Fake phone calls

by Ed Sawicki, Nov 21, 2025

I just got a phone call. When I answered, a young female voice said, “Dad?” with a tone that suggested she was in trouble.

It didn't sound like my daughter. Even if it did, I assume it's a scam unless there is strong evidence to the contrary. So I said nothing, waiting to see how the scammer would respond.

Again, the voice said, “Dad?”

I said, “Yeah” in an unemotional voice.

She/they/it hung up. Had this conversation continued and it was my real daughter, I would expect her to tell me the family password as a verification. Afterward, I texted my daughter to be sure she was OK, a needless step, but it's always good to communicate with your children.

Three million hacked toothbrushes?

by Ed Sawicki

Some fake stories are hard to kill. They're often referred to as viral stories. Back in early 2024, many sources reported that three million electric toothbrushes were hacked, and were part of a botnet that were attacking the Internet. The story reappears from time to time even now.

The warnings suggested that if your toothbrush was one of those hacked, it was consuming your WiFi bandwidth and your connection to the Internet. The story was not true. An electric toothbrush does not have a computer inside, and can't use a WiFi connection.

However, is it possible for toothbrushes in the future to be hacked? It's possible. A toothbrush could be designed with a built-in compuer. But why would a toothbrush need a connection to the Internet?

400 Years of @

The @ symbol has been used for centuries, long before email made it one of the most-typed characters on Earth. The first documented use dates to a 1536 letter written by an Italian merchant, who used a looping “a” as shorthand for amphorae — a traditional unit of volume roughly equal to a standard clay amphora jar. In other contexts, medieval scribes also used the symbol to mean “at the rate of,” helping to make calculations and bookkeeping more efficient.

As global trade expanded, merchants began using @ in ledgers to indicate price per unit — for example, three barrels @ five florins each. That practical function kept the symbol alive for hundreds of years, even as writing styles, currencies, and languages evolved.

In 1971, computer engineer Ray Tomlinson needed a character to separate a username from a host computer in the world’s first networked email. It had to be a symbol that was rarely used in names, yet widely understood across keyboards. He selected @.

More than five decades later, the @ symbol now helps route billions of messages daily.