s20e02: A Model for the People

Monday, 11 August 2025 in Portland, Oregon where I am sitting in my basement office. In here, it’s a comfortable 71f/21.7c. Outside, it’s apparently 96f/35.6c which is not comfortable. That is why I am inside.

Me and the smaller kid went and saw &Juliet the Musical the other night as a father’s day present. Laughed all the way through.

0.1 Hallway Track

While there are no Hallway Tracks coming up, I have three planned in my head that I’m super excited about. Hopefully something coming soon.

1.0 Some Things That Caught My Attention

1.1 A Model for the People

Here’s a thought experiment. I’ve written about this before, but it came back into my head recently when I told Ted Han about it a few weeks ago and he said his mind is still blown by it.

National copyright libraries should have been entrusted with building public ML datasets and models.

There you go. I’ll walk through it.

• They’re supposed to have it already

Broadly, national copyright libraries exist as the expression of copyright policy. They’re entitled to a copy of everything, even if they sometimes don’t actually have possession. Because copyright is a social policy, they