$1 billion in romance scams

January 2, 2025

💔 $1 billion in romance scams: That’s how much more than 64,000 Americans were talked out of, double the total four years ago. The Online Dating Safety Act could help. If approved, it’d require dating apps to notify anyone who has come in contact with a scam account. This begs the question: If they can identify scam accounts, why can’t they just remove them?

Tags: applications (apps), scams/scammers

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The crypto investment scam that’s all over social media

ESET.com

I’m all about using AI to get stuff done. No kidding, I use ChatGPT every day to shortcut planning and organize my work and my life.

You know who else loves AI? Cybercriminals. A new scam powered by deepfakes is all over social media. Too many people have fallen for it and lost millions of dollars in the process. I’ve got the dirty details so you don’t become a victim, too.

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Lost dog finds her way home

Nine days after going missing, 4-year-old German shepherd mix Athena rang her owner’s doorbell. It was Christmas Eve at 2:30 a.m. — a holiday miracle! The Green Cove Springs, Florida fam searched as far as Jacksonville and Saint Augustine.

280 mph

Top speed for China’s new bullet train prototype. That’s a world record and fast enough to zip from New York to Chicago in under three hours. China’s current fastest trains max out at 220 mph. The fastest Amtrak trains go 160 mph, but most top out closer to 100 mph. We really need better trains in the U.S.

Your very own Rosey

Nvidia, the $3 trillion AI chip giant, is betting on robotics as the next big thing. Next year, they’ll launch the Jetson Thor, a new “brain” designed for robots. The Jetson line includes this teeny-tiny AI computer. The robotics biz is expected to jump from $78 billion to $165 billion by 2029. I want one! Do you?

301 terabits per second

New internet speed world record. That’s 4.5 million times faster than the average broadband connection. Some context: At that speed, it’d take one minute to download every single movie listed on IMDb. Speaking of … How do you know the speed of light is much faster than the speed of sound? Because some people appear bright until they open their mouths.

115,000 years old

Age of footprints found in Saudi Arabia. These are the oldest ones ever uncovered on the Arabian Peninsula. They turned up in a dried-up watering hole in the Nafud Desert, right next to animal tracks. The area was wetter back then, and early humans were likely taking a water break alongside other animals, like a prehistoric rest stop.

5 times more data

Collected by holiday apps compared to regular paid apps. The holidays are over, but those festive apps are still gifting your data to anyone willing to pay. Monopoly Go! is the worst offender. Here’s the full list. Ditch ‘em.

1929

Works from this year will enter the public domain on Jan. 1. Included are Alfred Hitchcock’s “Blackmail,” along with “Tintin in the Land of the Soviets” and “Thimble Theater,” which features Popeye and Olive Oyl (and her brother, Castor Oyl). Public domain means they’re not protected by copyright, so anyone can use, copy, distribute or change them. Get ready for some weird Popeye videos, folks. Food for thought: Wouldn’t it be ironic if Popeyes’ chicken was fried in olive oil?

$100 million

The value of a one-square-mile parcel in Wyoming’s Grand Teton National Park that’s now protected from development. The state has considered selling the plot — a migration path for pronghorn and elk — to luxury developers. The nonprofit Grand Teton National Park Foundation raised about one-third of the cash; the rest is from the federal Land and Water Conservation Fund.

20 minutes

Of life gone for every cigarette smoked. Yikes! I still cannot believe there were ads in the 1940s that said, basically, cigarettes were good for you. A new study out of University College London found a pack of 20 cigarettes knocks 7 hours off a person’s life. Say you smoke 10 a day and quit on Jan. 1. By the end of the year, you’ve “earned back” 50 extra days. Now, that’s incredible motivation.