+
+In short, there's a growing sentiment against copyright in general. Copyright can enable centralization of rights when paired with a capitalist economy, which is what we've been historically experiencing with the advent of record labels/publishing companies. It's even statutorily enshrined as the "work-for-hire" doctrine. AI has the potential to be an end-run around these massive copyright repositories' rights, which many people see as beneficial.
+
+However, this argument forgets that intangible rights are not *yet* so centralized that independent rights-holders have ceased to exist. While AI will indeed harm central rights-holders, it will also affect individual creators and the bargaining power of creators that choose to work with the central institutions. For those against copyright as a whole, this is a neutral factor to the disestablishment of copyright. Due to my roots in the indie and open-source communities, I'd much rather keep their/our/**your** rights intact.
+
+Reconciling the two views, I'm sympathetic to arguments against specific parts of the US's copyright regime as enforced by the courts, such as the way fair use is statutorily worded. We as a voting population have the power to compel our representatives to enact reforms that take the threat of ultimate centralization into account, and can even work to break down what's already here. But I don't think that AI should be the impetus for arguments against the system as a whole.
## The Legal Argument
Fair warning, this section is going to be the most law-heavy, and probably pretty tech-heavy too. Feel free to skip [[#The First Amendment and the "Right to Read"|-> straight to the policy debates.]] The field is notoriously paywalled, but I'll try to link to publicly available versions of my sources whenever possible.
-Please don't criticize my sources in this section unless a case has been overruled or a statute has been repealed (ie, I **can't** rely on it). This is my interpretation of what's here (also again not legal advice or a professional opinion). Whether a case is binding on you personally doesn't weigh in on whether its holding is the nationally accepted view.
+Please don't criticize my sources in this section unless a case has been overruled or a statute has been repealed/amended (ie, I **can't** rely on it). This is my interpretation of what's here (also again not legal advice or a professional opinion). Whether a case is binding on you personally doesn't weigh in on whether its holding is the nationally accepted view.
For all of the below analysis, assume that the hypothetical model in question has been trained on some work which has a US copyright registered with the original author.
-### Training
-Everything AI starts with a dataset.
-The core tenet of copyright is that the doctrine protects original expression, meaning you can't copyright facts. One common legal argument against training as infringement is that the AI extracts facts, not the author's creativity, from a work. But that position assumes that the AI is capable of first differentiating facts and art, and further separating them in a way analogous to the human mind's. First, let's talk about The Chinese Room.
+The core tenet of copyright is that the doctrine protects original expression (of which regulation is authorized by the Constitution as "works of authorship"), meaning **you can't copyright facts**. There are two ends to the spectrum of arguments made by authors (seeking protection) and defendants (arguing that enforcement is unnecessary in their case). For example, you can't be sued for using the formula you read in a math textbook, but if you scan that math textbook into a PDF, you might be found liable for infringement.
+
+One common legal argument against training as infringement is that the AI extracts facts, not the author's creativity, from a work. But that position assumes that the AI is capable of first differentiating facts and art, and further separating them in a way analogous to the human mind's.
+### Training
+
+
+
+They claim a label will be applied by creators to AI videos. Yet it's been two months, and no such label appears on very recent videos like [US Presidents SURVIVE An ALIEN ATTACK In GTA 5](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgG7BnXzkAU). Their mentioned dispute tools are also absent, though we have no way of knowing whether those are truly implemented.
+
+Now look at Apple, who [*still* has no AI policy for the App Store](https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/). Or Google, whose solution is [user labor](https://techcrunch.com/2023/10/25/google-plays-policy-update-cracks-down-on-offensive-ai-apps-disruptive-notifications/).
+
+The simple truth is that a platform will not enforce any standard if not compelled to. Section 230 was ultimately a net positive because it was a nice carrot to goad platforms into enforcing some ground rules, with a tantalizing shield from liability if they did so. The (rightful) fear then was that if held liable regardless of moderation policy, then platforms would not spend a dime on moderation because if just one post slipped through the lawsuit would hit just as hard. The articles fail to mention this important historical fact when they raise the specter of Section 230, despite the credibility it would lend to their arguments. Yet it does not apply to AI.
+- And in fact, having zero involvement actually enables websites to make an argument (albeit weakly) that they have *no* control over their users' content. Any moderation at all obviously defeats this argument. This underscored the historical need for an incentive, but now that argument is no longer applicable because of the previous sentence. We can guarantee that platforms will comply with the stick.
