Linked List: February 8, 2017

Wednesday, 8 February 2017

Republicans Are Moving to Scrap Rules That Limit Overdraft Fees ★

Matthew Zeitlin, reporting for BuzzFeed:

Last week, Georgia Republican Sen. David Perdue introduced a resolution in Congress, alongside other Republicans including his fellow Georgian Johnny Isakson, to throw out a new package of rules for the prepaid debit card industry.

The rules, finalized by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in October, include limitations on overdraft fees, which have become a significant source of consumer complaints about the financial industry — and an important revenue stream for Georgia-based financial firm Total System Services, whose NetSpend unit is the country’s largest manager of prepaid cards, according to a 2015 financial filing.

The vast majority of prepaid debit cards don’t come with overdraft fees, but NetSpend’s do, and the fees accounted for 10-12% of its overall revenue in 2016, or $80-85 million, the company told investors in October. Its parent has spent big on lobbying and political donations in a bid to kill the rules: in the last three months of 2016 alone, it spent some $270,000 lobbying Congress.

Again, this should be absolutely bipartisan. The people who are hit by these usurious overcharge fees are Republicans and Democrats alike. There’s no liberal/conservative angle to this. It’s just wrong.

And look at the deal Total Shitbag Services gets out of this: they spend $270 thousand lobbying Congress in order to preserve nearly 100 million in fees.

Kakistocracy.

It’s Not Foreigners Who Are Plotting Here: What the Data Really Show ★

Nora Ellingsen, who spent five years working as a counter-terrorism analyst for the FBI, looked at the numbers for federal terrorism cases to see if there’s anything to support Trump’s immigration ban for its stated purpose:

For those who don’t want to do this deep dive, here’s a quick two-sentence summary: Conway’s position is empirically indefensible. Absolutely nothing in the large body of data we have about real terrorist plots in the United States remotely supports either a focus on barring refugees or a focus on these particular seven countries.

Nothing.

But she did find this (emphasis added):

Since January 2015, the FBI has also arrested more anti-immigrant American citizens plotting violent attacks on Muslims within the U.S. than it has refugees, or former refugees, from any banned country. As we wrote about here, here and here, in October 2016, three white men from Kansas were charged with conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction. According to the graphic complaint, the anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant men planned to attack a mosque in the area. The men progressed quickly with their plot, amassing firearms and explosives. The targets were people from Somalia, who ironically, would now be covered by Trump’s order.

Ajit Pai, Trump’s FCC Pick, Quickly Targets Consumer Protection Rules ★

Cecilia Kang, reporting for The New York Times:

In his first days as President Trump’s pick to lead the Federal Communications Commission, Ajit Pai has aggressively moved to roll back consumer protection regulations created during the Obama presidency.

Mr. Pai took a first swipe at net neutrality rules designed to ensure equal access to content on the internet. He stopped nine companies from providing discounted high-speed internet service to low-income individuals. He withdrew an effort to keep prison phone rates down, and he scrapped a proposal to break open the cable box market. […]

“With these strong-arm tactics, Chairman Pai is showing his true stripes,” said Matt Wood, the policy director at the consumer group Free Press.

“The public wants an F.C.C. that helps people,” he added. “Instead, it got one that does favors for the powerful corporations that its chairman used to work for.”

High-speed internet for low-income people, lowering usurious phone rates, breaking open the cable box market — who could be against these things? These aren’t liberal/conservative issues. This is just doing the bidding of major corporations.

Remember that word kakistocracy? Yeah, that’s what we have.

Samsung Factory Fire Triggered by Discarded Batteries ★

The rare case when a figurative garbage fire turns into a literal garbage fire.

Oculus VR Best Buy Pop-Ups Are a Bust ★

Alex Heath, writing for Business Insider:

Facebook is closing around 200 of its 500 Oculus virtual reality demo stations at Best Buy locations across the US, Business Insider has learned.

The scaling back of Facebook’s first big retail push for VR comes after workers from multiple Best Buy pop-ups told BI that it was common for them to go days without giving a single demonstration. An internal memo seen by BI and sent to affected employees by a third-party contractor said the closings were because of “store performance.”

