Sadly this was an April Fool's joke. Even if it were true they'd probably shift to Flatpak

If the speed of your text messaging program is noticeable you've got it very wrong.

Maybe the on-demand loading for scrolled history is now twice as fast, so when you're searching for the context around that message 6 months ago it only takes 20 minutes to get there?

Seriously, having read a few links the speed improvement is in how they render the multiple incoming webcams during a meeting. Not a bad thing but something I'm unlikely to notice.

Only ever do the minimum amount of work necessary, I see

The best argument against this acquisition is that World of Warcraft will eventually be made to require login with a Microsoft account.

This is understandable however there are multiple comments suggesting that YouTube shows ads on demonetised videos anyway, just the creator doesn't get the revenue. I can only assume there is a separate category of advertisers who don't care about possible negative associations.

Probably not many on Slashdot. However two-thirds of YouTube usage is via mobile platforms where an ad blocker is not easily available, and I'd guess the majority of the remaining third on a browser do not use ad block either.

I do wonder if that's even possible since they claim it is end-to-end encrypted. Lying about this would be a huge business risk as if it were shown to be false their marketshare would quickly plummet. Believing there is a backdoor there is getting into conspiracy theory territory, although conspiracy is much more viable when government agencies are involved.

There are two ways I know of that currently give Meta unencrypted WhatsApp chats

• 1. When a recipient reports a received chat the past 5 or so messages are sent for review.
• 2. The app has a built-in filter of some sort that checks messages as they are typed. If triggered (supposedly by child porn/terrorism phrases) then the messages are sent for review.

On the second point there is no released information as to how this filter works or how it is updated, but I'd assume the app retrieves filter updates periodically or on each startup without requiring the app itself to be updated. Were they presented a warrant to snoop on a particular phone number it would be trivial to add this number to the filter.

Spotify tends to have everything popular, however most of my music (metal) I find on Bandcamp and a good amount of it is not on Spotify for whatever reason. Bandcamp also allows you to purchase albums if you are a collector type. After Bandcamp I'll go to YouTube as I prefer the simpler interface and, as a last resort, will use Spotify (which doesn't suck).

The simplest explanation is that it's Netflix for music.

It depends on your purpose going in. Part of what I get out of reading classics is a sense of intrigue at the society, attitudes and communication style of the day. If you want pure entertainment (which movies aim at more than literature) then updating for modern sensibilities is the go, and that's fine as our purpose isn't fixed - we consume a mixture of escapism and high art.

The classics formed today will probably interest future generations precisely because they provide a window into our current time's preoccupation with identity politics. Perhaps we'll hit full irony where the big studios of 2200 update the 2000's classics by stripping out LGBTQ/race messages and adding whatever society is arguing about then.

"The fact that Midjourney's specific output cannot be predicted by users makes Midjourney different for copyright purposes than other tools used by artists"

It depends on the artistic purpose of the unpredictability. Consider other works made using indeterminency, like Cage's Music of Changes or to a lesser degree Pollock's splatter paintings. The point of these is in the randomness. Midjourney is used more to replace the creative toil, although you could argue there is some random intent to 'see what it comes up with'.

That said, while I think you could make a decent case for the copyright of these images, I believe that given how prolific this sort of art will be that not granting copyright is going to be saner for society in the long run.

Classic victim blaming. With this logic how about Kia sues the City of Seattle for failing to police its citizens properly. Or just maybe the real blame lies with the criminals.

A car analogy, now I understand.

I do wonder if you could ask seed the revelvant facts in the prompt like "Given that Russia has invaded Ukraine yesterday and Zelenskyy released a press statement saying blah blah blah, write me a newspaper article in the style of the New Zealand Post". There's an interesting question as to how consistent the patterns in human behaviour are. If we keep repeating the same ones, perhaps an old dataset is partially sufficient to write copy about new events.

It's not trans because it doesn't believe it was created a software program but is really a conscious human. It either knows what it is or unconsciously produces text that appears human. It's debateable that it has any 'true' identity at all outside of the text, and the apparently identity of the text may change depending on the input question.