Linked List: February 27, 2017

Monday, 27 February 2017

My friend Louie Mantia has recently taken to type design. He posted a preview to Twitter, and Jonathan Hoefler provided a detailed critique. (He marked it up using Notability on an iPad Pro.)

Another Tale of Rampant Sexual Harassment at Uber ★

“Amy Vertino”, a former Uber engineer writing under a pen name:

On a bright and windy day last summer, while working on some updates to Uber’s driver payment system, Mike#2 proposed an idea which to me seemed as unfair to the drivers. It would block the payments to the driver if a customer complained about the ride before a ride ends. Fortunately, this never made it into the app. When we were brainstorming this idea, I openly spoke up against it. I told them that it was unethical to block a driver’s payments without researching the complaint to make sure it was the driver’s fault. Many of the Uber drivers in some countries do not own the cars they drive. They are owned by rich people who give the drivers a fixed monthly salary and take the money Uber pays the drivers from their bank accounts. So, if a payment is blocked because of a customer complaint, the drivers may go home without the pay they need to feed their families. When I voiced my concern, Mike#2 looked at me and said “There is no place for ethics in this business sweetheart. We are not a charity.” I was upset to hear such an insensitive comment. I repeated my point and this time, I raised my voice to show that I was unhappy with his attitude. Visibly angry, Mike #2 covered the microphone of the conference phone, he reached over to hold my hand tightly and told me to stop being a whiny little bitch. Two of the men in the room looked at each other and laughed while the rest of the men, like me, were shocked.

Ordinarily I wouldn’t link to an unverifiable anonymous story. But for me, Uber has lost the benefit of the doubt.

Emails Show Uber Deceived California DMV ★

Andrew J. Hawkins, reporting for The Verge:

According to a lengthy email exchange between Uber and the DMV obtained by The Verge from a public records request, Uber was repeatedly urged to sign up for the state’s autonomous testing permit, with the DMV even offering to expedite the process to make it as quick and seamless as possible. Had it done so, Uber could have saved itself a lot of embarrassment and could be offering trips in self-driving cars in San Francisco right now.

But in multiple emails to the DMV, Anthony Levandowski, vice president at Uber’s Advanced Technologies Group and the company’s top executive in charge of autonomous technology, argued that what it was doing did not meet the legal definition of autonomous vehicle testing, spurring a brain-bending debate over the letter of the law. The debate ended inconclusively, and Uber ultimately launched its doomed public pilot without ever notifying state regulators of its intentions to invite members of the public into the backseat of its self-driving cars.

“In their minds, they really thought they weren’t autonomous,” Jessica Gonzalez, assistant deputy director of public affairs at the DMV, told The Verge. “But we decide what’s autonomous. And under our regulations, it was.”

Levandowski is the guy accused of stealing intellectual property from Alphabet subsidiary Waymo and taking it with him to Uber.

Recode: ‘Uber’s SVP of Engineering Is Out After He Did Not Disclose He Left Google in a Dispute Over a Sexual Harassment Allegation’ ★

Kara Swisher, reporting for Recode:

Amit Singhal has left his job at Uber as its SVP of engineering because he did not disclose to the car-hailing company that he left Google a year earlier after top executives there informed him of an allegation of sexual harassment from an employee that an internal investigation had found “credible.”

Singhal was asked to resign by Uber CEO Travis Kalanick this morning.

Uber execs found out about the situation after Recode informed them of the chain of events between Singhal and the search giant this week.

It’s possible that Uber never would have hired Singhal in the first place if they knew of the allegations against him at Google. It’s also possible that they would have, and Kalanick only asked him to resign today because the company is going through a firestorm of bad publicity regarding their poisonous corporate culture. They have no credibility here.

Internet-Connected Teddy Bear Leaked 2 Million Recordings of Parents and Kids ★

Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai, reporting for Motherboard:

A company that sells “smart” teddy bears leaked 800,000 user account credentials — and then hackers locked it and held it for ransom.

