Leftovers

• New Statesman ☛ The exploration of Sly Stone’s genius

  Sly and the Family Stone achieved unprecedented success in the late Sixties, with number one records, a star turn at Woodstock, a cover on Rolling Stone magazine. Sly was not just a musical genius but a progressive mastermind, insisting that the band be multi-racial and made up of both men and women. Everything about them embodied the notion of inclusivity, of reaching towards a better world in which – without wanting to sound too blandly idealistic – all people could get along together. In a song like “Everyday People”, he made the impossible sound easy.

• Rolling Stone ☛ Questlove on Sly Stone — and His Upcoming Earth, Wind and Fire Doc

  Questlove defends the “audacity” Maria Shriver showed — in an old interview that’s central to his film — by trying to get Sly Stone to acknowledge he “blew it” in letting drugs derail his career. “I won’t lie to you, I’m jealous at her audacity to ask that question,” Questlove says. “I knew this project was not the Sly Stone story. My intent was always to use Sly Stone to tell our story, my story, D’Angelo’s story, Lauryn Hill‘s story, Frank Ocean’s story… When you’re talking about blowing it, a lot of times, the fear of failing or the fear of returning to where you came from — which is the very bottom — causes you anxiety about your future, and then causes you to fumble it… That context is not brought up in Maria Shriver’s question. So it’s rather unfair for him to get ambushed with that question, but yes, on a technicality, he did blow it.”

• Science

  • Digital Camera World ☛ The car-sized camera that can see a golf ball from 15 miles away is nearly ready to start taking epic images of the galaxy | Digital Camera World

    The LSST camera completed construction in April of 2024, but moving the world’s largest digital camera (which weighs over 3,000 kilograms / 6,000 pounds) proved to be a long and complex process.

    Bringing the camera from where it was manufactured, in California, to the observatory in Chile required a chartering 747 airplane to bring the camera along with ten truckloads of gear to the facility. The camera then underwent months of testing in a clean room at the observatory. In March 2025, the crew lifted the camera into place on the SImonyi Survey Telescope, bringing the camera’s nearly 20-year-long development to near conclusion.

  • Noë Flatreaud ☛ Happy Pi (π) day | Noë Flatreaud

    Every year on March 14 — Albert Einstein’s birthday — math lovers can raise a piece of pie to Pi (π) Day, an international celebration of one of math’s most famous constants: the irrational, never-ending number π.

  • Futurism ☛ The Biggest Technological Development in Human History Happened All Across the World Around the Same Time, by Groups of People With Zero Contact With One Another

    Around the world, on separate continents that had no contact with each other, multiple groups of ancient humans invented farming more or less simultaneously — and scientists still don't know how or why.

  • Wired ☛ Undergraduate Upends a 40-Year-Old Data Science Conjecture

    The paper’s title, “Tiny Pointers,” referred to arrowlike entities that can direct you to a piece of information, or element, in a computer’s memory. Krapivin soon came up with a potential way to further miniaturize the pointers so they consumed less memory. However, to achieve that, he needed a better way of organizing the data that the pointers would point to.

    He turned to a common approach for storing data known as a hash table. But in the midst of his tinkering, Krapivin realized that he had invented a new kind of hash table, one that worked faster than expected—taking less time and fewer steps to find specific elements.

• Career/Education

  • University of Michigan ☛ From The Daily Weekly: UMich receives Antisemitism Warning, Plans a Satellite Launch and More.

  • Dave Stewart ☛ The work is never just “the work”

    Last year I took on what seemed like a short, easy-to-deliver project, which over the course of a year turned into a kind of “night of the living dead” slog, and because of a variety of factors, had never been easy to estimate.

    With the latest phase finally delivered, I wanted to conduct a detailed postmortem to understand why my perception of the actual work was so off, and in the process reevaluate everything I know about assumptions and estimation.

    In the rest of the article I’ll deep dive my own shortcomings around estimation, as well as present a framework to plan and visualise estimates, hopefully helping both of us clear those lurking feelings of confusion and guilt.

