PrairiePundit

 Headline USA: Apple and Google Block Apps that Crowdsource ICE Sightings This is a good move by both Apple and Google.  Those apps were a danger to ICE officers and to other law enforcement operations. 

 Federalist Wire: ... In a rare victory for common sense and the rule of law, Apple has yanked several apps from its App Store that were basically turning smartphones into getaways for illegal immigrants dodging federal agents. These digital hide-and-seek tools let users spot Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers from miles away, making it easier for lawbreakers to slip through the cracks of America’s borders. The New York Post broke the story, highlighting how Apple’s move targeted apps built specifically to track and steer clear of ICE operations. Leading the pack was ICEBlock, a sneaky little number that racked up hundreds of thousands of downloads from folks desperate to pinpoint federal enforcers. Users could drop anonymous pins on agent locations within a five-mile zone, turning every iPhone into a virtual lookout post. The app’s creators even pushed it as the go-to secure download spot right on the App Store. This purge didn’t happen in a vacuum. The Trump administra...

 CNBC: Apple to open AI server factory in Texas as part of $500 billion U.S. investment   Apple  plans to open a new factory for  artificial intelligence  servers in Texas as part of a $500 billion investment in the U.S., the company said Monday. The U.S. technology giant said it would work with partners to launch a 250,000-square-foot server manufacturing facility in Houston to produce servers for Apple Intelligence, its AI personal assistant for iPhone, iPad and Mac computers. The new factory, which is slated to begin operations in 2026, will form part of a major investment plan Apple is committing to over the next four years. In addition to the new Texas facility, Apple said it also plans to hire around 20,000 new employees across the U.S. Most of the new hires will be focused on research and development, or R&D, silicon engineering, software development, and AI and machine learning, Apple said. ... This is a good move for Apple and for Texas.  They ...

 Joel Kotkin: The Western world is experiencing the most dramatic political realignment since the rise of socialism over a century ago. The driving force then was the rise of the working class, created by the Industrial Revolution. Today, it is the shift to an economy dominated by information industries, technology, finance and media. This new economic order, just like that which arose a century ago, is creating a highly disruptive political dynamic and a shift in historic class allegiances. The tech platforms, the financial giants and retail mega-corporations have formed a new economic oligarchy. In 2023, six of the world’s eight most-valued companies were tech firms . Apple, which sits at the top of the list, became the first $3 trillion company last year. It has a market valuation just below the GDP of India and the UK, and larger than that of Italy, Russia or Canada. The oligarchs tend to back the so-called progressive agenda on issues like climate change, culture and immigrati...

 Revolver: Revealed: Eric Holder’s Partisan Fingerprints Were All Over Apple’s “Trust and Safety” Department During 2020 Election She appears to be an ultra-left-wing partisan lawyer.  She is believed to be responsible for removing Parler from the app store at Apple.  I suspect she is not a fan of free speech for those not in the leftist orbit.  

 Red States: ... “These experts were wrong and you had people on Twitter that were calling that out and Twitter, the old regime and Twitter, their response was to try to just suffocate the dissent and Elon Musk knows that’s not a winning formula,” DeSantis said. Musk announced Monday that Apple “threatened” to withhold Twitter from the App Store without providing a reason as to why. “He’s providing free speech and so if Apple responds to that by nuking them from the App Store, you know, I think that would be a huge, huge mistake,” DeSantis said in response. He said that would be an exercise of “monopolistic power” and Congress should respond if Apple goes through with it. ... DeSantis is right.  When Big Tech starts acting like the censor in chief it has stepped over a line.  They should not have a monopoly on social media or its content.  See, also: A Tesla Smartphone Is Not an Idle Threat And:

  What we are learning about the left is that they do not trust people who are not leftists and this mistake will hurt them in the long run.  What Musk is doing is making Twitter a better and fairer platform for people to discuss the issues of the day.  The threat that Apple or Google may kick them off their servers is an absurd idea that they should rethink.  It would hurt both Apple and Google in the long run to do such a thing.  Musk is perfectly capable of creating a competitive phone.

