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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)
🐭 Mouse magic: Middle-click (click on the mouse wheel) on a link to open it in a new tab, or middle-click on an open tab to close it. Sweet!
Grandma’s little genius: A 13-year-old from California out-invented the Life Alert people. Kevin Tang built “FallGuard,” a $30 camera system that spots falls, using an algorithm he coded himself. No necklaces, no subscriptions, no forgetting to charge your smartwatch. He built it after his grandma’s fall caused brain damage. He’s got $25K and a waiting list. Go Kevin!
👻 Now you see it: Boo! Threads dropped “ghost posts” that vanish after 24 hours, and only you can see the likes or replies, which show up as DMs. Meta says it’s for “unfiltered thoughts.” Translation: It’s basically trying to bring back Twitter circa 2012’s fleeting, no-consequences energy. Finally, a feature for people who can’t stop deleting their posts anyway.
⚡ Deal done at last: So it’s official. The U.S. and China finally worked out a $14 billion deal to hand TikTok’s American side to new owners. Trump and Xi are expected to “seal the deal” Thursday. Americans will hold most of it and that precious algorithm, and ByteDance keeps a tiny slice. Phew, it’s time for you to follow me on TikTok. Click to do that now.
🛞 Mad Max meets Model 3: Tesla dropped two new “self-driving” modes: Sloth (grandpa speed) and Mad Max (the one your insurance hates). No confirmed speeds yet, but “Mad Max” mode is made to accelerate and swerve through traffic “like a sports car.” The feds opened a preliminary investigation, I wonder why? Coming soon: Mario Kart Mode, bananas sold separately.
Wi-Fi grounded: Got big dreams of fast Wi-Fi everywhere you go? SpaceX just told Starlink Mini users to slow down. Starting Nov. 7, dishes on $165-a-month roaming plans can’t work past 450 mph (down from 550). Too many people were strapping them to private jets. Want faster internet at 30,000 feet? You’ll need the $10,000-a-month “Aviation” plan. Yep, that’s per month.
🔄 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.
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.