📬 Did someone forward this to you?Sign up here. Tomorrow: Your credit score could be destroyed, and you wouldn’t know it . I’ll tell you the free fix most people never do.
Happy Friday to you, friend.Somehow we all became part-time forensic face analysts. You know, the “do I actually look like that?” moment when the camera makes you look like a Disney villain.
Your arm can hold the phone only a couple of feet from your face, and the lens exaggerates whatever is closest to it, usually your nose. Plastic surgeons studied this and did the math on the fix. They even calculated the length your arms would have to be to snap a selfie with zero distortion, one that shows the real you.
🤳 How long would your arm need to be to take a perfectly undistorted selfie with your phone’s front camera? A) 3 feet, B) 5 feet, C) 10 feet or D) Longer than the line at the DMV? Take your guess. The truth is waiting at the end.
🤦♀️ You know what drives me nuts? People drop $1,300 on a new laptop but won’t spend a few bucks to protect the data inside it. That computer is replaceable. Your family photos, videos, years of work and tax documents are not. I use Carbonite to back up everything automatically to the cloud. Get 50% off right now.* — Kim
TODAY’S DEEP DIVE
Mute the mayhem
Image: ChatGPT/Kim Komando
🤯WOW! There is a free app that erases barking dogs, traffic, leaf blowers, keyboard clacking and the coffee shop espresso machine out of your calls, in real time, while you talk. Your side sounds like a quiet studio even when your world is chaos. It works with Zoom, Teams, Meet and Slack.
📖Read time: 3 minutes
Your neighbor’s leaf blower does not get a vote in your career. Neither does the dog, the doorbell or the kid practicing recorder in the next room. Now you can fire them all.
The tool is Krisp (krisp.ai), and it uses AI to strip background noise out of your microphone in real time. You keep talking normally. The person on the other end hears your voice, clean, like you’re in a silent office. It kills echo and cuts noise on the incoming side, too, and it works in Zoom, Teams, Meet, Slack, anything that uses your mic.
🔇 How to set it up
About five minutes, once.
Download Krisp from krisp.ai and install it. Works on Windows and Mac.
Open your video app. In its audio settings, pick Krisp Microphone and Krisp Speaker. In the Krisp app, toggle on noise cancellation.
Privacy folks will love this: Krisp does all its processing right on your device. Your audio never ships off to a company’s servers. Time magazine named the tech one of the best inventions in 2020, and it’s only gotten sharper.
🎛️ Check your built-ins first (free, no download)
Now, I checked all these steps below. Depending on your device, operating system and more, you might have to poke around to find the setting.
Mac or iPhone: Apple already gives you this. During a call, open Control Center > click Mic Mode > pick Voice Isolation. One switch, no app.
Newer Windows PCs: Find Voice Focus under Settings > System > Sound. Click your mic, then Audio enhancements.
Krisp’s edge: It works across every app at once, on Windows and Mac, and cleans the other person’s noise, too.
💵 What’s free and what’s not
The free plan gives you about 60 minutes of noise-free calls a day, plenty for a daily standup or a couple chats. Live on calls all day? Pro runs $8 a month billed annually ($96 up front), or about $16 month to month, and it adds automatic meeting notes.
FYI, on an old laptop, Krisp can push up your processor use and lag a bit. And when it scrubs a sudden loud burst too hard, your voice can go briefly robotic. Small prices for sounding like a pro from your kitchen.
My take? Take the meeting from the porch, the car, the busy cafe. The world stays loud. You sound serene. You were sipping that latte before it was cool.
🎯Send this to someone who takes calls with a loud dog, loud kids or a loud street.
Imagine turning on your computer one day and finding everything gone. Most people think their files are safe until something goes wrong. That’s why I’ve used Carbonite for many years. Knowing everything on my computer is backed up means one less thing I have to worry about.
Unlimited cloud backup for one affordable price. No more “You’re out of storage” messages.
One-click setup, then Carbonite backs up all your files automatically.
Carbonite uses 128-bit encryption, a security feature that helps keep your photos, documents, and personal information private and secure.
The best part? Right now, Carbonite is offering my readers an exclusive 50% off. That’s only $47.99 for an entire year of backup. It’s a small investment for the peace of mind that comes from knowing all your important files are backed up automatically and ready whenever you need them.
🚫 People bouncer problem: Meta says its AI moderation makes 13% fewer mistakes than human reviewers on Facebook and Instagram. Translation? Our bad if our tech wrongly deletes your accounts, photos, contacts and business info overnight. More accurate on average doesn’t help when your family pictures or small-business page disappear. Don’t build your company on rented land, and export your stuff regularly.
Ticket goes feral: I’ve had coupons examined harder than this at CVS. A Delta passenger says an agent fixing a service-dog issue handed him another traveler’s boarding pass for Miami-to-LaGuardia. He had his real ID but still passed bag check, CLEAR, TSA PreCheck and facial recognition before he spotted the wrong name and flight time. CLEAR says it verified him, not the ticket. Delta apologized: 40,000 SkyMiles worth about $400. That “faster and safer” security needs a second look.
🔐 Face as backup: Smile, you need to get back into your account. Google’s new account recovery option uses a short face video to verify your identity, replacing security questions or backup codes. Your face as a password feels convenient until someone deepfakes it, and that’s very much possible. Google says it checks your moving face with liveness detection. If you want to chin up for Big Login: Go to g.co/signin-selfie and follow the guided head movements.Takes less than five minutes. Not available for all accounts, yet.
