Tag: climate change

Links of the week: climate change, but can we make it a bit prettier?

A period of time has flown by since my last Links of the Week post, and that period of time could be called 7 days – but I think most people call it ‘a week’.

So, here’s some more stuff I’m going to throw your way.

Coastal residents fear ‘hideous’ seawalls will block waterfront views

Join me as we take a trip to Miami (USA) where local residents are complaining that plans to combat climate change are… ugly.

Recent proposals involved building a massive concrete seawall in the marine ecosystem of Biscayne Bay, looking to protect the city from future storm surges that could flatten homes and kill thousands of people – a danger growing more dire each day due to climate change. But residents don’t like it.

The Downtown Development Authority of Miami hired an architecture firm to visualise some dystopian-looking concrete seawalls in response to the proposal.

Coastlines around the world will face the same problem: tall concrete walls could technically protect homes and property from seas rising because of climate change, but the prospect of being faced by a concrete wall in place of a nice sea view cause locals to reject plans.

Forget your fancy scientific simulations of extreme weather conditions. Nobody cares. Show the people what will climate change really looks like? Because it seems a massive concrete wall gets people talking.

theguardian.com

Every Noise At Once

Some smart person has taken all the genres from Spotify and dumped them on one webpage. You can click one of those genres and instantly hear a sample of what that music sounds like, or click the little arrows to see the individual artists.

I’m not sure the website works well on mobile, but next time you’re at your computer, give it a shot and who knows – you might just discover your new love for Finnish Electro, Vapor Pop, Swamp Rock, or Pornogrind.

Edit: The site does work on mobile. You just need to press the genre twice; once to select it and a second time to start the music playing.

everynoise.com

Microsoft’s new AI can simulate anyone’s voice with just 3 seconds of audio

Some research boffins at Microsoft have created something they call VALL-E. It’s, in their words, a “neural codec language model” that they have trained to simulate the tones and inflections in people’s voices.

You put the audio sample in with the text you want reading, and get a some AI-simulated speech back.

It builds off of a technology called EnCodec, which Meta (Facebook) announced in October 2022, and can take just 3 seconds of audio and use it to generate authentic sounding clips of any typed text in a simulated voice.

Example 01 — 3 second source

Example 01 — VALL·E output

Example 02 — 3 second source

Example 02 — VALL·E output

The demo website has 30+ audio files of the inputted audio sample and the outputted audio for you to listen to and judge yourself.

valle-demo.github.io

LogoArchive

Back in the day, when I did a lot more print and branding design work, I would cherish my copy of the book Los Logos by Gestalten (ISBN: 9783931126926). It was a great reference for inspiration, but also to see if that little sketch of a logo you just drew on a napkin existed somewhere already.

But, that was 2002 – over 20 years ago. Who needs books anymore?? (/sarcasm)

BP&O founder Richard Baird has teamed up with designer and developer Christian Laufenböck to make a digital equivalent. They aim to be an ever-growing historical reference and currently have over 3000 modernist logos archived – with the full story behind 100 of those.

It looks great, but costs $10 per month to access – a small cost for what seems like an excellent resource, if you’re creating logos and branding on the regular for cash. But me? I rarely get to sniff in that direction anymore.

logo-archive.org

Okay, that’s the lot for this week. If you’ve got anything fun to show me, leave it in the comments or send me a message however you like to send me messages.

Note: The image you see at the top of this blog post was generated by Midjourney AI. Sorry about that.

✌️

16 January 2023
Links of the week: Evil tech, hot stuff, good posture

A while ago I bought a health tech device; Upright Go. It’s meant to correct your posture by giving you a little nudge when you’ve been hunched over too long.

Last time I used it, all was going well until I messed up my back playing football and then I put the device in the cupboard and forgot about it until this week.

After seeing Emma make an appearance on television – the human mannequin that predicts what your average office worker will look like – I figured it was a good time to give it another shot… because I hunch. A lot.

There hasn’t been much else going on in my life this week, but here’s a round-up of some of the more interesting things that I’ve read:

Which companies are most evil?

Time to place your bets! The website Slate sent a ballot to a wide range of journalists, scholars, tech geeks and others to come up with The Evil List. It’s an interesting read and, unsurprisingly, the Top 10 is dominated by US-based tech giants.

