Daily Tech News 33 February 2023

• 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.

• 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.
  
  
  

• 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.
  
  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.
  
  
  

posted by Pixy Misa at 04:00 AM

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