The emergence of the modern deepfake is closely tied to the rise of generative artificial intelligence, but when it comes to videos and images of questionable origin and authenticity, the real pioneer is Bigfoot.

Fifty-seven years after the infamous Patterson–Gimlin film purported to capture a furry beast traipsing through the Northern California wilderness, the Bumbershoot Arts + Music Festival in Seattle is challenging artists, animators, and technologists to take the tradition to the next level in its “Big Fake Deep Foot” contest.

Bumbershoot organizers are inviting people from around the world to create short (no more than 5 minutes) deepfake videos featuring the legendary figure of the forest. The winner will receive a $5,000 prize.

This show has been a longtime goal for Greg Lundgren, the Bumbershoot producer and creative director, known for projects including the Out of Sight art fair and Museum of Museums, who signed on with the iconic Seattle festival last year.

Lundgren has been closely following deepfake technology for several years, watching the tools mature. He had originally hoped to do a Bigfoot deepfake show three or four years ago, but the technology hadn’t reached the point where it was feasible.

“I’m hoping that that moment has arrived, where there’s enough people out in the world that feel capable of it, and rise to the challenge,” he said recently.

It’s a lighthearted twist on an emerging area of technology that is more often a source of concern, due to the potential for deepfake content to contribute to the spread of disinformation and other malicious behavior in politics and society.

“I chose Bigfoot partly because I love Bigfoot, and partly because Bigfoot is part of the Pacific Northwest DNA,” Lundgren explained, noting that Bigfoot also has the benefit of being politically ambiguous and gender-neutral.

“It’s meant to be light, it’s meant to be creative and comedic, and give people a wide berth about how they approach it, and what that narrative is,” he added. “It could be really funny, it could be very serious. But I think Bigfoot as an idea was a good foundation that didn’t create political divide, that wasn’t about hate, that wasn’t about some of the problems that deepfakes represent.”

The winner, as chosen by an expert panel, will receive $5,000, plus the satisfaction of being the best Bigfoot deep-faker on the planet, or at least the best one who took the time to come up with a submission.

(GeekWire is a supporting sponsor of the contest, and I’ll be a member of the jury assessing the submissions, drawing in part on my own heritage. I’m no Bigfoot hunter, or deepfake creator, but my dad was a souvenir wholesaler who specialized for many years in Bigfoot merchandise.)

People around the world are invited to compete. As many as 20 entries will be chosen to be screened in the Animation District at Bumbershoot, Aug. 31 and Sept. 1, Labor Day Weekend at Seattle Center.

One contestant (below) is documenting the process of generating a submission.

Full rules and requirements are available here. Contest submissions, no more than 5 minutes long, must be posted to YouTube by midnight July 31.

My idea of weekend fun is browsing the racks at Seattle-area thrift stores in search of once-prized tech swag that has become castoff apparel, as a barometer of the status of the companies and brands emblazoned thereon.

Seriously, I love to do this.

Here are my best finds from today’s visit to the Goodwill. 

EST. 2015, R.I.P. 2023 … I bought this one, $2.99 red tag. A very nice shirt.

Not out of business, but knocked down a notch.

Not Meta enough …

This didn’t take long to reach the donation bin …

And finally, not tech, but very much in line with the theme. I did not buy this.

Another museum is coming to downtown Seattle with the hopes of attracting visitors with a mix of interactive rooms and displays.

Museum of Illusions, a global attraction with more than 50 locations in 25 countries, is opening a permanent location in Seattle on June 28 in the historic Skinner Building — home to the 5^th Avenue Theatre — at 1330 5th Ave.

The family friendly museum will feature 9,000 square feet of holograms and illusion rooms, including a “Vortex Tunnel” to test visitors’ perception of physics, an anti-gravity room, and a big walk-in kaleidoscope.

The Seattle location will also feature installations unique to the city, such as the “Reversed Room” and “Building Illusion” where visitors appear as if they are levitating upside down on a monorail or hanging from a Seattle building.

“Each display is uniquely designed to puzzle your perceptions, fool your senses, and stimulate curiosity, all while educating visitors about the fascinating science behind the illusions,” the museum said in a news release, calling its “edutainment” a blend of art, science, and psychology.

Museum of Illusions was founded in Zagreb, Croatia, by Roko Živković and Tomislav Pamuković in 2015. The fast-growing chain of private museums has attracted more than 15 million visitors worldwide, in locations ranging from Paris to Dubai to New York City.

The museum is the latest entertainment entity to take over a space downtown in a bid to attract more people to the city’s core.

The high-tech, interactive WNDR Museum opened along the waterfront in March 2023 with an array of immersive, multi-sensory experiences showcasing a mix of video, audio, interactive and AI-generated artwork. But it closed before the end of the year.

Other stabs at interactive spaces in Seattle have included “Stranger Things: The Experience,” which sought to attract fans of the Netflix series to a SoDo warehouse, and “Tomb Raider Experience Seattle,” which is bringing the popular video game series to life this fall in an escape-room-style format, not far from Pike Place Market.

“The Museum of Illusions has found the perfect home in Seattle, a city deeply celebrated for its trailblazing technology, innovation and curiosity,” Museum of Illusions CEO Kim Schaefer said in a statement.

Tickets for the Museum of Illusions will start at $27. Walk-ins are welcome, but visitors are encouraged to reserve tickets online.

The most impressive skyline view in Seattle is coming to the inside of the city’s Museum of History and Industry.

But what makes this “view” at MOHAI especially fun and interactive, is that it features recreations of iconic skyscrapers from all over the world, constructed in painstaking detail out of LEGO bricks.

“Towers of Tomorrow with LEGO Bricks,” a new traveling exhibition, opens Saturday and is sure to impress everyone from architecture geeks to little kids (and adults) who can’t get enough of the colorful, plastic toy.

Featuring 18 buildings built at 1:200 scale, the exhibit is the work of Ryan McNaught, one of only 21 LEGO “Certified Professionals” in the world. The Australian is known as “The Brickman,” and he and his team used more than half a million LEGO bricks and devoted thousands of hours to build the structures featured in the exhibit.

The exhibit features towers such as Dubai’s Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest skyscraper at 2,723 feet. The LEGO version is 162.99 inches tall, built with 48,365 bricks over 135 hours. Other buildings include the Empire State Building, Chrysler Building, Shanghai Tower, Petronas Twin Towers, CN Tower, Willis (Sears) Tower and more.

And LEGO fans who visit can test their own construction skills with more than 200,000 loose LEGO bricks available in special build areas.

“This is a really fun hands-on exhibit. And by hands on I really mean hands on,” said MOHAI Executive Director Leonard Garfield during a media preview of the exhibit on Wednesday.

“Towers of Tomorrow” provides a look at both LEGO history and a closer examination of architectural history across the globe.

“There’s a lot to learn in working with LEGOs, particularly about design and architecture,” said MOHAI’s Devorah Romanek, chief of exhibits and head of interpretive services. “You can learn about modularity and grammar, and being additive or subtractive, analytical and logical, as well as creative. There’s all this opportunity in this play.”

The exhibit runs through Sept. 22. Watch this video detailing some of the build process.

Keep scrolling for more images from GeekWire’s tour:

Related:

• Inside BrickCon 2023, where serious LEGO geeks have been building for this moment
• LEGO builder’s T-Mobile Park gets major upgrade in time for Seattle Mariners season opener
• LEGO Space Needle uses 55,000 bricks to create a 14-foot-high tribute to Seattle landmark

Mahee Chandrasekhar, a 9th grader at Redmond High School in Redmond, Wash., is the Washington state winner in the 16th annual “Doodle for Google” contest.

Mahee, 15, is one of 55 state and territory winners announced by the tech giant on Wednesday. Her artwork was selected from tens of thousands of submissions.

In celebration of Google’s 25th anniversary, students were asked to answer the prompt: “My wish for the next 25 years.”

Mahee submitted an artwork titled “Small but Mighty” (above) and provided the following response to the prompt:

“My wish for the next 25 years is for us to honor the smallest, but mightiest of us all, the pollinators, who through their small size, truly help make the world brighter.”

“Mahee has been an artist ever since I have given her a pen and pencil,” said her father Chandrasekhar Goka. “She has loved to create art, and enjoys creating art from abstract to real, and expressing herself through many facets of science, and technology, and bringing thoughtfulness to real problems..”

Goka said when Mahee was young, she would go to a local organic farm to observe how bees collect nectar from one flower to the next and pollinate the flowers that grow into fruits, nuts and vegetables.

“Mahee loves nature, and as she started to learn science, she started to understand that their are many ecosystems that help us survive and thrive in this world,” Goka said. “She wanted to bring attention to the fact that protecting these ecosystems long term would not only help us, but help our growth and vitality of our society for the next 25 years.”

Goka also credited Mahee’s mother Dr. Sudha Gulkhandia and aunt Sangeeta Vinit with being instrumental in her art education.

Mahee received Google hardware and swag for her achievement.

Rebecca Wu, a sixth grader from Bellevue, Wash., won the entire contest last year and had her artwork in the featured spot on Google’s homepage. She also won a $30,000 college scholarship and a $50,000 technology grant for her school.

Bill Gates left Harvard to start Microsoft. Mark Zuckerberg dropped out of Harvard to concentrate on Facebook.

But the two tech moguls made it back to school for a reunion of sorts, posing in a recreated, small-scale dorm room to celebrate Zuckerberg’s 40th birthday this week.

Dressed in gym shorts, running shoes, and a hoodie, Gates is shown (above, and in the second image in the gallery below) seated on a tiny couch next to Zuckerberg, who is seated at a small desk with a laptop. He’s wearing a gold chain and a black T-shirt with the phrase Carthago delenda est on it.

The room is one of several put together by Zuckerberg’s wife, Priscilla Chan, to celebrate the places where her husband lived over the years.

Other rooms at his party included his childhood bedroom where he says he learned to code; his first apartment, with just a mattress on the floor, where Zuckerberg says he stayed until Facebook reached 100 million people; an office where he was locked down while working “day and night to fight off competitors”; and a pizza place in Harvard Square where Zuckerberg “basically lived in college.”

Even though @zuck tagged @thisisbillgates in the image and thanked him for being a special guest in the dorm room, we couldn’t help but think, in this age of AI fakery, that perhaps the Microsoft co-founder didn’t really attend the Meta maker’s party.

But Gates did share the image and a “Happy Birthday, @zuck!” message on his own Instagram Stories. And a rep for Gates Ventures confirmed to GeekWire that the image is in fact real.

For the sake of the innovators in the crowd at Thursday night’s GeekWire Awards, let’s hope their products and services don’t end up in a future Robert McPherson musical number.

McPherson, affectionately known as “The Drunken Tenor,” returned to the GeekWire stage for another rousing song to open the big show this year, this time taking on the gadgets and geeky must-haves of a bygone era.

Playing off the night’s theme of “Land Before Tech,” McPherson belted out a laundry list of items that have mostly been relegated to the tech recycling bin, from VHS and Betamax tapes to dial-up internet, Palm Pilots, BlackBerries, 8-tracks, dot matrix printers, Friendster, Ask Jeeves, and so much more.

As each device or service appeared flaming in the video playing behind him, McPherson sang his burning lyrics to the tune of Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” before adding the chorus:

We threw it in a fire. Tech that once was so hot but now is so not.

We threw it in a fire. Tech that once had its day but now it’s passé

“I’ve watched so many things come and go in my lifetime,” McPherson told GeekWire at the Awards. “And while I may not be up to the minute, I think Gen X, we’ve always been adaptable.”

Based on audience reaction from the sold-out crowd at Showbox SoDo, McPherson had a hot hit on his hands. People laughed or cheered each time a device appeared on screen that they remembered using or loving — touchstones from a less screen-addicted time.

A Grammy winner who created and stars in Seattle Opera’s “A Very Drunken Christmas Carol,” McPherson sang at last year’s event about tech that’s a bit more current. As the human embodiment of ChatGPT, his 2023 song was a lyrical romp through the rise of generative AI and the tech industry’s hottest topic.

