The Morning After: Elon Musk deepfakes are pushing crypto giveaways
06/24/2024 18:27The biggest news stories this morning: Our BTS guide to Summer Games Fest 2024, Amazon Prime Day 2024: The best deals ahead of Prime Day, Five men face jail time for running illegal streaming service Jetflicks.
It’s been a weekend of crypto scams, hacks and deepfake chaos. Late on Friday, someone hacked 50 Cent’s accounts to push memecoin GUNIT and made off with millions. The exact amount is unclear; Fiddy himself wrote on Instagram, “whoever did this made $3,000,000 in 30 minutes.” The rapper’s X account and website were hacked at the same time.
Then, multiple deepfakes of Elon Musk were spotted on YouTube, telling viewers to deposit their crypto on a suspicious website, promising free crypto in return. Now taken down, the looped video showed Musk at what looked like a livestream from a Tesla event, with an AI-generated version of his voice instructing viewers to visit a website and deposit their Bitcoin, Ethereum or Dogecoin to enter the competition. Over 30,000 viewers tuned into the stream at one point, pushing it to the top of YouTube’s Live Now recommendations.
Don’t take investment advice from rappers and social media network owners.
— Mat Smith
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Starliner astronauts’ return trip has been pushed back even further
Oh no, more time in space.
Astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who flew on the heavily delayed first crewed flight of Boeing’s Starliner craft, won’t be returning from the International Space Station until sometime next month, instead of, well, earlier this month. NASA announced last night that it’s pushing the date of their return trip even further to review problems with Starliner’s first flight.
How to stream video to your TV using a VPN
You’re not just limited to a phone or laptop.
I love it when an Engadget writer solves a problem I have. You might be used to using VPNs to stream video content from other regions, but it falls apart a bit if you’re trying to view it on your TV. That’s where this guide comes in. Alongside guides for smart TVs and TV dongles, there’s a great tip I hadn’t thought of: using an HDMI cable to pipe video directly from your phone. Smart!
Five men face jail time for running illegal streaming service Jetflicks
A federal jury in Las Vegas found five defendants guilty.
Jetflicks once boasted visitors could watch just about any TV show or movie “Anytime. Anywhere.” A jury in a Las Vegas federal court found the people behind the site guilty of conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement. Jetflicks used computer scripts and software to scour the internet for illegal copies of movies and television shows and posted hundreds of thousands of illegal copies as far back as 2007 from torrent and Usenet sites — back when illegally watching shows and movies was a little more challenging.