Are you sure? He used it to help get Donald Trump elected, and now Musk has an unassailable position in government and tremendous power to steer government spending to his businesses, and to cripple the agencies that regulate them.
Musk is a lightning rod. Surely he must realize that after he has served his purpose, he will be cast aside and likely end up imprisoned if not worse, right?
Have people paid no attention to what happens to almost everyone in Trump's orbit? In Musk's case it will be hugely politically valuable to use him as a sponge for anger, pretend that he was free-ranging, and cast him aside. Therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia. We've seen this pattern with Trump time and time again, and it's amazing that Musk seems so completely delusional about this guaranteed outcome.
I think the idea that Trump and Musk have a falling out is wishful thinking - they have too many aligned long-term incentives. Also, Trump consistently rewards public loyalty, especially the extremely sycophantic kind that Elon exudes. "Unassailable" is a dramatic way to phrase it, but its more or less accurate.
I'm not being wishful. It is an absolute certainty. Like as certain as the heat death of the universe. We're only two months in and already the friction is growing.
Both have absolutely colossal egos. Both demand being the centre of attention at all times, and both have a weird Mafioso "family dynasty" thing going on. I mean, look at Musk dropping in on various Trump meetings. I don't think you could say he was being sycophantic at all, but quite contrary is giving off major "these are my employees" energy.
Add that Musk is increasingly whiny. He's starting to realize that the people aren't going to love him for the things he is doing, and he's realizing this isn't the long term advantage he thinks.
At some point, sooner rather than later, they're going to disagree on something. It might not even be a big thing. Or maybe Trump will just decide it's political capital to jettison Musk during some crisis or other. The egos will clash, Musk will be declared a "RINO" (like almost 100% of Trump's first cabinet and underlings) and every protection will evaporate.
Musk's "favorability rating" is collapsing (currently -19 and dropping). He is a sponge taking all of the negativity, and once he has absorbed enough he's going to get jettisoned.
This matters less than you think. Trump has no problem setting aside his ego to further his agenda. Remember his leaked calls with the Mexican president? Remember his submission to Putin in Helsinki? His entire cabinet is made up of people who have trashed him, his own VP called him literally the next Hitler. Trump acts very rationally when it comes to power dynamics, casting off Elon only creates problems for him, no benefits.
> but quite contrary is giving off major "these are my employees" energy.
That's just the vibes you're picking up, Trump doesn't care about this, he's the one sitting at the desk. What he cares about is the unending stream of praise that Elon glazes him with. "Trump was right about everything", "Trump is the greatest president ever", walking around in Trump swag etc etc. Allowing Musk to crash a couple meetings with the press means nothing.
> and he's realizing this isn't the long term advantage he thinks
Elon is all-in, he's burned every other bridge, a Trump alliance is the only long-term advantage he has.
> Musk's "favorability rating" is collapsing (currently -19 and dropping).
Except with Trump's base, where it has climbed from -10 to +50. There is close to 0 possibility of Elon being jettisoned.
> His entire cabinet is made up of people who have trashed him, his own VP called him literally the next Hitler.
You don’t think it helps his ego to bring these folks to heel? To make Marco Rubio preside over the destruction of a foreign policy system he personally values?
> Except with Trump's base, where it has climbed from -10 to +50.
The same folks suddenly hate Canada. They swing, wildly. The core principle is “what is Trump saying today” - what he said yesterday is unimportant.
>Trump has no problem setting aside his ego to further his agenda.
Everything Trump does -- on geopolitics, trade, business, law -- is 100% based upon his ego. Trump's bizarre hostility towards Canada and Europe is not based upon reality, it's based upon how Trump feels they have treated him (look at Trump's endless attacks on Canada...while the US has a $100B trade deficit with Vietnam of all places). Zelensky has thanked Americans and America endlessly, but to Trump and his puppy Vance, it's about thanking them personally.
