📬 Did someone forward this to you?Sign up here. Tomorrow: Your slow pokey PC or Mac can diagnose itself, and AI can translate and advise you on how to get it in shape again. Yea, you’re gonna love this!
It’s Juneteenth, friend.Remember when MTV actually played music videos? Good times. Now YouTube does the heavy lifting, with enough clips to keep your thumb scrolling till the cows come home. There are over 115,000,000 different channels on YouTube. So you’d figure the whole place is buzzing with creators dropping fresh videos every week, right?
🎬 But how many of those 115 million channels post on a regular basis? A) Almost all of them, B) About 3 out of 4, C) A small slice, D) Nearly 100 wildly committed souls. Answer’s waiting at the bottom. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
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TODAY’S DEEP DIVE
Develop feelings
Image: Kim Komando
⚡ TL;DR
Google’s free Gemini restores cracked, faded photos, sharpens blurry faces and adds realistic color from one plain-English request.
It keeps faces looking like the real person, which is where it beats ChatGPT for family photos.
For badly torn photos, its newer Nano Banana Pro model rebuilds even rough damage.
📖 Read time: 3 minutes
My cousin shared a photo of her dad Harold Jr., my uncle, in our family group chat. That’s him, up above. He died in a car accident when she was still a baby, so she never got to know him. I never even met him. “He was so handsome,” she wrote.
I decided to show her exactly how handsome. I ran that old photo through AI and dropped it back in the group chat. Everyone was amazed and I saw the resemblance of Harold Jr. to my son Ian that my mother always referenced.
You’ve got the same thing somewhere. The shoebox. The junk drawer. The album with crumbling corners. Faded faces, cracked edges, maybe the only picture you’ll ever have of a grandparent you never got to meet.
Good news: AI can fix all of it. And the best tool for the job is free.
🎞️ Gemini does the magic, free
Google’s Gemini app is the surprise star. Upload a faded, scratched, blurry photo, type one sentence, and seconds later, it hands the picture back repaired, sharpened and in believable color. No Photoshop. No skills. Best of all, it keeps faces looking like the actual person, not a stranger.
Go to gemini.google.com or the Gemini app, use the paper clip to upload your photo and select Create Image:
Then, paste this prompt:
Restore and colorize this photo. Repair the scratches and fading, sharpen the faces, keep everyone looking exactly the same and do not add anything new.
Want one quick fix instead? Ask plainly. “Brighten this dark photo.” “Remove the stranger in the background.” The first time it works, you might get a little misty. That’s allowed.
🤔 What about ChatGPT?
Yes, ChatGPT can restore photos. But it tends to reimagine the picture instead of repairing it, so it can change a face into someone who isn’t quite your grandmother. For family photos, where keeping the real person matters most, Gemini is the one to use.
📱 Two quick tips
Scan first, if you can. Grab the free PhotoScan by Google from the App Store or Google Play. It captures your prints without glare, and scanning in color, even for black-and-white shots, gives the AI more to work with. You can also use it to scan photos without taking them out of a photo album.
So, dig out that shoebox tonight. The faces you miss are in there, waiting to come back. And if this helped you out, let me know in the comments when you rate this newsletter at the end.
📩 Send this to someone who has old family photos they keep meaning to fix. Use the icons below to email this story or post it on your social media. Everyone needs to know how to do this.
A researcher at Consumer Reports (someone whose entire job is online safety), typed her own name into a search engine. Her home address, age and phone number were sitting on data broker sites she had never heard of. No hack. No breach. Just her name in a search box.
Yours is there too. Right now. It’s available to an ex, a stalker or any stranger with five seconds and an internet connection. Data brokers collect this information legally and sell it to anyone willing to pay. You never agreed to it. Most people don’t even know it’s happening.
Incogni handles this for you. They do the heavy lifting by sending out automated removal requests to these brokers. They keep the pressure on so your data doesn’t show back up a month later.
Or for audio only, click your favorite podcast player below:
WEB WATERCOOLER
🧾 Crooks booked Tuesday: Here’s a sneaky one. Scammers are slipping fake renewal invoices straight into your Google Calendar. The invite looks official, the “your subscription expired” link looks real, and one tap drops you on a page built to grab your password. Google flagged this trick in its June fraud report, casually bringing up a 1,210% jump in AI scams. Fix it now. Open Calendar Settings, and restrict who can add invitations. Never tap links inside events you didn’t create.
Roblox gets raided: Look at your kids’ Roblox settings like a parent checking the basement after a horror movie. Hackers are hijacking whole Roblox games, not just accounts. That’s a problem when the audience includes millions of kids who will believe cereal is a food group. The trick is trust: If the scam happens inside the game, kids believe it. Turn on two-step verification and make it very clear that passwords or personal info do not go in chat. Not for gems. Not for anything.
📲 Twelve dollars a month: It doesn’t sound like a lot for a subscription until you realize you have six of them. That is $864 a year leaving your account from those free trials you forgot to cancel. Rocket Money finds every subscription hiding in your bank statements, lines them up and helps cancel the ones you don’t want. I saved $465 doing this. Try it yourself at RocketMoney.com/Kim.*
Fifty rulebooks later: Small-business owners, this one stings. Fifty states looked at AI rules and chose potluck litigation. One owner in Bowling Green, KY, reportedly has to spend $16,000 to comply with a California law, despite being nowhere near California. There’s no single national standard, so a shop in one state can get tangled in another state’s rulebook. If you’re using AI tools that touch customer data, prepare for some legal sudoku. At this pace, every lemonade stand will need legal counsel.
