An example of a corporation doing the bare minimum required by law.

Laws which they've lobbied and used regulatory capture to slow any updates.

Regulations are important.

These regulations were written a long time ago when physical tape was used. Boeing has since captured the American regulatory system.

You're not wrong they literally have a scene talking about his test scores showing his mentally deficiency on a written test.

In the film he's a diagnosed retard.

The counter culture was called a counter culture because it was a minority. Even of the boomers.

The intergenerational fight is dumb, but if you're talking generalisation and joining in, most boomers weren't hippies.

They conformed and are still complaining about those who don't conform. Just as they complained about hippies then they complain about zoomers now.

He's a prosecutor who apparently can't be bought.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/feb/13/tax-authorities-should-prosecute-evaders-keir-starmer

That's far more dangerous to a billionaire than a firebrand.

If Starner only delivers a non-corrupt legal system it'll be an incredible win for the Country. But I do think he needs 10 years in office so he should focus on actually winning the next election.

It's based on Hamlet. So Shakespeare, not the bible.

For context.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/if-vlc-can-ship-a-free-dvd-player-why-cant-microsoft/

Under French law DVD and Blu-ray codecs aren't patentable and VLC is based in France. The organisation isn't breaking any laws.

Whether using VLC in the US is the legal grey area.

So it's not VideoLAN who might be breaking a law, it's you by circumventing the anti piracy keys in DVDs and Blurays. Millennium copyright act and anywhere that signs up to a treaty containing reciprocal copyright law might have an issue.

Patent infringements might also be possible in the US if you edited that open source code in that country, but US to EU patent treaties don't cover software France deems unpatentable so distributing the codec is probably fine as long as it's of French origin (and non-commercial use as per the GPL licence)

In the UK, the codec might be patentable now after Brexit interestingly but we haven't yet diverged on patent treaties with the EU yet as far as I know and we're part of the US patent treaty still.

Similar things happened with MP3 codecs in Linux before it was also made free. You'd either be prompted to make the choice to install yourself during or after the install. Or perhaps 2 downloads offered, one with and one without.

All to show you as an individual made the choice to use those codecs. If there were any possible damages from an individual download is would be less than $40 in licencing. So a lawyer would have to submit a case for each individual for that as a possible settlement, not even guaranteed.

As long as a large organisation isn't liable for the codec install, it falls into "de minimis" legal territory.

I remember a Live CD install of Ubuntu required some hoops to get codecs at one point in the distant past. I looked it up then out of curiosity.

He supported a book banning law. He's in the wrong.

Now he's not gone back on that, he's complaining the law he supported is applying to his books.

He wants to be above the law while others are not.

You're talking about a proportionally representative parliamentary system.

The UK has a parliamentary system and it's still just as possible for the opposition to be entirely powerless for 5 years at a time.

First past the post voting. That's the problem.

Parliamentary or not. The actual voting system is the problem.

And Hollywood profits aren't from movies, honestly you've fallen for basic accounting tricks..

A franchise that doesn't make money devalues the retail space. McDonald's model links rents to sales so they take maximum value at all times.

Royalty fee: 4% of gross revenues

Brand marketing and promotion fee: 4% of gross revenues

Location rent: Unlike most other franchises, McDonald’s owns the land and buildings at its locations and franchisees pay rent that can be based on a percentage of sales or as a fixed amount. Percentage rents are 31.75% of sales. Fixed rents are typically £100,000 to £225,000 per month.

So Corporately it looks like they make their money from rent. But that rent is directly linked to sales and labour in most cases.

Without sales they don't get rent unless they've agreed a fixed rent and that's increasingly rare. Usually only the highest value sites.

The real estate value of the property is linked to business revenue as well. If a franchise fails and doesn't get another investor then the empty building is worth a lot less.

By picking McDonald's you're actually about as wrong as possible. Everything of value is linked back to labour, even the value of the land.

It might work differently in other countries but I doubt it. Economics work the same everywhere and McDonalds didn't like to standardise when they find a winning model for themselves.

This happened with appliances. They ended up with the silly A++++ ratings added in 2010 as otherwise everything would be an A.

In 2021 they decided to redefine grades instead. A fridge at A+++ became a C. A became the top grade again.

It's also worth noting that as they push the whole scale and G into being more efficient that essentially bans products that can't achieve a rating.

if everything becomes an A the system has worked and increased the efficiency across the market. They'll adjust the goals every 5 to 10 years.

