I 🫶 this

February 12, 2025

I 🫶 this: Apple’s new $250 Powerbeats Pro 2 earbuds have built-in heart rate monitoring that kicks in when you start working out. Whoa, no more clicking buttons on a watch to track a run? Its battery life is good, too, at 45 hours with the charging case and 10 more hours if you turn off noise cancellation.

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Tags: Apple, charging, heart rate, noise cancellation, track

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'Forever chemicals' are everywhere in our tech and almost impossible to avoid

The term “forever chemicals” is floating around more than ever. If you’re wondering why folks are so worried about them, the clue’s in the name.

These substances stick around for a long, long time, and it’s not clear how safe they are. They’re also everywhere, from your phone and smartwatch tech to carpets to nail polish.

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12 times

As massive as Jupiter. That’s the size of an exoplanet spotted by the European Space Agency’s Gaia spacecraft. Some context: Jupiter is equal to about 318 Earths, so this thing is huge. The exoplanet, Gaia 4b, is 244 light-years away and 64% as big as the sun. A year there? About 570 Earth days.

$50,000

Cost to remove saggy skin. People who lose a ton of weight on GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic, Mounjaro and Wegovy are booking “360-degree” body lifts (paywall link). Lower-body procedures are up by 28% and upper-body surgeries have spiked by 86%. Most new patients are in their 20s and 30s. I just have no appetite for this.

819 million

Hours wasted on reCAPTCHA. Choosing images (like which ones have a bike or a bridge) stopped bots years ago, but now they’re useless. So, why do they still exist? When you interact with the boxes, Google gets access to your browsing data to sell to advertisers. They’ve collected $6.1 billion just by making you click. Sneaky dogs.

$97.4 billion

What Elon Musk offered to buy OpenAI yesterday. He’s in a battle with Sam Altman, who wants OpenAI to turn a profit. Altman responded to Musk on X, writing, “no thank you but we will buy twitter for $9.74 billion if you want.” Ouch.

180 years old

The Jevons paradox principle, which now applies to AI. Basically, it says that as efficiency increases, so does usage. With AI models becoming more efficient and cheaper (like DeepSeek), more people will start using them every day. This is probably good news if your Nvidia stock earnings are in the toilet like mine.

16GB of RAM

No longer enough to play PC games. For open-world games that rely on visuals, the new standard is 32GB for shorter loading times, fewer stutters and smoother streaming. Here are affordable upgrade kits for DDR4 and DDR5 systems.

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Closing time at an Earlybirds Club dance party

Closing time at an Earlybirds Club dance party. It starts at 6 p.m. so folks with a job and a bedtime can still let loose. The clubs began in Chicago but are all over the U.S. now. Playlists are stacked with favorites from the ’80s, ’90s and early 2000s. Sounds fun!

10 p

10 p.m.

Less than $50

What an antique collector paid for a suspected Van Gogh painting. It was the deal of the century at a garage sale in Minnesota. Specialists are trying to prove the portrait of a fisherman, “Elimar,” is authentic. If so, it’s worth at least $15 million (paywall link). Speaking of … My Van doesn’t Gogh. It’s out of Degas. (I saw you smile right there.)