But he had to spend a lot of educating himself on what AI and ChatGPT were all about. This year, McPherson said he started by Googling obsolete tech, making lists and categorizing items that rhymed.

“This one was in my wheelhouse,” he said. “It was fascinating because I wrote this parody in three days. This was one of the quickest writes I’ve ever done. I just I knew as soon as I started thinking about it, it had to be Billy Joel.”

Here are the complete lyrics to McPherson’s song:

Boom Boxes playing tracks, camcorders, send a fax.
I can use a stylus on my Palm pilot screen.
Polaroids, DVDs, caught with Napster’s MP3s
Please leave a message on my answering machine.

Got my Walkman and a pager, spelling boobs on calculators.
Sony Discman plays my music CDs.
Using Floppy diskettes, making mix tapes on a cassette.
Watching all my shows on a rabbit ear TV.

We threw it in a fire. Tech that once was so hot but now is so not.
We threw it in a fire. Tech that once had its day but now it’s passé.

Furby would talk with me, tennis on Nintendo Wii
Galaxy Note 7s exploding into flames.
IBM ThinkPad, Ask Jeeves is now sad.
Game cartridges are now no longer used for games.

Adobe Flash plugin, LiveJournal bloggin,
Super 8 cameras recording everything they found,
Motorola Razr, connecting on Friendster.
After years I still hear the AOL start up sound.

[AOL sound]

To record or pause a show we would use TiVo.
T-Mobile Sidekick, Buying things on Craigslist.
Watching shows on UHF, playing with my Giga Pet
Google Glass, Nexus One, MySpace is now done.

iPod music players, Atari Space Invaders,
one day photo booths, Dial up internet,
Blackberries once owned, typewriters, Flip phones.
Dot matrix printers I’m not done yet.
What was once cutting edge, now is tech that is dead.
They have all gone away, what more do I have to say?

We threw it in a fire. Tech that once was so hot but now is so not.
We threw it in a fire. Tech that once had its day but now it’s passé.

Laser disks are no more, Commodore 64,
Compaq Deskpro, Game boy from Nintendo,
VHS or Betamax, Cars playing 8-tracks.
But before I must go, apologies to Billy Joel!

We threw it in a fire. Tech that once was so hot but now is so not.
We threw it in a fire. Tech that once had its day but now it’s passé.

It was a mix of robot trophies and blow-up dinosaurs at the GeekWire Awards on Thursday night in Seattle, as the prehistoric “Land Before Tech” theme gave way to our modern, rapidly evolving times.

During a celebration of the best in Pacific Northwest tech, the community came together to pack the Showbox SoDo to network, eat and drink, pose for photos and cheer on the finalists and winners in a variety of categories.

Robert “The Drunken Tenor” McPherson pulled another original song out of his operatic hat as he took us back to the days of dial-up internet, 8-track tapes and more.

Ryan Devlin and Kim West from the Seattle band Smokey Brights helped get the party started, “Tomb Raider’s” Lara Croft made a surprise appearance, and New Zealand cricket legend Ross Taylor schooled us on the game that is taking the Seattle area by storm.

Big thanks to Astound Business Solutions, the presenting sponsor of the 2024 GeekWire Awards.

Also, thanks to gold-level and category sponsors: Wilson Sonsini, JLL, Blink UX, BECU, Baird, First Tech, Baker Tilly, WTIA, Silicon Valley Bank, and T-Mobile. And thanks to silver level sponsors: Prime Team Partners, Meridian Capital, Submittable, and Cosmogence. And supporting sponsors: Choose Washington, ALLtech, Showbox SoDo, and Roanoke.

Read about all the winners in our main awards story, and keep scrolling for a photographic recap of the event. And thanks again to everyone for attending!

Check out more pics and GIFs from the photo booth!

Go here and use the password b9d232.

At the risk of beating a not-dead, just-missing zebra, here’s another story about the story that won’t quit this week.

In case you’ve been off Facebook, X and nearly every other social media platform since last Sunday, an escaped zebra has been on the loose near North Bend, Wash. Four of the animals got out of a trailer that was headed to Montana, and one is still roaming around.

And based on internet posts relying on generative AI (like the image above) or Photoshop, the zebra could be grabbing a Dick’s burger, riding a ferry, assisting law enforcement, standing on the SR 520 bridge, hanging out with Bigfoot or tossing a fish at Pike Place Market.

Now one Seattle television station’s social team is saying enough already with the zebra memes.

The KOMO News #SoNorthwest Photography page posted a message to its 46,000 members Friday morning asking them to please stop sharing standalone zebra content. The page is intended as a place where photographers in the Pacific Northwest can submit weather-related photos to be featured on KOMO’s website, social channels or newscast.

The clutter of zebra memes was taking away from sunsets and mountain photos, apparently.

“We love the enthusiasm that everyone has had for the zebra story and have enjoyed laughing at the funny zebra photos,” the KOMO digital team wrote. “However, from now on, please post all zebra memes and any edited zebra photos as a comment on this thread. We will remove all other photoshopped or AI-created zebra-related content not posted in the comments.”

Considering all the ways we worry about deep fakes, misinformation, and how AI can be manipulated into delivering dangerous content, an endless stream of striped-horse memes certainly seems harmless.

And this week has definitely illustrated that just about every state agency or sports team with a social media intern and access to photo editing software has a sense of humor.

Video game fans will be able to step inside the worlds of Super Mario and Donkey Kong in a new “Super Nintendo World” theme park experience opening in Orlando, Fla., next year.

The Nintendo experience is part of the planned Universal Epic Universe — the fourth theme park at Universal Orlando Resort. Details revealed Thursday included a splashy video and artist renderings of what to expect.

From “Super Mario Land” to “Donkey Kong Country” visitors will be able to interact with their favorite characters and take part in a number of challenges — to “meld the game world into the real world.”

In “Super Mario Land,” players can punch blocks, collect coins, find hidden elements and track their progress against other guests in the park.

“There’s so many places to look and get engaged, you just get engulfed in it,” Eric Parr, a senior VP with Universal Creative, said in the video below. “We really wanted to create iconic worlds that deeply connect with fans.”

Visitors to the lush jungle of “Donkey Kong Country” can board a “runaway” mine cart on a family coaster that appears to jump the track.

Along with Super Nintendo World, Universal plans “The Wizarding World of Harry Potter: Ministry of Magic,” “Dark Universe,” “Celestial Park,” and “How to Train Your Dragon: Isle of Berk” as part of the Epic Universe.

Nintendo of America, a subsidiary of the Japanese gaming giant, is based in Redmond, Wash.

“Does it still have that new spaceship smell?”

That was the quip from Dave Boone, walking past the GeekWire office in Seattle’s Fremont neighborhood last week as Javier Luraschi pulled up in his new Tesla Cybertruck to take me for a ride.

We may not have launched into space in this version of an Elon Musk vehicle, but Luraschi’s angular, stainless steel monster of an electric truck did launch plenty of stares and double-takes as we drove around the city.

Luraschi is a tech veteran who now heads up Hal9, a 3-year-old AI-enhanced data analytics startup that is being incubated at the AI2 Incubator in Seattle.

He’d been waiting more than 3 1/2 years since hitting the “buy” button on the Cybertruck website and putting down a $100 reservation for a truck that was supposed to cost $40,000 when first announced. Now, with a price tag of $100,000, Luraschi had his truck — and all that comes with owning such a head-turner.

“I’ve never had a product where it gets this many reactions from people,” Luraschi said. “I feel like the first reaction is, ‘I don’t like this.’ The next few seconds it’s, ‘Oh, it’s not that bad.’ It’s pretty obvious that people don’t know what to think of it. It’s just many emotions at the same time.”

An introvert’s contradiction

During a 10-minute drive from Fremont out to Golden Gardens Park in Ballard, it was tough to tell who was more distracted — Luraschi as he spotted and tried to react to people staring at his Cybertruck from passing cars, or the people in those passing cars, shooting images or video from the passenger or driver’s seat.

A self-professed introvert, Luraschi was quickly learning that he was driving the wrong vehicle to maintain such a personality. He said he’s not a car guy, he’s a tech guy. But now, he had to be both.

“I don’t like getting stared at,” he says at one point, followed a few moments later by, “I do love the reactions of people.”

Each time we parked the truck to mingle with people who might get a kick out of seeing one in the wild, it was like turning on a bright porch light on a buggy summer evening. But Luraschi was hardly bugged.

“Come on over, guys!” Luraschi said as a couple young people pulled up to get a closer look — and photo — of the Cybertruck.

“I saw you guys driving, I was like, ‘No way! I had not seen one,'” said Conrad Puff-Carter of Seattle, who was cruising around in his 1997 Honda Civic hatchback with River Belle, also of Seattle. “I think it’s cool! I’ve never seen anything like this.”

Puff-Carter immediately asked Luraschi how much he paid, and his wide-eyed reaction to the price was to point at his Civic and say, “You want to know how much I got that for? Zero! The neighbors were moving.”

Belle took a little longer to warm up to the steel-grey Cybertruck, with its large black wheels and dramatically shaped front and rear ends.

“It looks like a weird pixelated car, like something glitched out in the rendering,” Belle said. “It sticks out like a sore thumb — in a cool way,” she said as she sat in the truck, before adding, “It’s growing on me.”

Beaming, Luraschi couldn’t help but come across as a Tesla ambassador of sorts, encouraging people to have a closer look and sit inside. He happily posed Puff-Carter and Belle in front of the truck to take their picture.

His desire to know whether people rated it a thumbs up or thumbs down seemed very much in line with his tech career, constantly collecting and analyzing data.

“I love trying new products,” Luraschi said. “To be the first one, it’s at times uncomfortable when people look at you and you’re like, ‘Oh, wow, that’s a lot of attention.’ But, you know, you get to try it first, right?”

In another parking lot on our drive, we chatted with Collin Mason, a chef who just moved back to Seattle from New York City. He was headed to band practice when the Cybertruck distracted him.

“The look is so different than anything I’ve seen that I almost don’t like it. But I also like it a lot,” Mason said. “It looks like it came out of a LEGO set or a Batman movie. I’ve never seen somebody go this far with design, as far as really ignoring what’s been done with cars.”

Even with muddy boots on, Mason was offered a seat behind the wheel of the day-old, very clean truck. And Luraschi, whose previous car was an electric Nissan Leaf, was quickly drawn to Mason’s own BMW CE O4, a zippy little “urban mobility scooter,” as the two discussed how fast it could go.

‘Computer on wheels’

When Luraschi offered me the chance to drive the Cybertruck, I couldn’t resist. Not because I hadn’t previously driven a newish electric vehicle — such as Ford’s F-150 Lightning, or Porsche’s Taycan — but because I wanted to feel the charge of being stared at by everybody else on the road. And it worked.

Because the vehicle is in the early stages of mass production and delivery, they’re just not a common sight on roads right now, especially in Seattle. But there are plenty of videos online making fun of driving predicaments or showing off the truck from pointy head to pointy toe.

I liked waving at people standing on the sidewalk pointing, or just shrugging my shoulders at people driving by laughing. I could imagine how quickly the photo or video they shot landed in a text thread or got posted on social media — “Finally saw one of these weird things!”

Driving the Cybertruck didn’t feel much like driving a truck or an electric car. It felt too big and long to be the latter — EVs typically have a more environmentally friendly footprint. And it didn’t really feel like a truck because of how comfortable and futuristic it is — would I really throw a load of lumber and concrete in this thing?

Luraschi himself said he was driving a “computer on wheels” and said he liked the Cybertuck on the unpaved roads where his co-founder brother lives in Monroe, Wash. And he wanted an electric vehicle capable of pulling (don’t tell his wife) the sailboat he wants next.

I loved the acceleration of the truck, like most EVs, and the ability to raise the suspension several inches from sport mode to off road with the push of touchscreen button was definitely cool.

