Tech roundup: Pig-butchering mayor, ChatGPT in 2025, obituary pirating

December 30, 2024

Ever wonder who’s behind scam rings? The Wall Street Journal just published a great story about a giant pig-butchering scam operation (paywall link) in the Philippines run by the former mayor of a town 60 miles north of Manila. Alice Guo had thousands of workers scamming people, including Americans. She swindled millions from mostly retirees to pay for fancy cars, designer goods and a helicopter. Now, the 34-year-old is facing human trafficking and corruption charges. I hope she rots in jail.

🙃 Smile for the bot: A new AI tool calculates your biological age by looking at your face. Created by cancer doc Raymond Mak, FaceAge spots signs of aging by analyzing wrinkles and skin texture. Mak’s team says it’s even better than doctors at predicting your life expectancy. Your next annual exam might include a photo opp. I wonder how it deals with Botox.

Life Skills 101: Gen Zers grew up with apps and cards, not cash. That’s why you might have trouble paying for items if you get a 20-something cashier. More often than not, they think bills are counterfeit. Know someone born between 1997 and 2012? Tell them no one really counterfeits $5, $10, $20 or $50 bills — only $100s! Meanwhile, a new study proves handing over cash gives you a “sting” you don’t feel with an app. Want to keep your spending in check? Use cash. No wonder Gen Z is so in debt.

🗣️ “Hey, Alexa”: The voice of Amazon’s smart assistant doesn’t belong to actress Kristen DiMercurio, and she wants to make sure others know it. She’s heard on over 8,000 projects and is often mistaken for Siri, Alexa and Google Assistant. Her TikTok video about the mix-up (and the real Big Tech voices) has racked up nearly 28 million views. She’s got skills.

The opposite of artificial intelligence is natural stupidity: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman just teased new ChatGPT features coming in 2025, including family accounts, improved voice mode and a “grown-up” version without the content guardrails. That last one frightens me; there’s already a problem with AI-generated child porn.

⚰️ “Obituary pirating”: If you look up someone in your life who recently passed, you just might see random YouTube videos of someone reading their obituary. Video creators are doing it to make a few ad bucks. Aren’t you glad to be ahead of the rest? I told you about this a year ago, and now the mainstream media’s picking it up.

“The biggest influencer scam of all time”: That’s what YouTuber MegaLad calls the coupon browser extension Honey, which PayPal bought for $4 billion in 2020. He says they’ve been deceiving shoppers and influencers for years by ignoring coupon options and hijacking links through sneaky pop-ups. Watch the vid here. While I’m researching to see if this is true, I uninstalled Honey and you should, too. I’ll let you know what I find out.

YGTR (You Got That Right!): A Stanford study says abbreviations in texts make you come across as insincere. Sure, you might think you’re being laid-back, but others see it as being lazy. Bonus cringe: People who use abbreviations are less likely to get replies. So, if you’re being ghosted, maybe ditch the “IDK” and try a full sentence, just sayin’.

$200 million

The listing price for the 1.84-acre empty lot next to Jeff Bezos’ house in Miami. It’s in the “Billionaire Bunker” area of the Indian Creek neighborhood. The price is over seven times what the last owner paid in 2018 ($27.5 million). Hey, Jeff, how’d you like an amazing house in Phoenix?

🎮 Couples unite: A mom says her husband called her selfish for refusing to buy their son a skin in his League of Legends video game. She was fine with spending $25 or maybe $50, but $300? Nope. Dad argued she should lighten up because it’s Christmas. The twist? Their son didn’t care.

Watt? This is shocking: AI data centers are popping up everywhere in the U.S., devouring massive amounts of electricity. Beyond driving up energy bills, they’re putting intense pressure on the grid and disrupting the normal flow of electricity. The consequences include damaged home appliances, blackouts, flickering lights and, in some cases, fires caused by voltage surges.

🛂 All you need is ~~love~~ a passport: In just a few years, say goodbye to paper passports. All your passport info, including your facial data, will go digital and link to your phone. At airports, you’ll just show your phone, and facial recognition cameras will authenticate you. I sure hope they’ve thought of privacy breaches, false rejections and lookalike frauds.

This bytes: Security camera apps are some of the biggest data hoarders, collecting payment details, location info, and image and audio recordings. The top offenders? Deep Sentinel, Lorex, Nest Labs, Ring and Arlo. Once they grab your data, it’s used for targeted ads or sold to third parties. Protect yourself: Always review and limit your app permissions.

🚨 Heads-up, drivers: Scammers are sending fake phishing texts claiming you need to pay your FasTrak bill to avoid late fees or you’ll be in big legal trouble. Don’t fall for it! It’s a ploy to trick you into clicking a bogus link to steal your personal info and drain your wallet.

10 to 20 years

Until AI drives humanity to extinction, according to a “godfather of AI,” Geoffrey Hinton. He’s the winner of this year’s Nobel Prize for Physics and previously put the odds of AI taking over at only 10%. I know many people are thinking, “Great! I won’t have to pay off my student loans!”

The technology to reverse cancer: This is incredible. Most cancer treatments focus on destroying harmful cells, often causing lots of other damage to the body. Korean researchers just figured out how to flip colon cancer cells back to a normal state. This removes the cancer without killing the cells. I hate cancer.

Timeline: That’s Google’s creepy (and interesting) map that shows everywhere you’ve been and the routes you took to get there. Starting in early 2025, all your Timeline data will be moved from Google’s cloud servers to your device for more security. I bet Google’s finally getting its hands slapped by the government ruler for privacy violations. Hit this link for steps to delete or download your info before it’s too late.