  • Wouter Groeneveld ☛ PKM Summit 2025 Notes

    Of course I took notes. This was the conference where everyone laughed at each other for taking notes. As soon as you noticed an inspiring speaker blurt out something that could be put down as a memorable quote, you could hear keyboards rattling, fingers tapping on phone screens, and pens scratching on paper. Speaking of which, it amazed me that the overwhelming majority of attendants were digital-only note-takers. I saw quite a few reMarkable devices as well, but us (fountain) pen and paper folks were clearly in the minority. That’s fine, I don’t mind. Unfortunately, none of the talks handled the subject of analogue note-taking or how to balance analogue/digital note systems. Perhaps next year it’s up to me to do something about that.

  • Sean Goedecke ☛ The good times in tech are over

    For most of the last decade, being a software engineer has been a lot of fun. Every company offered lots of perks, layoffs and firings were almost unheard of, and in general we were treated as special little geniuses who needed to be pampered so we could work our magic. That’s changed in the last two years. The first round of tech layoffs in 2023 came as a shock, but at least companies were falling over themselves to offer generous severance and teary CEO letters regretting the necessity. Two years later, Meta is explicitly branding its layoffs as “these were our lowest performers, good riddance”. What the hell happened?1 What does it mean for us?

• Hardware

  • Ruben Schade ☛ Finding invoices for our first family PC from 1992!

    Something happened to me on the weekend that I’m still coming to terms with! And now I get to share it with you.

    You all know by now my interest in retrocomputing; some may refer to as harbouring an obsession. Neither of you are wrong. Everything from this, to my literal current occupation, started with a budget 486 my dad brought home one day in 1992. He originally bought it to track family finances and word processing, but when I saw that glowing CRT in my dad’s study that fateful evening, I was captivated in a way I’d never felt before. I wanted to know everything about it: how it worked, how it was put together, how I could use it to make my own programs, and games, and everything. My retrocomputing hobby now is partly an attempt to reconnect with those original feelings of indescribable wonder and joy.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • New York Times ☛ We Were Badly Misled About Covid

    Five years after the start of Covid, we still don’t know the truth.

  • India Times ☛ As AI nurses reshape hospital care, human nurses are pushing back

    Hippocratic AI initially promoted a rate of $9 an hour for its AI assistants, compared with about $40 an hour for a registered nurse. It has since dropped that language, instead touting its services and seeking to assure customers that they have been carefully tested. The company did not grant requests for an interview.

    AI in the hospital can generate false alarms and dangerous advice Hospitals have been experimenting for years with technology designed to improve care and streamline costs, including sensors, microphones and motion-sensing cameras. Now that data is being linked with electronic medical records and analyzed in an effort to predict medical problems and direct nurses' care - sometimes before they've evaluated the patient themselves.

  • Futurism ☛ Human Intelligence Sharply Declining

    No, it's not just you — people really are less smart than they used to be.

    As the Financial Times reports, assessments show that people across age groups are having trouble concentrating and losing reasoning, problem-solving, and information-processing skills — all facets of the hard-to-measure metric that "intelligence" is supposed to measure.

  • Science Alert ☛ Cannabis Use Linked to Epigenetic Changes, Scientists Find

    "We observed associations between cumulative marijuana use and multiple epigenetic markers across time," explained epidemiologist Lifang Hou from Northwestern University when the research was published in 2023.

  • Yordi Verkroost ☛ Lost in Work

    Hmm, yeah. Life is strange sometimes. The answers don't grow on trees; they seem to be buried deep underground. It just takes the courage to start digging.

• Proprietary

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI)

    • Wired ☛ An AI Coding Assistant Refused to Write Code—and Suggested the User Learn to Do It Himself

      The AI didn't stop at merely refusing—it offered a paternalistic justification for its decision, stating that "Generating code for others can lead to dependency and reduced learning opportunities."

    • Pivot to AI ☛ CJR: LLMs are still really bad search engines

      Across all bots, over 60% of answers were wrong. Perplexity was least-worst at 37% wrong, and Grok was 94% wrong.

      All the bots were very confident in their wrong answers. Paid bots were more confidently incorrect than the free ones.

    • CER ☛ How scientists learn computing and use LLMs to program: Computing education for scientists and for democracy | Computing Ed Research - Guzdial's Take

      I was impressed with how much effort the scientists that she studied put into checking what the LLMs produced. One scientist ran code in a familiar system to compare to the results generated by the LLM-generated code. They all wisely distrusted the LLM code, more than I usually see computer scientists (and especially computer science students) who may not check LLM-generated code.

