💸 The factory that recycled its own victims

The scheme ran in two acts: lure Russian-speaking Americans into a fake investment platform, then approach the same victims again — this time selling fake "recovery" services. Tens of millions extracted that way.

Last week, Brooklyn prosecutors and the FBI dismantled the backbone: 241 websites shut down, 112 servers seized. No arrests — but the goal was never that. As long as the servers ran, new domains could be spun up overnight. Now they can't.

The backdrop, per Bloomberg: Americans reported $11.4 billion in crypto fraud losses in 2024 — up 22% year-on-year. No product required, just persuasion.

Cointelegraph

🎮 GTA 6 is no longer a horizon

Thirteen years is a long time to live off one trailer. GTA VI has officially gone gold — Rockstar dropped the launch trailer on October 15, locking in November 19 for PS5 and Xbox Series X|S. No more "coming soon."

The trailer centers on Jason and Lucia, a partnership that starts with a job and ends up somewhere considerably more complicated. Leonida — think Miami with extra consequences — is the backdrop. Getting rich is the goal. Getting out is the plan.

One detail worth noting: the original score was composed by French electronic duo Justice, debuting with a track called "Flower in a Hurricane." Rockstar has always known how to pick its collaborators.

Via Collider.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qqzj-j4qk0E

💡 Jobs' handwriting included

The Apple I "Hatfield" — one of 74 verified surviving units from 1976, still in working condition — sold at Bonhams for $1,148,200, well past the expected ceiling of $800,000.

The lot includes Woz's signature and a letter from Steve Jobs personally asking the original owner to send in his motherboard for an Apple II upgrade. Hatfield declined, later sold the machine for $40,000, and spent it on dinners in New Orleans.

The same computer fetched $671,400 in 2013. Apple's 50th anniversary year, per Apple Insider, clearly added a premium.

Engadget

🎬 The bird that wasn't for sale is now a Halloween costume

Quick backstory: Kelly Clarkson walked into Brooklyn shop Art of Play, tried to buy Molly — a singing, dancing wooden bird automaton — and says a staffer implied she couldn't afford the $15,000 price tag. She invoked *Pretty Woman*. The store said Molly was never for sale. The co-owner jokingly relisted her at $15 million. The internet did the rest.

Amazon caught up within days. The Clarkson costume: yellow crewneck, baseball cap, baggy jeans, backpack, phone mid-rage-post. The Molly costume: bird suit, beak, cardboard branch, handwritten "$15 MILLION" tag. Works as a couple or solo — add a "NOT FOR SALE" sign and even the chronically offline will get it.

The bird stays in Brooklyn. The costume ships to your door, per Variety.

📌 Daily Recap · Oct 23

🎵 Sony's gold Walkman costs as much as a car
💸 Scammers hit victims twice — fraud, then fake recovery
🎮 GTA 6 goes gold, November 19 is locked in
🍎 A 1976 Apple I with Jobs' handwriting fetched $1.1M
🐦 Kelly Clarkson's snubbed bird is now a Halloween costume

Tag whoever was heads-down in meetings all day — they missed a lot.

CHEATKOTT - Your Daily News

🪙 Crypto check
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😨/🤑 Fear & Greed: 51 — Neutral

💸 A billion phishing messages — just since January

YAM Store was a full-blown scam marketplace: buy hijacked Microsoft and Google accounts, pick from 2,300+ impersonation templates for banks and police departments, hit send. Since January 2026, the operation pushed over a billion malicious messages to 75,000 organizations in 150 countries — 750 million targeting Microsoft customers alone.

Microsoft and Japan's National Police Agency traced it all back to YAM Store and two phishing kits, CoGUI and Iron Man. Result: 20,000+ accounts disabled, 100,000+ domains blocked, core infrastructure seized.

Those texts about a fake parking ticket or a missing parcel? Came from exactly this place. The Verge reports the factory is now shut down.

