Hasta La Gadget!

It’s been over six months since Elon Musk first offered to buy Twitter, the platform he apparently dreams of transforming into a free-speech utopia.

Starting next month, dating app Hinge will begin rolling out a new profile verification feature to combat a surge in fake accounts. Dubbed “Selfie Verification,” the feature will prompt users to upload a video of themselves, which the app, with a combination of machine learning and human oversight, will use to confirm they look like the person pictured in their profile. People who complete the process will get a “Verified” badge on their dating profile.

Hinge parent company Match Group told Wired, the first publication to report on the feature, that Selfie Verification would roll out to all users by December. “As romance scammers find new ways to defraud people, we are committed to investing in new updates and technologies that prevent harm to our daters,” Hinge spokesperson Jarryd Boyd told the outlet.

The feature comes after Wired writer Lauren Goode wrote about her experience with Hinge’s many bots. The app, like many other dating platforms, is rife with fake accounts, and the real people behind them will often attempt to scam their matches out of money. For instance, “pig butchering,” one of the more popular online dating schemes, frequently sees victims tricked into “investing” their money into fake cryptocurrency platforms. As Gizmodo points out, online dating scams aren’t new, but they’ve become more prevalent since the start of the pandemic. In February, the Federal Trade Commission issued a warning to online daters, noting that people reported losing a record $547 million in 2021 from online dating fraud.

How much Selfie Verification will help protect Hinge users from such scams and catfishing more broadly is hard to say. Other Match Group apps, including Tinder, already employ similar features. On those platforms, users aren’t required to verify their identity, and you still see plenty of fake accounts.

House Targaryen may think they have ‘em tamed, but as the House of the Dragons finale amply demonstrated, a dragon’s gonna do what a dragon’s gonna do. It was a satisfying sight for Game of Thrones fans who’ve been waiting years to see a proper dragon brawl, so the people behind the HBO franchise didn’t take any…

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Back in July, Samsung began testing a new privacy feature on Galaxy S21 phones in Korea. Dubbed Maintenance Mode, the tool allowed users to secure their personal information – including photos, messages and contacts – when sending their device in for repair. Now Samsung says the feature is ready for primetime.

Starting today, the company has begun rolling out Maintenance Mode to Galaxy devices with One UI 5 installed. Broader availability will follow in 2023. In other words, Galaxy S22 users will receive access to the feature first.

Once Maintenance Mode arrives on your phone, you’ll find the option to enable it within the “Battery and device care” section of the Settings menu. It will create a separate account on your phone for a technician to use while working on your device. In addition to protecting your personal information, Maintenance Mode prevents a technician from seeing what apps you have installed. They can use the Galaxy Store to download any diagnostic software they need, but once they’re done, your phone will automatically wipe any new data and apps. When your phone is back in your possession, you can disable Maintenance Mode by authenticating your identity.

Actor Johnny Depp sunk roughly $30 million into the superyacht, which has since been sold and re-sold.