The EU battery life measure is going to be the most interesting battle ground in my opinion. "All day battery life" will have a measured metric in hours.

If the EU have managed to make that metric representative of an amount of screen time in a busy day it could become the first thing consumers look at. Or at least a deal breaker when that number is too low.

As a public, we've gone back to the days when the internet was a techies platform.

The difference now is it's a techies platform Vs. a corporate platform.

The more convenient FOSS social media is, the less techie it will be, and the closer we'll get back to the more open internet for all.

Until then we have an open internet for techies alone.

When they ditched the headphone jack fairphone ditched environmentalism.

The fairphone 3+ was their last fair phone.

It's just another cheap phone now. Made in the same place from the same stuff as other makers, with maybe a year of extra security updates.

They started by doing stuff differently, now they do things the same as everyone else and want to pretend they're different.

The point is to prove that copyrighted material has been used as training data. As a reference.

If a human being gets asked to draw the joker, gets a still from the film, then copies it to the best of their ability. They can't sell that image. Technically speaking they've broken the law already by making a copy. Lots of fan art is illegal, it's just not worth going after (unless you're Disney or Nintendo).

As a subscription service that's what AI is doing. Selling the output.

Held to the same standards as a human artist, this is illegal.

If AI is allowed to copy art under copyright, there's no reason a human shouldn't be allowed to do the same thing.

Proving the reference is all important.

If an AI or human only ever saw public domain artwork and was asked to draw the joker, they might come up with a similar character. But it would be their own creation. There are copyright cases that hinge on proving the reference material. (See Blurred Lines by Robin Thick)

The New York Times is proving that AI is referencing an image under copyright because it comes out precisely the same. There are no significant changes at all.

In fact even if you come up with a character with no references. If it's identical to a pre-existing character the first creator gets to hold copyright on it.

This is undefendable.

Even if that AI is a black box we can't see inside. That black box is definitely breaking the law. There's just a different way of proving it when the black box is a brain and when the black box is an AI.

The problem is artists often make their actual living doing basic boiler plate stuff that gets forgotten quickly.

In graphics it's Company logos, advertising, basic graphics for businesses.

In writing it's copy for websites, it's short articles, it's basic stuff.

Very few artists want to do these things, they want to create the original work that might not make money at all. That work potentially being a winning lottery ticket but most often being an act of expressing themselves that doesn't turn into a payday.

Unfortunately AI is taking work away from artists. It can't seem to make very good art yet but it can prevent artists who could make good art getting to the point of making it.

It's starving out the top end of the creative market by limiting the easy work artists could previously rely on to pay the bills whilst working on the big ideas.

They value Tesla as a battery manufacturer. I'm not saying that's right but they're hoping other manufacturers will end up using their batteries just like every phone uses Samsung's screens.

I think Tesla has a small lead but is going to be quickly out-developed.

The self driving stuff has always been fluff. The gigafactory not so much.

I'm not sure that works. There were 20 shillings to the pound.

So £0.75 a week.

This inflation calculator:

https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/monetary-policy/inflation/inflation-calculator

£75 in 1843 is equivalent to £8,310.96

So 15s then is equivalent to £83.11 a week, £4321.72 a year.

40 hour week (which is implied to be too low). ~£2.08 an hour

So if he worked over 40 hours you're talking a sub £2/hour wage. Around $2.70 in US money.

I suspect the stat relies on converting to dollars before applying inflation as GBP to USD was about 1 to 5 then instead of about 1 to 1.33

It's fun but I wouldn't want to denigrate Dickens by saying he got poverty wrong to make a political point.

Even if no one does anything, the first book was published 40 years ago. It won't leave copyright for another 62 years.

Copyright is too long.

Net worth includes all asset value. Pensions, investments, and property.

That seems about right to me. A lot will be tied up so liquid assets will be lower.

The 50% upwards middle class being $400,000 will mostly be the value of a house.

Very annoying they just specify "average". I'd expect this data to be based on the median values so it should just say.

Once out of curiosity.

It's usually an ad ridden article with AI vomit to make it really long that eventually tells you there's a point update in iOS.

Hitler wasn't a caricature either.

https://youtu.be/WE6mnPmztoQ

The idea that evil has to appear a certain way is from stories we tell to children. Evil people will generally appear pretty normal day to day.