Italy's data-protection authority has seen ChatGPT and doesn't like what it sees, banning and investigating the fancy chatbot "with immediate effect". According to the press release, "there appears to be no legal basis underpinning the massive collection and processing of personal data in order to 'train' the algorithms on which the platform relies". They also note that ChatGPT "exposes children to receiving responses that are absolutely inappropriate to their age and awareness". Open AI has to respond to the complaint within 20 days or it gets fined 20m euro or 4% of its worldwide annual turnover.
General Motors has come out of nowhere and said it is dropping the popular Apple CarPlay and Android Auto features from its upcoming electric cars. GM told Arstechnica that "we can do more than ever before with in-vehicle technologies and over-the-air updates" and will have apps we know and love like Google Maps and Spotify run natively on its Ultifi software platform. Sounds like the dumbest move you could possibly make, but hey, this is General Motors. God help us if other car makers get inspired by this move and remove "phone projection" (that's the brand agnostic term for it) from their upcoming cars too.
Interesting book alert! "Our phones, computers, and appliances are made of hundreds of internal components, each precisely engineered to perform a certain function, but none intended to actually be seen. Through painstakingly executed, vividly detailed cross-section photography, Open Circuits reveals the surprising — and often accidental — beauty hiding inside the electronic components that drive our everyday devices". Heaps of high resolution photos and cut-aways of relatively mundane electronics? Yes please.
Internet network test bed 7/16/1998 (NASA Glenn Research Center / Internet Archive)
📻 Honky's Ladder - The Afghan Whigs
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