Weekly output: Dashlane, T-Mobile home 5G, AI skepticism at Black Hat, the Fourth Amendment at Black Hat, Black Hat’s network, AOL dial-up

Black Hat is one of the more exhausting and intimidating events that I cover. That’s not because I stress over the risk of my devices getting compromised, but because almost all of its two-day schedule is blocked out by timeslots featuring from nine to 11 briefings each. That increases the odds of my missing something good and reduces the time in which I can write up what I do see.

Over at Patreon, I explained to readers why I decided not to stick around Vegas for another couple of days to cover the DEF CON security conference, somewhat to my dismay.

8/6/2025: Dashlane to Delete Its Free Tier of Service, PCMag

I wrote this Monday afternoon off an embargoed copy of Dashlane’s press release after getting further input from a publicist on two points.

8/6/2025: T-Mobile Tweaks 5G Home Internet to Add Benefits (and Fine-Print Fees), PCMag

An editor suggested I take a look at the T-Mobile announcement heralding some added perks to its fixed-wireless service, then I noticed a change in the fine print around its prices. That made this much more interesting to write about.

8/7/2025: This AI Skeptic Thinks AI Is Bringing Human Brains Down to Its Level, PCMag

After catching the tail end of a panel featuring Gary Marcus at Web Summit Vancouver, I made sure to watch his talk at Black Hat and found that an excellent use of my time.

8/8/2025: ACLU Expert: Please Don’t Make Bulk Snooping by Governments Easier, PCMag

Jennifer Granick’s talk was another one I’d put on my to-watch list after first looking over Black Hat’s schedule. I wish I shared her optimism that more companies would be inspired to adopt data-minimization practices to avoid aiding government surveillance.

8/9/2025: Inside Black Hat’s Network Security Operation: Humans Are Still a Problem, PCMag

After several years of writing about the penultimate panel in which Black Hat network admins relate how the event’s network worked and how badly some attendees behaved on it, I had the chance to quiz two of these experts beforehand. I should have done that sooner!

8/9/2025: End of an E-Era: AOL to End Dial-Up Internet Access, PCMag

I did not plan on working Saturday morning after the cognitive overload of Black Hat, but seeing tech journalist Ernie Smith’s Bluesky post highlighting the impending demise of AOL’s dial-up access left me feeling compelled as a Gen Xer to write about it. Unfortunately, my sleep debt may have caught up with me when I left two cringe-inducing typos in the same snakebit paragraph: spelling “America Online” as “American Online” and writing that the company’s 15th birthday happened in 2020, not 2000.

#ACLU #AI #AmericaOnline #AOL #BlackHat #BlackHatNOC #cybersecurity #dialUp #FourthAmendment #GaryMarcus #informationSecurity #infosec #JenniferGranick #LasVegas #TMobileFixedWireless #TMobileHome5G #techPrivacy #Vegas

This week featured vastly less travel than last week, but it also afforded me the rare experience of hearing an executive-branch appointee burst into song. And at the end of it, I carved out some time to write a post for Patreon readers about how certain PR pitches come with either a request or a stipulation that I cover the subject for a particular outlet.

4/23/2024: T-Mobile Adds New Fixed Wireless Plans: One for Home, One for the Road, PCMag

Of all of T-Mobile’s announcements Tuesday, the unlimited-data version of its new Away fixed-wireless plan was easily the most interesting.

4/23/2024: FTC Votes to Ban Non-Compete Clauses, PCMag

I wrote an update to the post I’d filed more than a year earlier when the Federal Trade Commission had started this rule-making process, explaining the particulars of the new FTC rule and noting the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s plans to sue to overturn this ban.

4/25/2024: Feds Try Breaking Out Into Song to Get People to Take Ransomware Seriously, PCMag

I spent Wednesday at a conference in Washington hosted by the Institute for Security and Technology, then wrote this recap Thursday that led off with Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency director Jen Easterly singing a bit from an upcoming remake of Schoolhouse Rock’s “I’m Just A Bill.”

4/27/2024: Ep 99 SmartTechCheck Podcast – TikTok, smartphones and children, FCC broadband labels mandate, Mark Vena

I joined my tech-analyst friend’s podcast to discuss the new law requiring TikTok owner ByteDance to sell that social platform, the FCC’s broadband-labels regulation, how harmful smartphones might be to kids, and other tech topics.

Updated 5/5/2024 to add a link to the Patreon post.

https://robpegoraro.com/2024/04/28/weekly-output-t-mobile-adds-fixed-wireless-plans-ftc-bans-non-compete-clauses-ransomware-prevention-mark-vena-podcast/

#cybersecurity #fixedWireless #FTCNonCompeteBan #informationSecurity #infosec #JenEasterly #MarkVena #nonCompeteClauses #ransomware #SchoolhouseRock #TMobile #TMobileHome5G #TMobileHomeInternet

After clocking 17 days in a row of work–thanks to the run-up to CES, CES itself, and then needing to catch up on projects set aside during that week in Vegas–I ditched professional obligations Monday to go skiing. And then I answered some business e-mails from the chairlift anyway.

