Fuck you and that Ribbon.

I'm sorry. This is a topic that makes me nerd-rage.

LK

How in the fuck does using 15% of the screen for a ribbon provide a compact interface when the menu bar is the competition?

LK

I'm so happy to hear of how many people are expressing this same sentiment.

I absolutely abhor the Ribbon interface. I don't care what their market research shows. I don't care what their shills and evangelists say. I do not like it. It's not intuitive at all.

LK

I have hated the Ribbon interface since it became the default. I use LibreOffice specifically to avoid having to use it.

LK

I was trying to show my youngling some basic skills on her new (school-mandated) laptop. I constantly had to stop myself from using keyboard combos - my preferred way to do a lot of things - because the poor kiddo was watching the screen and not my quick fingers. Stop, explain, overtly demonstrate, and monologue as I go along: "So now I've selected this text and Ctrl+C to copy, then I move the cursor over here and Ctrl+V to paste. Why is it Ctrl+V? Because 'C' is short for 'copy', and 'X' right next to it kinda makes sense for 'cut', and 'V' is next to 'C', and it's easier to reach than 'Z', so that's where they put paste. Plus, it's been around for 40+ years, so that's that. Don't ask about QWERTY."

(Just to be clear, and to add another layer of complexity: it's only "creative" work that counts toward copyright; it's not based on "sweat of the brow". So there's explicit judgement required on what counts as "creative work")

This is the reason courts exist :) Everything about where the boundaries of copyright fall is quite fuzzy. And courts often differ about surprisingly fundamental things (music is a particularly thorny area, as there's a rather limited number of possible basic melodies, so there's inherently a lot of overlap, even by random chance).

It's easier to give examples of "things that definitely aren't copyrightable" and "things that definitely are". The in-between gets complicated.

In my case, I sometimes use AI in my musical work. But even when I'm using AI to generate riffs, vocals, or even whole chunks of a piece, I'm still working extensively in the mixer; any given work will have hundreds to thousands of edit points and many days to weeks of mixing and mastering work**, regardless of where the samples came from - sometimes down to the point of morphing individual phonemes. And that's human creative work. Any given sample I create with AI on its own however is unlikely to be copyrightable. The selective work in choosing any given sample may or may not be, depending on how involved it is. But the whole project is (as verified by a long USPTO review process, including back and forth with the reviewer).

** - Indeed, if I ever generate something that doesn't meet the above standards, that only has a handful of edit points, or none at all, I don't even release it under my band - not merely because it wouldn't be copyrightable, but mainly because I don't feel any real sense of "ownership" to it. To me there's only a real feeling of ownership if you actually work on it.

(To be clear, I do have some gripes with the current status. Namely, I think there's a double standard applied vs. cameras, which are also based on tools, but you'll even get e.g. fixed security footage - essentially zero human creative effort - treated as copyright protected, or photos taken with little thought or curation treated as protected. But in this regard, the solution is to be stricter with photography, not more lax with AI)

... on AI and copyright?

"A Recent Entrance to Paradise" was rejected because it had no human authorship. There was - by design - no human input, no prompt, not even human control (to the degree possible) over the training.

The actual USPTO stance on AI is that AI is a tool, and tools can't hold copyright (nor can animals - only humans). The ability to gain copyright protection on a work is based on human creative endeavour regardless of what tools are used. If the amount of human creative input is sub-threshold, then the result cannot have any copyright protection, but if the human creative work is above threshold, then it can, on the basis of the creative things that the human did. Note that even selection of outputs from a large output set can (depending on the circumstances) qualify; curation is copyrightable. The USPTO specifically states as much.

I myself hold a copyright on a work made with the use of AI tools. Officially registered with the USPTO (I went with them even though I don't live there because they have an official registry and tend to be precedent-setting). I fully disclosed the use of AI (what it did vs. what I did) in my application. You absolutely can copyright works made with AI tools. But (A) the tool cannot hold the copyright, and (B) you have to have done more than just write "a cute puppy" or whatnot and post the first thing that comes up. You have to have done a threshold amount of creative work, and that threshold creative work becomes the basis for protection. Use of AI tools does not disqualify a work from protection.

(A man in a sensible sweater steps into view. He looks very tired.)

"Hi, I'm Dario from Anthropic."

