Farhad’s and Mike’s Week in Tech: President Trump’s Unsecured Phone and His C.E.O. Confidant
Farhad: Yeah, what if the cloud’s a fad? Sure, Microsoft just reported huge growth in its cloud business, and in its earnings report, Google said it had seen a “terrific upswing” in income from promoting on-line server house. (That’s how they might afford Quentin.) But look, the newspaper enterprise has been round eternally. It’s confirmed. I don’t know why you’d go away that certainty behind.
Mike: Indeed. Happy trails to Quentin and his clouds. Me, I’m investing all my cash in a unique type of cloud: Vaping. I’m telling you, it’s huge.
This week in fake news: Google, Facebook and Snapchat all appear to be stepping up efforts to tamp down the emergence of pretend information websites throughout their properties. For Google, which means superboring advert community stuff, which is vital in the identical manner consuming your every day serving of broccoli rabe is vital. For Snapchat, which means cleaning up the types of content folks see and selling extra high quality tales. To proceed that metaphor: More greens, fewer helpings of Doritos Cool Ranch (which, to be clear, are scrumptious).
And for Facebook, that can imply much more adjustments to the way it surfaces information within the Trending Topics part. I don’t know what sort of food-related metaphor matches this precisely, however I’m going to go together with “Mark Zuckerberg killing his own bison,” as a result of that’s a picture that also brings me nice mirth.
Farhad: As a frequent reader of Snapchat’s Discover part, I’m fairly nervous about these adjustments. Snapchat is my solely supply of stories for the all-important topic of how little clothes varied Kardashian sisters put on when going out. I actually hope that doesn’t go away.
Mike: I’m certain you will discover that materials elsewhere on the web.
Moving on, Bloomberg had a great article this week about Uber drivers who sleep in their cars on certain shifts, reminding me to ask you should you nonetheless sleep in your automobile or in case your garments simply make you appear like you do.
Farhad: As I’ve informed you repeatedly, I’m making an attempt out a brand new vogue fashion, rumpled stylish. It’s gonna be a factor. Just watch.
Mike: In all seriousness, it’s fairly an attention-grabbing manner to have a look at the way forward for work, and what employee situations might imply while you’re making an attempt to earn as a lot as attainable even while you’re setting your individual hours. I can say, from expertise, that sleeping in your automobile sucks. I don’t miss my highschool days.
So let’s get onto the principle occasion: Donald J. Trump. He spent the primary full week in workplace issuing govt orders, then sending media and the general public right into a tizzy when a few of them weren’t absolutely defined and even printed on the White House web site in a well timed method.
Beyond all of the orders which will or could not really be carried out, I believe one factor weighing on residents’ minds is the truth that Trump nonetheless makes use of an unsecured Android phone to tweet from his private account, @actualDonaldTrump.
Farhad: The historical Android telephone is kind of worrying. Anyone who went loopy over Hillary Clinton’s emails needs to be tearing their hair out about Trump’s telephone. Cybersecurity specialists identified that it will be trivial for any hostile energy (or perhaps a pleasant energy) to interrupt into the telephone and switch it into an all-purpose recording gadget, getting intel on every part that occurs within the White House. Nicholas Weaver, a pc safety knowledgeable, issued this warning on the blog Lawfare: “First, anybody across the president ought to presume they’re being actively recorded by hostile powers, no matter location, until they’re constructive the telephone is out of the room.”
Welp.
Mike: If that’s true, let me simply say proper now that every part I say is satire. Please don’t prosecute me.
What’s extra, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan has basically mentioned we should always simply get used to Trump’s unsecured telephone and, from the surface, it doesn’t seem to be any nationwide safety businesses are literally intervening and saying, “Uh, sir, that is an extremely dangerous thought.”
And let me be crystal clear, right here: This is, in reality, an extremely dangerous thought. We’ve seen the A.P. Twitter account hacked prior to now and used to tweet a false message that the president was killed, and it despatched world inventory markets into turmoil. Trump makes a brand new information cycle each time he tweets a casual comment about one thing he’s seen on tv.
Do you assume anybody will really step in and inform him he can’t do what he’s doing right here? It appears they haven’t but — no less than, till he inadvertently begins a commerce struggle with Mexico due to an errant tweet.
Farhad: Unlikely. Trump appears, to place it mildly, set in his methods. But there are some of us making an attempt to determine methods to enchantment to him. One case examine is Elon Musk, the C.E.O. of Tesla. Musk took warmth this week for endorsing Rex Tillerson, Trump’s choose for secretary of state. It did seem to be an odd transfer — in any case, Tesla is betting on a future pushed by renewable power, and Tillerson is the previous C.E.O. of Exxon.
But as our colleague Jim Stewart explains, each Trump and Musk have lots to achieve from cooperation. Tesla is constructing factories in America, one thing that matches into Trump’s narrative of a resurgent American manufacturing sector. And Musk wants the federal government — a lot of his companies, together with automobile gross sales, rely upon federal subsidies.
Plus, as Musk argued in a dialog with Gizmodo this week, speaking to Trump will yield higher outcomes than combating with him. “The extra voices of purpose that the president hears, the higher,” he said. “Simply attacking him will obtain nothing. Are you conscious of a single case the place Trump bowed to protests or media assaults? Better that there are open channels of communication.”
That’s type of how I take into consideration my relationship with you. Chat subsequent week, Mike!
Mike: Not if I assault you on Twitter first. Ta-ta!
