I'm sure for most participants, attending the conference is about staying current on the latest technology and proceedings. For the others, some will be attending for business networking, others for job hunting, but most experts go to the conferences to stay current on the latest things they may have missed.

The most likely reasoning here is petty: "I don't want anybody supporting someone who isn't fully loyal to the brand". It sure smells that way from the announcement and news articles. It isn't about "security for all Americans", but about Party Loyalty (tm), to the point of hatred and snubbing of anything that isn't part of the Party.

The most generous telling I can imagine is that the agency is focusing on the "statutory, core mission" part of the quote, and the "stewardship of taxpayer dollars" means "participants will have to pay for their own tickets". I don't think this is likely, but if I try hard, and I mean *really hard* to think of a way to twist the words that aren't about Party Loyalty, that's the only way I can twist and contort it to make it look like anything else.

I'm sure many professionals will still go to the conference, have already registered, and purchased their plane tickets and hotel room months ago. The question will be what happens after. Based on the past year, I'd wager Party Loyalists will give the long knife treatment to professionals who are doing their job at actual security, but we'll know in a few weeks.

Less about the chair, more about lighting that cannot physically exist in the space, sunlight streaming through the north-facing windows, with a view that doesn't exist of an open field which is actually a cinderblock wall and electrical transformers, with carpets that look brand new instead of 25 years of heavy wear.

That immediately identifies you as not being qualified to make the distinctions. What you described can't be codified.

You want to not "make rooms look bigger". How exactly? Does that mean you would consider a 35mm too much? 30mm? 20mm? 10mm? What about 25mm with a crop? How about a 360 panoramic view of room that's typically shot at 24mm? What about one shot at 35mm? A difficulty in photography is that exactly the same settings in one room make it look and feel natural, in another room make it look unnatural or distorted. People say in one breath they don't want fisheye lenses because it creates distortions, but then they see a 360 view in a different room taken with a circular fisheye and they say it is accurately shown. There is no legal test that makes sense there, it's about one person's perception of the space and perception of the image. The closest might be the legal language around a pattern of deceptive practices, but that's easily countered by a particular view being standard across the industry, or limitations of the space requiring a specific set of lenses or lighting.

You also wrote that you're okay with digitally removing objects claiming it is equivalent to staging. From the time I worked doing that sort of thing, I think that's an item most who do actual real estate photography would strongly disagree. Digitally moved objects are what the AI thinks will be in the space. In physically staged objects you might have chairs obscuring carpet stains, tables or couches obscuring traffic lanes in carpet, and photos added to the wall that cover up light-faded paint. Yes people can hide unsightly elements with staging, but the effect is substantially worse with AI generated images: with staged objects it shows the space as it actually is with the issues obscured or occluded. With the AI edited image those actual elements get hallucinated by AI, the algorithm doesn't know there was a stain here, or a faded area there, and it is actually not what is shown in the image.

What is actually codified into law I think addresses the biggest actual problems seen in listings these days, rather than the more abstract "these photos don't present the right feeling for the room". When it comes to the feel of a room, exactly the same camera settings in a different room may feel deceptive or non-deceptive, it isn't the camera settings at fault.

They're trying to, the difficulty is in defining what makes a photo "altered". It's actually surprisingly hard to do, and something journalism struggles with despite over 150 years of clarifications.

In journalism, some elements are explicitly allowed: exposure levels, color balance, a choice for B/W versus color. Some are explicitly prohibited by most outlets, like adding or removing items. Reenacting an event instead of being photos of the actual event are generally prohibited. Even something seemingly innocent like digitally removing a backpack from the side of a scene is enough to get photojournalists banned from some publications and cause an uproar from their audience.

Even with that, there is gray areas. Rotating and cropping are only allowed if they don't change the context, some cropping can make a tremendous difference in the tone of a story, revealing or hiding details that help in understanding. Adjusting the light levels can be controversial, dodge and burn, selectively lightening or darkening areas of a photo, can help improve visual quality of the image and can also highlight certain elements or obscure certain elements, and it can be divisive about if it is allowed or not.

As the story touches on, the use of wide angle lenses, also called 'fish eye' lenses, is common in real estate photography but isn't banned. It can potentially be deceptive, making a room feel larger than it really is, other times it is essential in the photos to actually capture photos of the location.

