Weekly output: NextGen Acela, Evernote V11, Verizon CEOs, RGB LED, screen time, Cranky Dorkfest, Verizon buys Starry, AT&T standalone 5G, TiVo DVRs
This week will have me crossing a state off my states-visited list for the first time since 2009–Wisconsin, where Oshkosh Corp. is hosting a press day to show off its government and industrial vehicles, including the U.S. Postal Service’s new and behind-schedule duckface trucks. I don’t have a good explanation for why I had not set foot in that state sooner and can only apologize to America’s Dairyland for the extended oversight.
10/6/2025: Amtrak’s new Acela trains can’t keep up with high-speed rail, Fast Company
After taking the new trains to and from New York at the end of August, I had ambitions of writing this story much faster than I did–sort of like how Amtrak had ambitions of getting the new train into service much sooner than it did. But getting the level of detail that I wanted about the railroad’s plans to upgrade the power infrastructure along the Northeast Corridor took more time than I expected.
(I included the full text of Amtrak’s detailed explanation of its plans to improve the catenary along the NEC in the commentary-enhanced version of this post that I published early on Patreon.)
10/6/2025: Major Evernote Update Taps AI for Search and Transcription, But Not Writing, PCMag
I had about an hour Friday to quiz Evernote product lead Federico Simionato about Bending Spoons’ plans for the note-taking app that it bought in 2023, and which I’ve used since 2010–so of course I took notes in my Mac’s copy of Evernote while using the Android app to record our conversation for subsequent AI transcription.
10/6/2025: Verizon Hot-Swaps Current CEO for Ex-PayPal Boss, PCMag
I don’t usually cover C-suite departures and arrivals, but I had some free time. And Verizon’s new chief executive Dan Schulman has a sufficiently interesting backstory–see the New York Times’ interview of him in 2008–that I told my editors I could pick up this item.
10/7/2025: RGB LED Is Getting Its Time in the Spotlight. Will TV Shoppers Tune In?, PCMag
I started writing this post at IFA–the first version had a Berlin dateline. But then I got sufficiently sidetracked and got in enough reporting after that tech trade show for the piece to evolve from an event recap to a broader assessment of a tech development.
10/8/2025: It’s Not Just You: Parents Everywhere Struggle to Set Screen-Time Boundaries, PCMag
Pew’s data about the level of technology use respondents to its survey allowed among kids 12 years old or younger made me feel slightly better about my own attempts at digital parenting.
10/8/2025: What happens when online plane enthusiasts meet up IRL?, Fast Company
This recap of Cranky Dorkfest 2025 was easily the most fun that I’ve had with a story since the last time I went to Florida to see a space launch.
10/8/2025: Verizon to Buy Wireless Broadband Pioneer Starry, Fold It Into Its Home Internet Service, PCMag
Writing this sent me back a ways–both to writing about Starry in its early days, including a December 2017 feature for Yahoo Finance, but also to covering Starry founder Chet Kanojia’s previous venture, the local-TV-streaming service Aereo that the Supreme Court put out of business in a dubious 2014 opinion.
10/9/2025: AT&T Switches on Standalone 5G Nationwide, Unlocking Future Network Slice Services, PCMag
This post also covers Verizon’s advances in standalone 5G, about which that carrier has been quieter than AT&T and T-Mobile.
10/9/2025: Time’s Up for a Timeshifting Trailblazer: TiVo Discontinues Its Standalone DVRs, PCMag
I would have written this much faster if I didn’t get sucked down a rabbit hole of old TiVo posts and reviews, followed by my checking my own TiVo purchase history.
#Acela #Amtrak #ATT5G #avgeek #BendingSpoons #CrankyDorkfest #DanSchulman #digitalParenting #Evernote #fixedWireless #fixedWirelessBroadband #highSpeedRail #IFA #LAX #NEC #NextGenAcela #NortheastCorridor #PewResearchCenter #RGBLED #screenTime #Sony #standalone5G #StarryInternet #Verizon5G #VerizonCEO
Weekly output: Zoox, FCC on broadband, Trump 2.0 cybersecurity, NextGen Acela WiFi, Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses, Myriam Joire podcast
This was a big week for wrapping up stories that I had begun reporting out in a previous month–not September, but August. I’m now mostly caught up on those projects and behind on a post I owe from the cable-industry group SCTE’s conference in D.C. last week.
I also barely managed to avoid falling behind in my commitment to Patreon readers to write two exclusive posts a month: I published September’s second, a look at how some freelance tech journalists cover travel costs to events like IFA and MWC by arranging sponsorships from individual exhibitors, with less than seven hours left in the month.
9/30/2025: Amazon’s Zoox Launches First Stage of Robotaxi-Service Testing in DC, PCMag
Spending all of Monday at SCTE’s event meant that I had to finish writing this during the cocktail hour at a press dinner at All-Purpose across the street from the convention center.
10/1/2025: FCC Tries to Speed Up Broadband Buildouts But Cuts School Wi-Fi Support, PCMag
I spent much more time talking to Public Knowledge’s telecom-law expert Harold Feld than the brief quotes in this story might suggest–which happens every time I ask Harold if I can borrow some of his extensive insight for a story.
10/1/2025: U.S. cybersecurity was bad during the first Trump administration. Somehow, it’s getting worse, Fast Company
I started working on this before Black Hat, got some useful quotes for it during that security conference in Las Vegas, then quizzed a couple of experts in the weeks after, then got seriously sidetracked from being out of town for the first two weeks of September.
10/2/2025: I Tested the Wi-Fi on Amtrak’s NextGen Acela. Bad News: You No Longer Have an Excuse to Skip Work, PCMag
Amtrak took much longer than I expected to get back to me on some of the more technical questions I had after my introduction to NextGen Acela at the end of August, and then I realized that I could refresh my reporting and get some comparative data points about WiFi on Amtrak’s older Northeast Regional trains by making a quick trip to Baltimore and back on Monday afternoon.
10/4/2025: Want to Buy Meta’s Ray-Ban Display Smart Glasses? You May Have to Work For It, PCMag
My tech-analyst friend Avi Greengart’s LinkedIn post about his unsuccessful attempt to buy a pair of these augmented-reality glasses struck me as newsworthy to reshare on that platform. I also shared it on PCMag’s Slack, and one of my colleagues then suggested there was a post to be written about Meta’s weird retail-distribution strategy.
After years of showing up at the same tech events with my friend and fellow avgeek Myriam, I finally showed up on her podcast. Among many other topics we discussed, I particularly appreciated our exchange about the possibile utility of smart glasses; she’s more optimistic about their odds of becoming a consumer-scale gadget than I am, but we agree that Meta is not the ideal company to champion this category.
#AcelaWiFi #AmazonRobotaxi #AmtrakWiFi #ARGlasses #augmentedRealityGlasses #broadbandBuildout #broadbandPermitting #BuildAgenda #CISA #cybersecurity #FCC #informationSecurity #libraryWiFiHotspot #meta #MyriamJoire #NextGenAcela #RayBanDisplay #robotaxi #schoolBusWiFi #selfDrivingCars #smartGlasses #Zoox
Andreas Wiedenhoff
Rob Pegoraro