Oculus spokeswoman Andrea Schubert confirmed the closings and said they were due to “seasonal changes.”

Actual headline from Business Insider, one year ago: “Apple Is Completely Missing VR”.

‘A Conservative Climate Solution’: Republican Group Calls for Carbon Tax ★

John Schwartz, reporting for The New York Times:

A group of Republican elder statesmen is calling for a tax on carbon emissions to fight climate change.

The group, led by former Secretary of State James A. Baker III, with former Secretary of State George P. Shultz and Henry M. Paulson Jr., a former secretary of the Treasury, says that taxing carbon pollution produced by burning fossil fuels is “a conservative climate solution” based on free-market principles. […]

In an interview, Mr. Baker said that the plan followed classic conservative principles of free-market solutions and small government. He suggested that even former President Ronald Reagan would have blessed the plan: “I’m not at all sure the Gipper wouldn’t have been very happy with this.” He said he had no idea how the proposal would be received by the current White House or Congress.

For those of you who erroneously claim I never link to stories about Republicans with approval, here you go: I love this. I hope they succeed. These are Republicans whose eyes are wide open to reality. (Maybe not the reality of today’s Republican party, but the reality of climate change.)

Apple Poaches Amazon’s Fire TV Head to Run Apple TV Product Marketing ★

Mark Gurman, reporting for Bloomberg:

Apple Inc. has hired Timothy D. Twerdahl, the former head of Amazon.com Inc.’s Fire TV unit, as a vice president in charge of Apple TV product marketing and shifted the executive who previously held the job to a spot negotiating media content deals.

The moves suggest a renewed focus on the Apple TV and on providing more content for the device, an effort that has been stalled in the past by failed negotiations.

Twerdahl joined Apple this month, a spokesman for the iPhone maker said. He had been general manager and director of Amazon’s Fire TV business since 2013, according to his LinkedIn profile. At Apple, Twerdahl reports to Greg Joswiak, a vice president in charge of marketing for the iPhone, according to a person familiar with the matter.

It seems pretty clear that Joz is in charge of more than just the iPhone if the head of Apple TV reports to him. Sometimes Gurman’s stuff makes no sense to me.

Republican Senate Leadership Stops Elizabeth Warren From Reading a Letter From Coretta Scott King ★

Jason Kottke:

Last night, during the Senate confirmation hearing of Senator Jefferson Beauregard “Jeff” Sessions III for Attorney General, Senator Elizabeth Warren attempted to read a letter that Coretta Scott King had written to the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1986 opposing Sessions’ nomination for a federal judgeship (which he did not get).

Watch the video — it’s jarring.

I can’t help but feel this is backfiring on the Republicans. I’m seeing far more coverage of their preventing Warren from reading this letter — a letter from Martin Luther King Jr.’s widow! — than we would have seen if they’d simply allowed her to read it.

Every other Democratic senator should attempt to read King’s letter on Sessions. Make the Republicans own this.

Which Is It? ★

From an October 2016 story for Bloomberg by Mark Gurman:

The new building features open floor plans and few traditional offices. While some of Apple’s senior vice presidents are expected to see their offices move over to the new campus — less than a five minute drive from the current headquarters — management must be at a vice president level or above to get a formal office, one of the people said. Previous plans included office space for senior directors, who report to vice presidents. Another person said that some employees below vice president will be eligible for offices.

The new campus will include bench seating, long work tables, and open cubicle spaces, potentially irking employees used to quiet office environments, two people briefed on the new campus’s plans said. Apple’s presentations to the city of Cupertino have indicated that the open floor plan designs are conducive to collaboration between teams.

From yesterday’s (aforelinked) story for Reuters by Julia Love:

The campus is something of an exception to the trend of radically open offices aimed at fostering collaboration, said Louise Mozingo, a professor and chair of the Department of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning at U.C. Berkeley.

