I can only assume they see it as a double edged sword. Rights-holders (read: publishers, labels & studios) would have the power to sue here, not creators (read: artists, musicians and filmmakers).

These rights-holders also want to use AI so they don’t have to pay or deal with creators, so while they don’t love that other companies are making money off their content, they’re more just mad that someone else did it first before they could exploit their own content in the same way.

Sue and set precedent, and they might accidentally make it impossible for them to turn around and do the exact same thing once they have the technical know-how.

Entirely speculation, but it’s the only thing that makes sense to me.

EDIT - As another commenter mentioned, I broke my own rule and commented without reading and this was discovery as part of an ongoing lawsuit. I did say it was entirely speculation though, and I still think this is why you don’t see so many AI related lawsuits in all the areas there is just tons of content generation. I also still think this is a “mad they couldn’t get there first” situation.

Sonos. Recent app troubles aside (it’s really not that bad, just kind of clunky for certain tasks), the longevity alone make them so worth it. Despite being essentially computers/smart home devices, they support 10+ year old devices in their latest app, older devices in their S1 Controller app, and the sound quality & setup ease is amazing.

Plus, they have pretty good Black Friday sales and make it easy to build piece by piece if pricing is too high. You can also used replaced pieces to build a sound system in another room.

Over ~3 years I started with a Beam, then bought a Sub and two Play:1s as rears. Bought an Arc, moved the Beam to the bedroom. Just recently I bought 2 Arc 300s as rears/upward firing Atmos speakers, and moved the Play:1s to the bedroom. Resale value stays high so if you have no use for a piece, you can sell it and get 50%-75% of what you paid out of it easily.

There are cheaper devices with better sound quality out there, but nobody else can compete on the whole package with Sonos.

Most people get their oil changed at a shop, and drive through a car wash. I wouldn’t really consider those additional skills.

It never ceases to amaze me how out of touch tech enthusiasts are. How much does your average person know about their car? That’s how little they know about their computer.

They might not know what an OS even is, or how to identify where “Windows” ends and applications begin. They do what they bought it for, and if that doesn’t work, they take it to someone who knows how to get it working again. They know how to charge it, and to plug in a headset or USB key or something. If that functionality doesn’t work automatically or they encounter any issue, it might as well have exploded in their hands.

There are people who have been using Windows for 30 years that know literally nothing about it. Putting a “years of experience” metric on it is hilarious. It’s like assuming that if someone has been driving for 50 years that they know anything about cars besides how to drive it and where to put the gas.

You’re thinking of smoothies. Bananas are rarely in milkshakes.

But those end up being the same in practice. If you have to put up a disclaimer that the info might be wrong, then who would use it? I can get the wrong answer or unverified heresay anywhere. The whole point of contacting the company is to get the right answer; or at least one the company is forced to stick to.

This isn’t just minor AI growing pains, this is a fundamental problem with the technology that causes it to essentially be useless for the use case of “answering questions”.

They can slap as many disclaimers as they want on this shit; but if it just hallucinates policies and incorrect answers it will just end up being one more thing people hammer 0 to skip past or scroll past to talk to a human or find the right answer.

You don’t need to cut up your credit cards, never go to a bar or never visit a casino to curb your spending, drinking or gambling addictions either.

But is it hard to understand why people choose to? Not really. This is the same thing.

Yep. I used to upgrade my iPhone every year just because smartphones were moving fast in the 2010-2020 era. Now, I’m on a three year cycle and barely even notice.

I’ve resold every iPhone I’ve ever owned for 50% of the value or more, and I manage a fleet of iPhones for my job and we still have 5Ses in the wild for people. Apple still provides critical security updates for those devices and we’re at 11 years for those devices. Most people have 7 year old iPhone X era devices and I get almost no complaints or dead devices.

iPhones have ridiculous longevity and hold resale value better than any other device.

No it doesn’t require it but it can make it easier. Especially for people that don’t have a robust and centralized way of controlling their smart devices, or only have 1-2 of them. I think the appeal is still obvious.

The switch part will still work. How are you not getting this?

The appeal is remote and centralized management, easier programming and more features. If that’s not worth it to you to replace your thermostat every 16 years, then nobody is forcing you to get one.

But being able to change the temp from my phone from anywhere is worth it to me, as well as including it with other automations for all my connected devices. The appeal is honestly not hard to see, even if it’s not worth it for you personally.

Matter’s biggest problem is that it launched behind everything else. You’re already starting to see a lot of support for it just because it allows companies to support Apple Home without implementing the whole HomeKit stack & pay the licensing fees to Apple. SwitchBot, Hue and IKEA already have Matter support in their hubs in beta.

But it won’t be relevant to non-Apple users until Thread radios start being more pervasive and the spec reaches v2 and supports more stuff. Then most devices will be Matter, because a company can support all 3 major vendor apps with one standard. Right now it’s:

• Amazon/Google - most low end devices or devices made by those companies
• Apple Home - devices specifically for homekit
• Amazon/Google/Apple Home - devices for all 3
• Amazon/Google/Matter - devices for all 3 that use Matter to support Apple Home

Some will still go those routes, but eventually it will just make sense to support Matter and do away with all of those separate devices and support paths.

I think the analogy is faulty because none of what exists is any sort of standard. It’s just a bunch of proprietary vendor implementations. Matter is the first front end Smart Home standard.

Most washing machines have sensors and do not dry based on a timer. The program time is just a rough estimate, if clothes are still wet or soap bubbles are still present it will do extra rinses or spins.

If this kills Fandom/Wikia, that would be amazing and somewhat realistic.

Alabama

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I mean I can’t say 100%, but…

RTO/WFH definitely impacts tech workers the most, I think that’s just obvious.

With the worst controls imaginable to boot :)

Other things happening now does not mean this is not important right now. If I thought focusing on this was preventing them from doing something about the wars, stopping Trump, or establishing abortion rights, then yeah maybe I would agree.

But we all know they aren’t doing shit about those things. IMO, “what more important things could they be doing” is the wrong question to ask, because it doesn’t function like a priority list where one takes away from their other. If they happen to stumble on an issue that is actually important and prescient, which this is, albeit framed poorly, then I say let them go for it. At least some actual good might come of it.

You do realize that they wouldn’t pass a special law that would make AI generated photos of Taylor Swift illegal and everyone else’s would stay legal right?

This event is being used as a catalyst to put in proper legislation about deepfakes, something that impacts everyone but impacts your average woman much more. I agree with the other commenter that it’s unfortunate that this is the event that caused people to take this seriously, but better late than never.

Sorry, but I can’t see anyone who thinks that AI generated images of non consenting women is issue “1001 out of 1000” as someone who gives a shit about women and issues that impact them, especially as we are in the middle of an AI revolution. This is EXACTLY the time to be solving issues like this.

Agreed, but it was, so it’s still important.