Fragments: March 10

Tech firm fined $1.1m by California for selling high-school students’ data I agree with Brian Marick’s response No such story should be published without a comparison of the fine to the company’s previous year revenue and profits, or valuation of last funding round. (I could only find a valuation of $11.0M in 2017.) We desperately need corporations’ attitudes to shift from “lawbreaking is a low-risk cost of doing business; we get a net profit anyway” to “this could be a death sentence.” ❄                ❄                ❄                ❄                ❄ Charity Majors gave the closing keynote at SRECon last year, encouraging people to engage with generative AI. If I was giving the keynote at SRECon 2026, I would ditch the begrudging stance. I would start by acknowledging that AI is radically changing the way we build software. It’s here, it’s happening, and it is coming for us all. Her agenda this year would be to tell everyone that they mustn’t wait for the wave to crash on them, bu