Linked List: April 4, 2016

Monday, 4 April 2016

Daring Fireball RSS Feed Sponsorship Openings ★

The DF RSS feed sponsorship schedule is booked through mid-May, ~~but due to a scheduling error by yours truly, this week’s spot is open~~. If you’ve got a product or service you’d like to promote to DF’s savvy audience, get in touch.

Update: This week’s spot has been sold.

Longtime Apple Software Engineer Francois Jouaux Killed in Car Crash ★

Heartbreaking news:

Francois Jouaux played just as hard as he worked, according to his family.

On Sunday, the longtime Apple software engineer was returning home from kitesurfing at Waddell Beach in Davenport when a suspected drunken driver crossed the double-yellow line on La Honda Road and hit him head-on. Jouaux, 46, of Woodside, died at the scene.

There is a fundraising campaign for Jouaux’s family — would love to see the DF audience give it a bump.

Inside the Unorthodox Donald Trump Campaign ★

Fascinating look inside Trump’s campaign by Gabriel Sherman for New York Magazine:

It was also thanks to some information he had gathered that Trump was able to do something that no other Republican has done before: take on Fox News. An odd bit of coincidence had given him a card to play against Fox founder Roger Ailes. In 2014, I published a biography of Ailes, which upset the famously paranoid executive. Several months before it landed in stores, Ailes fired his longtime PR adviser Brian Lewis, accusing him of being a source. During Lewis’s severance negotiations, Lewis hired Judd Burstein, a powerhouse litigator, and claimed he had “bombs” that would destroy Ailes and Fox News. That’s when Trump got involved.

“When Roger was having problems, he didn’t call 97 people, he called me,” Trump said. Burstein, it turned out, had worked for Trump briefly in the ’90s, and Ailes asked Trump to mediate. Trump ran the negotiations out of his office at Trump Tower. “Roger had lawyers, very expensive lawyers, and they couldn’t do anything. I solved the problem.” Fox paid Lewis millions to go away quietly, and Trump, I’m told, learned everything Lewis had planned to leak. If Ailes ever truly went to war against Trump, Trump would have the arsenal to launch a retaliatory strike.

Nest to Shut Down Revolv Home Automation Hubs ★

Rob Price, Business Insider:

Just over a month ago, Revolv updated its website to announce that it is closing down completely, pulling the plug on its existing products in May. “We’re pouring all our energy into Works with Nest and are incredibly excited about what we’re making,” wrote Revolv founders Tim Enwall and Mike Soucie. “Unfortunately, that means we can’t allocate resources to Revolv anymore and we have to shut down the service.”

Shutting down Revolv does not mean that Nest is ceasing to support its products, leaving them vulnerable to bugs and other unpatched issues. It means that the $300 devices and accompanying apps will stop working completely.

Seems like a good way to create angry former customers.