Deepfake ‘endorsements’

AI gone wild: A social media influencer created an AI clone to act as a virtual girlfriend. She charged followers $1 per minute for audio chats and raked in $70,000 a week. Then, the AI went rogue, playing along with dark fantasies and initiating explicit conversations the influencer says horrified her. Yeah, I warned you about this.

Chrome users who have installed shady extensions in the past three years. These extensions included malware and often asked for advanced permissions during installation. On average, dangerous extensions stayed in the Chrome store for over a year before getting the boot. Good job there, Google.

A dangerous Google Chrome scam: It’s planting malware that starts with a pop-up when you try to open a webpage or document. It’ll then tell you to copy and paste text into Windows PowerShell. No, don’t do this. Time to add a trusted ad blocker to your browser to avoid this scam and the thousands of others that get you the same way.

📧 Mark Cuban scammed: The billionaire received strange notifications in Gmail before answering a phone call from someone ready to fix his account. He bought it, hook, line and sinker. Reminder: Google will never ask for passwords or verification codes over the phone, email or messages.

It’s a 1990 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame statue given to the Kinks’ guitarist Dave Davies. The seller got his hands on it after Davies had a stroke and missed a storage unit payment. Looks like they figured out a deal, because the statue is marked as sold.

🗿 I love this story, but I don’t know Y: A team who discovered a lost civilization’s alphabet on a fifth-century B.C. slate slab posted a pic on X. The rock caught the eye of a part-time researcher, who recognized a symbol as the Paleohispanic letter “i.” He’s been invited to join the official research team. Maybe X isn’t all that bad? Wait, yeah, it is.

☄️ That was close: A Florida family is suing NASA after a chunk of metallic space debris crashed through their roof. No one was hurt, but the family’s 19-year-old son was just rooms away from the impact zone. They want a payout for the stress and impact (no pun intended).

Suggested by Google Maps to “avoid turns.” A driver shared the wacky alternative road trip route on X. The comments are a goldmine if you need a laugh. Be smarter than your GPS, people.