, Qatar–Between two daylong conferences in D.C. Thursday and Friday, scrambling to finish up some longer posts so I could put them on a January invoice instead of waiting yet another month, and getting ready to fly almost 7,000 miles here for Web Summit Qatar, I only had one post appear under my byline this week.

Patreon readers, however, got one extra post from me: my annual look into my income sources for the previous year.

1/26/2026: Verizon Has Slight Edge Over AT&T, T-Mobile, Except in One Key Category, PCMag

I’ve been covering RootMetrics’ nationwide testing of wireless carriers for years, but this was the first time I could quiz my former Light Reading editor Mike Dano for a story about them. He moved from that trade pub to become an analyst for RootMetrics’ parent firm Ookla last year, and I could see Mike’s knowledge of the business show up in the new RootMetrics report’s detailed breakdown of network infrastructure progress at AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon.

#Doha #Ookla #Qatar #RootMetrics #WebSummit #WebSummitQatar #wirelessCarriers #wirelessNetworkPerformance #wirelessNetworks

Firefox is my default browser on this Windows laptop, and I didn't know about this feature until hearing Mozilla CEO Laura Chambers tout it in a #WebSummitQatar panel: It does language translation on-device. "It's not getting uploaded to someone else's cloud," she told podcaster Jennifer Strong.

I’m sitting out SXSW

The second weekend of this March will not treat me to a few things that have been constants in my late-winter business travel since 2012: a taco- and BBQ-centric diet, the squawks of grackles, panel FOMO, and sore feet from walking up and down the streets of Austin.

I’m breaking that streak of covering SXSW in person (including moderating panels at this conference in 2012 and 2019) not because I’m tired of that event or its excesses but because of other events.

One is MWC Barcelona, which this year takes place a week later than in previous years. That scheduling means I’d either spend barely half a day at home between returning from Spain and flying out to Austin–or I’d have to fly from Barcelona to Austin, resulting in 12 days in a row away from my family.

The other is HumanX, a new AI conference in Las Vegas that runs from March 9 to 13–overlapping half of SXSW–and whose organizers saw fit to invite me to moderate a few panels there. As much as I vastly prefer Austin to Vegas, comped travel beats paying my own way, especially when that involves SXSW-inflated lodging expenses. So that officially shut the door on my going to Marketing Spring Break.

The final plot twist to my late-winter schedule came with the Web Summit people asking if I’d like to speak at Web Summit Qatar. I had passed on that last year because this new addition to their conference lineup overlapped with MWC, but this time it happens the week before. And since I’d heard good things about last year’s event and was curious to see that part of the Middle East, I’m off to Doha in a week and change.

The catch here is that because Web Summit Qatar itself ends only two days before the first MWC pre-conference events start, I’d have little more than a day at home between crossing the Atlantic westbound and then flying back across it eastbound. Instead of that overdose of jet lag, I will spend 12 days in a row away from my wife and our kid–but not entirely away from family, since I’ll stay with my wife’s sister and her family in London for those between-conference days. I know I’ll appreciate that chance to reconnect with a part of my non-work life, even if it comes with elevated odds of my stepping on a Lego.

#ATX #AUS #Austin #Barcelona #bbq #conferences #Doha #HumanX #LasVegas #London #MarketingSpringBreak #MWC #Qatar #southBySouthwest #speaking #sxsw #tacos #WebSummitQatar

BigTrader at WebSummit Qatar 2024! 🚀 Connecting with global tech pros, insightful sessions, and unforgettable networking moments. 🌍🔥

#WebSummitQatar #Networking #nightsummit #TechInnovation #BigTraderMarketplace #BigTraderQatar #MyQatarMyPride #startups #b2becommerce

Experience the future of B2B trade with BigTrader Technologies LLC! Meet us at Web Summit Qatar 2024 in Doha, Qatar.

Date: 27th Feb 2024
Stall No: B304

#BigTrader #WebSummit2024 #WebSummitQatar #innovation #businessmeet #businessmeetup #B2BMarketplace #b2becommerce #Qatar

Delighted to announce I am moderating at @websummitqatar@twitter.com between February 26-29. Excited to chat on stage with @mikel_john_obi@twitter.com.🇳🇬

Do reach out if you're heading to Doha! 🇶🇦 #WebSummitQatar