Notices by Bruce Lawson ✅ (quiet time) (brucelawson@social.vivaldi.net)

Disney And NBCUniversal Sue AI Company Midjourney For Copyright Infringement https://deadline.com/2025/06/disney-nbcuniversal-ai-lawsuit-1236430694/

A.I. in everything is a first, and so welcome. And Liquid Glass is nothing short of revolutionary.

Ordering troops on the streets to quell citizens protesting against race-based round-ups to make a nation great again is back, I see. Along with annexing neighbours to provide more "living room". https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/07/immigration-raids-los-angeles

@chrishtr Here's my 20 year old blog post about css and poetry! https://brucelawson.co.uk/2005/what-i-want-from-css-3/

I seem to have 100 slides for a 40 min talk. #CSSDay victims, strap in. xxx

It was highly gratifying to see @mia using Vivaldi for her #CSSDay presentation! Here's the interview I did with her in April about her work on CSS, AI, why tech is political https://vivaldi.com/blog/8-miriam-suzanne-oddbird-for-a-better-web/

Watching @johnallsopp, the Gandalf of the Web Standards movement, talk about his seminal article A Dao of Web Design, 25 years after it was first published.

Going to an office and pretending to work: A business that’s booming in China https://english.elpais.com/international/2025-05-31/going-to-an-office-and-pretending-to-work-a-business-thats-booming-in-china.html
Many citizens who don’t want to explain their employment status pay to rent a position in a fake office, with some even assigning fictitious tasks and organizing supervisory rounds

Apple said the EU's interoperability requirements create "a process that is unreasonable, costly, and stifles innovation". https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulation/apple-challenges-unreasonable-eu-order-open-up-rivals-2025-06-02/ Comedy gold!

"lack of health insurance explains about five to twenty percent of the mortality disparity between high- and low-income Americans" https://www.nber.org/papers/w33719

An analysis of a dataset of 37 million people.

Why Are Penises In Older Paintings So Small Compared To Today?
Around the 19th century, they suddenly got bigger. https://www.iflscience.com/why-are-penises-in-older-paintings-so-small-compared-to-today-67850

Updates to Windows for the Digital Markets Act: Microsoft Edge will not prompt you to set it as the default browser unless you open it directly. Search, Widgets Board and Lock Screen now open web content with the default browser. Setting the default browser with the “Set default” button will pin it to the Taskbar. Currently, changing the default browser with the “Set default” button sets http, https, .htm, and .html. Additional file and link types will now be set in the EEA.
https://blogs.windows.com/windows-insider/2025/06/02/updates-to-windows-for-the-digital-markets-act/ Obvz it’s a complete coincidence that this happened on the anniversary of me joining Vivaldi as Assistant Vice Deputy Head of Goliath Vanquishing.

Study looking at AI chatbots in 7,000 workplaces finds ‘no significant impact on earnings or recorded hours in any occupation’ https://fortune.com/2025/05/18/ai-chatbots-study-impact-earnings-hours-worked-any-occupation/ - who would have thought it, eh? (Apart from everyone who works in tech.)

Anthropic’s new AI model turns to blackmail when engineers try to take it offline https://techcrunch.com/2025/05/22/anthropics-new-ai-model-turns-to-blackmail-when-engineers-try-to-take-it-offline/ Oh, fuck off, TechBros, and take your Frankenstein monster made of grave-robbed body parts of other people's intellectual work with you. kthxbai

At the weekend, a group of trans women protested topless at the Scottish Parliament about the recent Supreme Court ruling that the Equality Act defines women as "biological women". The police couldn't arrest them, because to arrest them for showing their breasts would be to define them as women (it's not illegal for men to be topless). And, of course, the right-wing press that reported on it censored their breasts, thereby making their point for them.

It's a shame that my city council allowed the fascists to assemble, but heartwarming to see this local's reaction to poundland fuhrer Paul Golding's attempt to shake his hand.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnrjlIHDnCs

@andypiper Thank you! You might enjoy the episode about the fediverse, too https://vivaldi.com/blog/better-web/evan-prodromou-social-web-foundation-for-a-better-web/

Republicans push for a decadelong ban on states regulating AI. https://www.theverge.com/news/666288/republican-ai-state-regulation-ban-10-years
This makes me really want to use Big Tech and let them train their LLMs on all my stuff, utterly unregulated and unfettered.

Tara Whalen, W3C Privacy Lead, shared a progress update on the Privacy and Advertising Working Groups, launched in late 2024. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxOKYBnqqXc

It's not often that I get to interview an ex-Cold Warrior and ex-Microsoft lawyer who's now working to make the web a better place, but I caught up with Gene Burrus, who advises the The Browser Choice Alliance on how to counter Microsoft's anti-choice tactics. https://vivaldi.com/blog/9-gene-burrus-for-a-better-web/