The $130 Million Cell-Phone Scam |
If you had an Internet connection at any point in the aughts, you'll likely remember a series of pop-up and banner advertisements designed to prey on the lonely and insecure, the gullible, and the vulnerable. These ads appeared all over social media and inside games like FarmVille, and they made bizarre promises. My Luv Crush informed users they had a secret admirer—and it was someone they knew. Text NOW to find out who before the message expires! Another ad promised to reveal a user's IQ score if they would answer twenty questions like "What color is the ocean?" One promotion offered "Free Justin Bieber Tickets!"
These advertisements might have been annoying, but they appeared to be innocuous. In fact, they were at the center of one of the largest cybercrime rings ever assembled, and its story has been largely untold until now because one of the last perpetrators was only just sentenced after years of testifying against his co-conspirators. The crime: sneaking hard-to-cancel, recurring monthly payments onto cellphone bills, sometimes those of people who never even subscribed. The perpetrators: mostly college-age kids. The implications for the telecom industry, federal regulators, and your phone bill: incalculable.
The idea was pioneered by a Chinese immigrant named Lin Miao. Miao was brought to Salt Lake City at age 12 with no winter coat. He built his first computer with spare parts he found at garage sales. Then, in college, he co-founded an online advertising network that would eventually be valued at $130 million. |
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| When Will the Oscars Finally Give Horror Its Due? |
Take another look at this year's Oscars nominations. Notice something, aside from the overdue Michelle Yeoh love? There isn't a single horror film among them. This isn't new. Only six films in the genre have ever been nominated for Best Picture: The Exorcist, Jaws, The Silence of the Lambs, The Sixth Sense, Black Swan, and Get Out. Only three actors have ever won an Oscar for their scary-movie performances: Natalie Portman in Black Swan, Kathy Bates in Misery, and Ruth Gordon in Rosemary's Baby. Now, entering Sunday night's Academy Awards, we have another crop of fantastic horror flicks that were turned down at the door. Barbarian and Pearl were multimillion-dollar successes, while some Best Picture nominees didn't even break even. To put this disparity in context, The Fabelmans, which is up for seven Academy Awards this year, was reportedly made on a $40 million budget—and only took in roughly $35 million at the box office worldwide. Meanwhile, the Airbnb-booking-gone-horribly-wrong indie film, Barbarian, cost $4.5 million to make, and grossed nearly $45 million. Don't even get me started on M3GAN's triumphs. We live in a time where any successful film at the box office is viewed as saving the movies, yet the horror fans who show up to theaters, again and again, are told by the Academy that the films they love hardly matter. |
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Big Wave Surfer Kai Lenny Knows What It's Like to Be Buried Alive |
Shortly after a jet ski towed him onto his first wave of the day, Kai Lenny zipped across the top of a Nazaré monster and launched himself into an aerial 360. He landed, for a moment and change, with smooth dexterity, the front third of his board suspended over the rushing cliff of water. And then he skidded down the face of the wave—feet and board slipping forward, torso tumbling backwards, arms waving about in desperate search of the balance he almost never loses. It was gone. In that moment at the 2020 Nazaré Tow Surfing Challenge, Lenny cartwheeled into the abyss. This is big-wave surfing in the style of Kai Lenny, the 30-year-old from Maui who is doing things on giant swells that no one, outside his frequent tow-surf partner Lucas Chumbo, has ever done. And this is surfing at Praia do Norte in Nazaré, Portugal. It's the kind of place that hatches tales of sea monsters and the wrath of Poseidon, the sum of all kinds of geological anomalies and freakish oceanography. The wave at Nazaré is really multiple waves coming together out of a 10,000-foot trench just offshore, a ferocious aggregate of raw power and devilish microcurrents, one of which sent Lenny spinning in 2020. This is where Brazilian surfer Marcio Freire drowned in January, pulled into the viper pit of currents in the "impact zone," that space before the shore where the wave's lip falls like a guillotine. The wave at Nazaré is not like other big-wave spots. The churn of the maelstrom digs up sand and spits foam with a kind of Atlantic rage. The peak months are winter, November to March, when surfers come out in the fog and cold after nights where the ground shakes as the surf beats against the rock beneath the Forte de São Miguel Arcanjo and its iconic red lighthouse. Lenny has called it "survival surfing." |
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A City Suddenly Erased: Photos From Turkey, After the Quake |
When you see the path of a wildfire, it's always a bit mysterious why some places are obliterated while others remain untouched. It's like that in Antakya, Turkey, the city hardest hit by the devastating February 6 earthquake. Sometimes, whole city blocks are destroyed. On other streets, only a single building or two has collapsed while the rest remain cracked but standing. But the city, which has been continuously inhabited since Roman times and was one of the early centers of Christianity, is now largely erased. When the buildings fell, the destruction was total. Often, what remains is just a pile of broken concrete and twisted rebar. Occasionally a child's toy, some family photos, or stray bits of clothing poke out of the rubble, but mostly it is hard to imagine life there at all. In rare cases, a single room is nearly intact, sitting awkwardly on top of the ruins. In one, a neatly packed dish-drying rack, the dishes unbroken. In another, a TV and a wall of family photos, the rest of the room utter ruin. |
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De'Longhi's Eletta Explore Machine Is Worth Every Penny |
You know the argument, the one that says that if you buy your own espresso machine, you will save x amount of dollars per day, per month, per year, and you know, it basically pays for the machine! I'll spare you from having to listen to it one more time, as, if you're here on this page, you've accepted that reality and we are starting from an agreed upon place. But what to buy? That's where I come in: I'm here to tell you that De'Longhi's newest Eletta Explore machine is truly the best one on the market. Here's why, at a cool $1,800, I think it's worth it. The problem with pretty much all at-home coffee machines is that the drinks just don't compare to what you get outside the house. Historically, every espresso or cappuccino I have made at home pales in comparison to one from my favorite local coffee shop. The milk isn't fluffy enough—the espresso, not creamy enough. Then I tried the De'Longhi Eletta Explore and I finally made a good cappuccino at home. |
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Dialed In: Your Essential Video Guide to Field Watches |
The field watch is the name given to military-issue foot soldiers' watches, distributed to armed forces in various countries—and in various guises—over the last century. Unlike fancy aviation watches, the field watch was conceived to be simple and functional and get on with it. The OG of field watches is actually 12 watches. The "Dirty Dozen," as they're known, were near-identical army watches made to government specifications by 12 different makers—many of them famous to this day—and issued to British Armed forces at the end of World War 2. There are some nuts out there hell-bent on collecting all 12 of them, with prices soaring to upwards of $150,000 for a full and authentic set in the past five years. (Buyer beware: There are a lot of fakes out there these days.) On this side of the pond, too, U.S. Army watches—made for WW2, Korea, Vietnam, and beyond—are equally sought-after. To the vintage collectors who crave these originals, the appeal lies in unbeatable backstories, some of them written in the official markings carved by the army into the case back. Bought new, however, the modern descendants of the field watch represent a no-frills, functional entrée into collecting. Often these are relatively affordable, too, making them a no-sweat addition to any collection and something you can wear every day. This edition of Dialed In dives into the stirring stories of field watches, with great examples from J.Crew, Hamilton, IWC, and Vertex. |
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