Kamala Harris for President
Since some publications can’t find the intestinal fortitude to prevent the death of democracy in darkness, I have returned to this site in order to provide mine (hat tip to my pal Brent Simmons for the impetus):
I endorse the only logical candidate in this race: Kamala Harris. Harris has the experience, the steady temperament and desire to make positive change for this country.
Donald Trump (a man currently out on bail, by the way) is utterly unfit to be president and should, by all rights, have been disqualified from running in this election after attempting to overturn the legal results of the previous one. The fact that our system of justice moved too slow — as it often seems to do when deployed against the rich and powerful — to make this happen is a disgrace, one that makes this country look like a banana republic. If reelected, Trump will carry out on his stated desire to rule like Hitler.
If you’re someone who’s leaning toward Trump because you think he might be better on the economy, think again. Here’s a piece in The Wall Street Journal of all places that lays it out. Don’t believe that? Well, then here’s another about how companies are readying price hikes in order to deal with Trump’s proposed tariffs. Despite the abject cowardice of its billionaire owner, I implore you to review this piece in The Washington Post that shows how most people actually prefer Harris’s proposals to Trump’s, even though they don’t know it (the irony of the news scratching its head about why people don’t understand these basics is not lost on me).
A second Trump administration would be a disaster for the economy, which has already mostly recovered thanks to Joe Biden, a pandemic recovery that happened faster in the U.S. than in most other nations. Moreover, it would be a disaster for democracy. Trump has already said he plans to use the military against the left and jail his political opponents. Anyone in their right mind should be able to see that these are un-American comments that go against the very ideals of this country. The fact that millions gleefully support this anti-democratic authoritarian who only cares about himself is deeply disturbing. Remember that this is the man who stacked the Supreme Court with candidates who lied under oath about Roe v. Wade being decided law and then repealed it. Now women are dying when they miscarry because doctors are too afraid to operate to save their lives.
This is not an ordinary election. Voting for Trump because you imagine he’s better for the economy (he really isn’t) and you think maybe interest rates are still a bit too high comes with the baggage of an aging, self-indulgent, would-be dictator, bent on gutting our democracy and institutions.
Vote Harris. I did. Like the rest of history depended on it. Because it does.
» I’ll believe it when I see it
Pursuant to my previous post, Axios is reporting that at a virtual meeting of a number of high-profile CEOs and investors, the sentiment was that they are fed up with the current anti-democratic mentality of certain elected officials:
Sources say that one topic of conversation, and agreement, was to no longer financially support congressional election deniers, either directly or indirectly (via PACs, etc). And possibly to support primary challengers.
There is some skepticism that participants will stick to this informal and private pledge
You don’t say? Maybe that’s because they say stuff like this all the time and never do anything different. From August of 2019:
Top U.S. CEOs say companies should put social responsibility above profit
There’s very little evidence that that happened. Call me when they actually do something.
» ‘Business leaders urge Congress to certify Biden win’
Microsoft and almost 200 other prominent American businesses have signed a letter urging Congress to dismiss attempts by Republicans to overturn the results of the presidential election.
Almost 200 of the country’s top business leaders urged Congress to certify the electoral results for President-elect Joe Biden in a letter Monday, arguing that “attempts to thwart or delay this process run counter to the essential tenets of our democracy.”
It is a shame to not see Apple on this list but Microsoft’s concern here stands out to me. If the company is so worried about democracy then perhaps it should ask itself why its corporate political action committee continues to donate money to the very senators and congressmen who are attempting to overturn the verified results of a democratic election, results that responsible Republicans have recognized as valid.
After suspending its PAC donations in the fall of 2019, one of the first people Microsoft donated to in December of that year was the campaign of Josh Hawley, the senator from Missouri who is leading the charge to contest Joe Biden’s win, not because he doesn’t believe Biden won fair and square but because he cravenly wants to curry favor with Trump fans in preparation for his own presidential bid in 2024. I haven’t checked on the other signatories on the list but as many hail from financial and banking interests, you can be sure they have also donated to the election campaigns of Hawley or his anti-democratic compatriots.
I don’t run a billion dollar company, but it seems to me that if you stop helping elect anti-democratic assholes, you’ll have to sign fewer “Please support democracy” letters.
