Linked List: April 2025

Friday, 4 April 2025

Trump Claims to Extend TikTok Deadline for Another 75 Days ★

CNBC:

President Donald Trump on Friday extended a deadline requiring China-based ByteDance to sell the U.S. operations of TikTok or face an effective ban in the country, marking the second time he has taken such action.

Trump, on Truth Social, which is by far the most popular social network in the world:

My Administration has been working very hard on a Deal to SAVE TIKTOK, and we have made tremendous progress. The Deal requires more work to ensure all necessary approvals are signed, which is why I am signing an Executive Order to keep TikTok up and running for an additional 75 days. We hope to continue working in Good Faith with China, who I understand are not very happy about our Reciprocal Tariffs (Necessary for Fair and Balanced Trade between China and the U.S.A.!). This proves that Tariffs are the most powerful Economic tool, and very important to our National Security! We do not want TikTok to “go dark.” We look forward to working with TikTok and China to close the Deal. Thank you for your attention to this matter!

Those are the remarks of the most powerful man in the world.

Keep in mind, too, that there is no mechanism in the law for the president to issue any such extension. What he’s saying is what he said the last time: he’s instructing Attorney General Pam Bondi not to enforce the law, and pinky-swearing that U.S. companies that are breaking the law to keep TikTok available (Akamai, Oracle, Google, Apple) won’t be held responsible for it. It’s just a complete abdication of the rule of law.

‘Floundering’ ★

From that same Reuters report by Akash Sriram that I just wrote about, speculating that iPhone prices might rise dramatically under Trump’s tariffs:

However, other analysts noted that iPhone sales have been floundering in the company’s major markets, as Apple Intelligence, a suite of features that helps summarize notifications, rewrite emails and give users access to ChatGPT, has failed to enthuse buyers.

Merriam-Webster defines flounder thus:

: to struggle to move or obtain footing : thrash about wildly

Here’s Jason Snell’s chart of iPhone sales through their most recent quarterly report — a record-breaking quarter for the company overall — covering the last three calendar months of 2024:

It’s certainly up for debate whether Apple Intelligence is an effective marketing driver for iPhone sales. I mean that with no snark. Maybe Apple Intelligence is driving iPhone sales. I don’t know why people have purchased new iPhones in the last six months. Neither do you, and neither do the “other analysts” (conveniently unnamed) cited by Reuters. But what we do know, because Apple reports the revenue numbers, is that iPhone sales have been remarkably flat, year-over-year, for the last 13 quarters.

Why Trump’s Tariffs Are Rattling Even Meta ★

Mike Isaac, writing for The New York Times:

Apple, Dell, Oracle — which rely on hardware and global supply chains that are in the direct line of fire from tariffs — saw their shares go into free-fall. But there was another big tech company whose stock took a pummeling even though its core business has little to do with hardware: Meta. [...]

The effect of tariffs on Meta’s ad business is simple. Many of its small and medium-sized advertisers are from all across the world. President Trump’s tariffs will instantly make it more expensive for them to sell their products to customers in the United States. [...]

Last year, the company disclosed that 10 percent of its revenue in 2023 was from Chinese companies spending heavily on advertising across Facebook and Instagram, an ad blitz aimed at garnering a foothold in lucrative Western markets.

Much of that growth was fueled by the explosive expansion of the fast-fashion company Shein — which is based in Singapore but has a supply chain that is largely in China — and the e-commerce app Temu, a low-cost, Amazon-like company owned by the Chinese e-commerce conglomerate Pinduoduo. Temu was estimated to have spent $3 billion in marketing costs in 2023 alone, according to estimates from Bernstein Research.

When the stock market began crumbling after Trump’s announcement Wednesday, I didn’t get why Meta was being hit so hard. Meta makes devices, but unlike Apple, that’s just a side hustle. Meta isn’t a retailer like Amazon. But Meta is a huge advertising destination for retailers. It’s all interconnected.

