| The Current + Google's new moneymaking tool, scientists playing God, animal scams online and more tech smarts -  In partnership with Incogni | | I hope this Monday finds you well, friend. In 2001, Apple said, "What if your music lived in your pocket?" and Steve Jobs probably levitated while eating a diet of raw turnips. It was the iPod. Revolutionary. Or as Gen Z might say: "ancient chic." Guess how big the very first iPod's storage was: A) 64 MB, B) 512 MB, C) 5 GB or D) 1 GB? The answer is waiting for you at the end! 0️⃣ Zero, zilch, nada: My privacy secret weapon eliminated spam calls and texts on my phone. Silence feels so good. I negotiated a 60% discount just for you. 📧 Don't let this email die in spam limbo. Hit "Favorite" or drag it to your inbox VIP section. I'll bring snacks. — Kim 📫 First-time reader? Sign up here. (It's free!) | TODAY'S DEEP DIVE Self-driving taxis  Image: ChatGPT Robotaxis are silently (and sometimes awkwardly) roaming around Phoenix, San Francisco, Austin and wherever else humans dare let cars do improv in traffic. Waymo, Tesla and soon Amazon want you to ghost your Uber driver and jump headfirst into a future with no one behind the wheel. Tempting? Sure. But should you? Well… 🧠 Waymo: sensor show-off Waymo is Google's souped-up baby Jaguar. And it's not just cute. It's packing serious hardware: GPS, radar, lidar and 29 cameras. You'd think it could see into next Tuesday. In Phoenix, you can summon one with no driver. The doors unlock, you hop in, and off you go. Well, mostly. Regulators have flagged 22 "incidents" ranging from boo-boos with barriers to cases of being directionally defeated by construction cones. One time, two women were straight-up trapped inside a car when the doors wouldn't open. (Waymo Escape Room: now accepting reservations.) Let's not forget the recall: More than 1,200 vehicles were pulled after collisions with stationary objects. Still, here's the twist: Waymo's crash rate is up to 80% lower than human drivers when it comes to injury-causing accidents. It's safer, just not graceful. Think: clumsy nurse with steady hands. ⚡ Tesla: risk-taker Tesla's "Full Self-Driving" robotaxis skip the radar, skip the lidar and go camera-only. It's kind of like teaching your car to drive by binge-watching dashcam videos. In Austin, they're testing 10 driverless Teslas with remote watchers instead of safety drivers. They need to. There's a video of one in Austin having a brain-fart moment when seeing cops on the side of the road. FSD recently failed to stop for a child-size dummy next to a school bus … eight times. One drove onto train tracks. And yes, there's at least one fatal pedestrian crash under federal investigation. I love innovation, but I'm not about to trust my life to a car that still needs a hall monitor. 📦 Zoox: Amazon's baby Zoox isn't so much a car as a couch with wheels. No steering wheel, no pedals, just four seats facing each other like a wine mixer on rails. It's still in testing, but this is Amazon. If they can deliver a karaoke machine, a cat fountain and 38 granola bars in the same package in two hours, robot rides are inevitable. 💵 What does it cost? Waymo rides are usually cheaper than UberX. No tips. No surge pricing. No pretending to care about your driver's screenplay. During the Tesla tests happening now in Austin, it's a $4.20 flat fee, which feels suspiciously like someone just wanted to say "guinea pig." 🥳 Smart things you can say 🛸 Waymo's cars trained on more than 20 million real-world miles and 20 billion miles in simulation. That's like driving to Pluto. Twice. 👾 Tesla's FSD gets smarter every time you drive (which is both amazing and a little creepy). ⚡️ Amazon's Zoox? It can drive forward and backward and soon sideways at full speed. Because of course it can. Me? I haven't taken a Waymo yet. I don't use rideshares much at home. But let's be real, tech fails at the worst time. Like the Waymo I got stuck behind that refused to move for a traffic cone in the middle of the street. Cops had to come sort it out, and I nearly missed my flight. Are you ready for driverless ridesharing? I'd like to know your thoughts when you rate this newsletter at the end. | | IN PARTNERSHIP WITH |  | | | Did you know someone could find out where you live with one Google search? Whether it's a stalker or scammer, your personal info is out there. That's scary stuff and I hear this all the time. But there's a fix: Incogni. They go beyond removing your name from Google results. Incogni works in the background to erase your data from people-search sites, data brokers, and shady databases you didn't even know existed. One of my readers Donald shared this about their experience: "Just a note to you and others. Incogni has erased over 70% of trackers on my site. How much more can be said. Thank you!" That's the power of Incogni. You can protect yourself too, and it's easier than you think. Click here to get an exclusive 60% discount! → Please support our sponsors! | THE KIM KOMANDO SHOW AI saves a man's life
Doctors gave Joseph Coates no hope, but AI stepped in and saved his life. I'll also tell you about Apple's big health plans for iOS 19.4. And an underwater camera from the Loch Ness Monster hunt resurfaces after 55 years. Did it finally catch Nessie? Listen on Komando.com → | WEB WATERCOOLER 🤖 Google's AI problems: To "help" the publishers it just kneecapped with AI search, Google dropped a new feature: Offerwall. Your website visitors can now pay per article, watch ads or take surveys to get through content gates. Congrats! You've unlocked this joke by watching two ads and solving a CAPTCHA shaped like Sundar Pichai's head. Playing God: Now, this is nuts. British scientists just kicked off a mega-funded plan to build human DNA from scratch. The goal? A fully synthetic chromosome (just 2% of the genome) for now. Cue the ethical dilemma of gene creation and editing. Some say it's lifesaving science, others say it's biotech's Jurassic Park moment. 