What I’ve Been Up To

Posted by on Jun 30, 2026 Time for an update on what I’ve been doing over the past year. Two projects were new adventures: some part-time teaching and a website focused on the U.S. rural broadband (a project I’ve put on hold). I also continued working with clients on a range of scientific and technical topics. Here are a few highlights: Ever since I encountered photonics some 25 years ago, I’ve welcomed any chance to...
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CyberConVA: Where CISOs and AI Took the Stage

Posted by on Feb 20, 2025 RVA Tech hosted its annual CyberConVA on Feb 6 at the Dominion Energy Center in Richmond VA. Subtitled “Where CISOs take the stage,” the conference did indeed feature a roster of chief information security officers (CISOs). But also taking the stage was machine-learning (ML)-based generative (Gen)AI, the technology du jour. (Or de l’année? du siècle?) The CyberConVA opening keynoter was Carsten...
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Five Takeaways from TechExpo 2024

Posted by on Oct 25, 2024 The SCTE held its annual conference and exhibition at the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta, September 24-26. It ended just as Hurricane Helene was slamming into Florida. That leads to a preliminary lesson: Check the weather. I hadn’t been following the news. It was only through exhibitors on the floor who were already talking on Day 2 about packing up that I realized Atlanta was in...
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The Power and Threat of ChatGPT

Posted by on Oct 4, 2024 After a year and a half of using the free version of ChatGPT, I signed up for a paid subscription. This paid version, ChatGPT Plus ($20/month), has been around since February 2023, when it was launched to provide paying subscribers with better performance and priority access to new features. But now seemed like a good time to take the plunge. Why so? One reason is that in September, OpenAI...
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Starlink and 50-plus Years of Satellites

Posted by on May 17, 2024 The sight is startling: Two dozen lights moving across the early night sky in a gentle arc. This is a “train” of Starlink low-earth orbit (LEO) satellites, lit up by the sun and still aligned, before separating and rising to their designated orbits. Given some recent client projects, satellites have been on my mind. My exposure to space-based telecom and media infrastructure, however, has a...
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RSA Cryptographers’ Panel Weighs Quantum Risk

Posted by on May 27, 2023 Several deadlines kept me from attending the RSA Conference last month in San Francisco. But having registered, I’ve been able to listen to recorded sessions, including ‘The Cryptographers’ Panel.’ Moderated as usual by Whitfield Diffie, co-founder of the Diffie-Hellman asymmetric key exchange, this year’s panel spent a lot of time on the threat of quantum computing. AI,...
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