🧬 Silicon Valley’s baby fever: Welcome to the Build-a-Baby boom. Startups like Orchid and Nucleus want to sell you on polygenic testing: basically “future-proofing” your baby’s DNA for everything from BMI to bipolar disorder. The cost? $50,000.
Titan submersible update
It’s been almost two years since the tragedy that killed all five onboard. Now, investigators are revealing some chilling finds from the ocean floor. In a new documentary, they say they found part of the OceanGate founder’s sleeve, with a pen, business cards and Titanic stickers still inside. So sad.
30 cats
That’s how many feline participants confirmed you smell exactly like they thought you would. Researchers in Tokyo ran a sniff test with 30 house cats and found they spent more time smelling strangers than their own humans. Translation: Your cat knows who you are and has already decided you’re not worth the extra sniff.
TSA’s planning touchless pat-downs: Yep, they’re working on VR tech that lets agents “feel” you without any actual contact. How? Sensors scan your body shape, then send the data to haptic gloves, creating a virtual version of your contours. And don’t you know all that is going into some database? Speaking of … Did you know that the TSA likes to hire dentists as supervisors? They are already experts in performing cavity searches.
🚨 AT&T data leak: Hackers just exposed 86 million customer records, including names, phone numbers, emails and addresses. Worse? Nearly 44 million Social Security numbers were leaked in plain text. That’s prime info for scammers and identity theft. PSA: Stay alert for phishing attempts and keep a close eye on your accounts, folks.
Lot cop unleashed: Walmart’s testing a security robot in its parking lots. It has wheels, cameras and apparently a dude behind the mic, whispering “Yo, what you say?” to shoppers. Is it surveillance? Art? Cyberpunk cosplay? Either way, the vibes are dystopian. Next up: R2-D2 with a gun.
📅 RIP, Samsung accounts: Samsung says inactive accounts will get deleted starting July 31. If you haven’t logged in for two years, it’s over: data gone, account gone, possibly your Galaxy brain, too. Exceptions made if you bought something or used reward points. Congrats on ghosting Samsung so hard they took it personally.
The pirate said, “Can I buy an I?”: Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune are hitting streaming for the first time, just one day after episodes air. Hulu and Peacock snagged multiyear deals for new and old episodes. Sony and CBS are still in a legal slap fight about it, but the real winner here is your Roku.
$250 million
That’s what MrBeast says he’ll spend on content this year, but he still needs a wedding loan from mom. Worth a cool billion on paper, MrBeast says he’s cash-poor IRL, leaving his mom to spot him for cake and canapés. Somewhere, Jeff Bezos just Venmo’d his mom out of guilt.
🪥 No floss can fix stupid: A top U.S. dental marketing firm accidentally exposed 8.8 million appointment records and 2.7 million patient profiles online: names, emails, birth dates, billing info, all just sitting in the open. Hackers didn’t even have to lift a finger. Be sure to keep an eye on your Explanation of Benefit records.
🤖 Humanoids at your doorstep: Amazon’s testing humanoid robots that might literally leap out of delivery vans. The company’s building a “humanoid park” to train these robot couriers to drop packages while dodging pets, toddlers and possibly your Ring camera judgment. Humans may still drive the vans, for now.
“Rilly big shoo”: I’m talking about The Ed Sullivan Show that just passed a million YouTube subs. Turns out there’s an endless audience for grainy footage of Elvis pelvis-ing and Beatles mop-shaking. Kids today don’t remember when every performance had 18 backup dancers, no autotune and a ventriloquist, but now they’ll get to experience all the grandeur.
1,000 miles
That’s how far China’s newest range-extended SUVs can go on one charge and a bit of gas. That’s New York to Key West without the “where’s the next charger?” panic attack. Huawei and Chery’s Luxeed R7 (paywall link) leads the pack, mixing EV cred with a gas backup. Range anxiety? Cured. Now it’s just regular life’s anxiety left.
🎨 Photoshop is finally on Android: And yes, it’s free (for now). You can grab it on Google Play and mess with layers, masks, selection tools and AI Generative Fill. The fine print: After the beta, it’s $7.99/month.
Getting old blows: Not just in candles. Job hunters over 40 say Workday’s hiring AI tool ghosted them, fast. One plaintiff claims they were rejected hundreds of times, often instantly, with no human review. Workday denies their tools actually make hiring decisions, which sounds like Shaggy’s “It Wasn’t Me” by way of HR software.
🧑💻 Online shopping scam: A dad thought he scored a 20TB hard drive for $51 (these are normally around $300) from a flaky site called “Chicntech.” Spoiler: It didn’t work. His son cracked it open and found glued-in metal weights and a chip faking the storage size.
#7
Where computer science ranks among majors with the highest jobless rates. Congrats, grads, now you’re competing with laid-off senior devs and chatbots that don’t sleep. Next stop, look into AI ethics, prompt engineering and cloud or quantum computing.
Open-source bombing: Ukraine’s wild daylight drone strike reportedly took out a chunk of Russia’s long-range bombers using open-source ArduPilot software straight from the hobbyist world. The code was originally built in a guy’s basement. Now it’s leveling airfields. Just another casual week for DIY warfare. Who knows what else is lurking around GitHub these days?
👁️ Laser eyes, activated: Chinese scientists made a laser that reads text ⅛ of an inch from 0.85 miles away. Originally for studying stars, it now works on your grocery list from the next neighborhood over. Add shape-recognition AI, and yes, it’s totally spying tech. Meanwhile, you’re looking for your glasses when they’re on your head.
3:4 aspect ratio
That’s the new photo size Instagram now supports. ICYDK, it’s also how most phone cameras shoot. So now your pics will show up exactly as you took them, with no weird cropping at the top or bottom. And yes, square and 4:5 posts still work, too. Finally, justice for your forehead.