I half expected you to segue into how it's America's car-centric nature that makes this sort of tracking possible in the first place.

The last thing these scummy ALPR companies need is more money.

Apple is doing the meme.

It might not come out, since the whole value proposition hinged on the $7,500 tax credit that the Trump administration killed. It doesn't even have an infotainment system, and Slate's answer of "put your phone in a vent holder and use that" is something you do in a beater from Craigslist, not a nearly $30k brand new EV.

If you're only going to keep a car for 5 years, reliability probably isn't going to be an issue regardless of the manufacturer.

On the other hand, if you're the type to keep a car and drive it until the wheels fall off, with a Chinese vehicle, that time might come sooner than you'd expect.

Heck, the story is still on the main page: OpenAI Losses Increased Nearly 8X In 2025, With Spending Hitting $34 Billion AI isn't likely to go away, but the current level of spending isn't sustainable. Guess what's going to happen when the purse strings start getting tightened? Yep, those RAM orders might start going *poof*. Irrational exuberance is a well-known phenomenon, and anybody who paid attention during the dot-com boom knows exactly where this is heading.

The other big hole in your theory that this is somehow a result of US-based politics is that the US is not a major player when it comes to having the factories that physically produce RAM chips. We certainly "own" a lot of the aspects of the IP relating to the technology, but when it comes to some place like China just saying "screw it, we'll flood the market with cheap RAM just because we can", there's really nothing the US could realistically do to stop them, other than just hoping that their processes aren't up to snuff. Even that approach only works for so long - China has already become a leader in battery technology, for example.

I know for you politics is like the square hole that everything fits into, but the RAM shortage is just capitalism being capitalism (and you probably know the famous saying that it's the worst system except for everything else we've tried). It's been explained to death - the RAM manufacturers are worried that if they build more capacity, the AI bubble could pop and then they'd be left holding the bag.

I'm not even sure how you'd fix this situation. Some types of businesses are just extremely expensive to start, which is also why there aren't like 50 different competitors to Disney World.

When it's codified into the highest law of the land and doesn't work, and suggestions to do so voluntarily can't work to the point of being laughable, what options do we have left?

There's always Nancy Reagan's catchphrase: Just Say No.

Any particular game is expendable. You won't miss out on anything. Games don't even have the network effects and lockin that you get with other types of software; it's a part of the economy where Just Saying No is easiest of all.

Don't like the quality? Don't spend your money. They have no power over us except what we give them. Stop being so selflessly altruistic when it comes to actively supporting your own abuse.

It's so damn easy, and there's already hundreds of years worth of hassle-free game-playing available to spend the few remaining seconds of your life on.

They probably do. That's the whole point of this odd neither fish nor fowl phone. It's for people who'd, for whatever crazy reason don't want a smartphone, but also don't want to be locked out of all the parts of modern society that have become dependent upon smartphone apps (for better or worse).

In my neck of the woods, you need a smartphone just to summon what passes here for public transportation. I'm totally not kidding.

The Trump T1 phone is just a gilded HTC U24 Pro. The controversial aspects of it are entirely related to its association with the president, and that it was originally claimed that it would be US-made. As far as its actual smartphone functionality goes though, it is an entirely unremarkable mid-range Android phone.

This Commodore phone, on the other hand, is a far more niche product with some substantial limitations compared against what the market typically expects.

IMHO, it just feels more douchey to me when someone goes all old man yells at cloud because things change but they're stubbornly stuck in the past. Reminds me of this skit.

Personally, I like just ordering my food on my smartphone and it just magically appears on a counter for me to grab without having to deal with a human.

I kind of miss physical qwerty keyboards, but definitely have no nostalgic feelings for the awful era of T9 texting. The problems with physical keyboards though, is that you either have to give up a bunch of screen space, or end up with a real chonker of a folding/sliding phone to accommodate the keyboard portion. It's been tried and for the most part ends up being too much compromise for something that, unless you're writing a novel on your phone, you probably don't actually need.

The T9 style flip phone design (which is what this phone is) is really the worst of both worlds - it wastes a ton of space that otherwise could've gone towards a larger screen and is still absolute garbage for text entry.

I've actually had the polar opposite of that experience once. Prior to Tesla opening their network to non-Tesla EVs, I tried charging at a OUC DCFC charger in Orlando. Had no end of problems with their poorly designed app and was completely unable to charge. Ultimately just decided to drive slowly on back roads and made it home anyway.

It'd be less of an issue if charging stations were as ubiquitous as gas stations, but as things currently stand, the situation of "oops, I can't charge here because they require an app" might result in you becoming stuck somewhere enroute to the next charger that hopefully takes credit cards.

I can assume from this statement that you don't own an EV.

As Slashvertisement-ish as this feels, I still clicked through out of morbid curiosity and it seems like the phone does still function as a basic touchscreen-enabled smartphone when a 3rd party app requires it. So, if you need to use a DCFC network's charging app for your EV, or want to order a McLardburger with one of those perpetual X% off coupons for mobile orders, or place a drive-up order for groceries from Walmart - you still can.

I think that's kind of the point behind this - to unplug from social media and information overload, but still have access for things like renting a Lime scooter and ordering lunch from Uber Eats.