Linked List: February 16, 2024

Friday, 16 February 2024

Trump Ordered to Pay $355 Million in NY Civil Fraud Trial Ruling 

Jonah E. Bromwich and Ben Protess, reporting for The New York Times:

The decision by Justice Arthur F. Engoron caps a chaotic, yearslong case in which New York’s attorney general put Mr. Trump’s fantastical claims of wealth on trial. With no jury, the power was in Justice Engoron’s hands alone, and he came down hard: The judge delivered a sweeping array of punishments that threatens the former president’s business empire as he simultaneously contends with four criminal prosecutions and seeks to regain the White House.

Not only did Justice Engoron impose a three-year ban preventing Mr. Trump from serving in top roles at any New York company, including his own, but the judge also applied that punishment to the former president’s adult sons for two years and ordered that they pay more than $4 million each. One of the sons, Eric Trump, is the Trump Organization’s de facto chief executive, and the ruling throws into doubt whether any member of the family can run the business in the near term.

In his unconventional style, Justice Engoron criticized Mr. Trump and the other defendants for refusing to admit errors for years. “Their complete lack of contrition and remorse borders on pathological,” he said.

Trump’s social media feed today is chock full of dozens of (totally sane, rational, well-reasoned) comments on this court decision, without a single word regarding Russian political prisoner and Putin critic/rival Alexei Navalny’s death in a Siberian prison. But he did make time to mention that he’ll be at Sneakercon here in Philly tomorrow.

Putin Rival Alexei Navalny Dies in Siberian Prison 

Robyn Dixon, David M. Herszenhorn, and Catherine Belton, reporting for The Washington Post:

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, the defiant anti-corruption crusader and democracy champion who was President Vladimir Putin’s despised nemesis, died suddenly in an Arctic Russian prison colony on Friday, penitentiary officials said, removing the most prominent figure inside Russia willing to challenge the Kremlin’s rule.

Referring to Navalny as Putin’s “nemesis” — which description the Post also uses in its headline — whitewashes just how despicable his attempted assassination, yearslong imprisonment, and now (presumed) actual assassination were. It’s a dysphemism — the opposite of a euphemism. Navalny was a political rival and staunch proponent of democracy. Putin was Navalny’s nemesis, but not the other way around.

His death — foretold as almost inevitable, including by Navalny himself — sent shock waves across Russia and was quickly condemned by global leaders, some of whom joined Russian opposition figures in calling it a state-sponsored murder. Navalny, 47, had appeared a court hearing by video link the day before, seemingly in good health and with his trademark humor intact.

Navalny’s family and his team, who continued to run his political operation in exile, had warned that his life was in danger since his arrest in January 2021, when he returned to Russia after recovering in Germany from being poisoned with a banned nerve agent. An investigation led by Navalny and Bellingcat, an investigative journalism organization, had identified a team of Russian federal security agents as responsible for the assassination attempt, and his supporters noted that in prison he was in the clutches of the very government that had already tried to kill him several times.

Until 2017, Navalny’s death would have been met with bipartisan, near-universal condemnation here in the United States. No more. But it shouldn’t be surprising that a political party that has turned against fair democratic elections — a party whose undisputed leader has, just weeks ago, argued in court that the president of the United States could not be prosecuted in court for ordering the assassination of his political rivals — sees Vladimir Putin’s Russia as a model to follow, not an enemy to defeat.

Nearly 250 years after the founding of our nation, genuine democracy remains a radical — and alas, fragile — idea.

Meta’s Oculus Quest App Lab 

So I found an answer to my intrigue regarding Mark Zuckerberg’s off-handed quip about “neural interfaces”, but I’m still at a loss to understand his positioning of Quest as the “open” alternative to Apple’s “closed” Vision. One friend sent me a pointer to Meta’s “App Lab”, which they announced in February 2021:

Whether the goal is to build a business, create a community, test and experiment with new apps, or get feedback on new ideas, you control how your app is distributed. App Lab supports both free and paid apps, which are shareable via a URL or Oculus Keys. While App Lab is distinct from the Oculus Store and App Lab apps won’t appear in the Oculus Store, customers who install apps from App Lab will find them in their Quest library. App Lab apps can also be searched by exact name and found in the “App Lab” section of results. App Lab apps can access the majority of standard platform features, including automatic update distribution, platform integration and SDKs, app analytics, release channels, and more.

We’ve taken steps to reduce the technical requirements and Virtual Reality Checks (VRCs) to make submission as simple as possible. In order to promote a safe, secure and positive experience, App Lab apps are required to comply with our App Lab Policies, including our Oculus Content Guidelines, Data Use Policy, and App Policies.

Follow that link to “App Policies” and you’ll see that this doesn’t sound very different from Apple’s iOS-derived platforms:

Apps hosted on the platform may not contain, use, or make available commerce solutions — including for app payment processing, in-app purchases, or in-app advertising — except as provided in the platform SDK, or otherwise expressly agreed by you and Meta Platforms Technologies in writing. For example, if your app has in-app purchases, and your app is distributed through any Meta Platforms Technologies distribution channel, including the Meta Quest Store, you must use the Platform In-App Purchases to handle such payment processing.

There’s also a third-party thing called SideQuest that ostensibly lets you “sideload” apps on a Quest, but it requires both desktop software on a Mac or PC and a Meta developer account. I can definitely see how Quest is at least slightly more open than Vision, but on the grand scale of open-vs.-closed platforms, it seems pretty closed. What am I missing?

Meta Acquired a Neural Interface Startup in 2019 

Nick Statt, reporting for The Verge in September 2019:

Facebook today announced that it will acquire neural interface startup CTRL-Labs, a company that makes a wristband capable of transmitting electrical signals from the brain into computer input.

The deal, which Bloomberg reports is worth somewhere between $500 million and $1 billion, is the most substantial acquisition Facebook has made in the last half decade, since it paid $2 billion to acquire virtual reality company Oculus VR in 2014.

I don’t remember noting this acquisition at the time, but a friend reminded me of it the other day after my sort-of “Whoa, what?!” reaction to Mark Zuckerberg just casually suggesting that hand-tracking might be merely a stopgap interface for XR headsets until we have “neural interfaces”.

From that same Verge report:

Bosworth says CTRL-Labs, which was co-founded by Internet Explorer creator and neuroscientist Thomas Reardon, “will be joining our Facebook Reality Labs team where we hope to build this kind of technology, at scale, and get it into consumer products faster.”

Patrick Kaifosh is CTRL-Labs’ other co-founder, and he is also a neuroscientist. Reardon, the company’s CEO, left his career in software engineering to study neuroscience and received his PhD in 2016.

That’s quite the second career for Reardon. If I recall correctly, Internet Explorer was fairly popular at one time.