Linked List: August 1, 2023

Tuesday, 1 August 2023

Donald Trump Indicted Over Efforts to Overturn 2020 Election ★

The New York Times:

Former President Donald J. Trump was indicted on Tuesday in connection with his widespread efforts to overturn the 2020 election following a sprawling federal investigation into his attempts to cling to power after losing the presidency to Joseph R. Biden Jr.

The indictment was filed by the special counsel Jack Smith in Federal District Court in Washington. It accuses Mr. Trump of three conspiracies: one to defraud the United States, a second to obstruct an official government proceeding and a third to deprive people of civil rights provided by federal law or the Constitution.

Can you even believe it? Well, other than the fact that we watched him do all of this live on television, repeatedly over the course of his final months in office, can you believe it? Read the full indictment here. It opens thus:

The Defendant, DONALD J. TRUMP, was the forty-fifth President of the United States and a candidate for re-election in 2020. The Defendant lost the 2020 presidential election.

The indictment, poetically, is 45 pages long.

Reed Jobs Starts VC Fund Focused on Cancer Treatments ★

DealBook at The New York Times:

Reed Jobs is stepping into the spotlight: The 31-year-old son of Steve Jobs and Laurene Powell Jobs is starting a venture capital firm to invest in new cancer treatments, DealBook is the first to report. It’s an area that hits close to home, since his father, the iconic Apple co-founder, died from complications of pancreatic cancer in 2011.

“My father got diagnosed with cancer when I was 12,” Mr. Jobs told DealBook’s Andrew Ross Sorkin in his first interview with a news organization. That led him to begin focusing on oncology, starting with a summer internship at Stanford when he was 15.

Pixar, Adobe, Apple, Autodesk, and Nvidia Form Alliance for OpenUSD ★

Apple Newsroom:

Pixar, Adobe, Apple, Autodesk, and NVIDIA, together with the Joint Development Foundation (JDF), an affiliate of the Linux Foundation, today announced the Alliance for OpenUSD (AOUSD) to promote the standardization, development, evolution, and growth of Pixar’s Universal Scene Description technology. [...]

Created by Pixar Animation Studios, OpenUSD is a high-performance 3D scene description technology that offers robust interoperability across tools, data, and workflows. Already known for its ability to collaboratively capture artistic expression and streamline cinematic content production, OpenUSD’s power and flexibility make it an ideal content platform to embrace the needs of new industries and applications.

The alliance will develop written specifications detailing the features of OpenUSD. This will enable greater compatibility and wider adoption, integration, and implementation, and allows inclusion by other standards bodies into their specifications. The Linux Foundation’s JDF was chosen to house the project, as it will enable open, efficient, and effective development of OpenUSD specifications, while providing a path to recognition through the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).

Conspicuously absent: Meta, which supposedly has bet its future on XR. (Likewise the word metaverse.)

I suspect some people will be surprised by Apple’s inclusion, thinking that Apple is only interested in proprietary technology. But that’s not the case. Apple’s interests tend to be at both ends of the proprietary spectrum, and the company has historically embraced open content/file formats in particular. A huge part of the original iPhone’s appeal was its groundbreaking support for the full web (as opposed to, as Steve Jobs called it, the “baby web” supported by mobile devices of the time). Nvidia executives have repeatedly made the analogy that USD is to 3D content what HTML is to 2D.

Four Score and Seven Likes Ago ★

Aisha Malik at TechCrunch:

Meta is gearing up to roll out AI-powered chatbots with different personas as early as next month, according to a new report from the Financial Times. The chatbots are designed to have humanlike conversations with users on Meta’s social media platforms, including Facebook and Instagram.

The report indicates that these chatbots will take on different personas, including one that advises users on travel plans in the style of a surfer and another that speaks like Abraham Lincoln. The new chatbots could launch as early as next month. Meta reportedly sees the move as a way to boost engagement with its social platforms.

It’s always Lincoln.

The Talk Show: ‘What’s Happening‽’ ★

Craig Hockenberry, the special guest with the special fleshy palms, returns to the show. Topics include Twitter/X, foldable phones, and our favorite features in iOS 17 now that it’s in public beta.