All I know about Volkswagon is they're a car company who deliberately cheated on their emissions tests.

No surprise their demand is falling away due to past outright illegal conduct.

Their license to manufacture a single new unit should have been cancelled the day this was found out. So I don't feel sorry for them.. surprised They did not have a complete shutdown imposed by the government sooner.

EULAs can not legally apply to a minor, just have your neighbor's kid set it up.

If you knew about the EULA, then hazarding to allow the minor to click accept still counts as you accepting it.

Judges are not keen to entertain "workarounds" like the kind you are describing. You can't avoid being deemed to have accepted a EULA by deliberately causing it to be accepted, no matter what method you pick.

I mean if such antics would work in practice; people could just let a cat click randomly; hex edit or NOP out the dialog display function from the executable, or figure out which bit written to disk or flash will bypass the prompt; etc. The concept of a clickwrap license would become a joke.

they sold it, as most people would to erase their streaming service credentials.

Your appraisal of consumer security awareness is way too optimistic.

Most people would just sell the TV. It's uncommon to seem them also reset to default aside from tested units sold by some secondhand stores that clean up used gear before selling.

Streaming services; assuming an old TV was even used for those; normally detect if a device has gone unused or moves to a different ISP or geolocation and cancel the device token requiring a revalidation. The old TV's reason for being for sale might even be that Netflix, etc, revoked their compatibility with it due to its age or outdatedness.

Anyway. There is never any presumption the seller factory defaulted their TV before selling it.

The manufacturer can log the EULA acceptance, and they will most likely be able to report on exactly the date, time, and IP address when someone clicked Okay. In the case of a dispute; the onus would be on the manufacturer to show evidence that the customer agreed. That is if the customer disputes the alleged fact that a EULA was accepted by them.

Get a new TV and never, EVER let it connect to the network.

Be really really careful. Manufacturers keep coming up with more and more ways to get it just enough internet access to talk to home even if you don't want it too. Hidden cellular modems. New mesh networking protocols like Sidwalk. Bluetooth. Aggressive wifi autoconfig. Ethernet over HDMI. etc

I am pretty sure they all spy on you now if connected to the internet. Some of them may be more obvious about it. Ideally you would get a TV that does not connect to the internet at all, Or turn the feature off, but A. It is almost impossible now, and B. Manufacturers are shady even if you turn the feature off.

You don't configure the WiFi: they will go into a loop searching for any AP they can connect to and grab any internet connection they can get to phone home, if possible; they'll especially try connecting to any unsecured AP that comes by.

It's kind of ridiculous the lengths they will go to; would probably make a good XKCD.

Possibly consider installing WiFi signal-blocking barriers around your TV, and force it to remain connected to a distinct SSID where it gets an IP from DHCP but has zero access to internet and zero access to LAN and other devices.

"You have the right to privacy, so long as whatever you are doing in private does not conflict with my religious ideals in any way whatsoever, such that it would be deemed a sinful act under catholic church published dogma."

"You are legally allowed to do sexual-like things, and in fact mandated to if adult; but only as done 100% in accordance with tradition and how god prescribes word for word in the bible. No toys. No porn. Only 1 human you are married to of the opposite sexes you two were born as that is listed in the original and only first version of your birth certificate."

It's a cool technology; Or it would be if the user could control it.

This thing takes screenshots 50 times a minute and can extract data like text shown on the screen.

It's freakin' cool, and I can think of a thousand neat uses for this if it would be 1. Sent to a local endpoint you configure in the menu. 2. An On-off switch you have to turn on, and off by default of course.

Instead the dumbasses who designed this system make it require an internet connection, and the data feed is sent to some asshole companies in the cloud You never consented to get this kind of data; who also horde the data, and don't provide you any kind of API or way to get realtime access to it, even though they have realtime access to it.

Anyway.. Yes.. I want to write a program that can see text displayed on my Game console or TV (Computer monitor) like ACR can, and under certain circumstances take certain actions based on the OCR'd contents of the text, and the text is typically displayed by something you won't have direct access to. For example: Entering a certain area or taking certain actions in a game automatically triggers certain mood lighting and drops a status message in IRC chat.

That it's a competitive system is the problem. The world advances through cooperation.

Not exactly true. The world largely advances by Natural selection. Survival of the fittest. Allocating scarce resources, such as money, to the projects and people who prove the most meritorious or effective or valuable usage of the resource. Of course Collaboration has a value, but it's largely involving or between researches who already passed the bar. You gotta have people reaching a certain level before a degree of collaboration becomes of value.

we have to many Ph.D's and when you need to do this to keep your slot = the college system is broken.

They are students not PhDs. And you don't "need" to do this to keep "your slot". Nobody is entitled to a slot. What you have to earn is not owed to you.

It's a competitive system, and you have to maintain certain level of merit and academic progress.

There is a right way. Either follow the rules or quit, and go do something more productive. And somebody deciding to become a criminal does not mean the system is broken.

from my overpriced Disney+ subscription was user-generated "AI" slop.

The article says a selection. Presumably terms will let them cherrypick videos they like, so it will probably be not slop, but whatever generations they deem high quality. Likely involving extra work by the end user, since actor voices aren't included for the characters.

Earth and are paying 1 billion to give it away. Make it make sense.

In short.. they are Not giving it away; they are expanding monetization into an area they'd not get money from before. They are earning billions in license fees for allowing limited use for limited time.

First AI came for the artists And I did not speak out Because I was not an artist

AI has not come for the artists. Artists are still necessary to create quality work.

There is simply a technical improvement, and you may have to learn new AI-based tools now required for the trade of creating animations.

More importantly: They set a business precedent for media companies that it is appropriate to demand licensing and expect generative AI companies have to pay for creating images resembling any of their characters/trained on their characters - even in a short video or internet meme context.

What they have licensed for now they can de-license in a few years, when Disney releases their own generative AI service.

That is the way with trademarks. X management has been very clear about stopping to use the name Twitter;
which means they won't use it anymore, therefore, they have no business continuing to claim a trademark.

That said the artists who drew the Twitter icon still get the copyright to their Logo and art assets, so another company shouldn't be able to just start using those. They will need to have to have their own art created.

If Elon really cared about the Twitter mark it would be, or would have been extremely easy; to keep a service Live using the mark.
Such as a Testbed website for X, for example, or an extra service to still be marketed under the Twitter name.. so called "Token use" wouldn't be sufficient, But you only need to have one actual service still using the branding to prevent it from being "abandoned". You can have a limited service with 100 customers, and still have the rights to your trademark. So If Elon/Twitter/X cares about this in the slightest; they should be able to easily block this proceeding. And you just need to resume use of it within 3 years to avoid it being abandoned under US law. So it's odd for them to petition the trademark office so early.. X can apply a new use of the mark within any schedule they want before that date. The attempt to usurp their IP would easily be blocked if X still cares in the slightest.

You just know that some dufus at the gym would bring a 10kg steel dumbbell into the MRI room and ruin things for everyone.

No.. this would have to be a locked restricted room where only MRI techs and their clients may access.
However; the equipment is A. Very expensive. Your Gymn is not likely to buy it.

B. Due to the expense.. It is likely that your nearest local Hospitals will guarantee you are not able to obtain the necessary permits in order to protect their monopoly. They've got a huge investment to protect, And they actually have to successfully sell MRIs at those rates to make the return on that investment. Can't have some random additional facility installing one nearby. Guaranteed it would be blocked by the government due to the availability of another provider's location and the lack of public necessity for yours.