Author: Aron Solomon

First appeared in BOXSCORE By Aron Solomon The short answer is yes. The longer answer is more complicated and something I dug into because of a Twitter thread. The Jesse in issue is Jesse Edwards, a Syracuse University basketball player who just entered the transfer portal for the stated reason that he wanted better NIL deals. Edwards is from Amsterdam and in the U.S., one would assume, on a student visa. As per Wikipedia, after graduating high school in the Netherlands, Edwards went on to play for IMG Academy, a boarding school in Bradenton, Florida, then headed to play for the…

First appeared in Florida Daily By Aron Solomon The ongoing debate surrounding the potential dangers of artificial intelligence has divided experts and stakeholders in various fields. President Biden stated last week that it remains to be seen whether AI is dangerous, but emphasized the responsibility of technology companies to ensure their products are safe before public release. For AI to move forward, we can’t be completely risk-averse. To understand and appreciate the potential dangers of AI we need to examine the roles of different stakeholders in addressing these concerns. Among the key arguments for AI being dangerous is job displacement, as AI…

First appeared in BOXSCORE By Aron Solomon If we’re being honest, the most interesting element of The Masters was tracking how golfers from the LIV Golf Tour were doing. While PGA Tour golfer Jon Rahm won what many see as the pinnacle of golf’s Majors on Sunday, the two players tied for second – Brooks Koepka and Phil Mickelson – are under contract with the LIV Golf Tour and count among the two most polarizing golfers in the world today, so it was no surprise that one of the world’s top golf writers led with this on Monday morning: While LIV…

First appeared in Substack By Aron Solomon If you live anywhere in the U.S., yesterday’s Montreal ice storm almost certainly appeared in your news feed. To give you a sense of the magnitude of the storm, here’s a picture from this morning that I took while out on an admittedly ill-advised walk to get an espresso: But what I like to call Montreal Ice 2023 was a formidable storm with much of this city still without power and massive chunks of ice and trees still falling in the city, it can’t hold a candle (unintended but pretty decent power failure pun)…

First appeared in NewsBreak By Aron Solomon Last year, in response to the Supreme Court’s overturning of Casey and Roe abortion cases in the Dobbs decision, Google promised not to track abortion data. Have they kept to the spirit and letter of their promise? Google has been under fire from privacy advocates for years. Last year, the company was found to be tracking users’ locations even after they turned off location history. And they’ve been accused of not doing enough to protect users’ privacy. When you search for abortion information on Google, you won’t see ads for abortion services or providers. When you search for abortion information on…

First appeared in Western Journal By Aron Solomon During the third week of February, Elon Musk claimed that Twitter’s algorithm would become open-source the next week. Yet that week became the next week and the week after that. Then, finally, very early Friday morning, over a month after the original announcement, Musk committed to making Twitter’s algorithm open-source that day. The opposite of open-source software is, logically, closed-source. As David Gelman, a New Jersey lawyer, explains, “Closed-source software is another way of saying ‘proprietary.’ In other words, the company that builds it owns the rights to its use. If you want to use you,…

First appeared in BOXSCORE By Aron Solomon Early on Friday, Wimbledon and all British professional grass court season events announced that Russian and Belarusian players would be allowed to play in this year’s tournament if and only if they sign personal player declarations that have been “clarified and developed” with the government and tennis stakeholder bodies. Looking back at the history of this issue, Wimbledon banned Russian and Belarusian players from the 2022 tournament due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The ban included top players such as Daniil Medvedev, Andrey Rublev, and Aryna Sabalenka, among many others. While Wimbledon defended the decision,…

First appeared in Down With Tyranny By Aron Solomon Open AI, the parent company for ChatGPT and GPT-4, has racked up nothing but wins. Until last week, that is: While “feeling awful” is an appropriate sentiment here, it doesn’t negate the fact that this breach violated many data protection laws, including the global queen of them all, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). I’m very familiar with the GDPR, having lived in Germany during the period of its final adoption and its implementation, having advised large legal and technology companies that would ultimately be firmly on regulators’ radar if they violated…

First appeared in Western Journal By Aron Solomon Elon Musk’s recent claim that Twitter is worth less than half of what he paid for it has caused widespread speculation about his intentions. While it is not entirely clear what his endgame is, Musk recently offered stock grants to Twitter staff that value the company at $20 billion, less than half of the $44 billion he paid to take control of the social media company in late October. Musk told employees they would receive stock awards based on a $20 billion valuation of the firm. This message came in the context of…

First appeared in Florida Daily By Aron Solomon A meme going around social media this weekend details a man who is “legally squatting in a bank-owned multi-million dollar mansion” in Boca Raton. The video has close to a million views this weekend, with a string of comments suggesting that since Florida is in a housing crisis with so many homes sitting empty that they should simply be occupied. One commenter even mentioned that there are now agencies that will help you legally squat in a mansion. The reality is, of course, very different. For those who were thinking that simply moving into an unoccupied $8…