Saturday, March 02
Daily News Stuff 33 February 2024
All Dates Approximate Edition
All Dates Approximate Edition
Top Story
- A tale of two tales: Elon Musk sues OpenAI and Sam Altman over "betrayal" of nonprofit AI mission. (Tech Crunch)
OpenAI was founded specifically as a nonprofit, chartered with a mission to produce AI for the public good.
This was the source of the drama last year when Sam Altman was removed by the board - the board was trying to return OpenAI to something closer to its original mission. But money talked, and Altman was soon restored as chief bullshitter.
Musk's suit hinges on how much of the nonprofit's charter and statements made at the time can be held as legally binding - since he provided much of the original funding.
- Speaking of chief bullshitters here's The Verge's terrible take on the story. (The Verge)
That's not reporting, it's propaganda.
Tech News
- This takes major talent. (MSN)
Home brand and budget soft drinks (as in soda/pop) and mineral water have disappeared from supermarket shelves in Australia due to - I am not making this up - a shortage of carbon dioxide.
Supplies are expected to resume by the end of the year, maybe.
- Apropos of nothing, I just bought a SodaStream.
- Apple is un-killing persistent web apps in the EU. (Apple Insider)
"This has nothing to do with the EU investigation," said an Apple spokesman on conditions of anonymity. "We listened to our users. Lol. Don't print that."
- Here's an 8.8" tablet with a 2560x1600 screen, a fast CPU, 16GB of RAM, and upgradeable storage. (Hot Hardware)
Only problem is it's a chunky monkey and runs Windows and costs about three times as much as Lenovo's Android-based Legion Y700.
Only problem with the Y700 is you can't officially buy it outside China.
- JPEG XL and the Pareto Front. (Cloudinary)
A very, very, very detailed look at recent improvements to the JPEG XL library, showing off performance improvements, resource reductions, and quality advantages over JPEG.
When you over-compress JPEG it gets blocky and ugly, but JPEG XL just gets overly smooth.
Not At All Tech News
- Vtuber agency Prism Project is ending. (Twitter)
I've been watching Prism since 2021; it's been my second favourite agency, though it has never made huge numbers. Sony Music acquired the company in 2022, and launched three new generations of talents last year, but it looks like it's fallen victim to cost-cutting by the corporate parent.
Update: Prism talents have now said specifically that this is not related to recent layoffs at Sony, though they can't go into a lot of detail.
But in a masterclass of how to do things right, Sony is transferring all rights to the character models, existing content, and online accounts to the individual talents, so they can all continue as independent channels.
It's a stark contrast to Nijisanji, which bullied Selen Tatsuki into a suicide attempt, seized control of her online accounts while she was hospitalised, fired her, defamed her, and deleted three years of content.
Disclaimer: How bad do you have to be to make Sony look good?
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
04:46 PM
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1
Pretty sure the weed growers will have plenty of CO2. Can't have one of the holy sacraments* of the left running out.
* those would be weed, killing babies, and chopping off genitals.
* those would be weed, killing babies, and chopping off genitals.
Posted by: normal at Saturday, March 02 2024 11:41 PM (bg2DR)
2
Can't they just go outside and wave a cup around to collect some CO2? I mean, we're drowning in it what with all the glowball wormening, right?
Posted by: Rick C at Sunday, March 03 2024 01:42 AM (BMUHC)
3
My thinking is that Sony is large enough to be driven by some conservative and calculating types, who thought vtuber was worth investing in two years ago, but who now see that there is some multi-jurisdiction liability that they did not plan for, and which is not central to their business.
This strikes me as the best way to mitigate the liability with the least loss of good will.
However, the problem with this hypothesis is that the timeline on the liability situation is a bit short for this sort of decision to be made.
So, either cost cutting, /or/ someone on their planning staff does some really excellent contingency prep, and briefing.
This strikes me as the best way to mitigate the liability with the least loss of good will.
However, the problem with this hypothesis is that the timeline on the liability situation is a bit short for this sort of decision to be made.
So, either cost cutting, /or/ someone on their planning staff does some really excellent contingency prep, and briefing.
Posted by: PatBuckman at Sunday, March 03 2024 02:15 AM (r9O5h)
4
Sony has two other vtuber agencies, VerseN and Vee, and the talents from those agencies often interact with Prism.
So it would make sense that they didn't want to blow up relations with the dozens of talents that they want to keep. Sometimes the right thing to do is also the smart business move.
I think it's not liability so much as Prism has just never done huge numbers, and with the global economy dead in a ditch Sony needs to focus on what it knows, which is the Japanese market and not the English one.
So it would make sense that they didn't want to blow up relations with the dozens of talents that they want to keep. Sometimes the right thing to do is also the smart business move.
I think it's not liability so much as Prism has just never done huge numbers, and with the global economy dead in a ditch Sony needs to focus on what it knows, which is the Japanese market and not the English one.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Sunday, March 03 2024 03:09 AM (PiXy!)
5
I'm a big fan of the Sodastream, particularly the zero-calorie pink grapefruit syrup. I used to buy the bottled stuff, but out of the dozen or so companies that slap their label on it, maybe two use a decent percentage of actual juice.
Sadly, even though they're owned by Pepsi now, they still haven't managed to produce a decent Diet Pepsi syrup.
-j
Sadly, even though they're owned by Pepsi now, they still haven't managed to produce a decent Diet Pepsi syrup.
-j
Posted by: J Greely at Sunday, March 03 2024 04:17 PM (oJgNG)
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