An Ignoble Experiment: 🔓 Hotel lock failed

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📬 Did someone forward this to you? Sign up here. Tomorrow: A tiny island nation got tired of waiting for Google Street View, so it strapped cameras to sheep. It worked. I’ve got wild places like this you can explore on Google Maps.

Welcome to your Saturday, friend. It’s October, the postseason is on and baseball looks different this year. For the first time in a regular season, batters, pitchers and catchers could tap their cap or helmet to challenge an umpire’s ball or strike call. No screaming. No kicking dirt. A tap, then a high-tech verdict popping up on the big screen in about 15 seconds.

🏟️ Each team starts every game with two challenges and keeps one each time it wins. Managers treat those challenges like gold. So here’s your question: Over the 2026 regular season, how many ball and strike calls did the tech overturn? A) 86, B) 1,129, C) 5,686 or D) Zero. The umps quietly turned the cameras around. Make a guess. The answer’s waiting at the bottom of the ninth.

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📻 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 show on YouTube. I’m wherever you are. — Kim

TODAY’S DEEP DIVE

Room for improvement

Image: ChatGPT/Kim Komando

🤯 WOW! A friend of mine opened her hotel room safe in Italy and found a $500,000 ring inside. Believe it or not, there’s a chance she gets to keep it. Your hotel room is full of things worth checking, and you could turn the TV into a second monitor.

📖 Read time: 3 minutes

A month ago, I checked into a hotel in Jackson Hole, dropped my bag and did what I always do: tested the locks on the door. Good thing. The extra lock didn’t work. The front desk made it right, but only because I checked.

I go over every room the same way: the locks, the Wi-Fi, the safe and, yes, under the bed. Two minutes, every stay. But before I share my routine, here’s a TV trick that turns the room into your ultimate office.

🖥️ Suite screen dreams

That flat-screen bolted to the wall? It’s a second monitor. Here’s what you need to do.

Most hotel TVs have an open HDMI port on the side or back. Pack an HDMI cable (10% off, $9) and a USB-C to HDMI adapter (7% off, $13) if your laptop needs one, plug in and press the TV’s Input or Source button until your desktop appears. Magical.

Now the important part.

On Windows, press Windows key + P and choose Extend, not Duplicate. So many people choose the wrong option.
On a Mac, plug in, then check System Settings > Displays and make sure mirroring is off.

Extend gives you two separate workspaces: the video call on the big screen, your notes on the laptop. FYI, some TVs are locked in “hospitality mode” and ignore the Input button. The front desk can unlock it.

🧳 The 2-minute room check

Test every lock the second you walk in. Dead bolt, latch, slider. For backup, a portable door lock ($25, two-pack) wedges any hinged door shut from the inside.
Get the Wi-Fi name from a human. Crooks park look-alike networks near lobbies to steal logins. Connect only to the exact name the desk gives you, and keep banking on your phone or hotspot.
Sweep for hidden cameras. Lights off, curtains closed, phone flashlight on. Examine smoke detectors, clocks, chargers and vents for a bright little lens glint. Then pan the dark room through your phone’s camera. Infrared night vision you can’t see shows up on screen as a glowing white or purple dot. Better yet, here’s the $30 detector tool I travel with. Find something? Don’t touch it. Report it.
Open the safe before you trust it. A friend of mine did that in Italy and found a $500,000 ring the last guest left. Yes, you read that right. Under Italian law, the hotel had to post the find publicly in the newspaper. If nobody claims the ring within a year, it’s legally hers. So open the safe the minute you check in.
Then test the safe’s lock. Most hotel rooms use electronic safes from a handful of brands, like Elsafe and Safemark, and many ship with a factory override code: 0000, 9999 or six zeros. Hotels never change it. Close the door and punch one in. If it pops open, don’t leave anything real in there. Either way, set your own code and know staff can always override it.

Want a better option? I pack a portable travel safe (10% off, $16), a slash-resistant bag with a steel cable you loop around the closet rod.

And steal my mom’s trick, so you don’t forget the stuff you lock up. She always put one shoe in the hotel safe. Mom’s shoe trick never failed. She always left on the right foot.

🎯 Send this to someone who flops onto the hotel bed without even glancing at the dead bolt.

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IN PARTNERSHIP WITH

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WEB WATERCOOLER

🚔 Plate expectations, broken: Two Pinellas County, Fla., sheriff’s deputies were arrested on felony charges of using police tools to look up people they were personally interested in. One ran a woman’s license plate through Flock’s camera network about 300 times. Their actions came to light after a reporter filed public records requests. Their own sheriff made the arrests. Insiders with logins are the risk nobody sees coming.

Aisle see you: Can’t find the cumin at Walmart? Pull it up in the Walmart app on your phone, walk to the aisle and tap “flash price tag.” The digital shelf label lights up right where the item sits. Walmart says Shop to Light has been flashed 5 million times since a summer test, and it’s headed to all stores before the holidays. Workers use the lights to stock shelves. Walmart says the labels don’t collect customer data. I guess I believe them, or I hear Santa does.

💰 Joanna saved $765 a year. That’s what happened when she switched to Consumer Cellular. Same reliable coverage, friendly U.S.-based support and unlimited for $35 a month. I’m a customer, too. Right now, get an extra $100 off any unlimited plan.* What would you do with an extra $765?

Your voice stolen, in any language: The phone rings. It's your granddaughter, sobbing, begging in Spanish for bail money. Here's the twist: she barely speaks Spanish. Her abuela does. ElevenLabs' new voice models can clone anyone from a 10-second clip and make that voice fluent in more than 90 languages. Now crooks can go after relatives who don't speak English first, in the language they trust most. Call them this week. Pick a family safe word, and make sure every relative knows it in their own language. Ten calm seconds could save thousands.

