Benjamin

By the by, are you following the current Künast case in Germany? It's in the wake of Glawischnig-Piesczek.

It's on halt while the high court waits for the ECJ to wrap up C-492/23 and create case law.

I'm worried but don't know what to expect. Should be your thing?

Exclusive: Meta, X and LinkedIn appeal unprecedented VAT claim by Italy U.S. tech giants Meta , X and LinkedIn have lodged an appeal against an unprecedented VAT claim by Italy that could influence tax policy across the 27-nation European Union, four sources with direct knowledge of the matter said on Monday.

Have you heard about that VAT case in Italy? That's treating it as property being bartered for services.

www.reuters.com/world/europe...

Oh. I didn't mean to say it is property. Merely to say that the technical issues are the same.

IMHO the lack of transferability says no. Maybe if some data trustee or data space scheme gets off the ground.

I do think the philosophy is lifted from the droit de l'auteur concept. Do you know more?

Every time you share the “3 Bs in blueberry thing” and no one explains its relation to tokenizers, you help everyone get just a tiny bit less informed

WRT the GDPR, the gatekeeper should first check if the potential interoperator is GDPR-compliant and make a contract that ensures that users can exercise their rights.

The paperwork has to be updated and data subjects must be informed and be able to opt-out.

Don't see a way around that.

I think Bluesky could get trouble over its API. To be like email or the web, it would have to be explicit that the user/rights-holder tasks the service with sharing the data to any third party that asks.

It could be copyright infringement to present works in a different context to a new audience.

It's also tricky whose data something is.

My posts concern me, but only as long as my name is on them. They also concern any people I mention, the people I reply to, those who reply to me, as well as likers, reposters, readers, and so on.

The charter talks about the protection of data concerning a person. It also says that intellectual property shall be protected. Evidently, this is the same protect.

Enforcement-wise, it is similar to IP law. For a company, it is not sufficient (nor strictly necessary!) not to spy on users.

Sidenote: GDPR should not be seen as a privacy law. It can serve privacy, but so can property law.

The EU charter of fundamental rights has privacy in article 7 and data protection in Art 8. It is its own thing.

GDPR creates rights over data, even if that data is public and non-sensitive.

Interoperability requires the free flow of data, even against the wishes of some stakeholders.

GDPR, as well as various forms of IP, demands fine-grained control over the flow of data.

I don't think the HLG will have much to say on that aspect. The literature does not seem to talk much about it, either. The DMA interacts with the GDPR in a number of explicit ways. The implicit tension seems to fly under the radar.

He is for interoperability, though?

Seeing the flag. I have difficulty believing that the EU can get interoperability for Social Media right. Like, what do you do about GDPR?

I wonder how much the EU's AI Act is holding the West back. It's hamstringing the EU, but idk how much harm it is causing in the US.

China sees the soft power opportunity to polish its image and spread its propaganda. I worry the West does not have a positive vision to set against that.

There is Llama Guard.

The one paper to read this week-end. ByteDance seems to have achieved a major breakthrough in AI math: new LLM systems claim to solve half PutnamBench — with previous SORA from DeepSeek and Goedel at 10-15%. arxiv.org/abs/2507.23726

While agents were overhyped, I feel people are not pricing correctly the recent progress in LLM math. If PutnamBench is on its way to be solved, we now have the recipe to transform language models into powerful and accurate logic engines.

I'd say it's a function of how much specialization is rewarded.

Theoretical physics requires advanced math knowledge. Experiments require some engineering skill.

In biology and psychology, a full focus on theory is unlikely to pay off. I'd think, that way crackpot-status lies.

I will support any effort to strength and expand the social safety net.

Adobe's image generator is trained on licensed image off their marketplace. I'm sure you know people who can tell you what the payout is like. No matter what happens in court, you cannot expect much more.

Photo of Tom Lehrer

My last living musical hero is still my hero but unfortunately no longer living. RIP to the great, great Mr. Tom Lehrer.

Tom Lehrer made all of his music 100% public domain so if seeing people sad about his death makes you want to check them out… it’s free. he wanted you to share them.

tomlehrersongs.com

There it is. I like knowing that some of my taxes support the arts and the unemployed.

When/if I lose my job to AI, I obviously cannot expect help from the likes of you. I will be told I should have saved and bought property.

You would choose this hell. I wish it on no one.

I'm even wondering if the economic structure of the entertainment business explains the economic rightward shift over the last half century. I'm thinking about that great union president, Ronald Reagan...

Empowering property owners is always the solution. Roads are common property being used for profit. Let's privatize them to solve poverty.

Property owners must always get a cut, regardless of the effects on society. It's dogma.

Profits are no longer seen as a reward for providing useful goods and services. They are a right. So don't worry about monopolies or market failures.

It's all very Ayn Rand.

I'm seeing extremely harmful economic ideas being pushed. I can't help but imagine a world where this is mainstream.

The drowning man will always try and drag somebody down with him.

I know how much Adobe or Shutterstock pay. It won't save anyone.

I fear the damage they do to society. By that, I don't just mean the harm to science and research. I mean that they are implicitly calling for a cyberpunk dystopia.

Are you calling me a machine because I know what "useful art" means? You must have a very low opinion of people if you think that knowing niche facts is only for LLMs.

GitHub - aavetis/PRarena: This repo tracks the opened and merged PRs by the top SWE coding agents by OpenAI, GitHub, and others. Updates every 3 hours. This repo tracks the opened and merged PRs by the top SWE coding agents by OpenAI, GitHub, and others. Updates every 3 hours. - aavetis/PRarena

A reasonable point I hear a fair amount is "if AI is so good for software engineering where are all the open source contributions" so here's a dashboard tracking that github.com/aavetis/PRar...

Ok. But if you have no reason to think so, then why do you ask?

Why would you think that?