      And yet, the LLMs still inserted bugs that the scientists missed. LLMs are absolutely nefarious in how and where they generate bugs. Elle raises the possibility that LLMs are having a negative influence on the scientific enterprise.

    • Declan Chidlow ☛ AI Model History is Being Lost

      I fear that we may lose – and are already losing – the modern history of AI, particularly with regard to the ability to use models that are/were only available in hosted capacities. As AI models are retired and become inaccessible, we’re losing crucial historical context about AI development that we will be unable to go back and reference in the future.

      This essay examines the disappearance of proprietary hosted AI models and the implications of that on research, accountability, and overall historical documentation and preservation.

    • [Old] UNICRI ☛ Algorithms and Terrorism: The Malicious Use of Artificial Intelligence for Terrorist Purposes

      Terrorists have been observed to be early adopters of emerging technologies, which tend to be under-regulated and under-governed, and AI is no exception. Given the international linkages and cross-border implications of many tech- nological systems, a regional and international approach becomes vital to ensure terrorists do not have the opportunity to exploit regulatory gaps that can expose vulnerabilities in AI systems. We need to build resilient governing structures that can quickly and effectively respond to and mitigate the impact of the malicious use of AI by terrorists.

      The United Nations is responding to this need with a wide array of initiatives. The Secretary-General’s Roadmap for Digital Cooperation sets “Supporting Global Cooperation on Artificial Intelligence” as one of the eight key areas for action. In line with this Roadmap, the United Nations Counter-Terrorism Centre in the United Nations Office of Counter-Terrorism is also responding to this challenge through its Global Counter-Terrorism Programme on Cybersecurity and New Technologies.

      This report developed jointly with the United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute should serve as an early warning for potential malicious uses and abuses of AI by terrorists and help the global community, industry and governments to proactively think about what we can do collectively to ensure new technologies are used to bring good and not harm.

    • Michal Pitr ☛ Paper Journal: Disaggragated Serving - by Michal Pitr

      DistServe tackles one of the most critical challenges in LLM deployment today: how to maintain consistent performance under high request loads. By disaggregating the prefill and decode stages of LLM inference, DistServe can satisfy the same Service Level Objectives (SLOs) at up to 7x higher request rates compared to traditional approaches.

      This innovation is particularly important for LLM API providers like Google or OpenAI, where predictable performance is essential for user experience.

      In this post, I’ll provide a short overview of generative LLM inference and go over DistServe’s internals.

    • Silicon Angle ☛ Baidu debuts its first AI reasoning model to compete with DeepSeek

      Now, it’s lifting the lid on Ernie X1, which it says delivers performance on par with DeepSeek R1 at just half the price of its rival. According to Reuters, it boasts “stronger understanding, planning, reflection and evolution capabilities,” and it’s also the first “deep-thinking” model that’s able to use independent tools autonomously.

    • Tom's Hardware ☛ China will enforce clear flagging of all AI generated content starting from September

      This regulation takes effect on September 1, 2025, and will compel all service providers (i.e., AI LLMs) to “add explicit labels to generated and synthesized content.” The directive includes all types of data: text, images, videos, audio, and even virtual scenes. Aside from that, it also orders app stores to verify whether the apps they host follow the regulations.

  • Windows TCO / Windows Bot Nets

    • Tom's Hardware ☛ Akira ransomware can be cracked with sixteen RTX 4090 GPUs in around ten hours — new counterattack breaks encryption

      Akira is a ransomware attack aimed at high-profile targets, first discovered in 2023 and known for ludicrously high ransom requests (sometimes reaching tens of millions of dollars). In 2023, Avast's Threat Research Team found the method Akira used to encrypt victim files, and published a free encryption breaker tool to free computers from the dreaded attack. Akira then patched this high-profile crack, adding some bespoke details to its originally publicly-available encryption methods.

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Court House News ☛ Federal judge considers blocking DOGE from accessing Social Security data of millions of Americans

      DOGE’s “nearly unlimited” access violates privacy laws and presents massive information security risks, they said. A recently departed Social Security official who saw the DOGE team sweep into the agency said she is deeply worried about sensitive information being exposed.

