Apple's VP of camera software engineering Jon McCormack has affirmed the company's commitment to traditional photography in an interview, contrasting with Google's "memories" approach for Pixel cameras. (A Google executive said last month of the AI usage in the pictures Pixel smartphone owners take: "What some of these edits do is help you create the moment that is the way you remember it, that's authentic to your memory and to the greater context, but maybe isn't authentic to a particular millisecond.") The Verge: I asked Apple's VP of camera software engineering Jon McCormack about Google's view that the Pixel camera now captures "memories" instead of photos, and he told me that Apple has a strong point of view about what a photograph is -- that it's something that actually happened. It was a long and thoughtful answer, so I'm just going to print the whole thing:

"Here's our view of what a photograph is. The way we like to think of it is that it's a personal celebration of something that really, actually happened.

"Whether that's a simple thing like a fancy cup of coffee that's got some cool design on it, all the way through to my kid's first steps, or my parents' last breath, It's something that really happened. It's something that is a marker in my life, and it's something that deserves to be celebrated.

"And that is why when we think about evolving in the camera, we also rooted it very heavily in tradition. Photography is not a new thing. It's been around for 198 years. People seem to like it. There's a lot to learn from that. There's a lot to rely on from that.

"Think about stylization, the first example of stylization that we can find is Roger Fenton in 1854 -- that's 170 years ago. It's a durable, long-term, lasting thing. We stand proudly on the shoulders of photographic history." Further reading: 'There is No Such Thing as a Real Picture,' Says Samsung Exec.

An anonymous reader shares a report: LinkedIn is using its users' data for improving the social network's generative AI products, but has not yet updated its terms of service to reflect this data processing, according to posts from various LinkedIn users and a statement from the company to 404 Media. Instead, the company says it will update its terms "shortly." The move is unusual in that LinkedIn appears to have gone ahead with training AI on its users' data, even creating a new option in its settings, without updating its terms of service, which is traditionally one of the main documents that can explain how users' data is collected or used.

YouTube has announced a series of AI-related features on the platform, including a couple that might change how creators make videos -- and the videos they make. From a report: The first feature is the new Inspiration tab in the YouTube Studio app, which YouTube has been testing in a limited way over the last few months. The tab's job is, essentially, to tell you what to make: the AI-powered tool will suggest a concept for a video, provide a title and a thumbnail, and even write an outline and the first few lines of the video for you. YouTube frames it as a helpful brainstorming tool but also acknowledges that you can use it to build out entire projects. And I'm just guessing here, but I'd bet those AI-created ideas are going to be pretty darn good at gaming the YouTube algorithm.

Once you have some AI inspiration, you can make some AI videos with Veo, the superpowerful DeepMind video model that is now being integrated into YouTube Shorts. Veo is mostly going to be part of the "Dream Screen" feature YouTube has been working on, which is an extension of the green screen concept but with AI-generated backgrounds of all sorts. You'll also be able to make full Veo videos, too, but only with clips up to six seconds long. (After a few seconds, AI video tends to get... really weird.)

The entertainment company behind "The Hunger Games" and "Twilight" plans to start using generative AI in the creation of its new movies and TV shows, a sign of the emerging technology's advance in Hollywood. From a report: Lions Gate Entertainment has agreed to give Runway, one of several fast-evolving AI startups, access to its content library in exchange for a new, custom AI model that the studio can use in the editing and production process.

The deal -- the first of its kind for Runway and one that could become a blueprint in the entertainment industry -- comes as creatives, actors and studio executives debate whether to use the new technology and how to protect their copyright material. Advocates say generative AI can enhance creators' work and help a cash-strapped industry save time and money. Michael Burns, vice chairman of Lionsgate Studio, expects the company to be able to save "millions and millions of dollars" from using the new model. The studio behind the "John Wick" franchise and "Megalopolis" plans to initially use the new AI tool for internal purposes like storyboarding -- laying out a series of graphics to show how a story unfolds -- and eventually creating backgrounds and special effects, like explosions, for the big screen.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CBC News: Inside a bustling unit at St. Michael's Hospital in downtown Toronto, one of Shirley Bell's patients was suffering from a cat bite and a fever, but otherwise appeared fine -- until an alert from an AI-based early warning system showed he was sicker than he seemed. While the nursing team usually checked blood work around noon, the technology flagged incoming results several hours beforehand. That warning showed the patient's white blood cell count was "really, really high," recalled Bell, the clinical nurse educator for the hospital's general medicine program. The cause turned out to be cellulitis, a bacterial skin infection. Without prompt treatment, it can lead to extensive tissue damage, amputations and even death. Bell said the patient was given antibiotics quickly to avoid those worst-case scenarios, in large part thanks to the team's in-house AI technology, dubbed Chartwatch. "There's lots and lots of other scenarios where patients' conditions are flagged earlier, and the nurse is alerted earlier, and interventions are put in earlier," she said. "It's not replacing the nurse at the bedside; it's actually enhancing your nursing care."