☁️ Cloud of duty: The kids are sprawled on the lawn, locked in a heated debate over whether that cloud looks like Florida or a rotisserie chicken. (It's both. Florida has always looked a little like poultry.) Good news: NASA wants the photo. Its free GLOBE Observer app lets anyone upload geotagged cloud pics that scientists use to double-check satellite weather and climate readings. No degree, telescope or silver jumpsuit required. Finally, a reason to stare at the sky that isn't avoiding yard work. Next up: renaming your patio Cape Canaveral West and requesting federal funding for a second lawn chair.

📺 YOUTUBE: THE KIM KOMANDO SHOW

🎧 This weekend on my show

ChatGPT/Kim Komando

Next time an Amazon driver walks up your driveway, go ahead and wave. Amazon delivery drivers are wearing AI smart glasses on the job, and your porch is part of the route. I’ll tell you what they’re capturing and whether you get a say.

Plus, AI is helping set prices at McDonald’s. You might want to wait for your next drive-thru run.

Also on the show this weekend:

Garbage trucks are scanning your yard. Yes, the garbage truck.
AI can remember where you hide things. Handy for the spare key. Less handy when the kids borrow your phone.
Those “magic” streaming boxes with every channel for one low price? Run.
Donna saved $400 with my AI tips. Steal her moves.

▶️ Listen to the full show →

🎥 Watch on Youtube →

DEVICE ADVICE

⚡️ 3-second tech genius: Your Google Maps arrow is boring. (Sorry, but it’s true.) Start driving navigation, then tap that blue arrow. Swipe through the vehicles, from a sporty little car to a pickup to an SUV, pick a color and tap Done. Ten seconds, tops. It’s purely cosmetic, so you won’t get there any faster. You’ll still miss the same exit. But you’ll do it in style.

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Can’t pick one kid pic for your wallpaper? Don’t. Let your iPhone rotate through all of them. In Photos, tap Select at the top right, choose your favorite pictures, then tap Share > Create Photo Shuffle Wallpaper. Tap the three dots to set how often they change, hourly, daily or every time you tap, then hit Add. Everybody gets screen time. Family argument officially avoided. (You’re welcome.)

🔇 Alexa, nobody asked for a speech: You ask her to turn on the lamp, and she narrates the whole process. The lamp is on, love. I can see it. Open the Alexa app > More > Settings > Voice Responses and switch on Brief Mode. For simple commands, she swaps the chatter for a quick chime, so you know the job’s done. Fewer words. Same results. If only the group text worked that way.

Gmail’s secret take-back button: Ever hit Send and spot the typo, the wrong attachment or (gulp) the wrong person? Gmail’s default gives you only five seconds to take it back. Stretch that to 30. On your computer, click the gear at the top right > See all settings > General > Undo Send, pick 30 seconds and hit Save Changes. That’s six times the panic window. Your boss never has to know.

🔊 Windows volume, one app at a time: A browser tab starts blaring an ad while your music plays. Windows buries the fix in menus. Nope. Grab EarTrumpet, a free app that puts separate volume sliders for every app right on your task bar. Click its icon at the bottom right to shush the noisy one and leave the tunes alone. You can flip between headphones and speakers there, too. Peace and quiet, restored.

KIM’S DAILY DEALS

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⚒️ Screw the struggle

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WHAT THE TECH?

Image: @lukas_m_ziegler via X

🚧 Orange is the new autonomous

Traffic cones are getting self-driving tech before most of us have figured out parallel parking.

Chinese firms are testing robotic cones that roll off response vehicles and drive themselves into lane-blocking formations, with one developer claiming a setup time under 10 seconds. Some prototypes use visual recognition, gyroscopes and radar. They can be controlled remotely or even navigate on their own.

Basically, it’s a tiny orange SWAT team for asphalt. Best part? Humans stay out of live traffic. Seems like such a no-brainer invention.

Check them out here. It’s ice cream you eat in a car. A traffic cone. Wow, tough crowd for a Saturday.

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LOGGING OUT …

🎓 What you learned today: Walmart can light up the shelf tag you’re hunting for, 10 seconds of audio can clone a voice, NASA wants your cloud photos, and traffic cones are learning to drive themselves. On the bench for tomorrow: You can wander the islands, a desert, the Galapagos and even the International Space Station from your couch.

⚾️ The answer: C) 5,686. That’s a lot of red-faced umpires. The magic behind all those reversed calls comes from 12 Hawk-Eye cameras ringed around every MLB ballpark, the same tech that calls lines in pro tennis. Five of them are high-speed cameras running at 300 frames per second, and the system judges whether a pitch clipped the zone to within about one-sixth of an inch.

That’s skinnier than a pencil eraser. And yes, challenges count in the postseason, too. Your team’s October could come down to one helmet tap.

What’s the difference between an umpire and an empire? An umpire gives three strikes, but an Empire Strikes Back.

🌱 The one-ingredient routine: I'm a sucker for simple. ImproveLife Colostrum has exactly one active ingredient: premium bovine colostrum, standardized to 20% IgG (those are the naturally occurring antibodies colostrum is known for). It comes from U.S. family farms with a calf-first approach. Your first order even ships with a reusable glass Forever Bottle that looks great on the counter. Save up to 25% on ImproveLife Colostrum.**

🧳 Lock the door, trust your gut and leave room in the suitcase for the good surprises. Thanks for letting me in your inbox. — Kim

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.

HOW’D WE DO?

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Photo credit(s): ChatGPT/Kim Komando, Tietoc, @lukas_m_ziegler via X

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