+
+Here, we have platforms that publicly state that they can fight the AI onslaught, but with no motivation behind it. Couple that with investor pressure to stay trendy and it's an environment ripe for stagnation. But we're in no danger of platforms abandoning moderation altogether. So when a carrot is no longer enough, it's time for a stick.
+### Detour: There is an alternative!
+There's an old saying about the evolution of tech: over the years, you keep what works and chuck what doesn't. With the Act's status as an IP right, we can lift a page from another common IP enforcement mechanism that gets around Section 230: the DMCA. If protecting platforms is truly a concern, why not compel platforms to implement and exercise a takedown tool? This way, they'll have two "strikes" (terrible pun) before being subject to damages. Not expressing any opinion on the merit of the DMCA itself though, I'd need an entire essay to unpack the mess its scheme creates.
+
+This would have the added benefit of resolving some disputes without a court's involvement, which federal district judges will certainly be very thankful for. However, the bill also recognizes that when a case does arise, judges want to do things their way.
+## The First Amendment Defense
+The final outcry about this section is that it supposedly outlines *one* First Amendment defense, and that:
+
+> It’s actually designed to really limit the 1st Amendment defenses.
+>
+> \- Techdirt
+
+Notwithstanding the impossibility of a Congressional act canning the First Amendment (thanks *Marbury v. Madison*!), Techdirt's article neglects to mention that subsection 3(i) makes special mention of other First Amendment defenses as a sort of Congressional CYA. That section states:
+
+>Nothing in this Act shall alter the *application by a court* of First Amendment protections in the event such a defense is asserted to \[a claim of unauthorized performance of a digital depiction\].
+
+(emphasis added). This clause is basically just stating the obvious to try and not get the Act struck down, yet the articles still fail to mention it.
+- Sidebar: Severability clauses like the one in the Act at §§ 3(h) get followed by the Supreme Court when they concern ancillary clauses like this one. If they hate this defense, it doesn't affect anything else in the statute's merit. I'm just hesitant to use this as a legitimate argument because a bad statute will still have an effect in the background while a case percolates.
+
+With respect to arguments (not seriously advanced by the articles in issue here) that the statute as a whole is an unconstitutional, note that this is not a legal justification essay. If I was going to evaluate the scrutiny arguments and precedent for whether this specific statute would be constitutional facially or as-applied to specific AI and non-AI examples, I'd submit it as a student note to law journals. I will point out, though, that many other categories of speech are given lesser or no protection just by nature of their effect or content (slander because it harms the subject, non-artistic obscenity, etc). My point is that such a hypothetical challenge would be a close case.
+
+Finally, if the content of someone's AI-generated image/audio/whatever is truly for a 1st amendment protected purpose, nothing stops them from just...making their criticism/opinion without digital depictions. For example, I don't think there's some expressive meaning to making Biden say "I'm senile" that just stating your opinion yourself wouldn't convey (unlike images on a t-shirt, which were integral to the point that the student was trying to make in [*Guiles v. Marineau*](https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/us-2nd-circuit/1101375.html) \[[shirt in question](https://www.thenation.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Scott_Censorship_AP_crop_img-680x430.jpg)\]). Nonetheless, I think reasonable minds could differ on this point, so feel free to let me know your take.
+### Detour: Chill, bro
+Since the articles focus so intently on the Act's purported cabining of protected speech directly, they don't address the possibility of a chilling effect on speech. I actually think this point has more merit than the complaints about 1a defenses being limited, or an argument that the whole statute is impermissible because of its restrictions themselves rather than their broader effect. In fact, this point would be where the other arguments about the statute being vague/broad would have the most powerful effect.
+## Conclusion
+Hopefully I've convinced you that there's more to the No AI FRAUD Act than meets the eye. Unlike the Act, I did have to cabin this essay heavily, because the IP nerd in me wants to revive my old RA position and just dive right back into the literature on rights of publicity, privacy, and appropriation. If I did that, I'd end up with a second essay on [[Essays/ai-infringement|AI infringement of IP rights (coming soon)]] and nobody wants that, haha. I definitely have more to say on Section 230, but outright analyses of that statute are kind of stale. If I find something else that it dovetails with, I'll explore it and devote too much of that future essay to it as usual.