A year-and-a-half-long study on Chartwatch, published Monday in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, found that use of the AI system led to a striking 26 percent drop in the number of unexpected deaths among hospitalized patients. The research team looked at more than 13,000 admissions to St. Michael's general internal medicine ward -- an 84-bed unit caring for some of the hospital's most complex patients -- to compare the impact of the tool among that patient population to thousands of admissions into other subspecialty units. "At the same time period in the other units in our hospital that were not using Chartwatch, we did not see a change in these unexpected deaths," said lead author Dr. Amol Verma, a clinician-scientist at St. Michael's, one of three Unity Health Toronto hospital network sites, and Temerty professor of AI research and education in medicine at University of Toronto. "That was a promising sign."

The Unity Health AI team started developing Chartwatch back in 2017, based on suggestions from staff that predicting deaths or serious illness could be key areas where machine learning could make a positive difference. The technology underwent several years of rigorous development and testing before it was deployed in October 2020, Verma said. Dr. Amol Verma, a clinician-scientist at St. Michael's Hospital who helped lead the creation and testing of CHARTwatch, stands at a computer. "Chartwatch measures about 100 inputs from [a patient's] medical record that are currently routinely gathered in the process of delivering care," he explained. "So a patient's vital signs, their heart rate, their blood pressure ... all of the lab test results that are done every day." Working in the background alongside clinical teams, the tool monitors any changes in someone's medical record "and makes a dynamic prediction every hour about whether that patient is likely to deteriorate in the future," Verma told CBC News.

Google said in a blog post today it will begin labeling AI-generated and AI-edited image search results later this year. Digital Trends reports: The company will flag such content through the "About this image" window and it will be applied to Search, Google Lens, and Android's Circle to Search features. Google is also applying the technology to its ad services and is considering adding a similar flag to YouTube videos, but will "have more updates on that later in the year," per the announcement post.

Google will rely on Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA) metadata to identify AI-generated images. That's an industry group Google joined as a steering committee member earlier in the year. This "C2PA metadata" will be used to track the image's provenance, identifying when and where an image was created, as well as the equipment and software used in its generation.

Mozilla is exiting the fediverse by shutting down its Mozilla.social Mastodon server on December 17. Moving forward, the company will focus on Firefox and AI, aligning with its strategy under interim CEO Laura Chambers to scale back investments in non-core products. TechCrunch reports: Mozilla.social was a small instance, having only 270 active users at the time of Tuesday's announcement. By comparison, the most popular Mastodon instance, Mastodon.social, has over 247,500 monthly active users. Mozilla had telegraphed its plans to scale back on its fediverse investments earlier this year after the CEO stepped down. At the time, Mozilla board member Laura Chambers took over the job as the interim CEO of Mozilla Corporation through the end of 2024. Shortly after the change in leadership, Mozilla said it would refocus its product strategy around Firefox and AI and significantly scale back or even shutter other efforts. Among those products affected by the pullback were its VPN, Relay, and Online Footprint Scrubber, in addition to its Mastodon instance, the company said at the time. Meanwhile, its virtual world Hubs was shut down.

