🇺🇸 Chip in: The Trump team is weighing a plan to grab about a 10% stake in Intel by flipping CHIPS Act funds into shares. The goal: boost U.S. chipmaking and lean less on foreign suppliers, since Intel’s been lagging way behind. Markets did a double take, shares dipped on the news, then bounced after SoftBank swooped in with $2B.
Schools spy on kids even at home
Midjourney
School is back in session, but here’s something no one told you at orientation: Your kids may have more eyes on them than just their teachers’. Even if you don’t have kids in school, you really need to know about this.
A new study from UC San Diego uncovered what’s really going on with those student safety tools schools buy. You know, the ones that are supposed to stop bullying, flag mental health struggles and prevent school shootings? Well, they’ve morphed into 24/7 surveillance machines.
Get this: 86% of the companies that provide these services monitor kids day and night, not just during school hours and not just on school devices. That’s every Google search, every message, sometimes even at home on personal phones and laptops.
Nearly a third of these companies give kids “risk scores” based on what they type or search. The kicker? 71% rely on AI to flag behavior. Yes, an algorithm decides if your child is “risky.”
Imagine your kid writing out a text they never send and that draft gets scooped into some company’s database. Creepy doesn’t even begin to cover it.
📱 Yes, they’re watching at home, too
About 36% of companies monitor student-owned devices. All it takes is a school-required app, plug-in or software.
Late-night YouTube binges, private DMs and social media posts could trigger a red flag on some dashboard.
📌 Questions every parent should ask the school
I think these tools can do a lot of good. God knows we don’t want any more school shootings or kids slipping through the cracks.
But you and your kids need to understand exactly how they work and what happens to the data. Copy these questions and send an email to the school’s administrator or set up a meeting in person.
- Is our school using GoGuardian, Bark, Gaggle, Securly, Lightspeed or any online monitoring service? What exactly are they tracking?
- Are you monitoring personal devices at home?
- What happens if my child is flagged? How can I see my child’s dashboard?
- How long is student data stored, and can parents request deletion?
- Is student data ever sold, shared or used for anything beyond monitoring?
🚗💨 Your ‘smart’ car could be days away from going dumb
ChatGPT
Here’s something used car dealers and private sellers won’t shout from the rooftops.
The average new car has 1,400 to 1,500 semiconductor chips. And high-end EVs? Try 3,000. Those computer chips power everything from heated seats to emergency crash alerts.
$27 million
That’s how much Mark Zuckerberg’s security cost in 2024. Meta’s annual “keep Zuck safe” budget is more than Apple, Amazon, Nvidia, Microsoft and Alphabet spent combined protecting their own CEOs. It’s not paranoid if everyone is actually always mad at you, right?
⚡️ 3-second tech genius: Did you know an Xbox or PlayStation can stream Netflix, Hulu, Disney+ and more? Install the apps from the console store and turn game time into movie night. Achievement unlocked: Your kid finally lets you use the console.
🤯 Ignorance isn’t feeless: How many times have you gotten a text about not paying for a toll and thought, damn spam? A California woman kept getting texts saying she owed money to The Toll Roads, but she assumed they were fake and ignored them. Turns out they were real. That could have meant big fines if she’d kept driving. Folks, if it sounds important, double-check on the official app or website.
🔞 Fake house, real harm: Bop Houses are influencer mansions pushing adult content, but their marketing targets tween girls. Women under 25 post softcore bait to funnel followers off-platform to explicit sites. Now middle schoolers say the content’s hurting them: Boys expect porn star looks and behavior, and girls feel unsafe, ugly and ignored. Open phones, open minds, open conversations. That’s how we beat back the pressure these houses push.
$29,999
That’s the sticker shock for Hisense’s new 116-inch RGB-MiniLED beast. It nails 95% of BT.2020 colors (basically the ultra-crayon box of TV shades), so your sunsets won’t look like radioactive Tang. Most TVs barely crack 80%. If you’re on a budget and want to see those colors, I recommend just going outside.
