Nah, it's just snake oil.

"Hi, James Woburn of 23 Acacia Avenue, Minneapolis, SSN 776-04-1120, this is Copilot! I heard you wanted to install Office with Copilot. Let me help you with that. First, we'll get your Microsoft account set up for you..."

Of course it wasn't, that would be going against decades of practice. Changes in education are based on a technique called analytical advocacy in which (typically) a teacher observes that something they do seems to be helping one or two kids (alternatively, a non-teacher thinks that some new thing will help kids), they spend a lot of time writing about it and talking about it at conferences, eventually it gets noticed when the previous analytical-advocacy fad has obviously failed, and then it gets pushed into classrooms. All entirely unencumbered by empirical analysis.

Next!

Glad I'm not the only one who hates Signal's incessant bloated updates. Ten years ago it was an IM app. Now, tens or possibly hundreds of gigabytes of cumulative updates later it's still the same IM app, currently using three quarters of a gigabyte of memory to display a couple of chats. And the worst thing is that if you block its constant updates it disables itself. It's like the worst type of intrusive vendor bloatware, only you can't really get rid of it because all your friends use it and everything else out there is even worse.

Oh the humanity!

I can see why Amazon wants to reduce this though, that way you'll get your next hit a lot quicker, and can order more stuff you don't need for rapid delivery once the high wears off.

I've seen snippets and read reviews but I'm having trouble seeing it as anything more than another Man Alone film, but set in space instead of on a boat in the Pacific or trapped in a remote mountain range or somewhere in Antarctica or the other usual settings for this sort of thing. Possibly influenced by The Martian which was that but even more so. Friend of mine has been trying to get me to see it but I'm having trouble working up any enthusiasm.

I reckon there's billions to be made peddling schemes for oil pipelines that bypass the Straight of Hormuz.

Note that this claim is disputed. The average American quite probably does violate a lot more than three obscure and mostly never-enforced statutes a day, but the felonies are somewhat cherry-picked and not necessarily an issue, e.g. companies charged rather than individuals, possible charges brought up for political reasons, no-one actually charged, etc.

Incidentally, if anyone else wants to "successfully create plasma", you can buy the necessary gear from Aliexpress, with free shipping.

There's also the obligatory woof! woof! woof! comment that's mandatory in any discussion of quantum.

That was my reaction as well, given the way the current administration does things did a US router vendor make a $10 million contribution to the Ballroom Fund?

In terms of who qualifies, there is still at least one remaining all-US manufacturer, Adtran in Alabama, however their ESG report says:

which I doubt would make them any friends in the Trump administration, so they're not doing this for them.

OpenAI has values?

Ah, just remembered, "maximising shareholder value" is a sort of value. As you were.

It's worse than that, I hear they provide diverse power sources, increase investors equity, and are inclusive of alternative technologies. May as well just paint red pentagrams on them.

Translated headline: "Firefox announces more shit no-one asked for and no-one wants".