1/23/2024: T-Mobile Plans to Deprioritize ‘Heavy Data’ Users of Its Home 5G, PCMag

Once again, Reddit enlightened me about a plot twist at a company I cover–this time, in the form of a post on r/tmobile pointing to a report of T-Mobile stepping slightly away from offering unlimited data on its fixed-wireless service. I e-mailed the company for comment Monday night, got a reply hours later and wrote this post Tuesday morning.

1/24/2024: Connected-car ambitions risk collision with regulators’ concerns, Light Reading

This post closed out my CES 2024 coverage, and I had planned to write it sooner. But after a few days of being in the weeds with other deadlines, I realized that the Washington Auto Show’s public-policy day would probably yield useful quotes from policymakers about the privacy implications of the connected-car tech that I’d seen hyped at CES. Fortunately, my editor agreed with my suggestion that I hold off on filing this post so I could fold in that later reporting.

https://robpegoraro.com/2024/01/28/weekly-output-t-mobile-fixed-wireless-gets-a-little-less-generous-connected-car-concerns/

#AWSAutomotive #ces #connectedCars #fixedWireless #home5G #Qualcomm #TMobile #TMobileHome5G #WashingtonAutoShow

This year’s business travel is in the books for me: With my return from Web Summit in Lisbon Friday, the rest of 2023 has no more out-of-town conference badges or hotel keys left. That’s pretty exciting, even if CES looms seven weeks away.

11/13/2023: T-Mobile Within Striking Distance of Becoming Fifth-Largest US ISP, PCMag

The way 5G has brought choice and competition to millions of American homes remains an underappreciated story in telecom.

11/14/2023: Is big tech killing trust?, Web Summit

I interviewed Signal Foundation president Meredith Whittaker and University of California at Irvine professor Veena Dubal about ways that people might reclaim some leverage against tech giants. Our conversation had some hiccups, in the form of acoustics that Whittaker said made it difficult for her to hear me–even while I could hear her mostly fine.

11/14/2023: Strike Up the Bands: White House National Spectrum Strategy Light on Mobile Details, PCMag

I stayed up late Monday to file this post unpacking the long-awaited release of the White House’s spectrum-policy roadmap–and explaining how some of the spectrum bands covered in the document seem unlikely to boost bandwidth to any phones or homes.

11/15/2023: Mozilla: Friends Don’t Get Friends These Tech Gifts, PCMag

I was going to write up the release of the 2023 edition of Mozilla’s “Privacy Not Included” anti-gift guide based on an advance look at the press release about it, then saw enough questions unanswered by that embargoed release that I decided to wait until the next morning to file. And then this nonprofit’s post announcing the guide had very little in common with the copy I’d seen before.

11/16/2023: Audience with a robot: AGI and a decentralised beneficial Singularity, Web Summit

My first panel Thursday had me interviewing one human, SingularityNet COO Janet Adams, and one non-human, that company’s talking, AI-powered robot Desdemona. I decided to test the robot’s conversational skills by asking her questions based on the Three Laws of Robotics and the Voight-Kampff Test, and she fielded them reasonably well.

11/16/2023: Raising money for robots, Web Summit

In my second panel Thursday, I interviewed Energy Robotics CEO Marc Dassler about the investment climate for robotics startups. We had fewer people show up to watch this, which I think has a great deal to do with this panel being scheduled right before a lunch break.

11/17/2023: Why Qualcomm Wants to Keep More of Your AI Offline, PCMag

I sat down with Qualcomm chief marketing officer Don McGuire Wednesday after watching one of his panels, then turned my notes from that interview into this post.

11/18/2023: Starship’s Second Flight Test Burns Bright But Not Quite Long Enough, PCMag

I assumed that jet lag would have me awake well before the scheduled launch time Saturday of SpaceX’s Starship rocket and so volunteered to write it up. I made a point of noting how much progress this incomplete test represented over April’s messier flight test and nodding to a Reuters report documenting some fairly gruesome workplace-safety issues with Starship.

https://robpegoraro.com/2023/11/19/weekly-output-wireless-broadband-rises-tech-vs-trust-national-spectrum-strategy-mozilla-non-gift-guide-ai-meets-robotics-robotics-startup-fundraising-qualcomms-on-device-ai-pitch-starship-f/

#BigTech #Desdemona #EnergyRobotics #fixedWirelessAccess #giftGuide #Lisbon #NationalSpectrumStrategy #onDeviceAI #PrivacyNotIncluded #Qualcomm #roboticsStartups #SingularityNet #SpaceX #spectrumBands #Starship #TMobileHome5G #techlash #Verizon5GHome #WebSummit