A bunch of things (which I added to my Tumblr) for your eyes and ears plus brain to spend time on (as no longer on Twitter).
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“We believe that electing the Ocean to be a Trustee of SAMS is one of the most important decisions in our history. It challenges outdated models of governance and champions a future where the ocean’s voice is central to decision-making. That the Ocean should be represented in our governance might seem, at first blush, to be a gimmick, even whimsical. We are conscious that the move could be seen as trivial or ‘greenwashing’. After all, as a non-profit marine research organisation, surely SAMS always has the best interests of the Ocean in mind? But after several months of careful discussion and debate, the Trustees are convinced that even with a strong empathy for ocean conservation and a well-informed understanding of marine environmental matters, our decision-making is essentially anthropocentric; human interests are given precedence, and concern is limited to the impact on the Ocean rather than the interests of the Ocean.”
News – The Ocean enters the boardroom — The Scottish Association for Marine Science
“…the British government’s undisclosed order was issued last month, and requires the capability to view all encrypted material in iCloud. The core target is Apple’s Advanced Data Protection, which is an optional feature that turns on end-to-end encryption for backups and other data stored in iCloud, making it so that even Apple cannot access that information. For a long time, iCloud backups were a loophole for law enforcement to gain access to data otherwise not available to them on iPhones with device encryption enabled. That loophole still exists for anyone who doesn’t opt in to using Advanced Data Protection. If Apple does comply, users should consider disabling iCloud backups entirely. Perhaps most concerning, the U.K. is apparently seeking a backdoor into users’ data regardless of where they are or what citizenship they have.”
The UK’s Demands for Apple to Break Encryption Is an Emergency for Us All | Electronic Frontier Foundation
“Last month, Meta admitted to torrenting a controversial large dataset known as LibGen, which includes tens of millions of pirated books. But details around the torrenting were murky until yesterday, when Meta’s unredacted emails were made public for the first time. The new evidence showed that Meta torrented “at least 81.7 terabytes of data across multiple shadow libraries through the site Anna’s Archive, including at least 35.7 terabytes of data from Z-Library and LibGen,” the authors’ court filing said. And “Meta also previously torrented 80.6 terabytes of data from LibGen.”
”Torrenting from a corporate laptop doesn’t feel right”: Meta emails unsealed – Ars Technica
“For the new study, Lupyan and Nedergaard recruited 47 participants who scored the highest for having an inner voice and 46 who registered low scores—roughly in the top and bottom fifths of scores. They then gave these participants four language-related tasks they thought might be influenced by the use of inner speech. In the first, participants were briefly shown five words and asked to repeat them back. The second involved participants saying whether the names of objects in two pictures rhymed. In both experiments the group with less inner speech was less accurate in their responses. For the rhyme judgements, people with more inner speech were also faster. “This wide-ranging study really tests what inner speech gives us in terms of cognitive benefits,” Fernyhough says.”
Not Everyone Has an Inner Voice Streaming through Their Head | Scientific American
“Here are just some of the factors in the Startup Drake Equation, the failure of any one of which is terminal:
– Product that people want to pay for (really)
– Able to grab those people’s attention amidst the noisy Internet
– Pricing that those people will accept (and that is greater than your costs)
– Competitive and distinctive enough to be chosen
– Able to build the product as promised by the home page
– Sustained value-delivery months and years later, so customers stay and keep paying
– Able to fund the venture, either through early profits or fundraising
– Able to work well with co-founders (or able do it all alone)
– Develop a repeatable and profitable customer acquisition process
– Able to attract and retain talent
– Able to psychologically handle many years of deep effort, stress, and pain
– Get lucky on occasion”
The Startup Drake Equation
WATCH
EXPLORE
Listen to this podcast exploring The supergene responsible for human creativity | RNZ, basically Neurofibromin – NF1 (memory and artistic expression).
ExifCleaner – FREE Desktop app to clean image metadata, give it a go and be surprised in what it cleans (especially on images).
Not too sure about the AI approach here but still an interesting list of 1000 Questions via SaveWisdom.org.
If there’s interest did you know the UN Trade & Development produces weekly podcasts.
Map Art Studio allows you to create free custom downloads of your favourite places.
Deck.Gallery® is a curated galley of decks / slides / keynotes etc for inspiration.
Check out this amazing Flip book creator (from video) which is free to use.
Pattern Club is a free, online, curated gallery to find pattern inspiration.
Elon Musks jet tracker is over on BlueSky.