Reset your Roku password before it's too late
Roku was hacked over the weekend. To keep yourself protected, I suggest changing your password ASAP!
🙏 Faith palm: Meet Carlo Acutis, a British-born teen who might be the Catholic Church’s first millennial saint. Known as “God’s Influencer,” he preached online before dying at 15 of leukemia. Now, he’s recognized for miracles and resting in a glass tomb in Assisi, drawing pilgrims from around the globe.
The phone call etiquette battle: More and more folks insist on a “text-me-first” rule. The two sides (WSJ, paywall link): 1.) “Cold” calls are too intrusive, so text first, and 2.) Calling without a text first is totally fine. I always text before calling. I never leave a voicemail, either.
Heads up, Verizon users: A weird glitch in Android messaging apps is causing photos to come through blurry. The issue only pops up when multiple images are sent in a single message. Sending them individually seems to bypass the problem. Why? It’s a mystery. In the meantime, make sure your apps are up to date, and hang tight for a fix.
🐷 He got butchered: A 75-year-old Midwestern man is broke after giving $715,000 to a sly romance scammer. It started with a LinkedIn message but quickly turned into a classic “pig-butchering” scheme. The crook promised huge returns on investments. Hit this link to read the texts between the man and his fraudster. So very sad and so very avoidable.
News from X: This is what happens when you buy a company for $44 billion that’s now worth $12 billion — advertisers leave and no one wants to pay $8 a month for a dumb blue checkmark. X is now officially open to adult content, whether it’s AI-generated, photographic or animated. The rules? It must be “consensually produced and distributed,” labeled, and kept out of profile pics and banners. Maybe they’ll change the name to “XXX.”
If it’s not a mother or father, it’s not a parent: Chip and Joanna Gaines, the former HGTV stars known for the hit show “Fixer Upper,” just said they have a strict no-social-media policy for their five kids until the summer before college. Now, juxtapose this sage advice with Kanye West and Kim Kardashian’s 10-year-old daughter, North, who has 19.2 million followers on TikTok. If you thought yesterday’s child stars were screwed up, you ain’t seen nothing yet.
🦾 New term to know: Internet of Bodies. Like the Internet of Things (IoT), the IoB is an ecosystem of devices humans rely on to function (even partially), including internet access, AI and other tech. Smartwatches and the like are in the first category, followed by internal devices like smart prosthetics. The third IoB generation? Devices that completely merge with the body, like Elon Musk’s Neuralink brain chips. I swear, sci-fi movies are coming to life.
From the “I’m-from-the-government-and-I’m-here-to-help” department: Effective June 1, the federal internet subsidies that gave 20 million low-income U.S. families access to speedy internet are over. Here’s a list of providers offering discounted internet prices through the end of 2024.
AI chatbot Perplexity has a new feature: You might like Perplexity if you haven’t tried it already. Its new trick is that you can type in a prompt and it’ll research, write and lay out an entire report. All the teachers just groaned.