43.5 hours weekly

April 17, 2024

The time the average American home spends watching broadcast TV, traditional TV and streaming video. Half of that video viewing is done on a TV screen; the rest is split between phones, tablets and computers. These numbers don’t include videos on social media platforms, like TikTok, Instagram Reels and whatever videos on Facebook are called … We can probably double or triple the phone-viewing hours, then, right?

Tags: broadcast, computers, Facebook, home, hours, phone, phones, screen, social media, social media platforms, streaming, tablets, TikTok, video, videos

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Drone discovery: A drone enthusiast uncovered ancient ruins while hiking in the American Southwest. He noticed the stone walls on a narrow ledge 50 feet up a near-vertical cliff. How the original builder managed to reach it is a mystery. Oh, and he filmed it all on a DJI Mini 4 Pro — that’s one of the drones on my list!

What’s your typing MO? Hunt-and-peck or touch typing? There’s one thing most of us have in common — 90% of people use the same number of fingers while typing on a computer keyboard. Is it … A.) 10, B.) Nine, C.) Eight or D.) Two?

Find the answer here →

🎧 It’s quiet … too quiet: Too much time in noise-canceling headphones can cause ear pain, nausea and headaches. It can also create “listening loss,” which is when your brain’s sensitivity is altered irreversibly to sound sensitivity. Try to limit your use to places that are actually noisy — not all day in your home office.

🚨 Faulty Cybertrucks: Tesla has stopped all Cybertruck deliveries for a week because of faulty accelerator pedals. Turns out, the metal covers can detach and stick to the floorboards, making drivers accelerate at full speed — from 0 mph to 60 mph in 2.6 seconds, to be exact. This follows Tesla laying off at least 14,000 employees and losing 29% in market cap after poor quarterly earnings. Talk about a week.

Hotel data breach: Omni Hotels & Resorts was just hit by a ransomware group threatening to release the sensitive information of 3.5 million visitors. Screenshots with names, email addresses and physical addresses have been shared with DataBreaches.net. FYI, Omni operates 50 properties across the U.S., Canada and Mexico.

Deadly mix-up: An 81-year-old West Virginia man fatally shot an Uber driver after mistaking her for a phone scammer who threatened his family. The scammer ordered William Brock to deliver a ransom to the innocent Uber driver, with whom he’d also been in contact with and threatened. When she arrived to pick up the “package,” Brock shot her three times. Now he’s charged with murder, and the Uber driver’s family is grieving. Awful.

The world’s first billboard that literally emits the mouthwatering aroma of McDonald’s french fries is increasing sales in the Netherlands. The billboard is about 650 feet away from the restaurant. I’m just waiting for the day they come out with a sandwich called “The McJagger.”

Western Digital announced they’ll be shipping a 4TB SD card next year. That one little card will hold 41 million Word docs, 820,000 photos or 5,800 movies. No price yet. Dang, I remember when a 3.5-inch floppy disk was state-of-the-art!

What’s the wingspan of the RQ-4 Global Hawk, our military’s biggest unmanned drone? Is it A.) 50 feet, B.) 89 feet, C.) 117 feet or D.) 131 feet? (Hint: The wingspan of an F-16 is about 31 feet.)

Find the answer here →

😨 School alarms: A 13-year-old girl accepted a friend request on TikTok from a classmate … who then grabbed a pic of her face, put it on a nude body using AI software and shared the images with groups of guys. If I had a young child, they wouldn’t be on social media until college. The NY Times (paywall link) has a great read about this epidemic.