Nintendo Delays Switch 2 Preorders Over Tariff Concerns ★

Emma Roth, The Verge:

Nintendo is pushing back preorders for the Switch 2 due to concerns about Donald Trump’s newly announced tariffs. According to a statement sent to The Verge by Eddie Garcia on behalf of Nintendo, it says preorders will no longer begin on April 9th:

Pre-orders for Nintendo Switch 2 in the U.S. will not start April 9, 2025 in order to assess the potential impact of tariffs and evolving market conditions. Nintendo will update timing at a later date. The launch date of June 5, 2025 is unchanged.

Riots in the streets.

Apple Cash Switched From Discover to Visa in 2022 ★

Allison McDaniel, writing for 9to5Mac back in 2022:

Apple Cash is a virtual debit card where you can send and receive money through iMessage. Stored in your Wallet, you can make secure and contactless payments with Apple Pay from your iPhone or Apple Watch. It’s also a way to receive daily cash back for those who use Apple Card. Previously a Discover card, your Apple Cash card is now Visa.

Spotted by user @Kanjo on Twitter, it’s easy to notice the card has a visible Visa logo in the bottom right corner. Before this change, there was no Discover logo on the card. While not everyone will like the addition of the logo, it’s going to be hard to forget it’s a Visa.

So Apple Card is a credit card, with Goldman Sachs as the bank and Mastercard as the network. Apple definitely needs a new banking partner, as Goldman is exiting the consuming banking business, and is rumored to be listening to offers from Visa and Amex to switch its network too.

Apple Cash is a debit card, which launched on the Discover network but switched to Visa three years ago — presumably with a nice kickback to Apple to get that Visa logo on the virtual cards in Wallet.

Costco Only Accepts Visa Credit Cards ★

I observed yesterday that, in general, Visa and Mastercard credit cards are both accepted at the same locations. The most notable exception is Costco, which, as part of the deal to make its own credit card a Visa (after long partnering with Amex), only accepts Visa credit cards at its physical retail locations and gas stations. They accept “most PIN-based debit/ATM cards”, but for credit, only Visa.

Online, for reasons I don’t understand, Costco accepts Mastercard too (which they incorrectly style in camelcase — you’d think Costco, of all companies, would be sensitive to wrongly camelcased mid-name C’s). Also, in Canada’s Costcos, it’s reversed, with Mastercard being exclusive in-store but Visa being accepted online.

Another high-profile exception: The Olympics, which “proudly accepts only Visa for card and mobile payments, along with cash”.

Bill Gates on the Creation of Microsoft, and the Source Code for Its First Product ★

Bill Gates, commemorating Microsoft’s 50th anniversary:

The story of how Microsoft came to be begins with, of all things, a magazine. The January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics featured an Altair 8800 on the cover. The Altair 8800, created by a small electronics company called MITS, was a groundbreaking personal computer kit that promised to bring computing power to hobbyists. When Paul and I saw that cover, we knew two things: the PC revolution was imminent, and we wanted to get in on the ground floor.

At the time, personal computers were practically non-existent. Paul and I knew that creating software that let people program the Altair could revolutionize the way people interacted with these machines. So, we reached out to Ed Roberts, the founder of MITS, and told him we had a version of the programming language BASIC for the chip that the Altair 8800 ran on.

There was just one problem: We didn’t.
It was time to get to work.

At the bottom Gates links to a printout of the original source code for the BASIC interpreter, in extensively commented assembly language. Amongst all of his other accomplishments, Bill Gates was one hell of a programmer.

The Making of the Lumon Industries WoeMeter ★

Wonderfully detailed write-up of a perfect prop from Make3:

Repurposed Nagra Knobs & Switches — To ground the device in a tangible, vintage aesthetic, we salvaged original knobs and switches from a 1990s Nagra IV-D recorder, seamlessly integrating them into our design. These components not only provided an authentic look and feel but also remained fully functional, with:

A power switch for system activation.

A reading on/off switch to engage or disable the Woe display.

