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TikTok faces a U.S. shutdown by Jan. 19. Is this really the end? Plus, a scammer posing as Brad Pitt steals $800,000 using AI, and a $765 million bitcoin fortune stays buried in a landfill. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Tags: bitcoin, download, open, shutdown, U.S
🚀 Houston, we have a problem: Elon Musk’s unmanned Starship prototype went boom after launch, lighting up the Caribbean sky like a meteor shower. The debris diverted at least 20 commercial flights. Imagine being on a plane and seeing that. It wasn’t a total disaster, though. The 233-foot-tall booster made it back to the launchpad in one piece. They’re already planning to try again.
What would you do for $5 million? Contestants on Amazon’s “Beast Games” are taking on giant beer pong, racing in potato sacks, and playing hide and seek with Navy SEALs. YouTuber MrBeast, aka Jimmy Donaldson, spent $15 million building “Beast City” in Toronto, where 493 folks are competing for the grand prize. After five episodes, it’s Amazon’s second-most-popular streaming show ever, with 50 million viewers.
To fund a real-life “Jurassic Park” project. Biotech startup Colossal BioSciences wants to bring back extinct species, including the wooly mammoth, dodo and thylacine, aka the Tasmanian tiger. I saw the new dinosaur in “Jurassic Park” is a hybrid; I guess that makes it Prius-toric.
Invisible threat: Hackers are hiding malicious code inside images. It loads in your email, and, just like that, your security is compromised. Solid antivirus software can spot malware tricks you can’t. Protect your computer and phone with my pick for just $19 for the first year.
Elon Musk’s unmanned Starship prototype went boom after launch, lighting up the Caribbean sky like a meteor shower. The debris diverted at least 20 commercial flights. Imagine being on a plane and seeing that. It wasn’t a total disaster, though. The 233-foot-tall booster made it back to the launchpad in one piece. They’re already planning to try again.
Google could stop this, but they don’t: At the top of its search results for Google Ads are fake sites that collect your real login info. Fall for one, and hackers can take over your Google Ads account to post their scam URLs — or just sell your info to other criminals. Make sure 2FA for Google Ads is on to detect strange logins. More smarts like this are coming soon in my small-biz newsletter.
Something new to try: ChatGPT’s scheduled tasks feature is rolling out now for paid accounts. Pick a suggestion (e.g., “Send me a daily horoscope”) or create your own task, like “Give me a weather report on Saturday mornings before my long run.” In the app, go to your profile > Tasks. On a browser, hit the gem icon (top right corner) > Tasks.
Oh, Deere: The FTC and state attorneys general of Illinois and Minnesota are suing John Deere for making their high-tech tractors impossible for farmers and third-party mechanics to fix, even after they promised to in 2023. The machines can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and come with massive repair bills as they age. I found a mechanic online saying they charged $12,000 for a $2,000 job.
Learning Chinese on Duolingo compared to this time last year. With the TikTok ban looming and so many people running over to another Chinese app, RedNote, they likely need a crash course. RedNote is in Mandarin by default. Duolingo downloads are up 36%, too.
🎮 Nintendo used to make the Wii, but It’s time for a Switch: The Nintendo Switch has sold over 146 million units since its 2017 debut, second only to the Nintendo DS. A new trailer shows the first console morphing into the fancy Nintendo Switch 2. The screen is bigger and the Joy-Cons snap magnetically instead of sliding. There’s no release date yet, so you have time to begin saving.