The redirection of Mozilla's efforts came after its flagship product, the Firefox web browser, spent years losing market share. That left room for other competitors, like the startup Arc, to take hold in the alternative browser market. Months prior to this change in strategy, Mozilla had been touting the fediverse's potential, but under Chambers, the company said that a more "modest approach" to the fediverse would have allowed it to participate with "greater agility." In an internal memo, Mozilla signaled that going forward, a "much smaller team" would participate in the Mastodon ecosystem. However, it didn't say at the time that the Mozilla.social instance would shut down, adding that it would continue to bring small experiments to those who participated on its instance. Mozilla said it was a "hard decision."

"Thank you for being part of the Mozilla.social community and providing feedback during our closed beta. You can continue to use Mozilla.social until December 17," a post on Mastodon reads. Users can download their data or migrate their accounts at the respective links.

Salesforce is unveiling a pivot in its AI strategy this week at its annual Dreamforce conference, now saying that its AI tools can handle tasks without human supervision and changing the way it charges for software. From a report: The company is famous for ushering in the era of software as a service, which involves renting access to computer applications via a subscription. But as generative AI shakes up the industry, Salesforce is rethinking its business model for the emerging technology. The software giant will charge $2 per conversation held by its new "agents" -- generative AI built to handle tasks like customer service or scheduling sales meetings without the need for human supervision.

The new pricing strategy also seeks to protect Salesforce if AI contributes to future job losses and business customers have fewer workers to buy subscriptions to the company's software. Salesforce is even leaning into the employee-replacement potential of the new technology. Its new AI agents will let companies increase their workforce capacity during busy periods without having to hire additional full-time employees or "gig workers," Chief Executive Officer Marc Benioff said Tuesday during a keynote speech at the company's annual Dreamforce conference.

An anonymous reader shares a report: September has been a big month for desktop hypervisors, with the field's big players all delivering significant updates. Oracle delivered VirtualBox version 7.1, billed as a major upgrade thanks to its implementation of a UI with a "modernized look and feel, offering a selection between Basic and Experienced user level with reduced or full UI functionality."

[...] Parallels also released a desktop hypervisor update last week. Version 20 of the eponymous tool now offers a VM that's packed with tools developers may find handy as they work on generative AI applications. Among those tools are the Docker community edition, lmutils, the OpenCV computer vision library, and the Ollama chatbot interface for AI models. [...] The other big player in desktop hypervisors is VMware, with its Fusion and Workstation products for macOS and Windows respectively. Both were recently updated.

China's internet regulator has proposed a strict regime that will, if adopted, require digital platforms to label content created by AI. From a report: The Cyberspace Administration of China announced its draft plan, which will require platforms and online service providers to label all AI-generated material with a visible logo and with metadata embedded in relevant files. The draft proposes that logos appear in several locations in a text, image, video, or audio file. In audio files, Beijing wants a voice prompt to inform listeners about AI-generated content at the start and end of a file -- and, as appropriate, mid-file too. Software that plays audio files will also need to inform netizens when they tune in to AI content.

Video players can get away with just posting notices about the content at the start, end, and relevant moments during a clip. Netizens who post AI-generated content will be required to label it as such. If they use generation tools provided by a platform, they'll be required to identify themselves -- and a log of their activities will be retained for six months. Some labels denoting AI-made content will be applied dynamically, based on metadata embedded in AI-generated content.

Google's philanthropic arm is partially funding a new initiative that "aims to deploy more than 50 small satellites in low-Earth orbit to pinpoint flare-ups as small as a classroom anywhere in the world," reports Ars Technica. From the report: The FireSat constellation, managed by a nonprofit called Earth Fire Alliance (EFA), will be the first satellite fleet dedicated to detecting and tracking wildfires. Google announced a fresh investment of $13 million in the FireSat constellation Monday, building on the tech giant's previous contributions to support the development of custom infrared sensors for the FireSat satellites. Google's funding commitment will maintain the schedule for the launch of the first FireSat pathfinder satellite next year, EFA said. The first batch of satellites to form an operational constellation could launch in 2026.

The FireSat satellites will be built by Muon Space, a California-based satellite manufacturing startup. Each of the Muon Space-built microsatellites will have six-band multispectral infrared instruments, eyeing a swath of Earth some 900 miles (1,500 kilometers) wide, to pinpoint hotspots from wildfires. The satellites will have the sensitivity to find wildfires as small as 16 by 16 feet (5 by 5 meters). The network will use Google AI to rapidly compare observations ofany area of this size with previous imagery to determine if there is a fire, according to Google. AI will also take into account factors like nearby infrastructure and local weather in each fire assessment.

