if the president decided to rename another country via EO, would google implement it for US users? where does google draw the limit?
michael veale
@michae.lv
prof @laws.ucl.ac.uk, technology, law, policy, society, whimsical latvian top level domain names. michae.lv and fediverse https://someone.elses.computer/@mikarv 🏳️🌈
note, when radovan karadžić (president of republika srpska, also convicted of war crimes in bosnia and sentenced to life) dies, if he does not move prisons he will die on the Isle of Wight where he is being held
Reuters@reuters.com · last mo.Bosnian Serb general Ratko Mladic, who was serving a life sentence for genocide in the bloody 1992-95 war in Bosnia, has died in the United Nations detention center in The Hague, Belgrade's Informer TV reported reut.rs/3Sd1MSL
uber fined 825m EUR for violating GDPR by dutch DPA re deactivation of drivers‘ accounts nos.nl/artikel/2627...
Uber schond rechten chauffeurs, AP legt megaboete van 825 miljoen op
Uber zou chauffeurs hebben geschrapt via automatische systemen, zonder dat er een mens bij te pas kwam.
nos.nl
disappointed that out of the huge number of digital sovereignty conferences, none have yet centred the lived experience of actual sovereigns
sainsbury‘s pauses AI shoplifting detection face scanning from Gordon’s Wine Bar spin out surveillance company Facewatch after incorrect customer ejection www.theguardian.com/technology/2...
Sainsbury’s store pauses AI scanning after false shoplifting accusation
Supermarket chain says ‘human error’, not its Facewatch technology, to blame for ejecting a customer
theguardian.com
have not seen anyone note that, in relation to AI SynthID text watermarking: all methods deployed by AI firms rely on private keys for security so no cheap/local/private detection. EU AI Act guidelines say it should not be this way, it should be local/interoperable. the deployed methods are not!
given Amazon provide the 'Sidewalk' infrastructure that makes Tile trackers work via Alexa and Ring devices as detectors, they don't exactly have a leg to stand on when investigative journalists slip an AirTag in a book
Emanuel Maiberg@emanuelmaiberg.bsky.social · last mo.We put a tracking device in a shipment of rare books acquired by an anonymous buyer. It ended up at an Amazon facility where the company scans books for training data and destroys them in the process: www.404media.co/we-tracked-a...
We put a tracking device in a shipment of rare books acquired by an anonymous buyer. It ended up at an Amazon facility where the company scans books for training data and destroys them in the process: www.404media.co/we-tracked-a...
We Tracked a Shipment of Rare Books. It Ended at an Amazon AI Training Facility
We placed a tracking device in a shipment of rare books to see which AI company was buying it, and found an Amazon facility where Amazon scans and destroys books.
404media.co
I’m convinced, upon rereading, that this simply misunderstands how either or both of how LLMs or watermarking works daringfireball.net/2026/08/anth...
Anthropic’s ‘Watermark’ Text Adulteration in Claude Is a Perversion of Writing
It’s unacceptable for a tool to sacrifice an iota of clarity, coherence, meaning, quality, etc. for the purpose of embedding hidden clues within the text to suggest its provenance. The idea that anyth...
daringfireball.net
I've updated UCL Massively Crossreferenced Digital Laws — it now features ~40 EU instruments as well as Irish & UK digital laws; what cites each article/para/sub para from a db of 6.5M cases, statutes, decisions, guidance, pending CJEU preliminary rulings & more homepages.ucl.ac.uk/~ucqnmve/law...
media is a hugely important thing to study, it’s dismal to reduce it to ‘content’ degrees.asu.edu/bachelors/ma...
Content Creation - BA | Degree Details | ASU Degree Search
Turn your creativity into content that connects with audiences. Learn to create powerful video, podcasts and social media content that builds engaged audiences and uses analytics to understand what wo...
degrees.asu.edu
i see government is taking its online presence seriously in this troubled digital age, passing GDS responsibility to the minister in charge of ‘ceremonials’ (ie remembrance day parades) and tourism.
Gavin Freeguard@gavinfreeguard.com · 2mo agoAccording to @dsonic.bsky.social over on The Other Place (h/t a civil society colleague), the DCMS ministerial briefs have been announced Steph Peacock (who shadowed data/digital infrastructure in opposition) gets GDS, not Ian Murray (who had been minister for GDS while at DSIT)
I always suspected a UK government would eventually reverse course on "coding in public". So I've been backing up all government code. For six years. Today I finally generated a report on what has been deleted. Its much worse than I realised. github.com/uk-gov-mirro...
The default is the consequential part. Scraping consent has operated as opt-out-if-you-knew-to, so silence became permission. Cloudflare now turns silence into reservation at a chokepoint covering over 20% of domains, changing the baseline for sites that never expressed a view.
meta fears a google 'glasshole' style catchy moniker situation for their unpleasant new tech. perhaps it's time to strike fear into their corporate partner and make 'raybanned' a verb?
Alderik@alderik.eurosky.social · 2mo ago"[V]enues from elite restaurants to popular pub chains have banned the £359 glasses in order to preserve the privacy of customers and staff. [..] various theatres across London, said [..] that those wearing the glasses during shows will be asked to remove them." www.theguardian.com/technology/2...
