Hitman-for-hire

September 25, 2024

Hitman-for-hire: A Tennessee woman will spend over eight years in prison for hiring a hitman to kill the wife of a guy she met on a dating app. She paid him $9,750 in bitcoin, insisting the murder look like an accident. Super scary: She tracked the couple through fitness app Strava so she could tell the hitman when the woman was out for a walk. Yup, make those location settings private.

Tags: apps, hiring, murder, settings

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Massive data leak impacts 1 in 3 Americans

Data broker MC2 Data left more than 100 million records of Americans exposed online for anyone to copy, grab, forward, sell on the Dark Web — you name it. This comes only a month after the National Public Data breach of 2.9 billion records. I’m getting so tired of these data broker companies and people-search sites screwing up, and it’s you and me who have to pay for their mistakes.

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So much data left exposed for anyone to see

Another day, another monumental data breach. Just because they’re getting more common doesn’t mean you can tune it out. In fact, it’s time to get even more serious about your private information and what’s posted online.

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Stranger travels 1,500 miles to return lost stuffed animal to 9-year-old

A Texas woman took to Facebook after her 9-year-old left his stuffed gorilla at a California hotel. A stranger saw the post, went an hour out of her way to pick it up, then documented the gorilla’s journey home. Absolutely watch this if you need a smile!

100% of the time

AI can beat online captcha tests designed to stump bots. A researcher trained a bot he called You Only Look Once (yeah, YOLO) on images of roads (paywall link). Now, the bot can ace the “Are you a human?” quizzes.

8 ways your phone is tracking you - That you can stop now

You understand that your phone knows where you’re located. This is how GPS works, how Find My sees your location and why you get local ads on Facebook and Google. Like other data on your phone, that location data is a hot commodity for internet marketers.

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How to protect your teen on Instagram, YouTube and Snapchat

Social media is a minefield of dangers for teens, exposing them to extreme content like anorexia “thinspiration,” drug culture, hardcore pornography, suicide glorification and even predatory grooming. Algorithms push the darkest corners of the internet right onto their screens, sometimes with devastating consequences.

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‘It is not real': Title company owner warns of new twist to title fraud

A quick-thinking title company owner was able to stop a fraudulent sale when it appeared the scammer was using AI to try to steal properties.

26 years later

A guy dislodged a Lego brick stuck up his nose. When he was 6, he wedged a plastic brick and a Lego man up his nostrils. Mom removed the Lego man but didn’t know about the individual brick. All that time, the 32-year-old dealt with congestion, asthma and sleep apnea. Watch the news about this crazy story!

$2.2 billion

How much movie theater chains are spending to lure us back. It’s not just better screens (though there are plans for 21,000 of those), beefed-up sound systems and comfier seats. You may see pickleball courts, arcades, ziplines and bowling alleys at a theater near you … all of which will be grossly overpriced.

4 companies

Account for almost half of Nvidia’s revenue, or about $100 billion so far in 2024. So who are they? They’re not talking, but my bet is on some combo of Alphabet (Google), Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI and Tesla. I’m saddened to report Komando isn’t on the list.