Watched by light: I can’t look at streetlights the same after this. Some of them have a little stub up top that could be a NEMA node, a standardized socket cities use to turn basic lights into networked sensors to help with savings, emissions and other civic broccoli. But when cities stack cameras, noise monitors, traffic counters and vehicle-to-everything gear on thousands of poles, then feed the info into AI tools, congratulations, your street infrastructure gets promoted to civic espionage. Most people have no idea it’s there. Now you do.
⛵ The yacht arrest: I would love to know who handled background checks here. Last week, U.S. marshals and the Coast Guard arrested Ronald Fischer, 70, on a 56-foot sailboat called The Silver Lining in New York’s East River. He’d fled his 2005 Rhode Island sexual assault trial before closing arguments. The crazy part? Under the name Richard Graydon, he reportedly became a biotech exec before Immix fired him Friday. Tech may help you hide, but it eventually will find you, too.
🎤 PODCAST: DIGITAL LIFE HACK
AI counts calories
No nutrition label? Snap a picture. AI gives you the full breakdown. Plus, we help Nancy give her family digital access safely.
Dim corners? Optional. These bright LEDs flip on when you walk by and stick up with magnets. No cords, no electrician. Put them in your kitchen, closet or hallway, and forget fumbling around in the dark.
Image: MCGOR
🪜 Tall order: This step stool(17% off, $50) weighs under 8 pounds but holds up to 300. Nonslip feet keep you steady on wood, tile or carpet.
Straight shooter: Get a measuring tool(24% off, $50) that switches between a 135-foot laser and old-school tape. It even does the math for you.
🖌️ Fix the nicks: Touch-up paint pens(13% off, $13, two-pack) cover wall scuffs and dings without cracking open a can, or explaining it to your landlord.
Stick with it: Think of this magnetic wristband(17% off, $10) as a tiny tool belt for your arm. Holds screws, nails and drill bits you could drop or lose.
🧰 Tools of the trade:Tap here for more gear that earns its shelf space.
Prices and deals were accurate at the time of publication.
DEVICE ADVICE
⚡️ 3-second tech genius: You don’t have to feel anxious handing your iPhone to someone else. Lock most apps, like Messages or Calendar, so there’s no chance of snooping. Press and hold the app, tap Require Face ID, and they’re blocked. To unlock it later, press and hold again and choose Don’t Require Face ID.
📍 Put an AirTag on it:Toss one in your kid’s school bag, your luggage or the car, so Find My can help when something disappears. If yours suddenly stops working, don’t replace the whole thing. It probably just needs a cheap CR2032 coin-cell battery. ICYMI, I made a quick video showing you how to swap batteries (no tools needed).
🔒 Give Facebook a privacy check: I run this whenever Facebook moves another setting around. In the mobile app, go to Settings > Tools and resources > Privacy Checkup. Meta walks you through who can see your posts, profile details and how people can find you. Update anything that looks too public. Worth the tap.
🧰 PDFs without the paywall: Adobe loves charging for buttons that feel pretty basic. PDF24 Creator is a free Windows tool kit that can merge, split and compress PDFs, plus add watermarks or password protection. The desktop version also works offline, so private documents stay on your PC instead of being uploaded somewhere random.
💸 Apple Music costs more: Bad news, folks. Apple raised its Individual plan from $10.99 to $11.99, while Family jumped from $16.99 to $19.99. Apple One Individual stays at $19.95, but Family is now $27.95. At least Apple Music is still cheaper than Spotify, and hey, we made it almost four years without a hike.
WHAT THE TECH?
Image: A-Morir
🕶️ Face value
Smart glasses can film your walk, identify songs and generally make every sidewalk feel like a low-budget surveillance documentary.
Now eyewear designers are selling a firewall for your face. Solir Optics’ $70-to-$100 shades block infrared and blue light, while A-Morir’s custom 3D-printed versions use black-and-white “dazzle camouflage” to confuse facial recognition sensors. Those run from $425 to $725, because privacy ain’t cheap these days.
It’s cyberpunk armor disguised as something you’d wear to brunch. The future is watching. At least make it squint.
🎓 What you learned today: Krisp turns your kitchen table into a recording studio. A stranger's boarding pass sailed through bag check, CLEAR, PreCheck and facial recognition. Google now wants a video of your face before you get locked out. And your streetlight may be taking notes. Not bad for one email.
Tomorrow: Barry's credit score dropped 235 points overnight, then the dentures bill showed up. How it happened, what we did, and the free fix almost nobody does.
🤳 The answer: B) About 5 feet. JAMA’s Facial Plastic Surgery journal reported that the ideal, distortion-free portrait distance is roughly 5 feet, so you’d need arms that long to pull off a satisfying selfie with your phone’s front camera. At the usual 12-inch selfie range, your nose can look about 30% wider than it really is.
The fix without the freakishly long arms: Use the rear camera, hold it as far as you can and shoot at eye level. I tried explaining to my friend why her selfie nose isn’t her real nose. She still didn’t buy it. It made no scents.
🛑 Don’t wait for a disaster. Data recovery experts charge thousands of dollars to rescue files from a dead hard drive, with zero guarantees. Carbonite runs quietly in the background, keeping your digital life completely safe. It’s the only backup I trust and use myself. Grab my exclusive 50% off deal right now.*
🧠 You learn one smart thing here every single day. That’s 365 free upgrades a year, and you never have to wait for the download. — Kim
Kim Komando • Komando.com • 510+ radio stations • Trusted by millions daily
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Keep a civil tongue.