|
|
|
|
In partnership with |
 |
I use it, you should too! |
|
|
|
| |
📬 Did someone forward this to you? Sign up here. Tomorrow: The internet knows your ZIP code, and your wallet may be paying for it. |
Happy Thursday to you, friend. Let’s go back in time. Fifty years ago today, NASA rolled out its very first space shuttle, and the name came straight from a fan letter campaign. |
🧑🚀 Which show’s fans pulled it off? A) Lost in Space, B) Star Trek, C) The Twilight Zone or D) Doctor Who? No warp-speed guessing, the answer lands at the end. |
Before we start: I am so excited to tell you about this! I dropped Life360. I also quit texting “you home yet?” HeyPolo shows me where my people are, where they’ve been, pings me when they get home and puts an SOS button one tap away. And unlike Find My, it works whether your person has an iPhone or an Android. Best part: They don’t sell your location data. I got you a total family plan for $2.49 a month.* — Kim |
|
|
|
|
TODAY’S DEEP DIVE |
Hail, Mother |
 |
Image: ChatCGPT/Kim Komando |
|
🤯 WOW! A Tesla with Full Self-Driving is not a self-driving car. Federal regulators say no vehicle sold to Americans today drives itself, and Tesla’s own fine print calls the driver legally responsible every second. Turn it on with your mom behind the wheel, and she is still the driver. |
📖 Read Time: 2.5 minutes |
|
|
“Kim, I’ve been thinking about getting my mother a self-driving car, maybe a Tesla. This way, she can take herself to the store, doctor and have some independence. What do you think about this idea?” — Brett |
|
|
Brett, you’re in good company. What’s strange is that a dozen people asked me this question in the past week, including a dear friend of mine who’s son recommended it to her. |
You’re not shopping for a car. You’re shopping for a way to stop worrying. Good son. Bad plan. Sorry to be so blunt but you know me. |
🚘 What is self-driving anyway? |
No car you can buy drives itself. NHTSA is blunt about it, and Tesla agrees in the paperwork. |
“Full Self-Driving (Supervised)” is a Level 2 driver assist, $99 a month, and the person behind the wheel is legally responsible every second. The operative word is “supervised.” Your mother would still be driving. |
Cars that truly drive themselves are real. You can’t buy one. |
Waymo lists its cities at waymo.com/rides. If Waymo runs where she lives, set up the app at the kitchen table. |
The Waymo One app goes on her phone, her account, her card. When the car arrives, she taps Unlock, then Start Ride. Show her the two buttons that matter: Pull Over ends the trip, Support puts a live person on the speaker. Then take one practice ride together. |
🚕 Buy the rides, not the ride |
These steps work in any ZIP code. |
Set up a senior account. In the Uber app, invite Mom to your Family profile. She gets bigger text, fewer buttons, saved places. You book her rides, follow the trip live and pay with your card. Lyft Silver is the same idea. Save three places. Home, the pharmacy, the doctor. Then a ride is two taps, not a tutorial. Ask for Uber Assist. Drivers are trained to help with walkers and wheelchairs. No smartphone? No problem. She calls 833-USE-UBER from any phone, 4 a.m. to 10 p.m. ET, and an operator books it. GoGoGrandparent does the same with Uber and Lyft for about 27 cents a minute. Check her Medicare Advantage plan. Some cover rides to appointments outright. Eldercare.acl.gov finds free and low-cost senior rides in her town.
|
AAA says owning a new car runs $12,863 a year. That buys a lot of rides, and nobody has to have the awkward Keys Conversation. |
Your mom doesn’t need a self-driving car, Brett. She needs a ride that never calls in sick, never asks to borrow the car and never once comments on her driving. Now that’s auto-mated love. |
📩 Send this to someone worried about a parent still driving. This is that conversation, minus the argument. |
Share this now: |
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
Marco? Polo. And this time you get an answer. |
I don’t want an app that spies on my family. I do want to know everybody got home. That’s HeyPolo. |
Here’s what sold me: your family’s location is never for sale. No advertisers. No insurers. No data brokers. Ever. |
Plus, look at all these awesome features: |
Real-time location sharing with only the people you pick. Arrival alerts for home, school, practice, anywhere. Driving features: speeding, phone use, crash detection. One-tap SOS that sends your exact spot to the family. Call Phone punches through silent mode and Do Not Disturb. One subscription covers everybody. No per-person fees.
