Do you eat meat, reader? If so, what is your meatball of choice — beef, chicken… mammoth? Yes, you read that right.
Newsletter editor Hallam Bullock here, coming to you from London.
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.
You can see pictures of the massive meatball here — but I warn you, it looks exactly how you would expect.
Now, before the scientists start serving up Dinosaur DNA, let’s take a look at the top tech stories this week.
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1. A hacker stole our reporter’s phone, credit card, and identity. So she set out to find them.
Insider’s Avery Hartmans 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 was a clothing store called Psycho Bunny that came to her rescue.
Read the full story.
Top tech stories of the week:
2. From TikTok to Broadway. 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 detail how TikTok has changed the dance industry.
3. Elon Musk’s $1 million bounty. Earlier in the week, Musk appeared to offer a $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. Read more.
4. Your Mac may have a hidden bitcoin manifesto on it. A tech blogger accidentally discovered a PDF of the original bitcoin white paper on his Mac, which he says has been in every copy of macOS since 2018. He also shared how you can locate it on your own computer.
5. AI tried to read a human mind. Imagine you’re thinking of a goldfish. Now, what if artificial intelligence could interpret what you’re thinking and turn that into an AI-generated image of a goldfish? Well, the results are pretty nightmarish. I suggest you see the images for yourself.
6. The super rich are trying to build private kingdoms. Earlier this month, the Wall Street Journal reported that Elon Musk plans to build a town named “Snailbrook” — but he isn’t the only billionaire creating their own utopia. Check out our list here.
7. “The next Joe Rogan.” Lex Fridman gives a warm welcome to some of society’s most controversial figures on his hit podcast, Insider’s Julia Black writes. But some critics say he is contributing to a cacophony of misinformation as he provides a safe space for the anti-woke tech elite. Read more.
8. Clearview AI scraped 30 billion images from Facebook to share with police. Critics say the company has created a “perpetual police line-up,” even for people who haven’t done anything wrong. More here.
From our tech analysis team:
9. The 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.
10. Revenue generated by Twitter employees fell drastically before Musk swooped in. Insider’s Hasan Chowdhury combed through Twitter’s SEC filings — and what he found might explain why Musk axed half the firm’s workforce. View the charts here.
Today’s team: Hallam Bullock in London, Lisa Ryan in New York, and Dave Smith in Toronto.
Read the full article here