+
+I'll be sure to update this page as the bill trudges through the [process](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZ8psP4S6BQ). It'll be interesting to see what provisions that raised concerns for the media and I do get amended or stricken.
+## Further Reading
+Some excellent reporting on another Section 230 AI Bill™ by the same guy who wrote the discussed misguided article, haha. *This* one wants to strip immunity from ANY AI-related claim from it. That's stupid for the reasons outlined above: there needs to be at least some secondary analysis to fill the gap (which the No AI FRAUD Act does quite nicely—[[#00230: Incentive to Kill]]). [Techdirt - Even If You Hate Both AI And Section 230...](https://www.techdirt.com/2023/12/06/even-if-you-hate-both-ai-and-section-230-you-should-be-concerned-about-the-hawley-blumenthal-bill-to-remove-230-protections-from-ai/)
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/content/Essays/plagiarism.md b/content/Essays/plagiarism.md
index 9a2a6b5e9..8c0c93cfb 100644
--- a/content/Essays/plagiarism.md
+++ b/content/Essays/plagiarism.md
@@ -10,13 +10,18 @@ date: 2024-01-13
draft: false
---
Expect this page to expand. I plan on fleshing it out it in tandem with a full argument on why AI training and output are both copyright infringement when the model was trained on copyrighted data, because copyright and plagiarism are inextricably linked.
+
+Some arguments in this paper specifically surrounding AI are related more to legal concerns than ethical ones, and are instead housed in the [[Essays/ai-infringement|🤖 essay on copyright infringement by generative AI]]. Those links will be denoted with 🤖.
+
+> [!warning]
+> CW: discussions of systemic/societal implicit bias and inequity in the AI section. Emotional accounts of exploited work product elsewhere.
## My Position
I think all works published that hold themselves out as informative or authoritative should properly inform the reader what they used to draw their conclusions.
To comport with my own beliefs, on this website, I:
- Provide links to webpages for programs/projects I discuss, including documentation as needed.
- See all of the [[Programs I Like/home|Programs I Like]]
-- Write blurbs about the sources I found the most helpful or persuasive (with links), and often hyperlink less argumentative statements of fact with a supporting reference.
+- Write blurbs about the sources I found the most helpful or persuasive (with links), and often hyperlink less argumentative statements of fact with a supporting reference. This is more common if I think that a source speaks for itself, or if I can't add much to the discussion and have chosen to adopt someone else's view without comment.
- See [[Essays/law-school|Law School is Broken]]
And when using my work, I request:
@@ -38,6 +43,17 @@ As mentioned above, there's definitely a gap in my knowlege/views that broadens
For digital gardening in particular, attribution is integral to the concept. [[Misc/what-is-a-garden|A digital garden]] is a network, and the culture of the digital garden is to provide paths out of the current webpage to others on the same site or even to other websites. These associations between webpages make up a comprehensive experience that differs from modern web use (Google search, click, close the tab) and looks more like Wikipedia spelunking.
Thus, the true value of attribution in a digital garden is mostly in the link itself rather than the substance of the current page or the linked page. This does not discount the importance of linking to those resources, though.
+
+## AI shouldn't disregard the need for attribution
+Attribution in the field of AI consists of two things: making public just what an AI was trained on, and then designing that AI to supplement its prompts with what parts of its training data it relied on for the facts of its answer.
+
+### #1: Revealing what's behind the curtain
+First, AI holds itself out as authoritative. Wrongfully so, due to incessant "hallucination" (when an AI model, due to their status as glorified autocorrect, makes up some fact or source and insists that it is accurate). This subjects it to the same kind of concerns as any authoritative work under my views.
+
+Second and perhaps most importantly, because of the actual issue of AI bias, transparency in what an AI was trained on is paramount. As a society, the ability to question the source of some facts presented to us is already beneficial (as discussed elsewhere in this essay). But for AI, we need to ensure that the generated statements are not only correct, but not disregarding other positions categorically because they were made by sources that the AI incorrectly considers non-authoritative. An AI model could look at two positions, one with many more datapoints supporting it, and thus completely ignore the second position in its answer to a prompt. Now imagine that the former is a white man's perspective, and the second a black woman's. It's not inconceivable that an AI could enshrine systemic bias. Attribution allows people who've made careers in this field to critically examine a dataset and look for this sort of gap. In that way, it makes a **better** AI model (assuming the goal of AI is to be accurate) because of more community oversight, not just one that's more ethically trained.
