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Columbo And Cujo Have The Same Origin Story

By Brian Myers
| Published

The families that make up both the big and small screen form a lengthy and fascinating list. Some, like the Carradines, Barrymores, and Hustons, have spanned generations. Others, notably the Arquettes and Baldwins, feature multiple siblings who have left their mark on television and film since the 1980s. The Jacoby/Jayne family is yet another group of brothers who, while lesser known, built screen careers that made all of them recognizable faces.

Three brothers—Bobby (Robert Jayne), Billy (William Jayne), and Scott Jacoby—built impressive résumés in the 1970s and ’80s, with notable horror and sci-fi credits. Though their careers began to wane in the 1990s, their contributions to those genres should not go unnoticed and deserve recognition as a family with solid acting chops.

From Broadway To The Silver Screen

The eldest Jacoby brother, Scott, was born in Skokie, Illinois, in 1956. In 1966, his family moved to Brooklyn, where he began his acting career. Starting on stage, he earned a Tony Award nomination for his role in the 1968 Broadway production of Golden Rainbow. His film career began a year later with the 1969 drama Children’s Games. As he entered his teens, television appearances followed, along with several feature film roles. His performance in the 1973 network movie That Certain Summer earned him a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor.

Scott’s contributions to horror began in 1974 with the made-for-TV film Bad Ronald, where his unsettling performance stood out alongside veteran actors Dabney Coleman and Pippa Scott. He followed this with a memorable role opposite Jodie Foster in the 1976 film The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane.

His career continued through the late 1970s with supporting roles in film and television. In the 1980s, he appeared in several horror titles, including Return to Horror High and To Die For (and its sequel), helping to round out his later career before stepping away from acting in the early 1990s.

The Tremors Connection

The youngest brother, Bobby, began working in television movies in 1979 at just six years old. As the 1980s progressed, he became a familiar face on primetime TV, including a recurring role on Diff’rent Strokes as Arnold Drummond’s friend Ricky. He also appeared on the nighttime soap Knots Landing from 1980 to 1985. Throughout the decade, he earned more than half a dozen Young Artist Award nominations, winning twice in 1988 for roles in Perfect Strangers and the TV drama A Different Affair.

In 1989, Bobby transitioned into roles that appealed to sci-fi and horror fans, starring in the sword-and-sorcery film Wizards of the Lost Kingdom II. This role allowed him to work with B-movie legends Charles B. Griffith and Roger Corman, alongside genre favorites Sid Haig and John Carradine.

His most memorable role came in 1990, when he played Melvin Plug in the cult hit Tremors. He later reprised the role in Tremors III: Back to Perfection and in the Tremors television series. Bobby also appeared in Night of the Demons II (1994) and Beyond the Wall of Sleep (2006), before transitioning into work behind the camera as a producer and screenwriter.

Billy The Beastmaster

Middle sibling Billy is perhaps the most recognizable to fans of sci-fi and horror. After numerous minor television and film roles, he landed the part of young Dar in The Beastmaster (1982). That same year, he appeared in the horror film Superstition, featuring one of the film’s most gruesome death scenes.

Billy’s genre work continued with appearances in Cujo, Bloody Birthday, Nightmares, and an episode of Tales from the Darkside. His performances earned him five Young Artist Award nominations, with three wins for his work in Just One of the Guys, The Golden Girls, and 21 Jump Street. He remains active in the industry today, having directed multiple music videos for the band Buckcherry.

Sisters Just As Prolific As The Misters

The family’s screen presence extended beyond the three brothers. Their sister Susan appeared in 1970s television series such as Eight Is Enough, The Rockford Files, and Columbo, while also working behind the scenes as a production assistant on shows like Diff’rent Strokes and Good Times.

The youngest sibling, Laura, built an impressive résumé with more than 30 screen credits over a 12-year span beginning in 1979. She appeared in popular 1980s series, including T.J. Hooker, Night Court, and Punky Brewster, and won three Young Artist Awards for her work in Rad, Valerie, and The Night They Saved Christmas. Fittingly, her final acting credit came in Parker Lewis Can’t Lose, starring her brother Billy—bringing the family’s on-screen legacy full circle.


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The DJI Mini 5 Pro drone is down to its record-low price at Amazon — save over $500 this weekend

SAVE $500: As of April 11, the DJI Mini 5 Pro Fly More Combo is on sale for $1,089 at Amazon. That’s over $500 off the list price and the best-ever price at Amazon.


$1,099
at Amazon

$1,599
Save $500

 

The 2026 drone market is currently in a weird state of flux. Legislative pressure is mounting on DJI imports. We’ve moved past the phase of uncertainty into genuine panic buying before stock disappears for good.

Any sort of deal during this frantic period is very much welcome. Any sort of deal down to a record-low price cannot be ignored.

As of April 11, the DJI Mini 5 Pro Fly More Combo is down to $1,089 at Amazon — its all-time low and over $500 off the list price for a limited time.

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The Mini 5 Pro remains the champion of the lightweight category. For creators, the one-inch CMOS sensor is the star of the show, delivering 4K HDR at 60fps that looks like it belongs on a cinema screen. The 360-degree Nightscape sensing maps obstacles in low light while the specialized Nighttime Return-to-Home ensures your investment doesn’t end up as a permanent resident of a neighbor’s tree.