    • Don Marti ☛ privacy laws for slacker states

      A small business that operates purely locally can just do their thing. But if they already have some "your California privacy rights" feature or whatever, they just turn it on for this state too. Easier compliance project for the companies, better privacy for the users, no enforcement effort for the state, it’s a win-win-win. After all, state legislators don’t get paid by the page, and we each only get one set of carpal tunnels.

    • International Business Times ☛ Saudi Arabia Speeds Up Gaming Hub Vision As It Acquires 'Pokemon Go' Game Developer for £2.7 Billion

      In a detailed blog post, Scopely co-CEOs Javier Ferreira and Walter Driver underlined their unwavering commitment to expanding Niantic's beloved franchises. Their goal is to secure these games as 'forever games'—sustained by strong community support and ongoing development. Importantly, Niantic's popular live events, community-building apps, and real-world exploration features will remain a key focus under Scopely's management.

    • [Old] Signal ☛ Exploiting vulnerabilities in Cellebrite UFED and Physical Analyzer from an app's perspective

      Cellebrite makes software to automate physically extracting and indexing data from mobile devices. They exist within the grey – where enterprise branding joins together with the larcenous to be called “digital intelligence.” Their customer list has included authoritarian regimes in Belarus, Russia, Venezuela, and China; death squads in Bangladesh; military juntas in Myanmar; and those seeking to abuse and oppress in Turkey, UAE, and elsewhere. A few months ago, they announced that they added Signal support to their software.

    • Osservatorio Nessuno ☛ A deep dive into Cellebrite: Android support as of February 2025

      In the previous blog post, we summarized part of the Cellebrite product history, and grasped some insights on the market of surveillance software and equipment aimed at mobile forensics. In this blog post, we will explore the current unlocking capabilities, as per their February 2025 documentation distributed to customers. We’ll also introduce some concepts and terminology, and hint at basic mitigations, though proper follow up will come in subsequent posts.

      For a very detailed and insightful write-up to help understand Android encryption, read “Android Data Encryption in depth” by Quarkslab or watch the their RECON23 talk.

    • Osservatorio Nessuno ☛ A deep dive into Cellebrite: how it came to be

      Our recent interest in Cellebrite arises from two key developments. First, we have seen a surge of activists asking us to examine phones that were returned after being seized. Second, sources familiar with the matter have confirmed that, following the recent Paragon scandal in Italy, Cellebrite has attempted to reassess its customer vetting practices. However, particularly in Italy, there have been longstanding reports of erratic sales policies and practices. To understand this, let’s take a step back: companies like Cellebrite operate in a largely unregulated market. While their primary customers are law enforcement agencies, their target customer base extends to a wide range of private companies and individuals. This raises significant concerns, as some of these customers may be operating outside the law—yet, in most cases, there is no oversight to hold them accountable.

    • [Old] CNN ☛ Microsoft defends its right to read your email

      The company's ability -- and willingness -- to take such an approach became apparent this week. Microsoft (MSFT) admitted in federal court documents that it forced its way into a blogger's Hotmail account to track down and stop a potentially catastrophic leak of sensitive software. The company says its decision is justified.

    • The Verge ☛ Microsoft just exposed email’s ugliest secret | The Verge

      ""We may access or disclose information ... to protect the rights or property of Microsoft.""

      A close look at company privacy policies only underlines the fact. As Microsoft pointed out its initial statement, “Microsoft’s terms of service make clear our permission for this type of review.” Look at the company privacy policy, and you’ll see that’s true: “We may access or disclose information about you, including the content of your communications, in order to ... protect the rights or property of Microsoft.” That’s a straightforward description of what happened in the Hotmail case.

• Defence/Aggression

  • The Straits Times ☛ Separatist suicide attack in southwestern Pakistan kills at least five

    Separatist militants drove a vehicle laden with explosives into a paramilitary convoy, killing at least five in southwestern Pakistan, officials said on Sunday, just days after the same group hijacked a train and held hostages for 36 hours.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ How the far-right AfD creates divisions in German society

    But in our increasingly polarized world, this reputation has taken a hit. The willingness to compromise and come to agreements has declined, and the political mood is one of growing intransigence.

