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.

Iâ(TM)ve been finding TikTok trackers in iOS apps for a long time. Apps that have nothing to do with TikTok, and Iâ(TM)m not entirely sure what the devs are getting from it. Other than simple metrics.

I surmise they used a digital signature to determine whether it was a clip from something they published. For example, they could have embedded something inaudible to mark the track. Barring that, it would be interesting to see where they got their sample(s) from, too. White noise is such a generic term -- how can they define and differentiate how their "white noise" is different from any other? For that matter, is there even a legal definition of "white noise"? LOL

It sounds frivolous to me, akin to copyrighting the sound of wind blowing through a tree.

This does nothing to handle those that bounce their calls off of vulerable VoIP or other devices. This happened to me recently; the ID was of some girl in a local city that has (had, hopefully) an Android phone that has obviously been hacked. It's unlikely someone is going to spend the kind of money required to trace them in this manner, unless they suspect it's a Big Fish they're going to catch.