Shop local: Bet you never thought about it while browsing cheap stuff on Temu, but after President Trump did away with a tax break for e-commerce companies, the site’s algorithm changed. Now you’ll see more products from the Chinese retailer’s U.S. warehouse marked with a green “local” badge. Yeah, I still won’t use Temu.
$100 million
Reported sales price for Brookhaven, a virtual city in Roblox. Some 60 billion people have played the life-sim game. Think building fancy houses, driving around in nice cars and exploring the city. Around 120 million players log on a month. That’s almost the population of Japan!
🤖 Alexa’s glow-up: Save the date for Feb. 26. That’s when Amazon will show off a new Alexa with generative AI. Yep, it’s finally happening after many delays. Alexa will be able to chat back and forth with you and help you get things done. Expect the smarter Alexa to cost you a few bucks a month.
🧀 Gouda grief, not again: Google had to edit one of its Super Bowl ads after its AI butchered a fact about Gouda. In the original video, Gemini said Gouda made up 50% to 60% of the world’s cheese consumption. Spoiler: It doesn’t. The fixed version calls it “one of the most popular cheeses in the world.” Another reminder AI loves to make crap up or, as the AI companies say, “hallucinate.”
🍏 I called this months ago: A foldable iPhone is coming, finally. Rumor has it it’ll be ultra-thin, at just 4.6mm unfolded, and will use a Samsung foldable OLED panel since they’ve already figured out the tech. It could be a massive 12 inches, with two 6.1-inch displays connected by a hinge. The price is TBA, but I bet it’ll cost a fortune. We’ll find out in 2026.
Ingenious till it wasn’t: A guy in Idaho got caught using a homemade barcode ring to scam Walmart’s self-checkout. He ripped off the store a few times without getting caught, then made a total bonehead move: He tried to ring up a $300 grill for the price of a 70-cent can of tomato soup. I wonder how the tomato soup is in jail.
⚡ Pulling the plug, literally: Wow, this is a wild one. Thailand just cut electricity to parts of Myanmar that house billion-dollar scam operations. There are shady compounds where people are forced to run schemes like romance and pig-butchering scams for little or no money. It won’t do much to lower the number of scammers, sadly. Crime bosses are already switching to diesel generators for power and Elon Musk’s Starlink for the internet.
50 cents
Extra for an egg at Waffle House. No word yet on when they’ll drop the bird flu surcharge. Better than a price hike on the whole menu. Oh, be careful what you say around egg whites. They can’t take a yolk.
This makes cents: If you’re looking to make some extra cash, this might be for you. Instacart is rolling out a new side gig where you can make money by just taking photos of products on store shelves. This way, brands see what’s selling and how their products look to customers. The pay? Around $12 for 10 minutes of work (paywall link). I made $15 taking pics of store shelves at Costco while writing about the TaskRabbit app years ago. Too bad I walked out with 50 boxes of animal crackers and a kayak.
A real-life nightmare: Imagine random people showing up at your door, primed and ready for a good time. That’s what happened to a university professor who was stalked for seven years. The creep behind it fed her info into an AI chat site where people hang out, looking for sex. The first line of his ad? “[Victim] Is University’s Hottest Professor. How Will You Seduce Her?” She wasn’t his only victim, and the 36-year-old guy could spend up to 20 years in prison.
🐾 I’m a dog person: My Abby makes life better. It turns out that’s true even if the pet isn’t real. Ageless Innovation makes meowing cats, wagging dogs and chirping birds that respond like the real thing, minus the walking, feeding or litter box duty. Now they’re all over assisted-living facilities and even hospice care centers. Some 93% of folks say they feel more joy after getting one. They’re for sale on Amazon.
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25 years later
EA is re-releasing the original Sims and Sims 2 games digitally. The first game was only available on disk, but now both come bundled in the 25th Birthday Bundle for $39.99. Grab your copy on Steam, the Epic Games Store or the EA app for Windows.
They only care about money: Searching “undress app” on Google brings up paid-search promoted results for AI tools that create nonconsensual naked pictures. All you need is a photo of someone’s face to make a very lifelike fake. Google’s ad policies prohibit deepfakes, but these links keep showing up. When there’s money to be made, enforcement gets blurry.
😱 Apple, we have a problem: For the first time ever, crypto-stealing apps made it into Apple’s App Store. (Yes, they’re on Google Play, too.) The infected apps snoop through your images, looking for crypto wallet recovery phrases. One of them, ChatAi, has 50,000 downloads on Google Play. I sure hope you’re using malware protection on your phone.
This is why I don’t change at the gym: A 68-year-old creep in Kaysville, Utah, planted a camera in a gym’s private tanning room. He connected it to the gym’s Wi-Fi for remote access to the footage. It was there two whole days before anyone noticed. Before you tan, change clothes or go to the bathroom in public, look around for a camera first. There are so many creeps in the world.
🚨 DeepSeek gets all your deep secrets: I said this when DeepSeek first came out, but maybe you weren’t paying close attention. If you use DeepSeek AI, your login information to various sites, documents, pics, searches, videos and more goes straight to China. They’re not even trying to hide it. PSA: Only use DeepSeek the secure way if you have to at all. Steps here on my site.
0.5%
Of your brain is plastic. The most common microplastic researchers found in brain tissue samples is polyethylene, the stuff used in single-use bottles and cups. I use mostly glass and metal containers. Scary, dementia patients had 10 times the levels of plastic of a healthy brain.
$1,320,000
Auction price for a super-rare motorcycle. The bright yellow 1915 Cyclone V-Twin is one of only 14 still around today. I bet it’d be fun to ride, but the new owner can’t; it’s for display only, since the Cyclone isn’t cleared for us on roads or highways.