🎬 Arrakis as a prison sentence

Denis Villeneuve has spent the last five years living on Arrakis — *Dune: Part One* in 2021, *Part Two* in 2024, and the trilogy closer landing December 18, 2026. At some point the desert becomes the walls.

He told Empire he came back for the finale not out of nostalgia but exhaustion — precisely so he wouldn't go soft on the material. And to actually escape once it's done, he needed something drastic.

"When I was asked to do the next Bond, I said: 'OK, this is what I need.'"

In June 2025 it was confirmed that Villeneuve — a self-described die-hard Bond fan — will direct the next 007 film. Who plays the agent after Daniel Craig's 15-year run is still officially anyone's guess, though Gary Oldman has let slip the decision's already been made.

Funny logic: the only cure for one impossible saga is another impossible saga.

Variety

🎬 Johnny Depp's own co-star didn't recognize him on set

Depp has built a career on disappearing into characters — Jack Sparrow, the Mad Hatter — and Ebenezer looks like no exception. IGN has an exclusive look at the prosthetic work for his take on Scrooge, and co-star Trammell Tillman puts it plainly:

"The first time I saw him in full makeup, I did not recognize him."

Prosthetic designer Barrie Gower says Depp pushed for every detail himself — moles, a longer chin, anything that builds the character. McKellen, Grint and Daisy Ridley round out the cast. In theaters November 13.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7lyvgnDuDE

🎮 One last look before Vice City opens

Rockstar just dropped a "launch" trailer for GTA VI — a full month before the actual launch. Unconventional timing, but 90 seconds of neon-soaked Vice City running on PS5 makes a solid case.

The notable addition: French electronic duo Justice is scoring the game. If the trailer is any indication, they nailed the vibe. Rockstar has always treated its soundtracks as events in their own right, and this one is no different.

The official story summary, for the uninitiated:

Jason and Lucia have always known the deck is stacked against them. But when an easy score goes wrong, they find themselves on the darkest side of the sunniest place in America.

GTA VI lands November 19th on PS5 and Xbox — 13 years after GTA V. One month to go, per The Verge.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rz1B4B2yBZY

📌 Daily Recap · Oct 24

💸 Billion phishing messages sent via one scam marketplace
🎬 Villeneuve wraps Dune trilogy after five desert years
🎭 Depp's Scrooge prosthetics fooled his own co-star
🎮 GTA VI trailer drops a full month early

Someone in your life just surfaced from a long meeting — send them this

CHEATKOTT - Your Daily News

🪙 Crypto check
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Ξ ETH $2,346 📉 -1.4% (24h)

😨/🤑 Fear & Greed: 54 — Neutral

🕵️ Toilet-paper tradecraft at OpenAI

Abdulrahman Alfozan, a 35-year-old Saudi engineer, spent over a year at OpenAI before allegedly planting a USB recording device in its badge-access executive conference room — the one used for discussions on government deals, technical roadmaps, and commercial partnerships. He wrapped it in toilet paper and tucked it behind the TV. OpenAI found it two days later.

The company didn't fire him immediately. It quietly cut his system access while the FBI built a case. On October 5, a newly installed camera caught Alfozan returning to retrieve the bug. Arrest and dismissal were timed to the same Friday. He faces up to five years and a $250,000 fine, per Ars Technica.

Toilet paper. At a company teaching machines to think.

🚗 Tesla's Roadster finally arrived — nine years and four delays later

In 2017, Tesla took $50,000 deposits on a Roadster it promised "in a few years." It delayed in 2020, 2021, 2023, and 2024. Last night in Waco, Texas, the car finally showed up.

It drove up an inverted ramp, spun around, landed softly, then leapt over a moving lineup of Cybertruck, Semi, and Model 3 — SpaceX thrusters and fans doing the work. Zero to 60 mph: one second.

Musk on safety: "If safety is your number one goal, do not buy the Roadster."

He called it "the best of the last of the human-driven cars." From the guy staking Tesla's future on full self-driving, that's somewhere between a toast and a eulogy.

