Month: January 2024

Enlarge / AI-generated results of a gangster Mickey Mouse, Eldritch Horror Mickey Mouse, and Basketball Mickey Mouse created by a model trained on 1928 public domain Mickey Mouse cartoons. (credit: Schroedingercat, Kevin Elliott, David Binkowski)

On January 1, three early Mickey Mouse cartoons entered the public domain in the US, and AI experimenters have wasted no time taking advantage of it. On Monday, a digital humanities researcher named Pierre-Carl Langlais uploaded an AI model to Hugging Face that has been trained on those public domain cartoons, and anyone can use it to create new still images based on a written prompt.  While the results are rough and sometimes garbled, they show notable early experimentation with integrating public domain Mickey into the AI space.

The new model can create images of Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, and Peg Leg Pete. "The generated images aims adhere [sic] to the 1928 design in order to have Mickey, Minnie and Pete and in the public domain," writes Langlais on the model card. "This is still a work in progress: while the model is in development, generated images should be checked to ensure they really are in the public domain design."

To create the model, Langlais fine-tuned a version of Stable Diffusion XL with 34 cartoon image stills from Steamboat Willie, 22 stills from Plane Crazy, and 40 stills from The Gallopin' Gaucho—all released in 1928 and now in the public domain. More stills would have equated to more cost and training time, so he likely kept the number of images low for practical purposes, although that created lower-quality results. And Langlais writes in the model card that the training stills aren't as high quality as possible, but that might change over time: "Hopefully with the cartoons now being part of the public domain, higher definition versions should be available."

Enlarge / Michael Cohen, former personal lawyer to US President Donald Trump, arrives at federal court in New York on December 14, 2023. (credit: Getty Images | Bloomberg)

Donald Trump's former attorney, Michael Cohen, admitted providing fake AI-generated court citations to his own lawyer, who failed to check whether the cited cases were real before submitting them in a court brief. Cohen said the fake court cases came from Google Bard and that he thought Bard was like "a super‑charged search engine" rather than a generative AI tool.

As previously reported, Cohen's lawyer, David Schwartz, cited three cases that do not exist in a motion seeking early termination of Cohen's supervised release. The fake citations were meant to show previous instances in which defendants were allowed to end supervised release early—two involved fictional cocaine distributors and the other an invented tax evader.

The brief provided case numbers, summaries, and ruling dates for the citations, but the judge determined that the cases never happened. Facing punishment for violating federal rules, Schwartz filed an explanation that apologized "for not checking these cases personally before submitting them to the court," but also blamed "the conduct of his client."

Enlarge / iFixit's Pixel 8 Pro display fix kit. (credit: iFixit)

Over the holiday break, Google and iFixit added a new batch of parts to the Pixel parts store. The companies now sell genuine parts for Google's latest flagship phones: the Pixel 8 and 8 Pro.

The most common replacement will probably be the screen, which costs $160 for the Pixel 8 and $230 for the Pixel 8 Pro. The product described as a "rear case" is the entire aluminum body of the phone, with the rear glass, camera bar, camera cover glass, side buttons, and charging coil. The Pixel 8 version of this will run you $143, while the 8 Pro version is $173. The batteries are both $43.

If your camera breaks, get ready for some serious sticker shock: The Pixel 8 Pro rear camera assembly is $200 for the bundled set of three cameras. For reference, a Galaxy S23 Ultra camera assembly (four cameras) is $142 from iFixit, while the iPhone 14 Pro Max rear camera assembly is $150. Interestingly, the Pixel 8 also has $200 worth of camera parts despite having one less camera by skipping the complicated periscope zoom lens. The Pixel 8 parts come in separate pieces: $143 for the main camera and $63 for the ultra-wide. This is a ton of money to spend on the camera portion of a phone, and while that's great for shutterbugs, for people more focused on productivity uses, it would be nice not to have to pay for all this. Along with the $43 front camera, a Pixel 8 is $700 and has $243 worth of camera parts!

Enlarge (credit: TIMOTHY A. CLARY / Contributor | AFP)

After FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried was convicted of seven charges related to wire fraud and money laundering in 2023, the US recently decided not to proceed with a second trial over additional charges in 2024.

During the second trial, Bankman-Fried could have been convicted on additional charges of conspiracy to bribe foreign officials, conspiracy to commit bank fraud, conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business, and substantive securities fraud and commodities fraud.

However, in a letter to Judge Lewis Kaplan, US attorney Damian Williams wrote that the "strong public interest" in a prompt resolution of the FTX scandal outweighed the benefits of holding a second trial—especially since "much of the evidence that would be offered in a second trial was already offered in the first trial."

Enlarge (credit: Getty | Bill Diodato)

January is usually a big month for hiking the list prices of drugs in the US—and it looks like 2024 will be no different. Pharmaceutical companies plan to raise the US list prices of more than 500 prescription medications this month, and more are expected to be announced in the coming weeks. That's according to a report from Reuters, which is based on data from the health care research firm 3 Axis Advisors.

The high-profile drug makers with plans to increase prices include giants such as Pfizer, Sanofi, and Takeda.

This year's tally of 500 is in line with the past few years, with 452 list price increases as of January 1, 2023, and a high of 602 on January 1 of 2021, according to data from 46brooklyn, a drug pricing non-profit related to 3 Axis Advisors. Overall, drug makers raised the list prices of 1,425 drugs in 2023, down slightly from 1,460 in 2022.

Enlarge / Just some of the prizes you can win in this year's charity drive sweepstakes. (credit: Kyle Orland)

If you've been too busy playing the best games of 2023 to take part in this year's Ars Technica Charity Drive sweepstakes, don't worry. You still have one final chance to donate to a good cause and get a chance to win your share of over $2,500 worth of swag (no purchase necessary to win).

So far, over 275 readers have contributed more than $26,000 to either the Electronic Frontier Foundation or Child's Play as part of the charity drive (EFF is now leading in the donation totals by nearly $7,000). That's a long way from 2020's record haul of over $58,000, but there's still a bit of time until the Charity Drive wraps up at the end of the day today, (Tuesday, January 2, 2024).

Don't put off your donation any longer! Do yourself and the charities involved a favor and give now while you're thinking about it.