+- Sidebar: huh, turns out that this argument parallels the open-source philosophy.
+### #2: \[citation needed\] for responses to prompts
+Not to be confused with Molly White's [excellent newsletter](https://citationneeded.news/). This requirement is a more fine-grained mitigation for the transparency issues present in the dataset at large. It also provides evidence for potential copyright infringement lawsuits if the AI has also copied the expression of the paper it sourced. Note that this isn't the be-all, end-all solution to the problem of copyright infringement by AI. Read more of my take on that [[Essays/ai-infringement|🤖 here]].
## To-be-written
I want to address piece-by-piece [an argument by Brian Frye](https://www.techdirt.com/2024/01/09/plagiarism-is-fine/) supporting plagiarism in general. He's a prolific IP scholar, so I'll probably look through his academic works as well (*Against Creativity*, 11 N.Y.U. J.L. & Liberty 426 (2017), looks pretty interesting). To be clear, I don't want to get into the absolute witch hunt that inspired the linked article, but in the article he reiterates his greater conclusions about attribution to say that ALL plagiarism accusations are silly, which are what I want to respond to.
- Planned topics: granularity, necessity, nature of the work/merit, nature of the work/type of content.
@@ -47,4 +63,6 @@ I also want to discuss disrespect of creators’ intent for their works and what
Anyone who identifies as a "proud plagiarist," this is your notice that I may respond to your opinions, and I will properly attribute you when doing so.
- Readers: **Don't harass anyone I cite, please**. We disagree on the topic, and since all it really bears on is respect and authoritative nature until it goes into copyright infringement territory, there aren't any high stakes.
-I'm dying to dig into enterprise software engineering and attribution/licensing as well. "The StackOverflow problem" is something that the industry has been struggling with for years, and there are some pretty strong counter arguments to my position that come out of critique of softeng and originality. Given the existence of Copilot, this ties into AI as well.
\ No newline at end of file
+I'm dying to dig into enterprise software engineering and attribution/licensing as well. "The StackOverflow problem" is something that the industry has been struggling with for years, and there are some pretty strong counter arguments to my position that come out of critique of softeng and originality. Given the existence of Copilot (and StackOverflow's ai stance), this ties into AI as well.
+## Further Reading
+This paper spells out what we should be thinking about relative to information authority, trust, and societal need when talking about generative AI. **Sections 4 and 5 are very good**; section 6 jumps the shark by immediately forgetting that it's about modern generative AI and ranting about historical Google bugs instead (which the paper would actually classify as a discriminative IA system, good under its arguments). [Bender & Shah (unpublished)](https://faculty.washington.edu/ebender/papers/Envisioning_IAS_preprint.pdf)
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/content/Essays/why-i-garden.md b/content/Essays/why-i-garden.md
index b5c616e18..6dbfe9caa 100644
--- a/content/Essays/why-i-garden.md
+++ b/content/Essays/why-i-garden.md
@@ -16,6 +16,7 @@ There are a lot of beautiful rabbit holes on the internet if you know where to l
The kind of experience I want to be a part of has some basis in the early internet. There was a vocal minority pushing for this sort of unguided exploration, supplemented only by signposts of where one *could* travel from a given page, instead of where one *should* travel [[#1.|(1)]].
+Practicality also plays a significant role: documenting my mental state means that I'm much more likely to have a fully formed opinion on the subject I'm writing about at any given point in that writing process. I like being able to talk about things, and as someone who struggles with articulating myself on-the-fly, it's helpful that I've cemented my talking points by writing them out. Not to mention it allows me to critically examine my own views like any others. The mental disconnect between words in the formatting you write them ([[Projects/Obsidian/editor|Obsidian]]) and their appearance in another medium ([[Projects/Obsidian/digital-garden|Quartz]]) is a boon to both editing and analysis, and a skill I picked up from my legal writing mentors.
---
## References
diff --git a/content/Misc/disclaimers.md b/content/Misc/disclaimers.md
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..cecaf4b4f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/content/Misc/disclaimers.md
@@ -0,0 +1,25 @@
+---
+title: Disclaimers
+tags:
+ - misc
+ - meta
+date: 2024-01-25
+---
+## Epistemological disclosure
+Please accept that I reserve the right to be wrong on this website. I don’t claim to be an expert on any of the subject matter within. As this site reflects a learning process, I’m also liable to change my mind if I research an issue further. I’ll document if this happens.
