A smart tip to help protect your retirement savings: With the economy so unpredictable, I don’t want all my eggs in one basket. I protect a portion of my savings with real gold and silver from Goldco. And right now, Goldco is giving up to 10% back in FREE silver when you open a qualified account.
The suburban hacker house: She helped North Korea infiltrate American tech
US Department of Justice
This isn’t a ripped-from-the-headlines new Netflix series. This really happened in a quiet neighborhood called Litchfield Park that’s about a 20-minute drive from Phoenix, Arizona.
Christina Chapman, 50, looked like your average middle-aged suburban woman. But inside her humble home? A secret cyber ops center built to help North Korean IT workers buy equipment and tools for their military by infiltrating hundreds of U.S. companies.
That picture above was just a small part of her setup.
🇰🇵 Here’s how it worked
North Korean workers aren’t browsing LinkedIn or applying at Google, Amazon and Meta. They can’t. Sanctions block them from working for American companies, at least legally. So what do they do?
They steal real Americans’ identities, including names, birth dates, Social Security numbers and more. Then, they use them to pose as remote IT workers, slipping into U.S. companies under anyone’s radar.
But when companies send out laptops and phones to their “remote new hires”? Those devices can’t exactly be shipped to Pyongyang.
🙇🏻♀️ Enter Christina
Over the course of three years, Christina turned her suburban home into a covert operations hub for North Korea’s elite cybercriminals.
She received more than 100 laptops and smartphones shipped from companies all across the U.S. These weren’t no-name startups. We’re talking major American banks, top-tier tech firms and at least one U.S. government contractor.
All thought they were hiring remote U.S.-based workers. They had no idea they were actually onboarding North Korean operatives.
Once the gear arrived, Chapman connected the devices to VPNs, remote desktop tools like AnyDesk and Chrome Remote Desktop, and even rigged up voice-changing software.
Share YouTube videos from a time stamp: On desktop, pause the video where you want it to start. Right-click and select Copy video URL at current time. Or copy the top link from your browser and add &t=2m30s to the end (swap in your own time) to go straight to that moment.
📅 Screenagers and schedulers: Parents are so busy as tech is taking over family life that half now schedule quality time with their kids like it’s a dentist appointment. And even then, phones interrupt 52% of parent-child conversations. You’re not imagining it. Your dog is the most emotionally available family member.
🚀 My rocket’s bigger: I just finished reading the book Rocket Dreams, and wow, Elon and Jeff have turned space into a billionaire soap opera. Through secret meetings, Twitter spats and NASA bidding wars, the book shows Musk and Bezos chasing space, not just for ego but because they actually believe we’ll live there. It’s messy but so interesting.
We may earn a commission from purchases, but our recommendations are always objective.
DIY movie star: Picture this. Tell OpenAI’s new Sora app, “Make me doing a sick skateboard trick,” and boom, it spits out a movie-quality clip (paywall link), up to 20 seconds. There’s even a “Cameo” mode that drops your likeness into AI worlds. The first viral hit? A fake Sam Altman stealing graphics cards. The app works like TikTok or YouTube Shorts: You can follow, like and comment on other AI slop.
🏋️ Peloton’s $7K treadmill: Peloton’s trying a full reboot with new bikes ($1,445), Bike Plus ($2,495), Row Plus ($3,995) and Tread Plus ($6,695). AI will track your form, count reps and suggest weights, plus a massive swivel screen eases your switch from cardio to strength. Yes, they finally upgraded the crummy bike seats, because apparently our butts unionized. Oh, the app’s monthly subscription is now $49.99/month.
We may earn a commission from purchases, but our recommendations are always objective.
Lord of the blings: Oura’s Ring 4 got a ceramic makeover. It’s supposed to be lighter, tougher, fancier and less likely to look like it survived a lawn mower. Made from zirconia ceramic, it comes in four colors (Cloud, Petal, Tide, Midnight), won’t fade or chip and starts at $499. And don’t forget the $6/month subscription. On a budget? Just grab a ring protector for under $10.
We may earn a commission from purchases, but our recommendations are always objective.
⚡ Gemini’s got the mic now: Google Assistant is NLWTF (no longer with the firm). Every Google smart speaker’s voice assistant is Gemini, its new AI brain. Yup, even your dusty 2016 Google Home. Gemini gets real context, better natural language and can actually answer “When’s a good day for a barbecue?” instead of pleading, “Sorry, I don’t understand.” The catch? The cool stuff is locked behind a $10/month “premium” account, because of course it is.
🧻 Pay-to-wipe: Going to China? New viral footage shows a woman in a public restroom forced to scan a QR code to get toilet paper. Over there, you either pay a few cents or watch an ad before the dispenser spits out your ration. The idea is to cut down on toilet paper theft, but this is just Hulu with higher stakes.
🏴☠️ Streameast resurrected: Remember when that pirate sports site Streameast was taken down last month? Well, it’s back online, using the exact same domain Homeland Security seized just 13 months ago. Turns out, the feds let the domain expire, and the original owners just reregistered it like a normal GoDaddy shopper. The government’s Achilles’ heel? Forgot auto-renew.
🚪 Stop and think: A New Mexico woman handed over $60,000 in cash to a scammer posing as the FDIC. He showed up at her door with a fake badge and somehow disabled her phone so she couldn’t call for help. Reminder: No real agency asks you to hand-deliver your life savings. Ever.
Looking to grow your team before year-end? Top candidates are seeking to connect on LinkedIn right now. This is the perfect time to find great talent to help your business thrive in 2026. Post a job for FREE using my special link.
📚 Speakers, spies and scribes: Amazon rolled out their new gear that includes $100–$220 Echo speakers, Show displays with 13MP cams, new 11-inch Kindle Scribes ($430–$630) that let you doodle in color, updated Fire TVs and Ring cams that spot your lost dog. Oh, and Prime members get free Alexa+ (otherwise $20/month), which gives you beefed-up voice skills, smarter search, more natural conversation and overall better personalization.
💍 Ring of fire: YouTuber Daniel Rotar’s Samsung Galaxy Ring swelled mid-trip, clamping his finger like a lithium bear trap. Airport security screeners wanted him to take the ring off, but he couldn’t, forcing him and his bulbous device to wait until doctors iced and lubed it off. Samsung paid his hotel, but he’s done with smart rings.
☎️ Don’t touch the button: Listen, if a YouTube video tells you hackers are about to raid your Apple Pay unless you “Protect Now,” don’t fall for it by clicking. That just dumps you into some scammy “cleaner” app you’ll never need. And those pop-ups screaming, “Congrats, you won a Mac”? Yeah, no, you just won malware. Save your clicks, save your bank account.
🚘 Buttons are back, baby: No more tap-tap-tapping. Mercedes is bringing back real buttons and knobs in 2026, saying they’re faster, safer and less annoying than touch screens. Nothing says “luxury” like not missing your highway exit trying to turn on the AC. Your great-grandpa was right: Knobs are the future.
⚠️ Scamming scammers: Some TikTokers claimed you could file a fake CFPB complaint and get a check from Zelle or Cash App. Millions watched. Some paid $77 for their “templates” and $24.99 for credit repair guides. It’s all bogus. “Just lie to the government” is not financial advice.
🔍 A stalker’s dream? Security researchers just revealed that Tile tracking tags, owned by Life360, can be hacked. Unlike Apple’s AirTags, which trigger alerts when they’re moving with someone who doesn’t own them, Tiles have no built-in anti-stalking feature. That means a bad actor could slip one into your purse or car, track someone for weeks, and the victim might never know. The kicker? Life360 has known about this loophole for a long time and still hasn’t fixed it.