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📬 Did someone forward this to you? Sign up here. Tomorrow: Identity thieves don’t touch the bank account you’re watching. I’ll tell you where they actually strike. |
Welcome to your Saturday, friend. Remember when sci-fi promised doors would scan our faces like we were secret agents? Congrats, your iPhone does that now. Face ID feels personal. You look, it unlocks and suddenly your face is your password. Very futuristic. Very Tom Cruise in a black turtleneck. |
But Apple’s own security numbers reveal a tiny wrinkle. Your face might not be the one-in-the-universe snowflake your phone thinks it is. |
😶🌫️ Roughly how many people on Earth could pick up your iPhone and unlock it with their own face? A) Zero, it only works for you, B) About 80, C) About 8,000, D) Everyone who’s ever been told “you have such a familiar face.” Keep scrolling, the answer is hiding at the end. |
✋ Stop buying expensive creams. They can’t fix the real problem. Wrinkles, thinning hair, weak nails and achy knees all trace back to one thing: dropping collagen levels. I put NativePath in my tea every morning. It dissolves instantly and supports smoother skin, thicker hair, stronger nails and even better joints. Get up to 45% off plus free shipping and free gifts right now. You’re gonna see the difference!** |
📻 Listen up! My national radio show is airing all weekend across the USA. With over 510 stations strong, find your closest one by using our super-duper station locator map, or listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or watch the entire show on YouTube. I’m wherever you are. — Kim |
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TODAY’S DEEP DIVE |
Cloudy with a charge |
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Image: Gemini/Kim Komando |
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⚡ TL;DR |
“The cloud” is really 5,400+ warehouses packed with servers, and one sits about 10 miles from my house. You’re paying for their power lines, draining your town’s water and covering the tax breaks they get for it. A 30-football-field data center creates 30 to 50 permanent jobs. That’s it.
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📖 Read time: 3 minutes |
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See that photo above? That’s a massive data center about 10 miles from my house. |
Now you know the cloud isn’t in the sky. It’s a windowless warehouse, aka a data center, the size of 30 football fields, sitting in a large expanse of cleared land. And it’s quietly raising your electric bill. |
Every photo you back up, every Netflix binge, every group text, every time you ask ChatGPT a question. All of it runs through a building packed with computers that never sleep. Inside are apparently endless rows of servers, thousands of supercharged computers stacked floor to ceiling, humming 24/7 so your stuff loads the second you tap. |
💨 Head in the cloud |
We call it “the cloud” because that sounds nicer than “a 50-acre box of servers next to a cornfield.” There are more than 5,000 of these facilities in the U.S. Ashburn, Virginia, has so many it’s nicknamed Data Center Alley. |
We need them. Online banking, hospital records, your work email, GPS, the whole internet lives in these buildings. No data centers, no modern life. Fair’s fair. And it is important that this data remains in the USA. |
One thing first. This isn’t a left or right fight, and I’m not picking a side. Lawmakers from both parties are raising flags here, in red states and blue ones alike. |
I don’t care who builds these warehouses. I care who gets stuck with the bill. Spoiler: It’s you and me. |
💰 You’re paying for their power lines |
Hooking up a giant data center takes new substations and heavy-duty transmission lines. Guess who foots the bill? |
Under old utility rules, that cost gets spread across everybody. One report found ratepayers in seven states paid $4.3 billion for data center grid connections in 2024. |
A Harvard expert calls it a “cost shift.” In plain English, you’re subsidizing the wires to Amazon’s warehouse. Add in skyrocketing demand, and residential prices jumped about 7% in 2025, nearly double inflation. |
💧 They drink our water |
To keep from melting, many facilities cool themselves with water. AI data centers drank roughly 264 billion gallons in 2025. Let me put that into perspective. |
One big facility can use 5 million gallons a day, the same as a town of 50,000 people. The “fix”? Switch to waterless air cooling, which burns even more electricity. They’re stuck. So are you. |
💸 They promise jobs, deliver a parking lot |
A 30-football-field warehouse runs on 30 to 50 permanent workers once it’s built. You read that right. |
One Microsoft site in Illinois got $38 million in tax breaks and created 20 jobs. Virginia alone gave up $1.6 billion in tax revenue last year. That’s your school and road money walking out the door. |
So what do you do? |
You can’t unplug the internet. But when a center gets proposed near you, show up to the town meeting and ask three things. |
Who pays for the power lines? Where’s the water coming from? And how many real jobs is this, actually?
