💸 Imagine winning the lotto: I bet you have. A Hillsboro, Missouri, couple thought the magical moment was real when someone told them they’d won $17 million. All they had to do was pay taxes upfront. They mailed over $800,000 in cash and gift cards to random addresses until their daughter figured out what was going on. They’re not getting that money back.
Elon Musk and Sam Altman are fighting like kids on the playground
By The Royal Society, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=152333860; By TechCrunch - TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco 2019 - Day 2, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=127902290
It feels like forever ago. The first time I tried ChatGPT, I knew it would change everything. Back in 2022, images of people had seven fingers and every other thing a chatbot spit out was nonsense. I asked Google’s Gemini for a Bible verse and it told me no because the Bible was a copyrighted work. Yikes.
At first, few of us seriously considered AI taking over our jobs, rewriting history or even creating wars. But the tech kept advancing, and then came DeepSeek, an AI model from Communist China. Suddenly, the stakes felt even higher.
In the middle of all this, we have Elon Musk and Sam Altman fighting like two kids on the playground. Before you send me a note asking why I’m talking about politics … don’t.
This is what’s happening in the world and you need to know about it. If it comes up in conversation, you’ll have an educated opinion.
These two go way back
In 2015, Altman was a 30-year-old Stanford dropout who sold his first company for $43.3 million. Musk was already a billionaire, and his companies were churning out Teslas, rocket ships and the first Starlink satellites.
That year, Musk and Altman got together with nine other folks interested in artificial intelligence to start OpenAI. Three years later, in 2018, Musk put in an offer to take over OpenAI and it was rejected. He then left to start his own AI efforts at Tesla.
Fast-forward to 2022, when OpenAI changed the world with ChatGPT. Musk wasn’t about to be left behind; he launched his own AI, Grok, about a year later. It hasn’t gotten nearly the buzz ChatGPT has.
Last year, Musk sued Altman and OpenAI (more on that below). He withdrew the suit and then refiled it a few months later. They’ve been bickering for years.
Now it’s in the global spotlight
Earlier this week, Musk and a group of investors made a $97.4 billion bid to buy OpenAI.
Altman fired back on X, offering to buy Twitter (X’s former name) for $9.74 billion, knowing fully well Musk paid $44 billion for the platform, whose value has since plummeted. Ouch. Musk called him a “swindler” for that one.
Modern day Jonah
A dad watched a giant whale swallow his son and caught the whole thing on video. Phew, the kid survived! The whale spat him and the kayak he was in out after a few seconds. One moment he’s paddling, the next he’s completely gone.
23 seconds
Tests that predict your fall risk. Test 1: Stand heel-to-toe with one foot touching the front of the other. Test 2: Balance on one leg. Brazilian researchers say 10 seconds (the old baseline) isn’t enough. Aim for 23 seconds. Every extra second lowers your risk of a fall in the next six months by 5%.
It’s everywhere: Hackers uploaded a free survival game to Steam. PirateFi was live for a week on the super-popular gaming site, spreading malware. Today’s cybercriminals have too many tricks up their sleeves. You need real-time protection that’s smarter than they are. My pick, TotalAV, is $19 for the first year and works with Windows PCs, Macs, iPhones and Androids.
57 years old
The new Spanish Scrabble world champion. This is wild. Nigel Richards is from New Zealand and doesn’t speak any Spanish. He has an encyclopedic memory, memorizing words as soon as he reads them. He’s also won the Scrabble world championship multiple times in French and English (paywall link). Reminds me … My dog accidentally swallowed some Scrabble tiles. Her next poop could spell disaster. (Oh, that was so good.)
🎓 Fake it till you make it: On TikTok, people of all ages are pretending they got into Harvard. The viral videos are funny, but it’s no joke that lawsuits have exposed donors and alumni kids getting special treatment. Speaking of … A Texan went to an Ivy League party on the East Coast. He walks up to a group of young women and asks, “Howdy, which school did y’all go to?” One of the women replied, “Yale.” The Texan asked again loudly, “WHICH SCHOOL DID Y’ALL GO TO?” (I saw you smile!)
