Heads-up, Gmail users

April 28, 2025

📧 Heads-up, Gmail users: Google’s phasing out text message 2FA codes for logging in. If you don’t update your security settings in time, you could get locked out. You’ll now need to set up a passkey or use an authenticator app instead. To update: Go to Google Account Settings > Security > How you sign in to Google > and choose passkey or app.

Tags: Google, security, security settings, settings, update

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AI isn’t optional anymore

ChatGPT

Just last year, I had an IT pro on my team with over 20 years of experience. Smart guy. Talented. But when it came to AI, he dug in his heels. “It’s a fad,” he told me. “In two years, people will go back to Google and search the web. They won’t trust AI.”

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Wi-Fi slow? It’s probably this

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You pay for high-speed internet, but your current connection is slower than your mom who took nine months to come up with a good joke. Something’s off, and no, it’s not Mercury in retrograde (this time).

Enter: DNS.

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Zero

That’s how much tap water flight attendants drink onboard, and yes, that includes the coffee and tea. Those plane water tanks? Let’s just say your local gas station bathroom might have better Yelp reviews.

7.3 out of 10

What Lenovo laptops got for repairability, according to PIRG’s annual report, considered an F rating. The catch? They only submitted one model, so they were slapped with a failing grade for not providing enough data. Other brands sent in nine or 10 models. I guess they didn’t read the terms and conditions.

$50 billion

That’s how much Google Chrome might be worth if Google was forced to sell it off. At least that’s what DuckDuckGo’s CEO estimated at Google’s antitrust trial. (Spoiler: DuckDuckGo will not be bidding.) The DOJ is still deciding how to break up Google’s search monopoly, and selling Chrome is on the table. AI players like OpenAI and Perplexity say they’d be interested.

4

The number of toys your toddler needs to be happy. Yep, no need for a mountain of plushies and plastic cars. A study found that kids given too many playthings got overstimulated and jumped from toy to toy. But with just four? They slowed down, focused and played longer. Oh, and no need to toss everything. Just rotate them.

$100

That’s how much people are allegedly paying for six ice cubes from Greenland. Greenland entrepreneurs are harvesting 100,000-year-old glacial ice (paywall link) and shipping it to Dubai, where it’s sold in cocktails like the $218 Scotch-on-ice at Nahaté. Talk about an ICE detention center.

1 terabit per second

Of data was sent over 750 miles using optical fiber. For context, that’s like streaming around 40 Netflix shows in Ultra-HD at the same time. The real twist? Researchers did it completely securely. How? They built a new “IEAC” system that hides the encryption inside the light signal itself. Pretty genius.

3,000 years old

The age of a mummified crocodile scientists recently cracked open. They used X-ray and CT scans to peek inside and found gastroliths, aka small stones crocs swallow to help with digestion. Even weirder? They also discovered a fish and a bronze hook, still intact, meaning the croc was probably caught right before it was sacrificed.

Three per day

Satellite or rocket parts crash back to Earth. A 4-inch shard from the ISS punched through a Florida roof last month, as if those hurricanes weren’t bad enough. We may hit 15 daily as Starlink and Amazon’s Kuiper launch more satellites. Did you hear about the film they’re making, where Dallas gets destroyed by space junk? Debris Does Dallas. (Thank you for that chuckle.)