Google said it validated its detection model for smaller fires and established a baseline dataset for the AI by flying sensors over controlled burns. FireSat's partners announced the constellation in May after five years of development. The Environmental Defense Fund, the Moore Foundation, and the Minderoo Foundation also support the FireSat program. After detecting a wildfire, it's crucial for FireSat to quickly disseminate the location and size of a fire to emergency responders. With the first three satellites, the FireSat constellation will observe every point on Earth at least twice per day. "At full capability with 50+ satellites, the revisit times for most of the globe improve to 20 minutes, with the most wildfire-prone regions benefitting from sampling intervals as short as nine minutes," Muon Space said in a statement. "Today's announcement marks a significant milestone and step towards transforming the way we interact with fire," Earth Fire Alliance said in a statement. "As fires become more intense, and spread faster, we believe radical collaboration is key to driving much needed innovation in fire management and climate action."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: Scientists who helped pioneer artificial intelligence are warning that countries must create a global system of oversight to check the potentially grave risks posed by the fast-developing technology. The release of ChatGPT and a string of similar services that can create text and images on command have shown how A.I. is advancing in powerful ways. The race to commercialize the technology has quickly brought it from the fringes of science to smartphones, cars and classrooms, and governments from Washington to Beijing have been forced to figure out how to regulate and harness it. In a statement on Monday, a group of influential A.I. scientists raised concerns that the technology they helped build could cause serious harm. They warned that A.I. technology could, within a matter of years, overtake the capabilities of its makers and that "loss of human control or malicious use of these A.I. systems could lead to catastrophic outcomes for all of humanity."

If A.I. systems anywhere in the world were to develop these abilities today, there is no plan for how to rein them in, said Gillian Hadfield, a legal scholar and professor of computer science and government at Johns Hopkins University. "If we had some sort of catastrophe six months from now, if we do detect there are models that are starting to autonomously self-improve, who are you going to call?" Dr. Hadfield said. On Sept. 5-8, Dr. Hadfield joined scientists from around the world in Venice to talk about such a plan. It was the third meeting of the International Dialogues on A.I. Safety, organized by the Safe AI Forum, a project of a nonprofit research group in the United States called Far.AI. Governments need to know what is going on at the research labs and companies working on A.I. systems in their countries, the group said in its statement. And they need a way to communicate about potential risks that does not require companies or researchers to share proprietary information with competitors. The group proposed that countries set up A.I. safety authorities to register the A.I. systems within their borders. Those authorities would then work together to agree on a set of red lines and warning signs, such as if an A.I. system could copy itself or intentionally deceive its creators. This would all be coordinated by an international body.

Among the signatories was Yoshua Bengio, whose work is so often cited that he is called one of the godfathers of the field. There was Andrew Yao, whose course at Tsinghua University in Beijing has minted the founders of many of China's top tech companies. Geoffrey Hinton, a pioneering scientist who spent a decade at Google, participated remotely. All three are winners of the Turing Award, the equivalent of the Nobel Prize for computing. The group also included scientists from several of China's leading A.I. research institutions, some of which are state-funded and advise the government. A few former government officials joined, including Fu Ying, who had been a Chinese foreign ministry official and diplomat, and Mary Robinson, the former president of Ireland. Earlier this year, the group met in Beijing, where they briefed senior Chinese government officials on their discussion.

Intel shares surged 8% after announcing plans to make its foundry business an independent unit with its own board and potential for outside capital, part of CEO Pat Gelsinger's strategy to restructure the company amid financial challenges. The company is also exploring the possibility of spinning off the foundry business, pausing some European manufacturing projects, and expanding its AI chip production partnership with Amazon Web Services to regain market share in the growing AI server chip industry. CNBC reports: As part of CEO Pat Gelsinger's effort to turn around the struggling chipmaker, Intel said in a memo to employees that it will also sell off part of its stake in Altera. Gelsinger said the restructuring would allow the foundry business to "evaluate independent sources of funding,â and comes days after Intel's board met to assess the direction and future of the company. The foundry business, which Intel plans to use to manufacture chips for other customers, has been a big drag on its bottom line, with the company spending roughly $25 billion on it in each of the last two years. Beyond just considering outside funding, Intel is weighing whether to spin off the foundry business, possibly into a separate publicly traded company, according to a person with knowledge of the matter who declined to be named in order to discuss confidential information. With a standalone "operating board" and a cleaner corporate structure, the mechanics of a separation become far easier than trying to turn a fully integrated unit into a separate company. [...] Intel will also pause its fabrication efforts in Poland and Germany "by approximately two years based on anticipated market demand," Gelsinger said, and pull back on its plans for its Malaysian factory. U.S. manufacturing projects will remain unaffected, the company said.

