Linked List: June 13, 2017

Tuesday, 13 June 2017

Post-Nomination, Trump Property Buyers Make Clear Shift to Secretive Shell Companies ★

Nick Penzenstadler, Steve Reilly, and John Kelly, reporting for USA Today:

Since President Trump won the Republican nomination, the majority of his companies’ real estate sales are to secretive shell companies that obscure the buyers’ identities, a USA TODAY investigation has found.

Over the last 12 months, about 70% of buyers of Trump properties were limited liability companies — corporate entities that allow people to purchase property without revealing all of the owners’ names. That compares with about 4% of buyers in the two years before.

From 4 percent to 70 percent.

The clear post-nomination shift since last year to more shell-company purchases is unique to sales by Trump’s companies, even in his own towers and neighborhoods. Condos owned by others in the same buildings, and sold during the same time period, were bought by LLCs in no more than 20% of the transactions. In some areas, the share was far less.

David Frum, on Twitter:

Nobody’s calling it money laundering! But if you — purely hypothetically — were money laundering via US real estate, this is how you’d do it.

Tim Cook Tells Bloomberg That Apple Is Focused on Autonomous Systems ★

Interesting interview with Bloomberg’s Emily Chang:

“We’re focusing on autonomous systems,” Cook said in a June 5 interview on Bloomberg Television that amounted to his most detailed comments yet on Apple’s automotive plans. “It’s a core technology that we view as very important.” He likened the effort to “the mother of all AI projects,” saying it’s “probably one of the most difficult AI projects to work on.” […]

In the interview on Bloomberg Television, Cook was hesitant to disclose whether Apple will ultimately manufacture its own car. “We’ll see where it takes us,” Cook said. “We’re not really saying from a product point of view what we will do.”

It’s kind of surprising to hear Cook speak so openly about this. Why now, with no product to speak of? I mean, this is a company that will not publicly acknowledge that they’re planning to release new iPhones this September.

I can think of a few reasons. First, there’s no reason not speak about it as an area of interest, because public filings with regulatory agencies prevent Apple from being entirely secret about these efforts. It might also be a sort of recruiting effort for AI talent – a way of emphasizing publicly that Apple is serious about autonomous systems.

(Lastly, I’ll note that Cook spoke of “autonomous systems” in general, not “self-driving cars” specifically. He did speak of the disruptive opportunities in the car industry, but “autonomous systems” could include any sort of device that moves around on its own accord.)

Uber Board Member Cracks ‘Inappropriate’ Joke About Women at Company Event on Sexual Harassment ★

Brian Fung and Craig Timberg, reporting for The Washington Post:

Billionaire businessman David Bonderman, a member of Uber’s board, apologized Tuesday for making what he called an “inappropriate” comment about women at a company-wide meeting that was aimed at addressing the harassment of women and other unprofessional conduct within the company.

At the event, Bonderman made a joke about women, saying that adding female board members would make it “much more likely there’ll be more talking,” said several people who heard the remarks.

The comment came as an interruption of fellow board member Arianna Huffington, who was explaining the benefits of having more female representation on Uber’s board.

This company is beyond parody.

Update: Bonderman has now resigned from the board.

A Bad Sign ★

Looking at Amazon’s page for Brian Merchant’s The One Device, it strikes me as a bad sign that the lead promotional quote is from Dan Lyons.