Category: Politics

SpaceX and the NAACP are in a legal battle over the use of turbines in Southaven, Mississippi, for powering the Colossus II data center in Memphis. This week, the Department of Justice got involved, as reported by Molly Taft at Wired:

In a filing, the agency sided with Elon Musk’s company, saying attempts to stop xAI from running the natural gas turbines “threatens American national, economic, and energy security by seeking to shut off the power supply for artificial-intelligence innovation that supports the Department of War’s military operations.”

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A very official and normal statement from the President:

I have always been a big fan of Tim Cook, and likewise, Steve Jobs, but if Steve was not taken from the Planet Earth so young, and ran the company instead of Tim, the company would have done well, but nowhere near as well as it has under Tim. For me it began with a phone call from Tim at the beginning of my First Term. He had a fairly large problem that only I, as President, could fix. Most people would have paid millions of dollars to a consultant, who I probably would not have known, but who would say that he knew me well. The fees would be paid but the job would not have gotten done. When I got the call I said, wow, it’s Tim Apple (Cook!) calling, how big is that? I was very impressed with myself to have the head of Apple calling to “kiss my ass.” Anyway, he explained his problem, a tough one it was, I felt he was right and got it taken care of, quickly and effectively. That was the beginning of a long and very nice relationship. During my five years as President, Tim would call me, but never too much, and I would help him where I could. Years latter, after 3 or 4 BIG HELPS, I started to say to people, anyone who would listen, that this guy is an amazing manager and leader. He makes these calls to me, I help him out (but not always, because he will, on occasion, be too aggressive in his ask!), and he gets the job done, QUICKLY, without a dime being given to those very expensive (millions of dollars!) consultants around town who sometimes get it done, and sometimes don’t. Anyway, Tim Cook had an AMAZING career, almost incomparable, and will go on and continue to do great work for Apple, and whatever else he chooses to work on. Quite simply, Tim Cook is an incredible guy!!! President DONALD J. TRUMP

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What a contrast to what someone else said.

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I promise this is not from The Onion, but rather Michael Crowley and Hamed Aleaziz at The New York Times:

Secretary of State Marco Rubio waded into the surprisingly fraught politics of typefaces on Tuesday with an order halting the State Department’s official use of Calibri, reversing a 2023 Biden-era directive that Mr. Rubio called a “wasteful” sop to diversity.

While mostly framed as a matter of clarity and formality in presentation, Mr. Rubio’s directive to all diplomatic posts around the world blamed “radical” diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility programs for what he said was a misguided and ineffective switch from the serif typeface Times New Roman to sans serif Calibri in official department paperwork.

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Amrith Ramkumar at The Wall Street Journal ( Apple News), writing about a new partnership between the Trump administration and his on-again, off-again bestie Elon Musk:

Under the agreement with the General Services Administration, which oversees technology procurement for the federal government, agencies will get access to models such as Grok 4 and a new fast version called Grok 4 Fast for a nominal fee of 42 cents, the GSA said in a news release Thursday.

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The Onion has nailed it when it comes to a “Made in America” iPhone:

Amidst the strain of tariffs, Apple CEO Tim Cook announced Thursday the launch of a new 7,083-piece iPhone kit. “Apple customers will have a blast soldering, polishing, and drilling as they build their very own iPhone,” Cook said in a Keynote presentation at Apple headquarters, touting the new product as an innovative, first-of-its-kind achievement and noting that the tech giant’s competitors were already scrambling to offer similar build-your-own products of their own.

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On Friday’s episode of The Vergecast, there was an exchange that really caught my attention. David Pierce mentioned the photos of all the tech CEOs at Trump’s inauguration in January, to which Nilay Patel replied:

The thing that kills me at that is the expectation they had going into that photo was corruption. Right? Tim Cook is going to personally donate a million dollars to Trump’s library and that will take the DOJ case away from Apple. Naked corruption. That is a nakedly corrupt thought.

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Jason Koebler at 404 Media:

This weekend, U.S. secretary of commerce Howard Lutnick went on CBS’s Face the Nation and pitched a fantasy world where iPhones are manufactured in the United States:  “The army of millions and millions of people screwing in little, little screws to make iPhones, that kind of thing is going to come to America, it’s going to be automated, and the tradecraft of America is going to fix them, is going to work on them, there’s going to be mechanics, HVAC specialists, electricians,” Lutnick said. “The tradecraft of America, the high school educated Americans, the core to our workforce is going to have the greatest resurgence of jobs in the history of America to work on these high tech factories which are all coming to America.”

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Jason Snell:

There are a lot of suggestions that the prices of Apple products are headed up. Apple Stores are crowded with buyers who are trying to beat the anticipated price increases. But while prices are probably going up, that’s only one of the many levers Apple can pull in order to deal with the tariff situation. Here’s a look at what the company might do to mitigate the tariff issue as much as possible.

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The most recent episode of Decoder covers what’s going on with Tesla, and how the company’s problems are bigger than just Elon’s current work dismantling the federal government. Nilay Patel:

Today we’re talking about the protests against Tesla, which have been branded on social media under the hashtag Tesla Takedown. The protests are, of course, a reaction to Elon Musk, who has managed to install himself as basically a not-so-shadow president who is tearing the federal government apart, leaving confusion and destruction in his wake.

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Earlier this month, the UK government demanded access to encrypted data stored on Apple servers. This demand was worldwide in scope, and would have required Apple building a backdoor into its encryption scheme for iCloud and related services.

Today, Apple has responded by announcing it will disable Advanced Data Protection in the UK. ADP is the optional setting that adds end-to-end encryption for iCloud data, device backups, message backups, and more.

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There’s a new employee on the severed floor. I wonder if the innie or the outie attended Trump’s inauguration earlier this week after helping pay for it.

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