In addition to the foundry announcement, Intel said it entered into a deal with Amazon Web Services to produce custom chips for AI, extending a long-running partnership between the two companies. Amazon is a big customer of Intel chips to power its AWS servers, and will buy a custom Xeon processor from Intel as well, Intel said. The move will potentially give Intel a new foothold in the growing industry for AI server chips. While Intel has several products that can be used for AI, including Gaudi 3, Nvidia has largely taken control of the market. Amazon has been developing its own AI chips, including one called Trainium, for over five years. Microsoft and Google have also invested heavily in custom chips to run AI, aiming to offer less expensive processors than Nvidia's general-purpose graphics processing units. Intel said that it would carry out its most advanced manufacturing, including the AI chip for AWS, at its plant in Ohio that's currently under construction. "All eyes will remain on us," Gelsinger said. "We need to fight for every inch and execute better than ever before. Because that's the only way to quiet our critics and deliver the results we know we're capable of achieving."

Oracle cofounder Larry Ellison envisions AI as the backbone of a new era of mass surveillance, positioning Oracle as a key player in AI infrastructure through its unique networking architecture and partnerships with AWS and Microsoft. The Register reports: Ellison made the comments near the end of an hour-long chat at the Oracle financial analyst meeting last week during a question and answer session in which he painted Oracle as the AI infrastructure player to beat in light of its recent deals with AWS and Microsoft. Many companies, Ellison touted, build AI models at Oracle because of its "unique networking architecture," which dates back to the database era.

"AI is hot, and databases are not," he said, making Oracle's part of the puzzle less sexy, but no less important, at least according to the man himself - AI systems have to have well-organized data, or else they won't be that valuable. The fact that some of the biggest names in cloud computing (and Elon Musk's Grok) have turned to Oracle to run their AI infrastructure means it's clear that Oracle is doing something right, claimed now-CTO Ellison. "If Elon and Satya [Nadella] want to pick us, that's a good sign - we have tech that's valuable and differentiated," Ellison said, adding: One of the ideal uses of that differentiated offering? Maximizing AI's pubic security capabilities.

"The police will be on their best behavior because we're constantly watching and recording everything that's going on," Ellison told analysts. He described police body cameras that were constantly on, with no ability for officers to disable the feed to Oracle. Even requesting privacy for a bathroom break or a meal only meant sections of recording would require a subpoena to view - not that the video feed was ever stopped. AI would be trained to monitor officer feeds for anything untoward, which Ellison said could prevent abuse of police power and save lives. [...] "Citizens will be on their best behavior because we're constantly recording and reporting," Ellison added, though it's not clear what he sees as the source of those recordings - police body cams or publicly placed security cameras. "There are so many opportunities to exploit AI," he said.

AI pioneers have issued a stark warning about the technology's potential risks, calling for urgent global oversight. At a recent meeting in Venice, scientists from around the world discussed the need for a coordinated international response to AI safety concerns. The group proposed establishing national AI safety authorities to monitor and register AI systems, which would collaborate to define red flags such as self-replication or intentional deception capabilities. The report adds: Scientists from the United States, China, Britain, Singapore, Canada and elsewhere signed the statement. Among the signatories was Yoshua Bengio, whose work is so often cited that he is called one of the godfathers of the field. There was Andrew Yao, whose course at Tsinghua University in Beijing has minted the founders of many of China's top tech companies. Geoffrey Hinton, a pioneering scientist who spent a decade at Google, participated remotely. All three are winners of the Turing Award, the equivalent of the Nobel Prize for computing. The group also included scientists from several of China's leading A.I. research institutions, some of which are state-funded and advise the government. A few former government officials joined, including Fu Ying, who had been a Chinese foreign ministry official and diplomat, and Mary Robinson, the former president of Ireland. Earlier this year, the group met in Beijing, where they briefed senior Chinese government officials on their discussion.

