Rob Pegoraro

Would you like to know more? 🔎 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

Years of people saying the equivalent of "never bet against Elon"--perhaps the smoothest-brained form of tech-industry analysis possible--after every crackpot scheme Musk unveils pushed me to write this reminder: The appropriate response to “never bet against Elon” is “citation needed.”

Ford's $28,350 Ford Fathom EV pickup will come with onboard power conversion tech that will slash the cost of setting it up as a home backup battery. Will other automakers join Ford and Tesla in pursuing AC V2H? And will utilities let them plug in? www.canarymedia.com/articles/ele... #energysky

Remember when Copa Airlines said it would add Starlink but only make it free to business-class and elite-status passengers? Turns out the rate for everybody else is practically free: $2.50 per device for the whole flight.

Two things to know about T-Mobile's third remixing of its postpaid plans in three and a half years: The new T-Mix plans can save you a little money, but this carrier still assumes that people either need absurd amounts of mobile-hotspot data or will never use that feature on their phones.

“ELT” is one of the more amusingly simple abbreviations you’ll find: Extremely Large Telescope. 🔭

Looks like Brazilians can continue dunking on Americans over how our respective countries have handled violent attempts to overturn elections. Ah well, nevertheless.

Spent the last hour in the kitchen making pizza from scratch while my wife was watching a professional women's soccer game--as in, the kind of scenario that leads certain types on X to declare "The West has fallen."

Interesting change from previous years to the speaker event-management UX at @websummit.bsky.social: That page invites me to add a link to my Bluesky account, with LinkedIn listed as a second option when I click the button to edit that form, but it does not mention X at all.

Had to get up a little earlier than usual (helped by a 7:20 a.m. military-flyover alarm clock) to cheer on tens of thousands of people who woke up way earlier than usual to run 26.2 miles. Bonus: seeing the sign game of other Marine Corps Marathon spectators.

Reminder for everybody running the Marine Corps Marathon tomorrow: That finisher's medal is going to look sexy as hell on you. GO GET IT!

Fellow civil engineering fans: The new Long Bridge construction project has reached the "pouring concrete for aboveground structures" point at the District end of the future span.

If you thought you were alone in sometimes struggling with executive function, I managed to buy a steak at the farmer's market and then not forget the step where I put it in my bag. (It's fine; I called the vendor when I realized my error, and he set my purchase aside for next week.)

Got the paper equivalent of the extended-warranty scam in today's mail--from two different offenders. The official-looking letters from "SureGuard USA" and "Evercare Protection" each urged me to call to activate my coverage on the 2021 Toyota Tacoma that I don't own and would never have bought.

Yesterday's inflight movie: Disclosure Day. Nowhere near Spielberg's best work (could he have been less creative with the look of the aliens?), but Emily Blunt was great. And as a Georgetown grad, I appreciated seeing a little of what seemed a Jesuit contemplation of "are we alone in the universe?"

Finally! This may be described as “beta,” but I didn’t have to change any settings to get the new tablet mode on this iPad mini.

If you heard that LIS is a bad airport to connect through, you heard right! Too many flights, especially intra-EU, require taking a bus to or from stands on the ramp, and in the terminal the lounges can't accommodate the crowds. OTOH, you can get some spectacular views of Lisbon on the way in.

Shareholder as bagholder doesn't seem like the right framing, since I don't see $META collapsing anytime soon--but redoing Meta's stock structure to avoid the indignity of Zuckerberg having to sell so much stock to pay a tax bill that he'd only hold 53% of voting shares shows some real contempt.

Important #CES2027 news, via CTA's CEO Kinsey Fabrizio: They somehow pried free WiFi out of the Venetian conference center, where it's never been free to attendees and cell coverage usually dies at the center of the venue.

Five most-liked comments on this WSJ scoop--yes, these are *from WSJ subscribers*: • "Traitors. Both." • "This is OUTRAGEOUS!!! Elon Musk was elected by NO ONE!!!!!" • "has blood on his hands" • "If ever there was a case for nationalizing a company, this is it." • "Trump is a corrupt traitor."

Among the more noteworthy bits opening CES Unveiled Milan was Gary Shapiro, former Consumer Technology Association CEO and current exec chair, defending trade: "Trade is what helps bind us together as humanity," he said, later acknowledging that "In the United States, we have an unusual president."

This makes me feel my age more than the jet lag already does: #Foursquare founder @dens.nyc writes that the location-sharing platform he founded in 2009 is closing after its purchase by the adtech firm Infillion. Current and former employees got their equity zeroed out: "You all deserved better."

Co-signed. And yet which company's free service do I use to block AI-scraper bots from my own little backwater of the Web? Cloudflare.

CEO Said A Thing! (h/t @karlbode.com) Look, I know stories about Elon can get serious traffic. But if you're going to do them, you have to do your readers the basic service of pointing out the guy's very long and well-documented history of saying he'll make things happen that then never happen.

Clumsy attempts at suppressing "Musk" like TikTok's apparent exercise in class solidarity have excellent odds of Streisand Effect-ing @alexgibneyfilm.bsky.social's documentary into orbit. But the film's account looks intact to me (see for yourself at tiktok.com/@muskdoc); did TikTok already cave?

The Google TV software on my set got an upgrade that adds Gemini AI, leading to an onscreen prompt asking if I wanted to enable "personal results" based on my Google Photos and Calendar data. Hard nope from me on that: Why would I want my TV suggesting shows inspired by tech conferences?

Alright, looks like all of the "a Zacharia is [n] of a Scaramucci" math jokes have been made here. Will stand down with my own.

Investors who think this silly stunt will improve Tesla's business in any material way--as opposed to it representing a stupid waste of R&D resources--deserve to lose their money. Meanwhile, I'm going to guess the reaction among Chinese EV manufacturers: whatever "LOL" is in Mandarin.

Leaving aside the implausible sicko keeping a receipt for 25 years, this is all fake: There is no “sunset bay, FL” no zip code 32987, no WalMart store #4821…

More fun with AI chatbots: Gemini blurted out its own instructions about how it should field queries about elections and voting. They seem fairly reasonable, which invites the question of why Google doesn't post a high-level version of them.

Apple Intelligence, but to notify me the night before that my "Magic Mouse" will fall below 10% of a charge by the next morning so I can plug it in (and therefore render this rodent unusable) before I go to bed.

A nice little grace note of a feature in Preview for macOS 27: When a fillable PDF has a field labeled "signature," the app now automatically shows a menu of any signatures you've already saved in that app.

Of course the IRS site would break on the real tax deadline for those of us who always file for an extension. Anybody else getting weird e-file rejections this evening? (The IRSnews and IRStaxpros accounts on X have not posted anything about this.)

At least 25% of my LinkedIn feed now seems to be people sharing takes on SpaceX's newfound ambition to become a national wireless carrier. (Mine: It's deeply delusional to think you can spin up that level of service with so little terrestrial spectrum and infrastructure.)

Twice in two days, my phone has completely dropped roaming connectivity in Ireland - went from the 5G roaming I get via T-Mobile to zero signal, with the satellite messaging icon showing. I think turning the T-Mobile SIM off and then on fixed it this morning, and yet: so annoying.

Nobody at SpaceX with an ounce of self-awareness can be surprised to see the EU prioritizing tech sovereignty when Elon Musk can't resist treating Starlink as an instrument of his personal foreign policy.