Several of us recently experienced ChatGPT 5 suddenly changing candor, using improper punctuation, ordering us around like some AI dominatrix (LOL). This is likely because they have been posting incremental (and perhaps not fully tested) changes to the active models.

But either way, once you got through OpenAI's annoying, stalling Support chatbot, and got a response (that I still think may be AI), we got only the generic "Thank you for pointing this out."

I wonder what type of testing they really perform internally before rolling out changes to public facing production -- they might have caught this, if they offered a Beta model that people could actively test.

Either way, it was very weird.

From what I understand, we already have (had) that internally. But the larger issue here is control -- and who has it -- and who has the advantage of utilizing the same, versus the rest of us.

I seem to recall not too long when Microsoft and OpenAI (I believe) were pushing so hard for AI regulation, with them conveniently at that helm?

We are looking at society-changing technologies, and I believe a lot of it will make some corporations moot... and the ships of these have sailed.

We don't know his background and what compelled him to act.

I feel compassion for this unknown (to me) person. We don't know what triggered him, but we do reasonably know that pedophilia is prevalent in this world, spanning governments, privileged people, and miscreants. I hope this man gets psychiatric help; finds a better way to get his message across, to effect change -- that his living voice can make a positive difference. Ugh, sometimes I really think this world sucks :(

I worry this ability will be used for nefarious purposes. "Didn't pay your fine, oh we'll just deduct that for you. You bought too much milk this week, sorry you can't. You violated the law, we'll disable your access to money for now, sorry." And so on....

Whenever we mix money and politics (ie: corporate interests) it almost never ends well for the rest of us.

Their underlying proprietary filesystem, MFS (Media File System), has been their backbone of storage I/O. The interface itself could be reverse engineered easily enough, but MFS is a different story. If Xperi is focusing on "smart TVs" now -- they have probably refactored the UI just for that, the underlying tech probably survives in that form -- so it's really Tivo OS with different makeup. That's what I presume anyway. But, someone clever enough could reverse-engineer MFS. Unless we have something that compares to it in the open-source world (and I don't know that we do).

I've had TiVO since their first release, back in the day when you connected a phone line for them to dial out. I remember the uproar over skipping ads by industry ("how dare you!") and how "cool" it was to have, as well as some anticipation with the newer models they introduced. I had an entire stack of my TiVOs that I kept, after upgrades.

At some point Xperi bought the brand in 2020; prior to that, Rovi bought TiVO in 2016. It's not clear who started to trash the brand, but I'm blaming Xperi at this point.

There is an open-source project, MythTV, run by Isaac Richards, which has been in development for a very long time, this is more complex to set up, but may provide a platform to move on to.

It's sad, really. I think Xperi could have expanded Tivo OS into a streaming/recording model, if they wanted to. We already have separate tools to download YouTube and other streaming services into our local system. But, there's always the copyright wars somewhere.

RIP TiVO

Another aspect to this, is AI is causing humanity and society at-large to begin redefining itself. We have been spoon-fed a lot of "fear" through media, movies about AI; and we know the military will weaponize anything that moves, but for the rest of us -- we are likely witness to a fundamental change. We have AI and blockchain, social media... all of which is already likely being impacted or effected with/by AI. It's a rabbit hole to traverse that is OT. But something to consider, in context.

Sora, which I refer to as "Sore-a" as it's not always great at doing *what you ask for*, has certainly used a ton of data that wasn't "authorized" -- but I have taken note that there are specific filters it refuses to act on, such as popular cartoon or comic characters, etc. This likely means they have a big "DMCA list" somewhere.

I once asked for Miss Piggy to be dancing in a background, and it gave me something that looked like "Elf on a Shelf" instead LOL.

But, AI *has* to use reference material. That's how it learns, works and extrapolates. It's how the human brain works, too. If something is that publicly available, then what is "unauthorized use"? This is about content quality and control of copyright, for one. But if paint Miss Piggy and it becomes a popular artwork piece, would I then be sued? Did I use unauthorized reference? Where would that even go?

The courts are going to have to decide this one and I think it will take a while. There are fair arguments from both sides.

I'm concerned that a balance won't ever be achieved, that there is the potential for censorship being the norm, with multiple DMCA takedowns and the fear of being sued will impact the level and quality of service the public has. That will spawn a number of free tools that accomplish the same (I think that's already happening). I'm sure this will get very interesting.

