The Trump administration has holllowed out the nation's lead cybersecurity agency, upended or ended some of its key tasks and punished its previous two directors--while creating a large target in the form of all the data sloppily harvested for DOGE and its migrant crackdown. This seems... not great.

A friend's initial assessment of Liquid Glass on his new iPhone 17: "It may grow on me... like... fungus?"

Thoughts and prayers for Hyatt's social-media managers.

Since Bloomberg seems to be struggling with the concept of linking to source documents, here's a DOT page showing the new $21.5 billion estimate for Brightline West: www.transportation.gov/sites/builda...

The ability of this administration to be an obstructive annoyance for the most vapid reasons possible might be amusing if it held power in a country I hated.

They didn't let Trump fire her at least temporarily as a treat because he is a Very Special Boy?! That's crazy talk...

Computing isn't fixing poverty, war, or inequality, says @sarahjeong.bsky.social in accepting one of Public Knowledge's IP3 awards. Then she recalls how tech partly helped Koreans resist martial law: "The things that slow down or maybe stymie fascism are little things, but they're worth working on."

Security theater at its silliness outside a Comcast reception in the District: Guy uses a metal-detector wand to verify that I have keys and a wallet in pants pockets, then ignores the bag on my shoulder. (Don't worry, it only hid my laptop... and a little plastic explosive shaped like a gopher.)

This repost = an endorsement

An SCTE #TechExpo25 panel that I thought would focus on the digital security of networks is instead covering physical attacks--most of it by thieves looking to collect copper and sell it to recyclers. Speakers note a rise in copper's price but not the 50% tariff Trump put on most imports of it.

I'm a lunch traditionalist and usually don't get breakfast food at that time. But I will make an exception when I can grab a Taylor ham, egg, and cheese bagel sandwich from one of the only places in D.C. that does that Garden State staple. (Pearl's Bagels, across 7th from the convention center)

I didn't watch Hegseth's speech, but from your commentary I take it that he continues to see Wayne Jenkins as his model for SecDef leadership. (If y'all haven't watched We Own This City, please try to fix that.)

Zoox's robotaxis (I want to call them Zooxen) have seen all kinds of weird driver behavior in Vegas, but are they ready for Maryland drivers?

ok pete now do the commander in chief

The Democratic FCC member speaking at SCTE #TechExpo25 doesn't hold back about the Trump administration's "campaign to bring all broadcasters to heel." Warns @agomezfcc.bsky.social: "It's not just Jimmy Kimmel," saying Trump's ultimate goal is that the White House "no longer needs to issue threats."

Good morning from the cable-industry group SCTE's #TechExpo25 event in D.C., where FCC chair Brendan Carr had a friendly onstage chat with NCTA president Cory Gardner. Carr decried "heavy-handed regulation" but faced no questions about his attempt to indulge in it with Jimmy Kimmel's on-air speech.

Another Nats season is in the books. We didn't lose 100+ games! And the beer at the ballpark was generally cold.

If you've got an Amex card with a billing address near D.C., check your Amex Offers for this Metro cash-back deal. The only hard parts with this incentive: remembering to tap in and out with that card, then remembering to switch back to whichever card normally offers a better return on travel spend.

I appreciate the Post's efforts to put together this take on the D.C. canon. But compiling a list of the best art about the District that doesn't include any book by George Pelecanos should be a firing offense. (Leaving out the Dismemberment Plan's "You Are Invited" is also deeply questionable.)

Pop quiz: Do you know anybody without a connection to the tech industry (like working for a tech firm or covering the business as a journalist or analyst) who regularly wears camera-equipped "smart" glasses?

I don't know how many of y'all need this travel tip, but @wmata.com extended service hours on Friday and Saturday nights make it possible to take a United late-afternoon transcon from SFO or LAX, land at IAD a little after 12:30 a.m., and still take Metro home.

I can't think of many of my Washington Post colleagues who immersed themselves more deeply in a subject than Don Phillips did; it was always a treat to hear him talk shop in his Alabama drawl about trains and planes.

Flying from Hawaii to Virginia in a single day remains an excellent way to remind yourself of the sheer size of the United States.

Seven different cases of Google Calendar PayPal/Bitcoin/etc spam on my work account - where it's not practical to block all event invitations from people not in my contacts list.

My big takeaway from the keynote that opened Qualcomm's #SnapdragonSummit: This company--like many other tech firms--has a lot of confidence in people's comfort with other people wearing smart glasses with always on-cameras. But are you okay with that vision of the future?