  Daily Mail: Your iPhone could soon detect if you're DEPRESSED: Apple is working on technology to help diagnose mental health conditions by spotting key signs in how you use your smartphone, report reveals I may have to consult with my wife who is a Ph.D. psychologist about whether this is a good idea. 

  John Sexton: He warned Apple they were too dependent on China but Apple didn't listen   The NY Times describes Doug Guthrie as “one of America’s leading experts on China’s turn toward capitalism.” Guthrie got a Ph.D. from Berkeley and then taught at New York University. In 2014, Apple hired him for his expertise on China. And he spent several years trying to warn the company that China was changing and  Apple was vulnerable .... ... His warnings were prescient. China has taken a nationalist, authoritarian turn under Mr. Xi, and American companies like  Apple ,  Nike  and  the National Basketball Association  are facing a dilemma. While doing business in China often remains lucrative, it also increasingly requires  uncomfortable compromises . That last link goes to a story the Times published last month about Apple’s decision to effectively hand over data on all of its customers in China  to the CCP . Tim Cook, Apple’s chief executive,...

 Red States: How did Tim Cook get suckered into becoming a TV spokesperson for Vigilante Fascism? It just doesn’t seem like something the head of a large public company should do. At least, not in the United States. Yet as RedState’s Mike Miller reported yesterday , here is Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, looking all of us right in the eye on Fox News Sunday, condescendingly trying to sell us a patently false story about why his company has volunteered to perform law enforcement services of the sort people associate with tyrannical governments. To hear Cook tell it, Apple removed the Parler app from the choices available to iPhone users because, “We looked at the incitement to violence that was on there, and we, we don’t consider that free speech and incitement to violence has an, has an intersection,” Cook said. We should care about this for three reasons. The first is that the kind of confluence that we see here between the state and the corporate sector is the primary characteristic...

 Epoch Times: A top Republican in the House of Representatives on Sunday called for a racketeering probe into large technology companies who over the weekend took action against Parler, a social media website. “This is clearly a violation of antitrust, civil rights, the RICO statute. There should be a racketeering investigation on all the people that coordinated this attack on not only a company but on all of those like us, like me, like you, Maria,” Rep.  Devin Nunes  (R-Calif.), the ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee, told Fox News’s “Sunday Morning Futures” host Maria Bartiromo. After Twitter banned President Donald Trump and some other users, Parler saw its traffic explode. Soon, though, Google announced it had removed Parler from its online store, a move followed by Apple. Then, Amazon  announced  it was suspending Parler from its web hosting services. Parler CEO John Matze  told The Epoch Times  his company is prepared to take leg...

 NY Post Editorial: So Twitter has “permanently banned” President Donald Trump’s account. While this will please Democrats, and perhaps lessen the (justifiable) heat the company is taking from regulators, it just proves again that Twitter’s claims that it is “just a platform” are hogwash. Some of Trump’s tweets were untrue and incendiary, but so are the Ayatollah Khamenei’s. His account is still up. The difference is Twitter is run by American liberals, who only really police one type of person, of one political persuasion. It’s a little ridiculous that what finally did Trump in was tweeting that he wouldn’t be attending Joe Biden’s inauguration . Twitter twisted that to mean that he still won’t accept the results of the election — which just shows they were looking for an excuse. Rather than let the readers judge, they pulled the plug. This paper has a bit of history with Twitter’s bias, seeing as they shut us down over a true Hunter Biden story . That incident proved that they ...

  Washington Examiner: President Trump condemned Twitter shortly after the social media platform  banned him permanently . "As I have been saying for a long time, Twitter has gone further and further in banning free speech, and tonight, Twitter employees have coordinated with the Democrats and the Radical Left in removing my account from their platform, to silence me — and YOU, the 75,000,000 great patriots who voted for me," the president said in a message on Friday night from his presidential Twitter account. "Twitter may be a private company, but without the government's gift of Section 230 they would not exist for long." Trump circumvented Twitter's ban of his personal account, posting the message briefly from his @POTUS handle before the tweet disappeared. His message was then released in an official statement. "As we’ve said, using another account to try to evade a suspension is against our rules," a Twitter spokesperson told the  Washington ...