🍏 Bad apple: This doesn’t happen often. Move over, Newton (the $700 tiny pre-iPad), Pippin (the $600 gaming console) and Portable (the 16-pound $6,500 laptop). Make room for Apple’s $3,500 Vision Pro AR headset, which has sold fewer than 500,000 units since launch. They’re not making it anymore. About 600,000 are stocked up to last the rest of the year. Don’t buy one.
The folks trading retirement for influencer status
TikTok.com/@therealirvinrandle, Instagram.com/trainwithjoan, Instagram.com/grandmajoysroadtrip
Who do you imagine when I say “social media influencer?” I’ll bet a young, hot model or a chiseled guy into cars. It’s time to expand your horizons.
I love that Joy Ryan didn’t even get her passport until she was 91. At 94, she’s on a mission to visit every continent with her grandson. So far, she’s at four out of seven. Joy is also the oldest person to visit all 63 U.S. national parks.
She’s posting “Grandma Joy’s Road Trip” on Instagram. She’s part of the trend of “grandfluencers” (“grandparent” and “influencer”) racking up millions of followers and fans of all ages. Maybe this is your sign to get this idea going with your grandparents, parents or even yourself.
Defying stereotypes
You probably think grandfluencers’ fans are older adults, too, right? Nope, most are young adults.
Take 94-year-old Lillian Droniak, aka “Grandma Droniak.” She went viral by laying down the three rules she wants people to follow at her funeral: Cry, but not too much (don’t embarrass yourself); Bertha isn’t invited (Who’s she?); and get drunk afterward.
Her 14.6 million TikTok followers love her sass, and I do, too. After she was hospitalized for breaking her leg, she shrugged it off, saying she “slayed too hard.” Love her.
Then, there’s 78-year-old Joan MacDonald. She was overweight and struggling with health issues. With the help of her daughter, a fitness coach, she now deadlifts 175 pounds for her 2 million Instagram followers and sports a bodybuilder’s physique, along with crop tops. She’s proof it’s never too late for a glow-up.
Offering up wisdom
Navy vet Kenny Jary, or “patriotickenny,” tells stories and tries out new tech with his 2.7 million followers. The 82-year-old has a chronic lung condition and gets around with a mobility scooter.
When Kenny’s last scooter broke down, his followers raised money for a new one. He’s since paid it forward and helped 119 other vets with their mobility needs. How awesome is that?
Be yourself
Space junk falls on a Kenyan village
A metallic ring 8 feet in diameter and 1,100 pounds fell from space into a village in Kenya. No one got hurt, phew. It seems to be a piece of a rocket launch vehicle.
80 years old
When the risk of getting cancer starts to decline. The risk is highest in our 60s and 70s, then it drops. Researchers studying lung cancer found a key protein, NUPR1, that behaves differently in older cells. I love reading about breakthroughs like this. I hate cancer.
I spy a killer: This is a strange story. Ring camera footage caught Maria Munoz confronting her husband’s mistress and giving her cheating spouse, Joel Pellot, an ultimatum on the doorstep. Maria died days later. Her husband said she overdosed, but toxicology results didn’t add up. He secretly poisoned her with drugs he stole from the hospital he worked at just to avoid an expensive divorce. He’s serving a life sentence.
🚘 Turo in trouble: The terrorists in the New Orleans attack and Cybertruck explosion outside Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas had one thing in common: They used the same car-sharing app, Turo. With Turo, you rent from a person, not a big car rental company. Turo’s no small app; it had 3.5 million bookings last year.
4-word phrase
You shouldn’t say to kids: “I’m disappointed in you.” Columbia sociologist Adam Galinsky says all it does is make them feel shame. Try being constructive instead, like, “How can we set up a system to get your homework done?” I still remember when my dad said to me after one college semester, “You get an A in Physics, Computer Programming, Statistics and Economics but a D in Accounting. What the hell is wrong with you?” He didn’t have to use the word “disappointed!” 😂
9 days after going missing
A four-year-old German shepherd mix named Athena rang her owner’s doorbell. It was Christmas Eve at 2:30 a.m. — a holiday miracle! The Green Cove Springs, Florida, family searched as far as Jacksonville and St. Augustine. Check out the doorbell cam video that melted my heart.