A manual override switch to cycle through needle positions if wireless control failed.

When I watched this episode, I remember noticing how cool the device seemed. It turns out to be even cooler than I thought. So much effort into such a little thing. And the coolest thing is that, in a sense, the WoeMeter actually works as a handheld wireless prop.

Reusing those Nagra dials to add verisimilitude reminds me of how much of Star Wars came from reused pieces of old gadgetry, like two of the lightsabers (Luke’s and Vader’s) being made from 1940s-era Graflex camera flash guns.

Jason Snell’s M4 MacBook Air Review ★

Jason Snell, last month:

The new M4 MacBook Air is the Mac most people should buy. [...]

That’s why perhaps the most important change in the M4 MacBook Air is its base configuration, which starts at $999. When Apple introduced a winning new flat-with-rounded-corners Air design in 2022, it had to keep selling older models in order to get down under a thousand dollars. Three years later, Apple is finally able to sell a brand-new Air — with a generous 16GB of unified memory — at that important price.

So: No more quibbles about stepping back a generation or two to an older model with a lower price. Apple has done away with that strategy for the MacBook Air: The latest and greatest model is the one most people shopping for a Mac should buy, especially if they’re coming from an Intel model.

I’d put off linking to Snell’s review for a few weeks while thinking about writing my own, but I’ve got nothing to add. The M4 MacBook Air is utterly unsurprising, but only in the best possible way. It’s the MacBook Air everyone wanted Apple to make. The $999 base model is now exceedingly recommendable. It even brings back the most notable feature that was lost in the transition from Intel to Apple Silicon — the ability to drive two external displays and its own internal display. Just aces all around.

Thursday, 3 April 2025

U.S. Transaction Shares for Visa, Mastercard, and Amex ★

Following up on the previous item, here’s a WSJ report from October on Visa’s dominant position in the payments industry:

Visa, based in San Francisco, has built its network over more than 60 years — going back to clunky manual credit-card readers and carbon-paper copies of receipts. It accounts for around 60% of the total dollar amount of U.S. debit-card purchases and about 50% of U.S. credit-card purchases, according to the Nilson Report, a trade publication. Its closest competitor, Mastercard, accounts for around 22% and 23%, respectively. Visa’s profit totaled $17.3 billion in its 2023 fiscal year, after more than tripling in the last decade.

Amex accounts for about 19% of U.S. credit card transactions (and doesn’t support debit), and Discover is down around 3 or 4%. I really thought Visa and Mastercard had comparable market share, but it turns out Visa is far bigger, and it’s Mastercard and Amex that are around the same size.

WSJ: Visa Offers Apple Roughly $100 Million to Switch Apple Card’s Network From Mastercard ★

AnnaMaria Andriotis, reporting for The Wall Street Journal (News+ link):

The Apple card is up for grabs because Goldman Sachs, the bank behind it, is getting out of the consumer lending world. For months, big banks including JPMorgan Chase and Synchrony Financial have been vying to take over as issuer. What hasn’t been known is the equally fierce fight playing out between the networks to win Apple, with Visa and American Express trying to unseat Mastercard, according to people familiar with the matter.

Apple is expected to select a network for the card before it picks the bank to replace Goldman Sachs. Networks provide the plumbing that transmit information between the banks that issue consumers’ cards and the merchants’ banks.

Visa, the largest network, has made an aggressive pitch to win the card, including offering the kind of upfront payment to Apple that’s normally reserved for the biggest card programs, the people said. Visa offered a similar payment when Costco was selecting its network about a decade ago, The Wall Street Journal reported.

American Express is also in the mix, trying to become both the issuer and network of the Apple card, the people said. Goldman had approached Amex to gauge its interest in taking over the card in 2023, the Journal earlier reported.

I’ve always thought Visa and Mastercard were interchangeable. I can’t recall ever once in my life seeing an establishment where one of them was accepted but the other wasn’t, and they both seem to be accepted everywhere that accepts credit cards at all. If there’s a reason to prefer one over the other I’ve never heard it.