I had trouble figuring out to how get the doors open at first. I couldn’t find my turn signals. The generative braking is a bit tough to get used to. A Seattle pothole felt just as jarring as when I hit one in my Jeep. And during a steady rain, I could only imagine that if the single, giant windshield wiper ever broke or wore out, it would cost an arm and a leg to replace.

It was hard not feel like I was driving a blinking “ELON MADE ME” billboard down the road, more so than I feel about Tesla’s other very ubiquitous models. Luraschi is diplomatic in how he feels about the often polarizing tech personality.

“I do believe that the products that Tesla is creating, or SpaceX, are amazing,” he said. “I don’t believe that Tesla means Elon and SpaceX means Elon. Obviously he’s fundamentally a great force in those companies. But the credit for Cybertruck also goes to the Tesla team. I think he’s a pretty great engineer and product person; we all have our deficiencies and qualities.”

I decided to give the last word to my parents the next morning during a Facetime call, when I told them about my story assignment the previous day. They hadn’t heard of or seen a Cybertruck until I texted them a couple photos.

They taught me how to drive, and they’ve owned probably 40 (gas-powered) cars over the years. As they head toward their mid and later 80s, they’re likely on their last two Honda vehicles.

I asked what they thought of the Cybertruck.

“It looks like a prototype,” my mom said.

I asked my dad if he’d ever want one.

“No.”

A new waterfront attraction in Seattle will bring the popular video game and film franchise “Tomb Raider” and its protagonist Lara Croft to life in an immersive, escape-room-style entertainment experience.

Seattle-based Hourglass Escapes, under its new banner Hourglass Attractions, plans to open “Tomb Raider Experience Seattle: Escape from the Temple of Fire” this fall, the company announced Monday. The 4,000-square-foot facility at 1122 Post Ave. is blocks from Pike Place Market.

The experience promises to go beyond traditional escape room offerings, where visitors will join Croft on the exploration of a mysterious temple that has emerged from a volcano and help her protect a dangerous artifact hidden within its ancient walls.

“Tomb Raider Experience Seattle” promises “scenic landscapes, heart-thumping adventures, challenging puzzles, and live actors all working together” over the course of about 90 minutes, with “pulse-racing action” that culminates in what Hourglass describes as “a thrilling, lava-soaked finale.”

The attraction comes at a time when Amazon is developing a film reboot of “Tomb Raider” as well as a streaming TV series. And it could serve as another way that the City of Seattle hopes to lure visitors to the downtown core as part of Mayor Bruce Harrell’s Downtown Activation Plan.

Seth Wolfson, owner and creative director of Hourglass Escapes and co-owner of Hourglass Attractions, is a film and theme park veteran who has been designing and operating escape room experiences and video games since 2016.

“Having the opportunity to create an immersive attraction based on the ‘Tomb Raider’ franchise is a dream come true,” Wolfson said in a statement, adding that he looks forward to bringing “a family friendly attraction to the Seattle Waterfront area.”

Hourglass Escapes is the creator of Seattle-based escape rooms including “Evil Dead 2” and “Arkham Horror: Mystery at Innsmout,” among others.

The first “Tomb Raider” video game was released in 1996, and since then, the franchise has sold more than 95 million copies. There have also been three movies: “Lara Croft: Tomb Raider” (2001); “Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life” (2003); and “Tomb Raider” (2018).

“Tomb Raider” creator Crystal Dynamics has a game development studio in Bellevue, Wash., called Crystal Northwest.

When Microsoft design chief Jon Friedman‘s son Judah needed help with a children’s book he wanted to write, Friedman went from Copilot to coauthor, of sorts.

Friedman, a 20-year vet of the tech giant, is a corporate vice president leading design and research across Microsoft, including on its AI products. His skills came in handy on “Max & The Purple Anxiety Monster,” a new book that his 13-year-old son wrote about coping with his anxious feelings.

Friedman created all of the illustrations for the book using DALL-E, the generative AI program from OpenAI that can create images from text prompts. Microsoft has invested more than $10 billion in OpenAI.

“I’m creative, but illustrating an entire book is a daunting task that would scare the crap out of me,” Friedman said about his choice to use AI rather than his own hand to “paint” the numerous watercolor-style illustrations in the book.

The idea for the book was born out of a school writing assignment, in which Judah shared how his family’s move from Seattle to Chicago had him feeling nervous and anxious. Friedman still regularly works from Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, Wash., but in Chicago, Judah was facing the prospect of making new friends in a new city.

“Being able to write down how I feel really helps with getting my feelings out of my system,” Judah told GeekWire. He hopes that his story will help other kids who struggle with similar emotions.

In the book, the Purple Anxiety Monster shadows the character, Max, finding joy in the boy’s fears, from the airport to his new bedroom in Chicago. “You’ll never make friends here,” the monster tells Max.

When Max does become friends with his neighbor, Ethan, feelings of being accepted ease his anxiety and make the monster fade into the background.

Judah and his dad planned to print just a few books — one for their house and the other two for his grandparents. They had no intent to publish it until Friedman ran into Greg Shaw, an author who has worked with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella on his writings who is also the founder of Clyde Hill Publishing.

Shaw was intrigued by Judah’s story and the use of AI to make it happen.

“I talk about my use of AI all the time,” Friedman said. “It’s just part of my job. What can AI do for people? How does it unlock creativity and push boundaries? And what are the positive stories?”

Beyond DALL-E for the artwork, Friedman and Judah also ran the original classroom story through ChatGPT, to see what that tool would do when prompted to create a children’s book. The process gave Judah some insight into pacing, number of pages and more, and he worked with his mom and therapist to further edit his story.

“The cool part about that was I think AI helped us get started,” Friedman said. “And then a bunch of people jumped in and helped, and that helped Judah to craft the language even more.”

“I don’t think I’d be able to make the book without AI,” said Judah, now a seventh grader.

Despite the use of technology, the book was not a rush job for Friedman by any stretch. He created more than 1,000 illustrations to get down to the 20 or so that are in the book. The main challenge was getting his written prompts in Dall-E to create a consistent look for Max and Ethan.

Age, clothing, hairstyle, skin color, eye color — all of it kept changing with each new illustration. Here are three prompts Friedman wrote, and the resulting illustrations which varied wildly in the AI’s depiction of Max’s age:

• Watercolor painting of a very young Max, in his red hoodie, seated in the airplane, his face illuminated by the gentle light from the window. In the shadows, the Purple Anxiety Monster cautiously peeks out from behind a nearby seat, keeping a close watch on the unsuspecting Max.

• Like the previous one but make Max a little older: Watercolor painting of a very young Max, in his red hoodie, seated in the airplane, his face illuminated by the gentle light from the window. In the shadows, the Purple Anxiety Monster cautiously peeks out from behind a nearby seat, keeping a close watch on the unsuspecting Max.

• That is not quite right, he is way too old now! Please make two versions where Max is around 10 years old: Watercolor painting of a very young Max, in his red hoodie, seated in the airplane, his face illuminated by the gentle light from the window. In the shadows, the Purple Anxiety Monster cautiously peeks out from behind a nearby seat, keeping a close watch on the unsuspecting Max.

When Friedman got things as close as he could with AI, he often would turn to Photoshop to clean up other details in the illustrations himself, such as skin tone.

“As a designer who’s helping design and guide Copilot there’s a lot of really exciting stuff that will come where we’ll be able to handle overarching things in the memory of a conversation and then fine tune things,” he said. “I think over time, you’ll see the tools get way better at this.”

“Max & The Purple Anxiety Monster” is available through a number of booksellers, including Barnes & Noble, Amazon, BookShop.org, and Books-A-Million. It’ll also be available at Judah’s school and neighborhood libraries, and for sale in Chicago and Seattle-area bookstores.

Father and son are also trying to land a book signing somewhere. Judah has been practicing his signature, but his dad probably should, too.

“The book is as much my dad’s as it is mine,” Judah said. “We did a lot of work on it together.”

When Sanjay Parthasarathy left his last tech job in February 2023, he figured he’d do what he could to help get the first season of Major League Cricket up and running in the Seattle area and at the national level. After that, it would probably be time to go find another “real job,” as he put it.

Just over a year later, Parthasarathy, one of several notable names from the region’s tech industry who are backing the Seattle Orcas, is beyond just getting things off the ground. He’s become fully immersed in the business of the sport he once played as a professional.

“I’ve done a startup. It was 10x a startup kind of pace and velocity,” Parthasarathy said of the inaugural season for the league and the Orcas. “I’ve played cricket my entire life. Running a team — that was something else.”

The Orcas lead investor group includes Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella; Madrona Venture Group Managing Director S. Soma Somasegar; Icertis co-founder and CEO Samir Bodas; and GreatPoint Ventures managing partner Ashok Krishnamurthi. Indian conglomerate GMR Group also has a stake.

Parthasarathy was a longtime Microsoft executive before founding and leading Indix in 2012. The AI and machine learning startup was acquired by tax software giant Avalara in 2019, which was in turn acquired by Vista Equity Partners in 2022. Parthasarathy stepped down from his role as Avalara’s chief product officer last year.

In retrospect, the 2023 cricket season went much better than he and others expected. Parthasarathy said the effort probably accelerated cricket in the U.S. by two or three years. Not bad, considering the goal was “just to survive the season.”

MLC and its six teams — Seattle, Texas, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C. — attracted fan and broadcast interest. And the Orcas finished as runners up in the short season of Twenty20 cricket that wrapped up outside Dallas last July.

There are several goals this season and none seem to faze Parthasarathy’s enthusiasm for what’s possible. Those goals include:

Make the Orcas ‘America’s favorite cricket team’

Parthasarathy said the Orcas decided from the start to be loud, different, and fun.

The team boasts a core group of fans from around the Seattle area, including many Asian Indians from the tech community. But as the smallest of the six MLC markets, the Orcas want to grow their base by attracting fans in cities across the U.S.

A redesign of the team’s original, quickly conceived logo added a cricket bat and crown (for King County) to the playful orca mascot. Fans took notice last summer, and Orcas merchandise was a hit.

“Every adult has their favorite team, but if you look at all the kids in the stadiums, they all have Seattle Orcas [jerseys],” Parthasarathy said. “That’s who we need to reach out to as a team.”

Broaden the fan base

“We have product market fit — just to use a traditional startup term — with the core audience,” Parthasarathy said, referencing 30- to 40-year-old males tied to what he calls “the Commonwealth diaspora” — India, Pakistan, Australia, New Zealand and England.

To reach a broader base of U.S. fans used to professional baseball, football, basketball and more, it’s about getting cricket in front of people.

“If people are aware of it and they actually go watch, they’ll get hooked,” he said. “Is that going to take three years, seven years, 10 years? Probably. We’ve got to do out-of-the-box things to attract attention and just be different. Because if people watch it, they’ll enjoy it.”

Grow the sport at grassroots level

Referencing the popularity of the NBA, and basketball in general, Parthasarathy said there are pickup games in gyms, parks and home courts all around the country.

“We don’t have enough pickup games in cricket,” he said. “If you go to India, there’s pickup cricket going all the time, everywhere. How do we get from here to there? I call that grassroots development. … It doesn’t take much to get started. Don’t worry about the rules. Don’t worry about the technicalities. Just start to play. It’s see ball, hit ball, right? That’s where it starts.”

Prepare U.S. for strong showing at 2028 Olympics

Even though it’s regarded as the second-most-popular sport in the world (behind soccer), cricket last appeared at the Olympics in 1900, at the Paris Games. In October, the International Olympic Committee approved the addition of the sport for the 2028 Los Angeles Games, and Parthasarathy called it a pivotal development, especially on the heels of the U.S. hosting matches for the 2024 ICC Men’s T20 World Cup.

“How do we get from Major League Cricket to the Olympics? That’s the journey that is most interesting, because you’ve got to get grassroots awareness and you’ve got to get the domestic team playing at a reasonable level,” Parthasarathy said.

Continue work on bringing a cricket ground to Seattle area

Two years ago, the King County Council passed a motion of support for the development of a cricket grounds at Marymoor Park in Redmond. Parthasarathy said discussions between MLC and the county and cities involved are ongoing.

