1. Quote I’ve been pondering this week “If you work really hard and you’re kind, amazing things will happen” – Conan O’Brien
2. Person that’s changed my perspective – James Bridle. His TED talk here contains content everyone would benefit from. It’s becoming more impossible to know where information originates. We can no longer tell if it’s bots or people making content, and we’re now building the entire world on this technology. As James says “..We’re taking all of this data, a lot of it bad data, a lot of historical data full of prejudice, full of all of our worst impulses of history, and we’re building that into huge data sets and then we’re automating it. And we’re munging it together into things like credit reports, into insurance premiums, into things like predictive policing systems, into sentencing guidelines.”
We’ve discouraged our son watching YouTube for over 2 months now and have noticed a positive difference. A difference where our 5 year old is visibly more creative, more questioning and more determined, and he watched less than an hour a day…
3. I learned about a form of blackmailing Sextortion – I recently received an email claiming to have videos of me watching porn. The sender said they’d send to my contacts unless I sent them Bitcoin. What’s more disturbing is that it contained a password I recognised. I don’t watch porn though the thing I couldn’t understand was how it contained a password I had used on the internet. Then I remembered this site and found the password used was an old one used on LinkedIn. According to here data breach information is sold regularly, so it’s likely the sender obtained an old password when Linkedin was breached a number of years ago.
If you haven’t made your online accounts secure yet then it’s worth considering. Here’s the best write up I’ve found on how to secure yourself.
4. Music I’m listening too – We’re big fans of Matt Costa in our home and lately our 5 year old has been singing along to the words “Sunshine”. It’s been amazing watching him appreciate beats and tunes as the years have gone by. The album Sing-A-Longs & Lullabies For The Film Curious George is our favourite one for when we’re all home and want good tunes for everyone to enjoy. Nearly every song extols some kind of goodness in the world.
5. We’ve got Netflix working in Denmark using our UK account so we’ve been enjoying the new season of Shooter (if you like suspense you’ll like this). I also love Final Space a Futurama esque cartoon that has the potential to be amazing as they tweak it on the fly.
Have a wonderful weekend everyone.