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Those answers decide your next bill. I’m watching mine. This was never political. It’s personal, and it’s our money. |
📩 Send this to someone who saw a “new data center coming” sign near them or who opened a scary electric bill and can’t figure out why. |
Share this now: |
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📺 YOUTUBE: THE KIM KOMANDO SHOW |
Watch now or bookmark for later |
UC Berkeley professor Hany Farid spent his career detecting AI fakes. Now he can’t tell what’s real. What that means for the rest of us. Plus, how AI slashed a $99,000 medical bill in half. And a Waymo gets chased by the police with riders inside. Rating? Zero stars. Also: |
Spy cameras hidden in bushes. President Nixon goes viral. Google Home cameras recognize your body. Shopping carts secretly track you. Kids are going to AI instead of parents. Uber driver saves woman from scam. Be a graphic designer with AI. Teens stunt-ride Waymos. AI lifeguard catches pool drownings. GM replaced 1,000 workers with 50 robots.
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Watch now before everyone else is talking about it. 👇 |
▶️ Deepfake experts are getting fooled → |
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WEB WATERCOOLER |
😴 Tossing and tracking: Here’s a wide-awake irony. The fancy tracker meant to fix bedtime might be the thing wrecking it. Doctors even have a name for it: orthosomnia (paywall link), the habit of obsessing over nightly sleep scores until the anxiety itself triggers insomnia. The trouble is these gadgets are not medical grade and often guess wrong, yet folks lie awake chasing a perfect number. The fix from sleep docs is refreshingly low-tech. Ditch the tracker for a week, and judge rest by how the body actually feels. Counting sheep beats counting stats. |
📧 Your inbox is a billboard: Gmail and Yahoo are free because you are the product. They scan your email, build a profile on you and sell it. You agreed in the fine print. StartMail offers total email privacy. No scanning, no ads, no data sharing, and every email you send is encrypted. One reader wrote to me: “Thanks, Kim! You were right about StartMail, I love it! It is easy to use and gives me peace of mind!” Get 60% off plus a 7-day free trial.* |
House has opinions: Imagine your camera laser-focused on a guy mowing the lawn and deciding, yep, that’s Gary. Google is updating Google Home cameras so its AI can recognize familiar people even when it can’t see a face, using body size and clothing color. It can also label sounds like barking dogs, alarms and porch footsteps. Your own camera profiling your silhouette? Creepy. This is the next smart home phase. Fewer preprogrammed lights coming on, more constant watching. Reassuring or terrifying, your call. |
🔧 Score one for the humans: Ford topped JD Power’s quality rankings for mainstream brands, its first time in 16 years, and the secret was not a smarter robot. After leaning hard on AI for design and production, Ford found the automated systems were making mistakes that rippled down the assembly line. So the company brought back roughly 350 veteran engineers to catch what the algorithms missed. Turns out experience still drives quality. |
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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. |
✈️ Ready, jet, go! |
Gear for every leg of your trip. |
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🧳 Pack like a pro: Carry-on luggage (27% off, $64)
4.5 ⭐ 1,300+ reviews |
Skip the baggage claim chaos. This hard-shell spinner has a built-in TSA-approved lock. Pull the zipper to expand if you need extra room for souvenirs on the way home. |
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Image: BAGSMART |
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🏨 Spy finder: I sweep every hotel room with a hidden camera detector ($32). Sniffs out pinhole lenses, wireless signals and GPS trackers. |
Ticker power: Clip a magnetic Apple Watch charger (15% off, $15) to your key chain, and juice up anywhere. Works with every Apple Watch series. |
⚡ Plugs that protect: These USB data blockers (11% off, $8, two-pack) stop juice jacking and keep your info safe while you charge at public ports. |
Glow on the go: This rechargeable pocket mirror (40% off, $9) packs bright LED lights, plus 1x and 3x magnification. Fits right in your purse. |
🌐 Boarding call: Shop all my travel picks before you depart. |
Prices and deals were accurate at the time of publication. |
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DEVICE ADVICE |
⚡️ 3-second tech genius: Phone ringing in a meeting? Don’t hit decline unless you want the caller seeing “rejected.” On iPhone, press the side button once. On Android, press volume down. It silences the ring on your end while the caller still hears ringing. No panic grab, no awkward explanation later. |