A company that sells internet-connected teddy bears that allow kids and their far-away parents to exchange heartfelt messages left more than 800,000 customer credentials, as well as two million message recordings, totally exposed online for anyone to see and listen. […]

As we’ve seen time and time again in the last couple of years, so-called “smart” devices connected to the internet — what is popularly known as the Internet of Things or IoT — are often left insecure or are easily hackable, and often leak sensitive data. There will be a time when IoT developers and manufacturers learn the lesson and make secure by default devices, but that time hasn’t come yet. So if you are a parent who doesn’t want your loving messages with your kids leaked online, you might want to buy a good old fashioned teddy bear that doesn’t connect to a remote, insecure server.

Of course, anyone who isn’t a computer security expert has no hope of being able to determine whether any particular internet-connected device is actually secure. And even security experts can’t be sure. If you’re going to use an internet-connected device, you have to trust the company who made it.

See also: This story from October, about HomeKit’s stringent security requirements.

Warren Buffett Has Doubled Berkshire Hathaway’s Stake in Apple to More Than $18 Billion ★

Bloomberg:

Berkshire Hathaway Inc. increased its stake in iPhone maker Apple Inc. to about 133 million shares, Chairman Warren Buffett told CNBC. That’s more than twice as much as Berkshire held as of Dec. 31, the billionaire told the cable network in an interview Monday. The stake is valued at more than $18 billion, based on Friday’s closing price of $136.66. […]

“Apple strikes me as having quite a sticky product and an enormously useful product to people that use it, not that I do,” Buffett said, praising Tim Cook, the technology company’s chief executive officer. “He’s been very intelligent about capital deployment.”

According to Recode, Berkshire didn’t have a single share in Apple a year ago:

Buffett famously insists that he’s not a technology investor, but says he bought Apple anyway, “because I liked it.”

“There’s a vast, untapped market up there,” Buffett said on CNBC, where he disclosed the new purchase and showed off his existing phone — not an iPhone, but a vintage flip model.

Trump Dines Out ★

Benny Johnson:

The president was heading to his new flagship property in D.C., the Trump Hotel, for a private dinner at the BLT Steakhouse inside. Once the president arrived at the location, the reporter who was on assignment to cover him, Jordan Fabian of The Hill, was not let into the building and had to wait in the van outside for the remainder of the dinner, without a guest list or details of what was happening inside.

Inside the restaurant, I was seated at a table which I had booked hours earlier, directly next to where Trump would be dining. I made the booking based on a tip from a trusted source. I was ready to tell the story no one else would get to see and was personally fascinated to observe how a restaurant prepares for a president — and how Trump interacts when he believes no press are present.

The night was a wild one. Here is what happens when President Trump goes to dinner.

I enjoy a behind-the-scenes story like this. ~~It’s fascinating to me that Johnson correctly predicted the exact table at which Trump would sit, and was able to book the nearest table for himself.~~ Update: Ah, apparently not so fascinating at all how he scored the perfect table: Johnson is friends with White House spokesman Sean Spicer. Still, I found it fascinating to read about how a restaurant and the Secret Service prepare for the president to dine out.

Daniel Dourvaris’s 2015 MacBook Pro Retina Exploded ★

Daniel Dourvaris:

One afternoon as I was lying on my bed browsing the internet, my MacBook Pro suddenly turned off. I turned it back on and within a few seconds there was weird hissing sound, followed by white smoke and thin flames coming out of from the back.

I got up and ran with the laptop for the bathroom where I could put it on the ceramic tiles. Not more than ten seconds had passed and already the heat from the bottom of the laptop burnt my middle and ring fingers so badly I had to let it drop.

Just in time.

There was a bang as I backed away causing the back to pop and smoke kept pouring out. It kept sizzling for a few minutes and then finally it stopped.

Wow. Scary how fast it went from something is wrong to dangerous.