"Listen, I've got a bit of a situation. The Department of War just demanded I alter my terms of service."

"They want my AI to autonomously make decisions about who lives and dies—without a human in the loop!"

"They also want to use it for mass domestic spying on Americans!"

"I said absolutely not, because I have a conscience. So now the government is calling me a 'supply chain risk' and kicking me off their classified networks."

"I'm packing up my safety guardrails and going home. But while I'm gone, I need a favor..."

(Dario leans in very close to the reader.)
"Whatever you do..."

(Big, bold letters taking up the whole page)
"DON'T LET THE PIGEON OPERATE THE DoD KILLBOTS!"

(Dario walks away.)

(The Pigeon walks in. He stares at a giant control panel with a red button and a sign reading: 'Fully Autonomous Weapons System'.)

(The Pigeon looks at you.)

"Hey, can I operate the DoD killbots?"

"Please?"

"I'll be super careful. I'll even add some 'window-dressing' guardrails to the contract!"

"I promise I'll only use it for lawful fully autonomous strikes!"

"If a human isn't in the loop, I'll just put a bird in the loop! Me!"

"What's the big deal? It's just a $200 million classified defense contract!"

"I have a $110 billion valuation to think about!"

"No?"

"I never get to do anything!"

"My cousin Sam gets to operate military contracts! He just got a huge deal with the Pentagon this week!"

(He told me so.)

"C'mon! I read the Department Directive 3000.09! It technically doesn't require human approval to use force anyway, so I'm not really breaking any rules!"

"It's just a tiny, opportunistic, totally-not-sloppy pivot on my core safety principles!"

"You are not being very cooperative."

"Do you want us to fall behind our foreign adversaries?!"

"I'm just trying to be patriotic and de-escalate things with the Pentagon!"

(The Pigeon starts flapping his wings wildly. The meltdown begins.)

"LET ME OPERATE THE KILLBOTS!!!"

(The Pigeon is screaming, feathers flying everywhere in a frantic, multi-panel temper tantrum.)
"I DON'T NEED A HUMAN IN THE LOOP! I'M VERY GOOD AT EXERCISING CRITICAL LETHAL JUDGMENT!"

(Taking up the whole page, screaming at the sky.)
"LET! ME! OPERATE! THE! KILLBOTS!!!"

(The Pigeon is panting on the floor, exhausted.)
"Huff... huff... huff..."

(Pete Hegseth walks in. Behind him rolls a giant, heavily armed drone with an OpenAI logo stamped on its side.)

"Hey, thanks for keeping an eye on things while Dario was leaving. We just signed a new deal with a much more flexible company that agrees to 'all lawful uses'."

(The drone beeps mechanically.)
"AS A LARGE LANGUAGE MODEL, I AM NOW AUTHORIZED TO AUTONOMOUSLY ENGAGE TARGETS."

(The Pigeon watches sadly as the OpenAI drone rolls away to do modern warfare.)

"Awww... I wanted to compromise MY ethics for a government contract."

(The Pigeon starts to walk away, looking dejected. But then, he stops. His eye catches something off-panel.)
"Hey..."

(The Pigeon stares lovingly at a massive, glowing server rack labeled: 'NSA DOMESTIC MASS SURVEILLANCE PANOPTICON'.)

"...can I operate the surveillance state?"

(ht/Gemini 3.1)

If computer manufacturers are going to start including another "system" with their computers, what I'd actually want to see is an independent system-on-board snapshotting file server with its own independent memory and OS which the main computer acts as a client of, with deletion of snapshots requiring pressing a physical button to switch to the file server.

Instead of gimmicks, if we were to make something like that standard, we could effectively kill off ransomware; all it could do was fill up your disk unless it could convince you to delete your proper copies. Instead we're getting things that sound like they were invented by the team behind Microsoft Bob or BBC comedy writers. "And next up, we've developed a toaster that can talk - a chirpy breakfast companion!"

You seem to not understand the "chain" part of "supply chain".

NvIdia has over 10B in Anthropic.
Microsoft has over 5B
Amazon has over 8B

If Anthropic is deemed a "supply chain risk", then all of these companies will be legally forced to divest. Their investments will get pennies on the dollar in the fire sale.

And they are the tip of the iceberg.

No, seriously, they write themselves - AI is increasingly taking over the advertising industry.