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).
READ
“Amazon has previously mismanaged Alexa voice recordings. In 2023, Amazon agreed to pay $25 million in civil penalties over the revelation that it stored recordings of children’s interactions with Alexa forever. Adults also didn’t feel properly informed of Amazon’s inclination toward keeping Alexa recordings unless prompted not to until 2019—five years after the first Echo came out. If that’s not enough to deter you from sharing voice recordings with Amazon, note that the company allowed employees to listen to Alexa voice recordings. In 2019, Bloomberg reported that Amazon employees listened to as many as 1,000 audio samples during their nine-hour shifts. Amazon says it allows employees to listen to Alexa voice recordings to train its speech recognition and natural language understanding systems.”
Everything you say to your Echo will be sent to Amazon starting on March 28 – Ars Technica
“When the company first announced it was considering a sale, we highlighted many of the potential issues, including selling that data to companies with poor security practices or direct links to law enforcement. With this bankruptcy, the concerns we expressed last year remain the same. It is unclear what will happen with your genetic data if 23andMe finds a buyer, and that uncertainty is a clear indication that you should consider deleting your data.”
How to Delete Your 23andMe Data | Electronic Frontier Foundation
“To prevent the threatened setbacks to US innovation and risks to national security, OpenAI urged Trump to enact a federal law that preempts state laws attempting to regulate AI threats to things like consumer privacy or election integrity, like deepfakes or facial recognition. That federal law, OpenAI suggested, should set up a “voluntary partnership between the federal government and the private sector,” where AI companies trade industry knowledge and model access for federal “relief” and “liability protections” from state laws. Additionally, OpenAI wants protections from international laws that it claims risk slowing down America’s AI development.”
OpenAI declares AI race “over” if training on copyrighted works isn’t fair use – Ars Technica
“Perhaps the closest we’ve seen to a justification has come from “Crypto Czar” David Sacks, who reiterated that the US would not sell any of the bitcoin and wrote on Twitter that “It will be kept as a store of value. The Reserve is like a digital Fort Knox for the cryptocurrency often called ‘digital gold’”. But this argument doesn’t really stand up to scrutiny, even setting aside the already questionable nature of bitcoin’s usefulness as a “store of value”. If an asset will indeed never be sold, how would the US draw upon its stored value in order to, say, backstop the dollar or pay outstanding debts? What’s the point of a store of value if that value can never be accessed?”
Crypto reserves: no public good, no principles
“The group cited several of the administration’s actions such as the mass termination of federal employees, the appointment of Trump loyalists in key government positions, the withdrawal from international efforts such as the World Health Organization and the UN Human Rights Council, the freezing of federal and foreign aid and the attempted dismantling of USAid. The organization warned that these decisions “will likely impact civic freedoms and reverse hard-won human rights gains around the world”. The group also pointed to the administration’s crackdown on pro-Palestinian protesters, and the Trump administration’s unprecedented decision to control media access to presidential briefings, among others.”
US added to international watchlist for rapid decline in civic freedoms | US news | The Guardian
“Professor Mark Bateman, from the University of Sheffield’s School of Geography and Planning, used a dating technique called Optically Stimulated Luminescence, to discover the burial age of individual grains of sand from eight samples throughout the site. His work showed that the archaeological site extended back from 12,000 years ago right through to around 150,000 years ago. These results were then corroborated by Electron Spin Resonance dating. “It is incredibly interesting to take a grain of ancient sand and be the first to know when it was deposited. It is even more so when the age of the sand changes what we know of how, and where, our ancient ancestors lived.””
Scientists find earliest evidence that our ancestors lived in rainforests 150,000 years ago | News | The University of Sheffield
“A more effective model charges for the full engagement, encompassing four key phases:
– Discovery – Understanding the client’s needs, challenges, and objectives. This phase involves research, conversations, and assessing the right approach.
– Defining Scope – Establishing the framework for delivery, including the intended outcomes, process, and deliverables. This ensures clarity for both parties.
– Delivery – The actual execution, whether that’s a keynote speech, coaching session, advisory engagement, or facilitation. By this stage, the foundation has been laid for maximum impact.
– Debriefing & Follow-Up – Evaluating outcomes, providing reflections, and offering ongoing insights to support long-term success.”
The Folly of Hourly Charging — David McQueen | Executive Leadership Coach
WATCH
EXPLORE
Searchable collection of retro 88×31 buttons from the GeoCities era.
Love this free Revenge font, a typeface made from some graf on the Bow Arts Cente in London.
This will keep you busy for a while, the largest collection of Free stuff on the Internet via FreeMediaHeckYeah.
Have a giggle, get confused, be moved / triggered / wowed by these 100 Best Artworks of the 21st Century (fwiw).
3D Earthquake Map is a real-time interactive global earthquake map showing the depth of the shakes as well as where.
Attend the Design for Exponential Impact at Camp Earnest, California, Jun 23-27 2025 (tickets available now and range from $1,282.33USD).
Seen a few of these pop up which basically run the subtitles through an AI and then summarises the YouTube video back to you (currently free).
goeuropean.org is a community-driven directory bringing you recommendations and insights from across Europe (if you’re looking to use move your purchase power away from certain places).
The Creativity Pioneers Fund is a global unrestricted grant of 5,000 euros for non-profit organizations around the world, that are addressing social and environmental issues through creativity and culture, established in 2021 by the Moleskine Foundation (apply before April 7th 2025).