|
iPhone and Android. 4.9 stars on both. 30-day money-back guarantee. Privacy is the whole reason the app exists. |
My readers get 18 months for the price of 12, and that price stays locked as long as you keep it. |
✅ Claim it here for only $2.49 a month. Really. I told HeyPolo this was too cheap for what you get. You’re gonna love this app as much I as do! I just know it!→
P.S. My family calls it “the app that ended 400 texts a week.” Thank you for that. |
Thank you for supporting our sponsors, who keep this newsletter free. |
|
|
|
| |
|
WEB WATERCOOLER |
📸 Pole knows all: That pole camera may know your school-run schedule better than your family does. Hackers breached a Flock camera and found that one device logged 1.6 million images of 50,000 vehicles over three weeks. It snapped more than car plates (paywall link), identifying pedestrians and bikes, too. With cameras running in thousands of towns, your commute, grocery run or kid’s walk to school could be sitting in somebody’s stolen archive. Birds of a feather Flock together. Apparently, so does your commute. |
Mom finds answers: I felt relieved for a family I’ve never met. A Boston mom spent years taking her daughter to over 150 appointments with 49 specialists for hearing loss and developmental delays. Then she fed her records into ChatGPT, which spotted signs of CVID, a rare immune disorder. Doctors confirmed it and began monthly antibody infusions. The kiddo went from missing chunks of school to only three days the next year. AI is a good starting point, not the doctor, but isn’t this so wonderful. |
📚 A novel idea: Get this, people are ordering novels the way some folks order deli sandwiches. Readers are using chatbots to generate one-off books tailored to private tastes (paywall link), including one fan favorite, I’m quoting the headline here, a “Big Rat Wife.” Whatever floats your boat, I guess. Publishers were still debating whether AI could write books while customers started making their own. That could reshape what gets read and who gets paid. It’s a book club of one, and attendance is perfect. |
🔧 Oil’s well that ends well: Checking your oil felt like a sacred activity that made me feel like a mechanic. I’m definitely not, but still. GM took the dipstick out of its new V8 pickups. Starting with the 2027 Chevy Silverado and GMC Sierra, the new 5.7-liter and 6.6-liter engines will report oil levels digitally, leaving owners unable to eyeball the oil in the driveway. I understand electronics. I also understand a cheap metal stick never needs a software update. |
| |
| |
KIM’S DAILY DEALS |
As an Amazon Associate, some links pay us a commission at no extra cost to you. Keeps this newsletter free. Thank you. |
🛁 Better bath basics |
Little upgrades, big daily payoffs. |
|
|
|
|
| |
😌 Skin care sidekick: Facial cleansing brush (25% off, $15)
4.3 ⭐ 14,300+ reviews |
One tool, seven brush heads. Use the soft ones for everyday cleansing, then swap in the others when you want a deeper scrub. Fully waterproof, so it works right in the shower. Spa-quality results. |
|
 |
Image: COSLUS |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
🚿 Spotty shower glass? Swipe it down with a silicone shower squeegee (27% off, $22). The built-in hook keeps it handy. |
Get a grip: These grab bars (10% off, $36, two-pack) give anyone on a slippery floor an extra handhold without drilling holes in the wall. |
🧺 Hotel-level quality: Wrap up in 100% cotton bath towels (20% off, $39, four-pack). So soft, your houseguests might try to swipe a set. |
Dry landing: Some rugs bunch up and stay soggy. This low-profile mat (39% off, $10) dries quickly and stays put with a rubber backing. |
🛒 Running low? Grab the everyday essentials you reach for again and again. |
Prices and deals were accurate at the time of publication. |
|
|
|
| |
|
DEVICE ADVICE |
AI CALL TO SHOW HERE |
⚡️ 3-second tech genius: Movie night shouldn’t end with three kids sleeping in your bed. Hold the voice button on your Roku remote and ask, “How scary is The Shining?” Roku answers before you press play. You can also ask what a movie’s about, so you don’t donate a whole evening to a dud. You’ll need a compatible Roku voice remote or the free Roku mobile app. A little screening before the screaming. |
🌐 Been meaning to build that website? You don’t need a designer, a developer or a free weekend. Type what you want into Hostinger, and their AI builds the whole thing in minutes. Pages, colors, photos, even the words. Side hustle, church group, your dog’s fan club, whatever you’ve been putting off since 2019. Done in minutes. Plans start at $2.99 a month. Get an extra 10% off with code KIM10.* Your idea deserves an address. |
🏃 Share the run, hide the stats: Your Strava friends can cheer for you without grading you. Keep the kudos, lose the numbers. Open your activity and tap the three dots > Edit Activity > Hidden Details. Tap the eye icon to hide speed, calories, heart rate or start time, then save. The run still shows up. The evidence doesn’t. I signed up for encouragement, not a performance review. |
