Daily Tech News 8 October 2024

• Artist* Jason Allen has requested judicial review of the US Copyright Office's decision to deny him copyright on his* piece Théâtre D'opéra Spatial. (Ars Technica)
  
  At issue is that Allen did not paint the image, neither in a traditional physical medium, nor in a digital one. It was generated using Midjourney.

  "Théâtre D'opéra Spatial" is a wholly original image expressing his idea, Allen said, and to produce that human expression, he dedicated more than 100 hours to refining Midjourney text prompts through an iterative process that he estimates took more than 600 prompts. Allen told Ars that through this process, he crafted his own prompt language after determining "which parts of his instructions were effective and which were not," as well as which parts were "not even considered."

  If it took you ten minutes to try each prompt, I would have to wonder what you were doing in between.

  The Copyright Office has said that Allen's prompts are copyrightable, but only Midjourney was responsible for the output derived from the prompts. Walsh told Ars that if Allen had used any non-AI tool to transform the final image a little, even just applying a filter, he would be "good to go" to register his work and sue anyone who "verbatim copies" it.

  Surprisingly, and the EFF concurs, the Copyright Office has this pretty much right.
  
  * For some value of this term.
  
  
  

• Bad news for Google, good news for Android users everywhere: The judge in the Epic vs. Google case has issued his final ruling, requiring Google to make third-party app stores (like Epic's) available via the Google Play Store. (The Verge)
  
  No more monkey business like Google attempted with Samsung to make it all but impossible to sideload apps. The app stores must be installable from the Play Store itself.
  
  In addition, Google can no longer require app developers to use its own payment services, or restrict how developers communicate with their customers how to install and pay for their software.
  
  No such decision has been reached against Apple as yet - at least, not in the US. Things are not looking great for Apple in the EU.
  
  
  
• If you want a Lego model of an AMD Epyc server CPU - the current 4th generation model with 12 CPU dies - this is now a thing that exists. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  It's not a working model, but it is a model.
  
  
  
• Asus' new "Nitropath" memory slots help your RAM run faster on partly-populated motherboards. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Up to 400MHz faster, which could increase overall performance of your computer by... 2%. If you're lucky.
  
  Not without value, but not a big deal.
  
  
  
• How a Clinton-era law opened up US secrets to China. (Tech Crunch)
  
  Yeah, who could have ever predicted that mandating back doors would lead to adversaries focusing their attention on those back doors?
  
  
  
• Speaking of which, Okta. (HackRead)
  
  Okta is a "security" company that lets other companies outsource logins to their applications.
  
  Okta is a constant target for hackers as a result. And they were successful. Again.

posted by Pixy Misa at 04:00 AM

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