Linked List: April 10, 2023

Monday, 10 April 2023

Kara Swisher, back in 2014, on Katie Cotton’s retirement from Apple:

Did she sometimes ice our reporters out, ignore calls or reply with newsless answers? Sometimes. [...] Did she try her hardest to showcase Apple and its products in a way that benefited it? Yep. [...] Was she vocal when she did not like something we did? And how.

So what?

That kind of hard driving is part and parcel to the business, even if she was harder driving and, because of that, more successful than most. As she once told me when we talked about her outsize reputation in the tech press: “I am not here to make friends with reporters, I am here to put a light on and sell Apple products.”

It was no surprise that some used the opportunity of her exit to drag out their complaints in the kind of strange rage that has been — at least to my mind — oddly emotional and sometimes full of vitriol that would never be directed at a man who was similarly strong.

Consider the various words used to describe her: “Queen of Evil,” “wicked witch,” “cold and distant,” “frigid supremacy,” “queen bee” and, perhaps most obviously misogynistic, “dominatrix.”

I always appreciated Cotton’s forthrightness, and part of that is Apple’s institutional default to “no comment” when asked about anything other than what Apple wants to talk about. Those “no comments” seem to downright offend some reporters, but to me, they’re a sign of respect. Better not to say anything at all, and waste no one’s time, than to offer up a lengthy but meaningless pile of bullshit, which in my experience is how most PR teams operate. If you wanted Katie Cotton to coddle you or bullshit you for an hour, you were going to be disappointed. If you wanted Katie Cotton to respect you, you simply needed to respect her and her team at Apple.

As for the misogyny she faced at every step of her career, a lasting part of Cotton’s legacy is that Apple’s PR team remains full of women. I’d wager that Apple PR is majority women, in fact. I could contact Apple to ask about that, but I think I know the answer I’d get.

Katie Cotton, Rest in Peace ★

Terribly sad news: former Apple PR leader Katie Cotton has died, apparently after a long illness:

It is with great sadness that the family of Kathryn Elizabeth Cotton announces her passing. Fondly known to family, friends and all who loved her as Katie. She passed peacefully on Thursday evening, April 6, surrounded by family and close friends. [...]

Katie is recognized as one of the most remarkable women in Public Relations and Marketing in Technology. In her role as Vice President of Worldwide Corporate Communications for Apple Inc., she worked most of her 18-year career directly for Steve Jobs. She was a strong and unwavering proponent for the company, helping to elevate its products and brand.

If you would like to honor Katie’s life and charitable work, please consider a donation to Pets In Need in Redwood City or SafeSpace in Menlo Park.

Ostensibly Private Twitter Circle Tweets Are Being Shown Publicly ★

Amanda Silberling, writing for TechCrunch:

Numerous Twitter users are reporting a bug in which Circle tweets — which are supposed to reach a select group, like an Instagram Close Friends story — are surfacing on the algorithmically generated For You timeline. That means that your supposedly private posts might breach containment to reach an unintended audience, which could quickly spark some uncomfortable situations.

I observed this bug when a tweet from someone I follow appeared on my For You timeline, but the retweet button was disabled, despite the person’s account being public. When I clicked on the tweet, it disappeared. I asked the tweeter if that post was intended for their Circle — which I am not in — and they confirmed this was the case. [...]

TechCrunch has spoken to multiple users who have also experienced this glitch firsthand; many more have reported the glitch in their tweets. Most often, it seems that Circle tweets are being surfaced in the For You timeline to users who follow the poster, but are not in their Circle. Others have reported that their Circle tweets are reaching even further than those who follow them.

Other privacy-related bugs I’ve seen people mention recently:

Will Oremus saw tweets in his timeline from people who had blocked him.
Ian Coldwater, testing the privacy of Twitter Circles, created a circle with just one other person, sent a tweet to that circle, and it was shown to several people not in the circle.
Replying to Coldwater, Whitney Merrill argues that this is a data breach under EU law, and could result in hefty fines.

I don’t trust anything “private” about Twitter, including and especially DMs. Some kind of breach regarding DMs seems inevitable at this point, given how sloppy Twitter is getting under Phony Stark.

CGP Grey Grades America’s State Flags ★

I love CGP Grey’s videos, and I know firsthand that we largely share similar design taste. (At some long-ago WWDC in San Francisco, Grey and I realized we carried not only the exact same wallet, but the same (alas, now discontinued) color of that wallet.) So I expected to largely agree with his grading of the 50 American state flags. I did not expect to agree with his grades completely. 50 for 50, no notes.

‘The Real-World Costs of the Digital Race for Bitcoin’ ★

Gabriel J.X. Dance, reporting for The New York Times (with informative graphics by Tim Wallace and Zach Levitt) on the Bitcoin mining industry:

It is as if another New York City’s worth of residences were now drawing on the nation’s power supply, The Times found.

In some areas, this has led prices to surge. In Texas, where 10 of the 34 mines are connected to the state’s grid, the increased demand has caused electric bills for power customers to rise nearly 5 percent, or $1.8 billion per year, according to a simulation performed for The Times by the energy research and consulting firm Wood Mackenzie.

The additional power use across the country also causes as much carbon pollution as adding 3.5 million gas-powered cars to America’s roads, according to an analysis by WattTime, a nonprofit tech company. Many of the Bitcoin operations promote themselves as environmentally friendly and set up in areas rich with renewable energy, but their power needs are far too great to be satisfied by those sources alone. As a result, they have become a boon for the fossil fuel industry: WattTime found that coal and natural gas plants kick in to meet 85 percent of the demand these Bitcoin operations add to their grids.

The costs of Bitcoin seem clear: higher energy prices and more carbon emissions. Totally unclear: what we should, or even can, do about it.