“If we take a phased approach, we’re hoping we can get games going in this area in 2025,” he said. “But a lot of stars have to align to make that happen.”

MLC and the Orcas ownership group wants the grounds to be a community resource.

“This is not just going to be like the traditional approaches that we have with baseball stadiums and football stadiums,” Parthasarathy said. “There’s a lot more nuances and benefits to both sides that need to be worked out.”

Before you spring forward this weekend into daylight saving time, a casket company hopes you’ll consider whether it’s time to bury what some consider to be an unhealthy ritual.

In a new ad campaign and promotional push on its website, Titan Casket makes a somewhat satirical pitch to stop with all this clock winding and rewinding and let standard time stand.

“At Titan Casket, we obviously have an interest in you dying,” actor David Dastmalchian (“Dune,” “The Suicide Squad”) says in the ad, before adding, “But, we can wait.”

The company’s new pitchman directs viewers to Titan’s website to learn how to “put our national nuisance six feet under.” That effort includes help in writing Congressional representatives.

Founded in 2016, Titan includes a husband-and-wife team based in Bellevue, Wash. COO Josh Siegel previously spent more than eight years at Amazon and was chief product officer at cosmetic treatment review startup RealSelf. Liz Siegel, who previously ran her own baby products company, is Titan’s chief customer officer. Longtime casket manufacturer and supplier Scott Ginsberg serves as Massachusetts-based CEO.

Titan raised $3.5 million in 2022 for its mission is to make it easy to buy a casket online rather than at a funeral home, saving customers time and money during what can be an emotional process. They even landed a casket in a Taylor Swift video.

The company is among an increasing number of startups innovating to bring change to the $20 billion funeral industry. 

The ad campaign was created in collaboration with actor Ryan Reynolds’ agency, Maximum Effort. While it may poke fun at the ritual of time change, there are legitimate concerns linked to the twice-yearly switch and disruptions to our circadian rhythms.

“That one-hour change may not seem like much, but it can wreak havoc on people’s mental and physical well-being in the short term,” said Dr. Charles Czeisler, professor of sleep medicine at Harvard Medical School’s Division of Sleep Medicine, in an article titled “The dark side of daylight saving time.”

Northwestern Medicine reports during the week of switching to daylight savings there’s a 24% higher risk of heart attacks, 6% spike in fatal car accidents, 8% increase in stroke rate, 11% jump in depressive episodes, and more.

So much for my after-lunch job search and profile lurking.

A day after a Meta outage knocked out Facebook, Messenger and Instagram, LinkedIn suffered a similar fate on Wednesday, as the social media platform for business professionals went down.

“An error has occurred,” read a message across the site shortly after 1 p.m. PST. On the company’s status page, a message said that LinkedIn was “continuing to investigate the issue.”

Update: The site came back online for me before I could even post this story to Tumblr.

The Microsoft-owned platform boasts about 1 billion members worldwide. Half of them tried to add me as a connection this week.

Many more simply turned to a functioning social media site — X?! — to flex their comedic chops with the usual memes:

The title and subtitle of Kara Swisher‘s new book, “Burn Book: A Tech Love Story,” perfectly illustrate the dichotomy of her career as a journalist and entrepreneur, in which she has been simultaneously captivated by the rise of digital technologies and disappointed by many of the people bringing these innovations into the world.

As a longtime follower of Swisher’s career, listener of her podcasts, and admirer of her reporting, I finished the memoir over the weekend. I found it enlightening and inspiring, filling in the gaps in her personal story and her approach as a journalist, with plenty of behind-the-scenes tidbits to keep the story moving.

Most of all, the book is pure Kara, including her unvarnished take on the tech elite.

I say this without bias because GeekWire is not mentioned in the book, and the fact that I know this is proof that I read the entire thing, because, as she writes at the end, “There is no index, people. So, you have to read the whole book all the way through to see if you’re in it. I’ll be honest—most of you are not.”

As I said, it’s pure Kara.

So was her talk Tuesday night at Town Hall Seattle, an on-stage conversation with Alex Stamos, the former Facebook and Yahoo chief security officer (who does get a mention in the book, by the way, a favorable name check in Swisher’s chapter on “The Mensches” of the technology industry).

A longtime Seattle-based tech journalist could easily quibble with the fact that Stamos and Swisher didn’t play more to the local crowd with deeper discussions about our region’s key players — enough about Zuck’s inadequate education already, sheesh — but I’ll set that aside and just share a few of my favorite quotes, takeaways, and zingers from the event.

Why she waited more than two decades to write a new book: “I got asked to write books all the time during those ensuing years. I never really wanted to because I didn’t think the story was over, or finished. …

“Then it got perfect because of two things. One, the tech companies got so big during COVID, got so enormous and so powerful. It started to really disturb me because they had no guardrails around them. …The second part was that AGI [artificial general intelligence] had become a thing, and so you can see, we’re at another inflection point. …

“I thought, someone has to tell people what these people were like, historically, and tell the truth. … We’re heading into the most important phase. When are we going to take back control? It’s sort of like if I was around during Standard Oil and I knew them before. It was my duty to do that, so that’s why I did.”

Tagging along with Jeff Bezos to one of Amazon’s early offices: “I took Jeff Bezos to see his first headquarters in a shitty section of Seattle. I went with him because he was like, maybe I could protect him. He was a skinny little guy. He probably was like, ‘Oh, I’ll take the lesbian with me.’ “

Steve Jobs was a jerk about getting things right: “He was not jerky in the way these people [many of today’s tech leaders] are jerky. I think they treat people badly. They lack empathy. They don’t care. They create products that aren’t safe.”

On the value of “reported analysis” from knowledgeable journalists: “As a beat reporter you’re writing, ‘This happened today at Google; this happened today at Amazon.’ … The reason why I left and did AllThingsD is I thought we should do something we call reported analysis. We did killer reporting, and then we said, ‘Well, this is a mess, or this is great.’ I think [longtime colleague and business partner] Walt Mossberg really defined that, which is he did amazing reporting, and then he said what he thought. I think that’s valuable to audiences.”

On the fake AI-generated ‘companions’ to her book: “I collect them all, and I send them to [Amazon CEO] Andy Jassy, and I’m like, ‘Hey, dude, what the fuck?’ … Of course, I’m sure Amazon scrambled the jets because they’re like, ‘Oh shit, it’s her.’ ”

Want more? As Kara would no doubt say, read the fucking book.

GeekWire managing editor Taylor Soper contributed to this story.

Jordan Schwartz, the software entrepreneur who previously founded and led Seattle startup Pathable, is the new chief product officer at Sēkr, an app to help travelers plan trips, find campsites and more.

Founded in 2018 and originally based in San Diego, Sēkr was acquired last year by Peace Vans and owner Harley Sitner, whose nationally known business south of downtown Seattle specializes in classic Volkswagen van repairs, rentals and electric conversions, as well as custom builds on modern camper vans.

Sitner always wanted to build out a digital strategy to boost the Peace Vans business and serve his thousands of travel-minded customers. He explored launching something himself, but the prospect was daunting. The road eventually led to Sēkr.

Together, Peace Vans and Sēkr — and Sitner and Schwartz — want to reimagine how useful an app and technology can be in boosting the community aspect of travel and vanlife in particular. And they’re bringing AI along for the ride.

“There’s a genuine opportunity with Sēkr to not just remove friction from the road trip experience, but to introduce some fairly sophisticated and advanced planning tools that bring travelers closer to those serendipitous moments we all long for,” Sitner said this week during a GeekWire visit to Peace Vans HQ.

Tech with a hippie vibe

Among a sea of Vanagons on the Peace Vans lot, all in need of varying degrees of care and repair, the scene might appear to be the last place that technology would interfere with the dreamy notion of road tripping. Just point it and go, right?

But while Sitner and Schwartz can come across as a couple of hippie dads, they aren’t exactly Cheech & Chonging their way through this venture. The two have strong tech chops that date back to stints at Microsoft, where Sitner was a senior product manager for five years and Schwartz spent more than 10 years as a program manager.

Sitner took over Peace Vans when the opportunity presented itself 12 years ago, and he’s built the business into a destination in the Pacific Northwest for vanlife enthusiasts.

“There’s very few people and entities with more expertise in this space than myself and Peace Vans,” he said. “I say that with a bit of hubris, but also some confidence. I’ve lived and breathed this space for 12 years and I’m going to infuse all of that into Sēkr, and I’m super stoked about it.”

Schwartz ran Pathable for 13 years. The startup built mobile apps for conferences, pivoted early in the pandemic to focus on virtual events, and was acquired in 2020. He’s been focused on climate tech investing for the last few years.

A camper van owner for 14 years or so, Schwartz has always been a big proponent of remote work, years before the trend took off during the pandemic.

During a meeting at Al’s Tavern in the Wallingford neighborhood — where Sitner previously advised Schwartz to sell Pathable — Sitner brought up Sēkr.

“I told him, ‘I’ve acquired this thing and I think you’re gonna love it,'” Sitner said. “We pulled [Sēkr] up on our phones, and we started using it. And I was like, ‘Will you help me, please?'”

Schwartz was in.

“I’ve been looking to get back into building product, because I love it,” Schwartz said. “If you’re building something, and people are using it, and you’re getting the feedback from them about how it’s changing their lives … I just really want to be able to do something like that again.”

Faster, smarter travel tips

Sēkr was originally founded by Breanne Acio and Jess Shisler as “The Vanlife App.” The company raised $2.5 million in seed funding in 2022, and was attracting about 10,000 monthly active users.

The goal was to help travelers avoid having to use a handful of different apps and websites to locate and book campsites equipped with the specific services those travelers desired. Other apps competing in the space include Portland-based The Dyrt and Hipcamp. Seattle-based Cabana rented custom-built vans before shutting down at the end of 2023.

Schwartz — with a small team of remote developers he used at Pathable — is excited to get his hands on an existing Sēkr database of over 75,000 waypoints and campsites, and a community of 100,000 members. With a refresh and relaunch of the app this spring, he’ll harness generative AI to power what he and Sitner are calling a “secret copilot” to help create magic road trips for users.

“The beginning of the conversation that you have with your secret copilot is around what you look for, and the kinds of things that you enjoy,” Schwartz said. “AI can not only digest all the information about everything that’s going on in all these different places, but it can personalize it, and it can start to know you.”

A traveler might be looking for a solitary place to hang out, or maybe enjoys having a conversation with an artist in a gallery. Maybe the traveler is looking to find a local band that’s playing, or she wants to find other like-minded vanlifers for a spontaneous meet-up. Sēkr’s copilot will mine the database and the community to make faster and smarter recommendations.

“AI, I think, enables those kinds of personalized connections in a way that search filters and hunting around the traditional apps just don’t,” Schwartz said. “You can’t Yelp ‘authentic experience.'”

A community focus

Standing beneath a Vanagon on a lift in his repair shop, Sitner gets fired up when discussing the legacy of loving the road and the road trip as an American archetype. He swings all the way through mentions of manifest destiny to the National Highway System to Jack Kerouac to VW’s recent Super Bowl commercial, and back to vanlife.

While there might be some irony in wanting to introduce artificial intelligence into something that has been such a uniquely human-powered endeavor, Sitner has a vision.

The guy who has been to the Burning Man festival for 27 straight years is big on community — whether he’s on the road or in Seattle at the Peace Vans shop where a yearly party shuts down 6th Avenue South for 1,000 van-obsessed revelers.

Sitner is embracing AI and its place within Sēkr as a means to strengthen the human element that powers vanlife.

“I’m a bit old school despite my technology chops,” Sitner said. “AI builds the scaffolding, lays the groundwork, elevates the experience. But then there’s that opportunity for more human connection.”

The cherry blossoms at the University of Washington offer a spectacular welcome to spring every year on the school’s Seattle campus. Thursday night, a brightly shining, tech-infused tree in front of the Husky Union Building got a jump on nature.

BECU, in partnership with the UW, unveiled the 12-foot-tall work of art in a promotion aimed at symbolizing the credit union’s “commitment to supporting the UW community’s financial well-being.”

