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The great Bitcoin dumpster fire

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Picture this: It’s 2013. A guy named James Howells from Newport, Wales, is cleaning up his office and accidentally throws out an old hard drive. No big deal, right?

Wrong.

Stored on that hard drive were the digital keys to 8,000 Bitcoins. Back then, Bitcoin was worth around $130 each, a solid chunk of change. But today? One Bitcoin is worth about $122,000, which means James accidentally trashed almost $1 billion. With a “B.”

🗑️ It all went to waste

James’ Bitcoin passkey is buried somewhere under 110,000 tons of garbage in the city dump. For more than a decade, he’s begged officials to let him search.

He offered to foot the entire bill, buy the landfill, use high-tech, robot-assisted excavation tools and split the recovered Bitcoin with the city. He even lined up investors and engineers. But the city said no. Again and again. Too messy, too expensive, too risky.

So now, he’s doing something completely wild.

🪙 Trying to create interest

James just launched a new cryptocurrency called Ceiniog Coin (that’s “penny” in Welsh).

Here’s how it works: The 8,000 Bitcoins James lost are still technically tied to his crypto wallet. They’re frozen in time. No one can access them without the key on that hard drive.

So James is offering Ceiniog as a kind of tribute meme coin, tied to the legend of the missing landfill billion. Buyers of the coin are essentially investing in his story.

🦄 Dump and dumpster

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VPN myths that need to die

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Half the stuff you’ve heard about VPNs is total nonsense. No, they don’t make you invisible online. AI host Rylie breaks down fact from fiction. Plus, how Chess.com became a billion-dollar empire, a teen’s genius and the latest AI fails that’ll make you facepalm.

Logging off is luxe: You know what’s trendy? Not texting back. Seriously, people are paying to not be online (paywall link). They’re going to concerts and dinner parties where phones get locked up and strangers actually talk. Apps like 222 even charge a “curation fee” to set up phone-free hangouts. I’m sure there’s a market to pay $25 to make real eye contact with a stranger.

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Employees are faking expense reports with AI

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AI’s new job? Creative accounting. Workers are having it whip up fake receipts for business lunches that never happened. Plus, Amazon’s big layoffs, chess makes an online comeback, and how to have AI help with lost stuff.

What your scrolling says about your bank account: Ever caught yourself scrolling bad news before bed? That might say more than you think. A viral creator claims constant scrolling is both a bad habit and a class signal. Overworked, burned-out folks escape online, while the wealthy and trust-fund types scroll the wine list. We all cope how we can. Here’s something to think about: Tablets were replaced by scrolls. Scrolls were replaced by books. Now we scroll through books on our tablets. Wild.

📦 Stop porch pirates before the holidays hit: Online shopping season’s here, and thieves know it. SimpliSafe keeps packages, and your home, protected with flashing lights, instant alerts and live monitoring. No contracts, no hidden fees, just peace of mind all season long.

The Amazon outage that broke the internet

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Amazon’s cloud crashed and took half the internet with it. Snapchat, Ring, Venmo, even banks went dark. I’ll break down what happens when the web’s backbone fails. Then I talk to one business owner who caught scammers stealing her online brand. Plus, the Louvre heist, a New Jersey “UFO” update, and a smart ChatGPT trick.

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How crypto ATMs rip you off

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A scammer says your money’s in danger and tells you to move it through a crypto ATM. You send it, it’s gone. What most people don’t know? The ATM companies profit, too. I talk to Jesse from Texas, whose business was hijacked by scammers. Plus, signs someone’s cheating online and old tech worth real money.

AI for the rest of us

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Don’t know where to start with chatbots? There are now free online classes to ease your way in. Try these and let me know what you think!

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

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🏴‍☠️ Streameast resurrected: Remember when that pirate sports site Streameast was taken down last month? Well, it’s back online, using the exact same domain Homeland Security seized just 13 months ago. Turns out, the feds let the domain expire, and the original owners just reregistered it like a normal GoDaddy shopper. The government’s Achilles’ heel? Forgot auto-renew.

⚡️ 3-second tech genius: Some power banks charge your phone while recharging. To find out if yours can, search the make and model online for “pass-through charging.” Handy when you’ve only got one outlet.