The Actuator – June 17th

We’ve been lucky with the weather here, allowing us to spend time outdoors either working in the yard or just relaxing. Getting outside these past few months has been important for our mental health, no question. It’s the middle of June, and in some ways this year is flying past. In other ways, it seems as if it will never end.

As always, here's a bunch of links I hope you find useful. Enjoy!

A Single Company Will Now Operate Facial Recognition for Nearly 800 Million People
That’s a lot of data, and certain to be a target for hackers as well as governments.

Big tech companies back away from selling facial recognition to police. That’s progress.
This is good news, and I hope some laws can be passed. Meanwhile, we still have companies engaged in the storing of facial recognition data.

Anti-Monopoly Thinking
I had some knowledge of consolidation in certain markets, but the numbers here were eye-opening and thought-provoking.

Decoding the clues: After 10 years, the “Fenn treasure” has finally been found
I had no idea such a treasure hunt was happening. I suspect someone, somewhere, is checking to see if Nic Cage is available to star in the movie.

Can a human brain hold your life experience?
This one had me thinking quite a bit. I mean, how does my brain work to recall the fact that I knew Jason Bateman was in Teen Wolf 2?

Nearly 1,000 Vulnerabilities Found in Popular Open Source Projects in 2019
Gentle reminder: open-source projects often have security issues. Maybe publishing source code for the entire internet to see isn’t the best idea after all.

Silicon Valley billionaires survived Elizabeth Warren. Now they have to deal with her supporters.
This will be an interesting story to follow; here’s hoping these efforts help bring us closer to a more equitable tax system.

How I spent time during lockdown – by completing all the Python career tracks at DataCamp: