🔄 The hacker becomes the hackee: If you’ve ever thought, “I’ll just grab the cracked version” of a software or video game, surprise, you’re the product. Check Point found thousands of YouTube “free software” videos that sneak malware into your PC. Some hit hundreds of thousands of views. That’s crazy. Turns out that you can actually fool all the people all the time. Remember, if it’s free and asks you to disable antivirus, it’s a setup.
Pawns, kings and queens
ChatGPT
Barry and I play chess a few times a month, and he’s always completely floored when I win. Why? He plays everyday on Chess.com, and I only play with him.
Here’s a business success I bet you didn’t see coming, I know I didn’t. Chess. Yes, the game that’s been around for about 1,500 years is the center of a billion-dollar empire.
Chess.com launched back in 2007, when two buddies scooped up the domain name for $56,000 (a bargain, if you ask me) and built a site for people to play, learn and connect. Growth was slow and steady, and then 2020 hit.
👑 Between a rook and a hard place
With everyone stuck at home, chess made a surprise comeback.
Then The Queen’s Gambit dropped on Netflix and made it downright cool. (If you haven’t seen the miniseries yet, watch it tonight. It’s fantastic!) Sign-ups on Chess.com exploded, up 500% year-over-year.
Twitch tournaments like “PogChamps” pulled in hundreds of thousands of viewers. A game that used to be old and niche? Suddenly, it was pop culture.
Chess.com runs on a freemium model. You can play for free, or upgrade for lessons, deep analysis and ad-free fun.
♟️ Control the center always
In 2022 alone, subscriptions brought in more than $150 million. Then came their checkmate move. They bought Play Magnus Group, the startup founded by world champion Magnus Carlsen, for $83 million. That gave them a treasure trove of content, training tools and more control of the chess world.
They didn’t just build a platform, they built the entire ecosystem. Today, they’ve got over 200 million users in over 60 countries. Wow.
So next time someone says, “That idea’s already been done, forget it,” so was chess. And now it’s worth a billion dollars. Bravo! Remember, if you ever forget the rules of chess, you’re allowed to check. (lol)
7 quick tech fixes that’ll make you feel like a genius
Bing Image Creator
It’s Saturday, which means two things:
So let’s channel that procrastination energy into productivity. I’m talking about the satisfying kind where you fix stuff in under a minute and feel wildly accomplished.
⚡️ 3-second tech genius: Switching to dark mode on YouTube desktop is gentler on your eyes and makes videos feel more immersive. Click your profile pic (top right), select Appearance and set it to Dark theme.
The phone scam evolution: This is frightening. A cybersecurity firm built a real-time voice deepfake, meaning someone can sound like you on a call instantly. Cheap laptop, open-source tools, done. They tested it, and people fell for it almost every time. So when your “boss” calls asking for gift cards, maybe call back first. You should take a sec and check it out.
💄 Swipe left on spies: In the most James Bond news today, U.S. counterintelligence says foreign agents, mostly from China and Russia, are cozying up to Silicon Valley execs through dating apps, LinkedIn and startup circles. Some even marry their marks. Forget malware, this is man-ware. Roses are red, violets are blue, your crypto’s gone, and she works for Xi, too.
Hold the phone: Do you love talking to robots on the phone? Have I got good news for you! Yelp’s rolling out two talking bots. A Host AI for restaurant bookings and Receptionist for business calls. They’ll handle everything from wait lists to “do you take dogs?” for about $99 a month per restaurant. Next up, a suggested 25% tip.
It’s a sign: A Kenyan engineer built what’s basically Google Translate for sign language. His app, Terp 360, listens to speech and uses AI-powered 3D avatars to sign in real time. It’s built with motion-capture tech (sensors track actual signers’ movements), and it already knows thousands of words. I’ve always wanted to learn ASL.