+
+If you don’t like how I’ve done something, feel free to write a piece in your own garden for it. I’d love to read it! It’s no secret that a lot of this garden comprises my gripes with various things.
+## Disclaimer
+It goes without saying that anything herein constitutes my own opinion and not the opinion of any affiliated person or entity. Nothing on this website is legal advice either.
+## Attribution
+Feel free to properly reference any of the content within in your own gardens or work. Don’t plagiarize. A link to the page you used is just fine.
+
+**Do not input my work into an online or offline generative AI for any purpose, including to train or update the model, explore alternate positions to mine, or to converse with the work.** Keep the moles out of the garden.
+## Privacy/Terms of Use
+- I don't run analytics of any kind on this site.
+- I don't share any of my content with third parties, nor do I consent to third party use of my content which I retain a copyright in.
+ - The sole exception to this policy is that third parties are permitted to link to pages on this website in their own content, or to cite this website as a source.
+- Comments
+ - The time of posting, username, and comment content are all public facing and stored on the server for the sole purpose of providing a comment service. These are not shared with any third parties except to the extent that someone may access that public facing data through this site.
+ - Accounts created through email will retain the email provided for account login purposes only.
+ - Accounts created through GitHub login will retain an access token (revocable at any time through GitHub), your GitHub username, and your GitHub profile picture.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/content/Misc/home.md b/content/Misc/home.md
index 32164f502..fa5a37419 100644
--- a/content/Misc/home.md
+++ b/content/Misc/home.md
@@ -1,9 +1,9 @@
---
-title: Misc - Home
+title: 🏠 Misc - Home
tags:
- toc
- misc
-date: 9-08-23
+date: 2023-08-23
---
Things which I didn't really have a category for.
diff --git a/content/Misc/judicial-action.md b/content/Misc/judicial-action.md
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..32e555490
--- /dev/null
+++ b/content/Misc/judicial-action.md
@@ -0,0 +1,27 @@
+---
+title: Judicial Action is State Action?
+tags:
+ - misc
+ - essay
+ - legal
+date: 2024-01-22
+draft: true
+---
+> [!warning]
+> CW: historical racism, a chaotic good doctrine
+
+There's an interesting legal argument that sadly never got off the ground called state-action doctrine. If applied to current events, it would fascinatingly provide for more protection of individual rights.
+
+## State Action as a gap-filler
+At the time of the founding (as well as in England before that), common law (judge-made law) afforded the people remedies for infringement of *all* their private rights: to be let alone in their homes, to be free from physical attacks, to maintain possession of their physical property, and others. If the King's Courts could not enforce a legal/compensatory remedy (usually by some technicality), the courts of equity could still provide a remedy at equity.
+
+Now, people have many more rights which have no founding in common law. They exist because they were written into existence through statutes or the Constitution, including our modern concept of civil rights. But who are these rights enforceable against? **The state-action doctrine says that Constitutional rights are only enforceable against the government, not private citizens**. It's why Facebook banning you isn't a violation of your free speech rights, among other things. i.e., the wrong for which you seek a remedy must be an action taken by the State, not a private entity. But what constitutes a "state action"?
+
+## The M. Night Shyamalan of Property Law
+Enter [*Shelley v. Kraemer*](https://casetext.com/case/shelley-v-kraemer). In 1948, this case went up to the Supreme Court to determine whether a
+
+## Where to?
+
+## Further Reading
+- [Erwin Chemerinsky - Rethinking State Action](https://lawcat.berkeley.edu/record/1112481/files/fulltext.pdf)
+- [Mark Rosen - Was *Shelley v. Kraemer* Incorrectly Decided? Some New Answers](https://scholarship.kentlaw.iit.edu/fac_schol/529/)
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/content/Programs I Like/home.md b/content/Programs I Like/home.md
index 1ee396412..b4be8cc22 100644
--- a/content/Programs I Like/home.md
+++ b/content/Programs I Like/home.md
@@ -1,8 +1,8 @@
---
-title: Programs I Like - Home
+title: 🏠 Programs I Like - Home
tags:
- toc
-date: 9-08-23
+date: 2023-08-23
---
This is a list of programs which I may or may not have experience with, and why I have a positive regard for them.
diff --git a/content/Projects/Obsidian/digital-garden.md b/content/Projects/Obsidian/digital-garden.md
index 567a3450d..fa4fb223f 100644
--- a/content/Projects/Obsidian/digital-garden.md
+++ b/content/Projects/Obsidian/digital-garden.md
@@ -4,7 +4,8 @@ tags:
- meta
- webdev
- difficulty-moderate
-date: 9-08-23
+date: 2023-08-23
+lastmod: 2024-01-20
---
...It's this website.
