Linked List: August 24, 2018

Friday, 24 August 2018

The Talk Show: ‘Smallen Up the Bezels’ 

Special guest Jason Snell returns to the show. Topics do include mechanical keyboards, but do not — I swear — include baseball. Also: speculation on what Apple might do with the non-Pro MacBook lineup.

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Apollo 

Apollo is “a beautiful Reddit app built for power and speed” and it is indeed just that. Designed and developed by former Apple engineer Christian Selig, it’s simply remarkable. Two recurring themes at Daring Fireball are that native apps tend to be better than web apps, and that if you’re going to make a native app, it should be a good native app, that embraces the user interface idioms of the platform.

You know how Apple’s own apps for iOS are very iOS-y (they more or less define what it means to be iOS-y) but Google’s iOS apps feel foreign and weird because they’re designed around Google’s own Material Design idioms, and an app like Slack, though technically native, just seems weird? Apollo feels like what we’d get if Apple itself made a Reddit app for iOS: fonts, layout, colors, scrolling performance, works exactly how you want it to on both iPhone and iPad.

I’ll be honest, I’m not a heavy Reddit user, but Apollo is so nice it tempts me to use it more. If you do use Reddit and care about using good native apps, you’re nuts if you don’t try Apollo.

Allen Weisselberg, Longtime Trump Organization CFO, Is Granted Immunity in Cohen Probe 

Rebecca Ballhaus and Nicole Hong, reporting for The Wall Street Journal:

Allen Weisselberg, President Trump’s longtime financial gatekeeper, was granted immunity by federal prosecutors for providing information about Michael Cohen in the criminal investigation into hush-money payments for two women during the 2016 presidential campaign, according to people familiar with the matter.

Mr. Weisselberg, who is chief financial officer of the Trump Organization, was called to testify before a federal grand jury in the investigation earlier this year, The Wall Street Journal previously reported, citing people familiar with the investigation. He then spoke to investigators, though it isn’t clear whether he appeared before the grand jury.

The decision by prosecutors in the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office to grant immunity to Mr. Weisselberg escalates the pressure on Mr. Trump, whom Mr. Weisselberg has served for decades as executive vice president as well as CFO for the Trump Organization. After Mr. Trump was elected, he handed control of his financial assets and business interests to his two adult sons and Mr. Weisselberg.

Mr. Weisselberg didn’t respond to a request for comment. A lawyer for Mr. Trump, who on Thursday said so-called flipping “almost ought to be illegal,” declined to comment.

The only reason prosecutors typically grant immunity is if someone is able to testify about crimes committed by someone higher up the ladder. And there’s only one person higher up the ladder from Weisselberg. But I’m sure Trump and his family have nothing to worry about, because surely there is nothing illegal in the Trump Organization’s books.

See also: TPM’s backgrounder on Weisselberg and his decades-long role at the center of its finances.

Color Footage of Johnny Carson’s ‘Tonight Show’ Monologue From 24 August 1964 

Great find from Mark Evanier — almost all the footage from that era has been lost. The monologue even has some great jokes about the Yankees.

Update: Holy crap, there’s more where this came from on DC Video’s YouTube channel.

New Logo and Identity for Library of Congress by Pentagram 

This new identity is a horrendous mistake. The old identity was perfect.

The new identity doesn’t look bad in and of itself, per se, but it doesn’t fit the Library of Congress in any way. The Library of Congress is majestic, historic, dignified, authoritative. A new or tweaked identity for the Library of Congress should be for the ages, something designed to last for a century or longer. This feels like an identity that will last 10 years. I love orange and black as a color scheme, but why in the world would you choose those colors for the United States Library of Congress? Why is the word “Library” used twice? Why do some of these marks break up the word “Library” at utterly random points making it unreadable? The ones that break it up as “LIBR-Library of Congress-ARY” look like a logo for the Long Island Railroad.

This is all so wrong it breaks my heart.