‘Cruise’ into a virtual train ride

July 20, 2024

🚢 “Cruise” into a virtual train ride: VR is coming to a new Royal Caribbean cruise ship. The restaurant is in a digital train car. Passengers sit in fancy booths with simulated sceneries on giant displays that look like windows. Subwoofers in the seats simulate the vibrations of the tracks. The first theme? Western. Giddyup!

Tags: car, Cruise, digital, displays, Microsoft Windows, restaurant, virtual

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The real reason CrowdStrike brought companies to their knees

Yesterday, you couldn’t miss seeing photos of the Windows Blue Screen of Death all over airport screens and news of massive problems hitting computers everywhere. Some consider it one of the largest IT outages in history. And it all started with a company you may not have heard about until now: CrowdStrike. (A few major news outlets inaccurately reported it as “CloudStrike.” Now you know better!)

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It's time to update your Social Security login

My inbox is flooded with folks asking about an email they got from the Social Security Administration. I mentioned it earlier this week, and, nope, it’s not a scam — it’s legit. But this change is big enough that we need to spend more time talking about it.

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Using iOS18 Reader Mode

iOS18 has a lot of cool features, including Reader Mode, Safari’s own personal ad blocker.

TikTok double-take: YouTube Shorts has copied yet another TikTok feature: AI voice-overs. Now, when you write video captions, you’ll see an option to add a voice. And if TikTok gets banned in the U.S. because of its ties to Communist China? YouTube’s ready to capitalize.

165% surge

In exterminator searches in the U.S., compared to 2023. Across the country, people are waging war with pests. Three times as many Yelp searches for cockroach exterminators have been completed than at this time last year. According to Yelp, California has the biggest rat problem. Bet you thought it was New York.

Sneak peek: Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold

Looks like they’re going all-in on AI, dubbing it “built for the Gemini era.” It’s expected to drop Aug. 13.

Self-driving Telsa hit & run

How do you explain this to the cops?

Police drone nabs a would-be burglar

Police in California nabbed a burglar near the Santa Monica Pier with a drone. The little guy spotted a car thief using a screwdriver to punch open locks in a parking lot. It called in officers and directed them to the exact location. Amazing, right?

$150,000 richer

A Kentucky man after opening a promo email from Powerball. On a whim, the guy decided to buy a Powerball ticket and paid an extra dollar for the 3x Power Play multiplier. “It was my first time,” he said, adding, “I wasn’t even sure how it worked.” It definitely worked — that dollar tripled his winnings.

$50,000 exception

To Tesla’s one-year resale penalty. After a divorce, Utah retiree Blaine Raddon couldn’t fit his Cybertruck at his new bachelor pad. So, he made a stink on social and, lo and behold, got an email from Tesla saying they had reversed their resale penalty. Blaine sold his Cybertruck and made a $2,000 profit.