@@ -26,10 +27,25 @@ I could have self-hosted the site, but I opted to use Quartz's built-in function
This was a time and a half to set up RSS for. It used some bastardized form of Atom but with RSS syntax and so neither spec could parse it.
- On the bright side, [one PR later](https://github.com/jackyzha0/quartz/pull/407) and Quartz is the only project in the Obsidian ecosystem with an RSS feed.
-**Important for any website:** Block the bot traffic! You don't want bad spiders/crawlers poking around on your site to try to find vulnerabilities or archiving your content for training AI without your consent. I like the Nginx project [Ultimate Bad Bot Blocker](https://github.com/mitchellkrogza/nginx-ultimate-bad-bot-blocker):
+**And important for any website:**
+## Block the bot traffic!
+You don't want bad spiders/crawlers poking around on your site to try to find vulnerabilities or archiving your content for training AI without your consent. I like the Nginx project [Ultimate Bad Bot Blocker](https://github.com/mitchellkrogza/nginx-ultimate-bad-bot-blocker):
- Still lets sites like Google and Bing crawl your site for search results, but blocks infinitely many other agents, referrers, and the like.
- Customizable with allowlists and denylists that you can use to override the defaults.
- Did I mention it gets updated every hour?
- Search for `444` in your nginx access logs after it's installed for a few laughs. It's mind blowing how many spiders are trying to find files that contain hosting access tokens (AWS, etc) for random sites.
-[[Projects/Obsidian/quartz-comments|Adding comments to the site]] was enough of a hassle that I consider it a separate project. Work in progress.
\ No newline at end of file
+[[Projects/Obsidian/quartz-comments|Adding comments to the site]] was enough of a hassle that I consider it a separate project. Work in progress.
+
+## Using this Site
+- [Explorer](https://quartz.jzhao.xyz/features/explorer)
+ - \[Desktop\] on your left: jump to any page on the site.
+ - \[Mobile\] visit the [[sitemap|Sitemap]].
+- [Graph View](https://help.obsidian.md/Plugins/Graph+view)
+ - An [[Programs I Like/obsidian|Obsidian]] feature which acts as a map of what pages link to each other. Click on it for a map of the entire site and how it interconnects. It doesn't use Obsidian's implementation directly, but since [[Projects/Obsidian/digital-garden|the site generator I use]] is heavily inspired by Obsidian and [Obsidian Publish]( https://obsidian.md/publish ), it remains.
+ - \[Desktop\]: right pane
+ - \[Mobile\]: below content and comments
+- Backlinks
+ - A list of all pages on the site that link to the current one.
+ - \[Desktop\]: right pane
+ - \[Mobile\]: below content and comments
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/content/Projects/Obsidian/home.md b/content/Projects/Obsidian/home.md
index fc52ceb95..882d911ee 100644
--- a/content/Projects/Obsidian/home.md
+++ b/content/Projects/Obsidian/home.md
@@ -1,11 +1,11 @@
---
-title: Project Obsidian - Home
+title: 🏠 Project Obsidian - Home
tags:
- project
- productivity
- cloud
- notes
-date: 9-08-23
+date: 2023-08-23
---
Hoo boy. This project needs its entire own folder structure because of the sheer amount of components I have going.
diff --git a/content/Projects/Obsidian/quartz-comments.md b/content/Projects/Obsidian/quartz-comments.md
index d76213e27..c7b473b10 100644
--- a/content/Projects/Obsidian/quartz-comments.md
+++ b/content/Projects/Obsidian/quartz-comments.md
@@ -15,7 +15,7 @@ I really enjoy how easy it is to bring-up my backend nowadays because everything
## Frontend
A [Transformer Plugin](https://quartz.jzhao.xyz/advanced/making-plugins#transformers) for Quartz was on their Discord server that adds the necessary scripts to the page, and I put the comment element on the footer of the page.