The colorful specimen features 550 3D-printed blossoms with LED lights and about 1,200 laser-cut mirrored mylar leaves that flutter and reflect the illumination source. It was created by Intention Space, a custom fabrication company located in Seattle’s Ballard neighborhood.

Hal Peterson, co-owner of Intention Space, said the whole point of the fake tree is to “capitalize on the buzz” of the real cherry blossoms, which draw thousands of visitors to the UW campus, and especially The Quad, every spring. Those trees are nearly 90 years old and tracking when they’ll be in peak pink bloom is serious business at UW.

The BECU Tree is meant to mimic a Japanese bonsai tree. It grows out of a “rock” made of concrete and steel. The realistic-looking tree is sculpted out of an epoxy clay over a steel and wire body, with acrylic paint.

Ian Henry, a designer at Intention Space, said the tree isn’t just a simple plug-in-and-light-up Christmas-style display.

“There’s a pretty elaborate wiring system, and each one of the branches is addressable on its own, so we can control each branch and give it a separate program,” Henry said, adding that the tree’s microcontroller allows for a variety of lighting effects. “I can isolate a specific light and tell it to be different than all the rest, or animate a specific sequence.”

The display also has a proximity sensor that reacts to visitors. As they get closer, the lights start at the bottom of the branches and progress until the entire canopy is lit.

The whole project took about 960 hours to complete.

And it even attracted Dubs, the Husky mascot who braved a steady, cold rain in front of the Union Building to pose for pictures, howl once in a while and gobble endless treats.

“The blossoms are always a fun event every year,” Henry said. “We really wanted to bring the spirit of that.”

The days of talking into a mirror to psych yourself up to ask someone on a date have given way to artificial intelligence.

Yoodli, the Seattle-based AI-enabled software platform that analyzes speech to offer tips for improving communication skills, wants to help users land a date and carry on a better conversation on that date.

Just in time for Valentine’s Day, it’s less like a scene from the movie “Her,” and more focused on real human interaction.

The company’s new dating coach adds to its list of previous offerings, including helping startup founders prepare to make a VC pitch; and guiding job candidates through potential interview questions.

“Our goal with Yoodli always has been to give people the courage to speak during any crucial conversation. Asking your crushes out on a date is no different,” said Esha Joshi, co-founder and head of product at the startup, which was founded in 2021 at the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence (AI2) incubator.

“Yoodli’s AI dating coach helps you believe in yourself, take the plunge, ignite connections, and hopefully watch your dating game soar,” Joshi added.

Joshi walks viewers through how the tech works in a new Yoodli demo video (below).

In real time, the AI coach responds to the Joshi’s questions, and afterward rapidly analyzes voice and visual data to create a review video and transcript of the conversation. It offers suggestions for how to clean up the speech or ask more relevant questions.

Using AI to do all that removes a number of barriers that a date-seeker might encounter trying to practice alone or with another human. Joshi listed some of the AI’s benefits:

• Provides a judgment-free space for practicing and building confidence because many individuals experience social anxiety when approaching someone for a date.
• Offers a risk-free environment to simulate and handle rejection.
• Tailors coaching to individual needs for a unique dating journey.
• Guides users through dating scenarios to glean practical insights and tips for a more polished approach.
• Offers real-time coaching on pacing, conciseness, and talk time to practice and boost confidence. Immediate feedback helps refine conversational techniques.

Yoodli co-founder and CEO Varun Puri joked that landing a date is “infinitely harder than landing a VC pitch.”

In his own chat demo during an interview with GeekWire, Puri chose “frustrated” for the personality type of his AI practice crush. His request for a Valentine’s date went a little sideways as the AI rejected his initial ask.

“I’m funny and charming. I’m a startup founder,” Puri shot back at the simulated recipient. “I just thought it’d be nice because I was feeling lonely and nobody was hanging out with me.”

“You think being funny and charming is enough to win me over? And being a startup founder?” the Yoodli bot said. “Well, guess what? I don’t need to fill another void in your life just because you’re feeling lonely.”

While he admits that Yoodli is having some fun with its tech for the sake of the holiday, helping people with a deep-rooted insecurity is at the core of what Yoodli does.

“Getting feedback in a private, judgment-free way is extremely hard, especially if you’re nervous and you’re insecure,” Puri said. “Dating can be stressful, and it’s weird to ask somebody for help or to simulate a date conversation with you.”

In the end, Yoodli can clean up your speech, help with eye contact and posture, and perhaps generate some confidence. But it can’t tell you what to wear or ride along on the date.

“When it comes to fashion tips, restaurant choices, and wine expertise, your personal touch and friends’ advice are important,” Joshi said. “Yoodli is here to elevate, not dictate!”

Flock around the television next week — a smart birdhouse created in Seattle is going to be featured on an episode of “Shark Tank.”

Bird lovers, design geeks and fans of mini-success stories should get a kick out of “The Peep Show,” a stylish home that has room for nesting birds and a camera to watch it all happen.

Steve Gray began making the birdhouses as a passion project during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Four years later he’s landed a coveted spot on season 15 of ABC’s hit reality show, where he’ll pitch the idea to potential investors on Feb. 16.

According to USA Today, on average, the show receives 35,000 to 40,000 applicants each season. Of those, about 1,000 advance to a second round of vetting. Gray couldn’t share details about the taped episode or how he did, but he did express how thrilled he was to make the cut.

“You just hear time and time again, ‘Oh, you should audition for ‘Shark Tank,'” Gray said. “It is such a remote goal, such an impossibility. There wasn’t a whole lot of reasoning behind it, other than, ‘Why the heck wouldn’t ya?'”

The Peep Show is not your garden-variety boxy bird dwelling. Gray is a longtime designer who purposefully went for a modern and simple Scandinavian feel. With its clever egg shape, The Peep Show features a regionally sourced wood panel front encased in white bio-plastic. Yes, it does have the look of an Apple product.

“My goal was to create a birdhouse that Steve Jobs himself would have liked to have in his backyard,” Gray said. And just like the products Jobs created and inspired, The Peep Show won a prestigious Red Dot Award for excellence in product design in 2023.

While Jobs may have helped inspire the look of birdhouse, Gray’s 95-year-old father Chuck gets lots of credit. Growing up in Alaska, Gray learned to love being able to see birds in their nest.

“Our original prototype — created by Dad — included a sewer inspection camera, coaxial cable, a hole drilled through our kitchen wall, and black and white monitor on the kitchen counter,” Gray said. “Watching baby birds hatch became a much-anticipated annual event.”

“I know he’s pretty proud,” Gray said of his father’s reaction to The Peep Show.

Other features of the house include a climbing wall inside to help fledglings find their way to first flight, top-to-bottom ventilation to keep the nest cooler, and an elevated nesting platform to keep the nest dryer.

As a birder, Gray is particularly sensitive to ensuring that his product doesn’t disrupt the natural comings and goings of the many varied species attracted to his house. The Peep Show includes a camera mount specifically created to accommodate off-the-shelf wireless cameras with at least six months of battery life — ensuring there are never any disruptions to an active nest.

Gray has dedicated a floor of his house in South Seattle to production of The Peep Show, where a series of high-end consumer-grade 3D printers are running 24/7. And the price reflects the effort he has put into the project.

The Peep Show sells on the company website for $199 as a standalone unit without the camera, and for $299 with a Blink outdoor camera kit included so users can stream bird footage straight to a smartphone.

Along the way, Gray was teamed with a mentor from SCORE, a Seattle nonprofit that helps small business owners get started. The mentor was from Herman Miller, makers of modern home and office furniture.

“He took one look at this product and said, ‘We are no longer making birdhouses, we are making objects of art. You do not price this as a birdhouse,'” Gray said.

Other camera-enabled houses and feeders on the market, such as the Birdfy Nest, sell for similar prices. As Gray sees it, those that are priced especially cheap don’t have the best interest of the birds in mind.

“I wanted to be very environmentally conscious, and I have found that this price point is what it actually takes to produce an object like this,” Gray said. “I can trim costs but I can’t drop them in half, because I think I would be doing my customers — I consider birds my customers as well — a disservice.”

A group of elementary and middle school students from districts east of Seattle are working together on a project to help visually impaired people experience paintings in museums through tactile displays.

The team, called 42 Watts, is based in Bellevue, Wash., and features seven kids from schools in that city as well as Issaquah, Redmond and the Northshore district. The students are: Aakash Abraham, 11; Amogh Kalra, 12; Anya Rajyaguru, 13; Arisha Rajyaguru 12; Namita Rao, 11; Rishabh Rao, 12; and Ayaan Thaker, 12.

The students are regulars in FIRST LEGO League, a robotics program that introduces kids to science, technology, engineering, and math challenges and competitions. Last year the team won the state championship for Washington and competed at the world championships in May with a project called SolarRollar, which was an automated AI-based approach to cleaning solar panels and in turn increasing their efficiency.

This year’s challenge is called “Masterpiece” and involves innovative ways to marry art and technology and solve real-world problems.

Team 42 Watts came up with a project called Reliefeelable, which uses software, hardware, artificial intelligence and more to generate a tactile version of a painting in real time. The displays can be used by individuals who are blind or otherwise visually impaired, to touch and explore art pieces within a museum setting. Audio descriptions of works are also generated using chatbots such as ChatGPT, to add to the experience.

Almost 20 million Americans have some form of visual impairment in the U.S., and 42 Watts team member Rishabh Rao, a seventh grader at Odle Middle School in Bellevue, said working on a problem that could potentially impact the lives of so many people was difficult to wrap his head around.

“It really shows you how we have so many things we take for granted that are not accessible to a lot of people,” said Rishabh, who thinks he may want to work in robotics engineering some day.

For help and guidance along the way, the team has talked to a number of experts across art and technology, including the Shape Lab at Stanford University; the MIT Department of Brain and Cognitive Science; AI experts at Google; ArtTech Foundation; ArtsFund; and more.

Nikhil Thaker is an advisor to 42 Watts and father of team member Ayaan Thaker. He said he’s watched the kids put in hard work on the project, struggle with new problems, find alternative solutions, and grow in the process.

“I have seen a paradigm shift in the kids’ attitude along the way,” Thaker told GeekWire. “[They] started off wanting to design an award-winning solution to win championships, but I observed that the impact potential made the team passionate about making the solution pragmatic for implementation.”

He said 42 Watts is now focused on incremental improvements to Reliefeelable and actually enhancing accessibility to art.

That goal has played out at the Bainbridge Island Museum of Art, where four paintings from the museum’s permanent art collection are on display in tandem with the students’ accessibility solution.

The project fit into BIMA’s mission around diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility and was first tested with a local group called Bainbridge Island Visually Impaired Persons Support Group.

The artworks on display vary in content, perspective, and perceived depths of various scenes, ranging from more cartoon or fantasy-like to more a realistic landscape. The kids were involved in selecting the variety of paintings, so they could explore different problems in their project, according to Greg Robinson, chief curator at BIMA.

The display, located near a museum classroom, includes the paintings, a 3D-printed tactile version of the artwork (on a much smaller scale), a recording that introduces the artwork to help guide the visitor in their tactile journey, and video with the kids explaining their project goals and solutions.

Robinson said visually impaired visitors experience the world on a highly varied spectrum of sight, and that has been a big part of the assessment and discussions. Some people had sight previously and have lots of visual memory, some still see to varying degrees including color, and some blind persons rely on previous life information, and rely totally on the tactile experience.

“This project is realizing how diverse the sighted world is, and the kids are totally excited about how complex their inquiry has become, and also how they have made a great start to understanding that,” Robinson said via email. “The visual arts world is isolated from how visually impaired persons experience our world, and we have so much to learn here. I look forward to these kids growing up and guiding us further in their pursuits. It is both exciting and humbling.”

Six orange statues on display at the Pacific Science Center in Seattle offer an eye-catching way to learn about the contributions of women in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). And they stand as a reminder that seeing examples of role models can help break down the barriers standing in the way of future successful girls and women.