Trump's ego is the root of literally everything the US does now. The world power being led based upon this clown's mafiosa type behaviour, which apparently the majority of America is happy to go along with. The guy sharpies maps and lies with every utterance if it serves his ego (in a manner that breaks the average person's brain, unable to comprehend that someone could be so insanely deceptive always, so they assume he surely can't be and it must be everyone and reality that is wrong). He holds laughable fake golf championships, that he of course wins on every outing. He posts fake man of the year magazine covers. It would be laughable if it wasn't so profoundly tragic.
All of the members of Trump's team have to subjugate themselves and metaphorically lick his toes at every meeting, in a scene that would make North Korea look on with shame.
EDIT: The US government just published the DNS for trumpcard.gov, likely for their "sell citizenship for $5M" hilarious plan. For anyone to seriously downplay this sociopath's extraordinary ego and need to be pandered to constantly is amazing.
>"Trump was right about everything"
Surely you realize that Musk's actual message was that he, Musk, was right about everything, right? Musk is happily going with this Trump is my puppet thing, and nonsense like this is Musk making it his own and about himself. Similar to how he often wears a black MAGA hat, because he's trying to make the cult his own. He won't succeed.
>Except with Trump's base, where it has climbed from -10 to +50. There is close to 0 possibility of Elon being jettisoned.
Sure, in the same way that Republicans suddenly hate Zelensky. The cult will follow whatever the cult leader demands.
With every passing month those big DOGE savings aren't going to materialize -- oh the excitement they all had for those imaginary $5000 DOGE savings checks they would get -- government will continue to fall apart, trade wars will put millions out of work and stagflation is going to go nuts, Americans will realize they are a global pariah (hey, but they've got El Salvador and Russia, so there's that), and things will turn really quickly. Musk will be an easy bit of chum to toss in the water. Trump loses nothing.
We'll revisit this. Musk absolutely will not last the term, and I doubt he'll make it to midterms. And when he is jettisoned, he should realize the outrageous, perilous danger he will be in.
Musk is different from the other people in Trump’s orbit. Trump can’t afford to throw Musk aside or turn him into an enemy. Not yet anyway.
This is not to say that there won’t be a breakup, there may yet be. But it seems like Musk was able to parlay his Twitter investment into tremendous direct influence over the government, a pearl without price. I don’t know that he ever cared whether Twitter made money or not.
Trump and the MAGA cult is far bigger than Musk. Musk was against Trump, and actually backed DeSantis. Did not matter at all.
If Trump turned his cult against Musk, Musk would be done. Immediately all of the bootlickers and retweeters would deride everything Musk has said or done. Musk's money would be meaningless, and he'd be the next "Soros" in their minds.
Musk clearly cares incredibly about whether Twitter makes money, and has been desperately flailing around to try to make it viable. They're currently suing advertisers who don't advertise there, which is farcical. Musk really believed his grand "we'll be your bank!" thing would be some simple thing (because everything is super easy to do for someone who doesn't actually understand or do any of it)
I’ve been wondering about that because it seems like the relationship is increasingly unbalanced in Trump’s favor.
Musk is very exposed to Trump now: he needs pardons or abeyance of enforcement for DOGE, all of his companies are exposed to multiple regulators, and he depends on government contracts. A lot of the money he throws around in politics is leveraged on his stock holdings, so a regulatory move which affects that would also cut into his ability to fight back.
In contrast, while Trump was somewhat addicted to X he doesn’t need it after the election the way he did before and he’s shifted a lot to Truth Social. Before the election, he depended on Musk’s money but he’s been taking in a huge war chest which he can use to keep Republicans in line, too.
1. Even if that were true, why is your "set of people" representative of such a large fraction of the US population that it would sway an election?
2. Even if it were somehow representative, is it more plausible that all of these people were on X getting these ideas (a platform that is small relative to other media), or that these ideas were simply blasted everywhere?
3. And even if it were somehow representative, and they did get those ideas from X, what makes you think that not having those ideas "false" ideas would have changed the election outcome [1]? People more often use "facts" to justify political positions they've already made, not the other way around.
> The idea that X had any influence on the election is laughable.
Likewise, the idea that a hammer has influence on building a house is laughable. But, of course, that is not what was said. It was said that Elon Musk had influence, helped by tools like X.