Microsoft has abandoned plans to overhaul its Edge browser interface, scrapping the design choice unveiled in February 2023. The redesign -- featuring a sleeker look with rounded tab buttons and increased blur effects -- aimed to give Edge a distinct identity as the company pushed into AI services. The new design never officially launched and the company has no intention to launch it later, according to Microsoft-focused news outlet Windows Central.

A Microsoft spokesperson confirmed to Windows Central that the company is moving away from the rounded tabs concept. Some elements of the redesign will remain, including webpage borders and a repositioned user button, but the majority of the proposed changes have been shelved. The decision marks a retreat from Microsoft's efforts to visually differentiate Edge from Google Chrome and align it with Windows 11's design language.

In 2015 Amazon purchased chip designer Annapurna Labs, remembers IEEE Spectrum, "and proceeded to design CPUs, AI accelerators, servers, and data centers as a vertically-integrated operation."

The article argues that while AMD, Nvidia, and other big-name processor companies may also want to control the full stack (purchasing server, software, and interconnect companies) — Amazon Web Services "got there ahead of most of the competition." (IEEE Spectrum interviews Ali Saidi, technical lead for the AWS Graviton series of CPUs, and Rami Sinno, director of engineering at Annapurna Labs, on "the advantage of vertically-integrated design — and Amazon-scale...") Sinno: I was working at Arm, and I was looking for the next adventure, looking at where the industry is heading and what I want my legacy to be. I looked at two things: One is vertically integrated companies, because this is where most of the innovation is — the interesting stuff is happening when you control the full hardware and software stack and deliver directly to customers.

And the second thing is, I realized that machine learning, AI in general, is going to be very, very big. I didn't know exactly which direction it was going to take, but I knew that there is something that is going to be generational, and I wanted to be part of that. I already had that experience prior when I was part of the group that was building the chips that go into the Blackberries; that was a fundamental shift in the industry. That feeling was incredible, to be part of something so big, so fundamental. And I thought, "Okay, I have another chance to be part of something fundamental."

[...] At the end of the day, our responsibility is to deliver complete servers in the data center directly for our customers. And if you think from that perspective, you'll be able to optimize and innovate across the full stack. It might not be at the transistor level or at the substrate level or at the board level. It could be something completely different. It could be purely software. And having that knowledge, having that visibility, will allow the engineers to be significantly more productive and delivery to the customer significantly faster. We're not going to bang our head against the wall to optimize the transistor where three lines of code downstream will solve these problems, right...?

We've had very good luck with recent college grads. Recent college grads, especially the past couple of years, have been absolutely phenomenal. I'm very, very pleased with the way that the education system is graduating the engineers and the computer scientists that are interested in the type of jobs that we have for them.
It's an interesting glimpse into the unique world of designing chips at Amazon.

Graviton technical lead Saidi: I've been here about seven and a half years. When I joined AWS, I joined a secret project at the time. I was told: "We're going to build some Arm servers. Tell no one...

"In chip design, there are many different competing optimization points. You have all of these conflicting requirements, you have cost, you have scheduling, you've got power consumption, you've got size, what DRAM technologies are available and when you're going to intersect them... It ends up being this fun, multifaceted optimization problem to figure out what's the best thing that you can build in a timeframe. And you need to get it right."

Google's describes their new Gemini-powered foldable phone as "an epic display of Google AI" (also calling it "unfoldgettable").

The Android Authority blog says the phone is "impressive," "incredibly thin" — and, at $1,800, expensive.

But long-time Slashdot reader mprindle notes some complaints from the YouTube channel JerryRigEverything ("known for in-depth testing of phones and other devices".) The blog 9to5Google summarizes some of the video's findings: - When exposed to dirt and sand, we hear the hinge start grinding since there's no dust protection...

