There’s a smorgasbord of DNA testing services, promising to tell you about where your ancestors came from, if you have any other relatives elsewhere in the world, or even to let you know if your genes put you at a higher risk for certain diseases. And if you use these services, you’d expect your DNA to stay private. But police have repeatedly accessed parts of these services’ databases to identify suspects. And now a new warrant might open up their entire databases, whether you want to or not. Your DNA Profile is Private? A Florida Judge Just Said Otherwise

Training Day

If you train an AI to recognize faces, you need faces to train it with. A lot of faces. So Yahoo, in an effort to level the playing field, turned to its subsidiary Flickr, and posted a collection of millions of photos with faces¹ that anyone could use for training their AIs. How Photos of Your Kids Are Powering Surveillance Technology

A Climate Crisis is a Military Crisis

Climate change is already affecting people today. Crops no longer grow like they used to, new pests have moved to areas where they were unknown before, and some island states are literally sinking into the sea. And even the U.S. Military is in danger: global starvation, new wars over resources like water, and a fragile power grid could lead to its collapse within 20 years.

Do No Harm

If you look at the causes of climate change, you will always find something designed by an engineer. Without engineers, there could be no engines, power plants, or even coal mines. But now engineers are starting to recognize their role in climate change, and are starting to refuse to work on fossil fuel projects—so much so that these companies are having trouble finding any engineers at all.

Refuge in Familiarity

There are some mainstays of media that are read, watched, or listened again and again. It’s why Netflix pays millions to stream “Friends”, it’s why you re-read Harry Potter yet again, and why your favourite album’s listen count won’t ever be matched by anything else: In defense of reading the same book over and over again

📖 Weekly Longreads 📚

Fans dubbed her the Queen of Pain. She won four obstacle racing championships in five years, while working as a lawyer for Apple. Amelia Boone Is Stronger Than Ever

🦄 Unicorn Chaser 🦄

The Gorgeous Metro Stations of Uzbekistan