Linked List: March 5, 2019

Tuesday, 5 March 2019

Teen Who Defied Anti-Vax Mom Says She Got False Information From One Source: Facebook ★

Michael Brice-Saddler, reporting for The Washington Post:

An 18-year-old from Ohio who famously inoculated himself against his mother’s wishes in December says he attributes his mother’s anti-vaccine ideology to a single source: Facebook.

Nice work, Zuckerberg.

The New York Post on Apple’s Hollywood Efforts ★

Alexandra Steigrad and Nicolas Vega, writing for The New York Post:

Shortly after Apple announced its Hollywood ambitions in 2017, Tinseltown’s wheeler-dealers were lining up to work with the iPhone maker. But as the company’s streaming project gets ready for launch, agents and producers can’t stop griping about how “difficult” Apple is to deal with — citing a “lack of transparency,” “lack of clarity” and “intrusive” executives, including CEO Cook.

One of the biggest complaints involves the many “notes” from Apple executives seeking family-friendly shows, sources said.

“Tim Cook is giving notes and getting involved,” said a producer who has worked with Apple. One of the CEO’s most repeated notes is “don’t be so mean!” the source said.

Sounds bad, but I wouldn’t read too much into this. It’s The New York Post, for one thing, and all the quotes are so anonymous they don’t even say which shows they’re talking about. We’d see catty pieces like this about Apple’s original content efforts no matter how things were going. And of course Apple is difficult to work with.

Trump Vows ‘A-Plus Treatment’ for Alabama ★

One more item on the state of Trump’s kakistocracy. Reis Thebault, writing for The Washington Post:

“FEMA has been told directly by me to give the A Plus treatment to the Great State of Alabama and the wonderful people who have been so devastated by the Tornadoes,” Trump wrote Monday, referring to the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s relief efforts. […]

Trump’s enthusiastic assurance that Alabama would get top-flight help contrasts sharply with his barbed rhetoric following horrific wildfires in California and Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, when he repeatedly threatened to cut off federal aid and picked fights with local politicians, in one instance calling the mayor of San Juan “totally incompetent.”

The difference between Alabama and Puerto Rico and California, the president’s critics say, is obvious.

“The president really treats differently those people who have supported him in the past and those people who haven’t,” Brian Ott, a rhetoric professor at Texas Tech University, told The Washington Post. “Not all lives are equal in the eyes of the president. … The lives of red states matter, and the lives of blue states don’t.”

It’s one outrage after another with this administration, I know. A non-stop barrage on our collective sense of normalcy and decency. But it’s worth taking a moment here to ponder just how morally bankrupt Trump is to see emergency disaster relief as a reward to be doled out based on his perceived political support among those affected.

The Making of the Fox News White House ★

The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer went deep on the relationship between Fox News and Trump’s White House, and makes a compelling case that the line between the two organizations is almost comically blurred:

Fox has long been a bane of liberals, but in the past two years many people who watch the network closely, including some Fox alumni, say that it has evolved into something that hasn’t existed before in the United States. Nicole Hemmer, an assistant professor of Presidential studies at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center and the author of “Messengers of the Right,” a history of the conservative media’s impact on American politics, says of Fox, “It’s the closest we’ve come to having state TV.” […]

The White House and Fox interact so seamlessly that it can be hard to determine, during a particular news cycle, which one is following the other’s lead. All day long, Trump retweets claims made on the network; his press secretary, Sarah Sanders, has largely stopped holding press conferences, but she has made some thirty appearances on such shows as “Fox & Friends” and “Hannity.” Trump, Hemmer says, has “almost become a programmer.”

I still think Trump needs Fox News more than Fox News needs Trump, but ultimately Fox News is at the mercy of its audience. And its audience is crazy.

T-Mobile Spending at Trump’s Washington Hotel Increased Sharply After Announcement of Merger With Sprint ★

David A. Fahrenthold and Jonathan O’Connell, reporting for The Washington Post:

T-Mobile’s patronage of President Trump’s Washington hotel increased sharply after the announcement in April of its merger with Sprint, with executives spending about $195,000 at the property since then, the company told congressional Democrats in a letter last month.

Before news of the megadeal between rival companies broke on April 29, the company said, only two top officials from T-Mobile had ever stayed at Trump’s hotel, with one overnight stay each in August 2017.

But the day after the merger’s announcement, nine of T-Mobile’s top executives were scheduled to check in, The Washington Post reported in January. The Post, relying on internal Trump hotel documents, found that T-Mobile executives had reserved at least 52 nights at the hotel since the announcement.

Two stays at Trump’s hotel, ever, until T-Mobile needed this acquisition approved, and then they drop almost $200,000 in a year. Shame on Trump and his administration for running the federal government as a patronage racket — but shame on T-Mobile, too, for participating in it.

Steven Troughton-Smith’s ‘Marzipanify’ ★

Steven Troughton-Smith:

At WWDC 2018 Apple gave us a ‘sneak peek’ at perhaps one of the most impactful developments on macOS since the transition to Mac OS X: UIKit apps running on the desktop. Today, I’m going to detail a special tool I built, called Marzipanify, to get started with UIKit on the Mac early, and start the initial bringup of your iOS app on macOS. […]

Marzipanify is a tool I created to statically convert an iOS app built for the iOS Simulator to macOS. It means you can continue working on and building your existing iOS app from its existing project, using the existing iOS SDK, and just run the tool against the Simulator build to create a functioning Mac app. As a bonus, Marzipanify will yell at you when you’re linking against a framework or library that doesn’t currently exist in the iOSMac runtime. It trivializes the process so you can focus on adapting your app rather than managing a build environment.

What a crazy project. It’s not meant for production obviously — much is surely going to change in whatever Apple winds up announcing at WWDC. But it’s an incredibly interesting examination of how Marzipan works today on MacOS 10.14. And it works — James Thompson used it to get the iOS version of PCalc running on the Mac.

Absher: Saudi App That Tracks Women ★

Bill Bostock, writing for Business Insider:

Google has declined to remove from its app store a Saudi government app which lets men track women and control where they travel, on the grounds that it meets all their terms and conditions.

Google reviewed the app — called Absher — and concluded that it does not violate any agreements, and can therefore remain on the Google Play store. […]

Insider last month reported how Absher — an all-purpose app which Saudis use to interact with the state — offers features which allow Saudi men to grant and rescind travel permission for women, and to set up SMS alerts for when women use their passports. […]

Apple told Speier’s office on Thursday they are still reviewing Absher, following calls from Senator Ron Wyden for them to “stop stalling” and make a decision.

Would be good to see a little of Apple’s famous courage here.