-Now works with SPA mode! Unfortunately, I’m waiting on an update that fires an event I can listen for when the theme changes so that I can also tell it to reload on theme change. For now, refresh the page if it looks glitched.
+Now works with SPA mode! Creator also updated the plugin to reload on theme change even without an event fired which is sick.
At present, you can choose to leave an anonymous comment or link it to your GitHub account. Alternatively, you can use email confirmation for notifications when someone replies to your comments!
## Todo
diff --git a/content/Projects/my-cloud.md b/content/Projects/my-cloud.md
index cbf27ed7c..ffa96f40b 100644
--- a/content/Projects/my-cloud.md
+++ b/content/Projects/my-cloud.md
@@ -68,6 +68,12 @@ The below is an excerpt from a document obtained through a Freedom of Informatio
![[Attachments/fbi-foia.png]]
+**2024 update:** I hate being proven right.
+
+> NSA does buy and use commercially available netflow (i.e., non-content) data related wholly to domestic internet communications and internet communications where one side of the communication is a U.S. Internet Protocol address and the other is located abroad.
+>
+> [NSA response to Sen. Wyden Letter](https://www.wyden.senate.gov/news/press-releases/wyden-releases-documents-confirming-the-nsa-buys-americans-internet-browsing-records-calls-on-intelligence-community-to-stop-buying-us-data-obtained-unlawfully-from-data-brokers-violating-recent-ftc-order)
+
**The average citizen has nothing to hide**: why would the US government be purchasing everyone's data? Surely, they have some non-commercial mechanism of determining who high-profile potential threat actors are that would warrant surveillance. It's not like they're trying to find such actors through these purchases, that would be a needle in a haystack. It's much easier and cheaper to find that kind of person through searches on social media sites and pay for everything about them later. That kind of surveillance, I agree with. This wholesale monitoring of the average citizen through commercially available channels? Unacceptable.
It's true that the very fact these commercial avenues for obtaining wholesale data exist is undesirable, and there's an argument that the government is just using every avenue legally available to them. But still: **to what end?**
diff --git a/content/Updates/2024/jan.md b/content/Updates/2024/jan.md
index 37a9bdcc6..d023cdda2 100644
--- a/content/Updates/2024/jan.md
+++ b/content/Updates/2024/jan.md
@@ -1,20 +1,30 @@
---
title: 01/24 - Summary of Changes
-draft: true
+draft: false
tags:
- "#update"
date: 2024-01-03
lastmod: 2024-01-31
---
+This is being talked about nowhere, but I think it deserves publicity. A New Hampshire cafe that had its Instagram account deleted just won a breach-of-contract action against Facebook over their Section 230 defense! 
+
+Neat coincidence that Section 230 features quite heavily in one of my newest essays. Happy 2024, all.
## Housekeeping
-I feel like I finally have a handle on the feel of this site. Front page looks very polished now, and I got around to drawing a great-looking and really symbolic logo:
-
+I went snowboarding with some law school buddies early this month! Had a great time through the whole trip, but I feel like as soon as I got back there was an onslaught of bad tech policy in the news, haha.
+
+On the bright side, I feel like I finally have a handle on the feel of this site. Front page looks very polished now, and I got around to drawing a great-looking and really symbolic logo:
+![[Attachments/logo.png|500]]
+
It's a moon due to my goals for the site and digital gardening as a whole, and progressively more detailed to reflect the incremental, learn-in-public philosophy of gardening. Hopefully that second meaning is apparent by the 1/2 in the middle of it.
## Pages
- Published [[Essays/law-school|Law School is Broken]]!
-- Getting a little sick of seeing arguments across the internet advocating for plagiarism and not citing your sources. Here's [[Essays/plagiarism|my response to plagiarists]].
+- **AI infringement essay about 40% done** with plans to edit in the future. It's a long one.
+- Finally have a [[Essays/no-ai-fraud-act|response to poor journalism on the No AI FRAUD Act]] out, highly recommend giving it a read!
+- Getting a little sick of seeing arguments across the internet advocating for plagiarism and not citing your sources. Here's [[Essays/plagiarism|my response to plagiarists]]. It's being updated in tandem with the AI essay I'm writing.
+- Adding a misc page explaining an interesting legal concept, because I was bored of writing the AI infringement article. Approx 50% done writing it.
- Added my [[bookmarks|public bookmarks]] in the spirit of digital gardening.
- Cleaned up [[Essays/why-i-garden|Why I Garden]] a little bit.
