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February 18, 2025

🔞 Watch the kids on ChatGPT: You can now ask about and create spicy and gory content and images. People complained restrictions were interfering with news reporting and crime scene depictions.

“Rage-baiting”: It’s what Winta Zesu does when she posts videos of her life as a NY model whose biggest problem is being “too pretty.” Is she a narcissist? Nope. People get angry and post hateful comments. Joke’s on them. More engagement translates to money and sponsorships for her.

Take part in research: Apple’s looking for 350,000 people for a new health study about how mental health impacts heart rate and sleep affects exercise. Spoiler: Joining means sharing a lot of personal data. Hopefully, we’ll get another useful tool like the AirPods hearing test.

Lifetime subscriptions: It’s the newest marketing ploy. Pay once and get access forever, right? But “forever” means “as long as the company stays in business” (paywall link). If it shuts down or abandons the app, you’re out of luck. Ask yourself, “Will I use this five years from now?” Probably not.

🩸 Elizabeth Holmes’ life in vein: Convicted felon and former CEO of Theranos wants us to feel sorry for her after cheating and stealing $724 million for tech that didn’t work. In a PR puff piece interview, she says prison is “hell and torture,” waking up at 5 a.m., earning 31 cents an hour and only seeing her kids twice a week. This criminal’s best asset is her lie ability.

Kindness + Tech = Heroes: After Hurricane Helene and the Eaton Fire, Taylor Schenker and Claire Schwartz are reuniting lost photos with their owners. They find damaged pictures, clean them, and post them on Facebook and Instagram to match them with the right families. Here are photos found from the Eaton Fire. So nice.

✈️ Traveling abroad? Starting Feb. 27, Uber is rolling out a Preferred Currency Pricing feature that quietly tacks on a 1.5% conversion fee. It keeps prices in your home currency, but you’re just paying extra. Here’s how to turn it off: Open the Uber app > Account > Wallet > Preferred Currency > No preferred currency.

20 minutes

Of dancing is just as good as a gym session or jog. Researchers found shaking your booty can get your heart rate up to a health-enhancing level (paywall link). Need a speaker? Here’s a cool one on sale.

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Are noise-canceling headphones bad for your brain? Scientists warn blocking out background noise 24/7 might train your brain to “forget” how to filter sounds naturally. This could lead to auditory processing disorder (APD). Share this with the kids in your life.

You’ve got 60 days to dispute bank fraud: A Denver woman’s SoFi account was drained of nearly $7,400 by scammers. The bank refused to reimburse her. She fought back and won. The takeaway? Act fast or they’re not liable.

Chatbot war continues: Perplexity AI just dropped a deep research tool that gives you detailed reports about nearly anything in two to four minutes. Free users get five queries a day, while Pro subscribers ($20 per month) get 500. Want to test it out? It’s live here.

😨 AI can clone itself now?! Relax. Researchers insist it only happens when instructed by humans. For example, AI could be programmed to clone itself if it senses it’s about to shut down. It’s basically a survival instinct. This is getting pretty scary.

41 views

That’s all the average video on YouTube gets. Over 74% have no comments and 89% have no likes. Research estimates a staggering 14.8 billion total videos on YouTube. Wow.

2060

When the world will end, says Sir Isaac Newton. More than 300 years ago, he used math and biblical dates to predict the apocalypse. He believed in the Battle of Armageddon, where good and evil would clash, ushering in the second coming of Christ.

2 million

Number of Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses sold since October 2023. Looks like these are going to make it. Another 10 million are projected to be sold over the next year and a half.