Jon Haidt’s appearance on The Ezra Klein Show was a good listen. If you’ve read The Anxious Generation, you will have some idea of what to expect, but I thought the conversation was insightful and Ezra’s questions were generally good. He’s had some great guests on recently.

I’m excited to play around with ente, a new open-source, encrypted and private photo service and app that has been in the making for some time. I’m not sure I can be bothered to switch away from Apple Photos and Google Photos, which I find to be a better product, but I love ente’s mission.

I appreciate the thought that Adam is putting into omg.lol’s stance on generative AI. I’m still formulating my own personal policy, which of course is different than a policy for a platform. Given how fast things are changing, I feel an obligation to use all of the tools a lot. I don’t believe you can formulate informed positions on things by taking other people’s word for how you should think about them. You have to use them and do some soul searching of your own. One thing that is non-negotiable is that we MUST figure out how to get artists paid for their work. I fear it will ultimately be the pennies music artists see from streaming, but it can’t be nothing. The central issue of provenance must be solved. It’s a difficult problem, but then so is getting a computer to “think”.

I don’t plan to talk about the news often, but OpenAI closed the largest round on record – a whopping $40B, valuing the company at $300B, which is absolutely bonkers.

Andrej Karpathy finds the best sleep tracker. I don’t wanna spoil it for you, so I’ll just say I was happy to see where he landed.

Simon Willison posted a quote from this great read by Ned Batchelder today. It’s one of those great posts you can send to your non-technical friends as well.

Winnie’s latest post was a wonderful read, especially her point about being relentlessly bombarded with psychological noise. It is not uncommon to catch myself thinking a certain way about something only to realize it doesn’t feel right. It’s almost always because the thought isn’t actually mine.

I believe Matt Webb is right about how not only are humanoid robots coming sooner than we think, but they are going to be exceptionally capable.

McSweeney’s, probably best known for its indisputably good humor, is cataloging Trump’s cruelties, collusions, corruptions, and crimes. No joke.

The safer you are in an environment of rising authoritarianism, the more obligation you have to make some noise on behalf of the people who are more vulnerable than you. Indeed, this is the only way you might avoid having the leopards eat your face. – Eva Galperin

23andMe has filed for bankruptcy. Bottom line: You have no idea who will buy 23andMe and what they will do with the data (your genetic info). Delete your genetic data as well as your test sample from 23andMe NOW. Please repost. The California AG even issued a consumer alert.

That was quite the finale.

I had to drive east at an unreasonable hour, which meant I had some time to listen to a podcast. I’m so glad I listened to the Dissect episode, featuring Rob Markman, celebrating the 10-year(!!) anniversary of one of the greatest albums ever, Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp A Butterfly. Incredible episode!

TIL there is a 6-hour time-stretched version of Brian Eno’s Ambient 1: Music for Airports

Meredith Whittaker, President of Signal was interviewed by Guy Kawasaki at SXSW. I thought it was great.

From The Case for Ditching Digital Memories for Physical Objects

I just watched a nearly 30-minute video on dishwashers.

From Robin Sloan’s post, “The teacher lies sometimes.”

I keep coming back to this quote from Jonny Ive.