- A closed bend test reveals no problems for the Pixel 9 Pro Fold, but the issues arise when it's open and bent from the back. Despite the left/right back panels meeting and covering the spine of the hinge, "there doesn't appear to be a whole lot of resistance."
"Not sure why Google thought it was a good idea to put an antenna line right here at the weakest point in an already thin frame," the video notes (arguing it's "like putting an exhaust port in the Death Star...")

But they also tell their 8.8 million subscribers that "One cool thing that Google has done is that they've made every single part of this metal frame from recycled aluminum." And "Out of the box, I'm already a huge fan of how it looks," the video begins. "It feels amazing, and folds completely shut and appears like the hardware has finally caught up to the folding form factor to where it looks just natural."

One thing to note... "Moving to the inner display, I start to get the vibe that when Google says 'super durable', they mean 'regular durable', since the inner display is made from the same soft flexible plastic that we've seen on every folding phone so far, which scratches at level two. Even fingernails can leave very permanent marks on the center screen. This is absolutely normal for a folding phone, though, and really not too big of a deal if you take care it, making sure there are no bits of dust or dirt in the screen when you close it will go a long way to keeping things pristine, since there's not a lot of room between the two halves."

iFixit makes an interesting observation: "Over half of the phone's internal area is occupied by the lithium polymer battery cells!" (They've also created another teardown video available on YouTube.)

"There's no denying that the inner screens are delicate and prone to damage," according to an accompanying iFixit blog post, "and the mechanical nature of the hinge mechanism provides additional avenues for dust and liquid ingress that may eventually become a problem."

But it also applauds "the less obvious repairability wins, from repair guides and a detailed Bill of Materials to spare parts that are available without malicious restrictions... [T]he Pixel team has gone to great lengths to support your right to repair the device you paid for and own" — and from Day One. There's really only a single criticism I'd direct at the Pixel 9 Fold from my own disassembly experience: the battery removal tabs. These tabs simply do not work, with or without the application of heat. They are flimsy and break often, require a second pair of hands to secure the device, and they fail to cut through adhesive reliably. Whether they should even try to cut through adhesive is debatable. Stretch release adhesive might age and break over time but at least they give you a chance at removing the adhesive. Pull tabs don't even work when the adhesive is brand new, they literally have no redeeming qualities when compared to other battery release mechanisms. Even the more robust pull tabs Samsung uses in its phones work better than this, though they aren't necessarily the easiest to use either.

As for the device itself, it prompted one of my colleagues — an iPhone user since forever — to say "this is nice, I'd switch to Android for this"... Setting aside the downsides of owning a foldable smartphone, I am excited to see Google and the Pixel team devoting so much time and energy towards improving the overall repairability of the device. The effort is seen and appreciated by device owners and as a technician, I look forward to seeing how manufacturers will continue to innovate for repairability.
Slashdot reader mprindle reminds us that when it comes to waterproofing, the JerryRigEverything video "noted that the footnotes say the device is rated IP68 yet the Sim tray is rated at IPx8."

Wired published some thoughts from Hans Peter Brondmo, the former head of "Google's seven-year mission to give AI a robot body".

An anonymous reader shared this report from Axios: Building AI-powered robots that can flexibly operate in the real world is going to take much longer than Silicon Valley believes and promises, according to the former head of Google's robotics moonshot project, writing in Wired...

Everyday Robotics spent seven years and a small Google fortune developing a one-armed robot on a wheeled platform. By the time Google pulled the plug on the project in February 2023, the robots were helping clean up researchers' desks and sorting trash during the daytime; in the evening, they were improvising dances. [Google hired a professional dancer as an artist-in-residence who teamed with "a few other engineers" to build an AI algorithm trained on the dancer's choreography preferences...]

Google founder Larry Page — favored moving directly to "end to end" (e2e) learning, where you'd hand robots a general task and they'd be able to figure out how to execute it. That, Page felt, was a goal worthy of a moonshot. But it also turned out to be out of reach. "I have come to believe," Brondmo writes, "it will take many, many thousands, maybe even millions of robots doing stuff in the real world to collect enough data to train e2e models that make the robots do anything other than fairly narrow, well-defined tasks...." ["Building robots that perform useful services — like cleaning up and wiping all the tables in a restaurant, or making the beds in a hotel — will require both AI and traditional programming for a long time to come. In other words, don't expect robots to go running off outside our control, doing something they weren't programmed to do, anytime soon."]

