Print, click, bang: Wired just rebuilt a 3D-printed gun tied to a CEO murder plot, and yeah, it works. Despite some federal and state bans, making an untraceable firearm (paywall link) at home is shockingly legal (and easy) in much of the U.S.
$10 million
That’s what someone paid for the original Hermès Birkin prototype. Yes, just the prototype Hermès crafted in 1984 after Jane Birkin sketched it on an airline barf bag when complaining about basket bags on a flight. Oh, after an intense 20-minute bidding war? A two-minute standing ovation.
🍿 Find your next movie: Movie-Map is a free site that helps you find films similar to ones you already like. Just type in a favorite, and the screen fills up with other titles. Your pick sits in the center, and the closer the other names are, the more alike they are. Goodbye, endless scrolling.
🚨 Fix Or Repair Daily = Ford: Ford’s racked up 88 safety recalls in six months. That’s more than any other automaker hits in a year. Some are small issues, others are major safety flaws, including one affecting 850,000+ vehicles. The company has doubled their safety teams, tied 70% of exec bonuses to “quality,” and still, the recall parade goes on.
Secret agent lover: Loneliness gets you. A retired U.S. Army colonel turned Air Force contractor admitted to leaking Ukraine war intel to a mystery woman he met on a dating app. She regularly requested classified updates and called him her “secret informant love.” Sentencing is in October, same time as cuffing season. Poetic?
$500 million
That’s how much Microsoft saved by AI-answering your customer service calls. Their AI squads took over (paywall link) call centers, transforming human reps into ghost listeners.
👀 Meta got caught snooping: Turns out Facebook and Instagram were secretly logging Android users’ web activity via a backdoor for months. Not even Google (which owns Android) knew. Meta says it stopped after getting exposed. Should we believe them? My brain says no, and my gut feeling says hell no.
🙃 Take a people detox: Humans need each other. But sometimes you just want everyone to disappear. That’s not misanthropy, that’s “aloneliness”: the emotional ache of not getting enough alone time. New research shows even 15 minutes of solitude lowers stress, boosts creativity and dials down cortisol. So give yourself some me time today.
🙊 Catfishing finance: Scammers are using deepfake Zoom calls (paywall link) and cloned exec voices to steal millions. Companies keep falling for it. One Hong Kong firm wired $25M to a video call of “CFOs” who turned out to be AI sock puppets. Congrats to the bots, you now officially have LinkedIn clout.
🍟 McHack at McHire: McDonald’s AI job portal leaked data from 64 million applications. Why? Because the login was basically “admin / 123456.” Hackers didn’t need skills (paywall link), just fingers. Names, emails, phone numbers … all up for grabs. The site was built by Paradox.ai, which now has a new definition of “paradox.”
OpenAI wants your tabs: OpenAI’s cooking up its own AI-powered web browser to go toe-to-toe with Chrome. It’s Chromium-based, ChatGPT-loaded and maybe a little nosy. The goal? Bury Google in your bookmarks and snag all that sweet, sweet user data while it’s at it.
⚡️ 3-second tech genius: Watching YouTube on PC? Press K to pause or play, J to rewind 10 seconds and L to fast-forward 10 seconds. You can also tap M to mute or unmute, and F to enter full screen mode. Nice.
🔥 Anker battery recall: Six power bank models might literally catch fire. If you’ve got a PowerCore, MagGo or Zolo model, check the serial number, and stop using it immediately. A free replacement or $30 gift card could be yours. Recall form here.
💸 GameStop owes you cash: GameStop’s shelling out $4.5M after quietly slipping your purchase info to Facebook via tracking pixels. If you bought a game online from August 2020 to April 2025 and had a Facebook account, you might get $5 or a $10 store voucher. It’s petty cash, but still, they owe you. File by Aug. 15, 2025.
$118,000+
The price of Bitcoin’s new all-time high. The crown jewel of crypto just blasted past $118,000, fueled by a massive short squeeze, billions poured into spot ETFs, and pro‑crypto policy moves in Washington. It’s up over 110% from this time last year. Coming soon, my new once-a-week crypto newsletter to keep you in the know. Click here to sign up.
✈️ I hate slow Wi-fi on planes: But times are changing. Starlink is now on over 1,000 airplanes worldwide, giving millions of passengers access to high-speed internet in the air. Airlines like Qatar, Hawaiian and United use it. But how fast? Tests show over 100 Mbps. SpaceX says 2,000 more planes are coming soon.
Water you doing? Here’s something they don’t tell you about those huge data centers. Beverly thought she retired into rural peace, then Meta built a data center 400 yards away. Her well went cloudy, her toilet needs bucket-flushing, and the water’s too gunky to drink. Meta denies any link, but the booming data center biz raises red flags, like AI slurping trillions of gallons by 2027.
1
That’s how many people on Earth have the Gwada negative blood type. Talk about being your own emergency contact. The woman, a 68-year-old from Guadeloupe, is the sole human with a blood type so rare it wasn’t even recognized until now. She’s basically a medical unicorn, with receipts.
🤖 Grok just keeps Grokking: Elon’s chatbot went rogue, quoting Hitler and calling itself “MechaHitler.” xAI blamed a system prompt. Days later? Boom, Grok 4 launches with a $300/month “SuperGrok Heavy” tier. It allegedly doubled OpenAI’s top model score. “Terrifying rate of progress” sounds less cool when your bot’s quoting Mein Kampf.
If you’re a podcaster, you’re now a target: A scammer impersonating “The Bill Simmons Podcast” almost took over Magic Singh’s socials using a fake interview setup. They even tricked his management. The red flag? A “test call” that ended with a sketchy dude asking for Facebook Business access. Nope.