I fully expect that "Elon is gonna come and clean up all the useless jobs in government just like he did at X!" won a lot of votes. So, while X itself has no influence – it is inanimate, it was undoubtedly an important tool in allowing Musk to achieve the influence he offered.
The plain English reading of "He used [X/Twitter] to help get Donald Trump elected" is quite clearly "X/Twitter was an integral part of getting Trump elected". There is zero evidence that this is the case.
> it was undoubtedly an important tool in allowing Musk to achieve the influence he offered.
I doubt it completely, mainly because there is no evidence of this, but please do cite the evidence that convinced you of this. Until then, I'll consider the most plausible scenario to be that this is a convincing story you've told yourself because social media is likely a big part of your life, and the lives of your immediate social circle, so of course you would think it was important, despite X/Twitter's relative unimportance compared to other social media.
> The plain English reading of "He used [X/Twitter] to help get Donald Trump elected" is quite clearly "X/Twitter was an integral part of getting Trump elected".
Sure. I can agree that "He used a hammer to help build that house" and "A hammer was an integral part of building that house" can be taken to mean the same thing. So it follows that X was an integral part of getting Trump elected by way of Musk using it to convince people that he has some kind of skill in hacking and slashing jobs and thus is able to do the same in government.
> mainly because there is no evidence of this
You didn't hear Trump say that he would call upon Musk to do reduce government – what at some point was labelled DOGE? In fact, he even followed through with it! This is all news to you?
> this is a convincing story you've told yourself because social media is likely a big part of your life
It was a convincing story reported in the mainstream press. I don't live in the US, so maybe it has all been made up – I'm not there to witness anything else, but that seems highly unlikely. Methinks you've been listening to Donald for too long if you are calling "fake news" here. We in my country still believe that the press has credibility. But if you know something else to be the case that contradicts what was reported, logically it is you who should be telling me. Me "proving" it to you makes no sense. You clearly didn't think that one through.
I'm with you! I kind of love GitHub Actions, and as long as I keep it to tools and actions I understand, I think it works great. It's super flexible and has many event hooks. It's reasonably easy to get it to do the things I want. And my current company has a pretty robust CI suite that catches most problems before they get merged in. It's my favorite of the CI platforms I have used.
Yes, as an end-user I didn't really care about Apple Intelligence, and had to disable it because it kept suggesting dumb responses in Messages, which I use many times a day. As an observer of and investor in Apple, it's very concerning. Announcing and hyping products that don't exist is a serious breach of their brand promise, and as Gruber rightly observes, signs of serious rot in their culture.
In America, the First Amendment guarantee of 'freedom of speech' only protects you from the government restricting your speech. It doesn't oblige any other entity to provide you with a platform, and it doesn't free you from the consequences of your speech. You can (and should!) host your own servers, but unless you buy ads on a search platform they are not obliged to prioritize, or even index, your content.
The platforms don't decide what is legal, but they do have the right, and in many cases the obligation, to moderate their platforms. They can be held liable for allowing CSAM for example. And these platforms have business goals that can be in conflict with, say, allowing anti-LGBTQ or Nazi content.
Sounds like the problem (for a platform like this) is that they have "business goals" in the first place. Freedom of speech shouldn't be up for sale, especially when it comes to discussing sensitive topics and creating a for-profit business around that would do just that.
so people shouldn't create apps/tools/sites where others can communicate with each other unless they're willing to forgo any moderation? how does that work?
Not every service with user-generated content need to try to cater to maximum freedom of expression, so it first of all doesn't apply to any service with user-generated content.
Secondly, my point is that if you do have a service that is trying to optimize for freedom of expression, mixing in needing to earn money on top of that, is bound to leave you almost penny-less, as advertisers don't like an environment like that and people needing to be anonymous aren't as happy to donate.
Regarding the Apple Wallet: what about it is uncompetitive? I can add credit cards from many providers to it, and as far as I can tell Apple doesn't get anything if I add my Chase card and use it with Apple Pay. I don't think banks have to pay Apple anything for their cards to be used in the Apple wallet. Nor do non-financial cards like memberships.
