When it comes to technology, staying in the know is essential. This week, Insider brings you all the latest tech developments, from a hacker stealing a reporter’s phone and credit card, to new possibilities in the world of dance and the evolution of meatballs.
Avery Hartmans, a reporter for Insider, was enjoying time with her family when she first noticed something was off. She got two push alerts from Verizon containing account-access codes — the kind of security measure they take when you make changes to your account. There was also a receipt from Verizon for $0 and a message thanking her for activating a new device.
She thought it was a glitch. In reality, she had been the victim of SIM swapping — a new form of technological identity theft. Once the hacker had control of Hartmans’ phone, they didn’t waste any time. In just a few hours, they wreaked havoc — spending big at Apple and Gucci with her Chase credit card, racking up nearly $10,000 in purchases.
Verizon, Chase, and the police were all useless. In the end, it all began to come together, when a clothing store called Psycho Bunny recognized the fraudulent purchases. Fingerprints were traced and Hartmans managed to put the pieces together, but it reminded the tech world of the threat SIM swapping poses to safety, security and privacy.
Then, a unique development took place on TikTok. When dancer Neha Dharmapuraum joined TikTok, she never imagined it would lead to her Broadway debut, but that’s exactly what happened. We spoke with dancers, choreographers and companies to learn more about how TikTok has changed the dance industry.
Elon Musk has also put his stamp on tech news this week. He has offered a $1 million bounty to help find the source of “botnets” on Twitter, and that he appeared to offer $1 million bounty to help find the source of “botnets” on Twitter. By taking control of several accounts, botnets have been able to suppress certain accounts by mass blocking, unfollowing, and reporting them.
In other news, it turns out your Mac may have a hidden cryptocurrency manifesto on it. A tech blogger accidentally discovered a PDF of the original bitcoin white paper on his Mac, which he believes has been in every copy of macOS since 2018. He also shared how you can locate it on your own computer.
AI has now advanced to the point where it can try to interpret people’s minds. An experiment was conducted where artificial intelligence was presented with the thought of a goldfish. The artificial intelligence was able to interpret this thought and turn it into an AI-generated image of a goldfish. Unfortunately, the results were pretty nightmarish.
Being wealthy isn’t enough for some people. The Wall Street Journal reported that tech billionaires are attempting to build their own private kingdoms. Elon Musk has plans to build a town named “Snailbrook,” while others have ideas of their own.
“The next Joe Rogan” is Lex Fridman, who brings some of society’s most controversial figures together on his hit podcast. Critics argue he is giving a platform to anti-woke tech elites and contributing to a cacophony of misinformation.
Clearview AI has been a hot-button issue this week. It scraped 30 billion images from Facebook and shared them with police, making for a perpetual police line-up, even for people who haven’t done anything wrong.
The recent tragic killing of tech founder Bob Lee has reignited the debate over crime in San Francisco. Some of Lee’s friends and colleagues, including Elon Musk, have lambasted the “violent crime in SF.” But a look at the city’s crime data paints a complicated picture.
Revenue generated by Twitter employees fell drastically before Musk swooped in. Insider’s Hasan Chowdhury found that Twitter’s filing with the SEC may have signalled the workforce cut coming along.
Finally, a discovery in the world of meatballs was made this week. An Australian startup has engineered a giant meatball made from woolly mammoth DNA — yet, it turns out nobody can taste it because humans could be allergic to the 5,000-year-old protein.
Elon Musk has been a major topic of discussion in tech this week, from the $1 million bounty to explore the source of twitter Botnets, to playing a role in the workforce cut of Twitter. Over the years, he has been part of a few key companies, such as Tesla and SpaceX. While his accomplishments for the two are numerous, Musk is best known for creating ambitious goals for the two companies, which range from SpaceX’s vision of creating a self-sustaining city on Mars to Tesla’s impending creation of a fully self-driving car.
Neha Dharmapuraum, who made headlines for receiving her first Broadway debut after joining TikTok, is best known for her work as a dancer and choreographer. As a creative, Neha takes her work seriously and is constantly pushing herself to come out with something unique. Her foray into TikTok, allowing a new audience to discover her talent and eventually leading to her Broadway debut, proves just how her hard work has paid off.
