Gondor
Rob PegoraroSunday started with Joe Biden as the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee and is ending with Kamala Harris as the increasingly likely Democratic presidential nominee. I am struck by the selflessness involved in somebody at the apex of political power assessing the circumstances and the stakes and deciding that they require taking himself out of contention–and how well that grace, however grudgingly it may have come, compares to Donald Trump’s incessant self-worship. As Tom Nichols writes in The Atlantic: “Biden’s decision reflected a determination to put the fate of his country ahead of his personal vanity, a choice Trump is inherently incapable of making.”
7/15/2024: Automation Lessens Zombie Account Risks, FedTech
I last wrote for this publication in 2017, but I must have left a decent reputation there for an editor to e-mail me in April to ask if I could do a story about how government-IT types can ease staff transitions between administrations.
7/17/2024: Boost Mobile Unwraps New Plans As 5G Network Buildout Chugs Along, PCMag
We had to correct this post because I had missed how Boost’s most expensive plan does not include mobile hotspot use, even though two of its three cheaper options include it. Which is a dumb pricing game for any wireless carrier to play, but especially one that touts “simplified pricing” in its pitch for its new plans.
7/17/2024: On Speed, T-Mobile Is First in Mobile Broadband, AT&T in Home Internet, PCMag
Ookla, the company behind the Speedtest family of apps, offered me an advance on their latest connectivity report. I’m still confused by how they assessed only AT&T’s fiber service next to all of Verizon’s broadband options.
7/18/2024: Google Ships Fourth And (We Hope) Last Android 15 Beta, PCMag
This was the fifth time this year that I’ve written a short post about an incremental step in Android 15’s development cycle for PCMag.
7/19/2024: Prior to Microsoft Meltdown, CrowdStrike Exec Warned of ‘Single Point of Failure’, PCMag
As I read about the worldwide IT meltdown sparked by CrowdStrike’s epic failure of a driver update, I remembered seeing a CrowdStrike executive declaring at a Washington Post event in early June that “A resilient digital architecture should be able to weather a storm.” Awkward!
Patreon readers got a bonus post related to this story, in which I recounted the continuing utility of keeping notes in a searchable digital format but also revealed that I still have paper notepads from more than 25 years ago–and recently got some unexpected use out of one.
7/19/2024: Ep 103 SmartTechCheck Podcast–CrowdStrike, innovation drought, foldable phones and robotaxis, Mark Vena
I joined my industry-analyst friend’s podcast to talk about a grab-bag of tech topics, one of them being Waymo’s robotaxis as I experienced them in Los Angeles a few weeks ago.
#5G #Android15 #ATTFiber #BoostMobile #CrowdStrike #federalIT #MarkVena #Ookla #Speedtest #TMobile #wirelessCarriers #zombieAccounts
Tina