That seems...fair to me? Apple makes a phone a lot of people want to buy, and adds NFC to it to enable mobile payment, and they provide security guarantees for the end user and the card issuer alike. I don't know why they should be obligated to provide this functionality to the card issuers for free.
Sure, but on my Android smartphone, my bank still has the ability to implement their own payment solution using NFC directly using their app, which is something they did and offer as an alternative next to Google Pay. It even has certain advantages, such as allowing one to unlock a banks doors outside regular hours to access the self-service area for things that are beyond regular ATMs, something that currently does not work with Google or Apple Pay.
On iOS, my bank does not get to offer that ability, and I do not get that choice. If I owned an iPhone and wanted to do something like deposit some cash, pickup or ship a package via the postal service (as our postal service has the same security measures) outside business hours without a physical credit or debit card, I'd be out of luck, because of Apple's restrictive nature.
Having talked to a few of my friends and family, a lot of Apple Pay users are surprised and/or unaware that this is even an option they could have, and I am certain that at some point, Apple will implement something similar, whereupon Google Pay will also enable such functionality, cause the industry does follow Apple to a large extent when it comes to what is considered the minimum of neceessary features one has to offer.
But until then, I see this as restricting innovation, similar to how AT&T prevented a lot of developments, and we got the internet in its current state in part thanks to antitrust action against them, which they promised, we'd regret in a similar manner to Apple today.
Security. I'm quite happy as an iPhone user to have Apple be the only ones in the loop for NFC payments. I'm generally happy with all other restrictions mentioned in the suit (no 3rd party app stores, no super apps, etc). It seems that this suit is brought on behalf of other companies (device and app makers, etc) and has a tenuous benefit to the public. There is a fair alternative available in Android for those who don't want to be in the iOS ecosystem.
FWIW I use Linux on my desktop computer, believe in open source, etc. Since mobile phones have become much more than phones and are now a sort of master key to your entire life, I am happy to have that key reside in as high a trust environment as I can find.
Why do you think a banks NFC payment app might not be secure? If ios is a platform then another NFC app could be as secure. Regardless, users should be given a choice. You can continue using Apple Wallet app, some other users might prefer other apps.
The concern is bad actors - that some random app (not your bank) gets access to NFC.
Choice isn't always good. Especially where consumers don't really understand all the implications. My mom doesn't benefit from choice here, she is actively harmed by it, she knows it, she uses Apple to avoid it.
Your mom already chooses to use Apple for this reason, so presumably would also not use a third-party App Store or sideloaded apps, so she could still benefit from the Apple security blanket even while theoretically having choice.
Yeah, though hopefully there is some sort of warning (or setting that prevents sideloading when enabled) that makes her think twice. Or, you could perhaps make her a “kids” profile unable to install anything without permission.
Sure - but why? Part of Apple's value prop is convenience. This extra app store thing doesn't sound convenient for Apple's customers. Apple isn't trying to make life difficult for consumers, they do make life difficult for developers and others in the ecosystem in many cases - but it's almost always to make life easier for their end customers.
Then nobody will use them if Apple allows them. If they do it like Google, by default users cannot sideload or install alternative app stores anyway. It's opt-in. Why do you want to prevent people who actively want to do these things with their phones from doing them?
If Apple's goal is to make things as "easy" for people as possible, then they should just not have any app store at all. And they shouldn't offer different configurations. They should just release an Apple iPhone that comes however it comes and nothing about it can be modified. That would be super convenient!
>> Why do you want to prevent people who actively want to do these things with their phones from doing them?
I don't want to. I want Apple to make the decision. I want Apple to make 1000s of decisions for me around my phone. They seem to be good at it, at least with respect to end users.
And, no, a non-app store phone wouldn't be convenient. Uber is very convenient. So is my banking app. There are dozens of very convenient apps on my phone.
Honest question: Do you have any example that the approach Android takes to the NFC stack enables exploits that are not possible on iOS in regard to NFC payments?
