Thomas Ricker
Peak deepfake America.
After assailing Pope Leo XIV and calling him “WEAK on crime,” Donald Trump, a real US President, posted this AI-generated image of himself as some kind of Jesus, healing… Ethan Hawke?
Thomas Ricker
Deputy Editor
Deputy Editor
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Thomas Ricker
Thomas Ricker
Jeff and Lauren Sánchez Bezos, they’re just like us.
Their morning routine, per an unapologetic New York Times profile, which delivers on the premise that “unabashed rich-person exuberance is back with a Blue Origin bang:”
They don’t touch their phones. Instead, they begin each day by listing 10 things they’re grateful for — and they can’t repeat what they named the day before. From there, the couple drink their morning coffee in a sunroom and watch the sun rise: hers from a mug that reads “Woke Up Sexy as Hell Again,” his from one she got him that spells HUNK in symbols from the periodic table.
And because I know you’re gonna search for it: here’s the mug.
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Thomas Ricker
Bespoke Musk virus.
Elon Musk has apparently made the jump from X to infect both TikTok and Instagram with new verified accounts. According to the New York Times:
Mr. Musk needs to build widespread public interest in SpaceX so it can raise billions of dollars from investors. The public offering could turn the 54-year-old tech mogul, who is already the world’s richest man, into the first trillionaire.
Elon Musk, Who Owns X, Appears to Post on TikTok
[nytimes.com]
Thomas Ricker
Lame loses his sparkle.
TikTok star Khaby Lame sold his personal brand to a small, relatively unknown company called “Rich Sparkle Holdings.” Instead of handing him $975 million in cash, they paid him in stock. Fans piled in, causing the price to skyrocket, briefly making Lame a paper billionaire (several times over) before the price plummeted. It’s now looking suspiciously like a “pump-and-dump” scheme, causing trading apps to freeze the stock. 🤷♂️
Thomas Ricker
Claude Cowork is ready to take over your company.
Anthropic’s shared, agentic AI workspace for macOS and Windows is getting much-needed tools for IT admins to do company-wide deployments, letting anyone build and deploy autonomous workflows so long as their organization is on a paid plan. It now adds the ability to turn Zoom meeting transcripts into action items.
Thomas Ricker
Apple to close three retail stores, including the first to unionize.
The stores are all located in struggling shopping malls. Employees at the non-union shops can transfer to nearby stores, but union workers from Towson, Maryland can apply for open roles. Apple says this is due to their collective bargain agreement, which the union disputes, threatening legal action.
Thomas Ricker
Chrome combats session theft.
Google is officially rolling out Device Bound Session Credentials (DBSC) to Windows users in Chrome 146. The new security feature cryptographically binds your login cookies to your device’s hardware. So, even if malware steals your browser cookies, they should be useless to remote hackers. MacOS support is coming soon.
Thomas Ricker