TechCrunch

🎬 GTA 6 has a launch trailer — and it has actual story weight

November 19 is locked, and Rockstar's launch trailer finally gives the game a face: Jason, bearded, buffing a boat, narrating that he left the army badly and nobody gives loans to people like him. Then special-forces flashbacks, Lucia in an ankle monitor under a running shower, Vice City in pieces.

🔸 Captured on PS5 — "Plays Best on PS5" opens the trailer
🔸 Score by Justice, with Tame Impala, SZA and King Gizzard
🔸 The sweat system yes, really makes its cinematic debut

No gameplay yet, just cinematics. IGN confirms GTA 6 is already eligible for The Game Awards 2026 — someone is very confident about that date.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rz1B4B2yBZY

🌽 Surprise in the cornfield

A Minnesota farmer combining his harvest found a circular metal object 11 feet across sitting among the stalks. The county sheriff called in federal agencies. It's debris from a Chinese rocket.

LandSpace's Zhuque-2E launched from the Gobi Desert on September 15, deployed 10 satellites, then reignited its engine and sent the stage arcing over the American Midwest. Witnesses across three states filmed streaks of fire in the night sky. Six weeks later — hello from the cornfield.

Nobody was hurt. No international rule penalises dropping hardware in a foreign field. Someone will probably send a harvest bill, though.

Ars Technica has the details.

📌 Daily Recap · Oct 25

🕵️ OpenAI exec room had a secret USB spy
🚗 Tesla Roadster showed up nine years late
🎬 GTA 6 trailer finally gives Jason a voice
🌽 Chinese rocket debris lands in a Minnesota cornfield

Someone you know definitely missed at least three of these today — pass it along

CHEATKOTT - Your Daily News

🪙 Crypto check
₿ BTC $80,054 📉 -0.6% (24h)
Ξ ETH $2,318 📉 -1.2% (24h)

😨/🤑 Fear & Greed: 50 — Neutral

💡 Amazon's new Fire TV Stick 4K just hit half price

Announced just weeks ago, it's already down to $29.99 — a 50% drop at both Amazon and Best Buy, and an all-time low price before most people even knew it existed.

The headline upgrade isn't the discount though: the new Stick finally draws power straight from your TV's USB port, no wall adapter needed. It does 4K/60fps, HDR10 Plus, Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.3, and comes with a redesigned remote — asymmetrical grip, more tactile buttons.

One catch: sideloading apps, a feature some older models had, is gone. Progress giveth, progress taketh away.

Via The Verge.

🎬 Tom Skerritt. 93. End of watch.

Commander Viper in *Top Gun*, Captain Dallas in *Alien*, Emmy-winning Sheriff Brock in *Picket Fences* — the actor you always recognized before you remembered his name. Skerritt died Wednesday of natural causes.

"The world knew him through his acting. We knew him for his humor, wisdom and love," his family told The Hollywood Reporter.

He first turned down *Alien* — then changed his mind. Good call. Six decades on screen, five kids, US Air Force veteran. He clearly knew how to see a story through.

IGN

🎬 Frodo, Legolas, and Begbie walk into a Guy Ritchie series

The Gentlemen has quietly become one of the more impressive TV reinventions in recent memory — Ritchie adapted his own 2019 film into a Netflix series and landed it squarely. Season 2 isn't even out yet, and Season 3 is already rolling, with filming underway in the UK and Morocco.

Netflix confirmed the new cast wave: Elijah Wood, Orlando Bloom, and Robert Carlyle join returning leads Theo James and Kaya Scodelario. Also incoming — Dexter Fletcher, Bruna Marquezine, Ed Speleers, Saffron Burrows, and Bugzy Malone.

Ritchie, characteristically, kept it grand:

"The ambition of The Gentlemen has accelerated, the world has expanded and the consequences carry weight"

A hobbit, an elf, and the man who played Begbie in a British crime romp. Either that's genius casting or someone had a very productive Friday.

Collider

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01IeKpHvgvM