🤖 No more humans working: The future is bright, if you’re a GPU or own six condos. Mechanize wants to replace all human work with AI. They say it’ll boost the economy since companies won’t have to pay salaries. Because robots are totally going to pay taxes for us.
514% jump
Taobao downloads spiked this month. The Chinese shopping app is now the No. 2 free iPhone app, behind DHgate at No. 1. Folks are buying directly from China after watching TikToks of luxury items being relabeled and marked up. Now for $12.99, you too can own a “Gucchi” belt with radiation.
🏠 Zillow’s new rule: If a home is advertised anywhere online, it now has to be listed on Zillow, too, or they’ll blacklist it. Why? Some brokerages have been posting homes on their own sites first to give their clients early access. Harsh. Long story short: If you’re selling, now you know, thanks to me.
😒 Comcast’s sneaky offer: New Xfinity customers can now lock their internet price for five years. Talking $55/month for 400 Mbps or $105 for 2.1 Gbps. The catch? It doesn’t include taxes or fees. Plus, internet deals will get cheaper with competition from Starlink and AT&T’s satellite service. Locking in your price for five years sounds great, until you realize the fees are multiplying in the dark like gremlins.
🧠 ChatGPT can “think with images”: OpenAI’s latest models, o3 and o4-mini, take ChatGPT’s visual reasoning to unsettlingly sharp levels. They can describe what’s in a photo, zoom, crop and enhance images. “Thinking with images” sounds cool until your AI starts judging your handwriting and that stain on your shirt.
32 minutes
How long it takes to cook the perfect egg. If you hard-boil it, the yolk goes chalky. Soft-boil it, and the whites stay wobbly. Why? Yolks cook best at 149°F, whites at 185°F. Scientists found a fix: Switch the egg between boiling water (212°F) and tepid water (86°F) every two minutes for 32 minutes. This isn’t a breakfast, it’s a culinary hostage situation.
Mind over metal: Move over, Neuralink. Precision Neuroscience, started by a Neuralink cofounder, just tested a brain patch thinner than a human hair on Tim Fisher, a 63-year-old with Parkinson’s (paywall link). Unlike Neuralink, this patch sits gently on your brain without poking it. The FDA just approved it for use for up to 30 days. Tim even fist-bumped the robotic hand used in the test. Love that.
🛡️ Google scrambles to fix Gmail phishing mess: I told you about this on Saturday, but it’s still going in full force. Don’t fall for spoofed emails claiming your Gmail account is about to be closed down. These are passing Gmail’s scam filters, slipping into inboxes looking squeaky-clean. You know it’s bad when the scammer gets better deliverability than your friend’s birthday email.
Around 70%
Of people are polite to AI. The kicker? All those “pleases” and “thank yous” are adding up and costing OpenAI tens of millions of dollars in electricity. CEO Sam Altman doesn’t think it’s a bad thing, though. Why? Just in case there’s an AI uprising someday. Plus, being nice can get you better responses.
AGI, but then what? While most companies are figuring out how to responsibly build AI, Google’s DeepMind is already hiring for what comes after, AI being smarter than humans. The job description should include “Please stop Skynet.”
🤖 Robocop is real: Thailand just showed off the Cyborg 1.0, and yes, it’s a bot dressed in full police gear. This thing has 360-degree cameras for eyes, facial recognition to spot suspects and the ability to detect weapons. The creepiest part? Its AI can analyze CCTV and drone footage from anywhere so it can keep tabs on everything. Coming soon near you, there’s a robot dude with WALL-E eyes and a badge.
7,000 miles
That’s the range of the U.S. military’s MQ-9B spy drone. The twist? It just got a whole lot deadlier. They’ve strapped a 25-kilowatt laser to it that can melt incoming kamikaze drones and missiles right out of the sky. And it doesn’t stop there: The laser can be scaled up to 300kW in future versions.
🌿 2,000-year-old garden under Jesus’ tomb? This is amazing. Italian archaeologists just found ancient grapevines and olive trees buried beneath the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the same place long believed to house the tomb of Jesus. There’s also this post going viral about Jesus’ body found under the Great Pyramid of Egypt.
🧓 Tech helps older brains: Screens rotting brains is an old wive’s tale apparently. A huge new study of 400,000+ adults found using digital tech is linked to a 58% lower risk of cognitive decline in older adults. Why? Learning to use new tech keeps your brain challenged. You or your grandma yelling at an iPad might secretly be gaining IQ points.
📱 Need a tough phone or tablet? Samsung just announced the rugged Galaxy XCover7 Pro and Galaxy Tab Active5 Pro. They’re water- and dust-resistant and can survive drops from up to 1.5 meters (that’s 5 feet for people like me who never understood the metric system). As for performance, both run the Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 with 6GB RAM. Oh, and the batteries are removable. Pricing is still TBA.
Safe Wi-Fi anywhere: Using public Wi-Fi is risky no matter where you go. It doesn’t make a difference if you stay at a five-star luxury hotel, have lunch at your hometown diner or you’re at the airport. The easy way to protect yourself? Turn on a VPN.
💸 Not a bad side hustle: Twentysomethings are making up to $36,000 a year by renting their everyday items like T-shirts, speakers and lawn mowers. On the clothing app Pickle, for example, a Cult Gaia dress that normally costs $898 can be yours temporarily for $100 (paywall link). Dang, my garage full of “investments” could be a passive income gold mine.
🔥 Power pod meltdown: Casely is recalling its Power Pods 5000mAh MagSafe wireless chargers because the lithium-ion batteries inside may overheat, expand or literally catch fire. Hit this link to see if it’s listed on your Amazon account recall list.
We may earn a commission from purchases, but our recommendations are always objective.