» ‘Opening a CURSED Macintosh SE!’
This is a wild set of modifications someone did to a Mac SE.
» ‘Trump calls TikTok a hot brand, demands a chunk of its sale price’
In the ever-tightening spiral as the United States goes down to the toilet bowl into the sewer of kakistocracy, TechCrunch reports on the words of the some-time resident of the White House on the grotesque deal being brokered for the sale of TikTok to Microsoft:
But the United States should be reimbursed, or should be paid a substantial amount of money because without the United States they don’t have anything, at least having to do with the 30%.
This is the guy the supposed lovers of free markets support.
» ‘New iPhone SE is successful in its intended role, says CIRP’
Ben Lovejoy at 9to5Mac on a report that shows the iPhone 9 sold well this past quarter:
The data showed that some 73% of those buying an iPhone SE were upgrading from a model more than four years old.
The original SE was more than four years old. I know this because that’s what I had before I bought this year’s SE. I wonder how much of this was “people who hold on to their phones for a long time” and how much was “people who just wanted a smaller damn phone with up-to-date components”.
» ‘Intel’s 7nm is Broken, Company Announces Delay Until 2022, 2023’
I’m not going to link to them, but if you look you can find people who think that Apple moving Macs to its own chips is a bad idea. I don’t know why you would do that but you can is all I’m saying which just seems rather incredible.
» Rebound Prime
My podcasting co-hosts and I are pleased to announce the launch of Rebound Prime, bonus content for listeners of The Rebound, our award-curious technology podcast. They said three white men could never talk about technology for 40 minutes a week for over five years but they were wrong.
Now, for just $5 a month you can support the show and get bootleg editions, bonus episodes, monthly live streams and more. It’s so much podcasting goodness you’ll need to walk it off like a rich meal.
So, check it out and take this opportunity to keep Lex and me making dad jokes and Dan making Dan jokes.
Touching
Seven years ago I wrote this over at Macworld:
The use of iOS devices has prompted us to expect screens to be responsive… While other vendors shipped touchscreen computers first, Apple is the company that could ship them right. … [Its] approach, assuming this particular rumor actually materializes, will have to reinvent user interaction on the desktop.
I, of course, had no idea how Apple might do that, but I knew from using Windows-based touchscreen devices that you can’t just slap a touch screen on a mouse-and-pointer-driven interface and call it good. With Windows 8, Microsoft had bolted a touch-based interface over top of the traditional one. Windows 10 improved on that, but its improvements were mostly focused on making the desktop experience better, fixing the things they messed up in Windows 8, not so much improving the touch experience.
The basic problem is that fingers are less precise than pointers. You can compensate for this by making all your touch targets huge, but that really screws up your interface for desktop use; large, clunky interface elements aren’t a solution. You could have the device work in two different modes, but mode switching is just another band aid and is only designed for tablets that dock to keyboards, not laptops.
What’s an operating system designer to do?
When you look at how Apple implemented cursor support in iPadOS, you get an idea: make it smarter. Over at Six Colors, Jason Snell sums up the WWDC session on Design for the iPadOS Pointer.
…the iPadOS designers focused on a pointer with “adaptive precision,” that could switch contexts (and shapes) to become more precise when necessary.
He concludes:
After watching the session, I have to be honest: I fully expect Apple to bring an adapted version of the iPad’s approach to pointers to macOS in a future release.
He’s not specifically suggesting there will be touch-input Macs coming, but making the operating system smarter — giving it the ability to make some assumptions about imprecise inputs and ask you “Is this what you wanted?” — is the kind of change I can now 100 percent say I was thinking of seven years ago when I had no idea what would happen. That was it. Totally.
I don’t know if touch-input is coming to the Mac (beyond the Touch Bar). But all the pieces needed for it are certainly coming together. So why not?
» Microsoft closing almost all retail stores
This is the smart thing to do as opening them in the first place was just another quixotic effort by Steve Ballmer to show that Microsoft could be successful at anything Apple could be successful at. They can’t and that’s fine.
I do enjoy their PR headline: “Microsoft Store announces new approach to retail.” The new approach: not doing retail.