The new California law is clear about what it covers: "to add, remove, or change elements in the image, including, but not limited to, fixtures, furniture, appliances, flooring, walls, paint color, hardscape, landscape, facade, floor plans, and elements outside of, or visible from, the property, including, but not limited to, streetlights, utility poles, views through windows, and neighboring properties." and "does not include an image where only lighting, sharpening, white balance, color correction, angle, straightening, cropping, exposure, or other common photo editing adjustments are made that do not change the representation of the real property." So some modifications are allowed, and I think they did a good job of clearly conveying the intention when it eventually lands in the court.

It is not about a remote kill switch, it is drunk driving detection.

The headline just calls it a kill switch, the article calls it "impaired-driving prevention systems", which is close to what the law calls it.

The requirement is for creating a policy that has passive alcohol estimation (breath, skin, whatever) and driving patterns typical of drunk driving.

Yup, the story isn't new.

Famously about 25 years ago, on the movie Toy Story 2 someone accidentally wiped the project servers. No working backups. It was only absolute luck that someone with a baby did an unauthorized data dump to work from home. I'm sure it was a bit of a sheepish admission but it saved the film. ("I know the servers were wiped out, but, well, I know it was against policy to have an unauthorized, off-site copy, but I did make a copy of all of it, and I have it here...")

Or go back about 50 years to learn of the lost episodes of Doctor Who, from 1967-1978. Most episodes have been recovered from stations that had old tapes but 97 are still gone, only some audio recordings from fans are known.

Anyone who has been in tech long enough has heard horror stories. A place that made backups but they're all on site and a disaster destroyed them all. Backups that were transferred off site by being driven across town, unwittingly the tech put them on a heated seat that degaussed the backups so the backups weren't viable. Or companies diligently backing up programs and temporary files for years, but accidentally omitting the actual critical business data. On and on.

3-2-1 rule: At least 3 copies, at least 2 different media, at least 1 off-site. Automate and monitor, failures happen. Validate the data occasionally, to make sure you can actually recover from failure. The warnings and the messaging have been around over a half century for digital technology.

You've got to read it carefully.

It's the "low-quality AI slop" they want to crack down on. They're actively pursuing AI systems that generate video on demand, either unique to each viewer or specific to demographics.

They don't like the "low-quality AI slop", they want the high-quality AI slop, the AI-generated videos generated specifically for that individual that matches the algorithm.

And it's clear to everyone they want to be the ones generating the "high-quality AI videos" to cut the content creators out entirely. It will soon be in a form that YT can capture all the ad revenue for themselves instead of pesky content creators that require payments.

It is "The reason" versus "ONE reason of many".

The drug affects a hormone that is one of the contributing reasons. If others are addressed, stopping the hormonal treatment is unlikely to regain the weight because the other factors are addressed.

If the hormonal reasons are the primary issue for an individual, then yes they may be on hormone treatment for life.

If the reasons for a person's obesity are unrelated to what the hormone affects, don't expect much from the drug.

Repeating from the rest of the thread, it is personal and the complexity is unique to each person. To some people it is like an addiction, to other people it is not.

Read the study, the details are there. We talk all the time on /. about correlation VS causation.

It clearly shows depression, anxiety, and other mental health concerns. They exist and aren't the point of the study.

But correlation VS causation?

With a respectable sample size it shows that the time spent is not the cause. In the analysis section it discusses how symptoms of depression and anxiety include withdrawal. Depressed people use it more, but it's true regardless of the amount they used it. Increased use is correlated, but more use doesn't cause the mental health issues.

Simply: usage time is not the cause. Depressed kids do withdraw more, but time spent in games and social media are not the cause behind the depression. More time, average time, less time, and heavily restricted time made no difference.

A couple issues with that.

First issue in English is that "diet" is both a noun and a verb.

* As a noun it is fine. Every living thing has a diet. Some people have a diet of junk food, others a more balanced diet.

* As a verb it is a little more complex. There are trends of diets that are popular this year. One year fats are the problem, the next carbs, the next it's everything about 'heart healthy'. Lots of people are against gluten yet have no idea what it is or what it does. This year the hip and trendy folks are getting their GLP Ones to drop a few pounds. Those are all unhealthy. However, it can be done in healthy ways.

