If shortcuts are wrong, I don’t wanna be copyright: Work with trademarks or intellectual property? On a Mac, press Option + G for the copyright symbol and Option + R for the registered trademark. For PCs, use Ctrl + Alt + C for © and Ctrl + Alt + R for ®.
Best TVs, YouTube downloads, using Google Images and more: Tech Q&A
Each week, I receive tons of questions from my listeners about tech concerns, new products and all things digital.
Sometimes, choosing the most interesting questions to highlight is the best part of my job.
This week, I received questions about the best TVs, YouTube downloads, Google Images and more.
Do you have a digital question you’d like to ask me?
Tap or click here to email me directly.
Picking the right TV
Q: I’d like a 70-inch television, but my wife says that our couch is too close to the wall in the den. I think she’s more concerned about the price. She’s cheap. How far away should you sit from a 70-inch set? My next Super Bowl party awaits your answer!
A: You definitely don’t want to sit too close or too far. There’s a sweet spot to catch all the action, and it depends on the dimensions of your den.
But there are other questions. Will you mount the TV on the wall or place it in an entertainment center? Where can you safely install such behemoths away from intense heat sources and the glaring sun?
Once you consider all these factors, it’s much easier to find the right fit. Tap or click here for the formula to help you select the right-sized TV for any room.
Download YouTube videos
Q: Is there a way to download YouTube videos? There is a share button by the video but no download button. I want to save these videos in case owners take them down.
📺 Monetized redemption: YouTube’s letting some banned creators come back, if they’ve been gone over a year and play nice this time. No copyright cheats, no repeat offenders. They’ll have to rebuild from scratch, monetization and all. Basically, it’s creator purgatory with ads.
$1.5 billion
The biggest copyright payout ever, courtesy of Anthropic. That’s more than some publishers make in a year, and all because Claude was caught with its hand in the pirate library cookie jar. Guess plagiarism does pay, just not in the way Anthropic hoped. If your book was in Anthropic’s pirated dataset, you’re automatically in the settlement class, with attorneys filing the full ~500,000-title list by Oct. 10.
Private chats, public fight: Remember that NYT suing OpenAI story? Now, The New York Times wants to dig through 120 million ChatGPT logs to try to prove OpenAI’s chatbot is a copyright-violating machine. OpenAI’s like, “How about 20 mil?” NYT said nope. Now the court may decide if your “deleted” chats become exhibit A.
ElevenLabs hits a high note: The AI speech company released a new tool that sings and raps. For example, you can ask it to “make a relaxing jazz song with an ’80s vibe,” and it’ll generate a track in minutes, complete with vocals and instruments. It can do 29 languages and accents. It’s raising copyright eyebrows and soon, long-gone superstar hitmakers with new tunes.
🎭 Who owns your face? Get this. Denmark’s rewriting copyright law to give people ownership over their face, voice and vibe. Yes, really. If a deepfake of you pops up without consent, you can make platforms take it down. It’s the first law of its kind in Europe, and the U.S. might want to take notes. This will be ID theft in 2035.
Google’s new AI model is a copyright nightmare: People are using it to remove watermarks from images so cleanly that it fills in the gaps like magic. It can also generate images of celebrities and well-known characters. Like this one of Elon Musk chilling at some random guy’s desk.