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Bill Gates Plotted to Look Like Mr. Rogers — Using Customized Mannequin to Test Boring Potential Outfits: Report
It’s a bizarre day in the neighborhood. Billionaire Bill Gates devoted a great deal of time and money to try to make himself look as kind and approachable as TV’s Mr. Rogers — with his team even using a custom-size mannequin to test out boring potential outfits, according to a new report.
Gates’ team toiled away on crafting the nerdy image he’s known for today to make the 70-year-old tech mogul appear as a benevolent man focused on helping the world, current and former employees told the Wall Street Journal. To that end, his stylists tested outfits for different days of the week on the custom mannequin, with the team having access to “troves of neutral tone crew and V-neck sweaters, button-down shirts, slacks and extra pairs of the Silver Lining Opticians ‘Carbon’ glasses at an off-site building,” the Journal said.
The outfits were specifically picked for Gates to wear during public events, with his employees reportedly sending the billionaire’s senior staff three options to choose from.
The carefully selected wardrobe was meant to evoke the “calm and approachable” image of Fred Rogers, the beloved TV personality who ruled the public airwaves for decades.
While Gates’ appearance was more in line with a quintessential nondescript tech nerd, the team believed their efforts were successful by the time a 2019 YouGov poll found the billionaire ranked at the very top of public figures whom people look up to.
Erin Brockovich Says People Are Angry Because Data Centers Are Being ‘Shoved Down Their Throats’ in Secrecy
Big Tech is expanding into communities across the country — and they aren’t all that happy about it. Many residents in cities and towns where tech companies are looking to build large data centers to power their AI products are mobilizing against them, concerned about a possible drain on water supplies, a surge in electricity costs, and a decline in their overall quality of life.
Now, legendary environmental activist Erin Brockovich, famously played by Julia Roberts in the 2000 film about her work, has joined the fight. Brockovich said on a recent episode of “The Jim Acosta Show” that communities are angry because they feel shut out of the decisions being made in their own backyards — and that the projects are being “shoved down their throat in secrecy.”
Brockovich said that residents learn about projects in the proposal stage, only to find that local officials are limited in what they can say because of nondisclosure agreements. In other cases, she said, projects are presented as warehouses rather than data centers. “There’s a lot of secrecy and NDAs at a very proposal stage,” Brockovich said. That lack of transparency, she said, is fueling anger among residents who believe their concerns are being ignored.
Ring’s New ‘Familiar Faces’ AI Feature Just Triggered an Explosive Facial Recognition Lawsuit for Amazon — What You Need to Know
Amazon is once again in legal hot water over its Ring doorbell cameras — and for a company with a growing list of privacy controversies, this latest lawsuit may be the most explosive yet. A Virginia resident, Charles Sigwalt, has filed a class action lawsuit in federal court in Seattle, claiming that Ring’s AI-powered ‘Familiar Faces’ feature collected and stored facial recognition data from people passing by Ring-equipped homes without their knowledge or consent.
The suit seeks at least $5 million in damages on behalf of the class. It follows a $5.8 million FTC settlement in 2023 over employee spying allegations, and long-running criticism over Ring’s law enforcement data-sharing practices. Ring’s optional ‘Familiar Faces’ feature uses artificial intelligence to identify and remember individuals who appear on camera, sending notifications that include specific names when recognized people approach a property.
While the feature is opt-in for Ring device owners, the lawsuit argues that the people being identified and stored in the system: passers-by, neighbors, delivery workers, etc, never agreed to be part of it. According to the suit, those captured “did not consent to have their privacy rights violated at the entrance way.”
Here’s How the CDC Tried to Use Bad Science to Convince People to Wear Masks During COVID
As we near June 2026, it’s disturbingly apparent from social media and the real world that there are still a ridiculous number of people who are religiously masking in public. One such post on X received an inordinate amount of attention as one man bragged about masking at the British Museum in London to keep himself healthy and avoid losing points of IQ. Seriously. As if someone wearing a mask halfway through 2026 has IQ points left to lose.
But that continued dedication to masking of any kind is not merely the result of unintelligence, or misplaced hypochondria, or even being affiliated with a specific political party. Though, of course, all of that doesn’t hurt..
It’s a result of the concerted effort to promote masks, courtesy of the media, politicians and most importantly, research either conducted or promulgated by the CDC. And we have some data on just how damaging that practice actually was. Three researchers, two of whom have since gone on to bigger and better successes, Vinay Prasad and Tracey Beth Hoeg, explained in detail how committed the CDC was to promoting masks.
23andMe Accused of Failing to Protect User Data in New Lawsuit
The genetic testing company 23andMe is being sued by the state of California over allegations it failed to protect user data during a breach that affected millions of customers. Attorney General Rob Bonta filed the lawsuit Thursday in San Francisco Superior Court against Chrome Holding Co., the corporate debtor name that 23andMe operated under during its bankruptcy process last year.
Last July, a bankruptcy court approved the $305 million sale of 23andMe to a nonprofit organization, TTAM Research Institute, led by the company’s former CEO Anne Wojcicki. The lawsuit alleges that hackers were able to operate inside the company’s systems for five months during an alleged data breach in 2023, accessing data linked to nearly seven million users.
According to allegations in court documents, 23andMe detected more than one million log in attempts to a single customer account in one day, but failed to act. The lawsuit also claims 23andMe downplayed the breach, saying the company was doing everything possible to protect customers’ data while hackers were already selling information, including ancestry and genetic health details on the dark web.
