Exactly: there is no substitute for skill. You're absolutely right saying that's the only reason it worked.

Now with AI, the required skills change: we'd somehow have to teach students to learn what we learned though decades of grunt work and... choices that were good enough at the time, but now inadequate (requirements change). Learning that as a society won't be pretty...

Please go talk to a resident greybeard: this kind of software design already exists for years, and a kindred spirit will help you establish it where you work. There are various variations of the design, but all have a modularity allowing components to be rewritten, and a flexibility to handle changing requirements. Details vary, so pick a variation you like and fits your environment.

The location of CEO of the parent company is not relevant. You need a legal representative (with enough decision power, such as the CEO of the local branch) to do any significant business in any country. That person can and will be jailed if necessary.

Oh, and don't try to avoid this like X did in Brazil in 2024. It cost them a lot of money: some fines, a ban, and another fine because they tried to circumvent the ban. Now, I don't think the fines amounted to much given their (global) revenue, but the ban certainly hurt: X now complies with the law there.

This depends entirely on the copyright laws where you live / read the stuff.

For example, newspapers generally publish some articles for free reading by the general public. They are in public view, and thus also public information (as in, available for the public for a specific, narrow purpose).

But the newspaper still holds the copyright. And the (implied) licence to read their news articles most certainly does not allow you to copy them, for example. So scraping is almost certainly a copyright violation (i.e,., a crime).

I've added emphasis to show I wrote that the opposite will be true. There will be liability, even for open source, even if no contract was signed.

And although I expect individual FOSS developers to be only as liable as employees of a corporation, the authors (both corporations and FOSS projects) most certainly will not be off the hook!

This will cease to be true in the (near) future, especially for commercial and large FOSS projects. Security breaches have caused enough damage that in the EU, product liability will be extended to "digital elements" (software, firmware, etc.). If you put it on the market, you either prove you did a decent job of security, or you'll be held accountable for damages.

And on the security bit: this is not controversial! All political groups in the EU voted more for it than against it, with one exception than mostly abstained from voting (but still more votes in favour than against).

For more information, search for "Cyber Resilience Act" (especially posts written since January 2024) and "Product Liability Directive" (a summary on the latest state from Apache). Also, expect both China and the US to implement their own version.

And this is the real problem.

I'd be happy if my car would notify me of speed limits. But I get annoyed real fast when it says the speed limit is 30 km/h when the road next to the one I'm driving on has a speed sign, whereas the road I'm actually driving on has a speed limit of 50 km/h

This is nonsense.

Sure, the actual training of the AI of not covered by copyright law. But much of its training material is very much covered by copyright law. And given the current long copyright terms, I suspect only a tiny fraction of publicly available sources are in the public domain.

And rightly so. This is exactly what I'm considering, given the widespread places my information goes in ad auctions.

Not all employers will see 2. as lost productivity. Idle chit-chat builds personal relationships that make working together work more smoothly. Also, the better employees also use office chit-chat for various minor adjustments and minor innovations that improve your process. Even IT is ultimately about people doing work.

On 1.: one way or another, employers will pay at least part of it. Less in a cool job market, sadly, but even then employers still face costs. More commute time reduces the labor pool, and a less friendly/flexible work environment (than your competitors) increases churn. Both increase the cost of doing business.

The nasty bit (for employees) is that these costs are not directly attributed to an employer being an asshole.

Of course not: many carriers charge per SMS. These may be low prices, but sending text messages can be very expensive. In the Netherlands, for example, the cost per SMS vary between zero and €0,31.

Using a message platform over the internet (especially via WiFi) reduces these per-message costs to zero, and is thus by far the most preferred option.

On the contrary! This judge has an opinion, which is allowed. Please read the remainder of the summary:

In other words: this judge says that democracy is more important than his own opinion.

Wrong. Requests to the Bing API always have an IP address (a technical necessity), which qualify as personal data in the EU. Also note that the GDPR term personal data extends beyond personally identifying information. So even if a bit of data does not uniquely identify you, it can still be personal data.

This also means that sending, for example, data on a search query for a medical condition makes that entire request sensitive personal data. Having/collecting such data for commercial purposes is definitely illegal.

Very much this, except that the rules for sensitive data such as medical information, race (images!), religion, sexual preference, location, etc. are even more severe.

For starters, you're not allowed to collect/use it unless you can prove that you cannot provide a necessary service without it. And it has to be necessary from the point of view of the data subject. This pretty much excludes all forms of marketing, and makes sensitive personal data a big no-go for Big Surveillance (like Meta, Google, etc.).

Not at all, at least in the Netherlands (but also elsewhere in Europe). Here, employers are required to provide everything needed to do the work. By law, regardless of sector.

For employers, providing the equipment also makes sense: if it's your equipment, you get to set the rules. But if the phone belongs to your employee, (s)he can set the rules for that phone. And not all employees are in the unfortunate position that you can bully them into submission by threat of firing.

For photographs, that's where portrait/personality rights (US: rights of publicity) come into play. Basically, you can control public use of any data related to you. I'm not certain what this means for private commercial use (like what Clearview is doing).

Then again, photographs of you are data where you are the data subject. So this definitely falls within the scope of e.g. the European GDPR. So what Clearview is doing is very much illegal where European data subjects are concerned. (not sure whether it's enforceable though)