TheAncient Red Sea scrolls — the world’s oldest papyri — uncover secrets behind the last stages of building Khufu’s pyramid. Unearthed in 2013 in Wadi al-Jarf, an Ancient Egyptian port and economic hub by French Egyptologist Pierre Tallet these ancient scrolls can be described as a detailed logbook that includes specificities of the construction of the pyramid. It also makes an intricate record of the compensation that was given by the author, Merer, to the 200 skilled workers that he led, reports National Geographic.

What did the scrolls reveal? Thanks to Merer’s due diligence (or OCD) historians were able to demystify several myths and confirm some facts that they had previously discerned:

#1- The limestones were brought in from Tura, where they were quarried and transported up the Nile over three days.

#2- Hierarchy involved in building the pyramids:Merer also gives special mention to Ankhhaf, Khufu’s half-brother and one of the pyramid’s architects in his capacity as Royal Architect, which tells us a bit more about how major construction was organized nearly 4.5 k years ago.

#3- The pyramids were most likely built using a skilled workforce — not slaves. Merer’s careful auditing of his workers’ “pay,” which consisted of grains (currency wasn’t a thing here at the time) pokes holes in the theory that the pyramids were built by slaves or by a massive workforce. What is also astounding is that there was a hierarchy there, too — the more “senior” you were, the more grains you got.

Can data brokers sell your location information to the highest bidder? If you’re a privacy policy skim-and-accept user, then yes, it’s quite possible. Companies — ranging from the big fish to the more obscure — could be harvesting location details from your phone and selling it on a USD 18.52bn market. But that’s not even the bad news: Shuttering data brokers won’t take your data to the grave — they can just sell it off to the highest bidder thanks to standard privacy policies that approve of transfer of data to new owners, according to TheMarkup.

Near, a company that once bragged about being the world’s largest location data aggregator, was looking for buyers on their way out. In 2021, Near had collected data from 1.6 bn people across 44 different countries and was valued at USD 1 bn when it went public in 2022. By early 2023, the company had filed for bankruptcy, and its mountain of sensitive data was up for grabs. Buyers can include other businesses, lobby groups, universities, retailers, and government agencies, to name a few, the Wall Street Journal points out.

Consumer protection in Near’s case is currently being afforded to US citizens, who have Senator Ron Wyden to thank. Last week, Wyden urged the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to intercede in Near’s bankruptcy proceedings to protect US consumer data from being sold. The FTC had set a precedent similar to this in 2010, forcing a data aggregator to destroy any data that may be misused. Wyden’s requests were granted this week, with an order placing restrictions on the sale and use of location data being issued.

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