What’s also interesting is that “Almost everyone distrusts Peter Thiel“.

Things are hotting up.

2019 was the second-warmest year on record and the 2010s were the hottest decade. According to a joint report from NASA (the space people) and the NOAA (the ocean people), greenhouse gas emissions from human activity are the primary cause.

Things will get worse. The world as a whole has continued to pump out more carbon pollution. Since carbon dioxide takes about 10 years to reach its full warming effect, we’ve already locked in much more warming to come.

Bitcoin records higher lows year on year.

Well, except for 2015 where the price reached a low just $15 less than in 2014. But generally the base price has just gone up year on year since 2010.

If you bought Bitcoin at the highest point in December 2017, then you are unlucky. But for those that got in earlier, or after the great crypto crash, it’s looking to be a good long-term investment.

If you want to get into crypto, a good place to start is Coinbase. Also, Dapper is a really nice app (for Android and Google Chrome) to store Ether.

Update your copy of Windows right now.

In a bizarre twist, the US National Security Agency warned Microsoft of a security issue in Windows. Microsoft released a fix for the wormhole immediately.

To stay up to date, click the Start button > Settings > Update & Security > Windows Update, and then select Check for updates.

Major updates to Windows are a pain in the ass, but you should do them.

I’m dedicating this post to my Ukrainian friend Hlib. He emailed me recently to ask when he could expect the next update of the privacy newsletter that I used to write.

The answer to that is never. I am lazy and forgot about the privacy newsletter after a mere four or five updates. However, subscribe to my blog for online privacy tips, security news and similar nonsense.

Bye.

17 January 2020
Links of the week

When you are done looking at the pictures of me and the love of my life getting married, here are some other digital treats to tickle your eyeballs:

Are the UK’s seagulls getting more aggressive? (The Guardian) — A whole array of stories about seagull behavior. Also worth noting that the gulls are now protected and a red listed species (due to a decline in population) by the RSPB. Maybe the birds are just doing what they need to in order to survive.

Tabby Cat (Leslie Zacharkow via Mozilla) — A cute extension for Mozilla Firefox which shows you a cute little illustrated kitty every time you open a new tab.

Animals failing to adapt to speed of climate crisis, study finds (The Guardian) — More climate-change-animal-related news because we all need to be aware of what we are doing to the nature around us. Be kind to nature.

Developer Chris Wetherell built Twitter’s retweet button. And he regrets what he did to this day (Buzzfeed News) — An interesting look at Twitter’s retweet feature and what it really means, or the meaning it lacks, in clicking that button.

Turn selfies into classical portraits with the AI that fuels deepfakes (MIT Technology Review) — It’s like the controversial FaceApp app, but instead of making you look old, it turns you into a classical work of art. Try it yourself.

If you spot anything interesting, throw it my way. Leave a comment below or drop me an email. Whatever.

24 July 2019
Links of the week

Meet the man behind a third of what’s on Wikipedia (CBS News) — Steven Pruitt has made nearly 3 million edits on Wikipedia and written 35,000 original articles, subsequently listed alongside Donald Trump, J.K. Rowling and Kim Kardashian West as one of the most influential people on the internet by Time magazine.

Facebook convinced teens to sell their privacy for $20 (The Next Web) — Targeted at 18-35 year olds, but used by kids as young as 13, Facebook paid participants to install an app named ‘Facebook Research’ which sends all internet activity back to Facebook HQ and even requested screenshots of their Amazon order history page.

Be safe on the internet. — An open source checklist of resources designed to improve your online privacy and security. Check things off to keep track as you go.

Germany to close all 84 of its coal-fired power plants, will rely primarily on renewable energy (LA Times) — one of the world’s biggest consumers of coal aims to shut down all 84 of its coal-fired power plants over the next 19 years to meet its international commitments in the fight against climate change.

Angola decriminalises homosexuality and bans discrimination based on sexual orientation (Evening Standard) — The first country in 2019 to take this important step forward. There are still 69 countries that still criminalise same-sex conduct.

What was the most interesting thing you read about this week?

31 January 2019