I understand that OpenAI/Microsoft can’t build ChatGPT within our legal framework. Well they could but it would be prohibitively expensive (it already is now without paying the people who did the work). But I missed the part where that is our problem as a society.
This!
I am tired of talking about these things as tech issues. They are not. They are social and political.
I want to live in a future where Artificial Intelligences can relieve humans of the drudgery of labour. But I don’t want to live in a future which is built by ripping-off people against their will.
If you dodged an accessibility lawsuit because you have physical locations, what does it mean when those physical locations close?
Good question.
As movie theaters, restaurant ordering, college courses, and more move to online-first delivery, the notion of a corresponding brick-and-mortar venue falls away. If the current pandemic physical distancing measures stretch into the next year as many think, then this blip becomes the de facto new normal.
I recently asked a friend who happens to be blind if he’d share some sites that were built really well—sites that were beautifully accessible. You know what he said? “I don’t use the web. Everything is broken.”
Everything is broken. And it’s broken because we broke it.
But we can do better.
Are you an EU/EEA national living in the UK? Worried about your rights and options post-Brexit?
Alex has an organised an event at 68 Middle Street for March 16th with an immigration advisor, The £5 ticket fee is refundable after the event or you can donate it to charity.
Finally! Apple are being sued for refusing to allow any non-Webkit browsers to be installed on iOS.
I’m not usually in favour of legal action but in this case, there doesn’t seem to be any other recourse.
We would be delighted at Nexedi to create a Web browser for iOS with better HTML5 support based on a recent version of Blink library for example. But as soon as we would publish it, it would be banned from Apple’s AppStore. Many developers have experienced this situation already. Many companies are being hurt by this situation. Some companies have already begged Apple to improve HTML5 support in iOS with little significant results.
It started when Jessica relayed something that happened when she was on a cultural walking tour of Sofia two weekends ago. The tour guide asked “Does anyone know who invented the computer?”
Alan Turing? Charles Babbage?
The tour guided pointed to a statue and said, “John Atanasoff.”
I had never heard of him. So of course I looked him up. That led me down the most incredible rabbit hole as I uncovered a courtroom drama filled with invalidated patents and mountains of court records.
Why had I never heard about this? It was eclipsed by a bigger legal drama: Watergate.
A new project from James, keeping track of the sites of illegal drone strikes.
This is a great idea: a community of volunteers distilling the Terms of Service agreements from websites into understandable terms.
A blow-by-blow legal analysis of the second verse of Jay-Z’s 99 Problems.
Google’s datadump makes for a fascinating—and worrying—bit of data dumpster diving.
A translation into plain English of the recent changes in the law regarding cookies in the UK. In short, keep calm and carry on.
A superbly written piece of near-future legal-dystopian speculative fiction. Damn, that Paul Ford can write!
Two lawyers attempt to answer the legal questions raised by the fictional conceits of superheroes. What is Superman’s immigration status? Who foots the bill when a hero damages property while fighting a villain? What happens legally when a character comes back from the dead?
Sending a cease and desist letter to an obvious parody just makes the parody even funnier.
Microsoft are trying to patent sparklines. Twunts.
An example of just how messed up libel law in the UK is.
Mark Pilgrim knows the score.
