WAILEA, Hawaii–I’m spending the next four days here in the middle of the Pacific, but not for fun. Instead, Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Summit has called me here as it did in 2023, with Qualcomm once again covering airfare and lodging. I’ll be covering the event for PCMag, and a disclosure about that in all the copy that I file from here.
Patreon readers got a bonus post this week about the lengths to which I went to chisel away at the cost of a new Brother multi-function color laser printer, ultimately knocking $130 off the $369.99 list price of this model.
10/15/2024: Google Ships Android 15, Unwraps New Pixel Drop for Recent Devices, PCMag
Eight months after my first post for PCMag about Android 15, I wrote about its official release. I installed it on a Pixel 8a four days later and, as I wrote here Saturday evening, found it an initially unremarkable upgrade. To repeat a reminder I offered in that post: Don’t forget to activate the new anti-theft features in this update that are not enabled by default.
10/18/2024: X’s New Rules: Blocked Posts Will No Longer Be Hidden, Your Tweets Will Train Grok AI, PCMag
The upcoming terms of service allowing AI scraping, the first change I noticed, seemed like it might not be newsworthy since X has been doing that for months. But then I also spotted the weird “liquidated damages” provision and and another requiring that any lawsuits against the company be brought in courts in a different part of Texas–and I realized that my client had not yet covered how X has begun notifying its users that the block function is about to be downgraded to a mute tool.
10/18/2024: Bluesky Boom: X Alternative Sees Surge Of Signups, PCMag
Before PCMag had gotten around to publishing my “ToS” piece, I saw another post emerging in what looks like a serious flight of users from X to Bluesky. The growth in user numbers–the decentralized platform crossed the 12-million-account line Friday–isn’t nearly as impressive as the way Bluesky’s apps have skyrocketed up the charts in the Android and iOS app stores. As of Sunday evening, Bluesky’s iOS app is ranked 19th in free apps and fourth in social apps, while its Android client is fourth and third, respectively.
It’s been equally striking to see so many old friends from Twitter who had set up Bluesky accounts start using them–especially among avgeek circles, something that’s on my mind more than usual having spent so much of this month and this day on airplanes. I’m now waiting/hoping to see more people in Virginia and Arlington politics do likewise–and if the Harris-Walz campaign will start posting on Bluesky.
https://robpegoraro.com/2024/10/20/weekly-output-android-15-x-changes-the-rules-again-bluesky-boom/
#Android15 #Bluesky #ElonMuskTwitter #GrokAI #Hawaii #PixelDrop #Qualcomm #SnapdragonSummit #TwitterBlock #X #XTerms
