It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s an insurance drone!

October 1, 2024

It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s an insurance drone! Just ask Mike Arman, who was spied on twice by two different insurers. The first refused to renew his policy after satellite images showed his roof “looked deteriorated.” The second hit him with a 25% increase when it was time to renew. Your insurance company could start doing the same.

Tags: birds, company, Images, insurance, policy, satellite, Satellite images

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Brace yourself: Superintelligent AI is on its way

Let me tell you a little about Sam Altman, one of the leading figures pushing the boundaries of artificial intelligence. He’s 39, from Chicago and worth about $1 billion, give or take. He dropped out of Stanford after two years to start Loopt, a location-based social media app that sold for $43.4 million in 2005.

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I wasted 36 hours trying to do it myself

So many of the calls, emails, messages and DMs I get are about privacy and security. I can’t remember the last time I had a full day where no one asked me some version of “How do I get all this info about me off the internet?”

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78.7% drop in value

For X since Elon Musk took over. Yeesh. That’s based on a Fidelity disclosure valuing its stake in X at around $4.19 million. The initial investment? $19.66 million.

3 cups of coffee

The amount linked to a lower risk of Type 2 diabetes, heart disease and stroke. That’s 200 to 300 mg of caffeine per day. One small steep for man, one giant steep for mankind.

1 million Starlink users

Added over the last four months. They hit 3 million total in May. Some major price drops certainly helped; Starlink lowered its dish price from $499 to $299 in August. I use it on my boat and as a backup at home.

$50,000 spent on AI

By the Secret Service. They won’t say why (national security and all that), but we do know the money went to Microsoft Azure and OpenAI cloud services (paywall link).

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Maybe you’ll find something good to watch on this list.

1,000-year-old seed

Grew into a 10-foot tree with biblical significance. It took 14 years, but scientists grew a once-extinct plant. It appears to be the one that produced a medical extract called “tsori” that was referred to in the book of Genesis and Old Testament accounts of Jeremiah and Ezekiel.

740 million children

Will be nearsighted by 2050. Blame less time spent outside and more screen time for youngsters. An estimated four in 10 kids will need prescription glasses. Girls are more likely than boys to develop myopia (the fancy name for objects far away looking blurry).

$350,000 stolen

By a five-person scam ring pretending to be Brad Pitt. Authorities in Spain say the group faces fraud and money laundering charges after conning two women. One sent nearly $200,000! PSA: The real Brad Pitt isn’t on social media.