POTUS
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Apple takes center stage in Presidential State of the Union address
All eyes and ears were on President Obama last night during the State of the Union address, but Apple inadvertently stole some of the President's spotlight. While political commenters discussed the President's new policies following the speech, the talk of the tech world focused on Apple and the prevalence of the Apple logo in the press gallery during the event. This tweet by Michael McAuliff captures the Apple moment. Wow. The press gallery over the House floor for #SOTU looks like a damn Apple ad. pic.twitter.com/uubqdon5qc - Michael McAuliff (@mmcauliff) January 21, 2015 This preponderance of MacBook Pro and MacBook Air notebooks is not surprising as we've seen this phenomena before. High-profile press events, even those events hosted by rivals such as Microsoft, seem to attract with a large number of Mac-using attendees who are there to cover the event.
President Obama responds to PRISM concerns, clarifies scope of snooping
If you've missed the news on PRISM and the hugely disconcerting allegations that the NSA is basically tracking everything you do on the internet and every call you make on your cellphone, we're guessing that's because you're stuck in a cave that has access to neither technology. The allegations are incredibly troubling to say the least, and President Obama this afternoon took the time to address them -- albeit briefly. For one thing, he clarified that "nobody is listening to your phone calls," indicating that people are looking at metadata about those calls (destinations, length, etc.) rather than the calls themselves. Additionally, he clarified the internet side of the program thusly: "Internet monitoring is only for those outside United States; we have to balance keeping America safe with privacy concerns." That's great for Americans, but perhaps a bit troubling for everyone else. This more or less echoes the statements made yesterday by James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence. President Obama also reminded that this program predates his taking office, and that he himself was skeptical but has come around to the program, stating that this is something "Americans should feel comfortable about." Well, then, how comfortable do you feel? Let us know in comments. Update: The Wall Street Journal has a full transcript of President Obama's comments.
President Obama finally owns an iPad
Last November President Obama saw Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva using an iPad while at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) leaders' retreat in Yokohama, Japan. After a brief exchange about the iPad versus lugging around books, it appears the President was swayed. Maybe it's the fact that the iPad 2 has just come out, or maybe it's because Obama and Steve Jobs had dinner together, and Steve pitched Obama hard, but now the President has told reporters that he does own an actual iPad. Speaking at a town hall in Washington, DC today, President Obama was asked by news anchor Jorge Ramos if he owns an iPad, to which Obama replied, "I do have an iPad." The President then went on to joke, "I mean, Jorge, I'm the President of the United States. You think I've got to go borrow somebody's computer? Hey, man, can I borrow your computer? How about you? You've got one?" There's no word on which iPad Obama owns, but it's probably a safe bet that he didn't have to stand in line with the thousands of others on launch day.
Walt Disney World unveils incredibly scary, robotic version of President Obama
His likeness is so... unlike him, so incredibly, terrifyingly creepy (and yet still impressive all the same).
Obama as you've never seen him before, an Aion character
We're generally apolitical in terms of our content here at Massively, but this is something worthy of note: Obama in the fantasy MMO Aion: The Tower of Eternity? (We're sure this unscheduled appearance will come as a surprise to the President, himself.)NCsoft really didn't have this in mind when creating the game's lore, but some rather inventive beta testers have created something which show off just how good Aion's character creation is. The end result is a player-created video that depicts Obama in ways his publicity people never anticipated, as an Elyos 'kicking ass' and saving trees on the road to ascension as a Daeva... Yes, this may piss off a few people -- namely the POTUS -- but it's all in good fun. Check out the YouTube embed below the cut in high quality.
iTunes is offended by POTUS podcast?
Our pal John Neff from Autoblog noticed something amusing. We thought we'd share."Have you seen that the president's weekly radio address is a podcast? It's currently in the top 100 at 91 and the funny part is that it's labeled explicit. I subscribed to it and learned the explicit rating comes from a radio address on the "holy union between a man and a woman", so he must have been speaking about marriage, which certainly is a dirty word to some people :)"Yes, John... and now that we've drawn attention to the "dirty parts," it's sure to hit the top 10 before the day is over :) It's up to 90 already!Now before you all email me to point out that the podcast in question is actually a parody, let me say this... I KNOW THAT! For what it's worth, though, the POTUS really is podcasting. You can subscribe to the real one here.
