📄 Talk data to me: OpenAI paid users can upload a mountain of PDFs, data files and images. It will spit out a full analysis in moments — something that might take a human team months. It’ll even answer questions and generate charts, too.
Love this idea: Two Colorado sisters launched a dating app designed for people with disabilities and chronic illnesses. Users can tap “X” or “❤️” to sort through matches, and there’s a “Dateability Deets” section where you check off terms that describe your condition. Check it out on iOS and Android.
It took radio 38 years to reach an audience of 50 million and just 13 years for television to hit that mark. How long did it take Facebook to reach 50 million users? Was it … A.) 6 months, B.) 1.5 years, C.) 3 years or D.) 5 years?
48% of TikTok users
Under age 30 use it to keep up with politics and news. Frightening. This is why it’s so important to understand the role Communist China has in this app and its data. The older Americans get, the less they rely on TikTok for news; 36% of 30- to 49-year-olds get their news from TikTok, as do 22% of those ages 50 to 64 and 24% of folks 65 and older.
Gemini Live is free to Android users: Google’s AI assistant chats in real time and you can interrupt it with new info or directions. To try it, open the Gemini app and tap the circular waveform with a sparkle icon in the bottom right. You’ll enter full-screen chat mode.
Prison changes a man: About two weeks after his arrest in France, Telegram’s CEO says it’s not fair he was held responsible for others’ criminal activity on his app. Still, he calls it his “personal goal” to fix the problems. Step 1: Telegram’s updated FAQ page says users’ private chats are no longer protected from moderation. Cry me a river. Way too little, way too late.
Canva has jacked up its prices: By 316%, to be exact. Canva Teams (up to five users) is going from $120 to $500 per year. If you use it, be sure to snag the 40% discount for the first 12 months. Canva usually announces price changes, but this time, they’ve quietly emailed customers instead. No wonder.
Principle of least privilege: Business owners, ask your IT folks if your accounts are set up this way. It means users and systems only get access to what they need to get their tasks done. It’s a simple way to keep your info safe.
Can’t trust ’em: Meta and Google secretly teamed up to target kids with ads for Instagram on YouTube. They exploited a loophole allowing personalized ads to be served to an “unknown” group, aka users whose age and parental status aren’t identified. Seriously? You can tell it’s a kid based on their search history.
Have a heart condition? You might have a smartwatch to keep an eye on your ticker, but one in five users says they feel intense fear when they get an irregular rhythm notification. That extra anxiety isn’t helping your heart. If you have an Apple Watch, try taking some deep breaths with the Mindfulness app before you panic.
🚨 Hide and C:/Seek: Hackers grabbed the personal info of more than 400,000 Life360 users, including names, phone numbers, emails and more. Life360’s location-sharing app is used primarily to help parents keep an eye on their kids. More bad news: Life360 owns tracker company Tile, which hackers also breached, nabbing not only personal info, but also device IDs. Don’t wait to change your passwords, and be on alert for phishing, phone and texting scams.
🪣 Leaky bucket: Two free PDF makers, PDF Pro and Help PDF, have somehow made public over 89,000 documents uploaded by their users We’re talking passports, driver’s licenses, certificates and more. People are still using these PDF tools, even as their private data leaks onto the web. Don’t be one of them.
Alt + Tab: A keyboard shortcut pro Windows users know. Press those keys to cycle through all your open programs quickly. On a Mac, it’s Cmd + Tab.
I wonder why: Microsoft brought back its official guide for Windows 10 and 11 users wanting to switch from a cloud account to a local one. They pulled the steps from their site in June, probably to push folks toward the more ad-focused version. Want to go back? Here are the steps (at the bottom).
🚨 180,000 Shopify users just had their data compromised, thanks to a third-party app. The exposed info includes account IDs, names, email addresses, cellphone numbers and total spending. If you have a Shopify account, watch for any legit-looking emails from them and don’t give out any personal info.
P*rn passport: Spain is testing a new way to confirm the age of p*rn viewers on websites — digital passports. Once you verify you’re over 18, you’ll get 30 tokens good for 30 days. The Spanish government says it won’t track users’ activity or keep records of their identities. You can bet the U.S. government is keeping an eye on how it goes.
🚨 Heads-up, iPhone users: There’s a malicious text going around trying to steal your Apple ID info. It reads, “Apple important request iCloud: Visit signin[.]authen-connexion … to continue using your services.” The URL is fake, and I left part out so you don’t accidentally click it!
🍏 Browser showdown: Apple is warning its 1.46 billion iPhone users to stop using Google Chrome. They’re throwing shade by plastering billboards worldwide, with the message Safari is “a browser that is actually private.” Google has admitted to collecting data even when you’ve enabled Incognito mode, so Apple makes a valid point.
Web safety alert: Over 100,000 websites, including Hulu, are victims of a security breach. They all use a compromised JavaScript library that could redirect users to scam sites, install malware, and even swipe usernames, passwords and credit card info. Watch out for rogue pop‑ups.
280 million
Chrome users who have installed shady extensions in the past three years. These extensions included malware and often asked for advanced permissions during installation. On average, dangerous extensions stayed in the Chrome store for over a year before getting the boot. Good job there, Google.