As a Virginian, I 100% support D.C.'s attorney general lighting up scofflaw Virginians like this. Somebody who drives in the District with that sort of craven indifference to the law does not magically become a good driver when they get to my side of the Potomac.

The production values on display at the coffee counter Qualcomm hired for the #SnapdragonSummit press lounge make a Viennese coffee house look like a Dunkin' Donuts in comparison.

Always amusing to see what lines at a tech keynote--in this case, an 80-minute product-launch presentation at Qualcomm's Snapdragon Summit--get bursts of applause from the employees and fans in the audience. Speaker: "This is first ARM-compatible CPU to run at 5 GHz!" Audience: WOOO!! 👏👏👏

I'm delighted that my friend @ragrawal.bsky.social was able to bring his eye for travel UX to this recap of taking Zoox robotaxis around Vegas. Verdict: Although their for-now price of $0 is compelling, they don't match up to Waymo yet.

Chotiner: and then you didn't send him to jail, and he ran again? USA: I mean yes but we do have pretty robust institutions, you know, the supreme court and so on Chotiner: I see. So they were able to stop the worst of it? USA: Well now it um the thing you have to understand

"We're going to bring AI everywhere," Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon says at the keynote ending day one of its #SnapdragonSummit in Hawaii. (I realize that may look like a threat to some of y'all.) He endorses AI for its ability to adapt to and respond to unstructured human input: "AI is the new UI."

Departures from Runway 30 at IAD now treat you to a view of something besides data centers and suburban sprawl: Construction of the Dulles Solar Farm project has advanced far enough to have hundreds of solar panels installed. www.mwaa.com/topic/dulles...

Why is this Boeing 777 not like any other? Because this one is N777UA, the first one placed into revenue service by any airline--and still flying for United 30 years later after multiple maintenance cycles, cabin renewals and trips to the paint shop.

Happy UN General Assembly week to NYC friends! Good luck dealing with the traffic, and please enjoy your opportunity to laugh at people who complain that their Uber from JFK to Manhattan cost $150 and took two hours.

The first half of this quote, suggesting that President Biden got Twitter and Facebook to suspend Trump before his own inauguration, is gone from the NYT's story without a note about the change. Also, because Peter Baker doesn't vote, you're not allowed to accuse him of political bias. Sorry!

An Arlington original.

Story assignment for somebody with more time than me: Add up the number of H-1B workers getting screwed this way at tech companies with CEOs who donated at least $100,000 to Trump's campaign, PAC or inauguration.

This seems like a smart application of AI to journalism--as opposed to leaning on it to generate slop art and text. (Context: Josh is replying to a post from Anil Dash about how he's doing the same thing with his last 25 years' worth of writing.)

Capital Riverfront is an easy pick for the D.C. neighborhood most transformed in the last 20 years, but you can make a strong case for NoMa too.

I would stomp these spotted lanternflies, but it seems like it would be rude to show up to this evening's reception with a pound of dead invasive bug caked to my shoes.

My firstname-lastname-dot-com email address can feel like a liability when I have to spell it out in a voicemail after calling an organization that for some reason in the year of our Lord 2025 doesn't list an email address for its PR office.

I realize that collecting Brendan Carr quotes to show how he was against censorship before he was for it is an exercise in shooting fish in a barrel in which the fish is a salmon and the barrel is only two feet wide--but salmon is delicious.

This bit of political art I saw yesterday in Arlington (and which has been there since at least Tuesday) must have required some non-trivial effort to create and put in place.

My fellow Virginia voters: Game on!

Who among D.C.-based tech journalists has not received an invite to an event at a particular law firm and immediately thought "their catering kicks ass"?

Given ~~gestures at everything~~ now is a great time to support your local (or not local) worker owned journalism outlet. Throw the money you just pulled from WaPo et al at a media coop! If you're in the Bay Area (or care about it) COYOTE Media just launched:

🎯

I often have PR reps asking what the story will be like and who else it's covering. (As in, "are we going to get crushed here?") I can't remember the last time one asked who else I'm talking to. Requiring that disclosure before any response is control-freak bullshit--which the story should note.

"Anti-corruption of Public Morals Act" sounds like a bill introduced in the Islamic Republic of Iran, not Michigan.

Today in "e-mail subject lines that seemed like a good sales pitch a week ago": "Win an exclusive Disney Studio tour!" (It's from Columbia Sportswear, marketing their new Disney-branded collection. Love their clothing, but that line and this offer get a hard nope.)