Luis Villa

Luis Villa

San Francisco
CS degree, failed programmer, now lawyer. Tidelift, Wikimedia Foundation, Mozilla, Ximian, many others along the way.
Oct
29
A man sick in bed, like me. Via midjourney

Blergh (viral and regulatory) / 2023-10-29

Lots of links on the state of regulation, the recent transparency report, and more.
5 min read
Oct
19
A fantastically carved jackolantern, next to an unnatural/clearly-AI-generated pumpkin vine. Via midjourney.

Ghosts in the machine / 2023-10-19

So much news, so little time.
7 min read
Aug
20
A bearded man in a suit, holding a scepter, in front of a town. After the style of the engraved frontispiecHobbes’ Leviathan.

Is this thing on? / 2023-08-20

Catching up on power, Facebook, and a range of miscellany.
9 min read
Jun
15
1800s shopkeeper, seen from behind, looking at their store with shelves full of goods

Taking stock of open(ish) machine learning / 2023-06-15

I’ve been writing this newsletter for about six months, so I thought it might be a good time to pause the news firehose, and instead review and synthesize what I’ve learned about the potential for open(ish?) machine learning. That took a while — so thanks for your patience, and welcome back!
15 min read
May
02
A man wearing a suit and hat, speaking into an old-fashioned microphone, taken from behind. Black and white.

Maps and Legends / 2023-05-02

Micro-essays on the commons and model copyrightability; new open(ish) tools; and a lot more.
6 min read
Apr
19
Sailboats in front of a church, with trees and birds, in the style of a pencil sketch.

Live from Sweden / 2023-04-19

Upcoming public panel moderation; shifting power via foundation models (open or not); public ability to understand via great WaPo visualization; modularity; and more.
5 min read
Mar
30
A robot carrying a broom, sweeping away lawyers and books of law. 1800s-magazine style.

thought experiments / 2023-03-30

A busy week: copyrightability, throwbacks to late-90s monopoly concerns, who is a coder anyway, permission culture revisited, artistic typography, and so much more.
8 min read
Mar
19
Pile of giant easter eggs in an Italian town square, generated by Midjourney

it’s a lot / 2023-03-19

Two mini-essays on the Open Data Definition and why OpenAI’s non-profit/for-profit split can be legal (but might not be), and many news bytes from a busy week.
11 min read
Mar
12
Foreground: a pile of lumber, vaguely structured in the shape of a house. Background: blue skies, trees.

structure is good / 2023-03-12

Focusing on some key themes, via deployment on laptops, government algorithms, a blog post from Anthropic, an intro to foundation models, and more.
5 min read
Mar
05
A body of water with a single person holding an umbrella and cloudy skies above. Mostly grey.

getting serious / 2023-03-05

An observation from the Linux Foundation Legal Summit; Apache grapples with ML; adversarial data; memes explained; and muuuch more.
8 min read