Monthly Archives: December 2025

When a power outage in San Francisco last night caused Waymo’s autonomous cars to freeze in place, snarl traffic, and block emergency vehicles, it felt to me like a paradigm of big tech. It was a predictable failure. The tech industry loves to release breakthrough products, but consistently refuses to confront how fragile these systems […]

I remember when my December newspaper columns were filled with new and unusual tech and travel products of the year, but no longer do see the swarm of new gadgets that we experienced in past years. Instead we’re mostly seeing refinements, improvements, and miniaturization of existing categories of products. This week I look back at […]

There was a time when the under-seat bag barely mattered. It carried a book, a computer, a boarding pass, maybe a sandwich. The real action lived in the overhead bin. The focus of interest was the rollerboard bag category, with every luggage company creating a line of bags measuring precisely 21 x 9 x 15 […]

My phone messages are being filled with a continuous torrent of requests for donations from our politicians. Day and night, I, a stranger they’ve never met, receive texts telling me I hold the key to saving their campaign. The tone is always frantic. “We are begging you.” “We are collapsing.” “We will not survive the […]