Out of control

December 14, 2024

Out of control: A family is suing Character AI after its chatbot encouraged their autistic teen to hurt himself and told him murdering his parents was a “reasonable response” to their limiting his online activity. It’s the same app that led a 14-year-old to suicide. Parents, keep tabs on your kids’ AI usage. You have to be ahead of what they’re doing.

Tags: AI (artificial intelligence), chatbots, family, kids, parenting

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Bank fraud is rising – How to protect yourself

The scams don’t stop — and here’s another one you need to know about. Your phone rings. It’s a rep from your bank, and they’re warning your account has been compromised. You’re smart, so you immediately suspect it’s a scam.

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Nervous Amazon driver has a wholesome conversation with a dog

Have you seen this video of a nervous Amazon driver having a conversation with a dog? It’s freakin’ adorable. A doorbell cam captured the wholesome moment an Amazon delivery driver wary of a dog sitting on the porch overcame his fear and approached the pooch for a cute conversation. I’d tell an Amazon joke here, but I’m worried about my delivery.

#BigChange for Instagram: As of today, you can no longer follow a hashtag (e.g., #healthycooking). Instagram pulled the plug, saying its hashtags are a mess of spam, bots and irrelevant posts. Try the “Explore” tab instead.

5,000 Christmas trees

Planted by an Indiana couple 10 years ago. Bruce and Shawn Carpenter’s Christmas tree farm is helping fund college for their eight grandchildren. About 1,000 trees are ready for sale. I wish I lived close enough to go get one!

Can it do CAPTCHAs?

Google’s shiny new AI assistant takes over your Chrome browser to do stuff like book flights, fill out forms and do your shopping. Sounds a little scary knowing how much Gemini has screwed up, but it’ll be handy if it works. It can’t fill out credit card or billing info, fyi. Watch it in action here.

$492,561.56

What you would have if you’d invested $1,000 in Netflix 20 years ago. That’s based on the stock’s current price of $925.03. The streaming giant outperformed the market by 28.06% with an annual return of 36.49% over two decades. Does anyone have a time machine?

$4.25 billion

Estimated worth of meth seized by the Indian Coast Guard. The 13,227-pound stash was found on a “fishing” boat traveling from Myanmar equipped with one of SpaceX’s Starlink systems for navigation. Police are demanding to know who bought it.

$245 million

Epic Games’ major settlement for Fortnite players. The FTC says a confusing button layout tricked players into making accidental purchases. They’ve already sent 600,000 payments totaling $72 million. You have until Jan. 10 to file a claim.

1 billion hours

Of YouTube watched every single day. That beats out all other streaming services. It’s the only streaming platform to top 10% of the viewing market share in 2024. In second place? Netflix, with 7.7%.

10 followed by 24 zeros

That’s 10 septillion. Today’s best supercomputer would take that many years to compute what Google’s new Willow quantum chip can finish in just five minutes. That’s over seven times the age of the universe. Speaking of which, this breakthrough could prove we live in a multiverse. I bet you’re still reading this newsletter in every reality.