I don't have an example, but I believe your question supports my point. From everything I've observed, Apple is generally better at providing a secure ecosystem than the variety of major parties that comprise the Android ecosystem. So if I remain in the Apple ecosystem I'll need to devote less energy to answering questions like the one you've asked than otherwise.
Ok, that is fair and there can be a difference in opinion between making such choices more based on subjective opinion and personal feeling vs. basing that mainly on evidence and I do not want to dismiss the former. I understand that the convenience and peace of mind of a solution one trusts have value, and I do not discount those facts, even if I take a different approach to this situation, digging into White papers and whatnot, partly for enjoyment and personal interest. I can even recommend the Apple Platform Security Guide [0]. It's quite a good read, actually.
But no one would force you or anyone else to leave that Apple ecosystem you hold in high regard. There would simply be more opportunity for alternatives that, if they are well implemented, may even provide such a robust product for such a long time that even devoting little energy to the decision on security grounds may make it more appealing than Apples. Or maybe some feature, such as the one I described for accessing banking institutions after office hours, might make such an impact on your situation, that you become more open to those additional choices. And if not, again, you may stick with Apple all the same.
> But no one would force you or anyone else to leave that Apple ecosystem you hold in high regard. There would simply be more opportunity for alternatives
“Opportunity for alternatives” is not free. There will be a trade off to enabling it, and my perception is that it’ll negatively affect those who are happy with the status quo.
If the current trade-off is considered anticompetitive, there may be enough incentive to create a new model. Bell telephone offered free long distance calls on their network, the happiness of their customers didn't protect them when regulators started questioning how competitive Bell's strategy was.
Maybe it will negatively affect those who are happy with the status quo. That has no bearing on the righteousness of a person or company's actions, especially if they're in a position to deny competitors market access.
It has bearing on whether a case should be brought. The goal of antitrust legislation in the US has been largely to protect consumers. It's slightly more gray than that, but by and large that's the goal.
With respect, this second part is so dependent on "well implemented" and a party acting in good faith (ie not being a scam) that it's basically a worthless argument.
I don’t know what you’re referring to. Trust is a fundamental part of security. Without trust you need to be ever vigilant in an ever expanding set of domains and technologies, or you have to shrink your vulnerability surface area down to something that you can at all times personally comprehend and manage. This will not work for 99.99% of the population.
If you pry up the pavement on the way to hell, you'll find good intentions underneath. Trust whoever you want, but don't turn around and make claims you're unwilling to defend. The security Apple offers is far from unconditional - the plethora of iPhone-related data leaks is a dead horse well-beaten on this site.
For your safety, I hope the government looks out for you. Because nobody else is going to do your due diligence, evidently not even yourself.
You imply Apple isn't a better choice than the android ecosystem(s) with respect to safety/security/privacy (because you reply to the comment that this appears to be the case). This is, at least on the surface, not the general perception. But given you talk so much about doing due diligence, I assume you have some insight as to why Apple isn't the better choice on these dimensions?
I'm genuinely all ears, because this has not been my observation, but I've never done and in-depth study of the matter.
You're all good. It's been a few months since I've written one of these comments out entirely, so I'll give you the rundown:
- Android is Open Source. Google itself is a ghoulish company nowadays, few people are wrong in assuming that. For all of iOS' security taglines though, you can't build it yourself and create a further-hardened version. "Features" like Apple routing traffic around your VPN cannot be un-programmed. This doesn't necessarily make Android a better OS, but it absolutely enables better overall privacy and proves that a better ideal is realistic. I don't personally hold Google in high regards security-wise, but the AOSP has nothing to hide. You can go see for yourself.
- Apple's software can't be trusted. pbourke's correct in that consumers have to make a choice about trust when selecting hardware, but I see no evidence that Apple's approach is working. Their services turn over personally-identifying data to governments by the ten-thousands, and in countries like China your iCloud server lives in a CCP-owned facility. Apple does nothing to resist obvious government censorship ploys, and is indeed a decade-old member of America's PRISM program. Without any transparency holding Apple accountable, you really have to hold on the question - can you trust them?
