Happy Tuesday, friend.If your Chrome browser wheezes when you open one more tab, congrats, you may have discovered the secret upper limit where your laptop becomes sentient and begs for mercy.
🧮 But what exactly is "too many" Chrome tabs? Is it: A) 99, B) 100, C) 500 or D) Infinite? Keep tabs on your guess, the answer's coming at the end!
Data brokers are profiting off you. Incogni removes your personal details from lists and databases you never agreed to be on. You stay in control of your privacy while they handle the takedowns. It's easy and effective to protect your privacy with Incogni. — Kim
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TODAY'S DEEP DIVE
Stop hoarding screenshots
Image: Bing Image Creator
You set your phone to back up photos, turn on file sync, and next thing you know, you get a message: "Storage full." Wait, what the heck happened?
Let's clear up your cloud storage confusion.
🎁 What you get for free
Google (Drive, Gmail, Photos) → 15 GB Shared across your Gmail inbox, Drive files and Google Photos. That's enough for a few thousand photos and emails. But once it's full, Gmail might stop working.
Price: 100 GB for $1.99/month or $19.99/year.
To see how much space you are using, go to Google Drive > Storage.
Apple iCloud → 5 GB Shared across your iPhone backups, photos, files, email and more. For most people, a single phone backup eats up 3–4 GB. Add a couple hundred photos, and boom, you're over the limit.
Price: 50 GB for $0.99/month.
To see how much space you are using, go to Settings > [Your Name] > iCloud > Storage.
Amazon Photos → Unlimited full-resolution photo storage But only if you're a Prime member. Videos are limited to 5 GB unless you pay. If you have Prime, this hidden gem is worth using.
📸 How fast does it go?
I want you to have an idea of how much space your stuff takes.
1 minute of HD video = ~100 MB
1,000 photos = ~2–3 GB
iPhone backup = 3–6 GB
Gmail inbox = 1–10 GB over a few years
So if your monthly costs for iCloud or Google storage are higher than you want, get in there and start removing duplicates, screenshots, old backups and movies. I was guilty of having a bad Nicolas Cage movie in my backups so I could watch it offline. Why, I have no idea.
🧠 The smart approach
You want to sync what matters and vault the rest. Keep only the essentials on iCloud or Google so you stay under their free limits, or get on an affordable plan. This way, you can use iCloud or Google to sync your everyday stuff like contacts, calendars, emails and device backups.
I pay for iCloud+ and save money by using Apple's Family Sharing plan, which lets me share cloud storage with up to five other people all without anyone losing privacy or access to their own data. It's a smart way to avoid each person paying for separate plans, especially if you have lots of photos, videos or device backups.
Google offers a similar setup through Google One, which also allows family sharing for their cloud storage tiers. Both services make it easy to manage storage across multiple accounts, and the shared plans are typically more affordable than buying individual subscriptions.
So what do you do with your large files, videos and archives?
Toss them in a cheap digital vault that lives in the cloud like Total Drive.* You get 10 TB (that's 10,000 GB) for $18, no monthly fees. Use it for offloading space-hogging files you want safe but don't need to access every day.
🙄 That reminds me... Hard drives don't have the patience for sit-down meals at restaurants. They prefer quick bytes. You can have that one for free.
🔑 Now, be a pal and use the icons below to share this intel with someone you care about.
IN PARTNERSHIP WITH
Don't fall for this scam
Ever get a text like this: "You owe $5 in unpaid tolls. Pay here to avoid penalties." Would you click it? Sadly, thousands of people do. They hand over addresses, card numbers, even Social Security numbers. That's how scammers get them.
And the stolen money is just the beginning. Your personal info is then sold on shady underground markets, tied back to you forever. Scammers make it worse by buying even more of your data from brokers—things like your date of birth, emails, and even car ownership records—to make their scams look real.
That's why I depend on Incogni. Their Unlimited plan scrubs your sensitive data from over 420 brokers, as well as any other site where it appears, and keeps it gone!
Lilly from Indianapolis thinks her phone has been hacked. Can she prove it? Also, the Secret Service crushes a nightmare cyber plot. Plus, the dark side of Amazon Prime, AI celebrity boyfriends, and digital shoplifting. Don't miss this!
🔥 Clout-chasing or a cautionary tale? YouTuber MrBeast's latest viral stunt has people talking for all the wrong reasons. In a video that's racked up millions of views, he ties a man to a chair inside a flaming building, part of a $500,000 "death trap" challenge. MrBeast insists everything was done safely with pros on set. But when did lighting someone on fire become family-friendly entertainment? What your kids watch isn't just harmless fun. It's content engineered for attention at any cost. If your teen says, "It's just a MrBeast video," you might want to take a closer look.
OpenAI adds parental safety controls: After a slew of lawsuits and deaths, ChatGPT will now flag suicidal prompts from teens, with one big but: Both you and the kids have to opt in first. If something happens, human reviewers step in and alerts go out. Oh, you can also block ChatGPT past bedtime. Remember when you were a teen? Yea, they can get around these controls without a problem.
