A24 got embroiled in copyright strikes against online creations related to the Backrooms. People, unsurprisingly, got very angry. The issue seems solved, for the moment, but it says a lot about capitalist appropriation of mass-created popular culture.
Backrooms Director Stops A24 Copyright Striking Community Art
Honesty gets Emacs patch rejected
The FSF, in effect, do what the FSF is there to do: defend the copyright of GNU Emacs. Meanwhile someone attempts to contribute a patch written by a large language model, and seemingly gets offended that it's rejected. I think the worst part about it is they seem to think that being honest about using an LLM should let their contribution in.
Social media to be banned for under-16s in landmark government move to give kids their childhood back
The press release from the UK government, covering the intended ban on social media for under-16s. Even if we were to assume this is a good thing (and I'm far from convinced it is), the proposal as it looks right now is as hilariously bad and appears to be as ill-informed as any attempt to control the Internet.
Don't Outsource Your Understanding
The article highlights the dangers of “cognitive surrender,” where individuals rely heavily on AI-generated content without proper verification. This phenomenon is evident in various fields, including law, software development, and academia, leading to errors, misinformation, and a lack of understanding. The author emphasises the importance of staying engaged in the cognitive loop, actively verifying AI outputs, and understanding the underlying processes to ensure the quality and reliability of work.
FAQ: Privacy Statement update on Copilot data use for model training (Free/Pro/Pro+) · community · Discussion #188488
An interesting claim from a member of staff that doesn't quite fit what's said elsewhere.
FAQ: Privacy Statement update on Copilot data use for model training (Free/Pro/Pro+) · community · Discussion #188488
GitHub's FAQ on how they're going to start learning off people's interactions with Copilot.
Can coding agents relicense open source through a “clean room” implementation of code?
Simon Willison's take on the whole chardet issue.
No right to relicense this project | Hacker News
HackerNews weighing in on the chardet legal/ethical issue.
No right to relicense this project · Issue #327 · chardet/chardet
Well this is a whole furball of legal and AI issues. I think the thing that gets me here is the apparent motives of the current maint'. It doesn't matter how you cut it with the legal side of things, what they've done, for me, is a real ethical issue.
Subject access request Q and As for employers
Useful information regarding the right to access information held on you by your employer. While this is written as advice to the company, it's also informative about what you, as an employee, can ask.
Digital ID - Hansard - UK Parliament
The UK Parliament debated the plan to introduce a digital ID. I have mixed feelings about this falling mostly on the no side; shades of the old No2ID campaign all over again.
GDPR Enforcement Tracker - list of GDPR fines
It's often you get told or hear that nobody ever gets fined under the GDPR. Here's a site that shows that really isn't the case at all.
SPDX License List | Software Package Data Exchange (SPDX)
The list of SPDX licences. For me this is useful to find the ID so that I can add the most useful value to Python package metadata.
AI Hallucination Cases Database
AI will enslave us all eventually...
Certifying a document
How to get a copy of a document certified in the UK.
Make It Fair
PPA article about the campaign against the UK government's wish to relax copyright laws relating to AI using people's work for training.
HiVid: The Streaming Service Everyone Pretends Is Legal
Interesting dive into a "service" offered in Second Life.
Copyright without years
A blog post about why curl switched away from showing years in copyright statements within the project.
Cards Against Humanity sues SpaceX, alleges “invasion” of land on US/Mexico border
I didn’t have CAH suing SpaceX on my 2024 bingo card. In retrospect it makes perfect sense. Also… absolutely on brand for SpaceX.
Elon Musk Didn’t Want His Latest Deposition Released. Here It Is.
I'm shocked! Shocked! Shocked I tell you!
licensing - What can I assume if a publicly published project has no license? - Open Source Stack Exchange
Useful thread about what you should take away from a repository that's available on a forge (especially GitHub) and which has no obvious licence.
Various Licenses and Comments about Them - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation
The Free Software Foundation's take on various software licences, both Free and non-Free.