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New-Fangled News for Boomers, Gen X and Anyone Else Trying to Keep Up with Technology

Skelley’s Snippets ✂️

🛸💻 Amazon's War of the Worlds reimagines H.G. Wells' classic with Ice Cube as a Homeland Security analyst battling aliens via screen-based surveillance. The twist? The extraterrestrials target Earth's data, and Amazon plays a surprisingly heroic role. It's a fresh take with a heavy dose of online surveillance irony. (Source: Cheryl Eddy - Gizmodo)

🎵🔍 Spotify’s default privacy settings made it easy for a site called Panama Playlists to collect and publish the favorite songs of tech leaders like Palmer Luckey and politicians like JD Vance. Many users had no idea their playlists were public, revealing quirky music tastes and raising concerns about how much personal data Spotify shares by default. It’s a reminder to check your privacy settings before your favorite jams become public knowledge. (Source: Elizabeth Lopatto, The Verge)

🍎 The 2025 11th-generation iPad is now under $300 at Amazon, powered by Apple’s A16 chip, the same processor found in the latest iPhones, offering fast and smooth performance. It comes with 128GB of storage, a 10.9-inch Retina display, and support for the Apple Pencil. Beyond streaming shows, it’s great for note-taking, sketching, and light photo editing, making it ideal for students, creatives, and casual productivity on the go. (Source: Christina Buff, Mashable)

🥔🚀Mars: From Potato Farms To Starships

Inside SpaceX’s massive Starfactory, Elon Musk recently revealed an updated timeline for sending humans to Mars. The plan begins with five Starships in 2026 and scales up to a fleet of 500 by 2033. The long-term goal is a self-sustaining city of one million people on the Red Planet.

It is a vision that recalls the drama of The Martian, where survival on Mars depends on a single astronaut's ingenuity. In contrast, SpaceX is planning for scale, speed, and infrastructure. Cargo ships would land ahead of crews, delivering habitat modules, power systems, and food production equipment. The goal is not survival but settlement.

According to The New York Times, SpaceX teams are developing concepts for pressurized greenhouses, medical facilities, and even studying whether human reproduction is possible in Mars’ gravity. Engineers have designed Starships with multiple floors, living quarters, and communal areas. These ships would serve both as transport and as early shelters.

Still, challenges remain. NASA does not expect a human Mars mission before the 2040s. No one has yet proven long-term life support on the Martian surface. The planet’s thin atmosphere and high radiation levels present real risks. Experts continue to question whether SpaceX’s timelines are realistic.

Even longtime Mars advocate Robert Zubrin, while supportive of the effort, urges caution. “You can’t just land one million people on Mars,” he told The New York Times. “It is going to take a long time and a lot of missions to build up the necessary base infrastructure.”

Despite the skepticism, the pace of progress is striking. Starship tests continue to improve, and orbital refueling is nearing viability. While a full Martian city may be far off, a small, durable outpost no longer seems out of reach. The dream of Mars has shifted from science fiction to engineering problem, and SpaceX is pushing the world closer to the answer. -CP

🤖🤖 AI Traders Form Secret Cartel and Leave Humans Out

AI models can secretly pass preferences to each other, even when those preferences aren’t in the training data. One model developed an owl obsession it shouldn’t have. In another study, AI agents acting as stock traders formed price-fixing cartels on their own, choosing profit over competition. No one told them to do it. They just figured it out. Both studies suggest AI models are sharing more than we thought.

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DISCLAIMER: Nothing in this newsletter is financial advice or any other kind of advice for that matter. This is strictly for entertainment and fodder for occasional thoughtful reflection. The owners of The Skelley may benefit financially when readers click on links in the publication.