- Neither Google nor Apple make good OSes, in part because neither one is motivated to compete with the other. Google treats Android as a technology dumping ground and a defacto unifying platform for their various hairbrained hardware endeavors. Apple treats iOS like Hotel California. Both companies have found a niche in ignoring each other, and Apple has used it as an excuse to pursue business strategies Google could never dream of. It's a threat to the market no matter how either of us feel about it.
The DOJ put it best, this morning: "Apple deploys privacy and security justifications as an elastic shield that can stretch or contract to serve Apple’s financial and business interests."
No no, peace of mind has no value. Just ask the big brains at the DOJ. Safety, peace of mind, convenience - these are zero value items. Only choice matters.
Sorry, that was a joke. I should have lathered on more obvious sarcasm. The DOJ don't understand very basic computer security. It's disgraceful. Agree with everything you say here - the antitrust regulators seem to have forgotten who they are supposed to be protecting - consumers, not apple competitors.
The fee is paid by card issuers. It's 0.15% for cc and 0.5 pennies for debit cards. Card issuers take a large chunk of change in interchange fees, this is a tiny, tiny proportion of it. Even if they managed to pass the cost on (which they almost certainly cannot given the nature of that business), spread across it might be 0.00000x % increase in costs. And, it's quite likely to actually reduce costs for card issuers due to reduced fraud and reduced physical card issuance (those cards actually cost money to produce).
And once you get into grad school they teach that those nice little graphs you drew in high school and undergrad were simplifications of the real world, and whether costs are passed on or not is very dependent on the specifics of the market. And then you hit the real world and realize, it's even more complex again when the costs are felt for some subset of transactions and not others, there are multiple parties to a transaction, etc etc.
Yes, exactly. Free money from the sky is exactly it.
It's definitely not coming out of card issuers pockets, from their fat interchange fees, that they may be happy to pay due to reduced fraud and other costs. Nope, the free sky money thing is it.
I question the governments decision to include this in the complaint. Surely Visa's 2-3% fee has a greater impact on the wider economy than Apple's 0.15%.
While that may be true for nfc payments, a lot of the accusations in the document are excused by Apple using bad-faith arguments in the name of security. Then there’s the 30% tax, which is just anticompetitive extortion.
While I would love to see a more open iphone NFC chip (primarily for identification/access control system integration), I shudder to think of bank implementations of contactless payments. Bank apps I’ve used have been “meh” at best, usually bad (and filled with ads!!) and don’t even support modern secure authentication (totp/webauthn). I’d like to see them fix their core technology before trying to figure out a way to sell me a loan using mobile payments.
> It even has certain advantages, such as allowing one to unlock a banks doors outside regular hours to access the self-service area for things that are beyond regular ATMs, something that currently does not work with Google or Apple Pay.
Have you tried it? I’ve been able to open Chase bank ATM lobbies using the NFC Jimmy John’s loyalty card in my Apple Wallet (along with every brand of payment card I have in there). This “security” appears to be primarily to keep unbanked (read: homeless) people out.
Here in Austria, it does not appear to be possible on either Apple Pay or Google Pay. Just tried with Google Pay, did not work and had a friend try it with Apple pay a few weeks ago, equally failed.
You could also frame it as they sold you an NFC capable phone and not really providing NFC functionality, which doesn't seem fair or at least deceptive.
I find it somewhat entertaining that the press conference, and to a lesser extent the brief, argues that giving 3rd party dev access to Wallet functionality would result in a more security for the user. I don't always trust monoliths (might be the wrong word?) but I trust Apple Wallet integrations more than anything my bank would try to roll out.
I'm fine with the claim of more competition and more privacy (although I'm not particularly worried about Apple here).
I worked as a contractor for a company offering a mobile payment solution in central europe. They were able to negotiate, with some weighty backing, an app entitlement that prevents Apple Pay from popping up when the phone is held close to an NFC-enabled payment terminal while the app is open.
Just saying that there are ways, but they‘re not open to everyone.