Check those extensions: Google Chrome extensions Cyberhaven, Internxt VPN, VPNCity and ParrotTalks just got hijacked to include malicious code that steals your data. Browse the full list of compromised extensions here. It’s part of a bigger campaign. If you have a ton of extensions you did not really vet, disable your extensions for now. Hit the puzzle piece icon near your URL bar > Manage Extensions > toggle them off.👶🏻 Meet Generation Beta: Born between 2025 and 2039, this next generation won’t sit in traditional classrooms; personalized AI companions will teach and entertain them. They won’t carry phones; it will be in their ears or implanted. Robots will do everyday chores, from cooking to cleaning. They’ll go to space for the heck of it. I sure hope they still get to experience what it means to be human, too.
Don’t buy a new drone now: Coming soon is the DJI Flip, a leaked folding drone priced at $829 that will offer first-person streaming. It has a 34-minute flight time with its 3110mAh battery and a three-axis gimbal camera — geek-speak for impressive.
💔 $1 billion in romance scams: That’s how much more than 64,000 Americans were talked out of, double the total four years ago. The Online Dating Safety Act could help. If approved, it’d require dating apps to notify anyone who has come in contact with a scam account. This begs the question: If they can identify scam accounts, why can’t they just remove them?
The Windows of my soul: Here’s one way to market a product. Microsoft is rolling out its AI assistant, Copilot, as part of its 365 subscription. It’s not free and you can’t opt out. It’s going to cost you an additional $30 per user per month for businesses. Wow.
280 mph
Top speed for China’s new bullet train prototype. That’s a world record and fast enough to zip from New York to Chicago in under three hours. China’s current fastest trains max out at 220 mph. The fastest Amtrak trains go 160 mph, but most top out closer to 100 mph. We really need better trains in the U.S.
Just horrifying: It’s no secret predators go after kids online, but I never thought I’d read whackjob parents are welcoming this (paywall link; Warning: This story contains very disturbing items). The New York Times spent a year investigating girl influencers and parents who encourage them to take sexualized photos and develop relationships with adult men to make money. This is child abuse. CPS should be all over this.
301 terabits per second
New internet speed world record. That’s 4.5 million times faster than the average broadband connection. Some context: At that speed, it’d take one minute to download every single movie listed on IMDb. Speaking of … How do you know the speed of light is much faster than the speed of sound? Because some people appear bright until they open their mouths.
Your very own Rosey: Nvidia, the $3 trillion AI chip giant, is betting on robotics as the next big thing. Soon, they’re launching the Jetson Thor, a new “brain” designed for robots. The Jetson line includes this teeny-tiny AI computer. The robotics biz is expected to jump from $78 billion to $165 billion by 2029. I want one! Do you?
115,000 years old
Age of footprints found in Saudi Arabia. These are the oldest ones ever uncovered on the Arabian Peninsula. They turned up in a dried-up watering hole in the Nafud Desert, right next to animal tracks. The area was wetter back then, and early humans were likely taking a water break alongside other animals, like a prehistoric rest stop.
Cue the “Jeopardy!” music: This company added a 27-inch LCD screen to its new microwave to bombard you with ads. The answer: Who is LG? Nothing’s sacred. They’re following Samsung’s lead by putting screens on everything as a way to make extra cash. I’ll keep my “dumb” microwave.
Can AI save Facebook? Meta hopes so. They’re rolling out AI avatars (paywall link) to pull in younger people. Robo-influencers are all the rage. Snapchat and TikTok are jumping on the bandwagon, too. It sounds strange, but I’ve read some of these AI-based virtual influencers make $10,000 per post. Maybe I’m in the wrong business.
🛜 Thanks for your service: Looks like Google secretly used phones for an interesting project. Researchers turned millions of Androids into tiny stations to map the ionosphere — 37 to 190 miles up, where space particles mess with GPS systems, leaving gaps in places like South America and Africa. It’s good the service is getting better for folks who live there, but isn’t it creepy Google can just flip a switch like that?