It is a digital signage display (ie in store ads, menus, displays etc) - not meant for desktop use.

How do we know these are the AI chatbots instructions and not just instructions it made up? They make things up all the time, why do we trust it in this instance?

From the article:

A quick Microsoft demo video shows the Copilot key in between the cluster of arrow keys and the right Alt button, a place where many keyboards usually put a menu button, a right Ctrl key, another Windows key, or something similar. The exact positioning, and the key being replaced, may vary depending on the size and layout of the keyboard.

I bet the 8 GB model ismore for lowering the advertised price then it being useable.

Software that controls your body should always respect your freedom

FTFY

But it is extremely worrying that so many devices that people require for their health and have no alternative for are so invasive and can be turned off without any warning.

I don’t see how? This is targeting people already using ad blockers. People not already using them should not see any difference in service so why would they change their behaviour? At most a mild rise of awareness, though I bet most people following these news stories are also already running ad blockers. It is all the other aggressive shit they are doing with ads that will turn people towards ad blockers/premium.

People that were running ad blockers were not seeing ads and business owners were not paying for those blocked ads. So I don’t see why they would care at all.

A new diffraction-gated real-time ultra-speed mapping technology threatens to undercut cameras costing $100,000 with off-the-shelf parts.

The threatens to undercut part. Rather than talking about how it is going to make things more affordable, it talks about how it is going to ruin the exiting markets pricing. At least that is how that reads to me. Note, I am not talking about the whole article - just that one abstract, which is what is shown here and leads a completely different tone to how the article is actually worded.

That abstract is full of oh won’t anyone think of the profits vibes.

And what point does that happen? According to the article and other sources say similar things:

Even at temperatures approaching -30C, heat pumps outperform oil and gas heating systems, according to the research from Oxford University and the Regulatory Assistance Project thinktank.

And the lowest recorded temperature in the UK since 1961 is -27.2 °C. So the times you need to fall back to resistive or other backup systems is 0% of the time. And what do you count as a cold climate? is 0C cold? or -10C? -20C? I know many people that would say yes at any other those and I bet there are others that live in places that go way lower. Yeah, what you said is technically true, but without these numbers is almost a meaningless statement. In the UK, and most of europe this article is basically saying that heat pumps are more effective than other sources of heat even at colder temperatures and it takes extremes before they require alternative heating methods.

The way you worded your post it makes it sounds like on a average coldish winters day heat pumps become useless and there is little point in having them. Even if that is not what you intended.

So? It is basically always as efficient as resistive heating at its worst, and the vast majority of the time it is massively more efficient. And even then they can remain more efficient even as low as -25C and might need resistive heating backup at places that get below that. But even in places that can dip below that they are often not that cold all year round. So overall throughout the year they are way more efficient on the majority of days even if you need a less efficient backup system.

We really need to think of the whole situation rather than just focus on the but sometimes part of the problem. Yes, sometimes they dont work as well. But overall through a year for the vast majority of places a heat pump can be all you need and is a lot more efficient than other heating systems.

Heat pumps dont replace gas ovens. They replace central heating systems. They are not that much more complex then a central heating system and come with a lot fewer safety concerns. And heat pumps are not new technology - they are just AC units that can run in reverse to heat instead of cool. We already know how well they work and how often they fail and a lot of the world is already reliant on them just as much as others are reliant on gas central heating.

All of these are solved by better public transport/safe bike routes and more walkable city designs. All of which is we can do now, not rely on some new shiny tech so that we can keep car companies profits up.

All they are doing is shifting the argument because they have realised they cannot outright go against it any more. Now their argument will be they are for right to repair, so long as it does not compromise on security, only focus on authorised channels, and force people to declare the use of used and non genuine parts. All of those points they make in this support letter. And all give them control to stifle the repairability of their devices.

You can see this already with the amount of parts that are serialised already - they will just continue to argue that you cannot replace these parts are it will compromise the security of the product. Or that parts will only be made available to authorised places - where they have to sign a whole bunch of documents giving up on a lot of your rights to enter. Then offer no real useful parts except some expensive whole assemblies.

I don’t think this changes their stance on right to repair at all - now they are just arguing the same points they always have been but from the other side. So they have better sway over the bills and look better to the public. I don’t see this changing anything.

Nah, it is them trying to control the bill by saying they are for it - if only these concessions are made. The article shows what they dont want to give up, under the guise of safety and security and disallowing repairs that might weaken that. And since they have been increasing the number of parts that are serialised in the name of security I bet they would argue repairing these parts will weaken their security and therefore cannot be allowed. Also, they want to focus on authorised repair channels, which they already massively lock down to the point they are more shipping stations than actual repair places. But also want to force third parties to disclose when they use used or non genuine parts - which since they only sell whole assemblies rather than individual components will likely force everyone that is actually making repairs to advertise that they use used/refurbished parts.

So they still want control, they just realise they can have better control by claiming to be fighting for right to repair while undermining any useful impact any bills would otherwise have - all while claiming they are for right to repair.

IMO, they have realised they cannot win - so have now switched sides for the PR boost and so they have more sway over the bills that get passed. This way they can look like they support the right to repair while knocking the teeth off the bills proposed under the argument of safety and security.

