Linked List: February 28, 2017

Tuesday, 28 February 2017

Abby Phillip, reporting for The Washington Post:

Weeks after a U.S. Navy SEAL was killed in a covert mission in Yemen, Trump has resisted accepting responsibility for authorizing the mission and the subsequent death of Senior Chief Petty Officer William “Ryan” Owens.

In an interview with Fox News that aired Tuesday morning, Trump said the mission “was started before I got here.” He noted that the operation was something his generals “were looking at for a long time doing.”

“This was something that was, you know, just — they wanted to do,” Trump said. “ And they came to see me and they explained what they wanted to do, the generals, who are very respected.”

“And they lost Ryan,” Trump continued.

Harry Truman: “The buck stops here.”

Donald Trump: “They lost Ryan.”

In other news from the kakistocracy today:

Trump accused Barack Obama of orchestrating the protests against him.
Asked about the alarming spate of anti-Semitic attacks and threats across the nation (including hundreds of desecrated headstones right here in Philadelphia), Trump reportedly said “Sometimes it’s the reverse, to make people — or to make others — look bad.”
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos issued a statement describing historically black colleges as “real pioneers when it comes to school choice”, when in fact they were created as a result of legalized segregation and Jim Crow laws — the opposite of choice.

So: cowardice, paranoia, anti-Semitism, and tone-deaf racism.

Porsche Design’s Book One ★

Tom Warren, writing for The Verge:

Porsche Design unveiled its Book One at Mobile World Congress this week, and it took me by surprise. At first glimpse it looks very similar to Microsoft’s Surface Book, and side-by-side there are obvious similarities, but I got a chance to spend some more time with the Book One and discover exactly how it blows past Microsoft’s own design.

Porsche Design has teamed up with Quanta, Intel, and even Microsoft to produce the Book One. It’s an ambitious effort to move from phones and headphones straight into computers, and it’s going to be the first of many computing devices with the German sports cars’ famous brand name. Inside the Book One is a 13.3-inch QHD display, with Intel’s latest 7th generation Core i7 processor, 16GB of RAM, and 512GB of SSD storage. Porsche Design is only producing one model with top specs, and it’s planning to make it available in April priced at $2,495. That’s a lot of money for even a premium Windows laptop, but you’re really paying the cash for the design and the hinge.

Seems like a much more elegant hinge design than the Surface Book.