...

October 27, 2025

💄 Swipe left on spies: In the most James Bond news today, U.S. counterintelligence says foreign agents, mostly from China and Russia, are cozying up to Silicon Valley execs through dating apps, LinkedIn and startup circles. Some even marry their marks. Forget malware, this is man-ware. Roses are red, violets are blue, your crypto’s gone, and she works for Xi, too.

Don’t let AI play doctor: People are still asking ChatGPT for medical advice, and it’s going horribly wrong. One guy cooked with pool sanitizer because AI said it was a salt alternative. Another skipped the ER during a stroke. Look, ask AI for dinner ideas, not diagnoses.

The phone scam evolution: This is frightening. A cybersecurity firm built a real-time voice deepfake, meaning someone can sound like you on a call instantly. Cheap laptop, open-source tools, done. They tested it, and people fell for it almost every time. So when your “boss” calls asking for gift cards, maybe call back first. You should take a sec and check it out.

🔄 The hacker becomes the hackee: If you’ve ever thought, “I’ll just grab the cracked version” of a software or video game, surprise, you’re the product. Check Point found thousands of YouTube “free software” videos that sneak malware into your PC. Some hit hundreds of thousands of views. That’s crazy. Turns out that you can actually fool all the people all the time. Remember, if it’s free and asks you to disable antivirus, it’s a setup.

Wi-Fi grounded: Got big dreams of fast Wi-Fi everywhere you go? SpaceX just told Starlink Mini users to slow down. Starting Nov. 7, dishes on $165-a-month roaming plans can’t work past 450 mph (down from 550). Too many people were strapping them to private jets. Want faster internet at 30,000 feet? You’ll need the $10,000-a-month “Aviation” plan. Yep, that’s per month.

🛞 Mad Max meets Model 3: Tesla dropped two new “self-driving” modes: Sloth (grandpa speed) and Mad Max (the one your insurance hates). No confirmed speeds yet, but “Mad Max” mode is made to accelerate and swerve through traffic “like a sports car.” The feds opened a preliminary investigation, I wonder why? Coming soon: Mario Kart Mode, bananas sold separately.

Pawns, kings and queens

ChatGPT

Hold the phone: Do you love talking to robots on the phone? Have I got good news for you! Yelp’s rolling out two talking bots. A Host AI for restaurant bookings and Receptionist for business calls. They’ll handle everything from wait lists to “do you take dogs?” for about $99 a month per restaurant. Next up, a suggested 25% tip.

It’s a sign: A Kenyan engineer built what’s basically Google Translate for sign language. His app, Terp 360, listens to speech and uses AI-powered 3D avatars to sign in real time. It’s built with motion-capture tech (sensors track actual signers’ movements), and it already knows thousands of words. I’ve always wanted to learn ASL.

🔫 Artificial unintelligence: After football practice, a Maryland teen got swarmed by armed police because an AI gun detector thought his Doritos bag was a pistol. In other words, a weapon of nacho destruction. Turns out, the system flagged the way he held the bag as “gun-like.” The teen was cuffed, searched and cleared. Put your hands up and the chips where I can see them!

AWS eats its own: Here’s the cloud tea, Amazon says this week’s massive AWS outage wasn’t a hack but a software glitch so bad it fought itself. That’s right, a mini-tech civil war. Two automation systems tried to update network records at once and triggered a global domino crash. A chunk of the internet went briefly offline, even some people’s smart beds.

♣️ Hackers, hustlers and high rollers: This is nuts. The feds unsealed an indictment straight out of Ocean’s Eleven, full of poker tables with hidden cameras, hacked Deckmate shufflers, even contact lenses that read cards. 30+ people, including the NBA’s Chauncey Billups, Damon Jones and Terry Rozier, were charged in a $7 million poker scam tied to Mafia families. Maybe your uncle blaming the game for being “rigged” was actually onto something. But also, maybe he’s just bad at poker.

GM’s hands-free future: Are you tired of driving? GM’s 2028 Cadillac Escalade IQ wants to let you fully check out, literally. The next-gen Super Cruise drives itself (on approved highways) with lidar, radar and cameras, and the dash glows turquoise when it’s safe to let auto drive take over. Oh, and Google’s Gemini AI will chat with you, because silence is awkward.

💻 Delete this now: If you see ads or blogs pitching the “Universe Browser” as the fastest and safest one ever, don’t fall for it. Researchers found it secretly routes your data to China, logs keystrokes and installs hidden programs. They probably should have called it “Internet Exploiter.” Millions downloaded it, thinking it was legit. If you’re one of them, I hate to say it, but you need to wipe your system and reinstall the OS. This thing digs in deep.

Lunatics, start your remotes: Amazon relaunched Luna, its cloud service that streams games over the internet. You’ve got it for free if you have Prime. Sign in on your phones, and play against each other on the TV. It’s finally time to settle the score with your aunt.

We may earn a commission from purchases, but our recommendations are always objective.

📦 Surprise package season: It’s not your lucky day. USPS says if you get a random package this holiday, don’t celebrate too fast. It’s probably a “brushing” scam, where fake sellers send cheap stuff to your address so they can post bogus “verified buyer” reviews. Basically, you’re an unwitting five-star accomplice.