99% isn’t a guess: Webroot Essentials tested against 100,000 of today’s most dangerous threats. It caught 99% of active malware. That’s independent, third-party testing, not a marketing claim. Webroot also scans 6 times faster and uses 33 times less space than other antivirus programs. It’s what I use. Get 62% off the best protection out there.* |
📸 Ask with your camera: Using the ChatGPT app on your phone? Tap the + button in the prompt box, choose Camera/Photo, snap a pic and ask away. Try “What type of insect is this?” or “What does this sign say in English?” Alternatively, in mobile Chrome, tap the camera icon next to Search for a similar trick. |
Lock down Roku: Your Roku has parental controls that can stop surprise purchases, random app downloads and grown-up content from sneaking onto the screen. Log into my.roku.com on your computer, go to Settings > PIN/Parental controls and create a 4-digit PIN. Two minutes now, fewer headaches later. |
🤫 Search Google Maps off-record: Google Maps has an Incognito mode for places you don’t want showing up in your search history or used to personalize your Maps. In the mobile app, tap your profile picture and Turn on Incognito mode. The Incognito icon appears in the search bar. Tap it again to turn it off. Surprise trip stays secret. |
🎙️ Fix messy voice notes: Recorded a memo with traffic or chatter in the background? Adobe Podcast Enhance Speech can clean up background noise and make voices sound clearer. Upload your audio, enhance it, then transcribe it into text to read later. Free plan catch: Audio uploads only, with recordings capped at 30 mins. |
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WHAT THE TECH? |
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Image: @QualiaRobotics via X |
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🤖 3P-Nope |
Qualia wanted to show the future of robot labor. Instead, it showed the present of tech marketing: a human in an android costume doing dishes. |
The company announced it was selected for Google DeepMind’s robotics program and posted a cinematic humanoid scrubbing plates like Rosie from The Jetsons was ready to take VC money. |
But after viewers noticed the movement looked suspiciously human, founder Fabian Kerj clarified the humanoid was not real. Qualia builds training infrastructure, not robot bodies. |
Credibility and water down the drain. |
It’s convincing, check it out. |
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LOGGING OUT … |
🔜 Tomorrow: Checking your bank account every day feels responsible, but it won’t catch the worst kind of identity theft. I’ll show you the blind spot and how to protect yourself. |
Tomorrow’s trivia asks why scammers love one of the most trusted icons on the internet. |
The answer: C) About 8,000. Apple says the odds of a random person unlocking your iPhone with Face ID are about 1 in 1,000,000. That sounds incredibly safe, until you remember there are about 8 billion people on Earth. Do the math, and roughly 8,000 strangers out there could, in theory, unlock your phone with their own face. |
If you drop your phone in the NYC metropolitan area, napkin math says eight people could open it with their face. Or should I say your face. |
Don’t panic. They’d need your actual phone in hand, and Face ID locks after five failed tries. Fun twist. Touch ID is only 1 in 50,000, so even more people share your thumb. |
Apple says the odds jump for siblings, look-alike relatives and kids under 13, so if your teenager keeps getting into your phone, that’s not a glitch, it’s genetics. |
And speaking of face twins, did you hear about the identical twins who robbed a bank? When the cops caught them, they finished each other’s sentences. |
🛑 Don’t wait for the warning signs. Stiff knees, brittle nails, thinning hair and wrinkles happen when your collagen drops as we age. I take NativePath every single day to keep my joints healthy and my skin looking smooth. It dissolves instantly in my morning tea and has zero taste. It’s the easiest way to support your body from the inside out. Get up to 45% off plus free shipping and free gifts right now.** |
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🌒 The hardest seasons are usually the ones you’ll thank later. You know what I mean. Hey, drop a rating below and a comment about my free newsletters, I read them all. — Kim |
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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. |
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Send your unique link below to friends and family. |
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You’re 3 referrals away from Kim's AI Prompt Hack Pack - 12 prompts Kim actually uses. Yours instantly at 3 referrals. |
🎉 Keep it going! You got this! — Kim |
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HOW’D WE DO?What did you think of today’s issue?
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Photo credit(s): Gemini/Kim Komando, BAGSMART, @QualiaRobotics 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. |
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