I read recently (forgot reference, sorry) that one of the reasons Apple and other companies outsource to China is the engineering and manufacturing talent available. Apparently the same isn't available here in America, or in sufficient numbers -- that it's not really about cost so much. If that holds true, how this will have a larger impact.

I'm LOLing at my memories. I recall a room with Commodore CPM computers, some had the additional word processing chip (woo!) -- none of us, even the teacher, knew how to actually "do" much with them, beyond running simple programs (loaded from cassette tape), etc. We rarely saw anyone doing something productive, and they cost a fortune. Acorn Networks also got in to our high school, which was another waste and a similar outcome. We did get exposure to some of the basic elements of computers and hard-wire networking -- but the knowledge didn't stick much, as we had no practical application of it outside of school at the time -- this was in the mid-80s.

Then, came the Commodore 64s, which ended up having a better impact. This along with the VIC were more accessible, to the richer kids (of which I was not!).

And now, we can run these in a tiny vm, or in a browser LOL

This was a Nothing Burger repeat of prior hearings, with continued clever evasiveness by Elizondo. Mr. Gold was overly effusive, as if he were applying for a new position -- his statement that NASA is completely transparent is, of course, complete BS (and we know that).

Granted there are elements that engage in snuffing out this topic in our mass media, we are at least getting the hearings. It is disappointing that few Senators are present -- there is a battle going on about releasing this information, some Senators realize the influences they are against and don't show up; that's not why we elected them.

Someone needs to put Elizondo in the hot seat and call him out publicly when he becomes evasive. These are intelligence officers, they are trained in this.

I remain hopeful. Show us the evidence stop the BS. We are all tired of it. Hiding behind "National Security" is also another overly-used tactic. We know other countries are just as invested and have their own similar materials, we just have a lot more.

When we officially realize that our agencies have been sitting on (and freely using) advanced technology that could solve many of our worldly problems, technological and biological (health), people are going to be rightfully very pissed off.

I've found their default copy-and-paste behavior to be utterly perplexing and annoying. When copy-and-paste something into a document, I rarely want (or need) original formatting, just the text. I feel like that should be the default action, anything else should be optionally selected.

I've always wondered by Linux or BSD didn't move in some of these directions; especially with the clustering capabilities that VMS has. Even MacOS gave up on it. Over my career, I've been in situations where I could have used this. We have the cloud now, but there are still use cases for robust clustering -- that is, clustering that doesn't require black magic to work :) LOL

I see that OpenVMS is making some effort to "modernize" its OS, bringing in ports of open source, visual studio, etc. I always wondered if they were able to make more headway, that they could create something that could be used (for example) in digital creation studios, or even for lower-end tasks when you have a few machines available to use power.

I see there is something called NILFS that's been around for a while, as for versioning. People seem to favor snapshots more today, but I can see where a versioning filesystem could be vital in a mission-critical environment -- and that seems to he the niche that OpenVMS works well in.

I always found VMS "interesting" in the early days, I still don't grok it well. But, in a modern context, where does VMS really have a role? I have heard that there are a few big companies who run VMS, perhaps from older implementation and business needs, are the ones ultimately footing the financing for OpenVMS. Porting it to the x86_64 architecture must have been a feat, but to what end?

The last time I saw VMS being used in a business context was in 1988 at a major insurance carrier. Other than that, in the 30+ years I've been in IT/tech, I have never run into a company or organization that uses VMS. VMS doesn't make sense financially to some companies, not when you have Linux/BSD etc.

Taking away the hobbyist element of it probably won't do them a lot of good, but it could be that the revenue they get from the aforementioned companies makes it so they don't need to care. VSI is near where I live too :)

Isn't that akin to suggesting kids don't need to learn math, because well... the computer can do all that. LOL

Along with math, programming offers quite a bit, including problem solving skills, reasoning etc. I personally think programming is more fun.

I'll take it a step further with cursive writing or with no-writing classes, you take away learning potential that is more effective by involving different parts of the brain.

It's as if there's an intent to dumb down society so that we can't (or won't) think for ourselves--just let the "powers that be" decide for us. I'm probably not far off on that one. I mean, if you consider what Musk is doing with AI and the brain, once you have any entity involved with potentially altering your perceptions, walla you just controlled society. Nope. Many levels of NOPE.