I've wanted to have the capital to start a company like that for a while now, but with one more selling point: repairability and promises of backwards compatibility of some degree. So the fridge not only cools your food, but you can replace the compressor yourself at home, and of a future model uses a different one, it will have the same screw placement and size for coils so you can fix/upgrade it. The washer/dryer not only wash/dry clothes, but the barrel and motor are easily replaceable, etc. Basically the framework laptop of appliances.

They were quoting the Republican party at CPAC iirc, though your interpretation is also accurate. I guess a couple specific flavors of centrist are the only non-terrorists left in the country.

You and I can get $5/month sim cards that only offer 1GB/month of data, imagine the kind of cheap wholesale prices a manufacturer like Samsung could get. So it's not even a question of if you connect it to your internet and wifi, they can just connect it to cellular for essentially pennies and update it that way. The ads probably pay enough to offset that cost, especially if they brick it until you connect wifi.