  • DaemonFC (Ryan Farmer) ☛ Republicans Re-Invent Soviet Psychiatric Abuse, Spread Measles, and Invoke Law Allowing Deportation of Americans.

    In other words, it was used as one of the government’s tools to crush dissent. If you spoke out against the Communist Party, they’d declare you insane, and your life would be ruined.

    So, essentially this is what’s happening in Minnesota. I don’t believe they can pass the bill there because they don’t control the state Senate, they have a 1 seat majority in the state House, and Governor Tim Walz, a Democrat, will veto it.

    However, it serves as a model bill to be introduced into other States so that the Republican Party can declare anyone who doesn’t like them to be “insane”.

  • Site36 ☛ Externalisation of migration: Fortress Europe now has a watch tower in Libya

    An EU-funded project is providing the Libyan coast guard with new capacities. After eight years and expenditure of almost €60 million, these should now be ready for use – at least in part.

  • New York Times ☛ Netanyahu Moves to Fire Israel’s Domestic Intelligence Chief

    The Israeli prime minister’s effort to remove the Shin Bet chief is raising concerns about whether he was seeking to undermine the agency’s independence.

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • RFERL ☛ Zelenskyy Shuffles Military Brass, While Moscow Presses Demand For 'Neutral' Ukraine

      Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy shook up his military leadership, replacing the chief of the General Staff, while a top Russian official said Moscow will insist Ukraine not be allowed to join NATO and remain “neutral” in any peace deal -- conditions Kyiv has long rejected.

    • Latvia ☛ Latvia provides reminder that Crimea is in Ukraine

      Latvia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs provided a clear reminder March 16 that it is eleven years since Russia staged an illegitimate 'referendum' in Crimea, part of Ukraine under occupation.

    • The Strategist ☛ In a divided world, momentum behind negotiations grows

      At a time of rising geopolitical tensions and deepening global fragmentation, the Ukraine war has proved particularly divisive.

    • France24 ☛ 'Coalition of the willing': UK hosts virtual summit while US talks with the Kremlin

      British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said on March 15 a so-called 'coalition of the willing' group of Western nations would draw up plans to help secure Ukraine 'on the land, at sea and in the sky' in the event of a peace deal with Russia.

    • JURIST ☛ Russia paramilitary unit leader sentenced to life for war crimes by Finland court

      The Helsinki District Court in Finland on Friday sentenced a 38-year-old man to life for committing war crimes in Ukraine. Voislav Torden, 38, Russian-Norwegian (better known as Yan Petrovskiy) was a deputy leader of a neo-Nazi paramilitary unit called Rusich, during Russia’s first attacks on Ukraine in 2014.

    • RFERL ☛ Russia, Ukraine Exchange Strikes As US, European Leaders Push For Cease-Fire

      France's president said Russia should not have a veto of any deployment of foreign peacekeepers to Ukraine as part of a cease-fire deal.

    • The Straits Times ☛ China’s Pooh-tin Jinping declines EU invitation to anniversary summit: News report

      Tensions between Brussels and Beijing have grown, with the EU accusing China of backing Russia in its war with Ukraine.

    • New York Times ☛ How Ukraine’s Offensive in Russia’s Kursk Region Unraveled

      At the height of the campaign, Ukrainian forces controlled some 500 square miles of Russian territory. Now they hold just a small sliver of land along the border.

    • New York Times ☛ Ukraine Retreats From Most of Russia’s Kursk Region

      The bold campaign Ukraine launched last summer to seize and occupy Russian territory appears to be nearing an end.

• Environment

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ Fog harvesting: How to get water from the clouds

    While it might restrict visibility, this misty mass also provides a solution to water shortages. How? It's harvested in the world's largest fog collection system.

  • Science Alert ☛ Microplastics Are Disrupting Photosynthesis, And The Impact Could Be Huge

    An international team of researchers analyzed data from 157 previous studies related to plastics and photosynthesis, using machine learning to build up an overall picture for the world as a whole – and the potential impact on crop growth and food supplies.

