Doesn't ANYBODY but me remember that "Napster" was actually RealNetworks? You know, the old Real.com that was the Internet's first scale, commercial streamer? Real became Rhapsody for several years. Rhapsody had no name recognition, so they bought the Napster name from it's owners... BEST BUY.

It gets weirder. Rhapsody had been Sonos' partner streaming service - and Rhapsody is also... I HEART RADIO. Now the whole Napster lot got dumped in the lap of venture capital vultures.

Data structures and algorithms are used in interviews, not because you'll be expected to implement sorts and linked lists, but because they demonstrate that the candidate can implement and troubleshoot software from specs, using cases they should be familiar with if they have a CS / coding background. Testing for skills rather than knowledge. By the same token, it makes sense to test candidates on the use of AI assistants, if they'll be using those in their work. Though rather than let them produce textbook algorithms with prompts, I'd give them a prompt that produces known faulty output, then ask them to test the result, figure out what is wrong with it, and fix the code and/or the prompt.

Plenty of good content on YT. Enough to justify the €10 or so for a premium subscription, and ad free viewing.

I'm not hoping for more trash talk and hate speech in the comments, but the censorship in the comment section has gotten ridiculous. Perfectly reasonably and polite comments get nixed, and some people (including myself) have noticed an odd personal ban on using certain (fairly innocent) words. When those people include that word, the post is consistently removed, while other people are allowed to use it. All in all very strange.

True, but "Gandalf vs Predator" doesn't fall under Fair Use. Copyright does not just protect the work but also the ideas in it. Personally I think that's going too far. Does that mean that others can profit off your creativity? Yes... and it's been like that since the dawn of time. That's how culture has always worked.

I’ve no illusions about which side the AI companies are on. But what I’m afraid of is that the issue of AI training will be misused by “Big Content” (for lack of a better word) to further restrict fair use, and to raise the barrier to entry for new commercial content creators. That’s what they have always done.

Personally I am not a fan of copyright allowing creators to retain control over the use of their work, whether they are commercial creators, or creators releasing under a license like the GPL. Especially the point on derivative works and moral rights: I think that copyright should be limited to just that: the right to copy or forbid it. The author controls when and how his work may be copied, so that he can derive an income from selling copies if he so desires, but for no other purpose. But derivative works should be allowed if the derivative is enough of an original work in its own right, inspired by the original rather than copying large parts of it verbatim. Anyone wants to write “Harry Potter and the Temple of Doom” or film “Gandalf vs Predator”, fine by me. Where that leaves AI, I’m not sure. The results from AI prompts sometimes seem to be inspired original works, at other times with recognisable snippets from someone else’s work.

Copyright itself has been twisted so far from its original intent that I feel little urge to respect it, and little remorse at breaking it. I will respect copyright when it respects me.

The other "Arabic" numerals also originated in India. They are called that because they found their way to Europe by way of the Middle East.

They're not that good.

We're whalers on the moon
We carry a harpoon
But there ain't no whales
So we tell tall tales
And sing our whaling tune

Worse: AIs are already picking up the garbage produced by other AIs for training. It's the Aipocalypse.

Yes, but it's already hard to convince legislators and the general public of the necessity. People still cling to the "I have nothing to hide" mentality (which may be true, but they have plenty worth protecting).
But once personal data becomes an economic asset with the ability to earn a little with it, convincing people to value their privacy will be even harder. And legislators will use a monetization scheme as an excuse to loosen up privacy laws.

AI does a fair job at voice acting and graphic design already, in a few areas, or those people wouldn't be losing their jobs. And a positive effect is that it makes those services available to people / teams for whom it used to be too expensive, like hobbyists and indie developers or creators.

The running joke here is that almost all judges will vote for D66 (a centrist left party)... and it is not really a joke: IIRC a poll showed over 75% of them voting for that party. That's no coincidence... judges are more or less supposed to all think alike, it makes for uniform justice which is a good thing. So while you may find both tough and lenient judges, the difference between them is far smaller than what you might find in other countries. If judges do not sentence the way the legislature thinks they ought to, they should correct that by fixing the laws or sentencing guidelines. Sadly that rarely happens in practice.

And in case of these environmental suits, the Netherlands is in a rather unique position. Our constitution places international treaties above our own laws, instead of having parliament translate those treaties into articles of law (like almost all other countries do). It sounds fine, but... it means that the interpretation of those treaties is left to the judges, rather than with parliament where it belongs, and with no option to fix these interpretations.

It depends on the fuel mix, but... in the period of 2004-2024, NOx emissions from vehicles in this countries saw the sharpest drop of all emissions, now less than half of the amount at the start of that period.

We have had a few similar rulings in the Netherlands. And it's silly. The way this used to work is: government would set boundaries, issue permits, set fees on emissions, and so on. Companies working within those boundaries would be free of liability, except in cases of unforeseen consequences, gross negligence, or efforts to hide harmful effects from regulators. Now that we know that global warming is an issue (for a while now), the thing to do is tighten regulation and review permits, not to allow companies to be sued into oblivion. Especially since those companies do not emit harmful gases for funsies, they do so because we the consumers demand it. I also have some questions about reciprocity: can we expect to successfully sue Peruvian companies for their contribution to global warming, which will likely cost our country a fair bit of money to mitigate?