A whole new world: Starting in September, Disney+ is cracking down on password sharing outside your household. Rumor has it you can add paid sharing, but no word on the cost yet. Oh, and the price for Disney+ will increase in October; the ad-supported tier will go from $8 per month to $10 monthly, and the ad-free version will rise from $14 to $16 a month. Yup, Mickey needs the money.
Dog sets the house on fire
An indoor cam caught a dog chewing on a lithium-ion battery power bank, which then set the house on fire. The flames spread through the living room in minutes. The family (and all their pets) got out safely. Note to self: Keep power banks up high away from Abby.
51% increase
In daily users on Reddit during the second quarter. Compare that to 1.6% for X and 7% for Meta (paywall link). Why the jump? With AI everywhere, more folks are turning to Reddit as a search engine that includes info from real people.
Hacked Ring camera
Ausharee Mcleod says her 5 year old son’s Ring camera was hacked after he heard a voice whisper “hey” in the middle of the night.
293% increase
In email attacks, compared to last year. Email scams exploded in the first half of 2024, including increases in ransomware, malware and phishing attempts. AI might not be helping tech companies turn a profit yet, but it’s sure helping cyber crooks.
💸 Wads up? Cash App is paying out a $15 million settlement, up to $2,500 per person. You qualify if your account info was part of a data breach or if someone made fraudulent withdrawals or transfers between Aug. 23, 2018, and Aug. 20, 2024. Submit your claim form by Nov. 18, 2024.
The have’s and the have yachts
Billionaire Mark Zuckerberg, sporting a gold chain and Gen Z curly hair, knows everyone’s roasting him online. From being called a lizard to claims he doesn’t blink, he’s ok with it. At 40, he says from his 387-foot mega yacht, if you’re gonna joke, “At least make them good memes.”
50% of Apple stock
Offloaded for billionaire Warren Buffet. Berkshire Hathaway’s money moves always make the news. In the last quarter, they went from 790 million shares of Apple to 400 million shares. Wonder what he knows.
15,000 employees
Are getting laid off at Intel. After reporting $1.6 billion in quarterly losses, Intel is axing 15% of its workforce by the end of this year. So, what the heck is going on? Microsoft and Apple both ditched Intel chips in their newest laptops.
Ferrari exec spotted a scam
This is the type of next level thinking we should all have in the age of AI. If something doesn’t feel right, then it probably isn’t.
🗓️ Wait two weeks: Don’t buy any Google tech right now; they’re revealing a bunch of new tech at their Made by Google event on Aug. 13. That includes the Pixel 9 lineup, Pixel Buds Pro 2 and new Pixel Watch 3. Then comes the race to offload old inventory at cheaper prices …
AI + Chrome: Check out the new stuff rolling out with the latest Google Chrome update. Lens lets you select part of a page or tap on an object in an image to ask questions about it. Tab Compare gathers product data from your open tabs into one table. And you can search your browsing history using normal language, like “What’s the Mexican restaurant I ordered from last week?” Update your desktop app to get these features.
When you don’t excel, people spreadsheet: On Tuesday, July 30, Outlook was stalling, the Starbucks app crashed and Office 365 was down for eight hours. We now know a cyberattack took down the cloud computing system Microsoft Azure and a ton of apps and services with it. D’oh! Microsoft’s attempts to stop the attacks actually made the outages worse.
Olympian OnlyFans Accounts
Could you imagine being one of these athletes and still needing a side hustle to pay the bills?
Byte-Ban: Starting Aug. 15, U.S. House of Representatives staffers are banned from using all ByteDance apps on government devices. TikTok’s already out, but now the ban includes photo-editing apps CapCut and Hypic, chat app Lark and social media app Lemon8. It all comes down to TikTok’s ties to Communist China. I’m surprised it took them this long.
Update to iOS 17.6 ASAP: It packs 35 security fixes, tackling vulnerabilities that could let hackers control your phone. Don’t wait for it to pop up. On iPhone XS or later, go to Settings > General > Software Update now. Update your iPad, too, if you have one.
🛑 Don’t be Russian me: The Kremlin is using gullible Americans to spread false info about the U.S. presidential race. They’ve hired marketing firms to pump out propaganda via phony news websites and social media. Be extra cautious if you see posts from a “local” news outlet you’ve never heard of.
What's a 'Coffee Badger?'
Amazon is cracking down on ‘coffee badgers’ because of how many people are guilty doing it. Be careful, Big Brother is watching.
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Mom who allowed her 5-year-old to play with her phone captures a priceless moment
Delphine Expert gave her 5-year-old daughter, Zoey, her phone to record “treasures” she found on a walk, but she never expected “to be one of the treasures.”