On top of the discovery that Apple has 800 engineers working just on the iPhone camera comes Marc Andreessen’s claim that Amazon’s Echo project occupied 1500 engineers for four years. If true, these are staggering numbers which indicate the scale of dominance of the companies.
Daily Archives: October 11, 2016
Quote of the Day
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“The truth counts only when there are agreed rules of evidence. It is the absence of such common ground that best measures America’s polarisation “.
*Edward Luce, FT, today *
Shakespeare saw it coming
Fabulous opinion piece by Stephen Greenblatt about Shakespeare’s Richard III, a character marked by “a weird, obsessive determination to reach a goal that looked impossibly far off, a position for which he had no reasonable expectation, no proper qualification and absolutely no aptitude”.
“Richard III,” which proved to be one of Shakespeare’s first great hits, explores how this loathsome, perverse monster actually attained the English throne. As the play conceives it, Richard’s villainy was readily apparent to everyone. There was no secret about his fathomless cynicism, cruelty and treacherousness, no glimpse of anything redeemable in him and no reason to believe that he could govern the country effectively.
His success in obtaining the crown depended on a fatal conjunction of diverse but equally self-destructive responses from those around him. The play locates these responses in particular characters — Lady Anne, Lord Hastings, the Earl of Buckingham and so forth — but it also manages to suggest that these characters sketch a whole country’s collective failure. Taken together, they itemize a nation of enablers.
Remind you of anyone?
Cabinet told to watch it
According to the Torygraph (so it must be true) Theresa May has stipulated that her senior ministers will be barred from wearing Apple Watches during Cabinet meetings amid concerns that they could be hacked by Russian spies.
Under David Cameron, several cabinet ministers wore the smart watches, including Michael Gove, the former Justice Secretary.
However, under Theresa May ministers have been barred from wearing them amid concerns that they could be used by hackers as listening devices.
Mobile phones have already been barred from the Cabinet because of similar concerns.
One source said: “The Russians are trying to hack everything.”
Apparently Michael Gove (who was once a serious politician, apparently) used to wear an iWatch and once treated the Cabinet to a few bars of a Beyoncé song while surreptitiously checking his email.
It’s a logical precaution. Mobiles have been verboten in Downing Street for a long time. Many years ago, when I was doing some consulting work in Whitehall, I once had to go to 10 Downing Street to see a senior civil servant. Upon entering through the front door, I was instructed to leave my mobile phone on the hall table and given a post-it note on which to write my name. I did so and went to my meeting in the warren of rooms behind No 10. When I got back to the entrance hall I went to reclaim my phone. Next to it was another handset (a Nokia, I think) with a post-it note saying “First Sea Lord”.
So this is how it ends
Good evaluation by the Economist of the second presidential debate:
SO THIS is how it was to end: a septuagenarian con-man flanked by four victims of sexual assault, real or alleged, trying to intimidate his opponent by dredging up old accusations against her husband, Bill Clinton. That pre-debate Facebook Live broadcast by Donald Trump, which combined farce, dystopia and reality-TV in three tawdry minutes, presaged the tone of the encounter that followed. As it turned out, his second confrontation with Hillary Clinton, at a town-hall style event in St Louis, did not signal the end of Mr Trump’s presidential bid. It may not lead to the headlong disintegration of the Republican Party, another outcome predicted in advance. Instead a hairline crack may have opened in the American republic itself.
Great piece, worth reading in full. It concludes that the debate wasn’t the cataclysmic event for the Trump campaign — but only because he was playing to his core supporters, who would probably vote for him even if he’d shot Clinton live on stage. But it shows the kind of damage that the last 30 years have inflicted on the American polity. And it’s more than a ‘hairline crack’.
ALSO. Great column by George F. Will. Ends thus:
Today, however, Trump should stay atop the ticket, for four reasons. First, he will give the nation the pleasure of seeing him join the one cohort, of the many cohorts he disdains, that he most despises — “losers.” Second, by continuing to campaign in the spirit of St. Louis, he can remind the nation of the useful axiom that there is no such thing as rock bottom. Third, by persevering through Nov. 8 he can simplify the GOP’s quadrennial exercise of writing its post-campaign autopsy, which this year can be published Nov. 9 in one sentence: “Perhaps it is imprudent to nominate a venomous charlatan.” Fourth, Trump is the GOP’s chemotherapy, a nauseating but, if carried through to completion, perhaps a curative experience.