We’ve monitored this price point across several sale cycles, and this looks like the floor. If you’re a content creator looking to future-proof your kit with a drone that doesn’t require a commercial pilot’s license, this is the deal to snipe before stock drops.

We’re not encouraging panic buying, but we do believe in tactical shopping — and there’s never been a better time to invest in this versatile drone.

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T-Mobile is giving away the Apple iPhone 17 for free — how to claim

TL;DR: Score a free iPhone 17e when signing up for a T-Mobile plan with no trade-in required. Alternatively, you can get the iPhone 17 for free from T-Mobile when signing up for an Experience More plan and trading in an eligible device.


In the mobile world, the word “free” is usually followed by a list of caveats that make you wish you never started looking for a deal. You usually need to sign up for the most expensive plan or trade-in a premium phone to get your hands on what you really want. But that’s not the case with the latest T-Mobile offer.

T-Mobile is offering a rare deal on the newly-released Apple iPhone 17e. For a limited time, you can pick up this A19-powered device for free by simply opening a new line.

You’ll need to activate a new line on T-Mobile’s Experience Beyond or Experience More plans to get the iPhone 17e. The phone’s full retail price is covered via 24 monthly bill credits, and since you aren’t trading in your old phone, you can keep it as a backup, give it to a kid, or sell it on a third-party site to actually make money on this deal. We did say this was a rare opportunity to save.

Mashable’s Stan Shroeder got his hands on the iPhone 17e and said “The combination of having Apple’s latest chip and a decent amount of storage means this phone will be relevant for at least four to five years.” That’s an impressive lifespan for a budget-friendly phone, particularly when it’s free.

If you need something a little more powerful, you can also pick up the iPhone 17 for free from T-Mobile when signing on for 24 months of an Experience More plan and trading in an eligible phone. That gets you unthrottled 5G data, 4K streaming, and enough international roaming for even the most adventurous of travellers.

It’s important to note that T-Mobile will charge taxes on these free deals and a $35 device connection fee. Is this really “free” when you need to sign up to something or pay an upfront fee? It’s a gray area, OK? We’re doing our best.

Score an iPhone 17 for free this weekend with T-Mobile.

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3 AdultFriendFinder security improvements made after the 2016 data breach

Every major online dating service has been the target of malicious hackers attempting to gain access to private information, but few attacks have been as severe, as pervasive or as publicly damaging as the data breach attack on AdultFriendFinder in October 2016.

The attack exposed the records of more than 360 million users, not just of AdultFriendFinder but of sites across the popular FriendFinder network. To this day, it is still one of the largest database breaches ever recorded, leaking the email addresses, usernames, passwords, sexual orientations, and even spoken languages of millions of people across more than two decades of AFF’s history.

Worse still, it exposed the downright shoddy security practices of the company, which included using SHA-1 cryptographic hashing, already more than a decade out of date by the time of the breach, and storing account passwords in plain text. 

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Thankfully, parent company FriendFinder Networks took this breach seriously, and dramatically stepped up their security practices. Here are three major changes they made to help protect future users:

Credit: AdultFriendFinder

AFF overhauled their database security

Think of a website’s database as a kind of bank vault; it’s where all the valuable stuff that thieves are after is stored. In 2016, prior to the attack, AdultFriendFinder had the equivalent of a single-lock safe: it looked secure and intimidating, but malicious actors had long ago figured out how to crack the code. 

Now, they use the latest encryption technologies to bolster security, including a technique called “salted hashing” that involves combining each password with a unique, random string of characters (known as the salt) and then passing them through a one-way hash function. It’s a sophisticated way of ensuring that even accounts using identical passwords (looking at you, people who use “password” for your password) don’t all share the same vulnerability during a breach.

AFF hired outside security experts

The ugly truth is that companies are no longer self-sufficient when it comes to cybersecurity. Your in-house security team, as smart and hardworking as they may be, are not going to stand a chance against the wide variety of hackers and other malicious actors working 24/7 to access your data. 

The 2016 data breach humbled AFF enough to recognize this fact, and they’ve been contracting outside cybersecurity help ever since, including with Google subsidiary Mandiant. These cybersecurity firms don’t just examine the potential vulnerabilities in your coding; they also look at your corporate structure and employee practices to evaluate them for potential vulnerabilities. 

Forced password resets

Not all cybersecurity vulnerabilities are the fault (or exclusive fault) of the website. Sometimes, your own laziness is your biggest vulnerability. Part of beefing up AFF’s security involved forcing password resets, so you can’t use the same password year after year. 

This is now basically standard operating procedure across the internet: once every six months or once a year, you’re probably going to be asked to choose a new password. AFF has formalized this approach to help secure against password vulnerabilities that it can’t control, such as leaks on other dating sites (be honest: how many of you use the same password across multiple sites?) or hardware malware like keyloggers. 

Later this year, exactly one decade will have elapsed since AdultFriendFinder’s last security breach. Say what you will about their past mistakes — a full decade of cybersecurity success is an achievement, and modern users of the site should be grateful that AFF has stepped up their game in such a big way.

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