Thanks for your service

January 1, 2025

🛜 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?

Tags: Google, space

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The crypto investment scam that’s all over social media

I’m all about using AI to get stuff done. No kidding, I use ChatGPT every day to shortcut planning and organize my work and my life.

You know who else loves AI? Cybercriminals. A new scam powered by deepfakes is all over social media. Too many people have fallen for it and lost millions of dollars in the process. I’ve got the dirty details so you don’t become a victim, too.

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Lost dog finds her way home

Nine days after going missing, 4-year-old German shepherd mix Athena rang her owner’s doorbell. It was Christmas Eve at 2:30 a.m. — a holiday miracle! The Green Cove Springs, Florida fam searched as far as Jacksonville and Saint Augustine.

5 times more data

Collected by holiday apps compared to regular paid apps. The holidays are over, but those festive apps are still gifting your data to anyone willing to pay. Monopoly Go! is the worst offender. Here’s the full list. Ditch ‘em.

Your very own Rosey

Nvidia, the $3 trillion AI chip giant, is betting on robotics as the next big thing. Next year, they’ll launch 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?

1929

Works from this year will enter the public domain on Jan. 1. Included are Alfred Hitchcock’s “Blackmail,” along with “Tintin in the Land of the Soviets” and “Thimble Theater,” which features Popeye and Olive Oyl (and her brother, Castor Oyl). Public domain means they’re not protected by copyright, so anyone can use, copy, distribute or change them. Get ready for some weird Popeye videos, folks. Food for thought: Wouldn’t it be ironic if Popeyes’ chicken was fried in olive oil?

$100 million

The value of a one-square-mile parcel in Wyoming’s Grand Teton National Park that’s now protected from development. The state has considered selling the plot — a migration path for pronghorn and elk — to luxury developers. The nonprofit Grand Teton National Park Foundation raised about one-third of the cash; the rest is from the federal Land and Water Conservation Fund.

20 minutes

Of life gone for every cigarette smoked. Yikes! I still cannot believe there were ads in the 1940s that said, basically, cigarettes were good for you. A new study out of University College London found a pack of 20 cigarettes knocks 7 hours off a person’s life. Say you smoke 10 a day and quit on Jan. 1. By the end of the year, you’ve “earned back” 50 extra days. Now, that’s incredible motivation.

37% of Gen Z

Plan to skip the gym and use Ozempic instead to lose weight in the coming year. This is so sad. They think the medication is more effective than diet and exercise, but there are scary potential side effects, like nausea, stomach pain and even vision loss.

$200 million

The listing price for the 1.84-acre empty lot next to Jeff Bezos’ house in Miami. It’s in the “Billionaire Bunker” area of the Indian Creek neighborhood. The price is over seven times what the last owner paid in 2018 ($27.5 million). Hey, Jeff, how’d you like an amazing house in Phoenix?

10 to 20 years

Until AI drives humanity to extinction, according to a “godfather of AI,” Geoffrey Hinton. He’s the winner of this year’s Nobel Prize for Physics and previously put the odds of AI taking over at only 10%. I know many people are thinking, “Great! I won’t have to pay off my student loans!”