Linked List: April 6, 2015

Monday, 6 April 2015

More on Apple’s Construction Hiring 

Wendy Lee, in a follow-up report for the San Francisco Chronicle:

A person familiar with the policy said construction workers with felony convictions within the last seven years are not permitted on the site, while those with earlier felony convictions could find work building the campus. People with “felony charges pending court disposition” are evaluated on a case by case basis, said the source.

“Evaluated on a case by case basis” is very different from the blanket ban Lee reported over the weekend.

In a separate op-ed piece, Debra J. Saunders reiterates the same policy:

Apple would not respond on the record, but someone familiar with the matter said the Apple policy affects only ex-offenders convicted of felonies in the past seven years. The person said that the corporation reviews pending charges and does not automatically discharge those facing prosecution, and that the policy exists to promote quality and safety. […]

Apple has not alleged that any of the fewer than five workers let go were not pulling their weight on the job.

I’m not sure where her “fewer than five workers” figure comes from — if they can be that specific, why not an exact number? But if I had to guess, I’d say “fewer than five” means “three or four”. Here’s my question that the Chronicle has not addressed: do other companies of similar stature to Apple — Google, Intel, Facebook, etc. — have similar hiring policies for construction work?

Update: Email from DF reader “CT”:

I work in the public service and when dealing in statistics we say either 0 or fewer than 5.

Giving a specific number lower than 5 risks identifying individuals. If only one person had to leave the Apple site, and they say “one worker”, their fellow workers could conclude that they have a felony conviction. From a privacy perspective it is better to keep it ambiguous than to risk identifying an individual.

Star Wars Digital Movie Collection Coming April 10 

Good news, but we’re still stuck with the Special Edition cuts.

‘Welcome to Macintosh’ 

Concise, tightly-edited, informative, and fun new podcast by young Mr. Mark Bramhill. Three episodes so far — go ahead and listen to them all. So good.

Rolling Stone UVA Rape Story Retraction: A Case Study in Failed Journalism 

Jonathan Mahler, writing for the NYT: 

Now that the facts have been laid bare, “A Rape on Campus,” published in November, joins America’s rogues’ gallery of journalism scandals. For ease of reference, the scandals can be divided into three general categories (excluding the recent phenomenon of television figures telling tall-tale war stories).

The first two are straightforward. There is pure fabrication, for which high-profile culprits include Jayson Blair (The New York Times), Stephen Glass (The New Republic) and, going back a little further, Janet Cooke (The Washington Post). And there is the act of plagiarism (culprits too numerous to list).

“A Rape on Campus” falls into a third category: lack of skepticism.

Iran and the Obama Doctrine 

Barack Obama, in an interview with Thomas Friedman:

“We are powerful enough to be able to test these propositions without putting ourselves at risk. And that’s the thing … people don’t seem to understand,” the president said. “You take a country like Cuba. For us to test the possibility that engagement leads to a better outcome for the Cuban people, there aren’t that many risks for us. It’s a tiny little country. It’s not one that threatens our core security interests, and so [there’s no reason not] to test the proposition. And if it turns out that it doesn’t lead to better outcomes, we can adjust our policies. The same is true with respect to Iran, a larger country, a dangerous country, one that has engaged in activities that resulted in the death of U.S. citizens, but the truth of the matter is: Iran’s defense budget is $30 billion. Our defense budget is closer to $600 billion. Iran understands that they cannot fight us. … You asked about an Obama doctrine. The doctrine is: We will engage, but we preserve all our capabilities.”

I love this. The central failing of the partisan gridlock that has paralyzed U.S. politics is that we don’t try anything. Try something new, see if it works, and if it doesn’t, change it again.

Report Claims Samsung Paid Hundreds of ‘Fans’ to Attend Galaxy S6 Launch in China 

WantChinaTimes:

South Korean smartphone giant Samsung paid people to pretend to be its fans at a press conference for its products’ release on Friday, reports Shanghai-based news outlet the Paper.

A person specializing in recruiting these “fans” said he brought over 100 people to the event. They and the other groups of people brought by other recruiters reached 400 to 500 in total. These hired “fans” amounted to around half of the 1,000 people at the event, according to the Paper. […]

The recruiters told them to tell reporters they were at the event because they are Samsung’s fans or interested in the smartphone brand’s new model the S6, said the paper. Over half of the people taking photos of Samsung’s latest model the S6 and the S6 Edge were using iPhones.

Update: Samsung’s official blog has issued a denial:

Samsung investigated a media report on April 3 that claimed people were temporarily hired and paid to attend the Galaxy S6 launching event in Shanghai, China and later found that the story was totally groundless and bogus.

The news article contended that part-timers, acting as “fanboys”of Samsung smartphones, participated in the launching event. However, our findings have indicated that under no circumstances has anyone been hired or given money to attend the event.

The Future of Apple Watch and Apps 

Also from Abdel Ibrahim, an interesting take on Apple Watch not having a primarily app-centric interaction model:

From the Watch Face, you are able to see your Glances and notifications. In order to see apps, you have to engage the Digital Crown. This makes it seem pretty obvious that Apple has purposely designed apps not to be front and center like they are on iPhone. Instead, Apple Watch apps are mere repositories where stored information can be pushed to the user in the form of Glances and via Notification Center.

This may sound a little weird, and I think to some of us it is. We’re used to apps being the focal point. But on Apple Watch, on initial waking, they’re not.

‘Apparently None of You Guys Realize How Bad of an Idea a Touchscreen Is on a Phone’ 

Abdel Ibrahim, cherry-picking from Engadget commenters pooh-poohing the original iPhone keynote in 2007:

Apparently none of you guys realize how bad of an idea a touch-screen is on a phone. I foresee some pretty obvious and pretty major problems here.

I’ll be keeping my Samsung A707, thanks. It’s smaller, it’s got a protected screen, and it’s got proper buttons. And it’s got all the same features otherwise. (Oh, but it doesn’t run a bloatware OS that was never designed for a phone.)

Color me massively disappointed.

The Samsung A707 was a real beauty.

Felons Barred From Constructing Apple’s Campus 

Wendy Lee, reporting for the San Francisco Chronicle:

Several construction workers who were hired to build the exterior of Apple’s new campus in Cupertino were ordered to leave the site in January due to prior felony convictions, several union officials and workers told The Chronicle. The ban is unusual for construction work, a field in which employers typically do not perform criminal background checks. […]

Banning felons could bring about legal ramifications for Apple, said Lisa Klerman, a law professor at the University of Southern California. “If they are just disqualifying people with felony convictions with no connection to the job, they could be challenged legally,” Klerman said.

I know nothing about the labor laws surrounding this, but could not the explanation for why this is “unusual” simply be that it’s more expensive to conduct background checks for every worker?

Update:

For work on the Apple site, anyone with a felony conviction or facing felony charges “does not meet owner standards,” according to documents from construction companies acquired by The Chronicle.

The “facing felony charges” prohibition is worth noting. Whatever your stance on the prohibition against those convicted of a felony within the last seven years, not hiring those merely facing charges seems blatantly contrary to our tradition of “innocent until proven guilty”.

I’m also curious whether these policies actually are “unusual for construction work” — especially for large companies. On Twitter, Greg Koenig says Intel has the same policy for its D1X chip fab in Oregon.