Rob Pegoraro
@robpegoraro.com
D.C.-based freelance technology journalist covering, and often vexed by, computers, gadgets, and other things that beep. May or may not be notable. He/him. Read: PCMag, Fast Company, etc. Write: rob@robpegoraro.com
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Rob Pegoraro
@robpegoraro.com
· Jan 16
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🔎 disclosures: robpegoraro.com/disclosures
📷 photos: flickr.com/robpegoraro
🤳 less-edited photos: instagram.com/robpegoraro
🧾 resume: linkedin.com/in/robpegoraro
➕ B-sides, outtakes, other extras: patreon.com/robpegoraro
🔎 disclosures: robpegoraro.com/disclosures
📷 photos: flickr.com/robpegoraro
🤳 less-edited photos: instagram.com/robpegoraro
🧾 resume: linkedin.com/in/robpegoraro
➕ B-sides, outtakes, other extras: patreon.com/robpegoraro
Contradictory words from NYT publisher A.G. Sulzberger to NPR CEO Katherine Maher in a #WebSummit panel when she asked about Trump's war on the media--including a whiny $15b libel suit v. the NYT:
• "Your rights only hold if you fight for them."
• "We cannot be baited into becoming the opposition."
• "Your rights only hold if you fight for them."
• "We cannot be baited into becoming the opposition."
November 11, 2025 at 11:07 AM
Contradictory words from NYT publisher A.G. Sulzberger to NPR CEO Katherine Maher in a #WebSummit panel when she asked about Trump's war on the media--including a whiny $15b libel suit v. the NYT:
• "Your rights only hold if you fight for them."
• "We cannot be baited into becoming the opposition."
• "Your rights only hold if you fight for them."
• "We cannot be baited into becoming the opposition."
The reason to take one of the #WebSummit shuttle vans to this conference's sprawling venue is not that they're free (the Lisbon Metro is only €1.66 a ride) or that it's faster than the subway (not really) but for the insightful banter with fellow conference humans that happens during these rides.
November 11, 2025 at 10:45 AM
The reason to take one of the #WebSummit shuttle vans to this conference's sprawling venue is not that they're free (the Lisbon Metro is only €1.66 a ride) or that it's faster than the subway (not really) but for the insightful banter with fellow conference humans that happens during these rides.
VPN ads: Public WiFi is scary, and only a VPN can stop The Man from snooping on you online! My VPN reality just now: Needed to switch to a U.S. IP address to log into a grocery store frequent-shopper page that falsely presented itself as "down for maintenance" when visited from a Portuguese IP.
November 11, 2025 at 8:29 AM
VPN ads: Public WiFi is scary, and only a VPN can stop The Man from snooping on you online! My VPN reality just now: Needed to switch to a U.S. IP address to log into a grocery store frequent-shopper page that falsely presented itself as "down for maintenance" when visited from a Portuguese IP.
Good evening from Lisbon, where #WebSummit opened with an Olympics vibe - a parade of flags of attendees' countries. Among the opening speakers, Lisbon mayor Carlos Moedas risked getting booted from X with this celebration of wokeness: "A country cannot work without social justice."
November 10, 2025 at 7:41 PM
Good evening from Lisbon, where #WebSummit opened with an Olympics vibe - a parade of flags of attendees' countries. Among the opening speakers, Lisbon mayor Carlos Moedas risked getting booted from X with this celebration of wokeness: "A country cannot work without social justice."
Evernote seems to have taken this rate increase from T-Mobile's playbook: replace a plan that met most individual-user needs with one that offers far more features/capacity than most people need and which costs a lot more.
Discontinuing Evernote Personal & Professional / Introducing Starter & Advanced — FAQ
To better serve our customers and support Evernote’s ongoing evolution, we’ve introduced two new individual plans—Starter and Advanced—to replace the current Personal and Professional subscriptions...
help.evernote.com
November 10, 2025 at 4:49 PM
Evernote seems to have taken this rate increase from T-Mobile's playbook: replace a plan that met most individual-user needs with one that offers far more features/capacity than most people need and which costs a lot more.
Recent weeks treated me to two adventures in electric vehicles that were never going to show up in my driveway:
📬 The U.S. Postal Service's Oshkosh NGDV, aka the "duck truck" or "platypus": www.pcmag.com/news/i-took-...
🛥️ Candela's C-8 battery-electric hydrofoil: www.fastcompany.com/91425601/can...
📬 The U.S. Postal Service's Oshkosh NGDV, aka the "duck truck" or "platypus": www.pcmag.com/news/i-took-...
🛥️ Candela's C-8 battery-electric hydrofoil: www.fastcompany.com/91425601/can...
November 10, 2025 at 3:10 PM
Recent weeks treated me to two adventures in electric vehicles that were never going to show up in my driveway:
📬 The U.S. Postal Service's Oshkosh NGDV, aka the "duck truck" or "platypus": www.pcmag.com/news/i-took-...
