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A golden phone that President Donald Trump‘s family business promised to release last year remains mysteriously under wraps as the technology industry serves up a glut of new gadgets at CES in Las Vegas this week. When the Trump Organization launched a mobile phone service last June, it was supposed to be a stage setter for a new smartphone bathed in gold with a $500 price tag a bargain compared to Apple’s latest iPhone models that sell for anywhere from $800 to $1,200. The newly formed Trump Mobile targeted its T1 phone for an August or September release. What’s more, Trump Mobile initially hailed T1 as a device that would be proudly designed and built in the United States for customers who expect the best.” But both the T1’s shipping date and U.S. manufacturing ambitions gradually began to shift, even as Trump Mobile continues to accept $100 deposits for the device. Not long after announcing the device, Trump Mobile pivoted from describing it as a phone that would be made in the U.S. to framing it as a device that would be proudly American. Trump Mobile’s website now touts the T1 as having an American-proud design, with no further explanation. Analysts believed that the shift stemmed from a recognition that the U.S. lacked the supply chain and other logistics required to make a smartphone for less than $1,000 the same hurdles that made it implausible for Apple to acquiesce to President Trump’s demands that the company move its iPhone manufacturing from China and India. Later in the summer, Trump Mobile also became more vague about when the T1 would become available, but still indicated it would be delivered to customers who paid the $100 deposit by the end of 2025. Trump Mobile’s website continues to list the T1’s targeted release date as later this year. The Trump Organization didn’t respond to inquiries from The Associated Press about the delays or when the device is now expected to be shipped. The Financial Times recently reported that it was told by a customer representative for Trump Mobile that the phone will be shipped in late January and attributed its delayed release to the 43-day shutdown of the federal government last year. Whatever the reason, the T1’s ongoing absence from the smartphone market didn’t come as a surprise to International Data Corp. analyst Francisco Jeronimo. We have always been quite skeptical about this phone, Jeronimo said. They are probably finding that it is harder to build a phone than they thought it would be. Let’s see if this thing comes to life or not. While the T1 has remained in a holding pattern, Trump Mobile has been selling its wireless service for $47.45 per month a price tied to Donald Trump’s titles as the 47th and 45th President. For customers looking for a smartphone that they can use sooner rather than later, Trump Mobile is also selling refurbished versions of older iPhones and Samsung’s Galaxy models at prices ranging from $370 to $630. Maybe they changed their strategy and figured out they are better off just selling refurbished phones, Jeronimo said. Michael Liedtke, AP technology writer
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E-Commerce
Pipeline safety regulators on Monday assessed their largest fine ever against the company responsible for leaking 1.1 million gallons of oil into the Gulf off the coast of Louisiana in 2023. But the $9.6 million fine isn’t likely to be a major burden for Third Coast to pay.This single fine is close to the normal total of $8 million to $10 million in all fines that the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration hands out each year. But Third Coast has a stake in some 1,900 miles of pipelines, and in September, the Houston-based company announced that it had secured a nearly $1 billion loan.Pipeline Safety Trust Executive Director Bill Caram said this spill “resulted from a company-wide systemic failure, indicating the operator’s fundamental inability to implement pipeline safety regulations,” so the record fine is appropriate and welcome.“However, even record fines often fail to be financially meaningful to pipeline operators. The proposed fine represents less than 3% of Third Coast Midstream’s estimated annual earnings,” Caram said. “True deterrence requires penalties that make noncompliance more expensive than compliance.”The agency said Third Coast didn’t establish proper emergency procedures, which is part of why the National Transportation Safety Board found that operators failed to shut down the pipeline for nearly 13 hours after their gauges first hinted at a problem. PHMSA also said the company didn’t adequately assess the risks or properly maintain the 18-inch Main Pass Oil Gathering pipeline.The agency said the company “failed to perform new integrity analyses or evaluations following changes in circumstances that identified new and elevated risk factors” for the pipeline.That echoed what the NTSB said in its final report in June, that “Third Coast missed several opportunities to evaluate how geohazards may threaten the integrity of their pipeline. Information widely available within the industry suggested that land movement related to hurricane activity was a threat to pipelines.”The NTSB said the leak off the coast of Louisiana was the result of underwater landslides, caused by hazards such as hurricanes, that Third Coast, the pipeline owner, failed to address despite the threats being well known in the industry.A Third Coast spokesperson said the company has been working to address regulators’ concerns about the leak, so it was taken aback by some of the details the agency included in its allegations and the size of the fine.“After constructive engagement with PHMSA over the last two years, we were surprised to see aspects of the recent allegations that we believe are inaccurate and exceed established precedent. We will address these concerns with the agency moving forward,” the company spokesperson said.The amount of oil spilled in this incident was far less than the 2010 BP oil disaster, when 134 million gallons were released in the weeks following an oil rig explosion, but it could have been much smaller if workers in the Third Coast control room had acted more quickly, the NTSB said. Josh Funk, AP Transportation Writer
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E-Commerce
Workplace training invites are dropping in many employees inboxes now that the new year is underway. Most employers require staff to complete multiple HR modules annually: training on harassment, workplace relationships, or conflicts of interest, for example, followed by a quick quiz. Recently, however, a new TikTok trend imagining fake workplace training modules is going viral. Its 5 pm and you notice one of your colleagues is crying at their desk, creator @pepsimasc posted in November. Do you A: check in and ask how theyre doing, or B: tell them to shut the fuck up? the skit begins. He continues on to the next imaginary scenario: Youre in a meeting and notice one colleague bullying another. Do you A: stand up for them, B: report it to HR, C: offer them a lift home and crash the car, or D: all of the above? In the final scenario, he explains: Youre walking to the lunchroom and notice someone has smashed a glass on the floor and left it there. Do you A: contact facilities, B: clean it up immediately, or C: spill baby oil around it so someone can fall onto the glass? For those well-acquainted with this type of training, the multiple-choice framing should be painfully familiar. The videos even share that familiar elevator music that plays in the background as you click your way through the slides. (Listen long enough, and you can feel your brain slowly powering down.) Across TikTok, creators are posting their own parody HR trainings, riffing on the fact that after years of mandatory workshops and assessments, theyve got the scripts practically memorized and the tone down to a T. Another creator parodies a common phishing prompt. You get an email with a link that you think might be a scam. Whats the appropriate course of action? A: tell HR, or B: throw out your laptop. Another, in a video watched more than 8.2 million times, asks viewers to select the example of harassment. Option one: Jane gives you a high five. Option two: Marcus gives you a pat on the back. Option three: John runs at you fully erect. The comments are filled with corporate workers who feel seen by the skit. One said: And then theyre like, actually its ALL of them. This is so funny, another wrote. And unfortunately, accurate.
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E-Commerce
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