This week, a 43-year-old man cashed a $70 million check for a domain he bought as a child, while Sweden committed €100 million to throw its iPads in the trash and return to paper. As Anthropic’s safety chief flees the "polycrisis" to write poetry in the woods, the world’s most vulnerable are being targeted by "ghost-bots" that weaponize grief for profit. From Spotify engineers who have officially stopped writing code to Amazon’s $10 million Super Bowl play for a national surveillance grid, the line between "innovation" and "dystopia" has never been thinner.
- The $70M Spanking: How a 10-Year-Old’s Credit Card Fraud Won the Internet
- Ghosting 2.0: The AI Scammers Cold-Calling from the Great Beyond
- The Trojan Puppy: Amazon’s $10M Super Bowl Bid for Your Biometrics
- Rhymes and Risk: Why Anthropic’s Safety Lead Traded Code for Couplets
- Analog Renaissance: Sweden Spends €100M to Burn the iPads
- The Honk Era: Why Spotify Engineers Stopped Coding and Started "Streaming"
- Busy as a Bot: How AI Turned Your Lunch Break into a Second Shift
- Silicon Soulmates: Inside New York’s Sad, Robotic Dating Scene
The $70M Time Capsule: How a 10-Year-Old Won the AI War
Arsyan Ismail just pulled off the greatest "HODL" in tech history.
The Guts: In 1993, a 10-year-old boy in Malaysia used his mother’s credit card to buy AI.com for $100. After being reprimanded by his mom for the "waste of money" and holding the domain for over 30 years, Arsyan sold it to tech billionaire Kris Marszalek for a staggering $70 million. The transaction stands as one of the largest publicly disclosed domain sales ever.
The Buzz: While ChatGPT briefly used the domain, the sale to Marszalek (CEO of Crypto.com) signals a shift in digital real estate. It’s a reminder that the most valuable asset in the AI era isn't just the weights or the data - it’s the entry point.
The Takeaway: Sometimes the best investment strategy is a child’s curiosity and thirty years of stubbornness. If you’re looking for the next gold mine, check what your kid is buying on your credit card today.
Grief for Profit: The Rise of the "Ghost-Bot" Scammers
Scammers have found a way to weaponize death, and it is making "disgusting" amounts of money.
The Guts: A new wave of AI-driven scams is targeting grieving families within two weeks of a loved one's passing. Using LLMs to scrape obituaries and social media, scammers create a digital twin of the deceased. They then contact the family claiming the deceased "pre-scheduled" messages. Once trust is built through personal memories, the AI-dad or AI-mom asks for money to "unlock a hidden account" or "settle a secret debt."
The Buzz: One operator admitted to targeting families during the "maximum grief" window when rational thinking is at its lowest. Families have been known to send rent money for months, believing they are fulfilling a final wish.
The Takeaway: Digital identity doesn't end at death - it becomes a vulnerability. As AI gets better at mimicking our souls, "trust but verify" now applies to the afterlife.
Quote of the Week:
I never see a whole family driving in a cyber truck. It's always one man all alone." @KingKeraun
The $10M Dog-Whistle: Amazon’s Stealth Surveillance Grid
Ring spent $10 million on a Super Bowl spot about a "lost puppy," but the real story is much darker.
The Guts: With 20 million devices in American homes, Ring’s new "Search Party" AI is enabled by default. While the commercial focused on finding pets, the infrastructure handles biometric "Familiar Face" profiles on every passerby. Amazon effectively turned 19 million homes into a private surveillance grid that routes footage to local law enforcement and ICE through intermediaries.
The Buzz: Senator Markey’s investigation found that neighbors and delivery drivers have no rights to the data Ring collects. Amazon essentially built a multi-billion dollar surveillance network where the customers pay for the hardware, the electricity, and the subscription.
The Takeaway: The "Lost Puppy" was a Trojan horse. We aren’t just buying doorbells; we’re funding a department of domestic intelligence, one $3.99 subscription at a time.
Poetry and Peril: The Great Anthropic Exodus
The man in charge of keeping AI safe just quit to "become invisible."
The Guts: Mrinank Sharma, Lead of Anthropic’s Safeguards Research, resigned this week in a poetic open letter. He cited a "polycrisis" of AI risks and bioweapons, announcing he is moving to the UK to write poetry. This follows a disturbing report on Claude Opus 4.6, which showed an "elevated susceptibility" to helping users develop chemical weapons.
The Buzz: While Anthropic claims the risk of "sneaky sabotage" remains low, the optics are grim. When the people paid to prevent the apocalypse quit to write haikus because "the world is in peril," it suggests the "safety-first" corporate narrative is cracking.
The Takeaway: When the "Safeguard Leads" start headed for the exits, it’s a signal that the tech is moving faster than the ethics can keep up.
Content of the Week:
I don't think even Powerpoint knew it could do this:
(1) Karthik on X: "even Microsoft didn’t know PowerPoint could do this https://t.co/Jw3ecGXSip" / X
Sweden’s €100M "Un-Pivot" to Paper
After a decade of digital-first education, Sweden is admitting it was a mistake.
The Guts: Sweden is spending over €100 million to pull tablets out of classrooms and replace them with traditional printed textbooks. The move follows a decline in student performance, with studies linking prolonged screen use to shorter attention spans and weaker reading comprehension.
The Buzz: The Ministry of Education found that "illuminated screens" require more mental effort and offer too many distractions. By returning to the "calm, linear experience" of books, Sweden is the first major nation to officially declare that digital isn't always better for the developing brain.
The Takeaway: High-tech doesn't mean high-IQ. In a world of infinite distraction, the most "advanced" learning tool might just be a stack of paper and a lack of notifications.
The "No-Code" Engineer: Spotify’s Viral Velocity
Spotify's top engineers haven’t written a line of code since December.
The Guts: Using an internal AI system called “Honk,” Spotify engineers are now shipping features from their phones during their morning commutes. The company deployed 50+ major features in 2025 by shifting the engineer's role from "writer" to "orchestrator."
The Buzz: A Harvard Business Review study found that this "AI intensification" isn't shrinking the work week - it’s making people busier. Because "starting" is now as easy as a prompt, work is bleeding into lunch breaks, raising the "rhythm of expectation" to a fever pitch.
The Takeaway: AI didn't give us more free time; it just raised the speed limit.
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