🔍 A stalker's dream? Security researchers just revealed that Tile tracking tags, owned by Life360, can be hacked. Unlike Apple's AirTags, which trigger alerts when they're moving with someone who doesn't own them, Tiles have no built-in anti-stalking feature. That means a bad actor could slip one into your purse or car, track someone for weeks, and the victim might never know. The kicker? Life360 has known about this loophole for a long time and still hasn't fixed it.
Clippy's final form: "Vibe working" is coming to Word and Excel. Microsoft's new Agent Mode uses GPT-5 to build entire spreadsheets and docs just from a prompt, while narrating its every move. There's even a PowerPoint mode that makes decks and does its own research. Somewhere, an intern just burst into tears of joy.
⚠️ Scamming scammers: Some TikTokers claimed you could file a fake CFPB complaint and get a check from Zelle or Cash App. Millions watched. Some paid $77 for their "templates" and $24.99 for credit repair guides. It's all bogus. "Just lie to the government" is not financial advice.
🚘 Buttons are back, baby: No more tap-tap-tapping. Mercedes is bringing back real buttons and knobs in 2026, saying they're faster, safer and less annoying than touch screens. Nothing says "luxury" like not missing your highway exit trying to turn on the AC. Your great-grandpa was right: Knobs are the future.
DAILY TECH UPDATE
Secret messages through Google Docs
Forget phones. Students are turning Google Docs into secret chat rooms. With invisible text and shared files, it looks like homework, but it is really the new way to pass notes in class.
⚡️ 3-second tech genius: Some power banks charge your phone while recharging. To find out if yours can, search the make and model online for "pass-through charging." Handy when you've only got one outlet.
Fix the iPad pointer: After updating to iPadOS 26, see an annoying circle cursor instead of an arrow? To switch back, go to Settings > Accessibility > Touch, and toggle off AssistiveTouch. That'll restore the arrow. Now go to Settings > Accessibility > Pointer Control to adjust size and color again.
📧 Search Gmail by date: Pull up emails from a specific time frame using the search bar. For example, type: after:2025/08/01 before:2025/10/01 to see emails from Aug. 1 through Sept. 30, 2025.
Turn off sleep mode in Windows 11: Go to Settings > System > Power > Screen, sleep & hibernation timeouts. Set Turn my screen off after, Make my device sleep after and Make my device hibernate after all to Never. But if you're on a laptop, this will drain the battery when it's not charging.
⌨️ Sticky mechanical keyboard? Before tossing it, try cleaning. Blow air between the key caps with an air duster. If a specific switch is stuck, remove the key capwith a puller (here's a cheap one with cleaning brushes) and check underneath, then blast it with air again.
🍿 Find where to stream anything: Tired of hopping between apps just to hunt down a show? Go to JustWatch or Reelgood, type in the title, and voila, it tells you exactly where it's playing (yes, even the free options).
WHAT THE TECH?
Image: IXI
👀 Visionary thinking right here
Helsinki startup IXI is building glasses that track your eye movements and shift focus automatically, so you can go from texting to bird-watching without the blur.
Now, before you get too skeptical, here's how they work. The lenses adjust automatically to what you are looking at. No more carrying around readers and driving glasses.
Plus, they actually look good. These aren't cyborg goggles. They've got that timeless frame vibe, but with hidden sci-fi tech.
🥸 Have you ever wondered why you need a prescription for eyeglasses? Can't you just eyeball it? (lol)
LOGGING OUT …
💯 The answer: B) 100. Once you hit 100 open tabs with no idea where the music is coming from, Chrome just throws up its hands and shows you a smiley face. So yes, your browser is silently judging your unquenchable thirst for more stuff like a concerned but supportive parent.
At that point, your laptop fan becomes a hair dryer, your productivity plans derail, and somewhere, a UX designer cries out, "Please, make them stop!"
😅 Speaking of… I'm going to open my own bar and call it Chrome. It'll keep your tab open until you have no memory. (OK, let's see you come up with free clever lines to make people smile or groan!)
Hold up. ✋ Did you know your personal data is constantly being bought and sold without your consent? Incogni fights back for you, automatically requesting removals from over 420 data brokers. It's simple, fast and backed by a 30-day guarantee. Try Incogni today.
Tomorrow, you have to hear about this PTA mom, a Crock-Pot and a $17M North Korean cybercrime ring. This one's more spy thriller than soccer practice.
🥸 You've got this, and I've got your back, one tip at a time. — Kim
Companies noted with an asterisk (*) sponsor my national radio show. Also, as an Amazon Associate, we earn a small commission from qualifying purchases.
This newsletter and its content are intended for informational purposes only. They are provided without warranty of any kind. You shouldn't construe anything provided here as legal, health, medical, technical, tax, investment, financial or any other kind of advice.
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