Linked List: September 2, 2017

Saturday, 2 September 2017

Gray Langur Tours: Adventure Into Hidden and Mysterious Bhutan 

My thanks to Gray Langur Tours for sponsoring this week’s DF RSS feed. I’ve never had a sponsor quite like this, and I love it. Bhutan is the world’s first carbon negative country, the only place where Gross National Happiness is more meaningful than Gross National Product, and tourism is strictly “high value, low impact” by design.

On October 19, Gray Langur will embark on their Kingdom of the Clouds Tour, a special two-week adventure into the world’s most different-thinking country — one that is, uniquely, as innovative as it is timeless. Those on the tour will explore both iconic and remote regions of the country, and have the opportunity to participate in Bhutanese ritual and culture that most travelers will never get to experience.

This special tour is a one-time event, and as such, availability is extremely limited. Daring Fireball readers interested in adventuring to the fiercely independent Land of the Thunder Dragon can use the code DARINGFIREBALL for a 20 percent discount. Register by September 19 to reserve your spot.

An exotic location — the last surviving great Himalayan kingdom — with truly expert guides. Check out their website and see just how amazing Bhutan is. Gray Langur was founded by Gabriel Cubbage, who until recently was the CEO of AdBlock and whom I’ve known personally for over 10 years. He’s a great guy. I would love to hear from DF readers who take this tour.

On The New York Times’s Claim That Trump’s iPhone Doesn’t Have a Web Browser 

Glenn Thrush and Maggie Haberman, reporting for The New York Times:

Mr. Kelly cannot stop Mr. Trump from binge-watching Fox News, which aides describe as the president’s primary source of information gathering. But Mr. Trump does not have a web browser on his phone, and does not use a laptop, so he was dependent on aides like Stephen K. Bannon, his former chief strategist, to hand-deliver printouts of articles from conservative media outlets.

Now Mr. Kelly has thinned out his package of printouts so much that Mr. Trump plaintively asked a friend recently where The Daily Caller and Breitbart were.

We know that Trump switched from an old Samsung Android phone to an iPhone after taking office, and we can tell from the metadata on his tweets that he’s using the Twitter for iPhone app. That’s led some DF readers to question whether this is even possible, given that you can’t remove Safari by the normal procedure (tapping and holding on the app icon), and the Twitter app has a built-in web browser.

But it is possible. You can remove Safari from the home screen using the Restrictions feature (Settings → General → Restrictions). That still leaves the built-in browser in Twitter, but you can restrict it from reaching any actual websites in the “Allowed Content: Websites” section of the same Restrictions feature. Disable Safari, turn off access to any websites, and you’ve got an iPhone that effectively “doesn’t have a web browser”. And Trump can be locked out of changing these settings by the Restrictions PIN code, which is wholly separate from the device’s main lock screen code. Or, more likely, these restrictions are managed by White House or Secret Service administrators via MDM.

‘No Madness Like American Madness: Scenes From a Debacle in Phoenix’ 

Dave Eggers, reporting for Medium from the streets of Phoenix during Trump’s “rally” last week:

That was a strange thing. There were a hundred or so protesters standing on the high steps, and at any given time a few dozen Trump attendees passing them on the sidewalk, but for much of the time they were in close proximity, and no one said anything.

Something was happening there, in that close confrontation between the two groups. There was recognition. There was the uncomfortable knowledge that they were in many ways very similar people. The rally attendees were not frothing at the mouth and were not spouting racial epithets. They were moms, dads, teenagers, and families who for whatever reason have an exceedingly high tolerance for wretched behavior and the absence of moral leadership from their chief executive.

Thus the protesters were flummoxed. It seemed cruel and strange to yell “Nazi” to a pair of grandparents in yellow polo shirts, or at a trio of Eagle Scouts, and so given the chance to say something directly to Trump supporters passing by them, mere inches away, much of the time they said nothing.