🔫 Artificial unintelligence: After football practice, a Maryland teen got swarmed by armed police because an AI gun detector thought his Doritos bag was a pistol. In other words, a weapon of nacho destruction. Turns out, the system flagged the way he held the bag as “gun-like.” The teen was cuffed, searched and cleared. Put your hands up and the chips where I can see them!
AWS eats its own: Here’s the cloud tea, Amazon says this week’s massive AWS outage wasn’t a hack but a software glitch so bad it fought itself. That’s right, a mini-tech civil war. Two automation systems tried to update network records at once and triggered a global domino crash. A chunk of the internet went briefly offline, even some people’s smart beds.
♣️ Hackers, hustlers and high rollers: This is nuts. The feds unsealed an indictment straight out of Ocean’s Eleven, full of poker tables with hidden cameras, hacked Deckmate shufflers, even contact lenses that read cards. 30+ people, including the NBA’s Chauncey Billups, Damon Jones and Terry Rozier, were charged in a $7 million poker scam tied to Mafia families. Maybe your uncle blaming the game for being “rigged” was actually onto something. But also, maybe he’s just bad at poker.
GM’s hands-free future: Are you tired of driving? GM’s 2028 Cadillac Escalade IQ wants to let you fully check out, literally. The next-gen Super Cruise drives itself (on approved highways) with lidar, radar and cameras, and the dash glows turquoise when it’s safe to let auto drive take over. Oh, and Google’s Gemini AI will chat with you, because silence is awkward.
💻 Delete this now: If you see ads or blogs pitching the “Universe Browser” as the fastest and safest one ever, don’t fall for it. Researchers found it secretly routes your data to China, logs keystrokes and installs hidden programs. They probably should have called it “Internet Exploiter.” Millions downloaded it, thinking it was legit. If you’re one of them, I hate to say it, but you need to wipe your system and reinstall the OS. This thing digs in deep.
Lunatics, start your remotes: Amazon relaunched Luna, its cloud service that streams games over the internet. You’ve got it for free if you have Prime. Sign in on your phones, and play against each other on the TV. It’s finally time to settle the score with your aunt.
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📦 Surprise package season: It’s not your lucky day. USPS says if you get a random package this holiday, don’t celebrate too fast. It’s probably a “brushing” scam, where fake sellers send cheap stuff to your address so they can post bogus “verified buyer” reviews. Basically, you’re an unwitting five-star accomplice.
🛰️ Starlink’s scam shutdown: After months of heat, SpaceX says it finally disabled over 2,000 Starlink kits in Myanmar that scammers were using for massive fraud and trafficking rings. Local governments raided one site and found dozens of Starlink dishes running cybercrime ops. Wild how crypto and romance scammers had better broadband than most small towns.
Modern family: Who do you text first when life happens? It’s a group chat. Giphy found almost 80% of Gen Z spill big news there first. Jobs, breakups, messy updates, all of it. Over half say their chat knows them better than their own family. Basically, it’s the new living room but with emojis and memes.
🌡️ Nest goes dumb tomorrow: If you’ve got a 1st or 2nd gen Nest Learning Thermostat, it’s going to lose its smarts. That means no more app control, Home/Away Assist or remote tweaks, only good old manual buttons. Basically, it’s a fancy dial. Upgrade now, there are some pretty solid deals out there. My favorite is this little guy.
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🪟 SID happens: Install the updates KB5064081 or KB5065426, and boom, Windows might forget who you are. Microsoft says the bug hits Windows 11 and Server 2025 systems cloned with duplicate SIDs, and only a full rebuild fixes it. Network shares, remote desktop, even file access are all toast. The fix? Start over. Fun times.
Speaking of glasses, lights out, creep on: A hobbyist named Bong Kim (no, it’s def not me on 4/20) is charging folks $60 to disable the tiny LED on Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses. Yeah, the one that lights up when you’re recording. Meta built it to stop creeps from filming in secret. Kim’s mod kills that warning completely, so the specs can still record with no light. I’m telling you, these glasses are a creeper’s dream come true.