🛥️ Candela's C-8 battery-electric hydrofoil: www.fastcompany.com/91425601/can...
📬 The U.S. Postal Service's Oshkosh NGDV, aka the "duck truck" or "platypus": www.pcmag.com/news/i-took-...
🛥️ Candela's C-8 battery-electric hydrofoil: www.fastcompany.com/91425601/can...
A new low in inscrutable hotel UXes: The eight unlabeled buttons on this wall-mounted panel control at least two arrays of lights, maybe three, as well as this room's powered window blinds and shades, and I may have them all figured out before I check out Friday.
November 10, 2025 at 10:19 AM
A new low in inscrutable hotel UXes: The eight unlabeled buttons on this wall-mounted panel control at least two arrays of lights, maybe three, as well as this room's powered window blinds and shades, and I may have them all figured out before I check out Friday.
The folks at Harvard's Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society brought pocket-sized zines with coaching about phone app permissions to #MozFest. Love this work. asml.cyber.harvard.edu/permissions-...
November 9, 2025 at 3:04 PM
The folks at Harvard's Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society brought pocket-sized zines with coaching about phone app permissions to #MozFest. Love this work. asml.cyber.harvard.edu/permissions-...
I have said more than once that the One Weird Trick that Sam Altman could try to improve people's views about AI would be to shut up about it. Stop talking, stop tweeting. Just stop.
“.. if anything, [OpenAI’s] endless barrage of statements, interviews, and communications .. is starting to become counterproductive (anyone, whether it’s a company or politician, that insists on saturating media cycles .. usually isn’t doing so from a place of confidence).”
- Vital Knowledge
- Vital Knowledge
November 9, 2025 at 12:37 PM
I have said more than once that the One Weird Trick that Sam Altman could try to improve people's views about AI would be to shut up about it. Stop talking, stop tweeting. Just stop.
Chelsea Manning gave a good, philosophical #MozFest talk - began as a monologue on our "pocket rectangles," then critiqued Wagner's total work of art idea, bench-deprived train stations, and more. "Allow yourself to do the most defiant and powerful thing," she said. "Allow yourself to be bored."
November 9, 2025 at 11:36 AM
Chelsea Manning gave a good, philosophical #MozFest talk - began as a monologue on our "pocket rectangles," then critiqued Wagner's total work of art idea, bench-deprived train stations, and more. "Allow yourself to do the most defiant and powerful thing," she said. "Allow yourself to be bored."
Fascinating workshop at #MozFest introduced me to the Flickr Foundation's Data Lifeboat archiving app for Flickr content... which I, a paying user of that photo-sharing site, did not know existed.
(I can't tell you more about how it works because rn it's throwing an oauth error with my account.)
(I can't tell you more about how it works because rn it's throwing an oauth error with my account.)
Data Lifeboat | Preserve Your Flickr Photos
Archive Flickr photos safely with Data Lifeboat - a project by the nonprofit Flickr Foundation
datalifeboat.flickr.org
November 9, 2025 at 9:45 AM
Fascinating workshop at #MozFest introduced me to the Flickr Foundation's Data Lifeboat archiving app for Flickr content... which I, a paying user of that photo-sharing site, did not know existed.
(I can't tell you more about how it works because rn it's throwing an oauth error with my account.)
(I can't tell you more about how it works because rn it's throwing an oauth error with my account.)
Finally, more people who don't follow Virginia politics are appreciating the feisty social-media game of Sen. Louise Lucas (D-Portsmouth), which makes Gavin Newsom's look like single-A ball. She is not--yet--on here, but @manos.lol has gone to the trouble of mirroring her X output.
I saw the Washington Post editorial on redistricting today and this is my official response.
November 8, 2025 at 8:59 AM
Finally, more people who don't follow Virginia politics are appreciating the feisty social-media game of Sen. Louise Lucas (D-Portsmouth), which makes Gavin Newsom's look like single-A ball. She is not--yet--on here, but @manos.lol has gone to the trouble of mirroring her X output.
Day two of #MozFest starts with the Mozilla Foundation's Bourree Lam interviewing the Onion's @bencollins.bsky.social. He brags that the Onion is now the 11th biggest print paper in the U.S. "Our goal next year is to beat the Washington Post... and they're making it pretty easy." [Audience LOLs.]
November 8, 2025 at 8:30 AM
Day two of #MozFest starts with the Mozilla Foundation's Bourree Lam interviewing the Onion's @bencollins.bsky.social. He brags that the Onion is now the 11th biggest print paper in the U.S. "Our goal next year is to beat the Washington Post... and they're making it pretty easy." [Audience LOLs.]
"If we let the bad people get a trillion dollars a year that we're not getting, they're going to kick our ass every single time": @robin.berjon.com's case in a #MozFest talk with @coricrider.com for breaking Google's hold on the digital-advertising market--which EU regulators seem poised to do.