Short for “If she can she it, then she can be it,” the IF/THEN display is part of the broader “Science for Everyone” exhibit at the Science Center. Through interactive screens, video interviews and the 3D-printed statues, visitors can learn from STEM professionals about what sparked their interest in STEM, what led them to their careers, and how everyone can work in STEM positions.

The six IF/THEN statues are part of a national exhibit featuring 120 statues, called the largest 3D-printed exhibit of its kind, which debuted in Dallas in 2021. According to project facilitator Lyda Hill Philanthropies, each subject stood in a scanning booth that combined 89 cameras and 25 projectors to generate a 3D image. To print the image, a special machine slowly built up layers of acrylic gel over 10 or more hours to create life-size human figures.

“Women constitute half of the college-educated workforce but make up just 25% percent of the STEM industry,” the IF/THEN website says. “This exhibit showcases accomplished and relatable STEM role models whose stories are proof that gender is no barrier to any career.”

Learn more about each woman featured in Seattle, with biographical information provided by IF/THEN:

Jordana Dahmen

Dahmen graduated from Washington State University with a BS in biology. She spent five years researching wearable technology in geriatric, rehabilitation, and pregnant populations. By age 21, Dahmen published her first author research paper, presented at an international computer science conference, and won multiple accolades for her research presentations. She currently works as a research coordinator for Vital Research where she amplifies the voices of underserved populations to improve their policies and programs through inclusive research. Dahmen was crowned as Miss Idaho USA in 2022.

In her words: “As a little girl I loved playing with my Barbies. Every 4th of July I would strap my Barbies to fireworks. It was thrilling to see what happened to Barbie when she went into space. Sometimes her hair would burn off, occasionally I would lose their heads, and one year I might have caught the neighbor’s tree on fire. … That was the year I learned about physics. This fascination with experimentation and discovery followed me throughout junior high and high school as I competed in various science competitions.”

Gracie Ermi

Ermi is a machine learning scientist at Washington D.C.-based geospatial monitoring company Impact Observatory. She was previously a research engineer focused on saving endangered animals and preserving ocean health through her work at Seattle’s Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, where she built machine learning technology that trained computers to do the most tedious aspects of conservation work. She is passionate about sharing her story as a way to inspire people, especially women and girls, to pursue computer science as an avenue to make a change in their communities and around the world. Ermie holds both a B.S. and a M.S. in computer science from Western Washington University.

In her words: “If you’re a girl who is even remotely interested in computer science or coding or solving big problems, I want you to know what a fun and attainable job it is. We need more young girls to enter this field.”

Jessica (Jess) Fagerstrom

Fagerstrom is a medical physicist at the University of Washington, who previously worked at the Northwest Medical Physics Center, ensuring that radiation is delivered safely and effectively. She is board certified in therapeutic medical physics through the American Board of Radiology and is an active member of the American Association of Physicists in Medicine. Fagerstrom earned her Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and her previous work took her to Hawaii where she was a clinical physicist at Queen’s Medical Center. In 2021, she earned a M.Ed. in Curriculum and Instruction with a specialization in Science Education from the University of Washington.

In her words: “I love my job because I get to use fascinating science and cutting-edge technology, to help people who are sick feel better. On a daily basis, I know that our team is making a real difference in people’s lives.”

Jaye Gardiner

A biomedical research scientist, Gardiner uses her knowledge of the microscopic world to understand what occurs in various diseases like viral infections or cancer. With 10 years of research experience, Gardiner has been nationally recognized for her STEM excellence, accruing numerous competitive fellowships to fund her research and present at conferences nationwide. Gardiner harnesses her childhood passion for drawing by combining her talents in STEM and as a self-trained illustrator to show that science is for everyone. She created scientist trading cards with Unique Scientists and comics about science and scientists with JKX Comics, an initiative she co-founded in 2015.

In her words: “For the longest time I thought I had to choose between my interests – I would either become an artist or a scientist – but never both. However, that all changed when I met my high school chemistry teacher, Mr. Coy. He was an active musician AND a science teacher.”

Becca Peixotto

An archaeologist, Peixotto relishes the intellectual and physical challenges of research in remote areas, like the Great Dismal Swamp of Virginia, where a team found traces of 18th and 19th century Maroon communities on small unmapped islands. This group of African Americans resisted slavery and sought freedom in the deep swamp. Peixotto combined her caving and climbing skill sets to help uncover a new-to-science ancient human relative, Homo naledi, and was curator of the “Origins: Fossils from the Cradle of the Humankind” exhibit at the Perot Museum of Nature and Science in Dallas. She is former director of the museum’s Center for the Exploration of the Human Journey. Peixotto holds a BA from the University of Alabama Huntsville, an MA from the Universiteit van Amsterdam, and an MA and a Ph.D. from American University in Washington, D.C.

In her words: “When I took my first archaeology course, it was like a lightbulb turned on! I could combine all my experiences and interests in science, the outdoors, teaching, history, to learn more about our collective human past.”

Maddie Weinstein

Weinstein is a mathematician who loves to tackle hard problems. She is currently an assistant professor of mathematics and computer science at the University of Puget Sound. In her short career, Weinstein has authored 14 research articles. Her work has earned her numerous awards totaling over $300,000, most notably a Mathematical Sciences Postdoctoral Research Fellowship and a Graduate Research Fellowship from the National Science Foundation, a Chancellor’s Fellowship from UC Berkeley, and an Honorable Mention for the Alice T. Schafer Prize, given by the Association for Women in Mathematics to an outstanding undergraduate female mathematician.

In her words: “My favorite part of my job is conducting math research. I spend most of my day reading math books and articles. I read like a detective, looking for patterns and for connections between ideas from different sources. When I think I’ve found something interesting, I explore examples by writing computer code and drawing pictures.”

If artificial intelligence is indeed coming for people’s jobs, this week would be a good time to start, to help out the busiest guy on the planet.

Fixie, a Seattle-based startup that helps companies fuse large language models into their software stack, has created HiSanta.ai, a web experience that allows people to have real-time AI voice calls with Santa Claus, Rudolph, Mrs. Claus and other characters.

Visitors to the site simply choose a character they want to speak with, click the call button and then have a conversation about holiday wish lists and just about anything else. Santa, for instance, is quick to reply and he talks back with what sounds like a British accent.

“We thought it would be fun,” said Matt Welsh, Fixie’s chief architect and one of the startup’s co-founders. “It was one of these things that we built out mainly as a technology demonstration.”

The core technology being demonstrated is Fixie’s platform that helps companies integrate large language model tech into their own products. With a recent focus on real-time voice interaction, Welsh said Fixie has worked hard to get multiple models — speech-to-text, a language model like OpenAI’s ChatGPT-3, and text-to-speech — working seamlessly together.

“When you try to build something like that, there’s a lot of engineering work that has to be done to make it really fast,” Welsh said. “So we had put a ton of effort into making it real time and interactive, and we think the performance is pretty good.”

Speed matters when a little kid is waiting for Santa to react to whatever Christmas present that kid just asked for. Fixie didn’t want any lag in response time, or kids would lose interest. The answers are also pretty clever, and Santa and the other characters are rather engaging.

I asked Santa for a new truck for Christmas and he kindly balked at the luxurious nature of such a request. When he followed up asking what else might be on my list, I asked for world peace, and Santa was delighted to let me know how he appreciated that wish.

Watch how it works in this video from Fixie:

Users can choose between nice characters — Santa, Mrs. Claus, Rudolph, Elfie, or your own creation — and naughty ones — Bad Santa, The Grouch, Karen Claus, and Bad Elfie.

During my conversation with a snippy Bad Santa, I asked him to be a little nicer.

“You must have me confused with that other jolly old elf,” Bad Santa said. “I’m the one who tells it like it is. You want nice? Go write a letter to the Easter Bunny.”

HiSanta launched last week and Welsh said they’ve had more than 10,000 conversations happen so far, with about 20 hours of conversation a day, in aggregate across all users.

Most people talk for a minute or two, but some have tried to keep Santa rambling and Welsh has seen conversations stretch past 30 minutes.

The tool’s builders have also put AI Santa through the paces, trying hard to break it and make it admit or say things that wouldn’t be well suited for Christmas believers.

“My kids stress-tested this quite extensively to try to get these models just to go off the rails, and we couldn’t get it to happen,” Welsh said. “We’ve given it explicit instructions not to answer any questions about the reality of Santa. This is a very important thing. We didn’t want the model saying anything about that.”

Ditching the handwritten letter to the North Pole and using the phone to call a Santa line or the web to keep track of his movements is not new. The North American Aerospace Defense Command has tracked Santa’s sleigh on Christmas Eve for more than 60 years. But chatbots, such as ChatGPT’s Santa communicator, and AI are rapidly changing the conversation game.

Welsh said Fixie views HiSanta as a showpiece for what you can do with his company’s tech. A lot has already changed in the quickly moving field of AI since Fixie emerged in the spring, and Welsh said that while excitement in the technology has not waned, people are now becoming aware of the range of technical problems you have to solve to use the tech in any application setting.

“We’ve been focused on not just enabling people to put together the quick and dirty demos, but to get them to production where they’re feeling really good about the results,” he said. “And that’s proven harder than we expected it to be.”

Fixie’s other co-founders include CTO Justin Uberti, a longtime engineering leader who spent more than 14 years at Google; CEO Zach Koch who was most recently director of product management at Shopify; and Chief AI Officer Hessam Bagherinezhad also worked at Xnor.ai, as head of machine learning.

The company raised a $17 million seed round in March.

WNDR Museum, an interactive, tech-infused art experience near the waterfront in downtown Seattle, has ceased operations eight months after opening.

A statement about the abrupt closure is posted on the WNDR website, but it doesn’t provide a reason for the decision. It was also posted as an Instagram story four days ago. A public relations rep for the museum had nothing additional to share when contacted by GeekWire.

“While we’ve enjoyed welcoming Seattle to experience the joy of WNDR Museum this year, we’ve made the difficult decision to close the doors of our Seattle location effective immediately,” the statement reads. “We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience. We’ve loved our time in the Emerald City and hope our paths cross again in the future!”

WNDR opened in March at the corner of Alaskan Way and Marion Street, in a 13,000-square-foot space in the Maritime Building, which previously sat in the shadow of the Alaskan Way Viaduct.

The museum, started by a Chicago-based collective of creators working at the intersection of tech and art, featured an array of immersive, multi-sensory experiences showcasing a mix of video, audio, interactive and AI-generated artwork. There was also a cafe and gift shop. It’s unknown how many people the museum employed.

David Allen, a creative director with WNDR, previously told GeekWire that the museum was attracted to what he called a “beautiful” art scene in Seattle. There was some hope that WNDR might help attract more visitors to a downtown rattled by the pandemic. Increased arts and culture options are often listed as potential drivers to get more people to visit Seattle’s urban core.

Earlier this month, WNDR was promoting a Dec. 7 event called “Fresh Fest Seattle,” as a celebration in honor of the 50th anniversary of hip-hop with live DJ sets, live art and lettering stations, break-dancing, beatboxing battles and more.

The museum website now only features links to its locations in Chicago, Boston and San Diego. An email link to share questions or concerns about the Seattle closure featured a misspelling in the address on Monday morning. GeekWire has reached out to seattleinquiry@wndrmuseum.com and will update this story if we hear back.

The hottest television series and the biggest concert tour were among the top trending topics of the year when it came to Google searches in the Seattle area.

The tech giant released its annual “Year in Search” breakdown on Monday, and broke out four trending categories for the Seattle area, including:

• Top 5 trending “tour” searches: Taylor Swift’s “The Eras Tour,” which came through Seattle for two shows in July at Lumen Field. The singer called it one of her “favorite weekends ever” on Instagram.
• Top 5 trending “TV show” searches: The HBO series “The Last of Us” was so popular as a search topic in the Seattle area that the region also ranked first in the U.S. for queries about the post-apocalyptic drama.
• Top 5 trending “near me” searches: Pawn shops topped the list in Seattle, but searches for “smoke shop near me” helped the region lead the U.S. in that search.
• Top 5 trending “versus” searches: The Dillon Danis vs. Logan Paul boxing match in October was tops. Another fight (that has yet to happen) also drew interest: Elon Musk vs Mark Zuckerberg.

