Linked List: July 16, 2018

Monday, 16 July 2018

Apple Celebrates World Emoji Day With Preview of 70 New Emoji ★

Apple Newsroom:

More than 70 new emoji characters are coming to iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch and Mac later this year in a free software update. The new emoji designs, created based on approved characters in Unicode 11.0, include even more hair options to better represent people with red hair, gray hair and curly hair, a new emoji for bald people, and new smiley faces that bring more expression to Messages with a cold face, party face, pleading face and a face with hearts.

Apple is having some fun with their executive bio page too. (Screenshot archive.)

‘The Worst Case Scenario Has Been Obvious for a While’ ★

Josh Marshall, writing at TPM:

There is no reasonable explanation for the simple facts we see other than that Russia has some kind of hold over President Trump.

I know that sounds wild and I have a very hard time sometimes quite believing it myself. But it’s so overwhelmingly obvious that we need to get real with ourselves and recognize what is happening. I don’t know what the specific details are. I don’t know whether Russia has some compromising information on the President, whether they have enticed him with personal enrichment. I truly don’t know. But none of the standard explanations — truculence, trolling, anger over questioning the legitimacy of his election — none of them remotely add up as an explanation. In the future, when we know more details, we will have a difficult time explaining how any serious people continued to think there could be an innocent explanation.

I don’t think it’s the infamous pee tape because even if real, the pee tape might not sink Trump. I think it’s money — that Trump’s entire company, and therefore his personal wealth, is held afloat entirely by Russian money and Putin could pull the plug on it with a snap of his fingers. But whatever it is, it seems clear there’s something they’ve got on him.

Fox News Host Calls Trump’s Helsinki Performance ‘Disgusting’, ‘Wrong’ ★

TPM:

During his Fox Business Network show Monday, host Neil Cavuto called President Donald Trump’s failure to denounce Russian President Vladimir Putin for the Russian interference in the 2016 election “disgusting,” saying that the presser “set us back a lot.”

“That made it disgusting. That made his performance disgusting,” Cavuto said of Trump’s refusal to even criticize the Russian President. “Only way I feel. Not a right or left thing to me. It is wrong.”

I’ve been thinking for a few months now that the most powerful person in the world isn’t Trump or Putin but Rupert Murdoch. If Fox News turned against Trump — not against Republicans, not against conservatives, but only against Trump and his family — it would sink Trump’s presidency within months. Politically, Trump couldn’t breathe without the support of Fox News. Rupert Murdoch could make that happen.

Hillary Clinton Was Right ★

Hillary Clinton’s remarks during a 2016 debate on Donald Trump being a “puppet” of Vladimir Putin have proven depressingly spot-on. Everything she said in this clip has come to pass.

Trump Kowtows to Putin ★

Jonathan Swan and Mike Allen, reporting for Axios:

Over the course of the press conference, Trump:

Sided with Russia over his own law enforcement.

Turned a question on Russian election interference into a rambling dialogue on Hillary Clinton’s email server and his electoral college votes.

And stood by, nodding, while Putin repeatedly lied about election interference.

John McCain:

Today’s press conference in Helsinki was one of the most disgraceful performances by an American president in memory. […]

No prior president has ever abased himself more abjectly before a tyrant.

Garry Kasparov:

I’m ready to call this the darkest hour in the history of the American presidency. Let me know if you can think of any competition. […]

Trump’s “We’re all to blame” says it all. Attacking his own administration and flattering Putin. America First? A sick joke. Where are Trump’s supporters right now? Where are you? You fools and enablers selling out your country and the world for this traitor?

Chuck Schumer:

Chuck Schumer said on Monday that Americans are wondering if the “only explanation” for President Donald Trump’s performance alongside Vladimir Putin is that the Russian president “holds damaging information over President Trump.”

Former CIA director John O. Brennan:

Donald Trump’s press conference performance in Helsinki rises to and exceeds the threshold of “high crimes and misdemeanors.” It was nothing short of treasonous. Not only were Trump’s comments imbecilic, he is wholly in the pocket of Putin. Republican Patriots: Where are you???

Brennan served under Obama, yes, but no former CIA director has ever once come close to accusing a subsequent president as a traitor. It is time to accept the plain truth before our eyes: Donald Trump is a Russian puppet.

Dan Coats, Trump’s own director of national intelligence:

The role of the Intelligence Community is to provide the best information and fact-based assessments possible for the President and policymakers. We have been clear in our assessments of Russian meddling in the 2016 election and their ongoing, pervasive efforts to undermine our democracy, and we will continue to provide unvarnished and objective intelligence in support of our national security.

Trump’s own DNI is telling us Trump is a traitor.

Microsoft’s Andromeda Project: A Bifold Pocketable Tablet ★

Brad Sams, writing at, uh, “Thurrott”:

As of last year, Microsoft planned to ship Andromeda in late 2018 but as recently as a couple weeks ago, the company put the plans on ice. Mary Jo wrote last week that the bits needed for Andromeda would not make it into RS5 and she is absolutely correct in her assessment but there is more to the story. While some assumed that this means that the project is dead, what Microsoft is actually doing is sending it back to the labs to be significantly reworked.

And this makes sense, seeing as it would use an ARM processor, the best it could use this fall would be the Snapdragon 835, a chip that is from yesterday. We know that Qualcomm is working on new chips designed explicitly for PCs and it could arrive as early as the beginning of next year.

It is impossible to overstate how important Apple’s A-series chip development has been to the success of the iPhone and iPad. It allows them to evolve at Apple’s own pace. Qualcomm seemingly can’t keep up, and everyone else is dependent upon Qualcomm for high-end ARM chips. Apple’s current position in the mobile space is like if Microsoft and Intel had been rolled into one back in the PC heyday.

The problem that Microsoft has run into is that the Surface brand is now a premium product line and that they can’t risk releasing anything that will tarnish its reputation. If Andromeda were to be released and it was a complete flop, this could reflect negatively on the Surface brand and impact products like the Pro line that sell quite well.

I don’t buy this excuse at all. It’s not about the Surface brand (the esteem of which I think Sams overstates). It’s just a product that isn’t ready to go. There’s no shame in that — a foldable tablet that can fit in your pocket could be great but would be really hard to do well today given current display and battery technologies. I think a concept like this needs to be closer to the tablets the characters on Westworld use.