The suburban hacker house: She helped North Korea infiltrate American tech
🧻 Pay-to-wipe: Going to China? New viral footage shows a woman in a public restroom forced to scan a QR code to get toilet paper. Over there, you either pay a few cents or watch an ad before the dispenser spits out your ration. The idea is to cut down on toilet paper theft, but this is just Hulu with higher stakes.
🏴☠️ Streameast resurrected: Remember when that pirate sports site Streameast was taken down last month? Well, it’s back online, using the exact same domain Homeland Security seized just 13 months ago. Turns out, the feds let the domain expire, and the original owners just reregistered it like a normal GoDaddy shopper. The government’s Achilles’ heel? Forgot auto-renew.
🚪 Stop and think: A New Mexico woman handed over $60,000 in cash to a scammer posing as the FDIC. He showed up at her door with a fake badge and somehow disabled her phone so she couldn’t call for help. Reminder: No real agency asks you to hand-deliver your life savings. Ever.
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📚 Speakers, spies and scribes: Amazon rolled out their new gear that includes $100–$220 Echo speakers, Show displays with 13MP cams, new 11-inch Kindle Scribes ($430–$630) that let you doodle in color, updated Fire TVs and Ring cams that spot your lost dog. Oh, and Prime members get free Alexa+ (otherwise $20/month), which gives you beefed-up voice skills, smarter search, more natural conversation and overall better personalization.
💍 Ring of fire: YouTuber Daniel Rotar’s Samsung Galaxy Ring swelled mid-trip, clamping his finger like a lithium bear trap. Airport security screeners wanted him to take the ring off, but he couldn’t, forcing him and his bulbous device to wait until doctors iced and lubed it off. Samsung paid his hotel, but he’s done with smart rings.
☎️ Don’t touch the button: Listen, if a YouTube video tells you hackers are about to raid your Apple Pay unless you “Protect Now,” don’t fall for it by clicking. That just dumps you into some scammy “cleaner” app you’ll never need. And those pop-ups screaming, “Congrats, you won a Mac”? Yeah, no, you just won malware. Save your clicks, save your bank account.
🚘 Buttons are back, baby: No more tap-tap-tapping. Mercedes is bringing back real buttons and knobs in 2026, saying they’re faster, safer and less annoying than touch screens. Nothing says “luxury” like not missing your highway exit trying to turn on the AC. Your great-grandpa was right: Knobs are the future.