Amex is different because it’s accepted at fewer locations because they charge merchants a higher fee, which they get away with because they offer their customers superior service. I wrote back in 2023 that they share an affinity with Apple: both are built around the idea of offering a premium experience and charging higher prices for it.

But I already have a regular Amex card. One of the things I like about Apple Card being a Mastercard (or if they switched to Visa) is that it’s a card I can use anywhere that doesn’t accept Amex.

‘Trump Declares a Trade War on Uninhabited Islands, US Military, and Economic Logic’ ★

Mike Masnick has a great piece at TechDirt running down just how stupid everything about Trump’s tariff trade war is:

Whoever on the Council of Economic Advisers used this formula should turn in their econ degree, because this is not how anything works. Even if they then go on to publish another version of the formula that looks all sophisticated and shit.

Brendan Duke, on X, shows that the fancier version of their formula — which is fancy in the way that Vertu phones are “fancy” — is even stupider, because the two Greek letters they chose to glam it up just cancel each other out.

Back to Masnick:

This is what happens when you ask ChatGPT to “make my wrong econ math look more scientific.” The document even admits that they couldn’t figure out the actual tariff rates, so they “proxied” them with this formula instead. That’s a bit like saying you couldn’t find your house keys, so you proxied them with a banana.

The fundamental problem here isn’t just that the tariff numbers are wrong — though they absolutely are. It’s that the entire premise rests on treating trade deficits as if they were tariffs. They’re not the same thing. At all.

Let’s back up for a moment and talk about trade deficits, because Trump has been getting this wrong for longer than some of his supporters have been alive. His logic appears to be:

“Deficit” sounds bad

Therefore, trade deficits must be bad

Therefore, countries with whom we have trade deficits must be cheating us

Therefore, we should punish them with tariffs to “level the playing field”

This sounds like it must be an exaggeration for comic effect, but it’s not. That’s how Trump’s mind works. This is what Trump has been saying about trade deficits for decades. It’s like how he understands “asylum” to mean “insane asylum” and so when he talks about political asylum he starts talking about “the late great Hannibal Lecter”.

The Economist on Trump’s Mindless Tariffs ★

The Economist:

On economics Mr Trump’s assertions are flat-out nonsense. The president says tariffs are needed to close America’s trade deficit, which he sees as a transfer of wealth to foreigners. Yet as any of the president’s economists could have told him, this overall deficit arises because Americans choose to save less than their country invests — and, crucially, this long-running reality has not stopped its economy from outpacing the rest of the g7 for over three decades. There is no reason why his extra tariffs should eliminate the deficit. Insisting on balanced trade with every trading partner individually is bonkers — like suggesting that Texas would be richer if it insisted on balanced trade with each of the other 49 states, or asking a company to ensure that each of its suppliers is also a customer.

And Mr Trump’s grasp of the technicalities was pathetic. He suggested that the new tariffs were based on an assessment of a country’s tariffs against America, plus currency manipulation and other supposed distortions, such as value-added tax. But it looks as if officials set the tariffs using a formula that takes America’s bilateral trade deficit as a share of goods imported from each country and halves it — which is almost as random as taxing you on the number of vowels in your name.

There is no way to report on these tariffs in a way that is honest and accurate without describing them as bonkers and nonsensical. News publications that are trying to present them as rational, or describing them as “reciprocal” just because that’s the word the White House is using, are beclowning themselves.

Trump Tariffs, Day Two ★

CNBC:

Markets plunged the day after President Donald Trump imposed a far-reaching “reciprocal tariff” policy, including a 10% baseline tariff on almost every country on earth.

The plan slaps much steeper tariff rates on many countries, including 34% on China, 20% on the European Union, 46% on Vietnam and 32% on Taiwan.

Economists and U.S. trade partners are raising questions about how the White House calculated the tariff rates it claimed other countries “charge” the United States.

