配置文件
Frustrated With SCOTUS Website’s Outdated Media Player, 这个2L找到了一种口头辩论的方式
2023年4月28日
上学期, George Washington University Law School student Bradley Neal’s copyright class was assigned to listen to the U.S. 最高法院的口头辩论 安迪·沃霍尔视觉艺术基金会. 戈德史密斯. 布莱德利是2L，他立刻发现了一个问题. 最高法院的媒体播放器过时了, 让忙碌的倾听变得令人沮丧, 和 other sites 和 services that publish audio recordings of the Court’s oral arguments usually take days to do so.
利用他在软件工程方面的背景, Neal set about solving the problem by writing an algorithm that would check the Supreme Court’s website every day the Court is in session 和 immediately post oral arguments on multiple podcast platforms. 最高法院:口头辩论，可于 苹果播客 和 Spotify, enables the public to conveniently access them for free on the day of their publication.
D.C. 酒吧 spoke with Neal about the conception 和 execution of his project, which has acquired thous和s of regular listeners 和 tens of thous和s of downloads.
是什么让你创建了你的播客?
I was in school, 和 the Supreme Court had just [started] its term. I looked for the cases we discussed on the Supreme Court’s website, 这就像2003年的东西. I’m not knocking it; I’ve come to like the court’s website because it is super predictable, 和 that makes a podcast like mine possible because I’m scraping it, 如果他们改变了一些东西，就会产生干扰.
但是(最高法院的)媒体播放器很不方便. 例如, if you are listening to [it] 和 you close your phone screen to put your phone in your pocket, 就像你平时做播客一样, 它会关闭. It wasn’t really feasible for me to listen to oral arguments while I walked to school, 骑自行车的时候, or doing the activities I like to do while listening to things.
There’s a platform called Oyez that publishes Supreme Court oral arguments, 但它们并不总是及时更新. 我很沮丧. 法院几乎总是在同一天公布, 录音通常是在下午, 所以我知道他们有空, 但不是在站台上. 此外，Spotify上也没有Oyez.
所以，我说，我认为这是一个可以解决的问题. 对我来说，这是个有趣的问题，因为, 作为一名软件工程师, 我想要有挑战性的问题, 但并非不可能. 难度刚刚好.
The first thing I did was write a scraper that downloaded the Court files, MP3文件, 从法院网站上下载, but then I realized that it was 50GB of media 和 was worried about how I could host that. 我不想付钱. So, 我花了一个多星期研究这个问题, 几乎不间断, 放学后和周末. 我最后做的是, 而不是下载媒体, 我刚把播客指向了法院的网站, 所以当有人听播客的时候, 它们实际上是从法院的服务器流出来的. 我只是个中间人.
如何确保及时发布?
我的刮板检查新的内容和张贴新的剧集. To accomplish this, I needed something that would run every day. 我的电脑不总是开着的, 我不想付钱给亚马逊之类的, so what I ended up doing is acquiring a tiny little minicomputer called a Raspberry Pi.
它们实际上供不应求, so I had to go onto 脸谱网 Marketplace 和 buy it from a reseller, 哪个有点粗略. I had to drive to Arlington at night … I was working on this around the clock, 有一次我想到用树莓派, 那是星期五晚上7点左右. I started messaging people on Marketplace asking, “Can I come tonight?”
I ended up finding this guy 和 drove over 和 met him in a dimly lit parking lot at midnight. I paid him $90 (they normally retail for about $50), 和 he gave me the Raspberry Pi. 我不知道它是真的还是赝品. I didn’t know how to tell if I was getting ripped off, but it worked out. 我在亚马逊上订了一小箱. The Raspberry Pi lives in this case, 和 I screwed it into the wall under my desk. It’s a permanent fixture of my apartment, 和 it is on all the time.
What it does is it runs every day that the Court meets, 和 the day after. It goes to the Supreme Court’s website 和 counts the number of cases listed. If the number of cases listed matches the number on my stream, it does nothing. If the number of cases on the Court’s website is greater than the number on my stream, 它会抓取最新的内容并将其添加到我的流中, 然后再计数. 如果号码仍然是关闭的, it grabs the second-newest one 和 adds it to my stream 和 counts again, 如果数字匹配, 这样就完成了.
你收到了关于播客的什么样的反馈?
我爸爸开始倾听了. 他不是澳门赌场官网. He was listening to the student debt relief case earlier this term; he was really curious about that. 太搞笑了. 他给我发短信说:“这个案子真的很有趣. 我希望它不会以站立决定!” He’d clearly listened to the case, googled “st和ing,” 和 clearly got a lot from it.
我认为这是公益事业. 这些东西应该是可访问的. They’re interesting, both to attorneys 和 law students, 和 [also] to lay people. 我收到一封邮件，有人说, “我不是澳门赌场官网, 我是个漫画家, 我喜欢听.“我收到了一些粉丝的来信，这太好了.
It isn’t possible to get accurate information about my total listenership. 它存在于苹果上, 在Spotify, 和 through a generic feed that will allow someone to access the stream from other podcast players. I can’t take stats on the general feed, but 在Spotify I have 6,000 listeners 和 52,000 streams. 苹果也有类似的数据. 我的听众大部分在美国, but the second highest number of listeners is in the Philippines, 其次是加拿大和美国.K.
你打算从事科技法律方面的工作吗?
This summer I’m interning at the Montgomery County Office of the Public Defender. 我来自蒙哥马利县. 我觉得这是一次很好的经历. 它是快节奏的. In terms of justice, it’s kind of where the rubber meets the road. 对我来说，这真的很酷.
但我也很喜欢科技方面的东西. 显然，我喜欢编码，而且我也做软件项目. 也, 这学期我对人工智能很感兴趣, 所以我选了一门深入研究人工智能和法律的课程. 那门课太棒了. 我要做一些很酷的研究.
我感兴趣的另一件事是区块链. 我在乔治华盛顿大学创办了一个区块链法律俱乐部. 我会是第一个告诉你区块链并不完美的人. 绝对不是. I think 99 percent of the stuff that we hear about is kind of garbage, 但是那1%的人, 那些骨头很有趣. I’ve been in that space for a decade now, 和 I’ve seen companies come 和 go. 人们问我关于FTX和加密是否已经结束. 我见过六个ftx来了又走. 这是本周的主题.
我肯定会做更多的修补. I have a list on my Notes app with ideas, 和 I have over a hundred. 他们并不都很好, 但我有很多想法, 尤其是现在的GPT4，我用它来编码. My exams are all week, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, 和 I think Thursday I will start a new project. I don’t want to spill the tea, but I will tell you that it will be aimed at law students.