The second is that for morbidly obese people, diet is almost never the root of the problem.

The data show clearly that it is complex and that most people who are obese have multiple factors. Physical activity is lifestyle related, hitting career, geography, friends, and age, contributing to a spiral. Genetics is a factor, with quite a few genes identified that have a major role. Stress is a huge factor, and people with stress-related eating often become obese. That ties into clear socioeconomic links, as being poor increases stress and limits access to quality food. Lack of sleep is both a causal issue and a consequence of obesity, contributing to a spiral. Many medications can affect weight, some triggering it or disrupting signals around hunger; whether that's antidepressants, birth control pills, insulin, or a person's marijuana use. Several health conditions can increase weight gain or help people lose it, and this is one GLP-1 agonists can help with.

If it were as simple as willpower and changing what food people buy for their diet, nobody would be fat. For most people it is a mix of addressing psychology, changing social groups, making adjustments to career choices or what is done within the career, and overcoming a lifetime of habits, all are quite resistant to change.

Yup, and other areas of nuance, too.

The story says half of the issues are fixed quickly. The actual research post (not the short writeup /. links to) adds that 30% are what they called "self fixes" and incomplete features being implemented rather than stable features with defects. Most developers consider this just normal development processes, not the dangerous types of bugs.

It doesn't break down issues by severity and frequency. Bugs caught in experimental features not used by anyone VS bugs in features used in core functionality. Bugs that fix minor performance blips VS crashes VS data leaks. It's just the keyword "Fixes" in the description, no nuance of what it actually addresses.

The research writeup (not the story) makes some distinction between stable VS non-stable systems, and "ancient bugs" that have been unnoticed or unreported for years. There are systems that have been in place for years, even decades, and it's not showing errors in the billions of computers using it, instead the issue it "fixes" was a source code scan where a theoretical exploit is discovered; follow this specific pattern under that specific load with this variety of race condition in order to reveal a trivially small amount of program state information.

AI scans finding theoretical issues and obscure issues only a few people globally might rarely experience are still issues tagged with "fixes", just like high profile bugs affecting everyone.

The difficulty is that when you need them, you need them.

Money through the mail, money when online services aren't available, backups when AWS goes out, or the Internet is out in the region, etc, etc.

They provide an exact amount and an alternative when other methods fail.

Yes, the details matter.

AI that can scan x-rays, analyze bloodwork, evaluate my poop for life-threatening conditions, or otherwise augment a doctor's treatment? AI models that look at millions of possible treatment plans and find the ones most likely to be successful? Wonderful.

AI systems that remove the human connections? AI that evaluates treatment not based on medical efficacy but on cost models? AI used to make healthcare cheaper but not better outcomes? Do not want!

A very real issue is the dumbing-down of doctors who rely too much on AI. There were studies that doctors using AI to help during colonoscopy were less able to do their job after getting used to the AI tools. They became worse at their job by being reliant on AI.

Use of AI in some cases and for some conditions results in far better outcomes for patients. In some cases it augments what a skilled doctor can do. In some cases it results in detrimental outcomes for patients. And in some cases, it adds no medical value with a risk of increasing problems, in addition to increasing costs, like cases of transcription errors that aren't caught, or case summaries that are wrong in critical ways.

Yup, still better than humans.

"Driver hits unleashed dog that darted into street" is just a Tuesday, but "autonomous vehicle hits unleashed dog that darted into street" is a headline because it is so rare.

I'd be less concerned about the malware on windows knowing the typical home user. It's just yet another method, joining all the infected game hacks (or non-functional ones that are just malware claiming to be Roblox or Minecraft mods) , infected "useful" plug in with the same story, MS office documents that still represent about a third of all pfishing, or Microsoft letting .zip files run as executables if you just renamed the exe BINARY. The malware is something people already do, so it is not surprising. Just like all the "my Facebook got hacked, please don't click on anything from me" announcements these are background.

No, it's the people who will apply filters, crops, or other edits to their entire photo collection and have no backup. Or replace the content of every single document on the shared drive with a mistaken find-and-replace command. Or have a more subtle large change wiping out parts of documents that goes mostly unnoticed. The system logs what it did, but that's not the same as an undo buffer, nor archives for when it really fouls the files up over time.