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Daily Archives: August 7, 2019

When Robots Make Legal Mistakes

Morse, Susan C., When Robots Make Legal Mistakes (July 22, 2019). Oklahoma Law Review, Vol. 72, 2019. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3424110

“The questions presented by robots’ legal mistakes are examples of the legal process inquiry that asks when the law will accept decisions as final, even if they are mistaken. Legal decision-making robots include market robots and government robots. In either category, they can make mistakes of undercompliance or overcompliance. A market robot’s overcompliance mistake or a government robot’s undercompliance mistake is unlikely to be challenged. On the other hand, government enforcement can challenge a market robot’s undercompliance mistake, and an aggrieved regulated party can object to a government robot’s overcompliance mistake. Especially if robots cannot defend their legal decisions due to a lack of explainability, they will have an incentive to make decisions that will avoid the prospect of challenge. This incentive could encourage counterintuitive results. For instance, it could encourage market robots to overcomply and government robots to undercomply with the law. “

What all the stuff in email headers means—and how to sniff out spoofing

ars technica – Parsing email headers needs care and knowledge—but it requires no special tools: “I pretty frequently get requests for help from someone who has been impersonated—or whose child has been impersonated—via email. Even when you know how to “view headers” or “view source” in your email client, the spew of diagnostic wharrgarbl can be… Continue Reading

Google has a secret design library. Here are 35 of its best books

FastCompany: “For just over a year, Google’s hardware design team has been working inside a new, highly classified design studio. Only a small fraction of Google’s employees are allowed inside this beautiful, birchwood-framed space—a team of around 150, who are hard at work designing the next Pixel phones, Google Home assistants, and all sorts of… Continue Reading

Computer Science Could Learn A Lot From Library And Information Science

Forbes – Kalev Leetaru: “Computer science curriculums have long emphasized the power of data, encouraging its harvesting and hoarding, pioneering new ways of mining and manipulating users through it, reinforcing it as the path to riches in the modern economy and proselytizing the idea of data being able to solve all of society’s ills. In… Continue Reading

Want Safe, Bikeable Streets? Get Rid of Free Parking, as Amsterdam Did

StreetsBlogNYC – The city’s $8-an-hour fees, residential permits, and limits to car ownership made it the world’s cycling capital. Is New York brave enough to try it? – “Reminder: Amsterdam wasn’t Amsterdam until it was Amsterdam. The famed “bike capital” of the world was once as congested and car-choked as the worst Western cities. So how… Continue Reading

Mapping the Scholarly Communication Landscape – 2019 Census

Educopia Institute -“This report [Mapping the Scholarly Communication Landscape – 2019 Census] documents the design, methods, results, and recommendations of the 2019 Census of Scholarly Communication Infrastructure Providers (SCIP), a Census produced by the “Mapping the Scholarly Communication Infrastructure” project team (Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; Middlebury College, 2018-19). The SCIP Census was created to document… Continue Reading