## Status Updates
- Updated the theme a little bit to be easier on the eyes.
-- Added a **beautiful** new index page
\ No newline at end of file
+ - Not to mention my slick little background cover image...
+- Made the index page beautiful and minimal by moving content around.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/content/about-me.md b/content/about-me.md
index da7b71a28..03f6921a5 100644
--- a/content/about-me.md
+++ b/content/about-me.md
@@ -4,12 +4,12 @@ date: 2023-08-23
---
I’m an enthusiast for all things DIY. Hardware or software, if there’s a project to be had I will travel far down the rabbit hole to see it completed.
-I can be reached in the comments here or on Mastodon @be_far@treehouse.systems.
+I can be reached in the comments here or on Mastodon (@be_far@treehouse.systems).
## By Day
-I'm a law student aiming to practice in intellectual property litigation. At a high level, this sort of work primarily involves pointing a lot of fingers and trying to force money to change hands. I enjoy the lower levels the most, where attorneys can really sink their teeth into the kind of technical issues that fascinate me.
+I'm a law student aiming to practice in intellectual property litigation. At a high level, this sort of work primarily involves pointing a lot of fingers and trying to force money to change hands. I enjoy the lower levels the most, where attorneys can really sink their teeth into the kind of technical issues that fascinate me.
## By Night
-I obsess over minimizing my digital footprint with respect to services where the users are viewed as the product. The projects within this website are a testament to that fact.
+I obsess over minimizing my digital footprint with respect to services where the users are viewed as the product. The projects within this website are a testament to that fact.
-I enjoy rock climbing, building & flying FPV drones, reading, and baking. Hobby electronics repair was previously one of my interests, but modern devices are unfortunately no longer repairable to the extent that I’m able to do so.
+I enjoy rock climbing, building & flying FPV drones, reading, and baking. Hobby electronics repair was previously one of my interests, but modern devices are unfortunately no longer repairable to the extent that I’m able to do so.
-I can be found in your local cafe, sipping caffeine that's more dessert than coffee and typing furiously into a legal document or class outline. If I'm procrastinating, I'll probably be debugging some selfhost service or writing a toy program in Haskell.
\ No newline at end of file
+I can be found in your local cafe, sipping caffeine that's more dessert than coffee, and typing furiously into a legal document or class outline. If I'm procrastinating, I'll probably be debugging some selfhost service or writing a toy program in Haskell.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/content/bookmarks.md b/content/bookmarks.md
index 2f0f078ef..5374dfe6b 100644
--- a/content/bookmarks.md
+++ b/content/bookmarks.md
@@ -9,6 +9,7 @@ lastmod: 2024-01-14
---
One of the core philosophies of digital gardening is that one should document their learning process when trying new things. As such, here's my very disorganized to-dos and to-reads in the form of a public bookmark list. This page will change very often.
+- https://www.shuttle.rs/
- [lazy.nvim plugin spec](https://github.com/folke/lazy.nvim#-plugin-spec)
- [3D printer troubleshooting](https://www.simplify3d.com/resources/print-quality-troubleshooting/)
- [List of attorneys on Mastodon](https://www.lawstodon.org/)
diff --git a/content/curated.md b/content/curated.md
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..7e99d2b63
--- /dev/null
+++ b/content/curated.md
@@ -0,0 +1,19 @@
+---
+title: Reading List
+tags:
+ - toc
+date: 2024-01-30
+---
+Here are some of the more interesting/mature works on my site organized by topic.
+
+## Intro
+- [[Essays/why-i-garden|Why I Garden]]
+- [[Projects/Obsidian/digital-garden#Using this Site|Using this site]]
+## Legal
+- [[Essays/no-ai-fraud-act|Play-by-play of the No AI FRAUD Act]]
+- [[Essays/law-school|Law School is Broken]]
+## Open Source
+- [[Projects/zotero-lexis-plus|Zotero now usable by the legal profession]]
+## Tech
+- [[Projects/my-computer|My Computer]]
+- [[Essays/on-linux|The Linux Experience]]
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/content/index.md b/content/index.md
index 250f75d52..a8a9af6d4 100644
--- a/content/index.md
+++ b/content/index.md
@@ -4,47 +4,20 @@ tags:
- toc
date: 2023-08-23
---
-
+
> [!tip]
> You will own **nothing**, and you will be **happy**.
-
+