Apple, in particular, is taking it on the chin, about 9.5% for the day. Amazon and Meta were both down 9%. Nike is down over 13%. From CNBC’s corresponding story on just how the White House computed the “tariff” rates it claims for various countries:

Many observers said the U.S. appeared to have divided the trade deficit by imports from a given country to arrive at tariff rates for individual countries.

Such methodology doesn’t necessarily align with the conventional approach for calculating tariffs and implies the U.S. would have looked at only the trade deficit in goods and ignored trade in services.

“Such methodology doesn’t necessarily align with the conventional approach” is an overlong euphemism for “The president literally doesn’t understand what tariffs are.” James Surowiecki was seemingly the first person to figure out the White House’s nonsensical formula:

Just figured out where these fake tariff rates come from. They didn’t actually calculate tariff rates + non-tariff barriers, as they say they did. Instead, for every country, they just took our trade deficit with that country and divided it by the country’s exports to us.

So we have a $17.9 billion trade deficit with Indonesia. Its exports to us are $28 billion. $17.9/$28 = 64%, which Trump claims is the tariff rate Indonesia charges us. What extraordinary nonsense this is.

Don’t rack your brain trying to make sense out of the nonsensical.

Wednesday, 2 April 2025

Nintendo Switch 2 Details ★

Great roundup from The Verge:

While Nintendo told us very little in the official reveal of the console in January, now we know when the Switch 2 is coming and how much it will cost at launch: June 5th and $449.99. We also have more hardware details and specs to pore over, like a 1080p, 120Hz 7.9-inch LCD screen, Joy-Con controllers with mouse-like functions, 256GB of storage, and 4K output via the dock.

Nintendo also cleared up the mysteries about the system’s “C” button with details about new GameChat features and a camera accessory and confirmed that GameCube games are coming to Nintendo Switch Online, along with a dedicated controller.

Last but not least, Nintendo showed off a number of new games, like a Switch 2 edition of Metroid Prime 4: Beyond and the exclusive Switch 2 launch title Mario Kart World.

People are going to object to the pricing, but the world has changed (and inflated) since the original Switch debuted in 2017. What I love about all of these announcements is that they’re so focused on fun. Nintendo doesn’t just still have it, they’ve got it more than they ever have. Just wonderful news all around.

Steve Kornacki Exits MSNBC for New Deal With NBC News and NBC Sports ★

Stephen Battaglio, reporting for the LA Times:

MSNBC viewers have seen the last of Steve Kornacki’s big board.

The popular data maven has signed a deal with NBC that will expand his presence across the network’s news and sports divisions. But the new contract does not include working for MSNBC, which is being spun off into a new corporate entity formed by parent company Comcast.

They might well just switch off the lights and lock the doors at MSNBC.

‘What Makes an App Feel “Right” on the Mac?’ ★

Watts Martin:

If we hold things to this list, programs like Nova, MarsEdit, and Apple Pages — canonical Mac-assed Mac apps — all do unsurprisingly smashingly. But Obsidian, the Electron-based program I’m writing in right now, does shockingly well, too. Microsoft’s Visual Studio Code doesn’t do quite as well (most notably, it opens its settings “window” as an editor tab), but it does better than Sublime Text (which opens a text file for settings), and much better than the banana crazypants menu and icon design of the cross-platform e-book management program Calibre.

Martin has a good list here of fundamentals, but ultimately, you know it when you see it.

Tuesday, 1 April 2025

Jason Snell’s Unsuccessful Journey Into Netflix’s Ad Tier ★: Jason Snell:

While the ads played on, I began creating a thought experiment: There’s a $10 difference between the ad and ad-free plans. If Mr. Netflix (he wears a top hat) came to my house and said, “Jason, I’ve got a great deal for you. I’m going to pay you $120 a year, and all you have to do is watch ads while you watch Netflix,” what would I do? When I started thinking about it, I thought it might be an interesting intellectual question. What would I accept in exchange for having Mean Mr. Netflix beam ads into every show I watch?