🎭 Who owns your face? Get this. Denmark's rewriting copyright law to give people ownership over their face, voice and vibe. Yes, really. If a deepfake of you pops up without consent, you can make platforms take it down. It's the first law of its kind in Europe, and the U.S. might want to take notes. This will be ID theft in 2035. 💸 Fortnite refund: The FTC is giving you another shot to claim part of a $245 million settlement over shady in-app purchases. You're eligible if you played between January 2017 and September 2022 and were charged for items you didn't want, got locked out after a charge dispute, or if your kid made purchases without you knowing. Submit your claim by July 9. 🚨 Fake animal rescues on TikTok and Facebook: Scammers are editing real videos of older creators to make it look like they're asking for help. One clip showed a man saying he has a story to tell, then it cuts to text: "you stayed 8 seconds so I don't have to shut down my cat shelter." Don't click that donation link. Running a business is tough: Download NetSuite's free guide, "Navigating Global Trade: Three Insights for Leaders." It's packed with smart, no-nonsense tips to keep you ahead of the game, avoid costly mistakes and spot new opportunities in today's market.* | DIGITAL LIFE HACK Apple's AI flunkout
Apple swears it's building the future of AI. Now they're scrambling to buy one. Listen on Komando.com → | DEALS OF THE DAY From grimy to shiny 🏠 Your cleaning MVPs have entered the chat. - ✨ Grout wants its sparkle back: Hit it with a stain cleaner (38% off) and wait a few hours. Boom, scrub-free clean.
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▶️ Want more cleaning genius? Tap into my Amazon store for more of the good stuff. | DEVICE ADVICE ⚡️ 3-second tech genius: Use a passphrase instead of a password. "Grape-soda-messy-shark-1973" is easier to remember and way harder to crack than "K1mR0cks!" Principle of least privilege: Business owners, ask your IT folks if your accounts are set up this way. It means users and systems only get access to what they need to get their tasks done. It's a simple way to keep your info safe. Wi-Fi master: Angry IP Scanner keeps track of everything connected to your network. It scans for IP addresses and other information about the devices connected. It helps troubleshoot tech issues and catch hackers or moochers since it pinpoints unknown or suspicious devices. 💸 Old electronics lying around? Costco's revamped trade-in program lets you swap them for a store gift card, no membership needed. The trade-in values aren't small potatoes, either; you can get up to $1,080 for an old laptop! Go to this portal for a quote. If you're cool with their offer, the shipping's free, and you'll have your money in under three weeks. PSA: Amazon has a trade-in program, too, so compare both to see which gives you the better price. ▶️ Save your YouTube channel: Back up all your videos, just in case. Head to takeout.google.com and select only YouTube and YouTube Music. Then, follow the prompts to download everything in one swoop. Your future self will thank you. 🎙️ Missed my show this past weekend? I'm not mad. I'm just disappointed. (Can you tell I'm a mom, too?) The good news is you can listen to it when and where you want. Here's a one-click link to my show on the most popular podcast players. | BY THE NUMBERS 30% That's how much of Salesforce's workload AI is already doing. Marc Benioff says bots are now answering customer questions and writing code like it's no big deal. You know, just casually replacing a third of the org chart before lunch. The high-end estimate of Salesforce's work done by AI? Nearly half (paywall link). Almost 90% That's how much heart attacks have dropped since 1970, thanks to better meds and emergency care. The twist? With more people surviving, issues like heart failure and high blood pressure are becoming the silent killers. Add in obesity nearly tripling since the '70s, and, well ... hearts are still under serious pressure. 200 cookies What the average American eats each year. A 50-state survey showed one in six Americans, or a little over 16%, eats dessert daily. That percentage is highest in Tennessee, at 25%. On average, sweets cravings hit hardest at 2:30 p.m. For the record, Newman-O's are my favorite cookie. | WHAT THE TECH?  | | | | To bee or not to bee. Penn State's unlikely dream team of entomologists and electrical engineers glued teeny QR codes to 32,000 bees to track their pollen-powered getaways. A custom camera setup at hive entrances tracks individual bees 24/7, logging each exit and return with time, temperature and direction like they're clocking shifts at BeeMart. They learned most bees take coffee-break-length trips of up to four minutes, but some go full Irish exit and vanish for hours, challenging our current assumptions about beehavior. | LOGGING OUT ... Answer: C) 5 GB. That first-gen iPod could hold about "1,000 songs in your pocket," as Apple famously promised. It might not seem like much today, but those 5 GB in 2001 felt like you were smuggling the entire Billboard Hot 100 in your jeans pocket. Years ago, I named my iPod "Titanic." This way, when I plugged it in my Mac, I saw the following message: "The Titanic is syncing." 😃 👉 Before you go: Incogni has requested my info be removed from over 1,400 different data-broker and people-search sites. I've tried doing this myself over the years, and I was happy if I got to a dozen. Incogni offers a 30-day money-back guarantee, so you have nothing to lose. Use my link for 60% off. This is the #1 tech newsletter in the United States, and it's made to make your brain go "oooOOOoooh" or at the very least give you a smart coffee buddy. That's a wrap until tomorrow. Keep your data safe and your confidence high! I appreciate you. 📊 — Kim 📣 Don't keep me a secret: Share this email with friends (or copy URL here) | How'd we do? What did you think of today's issue? | | |
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