I prefer this outcome:

Alot of these sellers on Alibaba aren’t nearly up to what an ODM is. They’re sorta more like middlemen that do stuff like take generic phones from ODMs and customize them or just grab parts off the local market and slap them together. To work with somebody like Foxconn, you’d better have some significant volumes - they just won’t talk to you otherwise. Now, maybe Trump is an exception there, but they’re still not going to want to do business unless there’s decent volume in it for them. The volumes I’ve seen for this phone is the sort of thing that wouldn’t even register for them. They’d only even think about it as a way to buy favor.

Well, some people are doing it just because it’s good content. Penguinz0 on YouTube has made a bunch of videos off his Trump phone experience. I’m sure he’s made out like a bandit with the revenue from those videos.

I mean they could have jumped on Alibaba, had a customized firmware, had the “gold” color, had a logo or something screen printed on the outside, and probably spent less than $100/phone, at least if current listings are correct. Sell the things for like $299 and they clear $200 profit on each with nearly no effort.

Some of them are built so the front doesn’t fall off at all.

As long as you live frugally and in a reasonable COL area, this isn’t crazy expensive. Doable with a couple million in net worth. Huge difference between that and what many of the rich are worth. The reality is that a million dollars isn’t what it used to be and the fight isn’t with people with single digit millions, it’s with people with triple digit millions and up. Yes, having single digit millions feels like being rich in today’s economy to many, but, in the eyes of the truly wealthy, a single digit millionaire might as well be a destitute homeless person.

And it gets even stranger. Apparently, the app is loading JavaScript from a random person’s GitHub site for YouTube embeds. Yes, you read that right, it’s just loading JavaScript from a random GitHub site. So if that account ever gets compromised, arbitrary code could run inside the app’s WebView.

Somebody has the opportunity to do the most hilarious thing.

There’s not really a reason to be upset with a phone running a privacy focused version of Android. Android, at heart, is Linux with some runtime stuff on top. The runtime stuff has open source versions that Google is involved with, but its still open source. There’s also independent reimplementations of some of the proprietary Google stuff.

The thing is, there’s really only 2 mobile platforms with any sort of application support: iOS and Android. iOS will probably never have open source versions. If you go outside those 2 platforms, you end up being very limited. You can talk to Amazon, Mozilla, Canonical, Microsoft, Palm, BlackBerry, and others about what that world looks like. So, if you want to have any application support and therefore any traction, the best bet is to take something that’s already mostly open source, reimplement the non open source bits, and make sure what’s left doesn’t depend on Google (though most have a way to use Google services, often is a restricted way, if you need that). That’s what /e/OS and GrapheneOS do.

Me too! It’s my favorite song!

Do you like “Everything is Awesome” also?

Probably because the people who make them believe in intelligent design.

Technically, the Palantiri weren’t the evil eye of the Sauron. Sauron and Saruman did use them (and that’s why you see Sauron’s eye in one of them), but the stones themselves were basically just communication and surveillance devices. They were, themselves, fairly neutral and not made by anyone especially evil (probably Feanor - flawed but not evil). But they were used for evil purposes during the time in the LOTR trilogy.

That would be one of the biggest ironies in history if Peter Theil ends up dying because the AI ATC he championed crashed him into some other evil exec. I’m thinking maybe Elon Musk.

Though there are a few creators that do such good ad segments that even those are worth watching. Map Men, Aging Wheels, and lazerpig all come to mind.

And sometimes very, very dark grey.

And, as a bonus, that car will add very few miles to the odometer every year.

And then there’s the fact that two of the bedrooms have no way to get to the kitchen and living room - you have to go out the garage and in the front door.

Hey, it’s not all bad for the kid walled in that bedroom - they can just crawl in and out the window, so they’re not trapped in there forever. No idea how they’re going to have any furniture though. Guess it’s gotta all be stuff that can be disassembled to be small enough to go through the window.

Not sure where this particular image is from. Could have been ChatGPT. But I’ve seen some of these from actual AI plan services that weren’t much better.

This is closer than you think. Take this lovely floorplan (and that’s one of the better ones I’ve seen):

And yes, there’s multiple companies offering this as a service:

https://floor-plan.ai/

https://gen.hexa3d.io/free-online-ai-floorplan-generator/minimalist

https://ideal.house/create/aiFloorplan