Robot strawberries: In Virginia, a vertical farm is growing 4 million pounds of strawberries a year indoors, on two-story towers, with no soil, no bees and a whole lot of AI. The system analyzes 10 million+ data points a day. It’s less “Old MacDonald,” more “Black Mirror: Produce Edition.” Can’t wait for my future salad to come with bug patch notes.
Digital self-destruction for fun and paranoia
ChatGPT
How to make any USB drive self-destruct
“Kim, I’m paranoid about losing my USB drive. Is there any way to make it so if someone steals it, they can’t see or open anything?” — Dave in Denver
Dave, losing a USB drive isn’t just annoying. It’s the secret nightmare of anyone who’s ever stored files they’d rather not see on Reddit 10 minutes later.
Here’s how to make your flash drive digitally self-destruct.
The secret weapon
VeraCrypt is a free tool that doesn’t merely slap a password on your files. It completely locks down your entire USB with heavy-duty encryption that’s virtually impossible to crack. It works on Mac, Windows and Linux.
🔐 Step 1: Encrypt everything (the right way)
- First, download VeraCrypt.
- Install it and encrypt the entire USB drive, not just a folder labeled “Totally Not Important Stuff.”
- Pick a strong password. The longer and more random, the better.
Now, if someone plugs your drive into their computer, all they’ll see is a scrambled mess unless they know your password.
💣 Step 2: Hide a secret partition
You can also create a hidden volume inside your encrypted drive. Basically, a vault within a vault.
- You create two volumes: One decoy vault holds fake but boring files (tax documents, cat photos, recipes you’ll never cook).
- If someone forces you to unlock it (think: bossy thief), you open the decoy.
Tech we thought was the future
ChatGPT
It’s Friday, and I’m feeling a little nostalgic. Let’s take a fun walk down memory lane back when our gadgets were clunky, slow and somehow magical.
Remember when flipping your phone shut made you feel like a movie star? Or hearing the sound of a modem? Good times. Take a look at this list and see if there are any you miss.
Cluckin’ wild
The Minecraft movie is meh, but Jack Black’s unhinged chicken ballad, “Steve’s Lava Chicken,” shot up to # 78 on Billboard’s Hot 100. It’s now the shortest song ever to hit the famed list, clocking in at 34 seconds, making it both a record and maybe a cry for help for our attention spans. Listen here, you have been warned.
1 hour
The weekly amount of weight training needed to gain muscle. One study found just two 30-minute sessions a week helped participants get noticeably stronger and more jacked (paywall link), no five-day grind or bro science required. One set per exercise. Nine moves. That’s it. I hear you: “Instead of calling my bathroom the John, I call it the Jim. That way I can tell people I go to the Jim every morning.”
23%
That’s how many HTML attachments are malicious. They usually show up in your inbox with names like “invoice.html,” and when you click, they redirect you to phishing websites. That’s where scammers steal your info or drop malware on your device. Moral of the story? Stay sharp and use real-time protection. My pick is TotalAV, just $19 a year.
📵 Phones down, eyes up: That’s the YMCA’s new water safety campaign for parents this summer. Why? Drowning is the number one cause of death for kids ages 1 to 4, and it often happens within 25 yards of a distracted parent. It’s usually silent, with no splashes, and can happen in 30 seconds or less. I know there’s someone you need to share this with.
Third Neuralink implant is in: This time, it’s a dad with ALS who’s fully paralyzed, and he’s also the first nonverbal patient to get the chip. Brad posted on X, using only his brain to type a message thanking Elon Musk. And get this: He even edited a video with his mind and used AI to bring back his old voice. Amazing.
🎭 Deepfakes just got sneakier: It’s getting harder to figure out if that person is real or not. A good way to spot them used to be skin color changes that matched a heartbeat. Bad news: New AI can mimic those. How can you tell? The person’s facial features are too perfect, or they worked at CGI Fridays.
💀 DIY neck crack: Chiropractic neck “adjustments” are all over TikTok. So are reports of strokes, nerve damage and ruptured arteries. The internet’s favorite crack (not that one) could basically snap your brain off. So before you adjust yourself straight into the void based on something you saw online, heed my words: Please don’t.
AI eats its own: Prompt engineer was tech’s hot new job title in 2023, featuring $300K salaries, fully remote work and bragging rights in Discord. Fast-forward to 2025: AI doesn’t need prompt engineers anymore. It writes its own prompts. Imagine training your replacement that never takes lunch breaks and doesn’t need caffeine. Congrats, prompt engineers, you played yourself, in natural language.
$10 million
How much revenue TikTok creators are collectively pulling in daily. New data also shows it’s now the second most-watched livestreaming platform on the net. So far in Q1: Twitch has 4.85 billion hours, TikTok Live 8.03 billion and YouTube leads with 14.98 billion hours. Dang, that’s crazy.
🛰️ High stakes laser tag: Amazon just fired its first 27 Kuiper satellites into orbit to take on Starlink, planning for 3,200 total. SpaceX already has 7,200 up there. Hope Earth’s atmosphere enjoys the new bumper-to-bumper congestion.
Solo Words With Friends: WWF (the puzzle game, not the pandas or wrestling) added a new solo game called Letter Lock. Slide letters up and down columns to make words and unlock more columns. It’s part puzzle, part productivity trap, and 100% designed to eat your break time.
Nearly $400,000
What someone paid at auction for a chilling letter from a Titanic survivor. The first-class passenger wrote it five days before the Titanic went down, saying, “It is a fine ship, but I shall await my journey’s end before I pass judgment on her.” The cruel twist? He still died a few months later from health issues made worse by the wreck.
🚗 Toyota’s Robo-glow-up: Google’s Waymo is teaming up with Toyota to explore self-driving tech in your own car, not just ride-hailing fleets. It’s all still “preliminary,” but (allegedly) the goal is future personal robo-car vibes, not just robots that pick you up and hold you hostage.
Less than 100
That’s how many shark bites are reported globally each year. Not a huge number, but it’s been going up. Why? Blame social media. Some influencers are telling tourists to snap selfies or reach out for a pat. Add to that the fact that most people can’t tell a reef shark from a bull shark. Yeah, natural selection in action.
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