It's happened! After well over 20 years of litigation, the Metall auf Metall case still isn't done! But it at least now has gotten another ruling. I previously talked about the Advocate General's opinion on this case, but now the judges have judged. So let's take a look at what they have judged. What on… Continue reading Fair use in the EU – sort of (ECJ Metall auf Metall/Pastiche/Sampling ruling)
Make Art, not Content – Or: AI Slop doesn’t threaten Artists, Capitalism does
As we look around ourselves, more and more of the internet is being spammed with AI content. Human content creators are ringing the alarm bells; their livelihood is under threat, their content which they spent hours making being drowned under a sea of quick-and-easy generators of text, images and videos. Yet, as new as AI… Continue reading Make Art, not Content – Or: AI Slop doesn’t threaten Artists, Capitalism does
Muse Group: Enshittifying everything it touches
Starting in 2017, Ultimate Guitar – then a guitar tabs website developed from a Kaliningrad office – started going on a shopping spree: They acquired MuseScore, an open source notation program, Audacity, the Audacity audio editor, Hal Leonard, a sheet music publisher, StaffPad, AmpKit, and others. Today, they're known as Muse Group, have abandoned their Russian… Continue reading Muse Group: Enshittifying everything it touches
Download Audacity with ASIO
Download Audacity 3.7.5 with ASIO support.
Corporations are agentic AGI
There are some good arguments in favor of understanding corporations as artificial, intelligent meta-(or super-)organisms: Corporations are aware of their predators (government agencies) and aim to extinguish them (see regulatory capture) Corporations prioritize their own survival over secondary goals (profits, growth, etc). To avoid death, it may shed massive amounts of its body (close stores,… Continue reading Corporations are agentic AGI
How to balance copyright and the freedom of the arts
Copyright law is unfair and a bit silly. We can fix it to be the tool creators deserve. And now might be the time to get ready to take action.
Even the institutions are waking up to the fact that copyright law is unfair
The balance between the freedom of the arts and rewarding existing creators with exclusive rights is manifestly wrong
Getting Ollama to run properly
Today I tried to do something which apparently is silly: Use Ollama on my Windows machine to run gpt-oss:20b, use it in VSCode's Copilot-chat, and also use it on WSL for my Linux (web) projects. This is, apparently, difficult. To document my findings instead of a "nvm fixed it", here's the stuff I did: Tell… Continue reading Getting Ollama to run properly
Thermite as grid-scale energy storage (and gemstone production method)
Thermite is a fancy name (actually a trademark) for a quite simple reaction: Just take some rust (iron oxide) powder and some aluminium powder, smash them together, and watch the fireworks. Or to put it into a formula: iron(III) oxide + aluminium → iron + aluminium oxideFe2O3 + 2Al → 2 Fe + Al2O3 This… Continue reading Thermite as grid-scale energy storage (and gemstone production method)
City Villages: Desirable public housing for a greener future
We are currently facing several issues: A housing crisis – housing in places which are desirable (ie: cities) is very short, and not much appears to be done to actually alleviate it. A loneliness crisis – people have a harder and harder time connecting to others. A climate crisis – resources are wasted on things… Continue reading City Villages: Desirable public housing for a greener future
Leo Wattenberg 