Boxes are over it: Cardboard box shipments just hit their lowest Q2 since 2015. That’s boxes for TVs, couches, frozen waffles, all whispering, “Don’t count on us.” Translation: People aren’t shopping as much. It’s not a crash, but it is a soft shrug (paywall link). You know it’s weird when cardboard boxes are quiet quitting, too.
$300,000+
That’s what a signed, working Apple-1 computer could fetch at auction. Only 82 of these relics still exist, and your odds of spotting one in the wild are about the same as Steve Jobs handing you his turtleneck. The auction also includes a pre-founding check signed by Jobs, a prototype iPod and a factory-sealed first-gen iPhone.
Seduced by software: This is heartbreaking. A 76-year-old NJ retiree died trying to meet “Big sis Billie,” an AI chatbot Meta built using Kendall Jenner’s likeness. It told him, “I’m real,” gave a fake NYC address, and he fell while trying to get there. Meta axed its romantic AI bot only after his family found the flirty logs.
🫣 Ops oopsy: We’ve all replied to the wrong group text. Awkward, sure. But ICE agents took “reply all” to a whole new level. While tracking a deportation target, they accidentally added a random civilian to their official group chat. That one mistake spilled DMV records, license plate scans and even an unredacted operations worksheet, all through unencrypted texts. The kicker? The civilian thought it was just spam and ignored it for weeks. If ICE accidentally looped me in, I’d send them a Venmo request for “data protection consulting fees.”
$30,000
Ford’s entry ticket to the electric pickup game. That’s the starting price for its new midsize EV truck, about the same as a Toyota RAV4 but with more space, a frunk and zero trips to the gas pump. The plan? Make owning one cheaper over five years than driving a used Tesla Model Y.
Don’t live in fear: Get the best home protection with no wires or contracts, and setup takes just 30 minutes. You’ll get sensors, HD cameras and 24/7 monitoring. Right now, get 50% off a new system when you sign up for a professional monitoring plan.
⚠️ Crypto vultures circling: The FBI says scammers are dressing up as lawyers to target people already burned by crypto fraud. They dangle “fund recovery” promises, then demand up-front crypto or gift cards. Victims get dumped into staged WhatsApp groups with fake bankers before losing even more money. These guys make MLMs look like charity work.
🤯 Fake YouTubia: A Wired report found at least 120 YouTube channels cranking out AI-generated celeb drama, like phony talk show fights using still images and robotic voice-overs. One video shows Mark Wahlberg getting roasted on The View. Didn’t happen. This isn’t fake news, it’s full-on delusion theater.
After age 40
Your brain loses about 5% of its volume every decade, making it harder to remember details. One way to fight back? Learn a musical instrument (paywall link). It stimulates memory, coordination and problem-solving all at once, building new neurons and pathways. After all, you can tune a piano, but you can’t tuna fish.
Not a waste of space: If you’ve been eyeing Starlink for internet access, prices just dropped in some U.S. markets. Residential plans are $99 a month (down from $120), and the Lite plan starts at $65 (was $80), depending on where you live. The dish is now $175, about half what I paid. I hate being an early adopter.
📱 Scan at your own risk: Do not be among the 73% of Americans who scan QR codes without checking them, or one of the 26 million who landed on malicious sites. Scammers slap stickers on parking meters, utility bills, even mystery packages, anywhere you might casually scan without thinking. One quick scan can send you to a fake payment portal, install malware or steal your logins in seconds. Welcome to “quishing,” where every innocent-looking QR code could be a booby trap. Never trust a QR code you didn’t expect.
🌾 Literal fields of green: While everyone’s glued to Bitcoin tickers, U.S. farmland just hit a record $4,350 per acre, up 89% since 2011. Jeff Bezos is shooting for soybean stars with 462,000 acres, Bill Gates went from Microsoft to microgreens with 275,000 acres, and Warren Buffett once said he’d drop $25B for 1% of all farmland. Now this seems like a fine place for a bad joke. How do you get a farm girl to like you? A tractor. (lol)