🙏 Siri to the rescue: I love stories about tech saving lives. A 70-year-old in Florida had a stroke and couldn’t reach his landline. He spent 48 hours drifting in and out of consciousness, then he crawled into the living room. He yelled for Siri to call his daughter, who then contacted 911. He’s doing well! Most stroke patients need help within an hour. Talk about beating the odds.
Fewer bells, fewer whistles: The average CPU performance is dropping for the first time in 20 years. It’s not because chips are getting weaker. Most folks don’t need a powerhouse processor to check emails and scroll social media, so the cheaper option works just fine.
$439
For AirPods that aren’t the default Apple white. ColorWare sells custom-painted earbuds in neutral skin tones with names like “Glaze,” “Toasty” and “Java.” Heads-up: You don’t need to waste money. A colorful AirPod cover is around $5 if you want to jazz yours up.
We may earn a commission from purchases, but our recommendations are always objective.
You might need this: OpenAI’s fancy ChatGPT deep research agent pulls info from multiple sources but takes 30 minutes per search. It’s coming to Free and Plus tiers pretty soon, not just the $200-per-month option. The catch? Plus users get 10 prompts a month and Free users get two. I’ve mentioned before this is great to use with medical issues, business ideas and just about anything that needs a ton of research.
🦉 Gone but not forgotten: RIP to Duolingo’s green owl mascot. In a very strange marketing stunt, the language-learning app put up a video that shows the little guy getting run over by a Cybertruck, shooting through the sky, past space and straight into hell. Now there’s a reward for anyone who IDs the driver. Hey, it worked, because #RIPduo is trending.
🤖 Not the AI Zuck wanted: Harry Potter, Jesus Christ and Taylor Swift walk into a bar … in the form of Meta chatbots. Anyone can whip up a chatbot on Instagram, Messenger or WhatsApp. Meta’s system is supposed to flag religious figures, real-life people and trademarked fictional characters, but it’s easy to get around that with a typo or two.
He’s not that into you: A woman lost $375,000 to someone pretending to be “Virgin River” actor Martin Henderson. It all began when she left a comment on a fan page and “his agent” slid into her DMs to say Martin wanted to chat. The scammer used AI voicemails to lure her in, and she moved to New Zealand to be closer to him. The full story is wild.
🚨 Etsy sellers, watch out: A new scam starts with an email from “support” and a PDF invoice hosted on a legit domain: etsystatic.com. The goal is to get you to fill out fake identity verification requests on a cloned Etsy site. Official Etsy emails always end with @etsy.com.
3.7 cents
Cost to mint a penny. President Trump just told the Treasury to call it quits. The government lost $85 million producing pennies over the last fiscal year at almost four times their face value (paywall link). This makes cents.
32 minutes
For what scientists call the perfect hard-boiled egg. Periodic cooking alternates between hot and cold water every two minutes to achieve cooked whites and creamy yolks. If I had 32 minutes, I wouldn’t be eating a hard-boiled egg. I ordered a chicken and an egg from Amazon today. I’ll let you know.
Gotta close my rings: Fitness influencers are all over a new “hack” for more accurate step tracking: Strapping a smartwatch to your ankle instead of your wrist. One woman tried it with a 10-minute jaunt around Target. On her wrist, the watch recorded 91 steps; on her ankle, 835 steps. If you try it, know you’re losing out on features like heart rate and CO2 tracking. Another downside is you look like a prisoner with an ankle monitor.
📸 “Time to take a selfie”: That’s probably not a wise thought after stealing $300,000 in blinged-out jewelry. But that’s exactly what the guys who broke into Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow’s house did. The three Chilean men are linked to other athlete break-ins. Around this time last year, Chilean gangs targeted my house.
Update your PC: Like, now! This month’s Patch Tuesday update fixes four zero-day vulnerabilities and 55 other issues. Go to Start > Settings > Update & Security > Windows Update and hit Check for updates. By the way, you can update your iPhone to 18.3. It’s all good.