🏨 Fake room roulette: I trust bargain hotel sites about as much as gas station sushi. Hotel workers were asked what scams they’re seeing, and spoiler alert, fake hotel reservations are surging. People book some miracle rate online, show up with luggage and the hotel has nothing. It’s not sleep logistics either. One staffer said a family bought New York attraction tickets, Statue of Liberty included, but nothing was booked. Which, to be fair, feels like an authentic New York City experience.
Floors that catch you: This is for anyone caring for a parent. A new wave of contactless sensors can spot a fall and alert family or 911 with no wearable and no button to press, just quiet monitoring in the background. And here’s the wallet news: Medicare loosened its remote-monitoring rules for 2026, making this kind of at-home check-in easier to get reimbursed. Falls are the leading cause of injury for older adults, so catching one fast is everything. Looks like the safety net finally hit the floor, in the best possible way.
🎤 PODCAST: DIGITAL LIFE HACK
Fix phone dead zones for free
No bars? No problem. Use Wi-Fi calling instead of the towers. And Victoria noticed a weird arrow and orange light on her locked iPhone. Spoiler alert. Her apps were secretly accessing her location and microphone.
The lowest price I’ve seen all year. Bissell’s Little Green sprays, scrubs and suctions stains out of carpet, car seats and upholstery in one pass. Small enough to tuck away in a closet.
Image: BISSELL
🌬️ Fan-tastic find: Dreo’s table fan(11% off, $40) pushes air up to 70 feet. Pick from three speeds, and it stays whisper-quiet at 25 dB.
Wrinkle wrangler: Black+Decker’s compact iron(15% off, $18) heats fast and glides smoothly. Shuts off automatically if you forget.
🐶 Fur everywhere? Click this self-cleaning slicker brush(17% off, $15), and the fur just falls off. Gentle on pets, tough on shedding season.
Pill patrol: A fabric shaver(48% off, $13) zaps lint and fuzz, so your clothes look new again. Works wonders on sofas and cushions, too.
Prices and deals were accurate at the time of publication.
DEVICE ADVICE
⚡️ 3-second tech genius: Headphones or wireless speakers cutting out in the kitchen? Surprise, it’s probably the microwave. Bluetooth uses the 2.4 GHz band, and a running microwave can mess with that signal. If audio lags, step away, then disconnect and reconnect the device. Solid concrete walls can block signal, too. Mystery solved.
Back seat scroll saver: Reading on your iPhone in a moving car can make you queasy fast. Apple has a special feature that adds tiny dots moving with the car to help reduce that motion-sick feeling. Go to Settings > Accessibility > Motion > Vehicle Motion Cues and choose Automatic. Tech support for your stomach.
📲 Android’s AirDrop-ish trick: Want to send a big video or photo folder to your PC? Skip the cable or cloud upload nonsense. Open My Files on your phone, pick what you’re sending, tap Share, then Quick Share. Remember: Your computer needs Quick Share for Windows installed and visibility set to Everyone.
Website, meet Dock: On Mac, you can turn a website into its own little app, so it opens in a separate window from your Dock. Open Safari, go to the site, click the Share button in the top right, then choose Add to Dock > Add. To remove it later, drag it out.
🍔 Weekend plans, sorted: Running out of family ideas that don’t drain your wallet? Ask a chatbot to play tour guide. Try this: “I’m in [city] with kids ages [X] and a budget of [$]. Give me three Saturday plans with indoor and outdoor options, like places tourists miss or unique restaurants nearby.”
Be on the show! Is tech making your life easier? Or driving you absolutely nuts? Or maybe you have a story that could help millions of people? Tell me all about it here. I’ll read it. A producer may reach out to feature you on the air.
WHAT THE TECH?
Image: FoodNeverArrives
😳 Cart blanche
South Korea found a way to make online shopping even sadder: remove the shopping.
Young users are flocking to “dopamine sites,” fake delivery and shopping platforms where you browse menus, add items to cart, read reviews, place pretend orders and even track imaginary couriers. One site mimics late-night food delivery. Another, Damta, simulates a smoke break with a virtual cigarette and live chat. Nothing ships. Nothing burns. Nothing ruins your bank account.
It’s basically consumer cosplay for people whose wallets and lungs said “please stop.” What a world we live in.
LOGGING OUT …
🔜 Tomorrow: Slow startup, screaming fan, spinning wheel of doom? Your computer may already know the problem. I’ll show you how to pull a free system report and have AI explain what matters before you hand over your credit card.
Tomorrow’s trivia hits play on Spotify’s biggest song ever, the one humanity apparently could not stop replaying.
📺 The answer: C) A small slice. Out of more than 115 million channels, only about 15 million post even once a month. That’s roughly 1 in 8. The rest? Ghost towns. Somebody made a channel, uploaded one shaky video of their cat and vanished. (We’ve all been there.)
Meanwhile, about 500,000 brand-new channels get created every single day, most headed for the same dusty fate. So no, the internet isn’t nearly as crowded with creators as it looks.
What do you call 115 million channels that mostly never post? A whole lot of boo-tubers. 👻
But wait, there’s more! Only about 300,000 YouTube channels worldwide have ever crossed 100,000 subscribers. That’s a microscopic club compared to the total channel count.
And hey, quick flex, the Kim Komando YouTube channel is one of them, with 131,000 subscribers and fresh videos every week. Most channels can’t claim both. Click or tap here now to join the fun and know how.
🗑️ Tired of the constant spam and “targeted” junk? It starts with data brokers auctioning off your home address and phone number. I use Incogni because they do the hard work of removing my info from over 420 broker sites. It works to keep my inbox clean. Take your data off the market with Incogni. Get 60% off with code KIM60. I love it and you will too!*
📸 Life is like photography. You use the negatives to develop. — Kim
Kim Komando • Komando.com • 510+ radio stations • Trusted by millions daily
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Photo credit(s):ChatGPT, Kim Komando, BISSELL, FoodNeverArrives
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