AppleZulu

Wesley_Hilliard said:

Please don't comment on moderation practices. Send an email or direct message to the staff if you've got a comment on moderation practices. Don't waste your time, I'll just delete the comment that violates the rules.

No, it isn't bias. We leave plenty of conservative and liberal posts up that are generalized in nature. Attacking a Senator, President, etc with insults and comments that can't be attributed to the topic will be evaluated and taken down if it crosses a line or doesn't belong in a thread.

However, if a post is about the President creating a grift, lying about whether or not it is made in the US, and people want to point out the grift in the comments, that's fair game.

If you can't tell the difference, just don't comment on political posts. And for those that don't like an individual's post history, just hit the ignore button and let them yell into the void.

Edit: If you don't want to talk to me (fair enough) reach out to Mike.

And yes, this is a grift. Without using the current president’s “brand,” there is no market for tacky, $500 gold-colored android phones set to run on a $50/month 20GB phone plan. If that same phone and plan were announced by anybody else without that branding, the business would close before it ever opened. Deadpool sells a comparable phone (minus the crappy gold color) for $150 less, and the same phone plan for $17.45/month less after the half-price introductory period. 

9secondkox2 said:

AppleZulu said:

9secondkox2 said:

StrangeDays said:

9secondkox2 said:

Business-wise, makes sense for the family organization to do this. Capitalize on popularity and make some money. 

No, it doesn’t make sense, because that’s unethical and wrong. It’s why we ask presidents to divest prior to coming into office. It only makes sense if one is void of ethics and doesn’t mind doing wrong. 

Is the president involved? I thought his family took it over in 2017. Or is the family not allowed to make a marketing connection to the fact that their father was and is the President? Donald Trump Jr. is not Donald Trump Sr. 

You thought wrong. Yes, the president is involved. He is enriching himself while in office, profiting from the very same industries which he affects with tariffs, executive orders and social media posts. He is doing crypto currency deals with foreign countries while making state visits. 

https://www.forbes.com/sites/danalexander/2025/05/06/trump-organization-admits-president-still-controls-his-business-in-new-filing/

So we are using British rules now?

Yes, to the extent that we are using British rules of disclosure that demonstrate the complete lie that the President is not in control of the Trump Organization and directly profiting off of whatever money is raised through this latest Trump Org grift. 

It used to be considered an honor to serve in high public office, and a person of ethics would not only abide by the rules separating their personal interests from those of the nation, but would go out of their way to avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest. Tax returns and financial interests would be disclosed, and personal investments placed into a blind trust. Not so, this president. 

You asked "... is the [Trump] family not allowed to make a marketing connection to the fact that their father was and is the President? Donald Trump Jr. is not Donald Trump Sr."

For anyone with a modicum of ethical standards, the answer is clearly and obviously "no, they are not." If the president and his family didn't want to make the sacrifice, he didn't have to run for office. It should be an embarrassment for you to exhibit your own lack of ethical judgement and suggest such behavior is in any way acceptable. 

This phone service and deal is not only unethical, it is crass, tasteless, and beneath the dignity of the office. With this phone they are seeking to profit by selling the president's name, the presidency itself, and even the US flag. The "47 Plan" and the $47.45 pricing all make it clear that they aren't selling Don Junior or Eric's name, they are selling the sitting President of the United States. 

In addition, the sale of a phone in the midst of a tariff controversy where Trump has specifically called out and threatened Apple, an American company, represents what would be a stunning breach of ethics if we hadn't been trained to expect it from this President. That doesn't make it legal, right, or acceptable, and anyone with any sense of ethics would see that.

9secondkox2 said:

StrangeDays said:

9secondkox2 said:

Business-wise, makes sense for the family organization to do this. Capitalize on popularity and make some money. 

No, it doesn’t make sense, because that’s unethical and wrong. It’s why we ask presidents to divest prior to coming into office. It only makes sense if one is void of ethics and doesn’t mind doing wrong. 

Is the president involved? I thought his family took it over in 2017. Or is the family not allowed to make a marketing connection to the fact that their father was and is the President? Donald Trump Jr. is not Donald Trump Sr. 

You thought wrong. Yes, the president is involved. He is enriching himself while in office, profiting from the very same industries which he affects with tariffs, executive orders and social media posts. He is doing crypto currency deals with foreign countries while making state visits. 

https://www.forbes.com/sites/danalexander/2025/05/06/trump-organization-admits-president-still-controls-his-business-in-new-filing/

If they’re building a phone in the US to sell in a couple of months, they should be able to provide tours of the factory that would have to be up and running right now, right?

I’m sure @9secondkox2 can fill us in on how all this has to be part of the well thought out plan. 

In a nutshell, this explains why Apple is “behind” with AI, but actually isn’t. 

It’s remarkable the consistency with which this pattern repeats, yet even people who consider themselves Apple enthusiasts don’t see it. Tech competitors “race ahead” with an iteration of some technology, while Apple seemingly languishes. Apple is doomed. Then Apple comes out “late” with their version of it, and the initial peanut gallery reception pronounces it too little, too late.

Then within a couple of years, Apple’s version is the gold standard and the others -those cutting-edge innovators- race to catch up, because “first” is often also “half-baked.”

In the news this week, it was exposed that RFK Jr’s “Make America Healthy Again” report was evidently an AI-produced document, replete with hallucinations, most notably in the bibliography, and of course it was. This is what happens when the current cohort of AI models are uncritically used to produce a desired result, without any understanding of how profoundly bad these AI models are. When I read about this in the news, I decided to experiment with it myself. Using MS Copilot -in commercial release as part of MS Word- I picked a subject and asked for a report taking a specific, dubious position on it, with citations and a bibliography. After it dutifully produced the report, I started checking the bibliography, and one after another, failed to find the research papers that Copilot used to back the position taken. I didn’t check all the references, so it’s possible some citations were real, but finding several that weren’t was sufficient to bin the whole thing. It’s bad enough when humans intentionally produce false and misleading information, but when a stock office product will do it for you with no disclaimers or warnings, should that product really be on the market? I also once asked ChatGPT to write a story about green eggs and ham, in the style of Dr. Seuss. It then plaigerized the actual Seuss story, almost verbatim, in a clear abuse of copyright law. This is the stuff that Apple is supposedly trailing behind.

So the report here that Apple is developing AI but, unlike their “cutting edge” competitors, not releasing something that produces unreliable garbage, suggests that no, they’re not behind. They’re just repeating the same pattern again of carefully producing something of high quality and reliability, and in a form that is intuitively useful, rather than a gimmicky demonstration that they can do a thing, whether it’s useful or not. Eventually they’ll release something that consistently produces reliable information, and likely does so while respecting copyright and other intellectual property rights. The test will be that not only will it be unlikely to hallucinate in ways that mislead or embarrass its honest users, it will actually disappoint those with more nefarious intent. When asked to produce a report with dubious or false conclusions, it won’t comply like a sociopathic sycophant. It will respond by telling the user that the reliable data not only doesn’t support the requested position, but actually refutes it. Hopefully this will be a feature that Apple uses to market their AI when it’s released.