    Microplastic impacts varied across plant type and location, but average reductions in photosynthesis rates varied between 7.05 and 12.12 percent across terrestrial plants, marine algae, and freshwater algae. Levels of chlorophyll a, a pigment essential to photosynthesis, was also reduced in freshwater algae by up to 18.25 percent.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • Insight Hungary ☛ Orban promises crackdown on media and civil society, calls them stink bugs

    Hungary's far-right prime minister Viktor Orban vowed to crack down on those who are - according to him - funded by foreign actors, likening them to insects. "They've been here too long, they've been through too much, they've got money from too many places," the Hungarian leader said on Saturday, March 15, a national holiday commemorating the country's 1848 revolution against the Habsburgs.

    Orban gave one of his most controversial speeches yesterday when thousands of his supporters gathered to hear his words.  “After today’s festive gathering comes the Easter cleaning. The stink bugs have overwintered," the Hungarian PM said. “We will dismantle the financial machine that has used corrupt dollars to buy politicians, judges, journalists, pseudo-NGOs, and political activists. We will eliminate the entire shadow army.” Orban claimed the groups he mentioned wearing a "scarlet letter" and a "special place in hell awaits" for them. 

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • Doc Searls ☛ Gag of America

    As Scott Adams says, Facts don’t matter. What matters is how much we hate the person talking.

    The VOA isn’t one person. But it is a voice, and Trump and Lake clearly hate it.

    Now, two questions: [...]

  • Hindustan Times ☛ Donald Trump admin begins mass layoffs at Voice of America, other US-funded media

    The email, confirmed to AFP by several employees, told contractors that "you must cease all work immediately and are not permitted to access any agency buildings or systems."

    Contractors make up much of VOA's workforce and dominate staffing in the non-English language services, although recent figures were not immediately available.

    Many contractors are not US citizens, meaning they likely depend on their soon-to-disappear jobs for visas to stay in the United States.

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ Contributor: NPR faces a real threat in defunding fight that's coming

    During its 55-year history, NPR’s funding scares have come almost on schedule, heralded by the arrival of a new Republican administration (Ronald Reagan, 1981), a rightward shift in the Congress (Newt Gingrich, 1995) or a decision by network executives that angers conservatives (the firing of commentator Juan Williams, 2010).

    The previous threats have been serious, but none as serious as what’s unfolding now.

  • RFERL ☛ Thousands Of Hungarian Opposition Supporters Rally; PM Orban Vows Crackdown On Media

    The comments echoed earlier comments where Orban targeted NGOs and media who received funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development and billionaire George Soros.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • RFERL ☛ Dress Codes Tighten For Women In Turkmenistan, Where The State Tells You What To Wear

    The headscarf ruling, which comes on the back of several previous directives on women's appearance, has received a strong reaction privately.

    "When will this end? When will the humiliation of women's dignity end?" one Turkmen woman told RFE/RL's Turkmen Service, speaking anonymously for safety reasons. Female state employees have previously been forbidden from using makeup, wearing tight dresses, or dyeing their hair blonde, among other requirements.

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ Landlords Want Us to Think Rent Gouging Isn’t Price Gouging

    The displacement caused by the recent Los Angeles–area fires has renewed attention on price gouging in rental housing. Some landlords were accused of increasing their rents by more than 300 percent — spikes that appeared to violate California law, which like many other states prohibits setting unconscionable prices on necessities.

    Or, as we more commonly know it, price gouging.

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • Terence Eden ☛ Extracting content from an LCP “protected” ePub

    As Cory Doctorow once said "Any time that someone puts a lock on something that belongs to you but won't give you the key, that lock's not there for you."

    But here's the thing with the LCP DRM scheme; they do give you the key! As I've written about previously, LCP mostly relies on the user entering their password (the key) when they want to read the book. Oh, there's some deep cryptographic magic in the background but, ultimately, the key is sat on your computer waiting to be found. Of course, cryptography is Very Hard™ which make retrieving the key almost impossible - so perhaps we can use a different technique to extract the unencrypted content?

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Copyrights

  • Futurism ☛ OpenAI Says It’s "Over" If It Can’t Steal All Your Copyrighted Work

    This policy proposal to the White House's Office of Science and Technology comes amid increasing momentum on the state level to regulate AI. In the lengthy document the president probably will not read himself, OpenAI said that it could not compete with China — which the company insists on calling the People's Republic of China, or PRC for short, throughout — if regulations stymie AI access to copyrighted works for training data.