The bottom line: So far, robot hype is outpacing robot reality. Boston Dynamics' back-flipping humanoid and quadruped bots have wowed YouTube viewers — but you wouldn't want to let them anywhere near your office or home.
It's an interesting look back. "My job: help figure out what to do with the employees and technology left over from nine robot companies that Google had acquired," Brondmo writes: Andy "the father of Android" Rubin, who had previously been in charge, had suddenly left. Larry Page and Sergey Brin kept trying to offer guidance and direction during occasional flybys in their "spare time...." I knew from firsthand experience how hard it was to build a company that, in Steve Jobs' famous words, could put a dent in the universe, and I believed that Google was the right place to make certain big bets. AI-powered robots, the ones that will live and work alongside us one day, was one such audacious bet.

Eight and a half years later — and 18 months after Google decided to discontinue its largest bet in robotics and AI — it seems as if a new robotics startup pops up every week. I am more convinced than ever that the robots need to come. Yet I have concerns that Silicon Valley, with its focus on "minimum viable products" and VCs' general aversion to investing in hardware, will be patient enough to win the global race to give AI a robot body. And much of the money that is being invested is focusing on the wrong things...

When I arrived, the lab had already hatched Waymo, Google Glass, and other science-fiction-sounding projects like flying energy windmills and stratospheric balloons that would provide internet access to the underserved... [But] in January 2023, two months after OpenAI introduced ChatGPT, Google shut down Everyday Robots, citing overall cost concerns. The robots and a small number of people eventually landed at Google DeepMind to conduct research. In spite of the high cost and the long timeline, everyone involved was shocked.
They'd tackled the problem with earnestness. ("[S]even robots working for months to learn how to pick up a rubber duckling? That wasn't going to cut it... So we built a cloud-based simulator and, in 2021, created more than 240 million robot instances in the sim.ma")

Brondmo adds this his mother had advanced Parkinson's disease, and hoped that one day robots could support her. "Our frequent conversations toward the end of her life convinced me more than ever that a future version of what we started at Everyday Robots will be coming. In fact, it can't come soon enough.

"So the question we are left to ponder becomes: How does this kind of change and future happen? I remain curious, and concerned."

"A two-day AI Labor Summit between AFL-CIO leaders and Microsoft executives this week reflects the tech giant's revamped approach to unions," writes GeekWire, "which includes a pledge by the company to incorporate feedback from labor unions and their members into the development of artificial intelligence."

But just two days later, "Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer announced it was game over for the jobs of another 650 Microsoft staffers (on top of an earlier 1,900 employee staff reduction)," writes long-time Slashdot reader theodp, "cuts that Spencer made clear were related to Microsoft's $69B acquisition of Activision Blizzard in 2023." Interestingly, Microsoft's Smith in October 2023 affirmed a "groundbreaking neutrality agreement" with the Communications Workers of America union (CWA) — designed to go into effect if Microsoft was successful in its acquisition of Activision Blizzard — in which Microsoft acknowledged the rights of its employees to unionize and pledged to work constructively with any who did. At the same time, Microsoft made it clear that it hoped its employees wouldn't feel the need to form or join unions, saying they would "never need to organize to have a dialogue with Microsoft's leaders."

In July 2023, the AFL-CIO applauded Microsoft's Activision Blizzard acquisition and the Microsoft-CWA agreement, which AFL-CIO union federation president Liz Shuler said "sets a new standard for respecting workers' rights in the video game industry and the larger technology sector." And in December 2023, Shuler thanked Smith for Microsoft's "absolutely historic partnership" on AI and the Future of the Workforce, which Shuler suggested "can be mutually beneficial for workers, for businesses, and for our country as a whole."
Thursday the CWA union issued critical remarks about the layoffs at Microsoft Gaming (which were later retweeted by the @AFLCIO Twitter account).

"While we would hope that a company like Microsoft with $88 billion in profits last year could achieve 'long-term success' without destroying the livelihoods of 650 of our colleagues, heartless layoffs like these have become all too common."