💒 Joined together in holy macaroni: Forget vows and veils, the rich are throwing music festivals disguised as weddings (paywall link). Think $500K holograms, $170K drapery and Rihanna on both the RSVP and performer list. Jeff Bezos is reportedly next, with a Venetian island, protests and a chilled Renaissance castle. Love is patient, love is kind, and love now has a dedicated caviar stylist.
Your browser is snitching on you
ChatGPT
You’ve heard me say it a hundred times: Clear your cookies, block third-party trackers, use private browsing. But here’s something new, something creepier.
Now, even after nuking cookies from orbit and going full incognito ninja, websites still know who you are. How? Something called browser fingerprinting.
And unlike actual crime-fighting fingerprints, this one just helps companies charge you more for socks.
🚰 How it works
Every time you visit a website, your browser leaks little clues about who you are: your screen size, time zone, where you live, your device and operating system, even how fast your processor runs.
None of these sounds personal, but when combined? They create a unique invisible fingerprint that websites use to identify you.
A new study from Texas A&M and Johns Hopkins shows this is no longer a fringe trick, it’s mainstream.
👣 Tracks in real time
Websites now know who you are even if you’re not logged in, cleared your cookies and browse in incognito mode. Researchers watched sites change in real time depending on the fingerprint they detected.
Here’s the kicker: Your “harmless” device fingerprint is used to change the prices you see. Researchers watched websites adjust pricing in real time based on things I’ve mentioned.
In other words, you could see higher prices simply because you live in an expensive area or use a newer iPhone. Creepy? Totally. Legal? For now, yes.
✋ So what can you do?
Warning: Your tech expires soon
ChatGPT
Your computer is behaving just fine, right? Opening apps, playing videos, checking email. Life’s good. But one day, without a single pop-up or beep, it’ll just … stop getting security updates. No ceremony. No goodbye. Just silence. From that moment on, it’s basically a digital sitting duck for hackers.
90 more days
That’s how long President Trump is giving TikTok before the ban hammer drops. Again. Yep, this is the third extension. The law still says ByteDance has to sell it to an American buyer. Big names like Amazon and Perplexity AI are sniffing around, but no deal yet. Oh, and those new tariffs? Not exactly speeding things up.
YouTube Shorts for channel growth: The algorithm pushes Shorts hard, making them a good way to get discovered fast. Just make sure your video is vertical (9:16, aka phone style) and under 60 seconds. Pro tip: Avoid copyrighted music, so you don’t get hit with a content claim.
Teen breaks into jail: A 19-year-old from New York snuck into a shut-down prison just to snap selfies. He crawled through a hole in the fence, wandered around and accidentally locked himself in a real cell. The twist? He had to call the cops to get out … and got arrested for trespassing. Genius move.
🪞 Deepfake boss attack: A crypto employee thought they were on a Zoom call with their company’s C-suite. Turns out it was North Korean hackers deepfaking the entire leadership team. That “Zoom extension” they asked you to download? Straight malware on macOS. Someone out there is cosplaying your manager to steal your crypto and mess with your M1 chip.
It’s rough out there: You need to be proactive. This is one of the smartest things you can do to protect your identity. Don’t wait till it’s too late, sign up for NordProtect today and get 65% off. Bet you save a ton of money making the switch to NordProtect, too!
📞 Hackers love call centers: They’re bribing low-paid call center workers to bypass security (paywall link) and loot crypto wallets. Coinbase alone may be out $400 million. All it took was screenshots, Chrome bugs and $2,500 Venmo bribes.
Chinese pump and dump stocks: Scammers are sliding into DMs and WhatsApp chats, posing as financial advisers. They’ll hype up shares in small Chinese companies listed on the Nasdaq that look promising. The twist? Insiders are manipulating the price. Once you buy in, they cash out, and you lose thousands (paywall link).
💻 Israel vs Iran online: The conflict isn’t just happening on the ground. It’s playing out in cyberspace, too. A hacking group linked to Israel apparently hit an Iranian bank, cutting off access to people’s money. Then, fake texts were sent to Israelis, warning of terror attacks on bomb shelters to stir panic. Tense times.
💰 Get paid to scroll: Yupp is a new chatbot site that pays users up to $50/month to rate AI responses, basically Tinder for bots but less romantic and more profitable. Every choice trains the AI, and every scratch card brings you closer to … $1. Maybe. It’s fun, weird and just useful enough to feel like work.
Amazing new health test: It’s always been hard to detect ovarian cancer. But researchers are working on a tiny device that fits inside menstrual pads and detects illness in period blood. It reacts to specific proteins like CA-125 (linked to ovarian cancer), and if something’s found, a line appears in about 15 minutes. Wow.
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Grand Theft Grandma: An elderly Montana woman thought “Amazon” was helping prevent ID theft. Instead, scammers made off with nearly $1M by spoon-feeding her a crime thriller plot starring fake marshals, dirty gold and suspicious cash pickups at her house. She eventually snapped, and helped bust the scammer herself with a Trojan money box.
🪐 Airbnb, but make it space: NASA’s phasing out the ISS, and now startups like Axiom, Starlab and Blue Origin want to rent you a bed …100 miles above Earth. The vibes range from “luxe scientific Airbnb” to “inflatable gym bag for astronauts.” All racing to launch before 2030. “Room with a view” now means dodging space junk at brunch.
1
That’s how many people in the U.S. have gotten a fully robotic heart transplant. Tony Rosales Ibarra is the first, and he’s crushing recovery. He didn’t just get a new heart, he got one installed like a high-tech carburetor. No cracked breastbone, minimal scarring, and he’s already cleared to drive. Your move, Iron Man.
Aflac breach gets messy: Hackers cracked into Aflac’s system using social engineering tricks, possibly swiping health data, SSNs and more. No ransomware dropped, but still, duck insurance just got real personal, in the bad way. Keep an eye on your inbox (and your identity).
⚠️ Data fire hose leak: Cybernews found 30 data hoards oozing 16 BILLION records, basically half the internet. Blame info stealers. Some leaks were old, most were new, all were unsettling. The good news: They’re offline now. The bad news: They were online, and no one knows who posted them. Yup, all your account credentials are probably in the leak. Take a deep breath. Here are the links you need to protect yourself.
More than 100
Telegram founder Pavel Durov says he’s fathered that many kids. He’s got six from three partners and has also been donating sperm for 15 years (paywall link). The kicker? He recently wrote a will saying he’ll split his $14 billion fortune equally among all of them. That’s $100 million or so each. Move over, Nick Cannon.