Google’s overall Year in Search highlighted such trending topics as news (War in Israel and Gaza); passings (“Friends” star Matthew Perry); people (Buffalo Bills player Damar Hamlin); movies (“Barbie”); and more.

The endless rain in Seattle stopped long enough on Thursday night for the “stars” to come out — even if those stars had to be man-made.

On a winding path through the Seattle Chinese Garden at South Seattle College, a new immersive light and sound experience has opened called Astra Lumina. The installation follows previous openings in the U.S. in New York, Los Angeles, and Gatlinburg, Tenn.

Billed as “an enchanted night walk amongst the stars,” Astra Lumina features 10 different and dramatic light displays set to atmospheric music and nature sounds. Each display plays on a loop for a few minutes, and some are accented by lighting directed into surrounding trees or fog that gives off an otherworldly feeling.

The temporary installation is the work of Montreal-based multimedia studio Moment Factory and Fever, a global live-entertainment discovery platform, which brought “Stranger Things: The Experience” to Seattle in May.

“We strive to create immersive moments to draw people away from the computer screens, away from their TV screens, away from their phones, and come into this great sense of collective wonder,” said Manon McHugh, senior director of business development and marketing at Moment Factory, during a press preview of the show.

Astra Lumina features an endless array of LED lights in various shapes and sizes. And everything is choreographed with the music and sounds along the way.

Some displays are simple glowing orbs hung from the trees, or tubes of light representing falling stars. Others are more dramatic, such as “Stellar Visions,” which features a large lighted ring displaying images that could have been shot in a distant galaxy. In “Stardust Rays,” the wooded trail is transformed into a laser light show of sorts.

Thomas Pintal is the director who created the show for Moment Factory. While Astra Lumina relies on the same sets in various cities, the landscape impacts how they are laid out and perceived. That was the case at the Chinese Garden.

“The way we design it, we amplify the impact of some zones,” Pintal said. “Like when we arrive at [‘Celestial Trail’], the way we arrive and face this multimedia experience makes it totally unique. There’s no other Luminas that have this sense of arrival.”

The lantern-accented walk along Astra Lumina’s gravel path, which Pintal estimated to be one kilometer, takes about 45 minutes, depending on how long you linger at various displays.

The show is planned to stay through the first week of January, and if it does well, Fever will consider extending the run. Tickets range in price from $29 to $41 and can be reserved here.

Keep scrolling for more photos from GeekWire’s tour of Astra Lumina in Seattle:

The hills are alive on this year’s ugly holiday sweater from Microsoft.

Throwing things back to the early 2000s, the tech giant’s latest soft-wear features “Bliss,” the default desktop image in the time of Windows XP. The famous image is a real photograph of a rolling green hill and blue sky with white clouds in Sonoma County, Calif.

Microsoft has been rolling out versions of the nostalgic sweaters for several years, to the delight of those who prefer a little tech geek with their holiday chic.

The sweaters will be printed in limited quantities and available for purchase starting Tuesday at 8:30 a.m. PT.

This year, Windows sweater sales are supporting the environmental organization The Nature Conservancy. Microsoft will contribute $100,000 of sweater proceeds to the group.

To kick off the ugly sweater campaign, Windows will be hosting a Sweaterathon event on Instagram and Tik Tok on Tuesday from 9-10 a.m. PT. The event — complete with Bliss backdrop — will feature Windows-specific trivia, among other entertainment.

The story of the Bliss hillside location in wine country north of San Francisco has been told previously in the years since XP was released in October 2001 and retired in 2014. Onetime National Geographic photographer Charles O’Rear stopped on a drive along a two-lane roadway to snap the green hillside back in 1996.

Previous Microsoft ugly sweater coverage:

• That’s a bomb sweater: Microsoft’s ‘Minesweeper’ soft-wear is a throwback to vintage video game
• Windows dressing: Microsoft’s latest holiday ‘ugly sweater’ soft-wear pays tribute to XP
• Retro software softwear: Microsoft shows off a Windows 95 ‘ugly sweater’ and fans want it now

Bill Gates is back with one of his seasonal traditions, offering three of the best books that he read in 2023 as recommendations for holiday gift givers.

In a new post on his GatesNotes blog on Monday, the Microsoft co-founder also shared his playlist of favorite holiday songs, a show he liked on Netflix, and an online course on economics for those looking for something to watch or listen to.

Books:

• “The Song of the Cell,” by Siddhartha Mukherjee. Gates says the book about the human body’s cells can help us better understand what is happening during times of illness, and to feel optimistic that things will get better.
• “Not the End of the World,” by Hannah Ritchie. The book uses data to contradict the doomsday scenarios on climate and other environmental topics without glossing over the challenges. “Everyone who wants to have an informed conversation about climate change should read this book,” Gates says.
• “Invention and Innovation,” by Vaclav Smil. The author writes that we are living in an era that shows “unmistakable signs of technical stagnation and slowing advances.” Gates says he doesn’t agree, and that even though Smil is not as optimistic as he is about the prospects of innovation, “if you want to know how human ingenuity brought us to this moment in time,” he highly recommends the book.

Online course:

• Online economics lectures by Timothy Taylor. Gates calls Taylor one of his favorite professors and recommends all three of his series on Wondrium: “New Global Economy,” “Economics,” and “Unexpected Economics.” Gates said he watched them more than a decade ago and is still recommending them to friends and family today.

TV series:

• “All the Light We Cannot See,” on Netflix. Gates called the book amazing and said the series is just as good. “The actor who plays von Rumpel, a Nazi gem hunter and the villain in the story, is especially memorable,” he says.

Music playlist:

• “Holiday Playlist 2023,” on Spotify. Gates says as soon as Thanksgiving rolls around, he’s ready to switch up his listening habits and get in the holiday music spirit. His playlist includes a mix of classics and modern songs from around the world. Bob Dylan, Madonna, Stevie Wonder, Norah Jones, Bing Crosby, My Morning Jacket and Los Bitchos are among the artists who make the cut.

Electric vehicle sales in the U.S. are on track to surpass 1 million for the first time ever this year, and prospective buyers at this weekend’s Seattle International Auto Show could help drive that number.

For the third straight year, the show is promoting the fact that it will feature more EVs than ever before, and during a GeekWire walk-through on Thursday, it was once again tough to tell which cars might still run on gas.

EVs and plug-in hybrids are on display from every major automaker, with highlights including the Pacific Northwest debut of the BMW i5 — the first 100% electric i5; the Kia EV 9 — a highly anticipated three-row electric SUV; and the Honda Prologue — the brand’s first real all-electric vehicle.

Tom Voelk, an auto industry journalist, spokesperson for the Seattle show and host of the YouTube channel Driven, said EV adoption has been on a steady climb — accounting for 7.9% of all U.S. car sales, up from 6.1% a year ago — and remains on that trajectory.

But reports about the green revolution hitting “a speed bump,” as USA Today put it, may give pause to some who think we’ve left gas-powered vehicles in the rear view mirror. EVs are sitting on car lots longer and many are still too expensive for average consumers, even with tax breaks.

“The automakers have rushed into EV production. They’re spending billions of dollars,” Voelk said, adding that those manufacturers would probably like to see more exponential growth. “They’re a little bit nervous. I understand that when I spend billions of dollars, I want to get my return. But sales are still continuing up.”

Washington state is the place to witness that growth.

Sales of EVs have doubled in Washington over the past two years and EVs and plug-in hybrids sold at nearly twice the pace in the state than they did nationwide in the first five months of 2023, according to the Electric Power Research Institute. Additionally, Washington is often rated as one of the best states to own and drive an electric vehicle because gas prices are high and electricity is inexpensive — and it’s largely from renewable sources.

“Washington state is the perfect place to have an electric vehicle,” Voelk said. “And we’re second only to California in our adoption rate. We’re now at 18% of all car sales.”

Plenty has been written about the concerns around charging infrastructure and battery range, and how drivers seem to expect the auto industry’s transition from gas to electric power to be seamless and happen overnight.

“EVs don’t work for everybody,” Voelk said. “If you live in an apartment and you can’t charge where you sleep, then you have to find public charging, which is more expensive, and it’s not as convenient. But if you can charge where you sleep, they’re awesome.”

Voelk said education around EVs is the biggest adoption headwind. Drivers who typically only travel 30 to 40 miles a day are still stuck in the mindset that they need an expensive EV with exceptional range.

“You don’t know that until you’ve experienced it,” he said. “You’re spending a lot of money on a vehicle and you don’t want to make a mistake. So until people experience it for themselves, they’ll be thinking that they need a vehicle like a gasoline powered car that will go 350 miles on a single tank.”

Show visitors Bob and Wanda Bolerjack of Everett, Wash., have definitely bought into greener driving. Bob Bolerjack is on his second Chevy Bolt, this time opting for the Bolt EUV. Wanda Bolerjack drives a Hyundai Santa Fe plug-in hybrid.

“I love charging at home, love never having to go to the gas station, love no oil changes,” Bob Bolerjack said. “With hers, it gives her 30 miles to tool around town without ever having to use gas. But on long trips, we don’t have range anxiety, we take that one and you can still put gas in it.”

Bolerjack said his last internal combustion engine vehicle was a Honda CRV, and he loved it, but he loves not going to the gas station as much. And he said incentives that help cover the cost of a home charging unit or the rewiring of a garage for a 240 volt outlet are nice, too.

“And just being green,” Bolerjack said. “That certainly gives you warm fuzzies, that you’re not polluting, especially here in the Northwest where our electricity is generated mostly through clean sources.”

Mike Amundson of Tacoma, Wash., only drives about 14 miles a day and was happily searching the show for an EV or hybrid that would satisfy that need — and get him out of his 2010 BMW 5 series wagon.

“I’m tired of driving my car that gets 15 miles per gallon,” Amundson said, adding that the only roadblock to going electric is making sure he can outfit his older home with the the proper charging infrastructure.

He’s also not a big fan of all the interior touchscreens that are so prevalent in EVs.

“You can have some things like your nav or whatever, but I don’t want every single function to be on a big tablet,” he said. “You spill, you drop, you do something, you’re SOL, right?”

The Seattle International Auto Show runs Friday and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. at the Lumen Field Event Center at 800 Occidental Ave. S. Ticket info here.

Keep scrolling for more GeekWire images from the show:

Gage Academy of Art, a longtime school located in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood, is moving to a modern facility at the base of an Amazon headquarters tower next year — and the tech giant is providing financial support to make it happen.

Gage, a nearly 35-year-old nonprofit, currently occupies space in the St. Nicholas Building next to St. Mark’s Cathedral. The school will move to a 14,000-square-foot custom-built space in Amazon’s 37-story re:Invent building next summer.

Amazon will provide Gage with more than $7.5 million in rent assistance over the next 10 years, and offset a significant portion of the cost of construction and space improvement, according to a news release on Thursday.

The space at 2105/2107 Westlake Ave. N., designed by Seattle architecture firm NBBJ, will feature flexible classroom designs, art studios, and communal student spaces to promote collaboration. The school’s leaders aim to serve a larger, more diverse student body in a central location, closer to more transportation options.

“Moving to a new space and implementing new, improved infrastructure resources will ensure we can fulfill Gage’s mission to educate, enrich, and transform the community through the visual arts,” Gage Academy of Art Board President Connie Mao said in a statement.

The move plays into the ongoing discussion in Seattle about ways to re-energize the downtown core in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and decreased foot traffic. Mayor Bruce Harrell’s “Downtown Activation Plan” has called for increased activation of arts and cultural spaces and events in the city to attract more visitors and to give office workers another reason to return, and stay after work.

Harrell and others have applauded Amazon, which employs roughly 75,000 people in the Seattle area, for instituting a return-to-office policy that requires corporate and tech workers to be in their South Lake Union offices at least three days a week.