Yup, they basically said they will only support it as long as:

• it does not threaten the security/safety of the devices/consumer data. AKA will continue to let them lock out parts and software under the excuse of security.
• focus on docs, tools and parts for authorized repair channels. AKA what they currently do/want as they already control these sectors.
• force repair providers to disclose use of unauthorised or used parts. AKA force third parties to advertise they don’t use genuine/new parts as apple don’t and likely still wont make these parts available (just continue with expensive whole assembly repairs).
• only apply these rules to new products.

So the way I read it - Apple see they are losing the right to repair fight so now want to flip sides so they can better control the laws that get put in place to better quite their needs by cutting off the teeth of any bills all the while claiming they are supporting right to repair for PR purposes.

What do you mean by infringement already? So you mean it automatically infringes copyright for all its output just because it might create something similar to a copyrighted work? Or do you mean that if it does create a copyrighted work that work in infringing on a copyright? Your wording is vague here.

can be shown to be capable of reproducing something close enough to said material

I don’t think it is a good benchmark for forbidding AI generation of content. If you create a random image generate that has no inputs and is truly random then it is capable of generating something similar to copyrighted work - by pure chance. Even if that chance is very low you could generate enough images and show it can create something similar to copyrighted works.

What happens if you create one that is trained only on public domain images or works properly licensed? Its output is still partially random and could still generate an image similar to some other copyrighted work outside of its training set by pure chance.

I would argue that both of these should be allowed. They are not doing anything obviously wrong even if they could be used to generate copyrighted works. Just like you could use photoshop - or a paint brush to create copyrighted work.

But then, what if you take some other AI that is trained on all sorts of data, copyrighted or not. But then the output of that is fed through a checker that compares it to the training set (and maybe more copyrighted content) and rejects/regenerates work until it is known to not infringe on copyrighted work. Making the chances of it ever producing a copyrighted work far less then the above programs? Should that be allowed? It is using copyrighted work much like an artist would and you could argue that any copyrighted work it does produce was by pure accident as there are intentional steps to mitigate that.

If you use a paid service like Midjourney to generate copyrighted content, the company is essentially selling you access to copyrighted content they lack the rights to.

As far as I understand the laws involved, yeah I would expect that to infringe on some copyright holders work and midjourney would likely be coppable for damages. Just like hiring a artist to create some work and they decide to copy some copyrighted work would also make that artist coppable for damages.

And you also have to consider another side of things - if you can effectively stop AI from training on most works you will effectively stunt its usefulness. Which could lead all efforts in regulated nations to become useless which can result in it just moving to places that are much more open with the technology and where authors of the copyrighted work will have far less control over things. IMO AI generated content is out of the bag now and we will not get it back in. So the best we can do is ensure the right people get compensated for their works. Push to hard in the wrong direction (either way) and there is a real chance they never will.

I don’t really have the solutions to many of these problems - but I do think it is worth talking about and don’t think that outright bans (or actions leading to an effective ban) on this tech is the correct way to go.

Someone getting sued does not mean they are wrong or that they lost the case. Each case needs to look at the works in question and decide if that perceptual case violates copy write. Lots of things are taken into account here, and even is small elements might have been used or be similar does not automatically win the case.

There is also a difference between some implementation and the overall feature in question. For instance, APIs are not copy writeable, nor are cords in music, nor what something does overall. Only specific implementations are copy writeable.

The same can apply to AI - if it generates a work that if a human did it it would violate copy write then it does - if not then it does not. But AI shows a different problem. That of scale. There is only a limited amount of work that a human can do. But an AI can produce vastly more content - enough that a case by case evaluation of infringement might not be viable. And if that becomes the case then AI works might need to be treated differently from human created works - or maybe how the models are created and how they can use copy writed works. The current laws were never designed with the speed at which AI can work in mind.

If the resulting code looks like copyrighted code, then you’re in trouble. If it doesn’t look like copyrighted code then you’re fine.

^^ Very much this.

Loads of people are treating the process of AI creating works as either violating copyright or not. But that is not how copyright works. It applies to the output of a process not the process itself. If someone ends up writing something that happens to be a copy of something they read before - that is a violation of copy write laws. If someone uses various works and creates something new and unique then that is not a violation. It does not - at this point in time at least - matter if that someone is a real person or an AI.

AI can both violate copy write on one work and not on another. Each case is independent and would need to be legislated differently. But AI can produce so much content so quickly that it creates a real problem for a case by case analysis of copy write infringement. So it is quite likely the laws will need to change to account for this and will likely need to treat AI works differently from human created works. Which is a very hard thing to actually deal with.

Now, one could also argue the model itself is a violation of copyright. But that IMO is a stretch - a model is nothing like the original work and the copyright law also does not cover this case. It would need to be taken to court to really decide on if this is allowed or not.

Personally I don’t think the conversation should be on what the laws currently allow - they were not designed for this. But instead what the laws should allow. So we can steer the conversation towards a better future. Lots of artists are expressing their distaste for AI models to be trained on their works - if enough people do this laws can be crafted to backup this view.