Make sure websites are following your rules: How to check permissions
Hey, where do you live? Can I listen to what you say through your microphone? What about watching through your webcam? Send me all your contacts. Oh, and I’d like to send notifications anytime I feel like it and also watch what websites you visit and what you do there.
X marks the spot: When Elon Musk took over Twitter two years ago, he told employees they’d need to work “extremely hardcore” with “long hours at high intensity.” Those who didn’t agree within 24 hours were fired. It turns out that not responding doesn’t legally count as resignation. A canned employee got $600,000.
220-mile-high club
On everyone’s mind with two astronauts stuck in space. Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams were expecting an eight-day trip but are stuck on the ISS for six months. Technically, it’s possible … but there’s zero privacy.
🔍 Google’s ultimatum for website owners: In short, “Let us use all your website’s content for AI search results for free or we’ll never send you any more traffic from Google Search.” And, yes, since Google feeds its search results to 93% of all sites, your site will be dead if you don’t agree. How is this not illegal?
🚨 Spoiler: You’re on the list! See if your info was exposed in the NPD breach that hit 2.9 billion people. Go to Pentester and enter your name, state and date of birth. The crazy part? You can look up anyone on this site. I found Bill Gates!
AI madness: Elon Musk’s updated Grok image generator for X Premium and Premium+ subscribers just dropped, and it’s a wild one. Unlike other AI tools, this one creates uncensored images of real people in real locations doing some seriously weird things … like this absurd AI pic of Trump and Harris kissing.
10,000 years
How long Microsoft’s ultra-durable glass plates can store data. A small sheet can hold terabytes — we’re talking enough music to play for 13 years. Maybe this is what we should use for time capsules. It’s like a Superman material!
📸 Shutter up! For real? The latest Apple leak shows the iPhone 16 has a dual vertical-stacked camera. Looks a lot like the camera from the iPhone X. The LED flash is on the side, no longer in the main camera bump. Rumored colors? Blue, teal, pink, black and white. I so want a pink iPhone!
Don’t throw your Bluetooth speaker in a lake; it’ll sync: Sonos rolled out a screwed-up app in May that’s missing basic features, and now speakers are turning off intermittently. They’re working on a fix that’ll cost a cool $20 million or more, but there’s no timeline yet. I’m sure it doesn’t help that they just laid off 100 people yesterday …
🚫 Ad crackdown: Google Chrome is tightening its grip on ad blockers, and the mega-popular uBlock Origin is getting the boot. New browser extension rules will automatically disable the ad blocker relied on by over 30 million Chrome users in an upcoming update. Heads-up if you have it: An updated version, uBlock Origin Lite, is already available.