Clickbait’s best friend is a fool

August 21, 2025

🤖 Clickbait’s best friend is a fool: Be careful what you believe on the Motley Fool site. Roadzen’s shares nosedived 10% after Motley Fool’s “friendly Foolish AI,” JesterAI, hallucinated a massive 50% earnings miss in an article. Other sites reposted their AI-written article. “Friendly Foolish AI” sounds like a Tinder bio and a lawsuit waiting.

Tags: friend, lawsuit, site, sounds, Tinder

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No translator, no problem

Midjourney

I’ll never forget the time I was in Paris, sitting at a café, staring down at a menu I couldn’t read. Out came Google Translate on my phone, and suddenly I thought, Wow the future is here. Fast-forward to this fall, and that “future” looks downright primitive compared to what Apple and Google are about to roll out.

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Schools spy on kids even at home

Midjourney

School is back in session, but here’s something no one told you at orientation: Your kids may have more eyes on them than just their teachers’. Even if you don’t have kids in school, you really need to know about this.

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$760

What it costs to unlock horsepower you already own. Volkswagen’s ID3 gives you 228 brake horsepower… but only if you pay to unleash it. Unless you subscribe ($20/month, $200/year) or cough up the one-time $760, you’re stuck with the 201 bhp version, which is like buying a cake and getting billed extra to eat the frosting.

🎊 Hey, Swifties: If you search “Taylor Swift” on Google, you’ll get a confetti shower and a flaming heart that says, “And, baby, that’s show business for you.” A number counter pops up (already in the millions), and if you click it, more confetti drops. Why the celebration? Taylor announced her 12th album.

Trim silence in YouTube Music: Yep, that cool feature from Google Podcasts is now in YouTube Music. It automatically skips over silent or dead-air parts in podcasts, making episodes shorter. To use it: Open the YouTube Music app, start a podcast, tap the playback speed option, and toggle on Trim silence.

📚 Connect headphones to your Kindle: You can listen to audiobooks straight from your Kindle with Bluetooth headphones. Go to Settings > Wi-Fi and Bluetooth and toggle on Bluetooth. Now tap Bluetooth devices, put your headphones in pairing mode and select them from the list. Not showing up? Hit Rescan.

43 years old

How old the compact disc (CD) just turned. The first commercial one was made in August 1982 for ABBA’s album The Visitors. I had one and lost it. Where did the disco? 💿

27

That’s how many “immersive” movies exist for Apple’s $3,499 Vision Pro. How awful. Turns out filming in 3D isn’t cheap (paywall link). Until Apple figures out how to mass-produce this stuff, you’re basically buying a 4K souvenir from the future. Wait until 2027 for the cheaper model and more movies.

$27 million

That’s how much Mark Zuckerberg’s security cost in 2024. Meta’s annual “keep Zuck safe” budget is more than Apple, Amazon, Nvidia, Microsoft and Alphabet spent combined protecting their own CEOs. It’s not paranoid if everyone is actually always mad at you, right?

$29,999

That’s the sticker shock for Hisense’s new 116-inch RGB-MiniLED beast. It nails 95% of BT.2020 colors (basically the ultra-crayon box of TV shades), so your sunsets won’t look like radioactive Tang. Most TVs barely crack 80%. If you’re on a budget and want to see those colors, I recommend just going outside.