As we close out 2025, the tech landscape has been a mix of ambitious breakthroughs and some truly spectacular misfires. While “worst” is a matter of personal opinion, several products this year stood out for failing to meet their massive hype, suffering from critical design… Read More »Some of the worst tech products of 2025
There’s a Verizon scam that’s fooling many, that we should be aware of, because it’s quite clever and initially fooled me. I received this text, supposedly from Verizon, saying I had points that were about to expire and I needed to redeem them soon: I… Read More »Redeem those Verizon points before they expire
More than a year ago we read how ChatGPT would just make things up and how it embarrassed a lawyer who used it by citing court cases that it just made up. After all this time, ChatGLT is no better and maybe worse. At least… Read More »ChatGPT still hallucinates
When a power outage in San Francisco last night caused Waymo’s autonomous cars to stall and snarl traffic, clog streets and blocked emergency vehicles, it felt to me like a paradigm of big tech. It was a predictable failure. The tech industry loves to release… Read More »When Technology Breaks, It Breaks Society
We no longer see the swarm of major new gadgets that we saw earlier in this decade. Instead we’re seeing refinements, improvements, and more miniaturization. I recently looked back on some of the gadgets that I purchased this year and like enough to recommend. Anker… Read More »Favorite gadgets of 2025
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. That was the focus of interest in the rollerboard bag category, each manufacturer creating a… Read More »Why Under-Seat Bags Became the New Battleground
My phone messages are being filled with a continuous torrent of requests for donations from our politicians. Day and night I receive texts from politicians who insist that I, a stranger they have never met, hold the key to saving their campaign. The tone is… Read More »The great texting onslaught from our politicians
It’s becoming one of the real annoyances of our daily life: the constant request to rate, score, or review every transaction we make. Buy a sandwich, rate the sandwich. Order an item from Amazon, rate the packaging. Call customer support, rate the agent before you’re… Read More »The Endless Survey: How Customer Feedback Became Customer Fatigue
I just returned from Paris with tired legs, achy feet, hundreds of photos, and a renewed appreciation for something that most cities lack: the enjoyment of walking. Paris is a city built for the pedestrian in a way few modern cities are. While other places… Read More »Paris: The World’s Greatest Walking City
We were told the AI era was going to be different. More careful. More reliable. More accurate. Yet the latest misstep at Google shows something very different. — and very, very irresponsible, especially for a company that is supposed to provide reliable information. Google recently… Read More »AI Still Hallucinates: Why Google’s failure is a danger sign