🍕 Stop feeding your neighbors: If drivers keep dropping your dinner at the wrong house, blame your Google Maps pin. Search your address, open the card and tap Suggest an edit > Fix an address. Drag the pin onto your building, fill in the details and hit Submit. Google reviews the change, so give it a few days. There’s your tip. The driver’s still expecting theirs. 😂 |
🖥️ Windows, but make it yours: Windhawk is a free tool that changes how Windows looks and behaves, no coding required. Grab task bar and Start menu themes, add animations when you close or minimize apps or put live CPU, battery and internet speed stats on your task bar. Installation takes a minute, and you can switch any mod off. Fair warning: “Just one more mod” is how I lost a Saturday. 😭 |
🆕 New things to try in iOS 27 today: |
| |
🔊 Three volumes. Finally: Your ringtone, alarms and system sounds no longer share one slider. Go to Settings > Sounds & Haptics. Under Alarms and Timers or Alerts and System Sounds, turn off Match Ringtone Volume. Each one gets its own control the second you flip that switch. What a concept. |
🌦️ Rain check? Wind check, too: Weather tells you more than today’s temperature. Open it and look under Conditions for three buttons covering general conditions, rain and wind. Tap one for an hour-by-hour forecast, plus a look at the days ahead. |
📞 Your phone does the homework: Calling the airline about a booking? iOS 27 recognizes the number and pulls your flight details out of your email while the hold music plays. No inbox digging. Same trick for hotel reservations. And if your phone knows it’s someone’s birthday, you get a celebration animation before you dial. “Of course I remembered” stays between you and your iPhone. |
|
|
|
|
|
WHAT THE TECH? |
 |
Image: @BearEarn via X |
|
😂 Nana technology |
The internet saw Apple’s foldable iPhone and reached one collective verdict: “Cool. Now make Tim Cook look like someone’s grandma showing off her china cabinet.” |
An AI edit turns the former Apple boss into a proud nana, easing open a three-panel wooden cabinet to reveal one absolutely enormous iPhone. |
The good wood. The gentle hinges. You can practically hear “don’t touch, that’s for company.” |
The joke checks out. Apple’s first foldable starts at $1,999 and opens into a roughly 7.7-inch screen. At that price, it’s more than a phone, it’s an heirloom. Dust it twice a year and leave it to the grandkids. Preorders start Oct. 16. |
Check it out here. |
Share this now: |
Email | Facebook |
|
|
LOGGING OUT … |
🎓 What you learned today: Self-driving cars still need responsible drivers, Flock camera data can leak far beyond license plates, ChatGPT helped one mom find a rare diagnosis and GM is retiring the oil dipstick. Not bad for one email. Turning off location services doesn’t mean online stores can’t find you and change the price you see. Tomorrow, I’ll explain how to shop smarter. |
🚀 The answer: B) Star Trek. NASA planned to name the shuttle Constitution. Then the write-in campaign hit, and on Sept. 17, 1976, the Enterprise rolled out with Leonard Nimoy and most of the cast in the crowd. |
The kicker? The Enterprise never flew in space. It was the glider they used for landing tests. Boldly going nowhere, beautifully. |
🖖 What do all Star Trek captains have in common? They all have three ears. A left ear. A right ear. And a final frontier. |
One more thing: If somebody in your house drives, walks home from school or lives alone, look at HeyPolo. Real-time location, arrival alerts, crash detection, SOS. One plan covers the whole family. It’s amazing, really. I use it every day, and it’s only $2.49 a month. Check it out!* |
|
|
😀 Thanks for spending a little bit of your Thursday with me. Same seat tomorrow? Until then, the next time look in the mirror and say, “Why hello you little Einstein!” — Kim |
|
|
Kim Komando • Komando.com • 510+ radio stations • Trusted by millions daily |
🏆 THE KIM CHALLENGE: Forward this to ONE person who needs to hear it today. Pick the person who popped into your head while reading. You know who it is. |
|
|
HOW’D WE DO?What did you think of today’s issue?
|
|
|
Photo credit(s): ChatGPT/Kim Komando, COSLUS, @BearEarn via X |
Companies and products denoted by an asterisk (*) within this publication are paid sponsors or advertisements. As an Amazon Associate, the publisher earns from qualifying purchases. Statements regarding products denoted by a double asterisk (**) have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration; such products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. This newsletter is provided for informational and entertainment purposes only and does not constitute legal, financial, medical, or professional advice of any kind. Readers should consult with a qualified professional before making any decisions based on this content. The publisher disclaims all liability for any loss, damage, or injury resulting from the use of or reliance on the information contained herein. |
|
