News - Page 95 of 136

The clock is ticking!

🏃 Last-minute gifts that’ll (hopefully) arrive by Christmas. You can do this!

PSA: Check the shipping date! When I did, these all arrived before Christmas.

For the pink fiend, a Paris Hilton air fryer (25% off, $60). It’s cute!
A jade roller and gua sha stone set (53% off, $7) are a slam dunk stocking stuffer.
These nice Cole Haan men’s sneakers go with basically any outfit.
$15 popcorn? 30 minutes of trailers? No, thanks. Gift at-home movie nights with a popcorn maker ($20).
This Lego board game is fun for the whole fam. You build Lego towers the characters race up.
A Chinese soup dumpling kit is fun for your favorite cook. If they don’t like dumplings, what about a French tart kit?
Make French fries even yummier with a seasoning set (click the coupon box for 25% off).
Give a golfer a golf ball and he’ll golf for an hour. Give a golfer a whole bunch of golf balls and he’ll golf all week.
This gym bag is water-resistant and lightweight, and it has a shoe compartment and spots for wet clothes. Win-win.

We may earn a commission from purchases, but our recommendations are always objective.

Shady streaming: Spotify is filling playlists with “ghost artists” so they don’t have to pay so much in royalties. Just 20 songwriters are behind over 500 artists and thousands of tracks. The genres most affected? Classical, jazz, ambient and lo-fi hip-hop.

38% of webpages

Have disappeared since 2013. Where’d they go? Websites got shut down, URLs changed and articles were deleted. About one-third of local news sites may be gone by next year. This is just the beginning; AI will only speed things up by deciding what’s important on the web.

Gift a little bit of luxury

💅 Treat them (or yourself) to something nice.

PSA: Check the shipping date! When I did, these all arrived before Christmas.

The right body wash is a game-changer. This one is under $10.
For the girl boss, a leather laptop bag in lots of colors ($35; click the coupon box for 15% off).
Everyone looks good in a classic pair of Ray-Bans (27% off).
This Korean face mask set ($35) has a ton of five-star reviews.
There’s no world in which a Le Creuset cast iron skillet wouldn’t be the best gift they get this year. Plus, it comes in 13 colors!
Just look at these gel nail polish (15% off) colors. If she doesn’t have a UV lamp for the polish, this one’s under $20.
Draw a bath, pour a glass of wine, grab a good book and relax. Add a snazzy bath tray for under $50.
If they don’t have a pair of over-the-ear headphones yet, change that ASAP!

We may earn a commission from purchases, but our recommendations are always objective.

Is Netflix going to tick off millions of people again? The streaming giant is going live with two NFL games tomorrow: The Chiefs versus the Steelers and the Ravens versus the Texans. After the Tyson-Paul fight fiasco, they must’ve learned their lesson, right? Internet providers like Comcast are stepping in with extra capacity, and Netflix says they’re ready (paywall link). They passed on third-party backups, so we’ll see.

🔞 AI porn star: A 33-year-old adult film star sold her likeness to an AI company to lighten the load of her, ahem, demanding career. Chloe Amour says she loves connecting with fans, but she can’t always fulfill all their desires. Enter AI: Now she can be everything they want, anytime they want it. Business is booming. One guy says he’s dropped $10,000 a month on AI “girlfriends.”

They need money: X jacked up the price for a Premium+ subscription, which turns off ads and gives profiles a blue checkmark. Instead of $16 a month, it’s now $22 monthly. The basic subscription that lets you edit posts and type as much as you want is $3. Still not worth it.

No. 1 on the U.K. charts

“Last Christmas,” for the second year in a row. Wham!’s iconic classic is racking up about 7.7 million streams a day on Spotify. That’s almost 90 plays per second. No kidding, it barely missed the No. 1 spot 40 years ago. It’s holding down the No. 3 spot now in the U.S.

Snapchat lawsuit: Some 64 families are suing Snap, claiming its Snapchat app connected their kids with drug dealers who poisoned them with fentanyl. With geolocation tools for easy handoffs and messages that vanish in 24 hours by default, it’s a dealer’s paradise. Snap’s defense? They’re not responsible for what others do or say on their platform.

Saving little lives: Mercedes’ new CLA coupe is equipped with Child Presence Detection, or CPD. The tech is sensitive enough to pick up even a newborn’s breathing when the car is turned off. If the car senses a little one, its cameras will check for an adult. If no one’s there, it sends an alert, kicks on the AC and honks the horn. About 37 kids a year die in hot cars.

👰🏻🤵🏻 Billionaire wedding: So many news outlets are reporting Jeff Bezos, 60, is tying the knot with fiancée Lauren Sanchez, 55, next weekend in an Aspen, Colorado, wedding rumored to cost $600 million. Jeff says, “The whole thing is completely false.” Phew, now I don’t feel so bad I didn’t get my invite yet.

🤖 It’s alive: OpenAI’s new o3 model can “think,” aka reason and check facts on its own. That’s a giant step toward artificial general intelligence (AGI), where bots can do tasks they were never specifically trained for. Rest easy, o3 is a total ace at math and science, but it’s not quite ready to take over the world.

AirPods rake in over $18 billion a year: They’re on pace to outsell iPads, becoming Apple’s third-biggest product behind iPhones and Macs. Teenagers and young adults love ‘em most. Around 62% of Gen Zers own a pair. Psst, the AirPods Pro 2 are on sale (24% off). Perfect holiday gift for yourself.

We may earn a commission from purchases, but our recommendations are always objective.

Putting the “AI” in “encyclopedia”: Britannica isn’t a dusty bookmaker killed by Wikipedia. The billion-dollar company now creates AI-powered customer service tools and websites that get 7 billion views a year. They’re also developing AI-driven educational software. Other companies, take note: This is how you adapt.

You can’t trust the ratings: Apple’s App Store is packed with inappropriate apps rated safe for kids (paywall link). Anonymous chat platforms, sexual games and body-tuning filters are slipping through, even with parental controls enabled. The loophole? Apple lets developers set their own age ratings. Parents, it’s your job.

Unlocking the future: By this time next year, Apple could be selling a video doorbell that uses Face ID to unlock your door for you. Sounds sweet … and a little scary unless it’s super locked down. Think Amazon (owner of Ring) and Google (Nest) are nervous? Me, too.

🏥 1 million Americans exposed: Hackers got private communications between doctors and patients using ConnectOnCall. The breach includes names, health conditions, treatments, medications, Social Security numbers and more. If your name’s on the list, look for a letter in the mail.

190 to 210 IQ

For a man who says he believes he knows what happens after death. Chris Langan’s IQ is 30 to 50 points higher than Albert Einstein’s. The 72-year-old horse rancher thinks death isn’t the end but a move to another dimension, like existing inside a supercomputer. OK, that’s over my head.

Drug dealers going digital: Instead of lurking on street corners, they’re sliding into DMs and posting ads on Facebook. They’d get flagged for using the real words, so one workaround is communicating with emojis (e.g., snowflakes for cocaine and love hearts for psychedelics). About one in 10 young people has bought drugs over social media. Talk to your kids.

3.8 million miles

From the sun’s surface. That’s how close NASA’s tiny Parker Solar Probe will get. It sounds far, but temps are still 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit at that distance. It’ll zoom in at 430,000 miles per hour, breaking its own record as the fastest human-made object in history.