News

The people who built social media give their own kids 90 minutes a week

Peter Thiel, Bill Gates, Evan Spiegel, Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg all ration screens at home. Your kid’s average? 7.5 hours a day.

Your carrier deletes voicemails automatically. Save the ones that matter tonight.

Your carrier isn’t a filing cabinet. AT&T keeps basic voicemail 14 days, T-Mobile says deleted messages “cannot be retrieved” and Verizon won’t take the blame even for ones you saved. Here’s how to turn a loved one’s message into a file you own forever, in a minute or so.

Robert pays for identity monitoring. It told him his SSN was on the dark web, then did nothing.

There are three different products in the identity protection aisle, and the companies would rather you not learn the difference. One watches. One fixes. One pays. Most people buy the cheapest and assume they bought all three.

Foldable phones are finally going mainstream. Here’s what they are and who should buy one.

Samsung unveils its new folding lineup July 22, and Apple’s first folding iPhone lands this fall for north of $2,000. Here’s the plain-English guide to what a foldable is, who it’s for and who should wait.

Verified badge. Dragged link. Both can wipe your accounts.

A verified X ad and a routine browser habit are being used to hijack Mac users and Microsoft 365 accounts alike. Here’s exactly how both attacks work and what stops them cold.

Facebook is the No. 1 place Americans lose money to scammers

New FTC data reveals scams starting on social media cost Americans $2.1 billion last year, and Facebook tops the list. Losses have exploded eightfold since 2020. Here are the exact settings that cut scammers off.

Your bank already knows it’s you, by the way you type

Banks watch how you type, swipe and hold your phone to catch fraud before it happens. Behavioral monitoring is invisible, it’s everywhere, and a thief can’t fake your rhythms.

Your name, address and secrets are being sold for pennies

Data brokers turn your private life into a product. Here’s what they know, who’s buying and how to yank yourself off the shelf.

Your phone is a magic star map. Here’s how to use it tonight.

No telescope, no chart, no clue what you’re looking at? Doesn’t matter. The free app already in your pocket names every star you point it at, and one trick lets you see the stars beneath your feet. Plus, the farthest thing your eyes can ever reach.

🦅 Give me liberty or give me lidar

The Fourth of July used to be about lighting things on fire and hoping nobody’s uncle lost a thumb. Now it’s drones. Lots of drones. This video opens with a Benjamin Franklin stunt double surveying rows of electricity’s neediest children. The juice is worth the squeeze. They rise into the sky and become glowing rockets, […]

This July 4, declare independence from the subscriptions draining your wallet

Fireworks are free. Those three streaming services you forgot you’re paying for are not. Here’s how to hunt down and cancel every sneaky recurring charge in under 15 minutes.

9 movies that predicted the future

It’s a long holiday weekend, and I’m doing something a little different. I’m queuing up the movies that called it: the ones that predicted the digital world we’re all living in. AI assistants, video calls, screens on everything. Hollywood saw it coming decades ago.  Grab the popcorn, and watch along with me. These flicks were […]

How to sweep your car and bags for hidden trackers

If you keep “running into” the same person or your gut says you’re being followed, you might be carrying a $30 tracker without knowing it. Here’s how to find it, what your phone misses and what to do before you touch it.

🚨 ‘I’d know if my identity got stolen.’ No, Chris. You wouldn’t.

A reader swears he’d catch identity theft himself because he checks his bank account. I had to break the bad news. The theft that ruins you never shows up there. Here’s what happens and how to catch it before the damage piles up.

The cloud isn’t in the sky. It’s a warehouse near you, and it’s on your power bill, your water and your taxes

Every photo, text and ChatGPT question runs through a real building full of computers that never sleep. Here’s why those buildings are quietly showing up on your electric bill, draining your town’s water and pocketing your tax dollars.

5 buttons you press every day that secretly do nothing

The close-door button. The crosswalk button. Your office thermostat. A whole lot of them are fakes, and they’ve been quietly playing you for years.

The phone in your pocket might be spying on you for someone you know

Stalkerware hides in plain sight, feeding your texts, calls and location to a partner, ex or relative. Here are the warning signs and how to check without putting yourself at risk.

The FBI built a fake town in Alabama. Then started attacking it.

Empty houses. A hospital. Traffic lights blinking at nobody. The FBI built a whole pretend town for one chilling reason.

The password rules you hate came from one man’s 2003 memo, and he’s sorry

Capital letter, number, symbol, change every 90 days. One government engineer invented all of it, then admitted it made your passwords worse. Here’s what actually works.

Give your sick computer a free AI checkup (without handing over your files)

Before you pay the Geek Squad $100 or panic-buy a laptop you don’t need, let AI read your computer’s own health report. Works on Windows and Mac. And it never touches your files.