Cloudflare (>20% of all domains) has started automatically implementing DSM Dir art 4 rights reservation (ie copyright/TDM objection to scraping) for all sites that do not have a robots.txt file. They also adding purpose fields to robots.txt unilaterally. developers.cloudflare.com/bots/additio...
on protest and bluetooth mesh networking apps - india attempts to restrict source code to stop people circumventing internet shutdowns restofworld.org/2026/india-g...
Why India asked GitHub to geoblock Jack Dorsey’s Bitchat code - Rest of World
Jack Dorsey’s Bluetooth messaging app surged during India’s internet blackout — and the government’s response suggests a new tech battleground.
restofworld.org
if i were in the lords i would submit a private members bill to remove " (Text with EEA relevance)" from the end of the titles of all assimilated EU law
UCL Massively Crossreferenced Digital Laws now includes *pending preliminary references & AG Opinions* for all EU laws. Currently updates weekly. Based on Eurlex data which is a bit later to update than CURIA data (if you can even find it on the new website...) homepages.ucl.ac.uk/~ucqnmve/law...
michael veale@michae.lv · 2mo agoYou can now access many more digital laws, not just the GDPR, at the UCL Massively Crossreferenced Digital Laws page: EU: GDPR, DSA, DMA, AI Act, UCPD, NIS2 UK: OSA, DPA18, ...+ Each article/para/recital, links to what-cites-it in int'l cases/statutes/guidance homepages.ucl.ac.uk/~ucqnmve/law...
$SPCX was, indeed, going to the moon www.yahoo.com/news/science...
SpaceX rocket stage believed to have slammed into Moon
A four-tonne piece of a SpaceX rocket was believed to have unintentionally crashed into the Moon on Wednesday, a collision that posed no danger to Earth but is expected to leave behind a lunar crater....
yahoo.com
so much talk about the EU AI Act, but so little talk about the California AI watermarking provisions, SB 942, (extremely similar to the AIA) which became enforceable on the 2nd August
Aan de KU Leuven lijken specifieke onderzoekslijnen te koop. Future of Life Institute – bruidschat van Musk en vooral Buterin à $660 miljoen – financieert een AI lab via een donatie en plaatst de *eigen policy director* aan het hoofd van het lab aan de KU Leuven. www.demorgen.be/niet-te-miss...
Geld van Elon Musk en crypto-ondernemers voor KU Leuven: waarom het Future of Life Institute vragen oproept
Het kreeg miljoenendonaties van Elon Musk en crypto-ondernemers en luidt al jaren de alarmklok over de existentiële gevaren van AI. Wat is het Future of Life Institute, dat een nieuw AI-veiligheidslab...
demorgen.be
You can now access many more digital laws, not just the GDPR, at the UCL Massively Crossreferenced Digital Laws page: EU: GDPR, DSA, DMA, AI Act, UCPD, NIS2 UK: OSA, DPA18, ...+ Each article/para/recital, links to what-cites-it in int'l cases/statutes/guidance homepages.ucl.ac.uk/~ucqnmve/law...
michael veale@michae.lv · 2mo agoParts of the GDPR are cited and interpreted by thousands of pieces of case law and guidance, but there's no easy and free way to find out what. We've made a tool which makes it super easy, for 13,000 citing documents, all in one place. More regulations to come! homepages.ucl.ac.uk/~ucqnmve/law...
My boiling hot take on this is that, if tech companies are going to fund this kind of research (looking at Schmidt too), then the money needs to be given *no strings* to an independent arm's length research body, pooled with other funding, and treated as a donation not as direct funding.
Hetan Shah@hetanshah.bsky.social · 2mo agoAnthropic AI research fund offers $5m - $30m for social science research on themes of AI impact on workers; transition initiatives; income support; building worker stakes; and wider evidence on public investments. Total fund of $200m available www.anthropic.com/news/economi...
Parts of the GDPR are cited and interpreted by thousands of pieces of case law and guidance, but there's no easy and free way to find out what. We've made a tool which makes it super easy, for 13,000 citing documents, all in one place. More regulations to come! homepages.ucl.ac.uk/~ucqnmve/law...
now the AI Omnibus has been published, if you want to read a version with redline or a total consolidated version (not just the list of what has been deleted and added, which is what the omnibus is), i've published both recast and track-change versions on my website michae.lv/ai-act-as-am...
in the legislative proposal to expand the supreme court, could you please also tell them to publish HTML versions of their judgments? (you can still paginate them precisely, technology is amazing!). section 508 of the rehabilitation act called and it wants the judicial branch in scope.
genuine q: if ai coding is massively increasing engineers’ productivity why does software either feel the same or worse? where is this productivity actually going?
Information Compliance team at the House of Commons managed to send an incorrect email to 120,000 recipients (me included), ironically intended as an internal puff piece about how good their information compliance is www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/inco...
Incorrect email recipients May 2026 - a Freedom of Information request to House of Commons
On May 28 2026 an email entitled “Information Compliance - FPP” was sent in error from the Finance, Portfolio and Performance Communications group. Please write back (FOI Act 2000) to tell me how ma...
whatdotheyknow.com