So which is it? I can’t believe Apple would attempt to stick their employees at benches and long work tables, but if they did, that would certainly be a “radically open office”. I suspect Gurman blew this one.

Update: Listening to some little birdies chirp, it sounds like there’s some truth to all of the above.

Daniel Steinberg Wishes Apple Loved Books ★

Daniel Steinberg lamenting the lack of recent progress on iBooks Author:

iBooks Author could have been a trojan horse into the personal publishing business. It would have been classic Apple. Instead of small authors going to Amazon’s platform, they would have started with iBooks Author. Apple should have made it easy for them to push to Amazon as well. Why? Because these people wanted to publish on Amazon but they weren’t considering publishing with Apple. Thousands of authors would have come to Apple to create content and stayed with Apple after publishing content there.

iBooks Author is a perfect example of how the iPad is not self-sufficient. I wrote yesterday about how you can’t develop iPad apps on the iPad itself. But Xcode is very complex, and also has longstanding roots that tie it, as currently imagined, to MacOS. iBooks Author was announced in January 2012, when the iPad was two years old. The iPad itself, seemingly, would be a fine device for creating books with iBooks Author. But iBooks Author remains Mac-only.

Linea ★

New $10 sketchpad iPad app from The Iconfactory. I love this app. Conceptually it’s simple: at the root level you have projects, and each project can contain multiple sketches.

When sketching, colors are on the left; layers, grids, and pens are on the right. That’s it — and the controls stay out of your way. The Iconfactory describes it as aiming for the simplicity of a paper sketchbook, and I think they’ve nailed it.

Reuters: ‘Channeling Steve Jobs, Apple Seeks Design Perfection at New “Spaceship” Campus’ ★

Julia Love, writing for Reuters on Apple’s new campus, now nearing completion:

Signage required a delicate balancing act: Apple wanted all signs to reflect its sleek, minimalist aesthetic, but the fire department needed to ensure the building could be swiftly navigated in an emergency.

Dirk Mattern, a retired deputy fire chief who is representing the Santa Clara County Fire Department on the project, estimated he attended 15 meetings that touched on the topic.

“I’ve never spent so much time on signage,” he said.

The stuff about navigation and collaboration, I don’t get:

For all the time and money sunk into the project, some in the architecture community question whether Apple has focused on the right ends. The campus is something of an exception to the trend of radically open offices aimed at fostering collaboration, said Louise Mozingo, a professor and chair of the Department of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning at U.C. Berkeley.

I don’t know anyone who works at Apple who’d want to work at a desk in a room with a “radically open” floorplan. And I know several who would likely quit if forced to. People at Apple have work to do, work requires concentration, and concentration is easier to achieve when you have your own office.

Its central office building — a massive ring of glass frequently likened to a spaceship — could be a challenge just to navigate, she noted.

“It’s not about maximizing the productivity of the office space, it’s about creating a symbolic center for this global company,” she said. “They are creating an icon.”

Critics from the “architecture community” — starting all the way back in 2011, when the new campus was just a plan — seem to have no understanding of how Apple actually functions. Remember too, that Steve Jobs spearheaded the design of Pixar’s unique headquarters, about which I’ve heard nothing but praise from Pixar employees. (Pixar’s headquarters is different from Apple’s in many ways, but Pixar and Apple are, well, different in many ways.)

I think there’s a good chance that Apple knows what it’s doing here.

Analysts: Apple Took 92 Percent of Smartphone Industry Profits in Q4 ★

Patrick Seitz, Investors Business Daily:

Among six major vendors surveyed, four were profitable in smartphone sales in Q4, Canaccord analyst Michael Walkley said in the report. They were Apple, BlackBerry, Samsung and Sony.

Samsung accounted for 9 percent of smartphone industry profits in Q4, while Sony took 1 percent and BlackBerry less than 1 percent.

Interesting that Samsung did as well as they did given the Galaxy Note 7 fiasco. And how bad is it for all the other phone makers in the world that they finished in the red, but even BlackBerry eked out a small profit?

(It’s because everyone else lost money that the numbers for profit share add up to more than 100.)