“Creating space for the arts is vital for fostering a thriving downtown that brings together diverse retail, dining, entertainment, and culture options, and we’re thrilled that our Puget Sound headquarters will host Gage Academy of Art as part of this effort,” said John Schoettler, vice president of Global Real Estate and Facilities at Amazon.

Gage says a street-level retail space will be activated as a creative hub, turning the area near The Spheres and other Amazon office towers into a “district where tech and the arts coexist.”

Gage has already been part of the Amazon Expressions program, providing art classes to Amazon employees, since 2019. GeekWire profiled an “Artist in Residence” working out of the company’s Doppler building as part of that program in 2018.

“Unlimited possibilities will emerge by being a part of downtown on a bustling city corner,” said Gage co-founder Gary Faigin. “Gage is finally becoming a true big-city art school as my co-founder Pamela Beylea, and I, always dreamed it would be.”

Lauren Sanchez makes a splash in the December issue of Vogue magazine, sprawling inside the 10,000 year clock, flying a helicopter, posing on a Blue Origin launch pad and inside a space capsule.

The fiancée of Jeff Bezos also offers up an inside look at her relationship with the Amazon founder.

Sanchez and Bezos, who have been together since at least 2019, got engaged earlier this year when he presented her with a gigantic pink diamond while aboard his $500 million mega-yacht.

“When he opened the box, I think I blacked out a bit,” Sanchez told Vogue, in a profile that touches on everything from Sanchez’s fashion sense to her philanthropic pursuits at the Bezos Earth Fund.

Here are some of the highlights:

• Sanchez on whether she’ll take Bezos’ name: “Uh, yes, one hundred percent. I am looking forward to being Mrs. Bezos.”
• Sanchez on Bezos busting out of his shell: “He’s the life of the party. He’s just extremely enthusiastic, and extremely funny. He can be really goofy. I mean, you’ve heard him laugh, right?”
• Bezos on how Sanchez changed him: “She has really helped me put more energy into my relationships. She’s always encouraging me: ‘Call your kids. Call your dad. Call your mom.’ And she’s also just a very good role model. She keeps in touch with people.”
• Sanchez on their space pursuits: “Jeff always says, ‘Building the road to space so that our children can build the future.’ And that’s what it’s about. Launch, land, repeat, over and over so that we can figure out how to have reusable rockets.”
• Morning routine: They try not to get on their phones first thing. Bezos takes his coffee black or with Laird Hamilton’s superfood nondairy creamer, in a self-warming Ember mug. Sánchez uses a mug Bezos got her from Amazon, with the words “Woke up sexy as hell again” splashed across the side.

Because it’s Vogue, the profile leans heavily on what Sanchez likes to wear and what inspires her fashion choices. She’s photographed by Annie Liebovitz in Texas in dresses by Dolce & Gabbana, Ferragamo, Valentino, and Victoria Beckham.

During a New York Fashion Week auction, Sanchez found herself bidding against friend Kim Kardashian for a Balenciaga couture that both women ended up paying $200,000 for.

The lifestyle of the world’s second-richest person and his soon-to-be new wife seems like a world away from the bookish Bezos who arrived in Seattle in 1994 to start Amazon.

Bezos pal Barry Diller, the chairman of Seattle-based travel giant Expedia Group, told Vogue that Sanchez is “a sparkler in Jeff’s life” who has “lit him up in the nicest ways. She’s a great stimulant.”

Last week, Bezos announced that he was moving to Miami to be closer to his parents and Blue Origin launch operations. He reportedly purchased a $79 million mansion.

Bezos and ex-wife MacKenzie Scott divorced in 2019 after 25 years of marriage. They have four children together. Sánchez divorced husband Patrick Whitesell after 13 years. They share two children together, and she has another child with former NFL star Tony Gonzalez.

A major new exhibition and multi-year initiative celebrating the life and work of artist Alexander Calder has opened at Seattle Art Museum, with a variety of colorful mobiles, sculptures and more demonstrating Calder’s lasting contribution to modern art.

The exhibition, “Calder: In Motion, The Shirley Family Collection,” is a gift from former Microsoft President Jon Shirley and his wife Kim and features more than 48 works of art from the couple’s private collection. It centers around a group of hanging and standing mobiles dating from the 1920s to the 1970s.

During a preview on Tuesday, the Shirleys spoke about how they hope Calder’s work and outreach programs by SAM to attract people to that work will draw more visitors downtown and play a part in revitalizing the city’s core in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“This exhibition exceeds our greatest hopes,” Jon Shirley said. “Everything now looks better than it did in our house.”

Indeed, across multiple galleries in the museum, Calder’s works pop against high white walls and simple displays. The double-height gallery, a space designed for large-scale works, features several overlooks from the floor above for views down onto gently moving mobiles. 

Shirley joined Microsoft in 1983 as president, chief operating officer and director and is credited with overseeing the construction of the Microsoft headquarters campus in Redmond, Wash. He retired in 1990 and left the board of directors in 2008.

The Shirleys have long supported the Seattle Art Museum and currently serve on the museum’s board of trustees. Jon Shirley served as chairman of that board from 2000 to 2008, and was instrumental in the development of SAM’s Olympic Sculpture Park and the acquisition of Calder’s sculpture “The Eagle,” which is on display there.

“They’ve given us yet another gift of incredible magnitude,” SAM interim director and CEO Kimerly Rorschach said of the Shirleys.

Jon Shirley bought his first work by Calder 35 years ago and grew the collection with his late wife, Mary. Called one of the most important private holdings of Calder’s art, the exhibition highlights Calder’s most important themes, styles, and materials.

Shirley said Calder’s hands-on creation of art always appealed to him, and while artificial intelligence is a big deal at Shirley’s former company and across the tech and cultural landscape, art remains a physical creation in his view.

“It’s always been a hands-on thing,” Shirley told GeekWire. “Yeah, you can tell the metaverse to create art, but you have to convince the public that that’s art. They have to like it, and it has to appeal to people. Some AI machine might produce one really great thing, but I don’t think the artists of the world need to be worried about AI taking their jobs away.”

As far as AI is concerned, Shirley thinks the tech giant is being very smart with the ways it’s pursuing the technology.

Shirley knew another Microsoft vet — and well-known art collector — by the name of Paul Allen. He said Allen showed him his collection and asked Shirley a couple times what he thought of things, but he said Allen was “going down his own special path.”

Ultimately, after his death, Allen’s vast collection was auctioned off by Christie’s for more than $1.5 billion. The Shirleys preferred not go the auction route and they made the move to bring their Calder works and a $10 million endowment to SAM — as a lasting gift to the museum and the greater Seattle community.

A week after Amazon founder Jeff Bezos announced that he was leaving Seattle for Miami, Jon Shirley said his own philanthropic pursuits demonstrate that it’s important to have ties to a place.

“Wherever you are, and you put some roots down, you try and help the community in whatever ways you can,” he said. “So many people in the tech world want to pick some particular cause where they can measure the outcome. It becomes so transactional. In some cases it might be great, in other cases I don’t think it helps at all.”

For more details on Calder, the collection and the exhibition, visit here. Keep scrolling for more GeekWire photos from “Calder: In Motion” at Seattle Art Museum:

Amazon’s 2023 holiday ad campaign is intended to be a love letter to lasting friendships and joyful moments that don’t slow down because of age.

A 60-second commercial titled “Joy Ride” features three older women seated on a park bench, watching with a sense of familiarity and longing as children play on a sledding hill.

One of the women turns to Amazon to purchase seat cushions for sleds, and after the package arrives she gets her friends back in on the fun of hitting the hill. The spot is set to an instrumental rendition of The Beatles’ song “In My Life” as the women zip down the hill and a flashback shows them doing the same thing as young girls.

The ad was produced by Amazon’s internal creative team and production company Hungry Man. It goes live today in the U.K. and Europe, and in the U.S. and Canada on Nov. 13. It will run through December.

Amazon is gearing up for the busy holiday season with plans to hire 250,000 people, a significant increase from past years, citing projections for a strong holiday shopping period.

The company forecasts Q4 sales of $160-to-167 billion, up from $149.2 billion in the year-ago quarter.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is moving away from Seattle, the city where he started an online bookseller that grew into a global tech giant.

Bezos posted a throwback video on Instagram on Thursday to announce the news, in which he is seen showing off one of Amazon’s earliest offices.

In the caption accompanying the post, Bezos says he wants to be closer to his parents and that as exciting as the move is, he calls it an “emotional decision,” adding, “Seattle, you will always have a piece of my heart.”

Seattle has been my home since 1994 when I started Amazon out of my garage. That’s my dad behind the camera in this video, touring Amazon’s first “office.” My parents have always been my biggest supporters. They recently moved back to Miami, the place we lived when I was younger (Miami Palmetto High class of ’82 — GO Panthers!) I want to be close to my parents, and Lauren and I love Miami. Also, Blue Origin’s operations are increasingly shifting to Cape Canaveral. For all that, I’m planning to return to Miami, leaving the Pacific Northwest.

I’ve lived in Seattle longer than I’ve lived anywhere else and have so many amazing memories here. As exciting as the move is, it’s an emotional decision for me. Seattle, you will always have a piece of my heart.

In his post, Bezos called Seattle his home since 1994, but Amazon was actually born east of the city in a garage in Bellevue, Wash. That 3-bedroom home went on the market in 2019.

Sporting glasses — and hair — in the video footage shot by his father, young Bezos points to his desk and a fax machine.

“It doesn’t take long to tour the offices of Amazon.com Inc.,” Bezos says.

Twenty-nine years later, Amazon employs 1.5 million people globally and 75,000 in the Seattle region as it has grown into one of the world’s most valuable companies, selling not just books but just about everything, from cloud computing to groceries to TV shows and movies. Beyond its sprawling urban headquarters in Seattle’s South Lake Union neighborhood, Amazon today has a large presence in Bellevue as well as across the country with a Northern Virginia “HQ2.”

Bezos stepped down as CEO of Amazon in 2021 but remains executive chairman. At the time, he expressed his desire to focus on the Day 1 Fund, the Bezos Earth Fund, his Blue Origin space venture, The Washington Post, and other passions.

Blue Origin is headquartered in Kent, Wash., and has more than 10,000 employees spread out from Virginia to Arizona. But as Bezos pointed out in his Instagram post, Florida is where a lot of the action will be happening over the next year or two — primarily due to preparations for launching the company’s orbital-class New Glenn rocket from Cape Canaveral.

Bezos and ex-wife MacKenzie Scott divorced in 2019 after 25 years of marriage. A novelist, Scott was a key figure in the early days of Amazon after she and Bezos moved to the Seattle region. The couple met when they worked together at hedge fund D.E. Shaw in New York. They have four children together.

As Amazon grew, Seattle grew and changed with it. A boom fueled by the company turned Seattle into a tech hub, where crises of affordability and homelessness became a leading concern — and Bezos and Amazon became a target of the backlash, in graffiti on city streets and at City Hall as some sought to slap a tax on the tech giant.

Even though Amazon is still firmly planted in the Pacific Northwest, Bezos has been putting down roots in other parts of the country for several years.

Reports last month tied Bezos and fianceè Lauren Sanchez to the purchase of a $79 million mansion in a Miami enclave called Indian Creek, or “billionaire bunker.” Bezos also owns luxury properties in Washington, D.C., Beverly Hills, Calif., and Maui, as well as a 417-foot, triple-masted sailing yacht that reportedly cost $500 million.

With a net worth of $160 billion, Bezos trails only Elon Musk on the list of the world’s richest people. CNBC wealth reporter Robert Frank pointed out in a post on X that Bezos may be finally fleeing Washington state in part to get away from taxes.

“Washington State has a new 7% tax on capital gains so he will owe $70 million in state taxes for every $1 billion of Amazon stock he sells. And he sells a lot,” Frank wrote.

Follow-up: Swimming from Seattle? Jeff Bezos’ big move brings us full circle from the mid-1990s