Linked List: October 7, 2019

Monday, 7 October 2019

Taiwan Flag Emoji Disappears From iOS 13.1.2 Keyboard 

Kris Cheng, reporting for the Hong Kong Free Press:

The Republic of China flag emoji has disappeared from Apple iPhone’s keyboard for Hong Kong and Macau users. The change happened for users who updated their phones to the latest operating system.

Updating iPhones to iOS 13.1.1 or above caused the flag emoji to disappear from the emoji keyboard. The flag, commonly used by users to denote Taiwan, can still be displayed by typing “Taiwan” in English, and choosing the flag in prediction candidates.

This is either a bug on Apple’s part, or kowtowing to China.

Update: Given that it’s the same in the first iOS 13.2 beta, it sure looks more like kowtowing than a bug.

‘The Samsung Galaxy Fold Is Great… If You Live in a Bubble’ 

Joanna Stern at her best.

Mac App Store Feature on Catalyst Apps 

Glad to see some of these charging real prices, or at least more than $1 — Carrot Weather is $15. No app from Twitter yet, even though Apple previewed it back at WWDC — despite the fact that Apple’s own first screenshot for Catalina in the App Store shows Twitter as a native app.

How to Install Google Apps on Huawei Phones: Give Control of Your Phone to a Random Chinese Company 

Ron Amadeo, writing for Ars Technica:

With all the traditional techniques out the window, the Internet’s brand-new method for getting Google apps onto the Mate 30 is through a website called Lzplay.net. You can see news articles promoting this site from just about all the major Android news sites. I Googled “mate 30 pro install play store,” and literally every result on the first page recommended Lzplay.net. It’s easy to see why Lzplay is ubiquitous: go to the website, install the app, mash “next” a few times, and boom, Google apps are on your Huawei device.

It seemingly installs six system apps in the blink of an eye with almost no user interaction. Even though the Google apps should not be able to get the system-level permissions they need to work, they somehow do, thanks to this app. It’s like magic.

Lzplay is fast, it’s easy, and as far as getting Google apps onto your Huawei device, it works. It’s also the biggest Android modding security nightmare I have ever seen. And no, that’s not hyperbole.

One Year After ‘The Big Hack’ 

I was going to write about the one-year anniversary of Bloomberg’s “The Big Hack” fiasco, but Nick Heer, writing at his excellent Pixel Envy, has done the job for me:

Unfortunately, a year later, we’re still no closer to understanding what happened with this story. Bloomberg still stands by it, but hasn’t published a follow-up story from its additional reporting. No other news organization has corroborated the original story in any capacity. After being annihilated after the story’s publication, Supermicro’s stock has bounced back.

Most upsetting is that we don’t know the truth here in any capacity. We don’t know how the story was sourced originally other than the vague descriptions given about their roles and knowledge. We don’t know what assumptions were made as Riley and Robertson almost never quoted their sources. We don’t know anything about the thirty additional companies — aside from Amazon and Apple — that were apparently affected, nor if any of the other nine hundred customers of Supermicro found malicious hardware. We don’t know what role, if any, Bloomberg’s financial services business played in the sourcing and publication of this story, since they were also users of Supermicro servers. We don’t know the truth of what is either the greatest information security scoop of the decade or the biggest reporting fuck-up of its type.

What does that say about Bloomberg’s integrity?

As Heer points out, a year ago, co-author Michael Riley himself tweeted, “That’s the unique thing about this attack. Although details have been very tightly held, there is physical evidence out there in the world. Now that details are out, it will be hard to keep more from emerging.”

With not one shred of evidence emerging in a year, it seems very clear that this was, in fact, “the biggest reporting fuck-up of its type”.

And yet Bloomberg stands by it.

NBA Kowtows to China Over Houston Rockets GM’s Tweet About Hong Kong 

Daniel Victor, writing for The New York Times:

The episode began Friday night, when Daryl Morey, the general manager of the Houston Rockets, posted an image on Twitter that included a slogan commonly chanted during Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protests: “Fight for freedom, stand with Hong Kong.” He quickly deleted the tweet, but the damage was done.

Chinese fans, who see the Hong Kong protesters portrayed as violent rioters in the state-run news media and largely regard them as such, were furious. Sponsors paused their deals with the Rockets, and the country’s main broadcaster said it would remove the team’s games from its schedule.

The league issued an apology for Mr. Morey’s comments Sunday night. That inflamed fans back home, where the protesters are generally seen as pro-democracy fighters battling a repressive government. Democratic and Republican politicians found agreement in calling the league gutless, accusing it of prioritizing money over human rights.

Striking, but unsurprising, that high-profile Republicans are (correctly) willing to speak out in opposition to the NBA’s kowtowing to China, but just shrug their shoulders at the president of the United States’s public request for the Chinese to open a bogus investigation into his political opponent.

Brooklyn Nets owner Joe Tsai tries to justify the NBA’s kowtowing in this Facebook post:

The NBA is a fan-first league. When hundreds of millions of fans are furious over an issue, the league, and anyone associated with the NBA, will have to pay attention. As a Governor of one of the 30 NBA teams, and a Chinese having spent a good part of my professional life in China, I need to speak up.

What is the problem with people freely expressing their opinion? This freedom is an inherent American value and the NBA has been very progressive in allowing players and other constituents a platform to speak out on issues.

The problem is, there are certain topics that are third-rail issues in certain countries, societies and communities.

That the Chinese consider support for freedom in Hong Kong a “third-rail issue” should not deter Americans from speaking out on Hongkongers’ behalf. And it is deeply disingenuous of Tsai to portray the protests in Hong Kong as a “separatist movement” — that’s the Chinese state media line.

Apple Releases MacOS 10.15 ‘Catalina’ 

Among the headline new features: Sidecar (using your iPad as an external, Pencil-enabled display), Find My, and the new Music, Podcasts, and TV apps that were split out of the old iTunes app. We should start seeing the first batch of third-party Catalyst (UIKit on Mac) apps in the App Store today, too. Update: Here’s one from Post-It.

The Rich Really Do Pay Lower Taxes Than You 

David Leonhardt, writing for The New York Times:

The overall tax rate on the richest 400 households last year was only 23 percent, meaning that their combined tax payments equaled less than one quarter of their total income. This overall rate was 70 percent in 1950 and 47 percent in 1980.

For middle-class and poor families, the picture is different. Federal income taxes have also declined modestly for these families, but they haven’t benefited much if at all from the decline in the corporate tax or estate tax. And they now pay more in payroll taxes (which finance Medicare and Social Security) than in the past. Over all, their taxes have remained fairly flat.

An excellent animated graph accompanies his column, showing how the combined tax rates on the very richest of the rich in the U.S. — not the top 1 percent, but the top 400 households — has plummeted in the last few decades. Good conclusion too:

I already know what some critics will say about these arguments — that the rich will always figure out a way to avoid taxes. That’s simply not the case. True, they will always manage to avoid some taxes. But history shows that serious attempts to collect more taxes usually succeed.

Ask yourself this: If efforts to tax the super-rich were really doomed to fail, why would so many of the super-rich be fighting so hard to defeat those efforts?