November 7, 2025 at 9:25 AM
"If we let the bad people get a trillion dollars a year that we're not getting, they're going to kick our ass every single time": @robin.berjon.com's case in a #MozFest talk with @coricrider.com for breaking Google's hold on the digital-advertising market--which EU regulators seem poised to do.
The Mozilla Festival has one of the most picturesque venues I've ever seen for a conference (with a non-trivial risk of getting lost in one or another of Poble Espanyol's alleys).
November 7, 2025 at 8:09 AM
The Mozilla Festival has one of the most picturesque venues I've ever seen for a conference (with a non-trivial risk of getting lost in one or another of Poble Espanyol's alleys).
Hola desde Barcelona! I'm here through Friday to cover the Mozilla Festival (with the organizers providing a travel stipend). It is such a treat to have this city as part of my business travel twice in a year. schedule.mozillafestival.org/schedule
November 6, 2025 at 3:04 PM
Hola desde Barcelona! I'm here through Friday to cover the Mozilla Festival (with the organizers providing a travel stipend). It is such a treat to have this city as part of my business travel twice in a year. schedule.mozillafestival.org/schedule
Having seen Facebook dismiss multiple reports I've filed of obvious violations of its ad policy--in each case, ads in the top right of its Web UI that mimicked Facebook's own notification and message icons--I find this report eminently credible.
Meta's fraud problem: The social media giant projected 10% of its 2024 revenue would come from ads for scams and banned goods, documents seen by @Reuters show reut.rs/4qJTpdH
November 6, 2025 at 1:06 PM
Having seen Facebook dismiss multiple reports I've filed of obvious violations of its ad policy--in each case, ads in the top right of its Web UI that mimicked Facebook's own notification and message icons--I find this report eminently credible.
NYC, your next mayor ranks as front-page news in Germany.
November 6, 2025 at 9:02 AM
NYC, your next mayor ranks as front-page news in Germany.
If your TATL flight lands at FRA and you can exit the plane on a jetway instead of stairs to a bus, have you even FRA-ed?
November 6, 2025 at 7:59 AM
If your TATL flight lands at FRA and you can exit the plane on a jetway instead of stairs to a bus, have you even FRA-ed?
Enlightening thread about election administration at scale - especially if you've put in time as a poll worker for a county with a tiny fraction of L.A.'s population and size.
Watching one of 22 optical scanners read ballots. A few minutes later, the ballot count update added another 120,000. Now over 2M ballots have been processed+counted in LA County (5.8 M registered voters).
On the processing floor, only green pens and gold pencils are allowed (invisible to scanner)
On the processing floor, only green pens and gold pencils are allowed (invisible to scanner)
November 6, 2025 at 6:47 AM
Enlightening thread about election administration at scale - especially if you've put in time as a poll worker for a county with a tiny fraction of L.A.'s population and size.
"But if I work all day on the Bluesky mines / There'll be food on the table tonight"
(Midnight Oil lyrics, slightly altered from a much more innocent era of social media)
(Midnight Oil lyrics, slightly altered from a much more innocent era of social media)
November 6, 2025 at 12:21 AM
"But if I work all day on the Bluesky mines / There'll be food on the table tonight"
(Midnight Oil lyrics, slightly altered from a much more innocent era of social media)
(Midnight Oil lyrics, slightly altered from a much more innocent era of social media)
The Silver Line train to Dulles is an excellent advertisement for transit when it's leaving cars on the Toll Road behind while whooshing along at 70+ mph. Same goes for the train's views of planes landing on 19L.
November 5, 2025 at 7:59 PM
The Silver Line train to Dulles is an excellent advertisement for transit when it's leaving cars on the Toll Road behind while whooshing along at 70+ mph. Same goes for the train's views of planes landing on 19L.
A reasonable read of Virginia voters in 2025: Sic semper MAGA.
November 5, 2025 at 3:05 AM
A reasonable read of Virginia voters in 2025: Sic semper MAGA.
Watching Governor-elect Spanberger’s victory speech, I loved the shout-out to Mary Sue Terry—the Democratic candidate for governor in the first Virginia election that I voted in. Thirty-two years later, Virginia has finally ended a streak going back to Gov. Patrick Henry in 1776.
November 5, 2025 at 2:04 AM
Watching Governor-elect Spanberger’s victory speech, I loved the shout-out to Mary Sue Terry—the Democratic candidate for governor in the first Virginia election that I voted in. Thirty-two years later, Virginia has finally ended a streak going back to Gov. Patrick Henry in 1776.
In case anybody needs a pep talk about voting, here's a short essay on that point that I share every November.
Why we vote
Because you want your candidate to win. Because you want the other candidate to lose. Because you can express your distaste for everybody on the ballot by writing in somebody else. Even yourself. B…
robpegoraro.com
November 4, 2025 at 2:32 PM
In case anybody needs a pep talk about voting, here's a short essay on that point that I share every November.