The Current + Sycophant-y, WWF’s new game, AI jobs, Waymo moves, and tech smarts -  In partnership with Oracle | | Oh, hey, happy Friday, friend! Today in “Wait, that’s how that happened?”… we’re talking robot vacuums. Specifically, the Roomba. You know, everyone’s favorite autonomous frisbee with a dirt obsession and a guilty pleasure of ripping cords from your outlets. What do you think inspired its invention? A) A spilled bag of rice, B) Watching ants clean up food crumbs, C) A NASA project to clean Mars dust, or D) A bet at a tech conference? Go ahead, lock in your wild guess. You’ll get your answer at the end. 💎 Loving this inbox oddity to stay tech ahead? Hit that little ⭐️ to favorite me, it helps train your email to stop treating me like spam. I’m not junk. I’m a gem. — Kim 📫 First-time reader? Sign up here. (It’s free!) |
TODAY'S DEEP DIVE Throwback tech  Image: ChatGPT It’s Friday, and I’m feeling a little nostalgic. Let’s take a fun walk down memory lane back when our gadgets were clunky, slow and somehow magical. Remember when flipping your phone shut made you feel like a movie star? Or hearing the sound of a modem? Good times. Take a look at this list and see if there are any you miss. AOL Instant Messenger
AIM was where friendships, gossip and teenage drama lived. Setting the perfect away message was an art form. “Out grabbing pizza. BRB.” Bonus points if you threw in a moody song lyric. T9 texting
Before touch screens, texting meant using a numeric keypad where each button represented three or four letters. You had to tap multiple times to get the right one. Sending a simple “Hi” could feel like typing a novel. Mastering T9 predictive text was a real skill, and if you could do it without looking, you were a wizard. Car phones
Not Bluetooth, not speakerphones, actual phones bolted into your car. If you had one, you were big-time. Even if the service cut out every time you left the city limits. Floppy disks
Saving a school or work project onto a floppy felt like high-tech magic. Too bad you could only fit about one blurry photo on it. 1.44 MB sounded like a lot back then. Digital cameras
Before smartphones ruled the world, you carried a chunky digital camera everywhere. You snapped 40 photos, crossed your fingers and hoped one wasn’t blurry when you uploaded them hours later. BlackBerrys
If you had a BlackBerry, you meant business. That tiny keyboard gave you the power to email, text and survive boring meetings long before iPhones took over. You were never in a jam. Fun fact: I never owned one. The original iPod
A thousand songs in your pocket sounded like pure science fiction. That click wheel was addictive, and you felt unstoppable with your whole music library at your fingertips. It’s crazy how fast tech moves. What once felt like the future now feels prehistoric. Makes you wonder what we’ll be laughing about 10 years from now. I bet carrying a phone will seem ridiculous. 🥳 For fun: If you could bring back one old-school gadget just for the memories, what would it be? Hit reply or let me know when you rate this newsletter at the end. I read every note. |
THE KIM KOMANDO SHOW Gen Z wants flip phones Forget the iPhone. Some Gen Zers are buying flip phones to unplug on purpose. Also: Siri’s getting dumber, a drone yells at you from the sky, and a Georgia woman loses $200K to a Bitcoin scam. Listen on Komando.com → |
WEB WATERCOOLER 😅 Digital suck-up: OpenAI just rolled back a ChatGPT update because it was agreeing with everything you said, no matter how wrong. It was so flattering, folks started calling it “sycophant-y.” Have you ever used that word in your life? Me neither. 🚗 Toyota’s Robo-glow-up: Google’s Waymo is teaming up with Toyota to explore self-driving tech in your own car, not just ride-hailing fleets. It’s all still “preliminary,” but (allegedly) the goal is future personal robo-car vibes, not just robots that pick you up and hold you hostage. Solo Words With Friends: WWF (the puzzle game, not the pandas or wrestling) added a new solo game called Letter Lock. Slide letters up and down columns to make words and unlock more columns. It’s part puzzle, part productivity trap, and 100% designed to eat your break time. 🛰️ High stakes laser tag: Amazon just fired its first 27 Kuiper satellites into orbit to take on Starlink, planning for 3,200 total. SpaceX already has 7,200 up there. Hope Earth’s atmosphere enjoys the new bumper-to-bumper congestion. AI eats its own: Prompt engineer was tech’s hot new job title in 2023, featuring $300K salaries, fully remote work and bragging rights in Discord. Fast-forward to 2025: AI doesn’t need prompt engineers anymore. It writes its own prompts. Imagine training your replacement that never takes lunch breaks and doesn’t need caffeine. Congrats, prompt engineers, you played yourself, in natural language. 💀 DIY neck crack: Chiropractic neck “adjustments” are all over TikTok. So are reports of strokes, nerve damage and ruptured arteries. The internet’s favorite crack (not that one) could basically snap your brain off. So before you adjust yourself straight into the void based on something you saw online, heed my words: Please don’t. 📬 Tired of spam and snooping? Bob from Illinois said it best: “I switched to StartMail, and I get no more junk email. Plus, no big tech snoops and trackers!” You can move your whole inbox without missing a beat, too. No downtime, no data lost and total privacy. Right now, snag 60% off your first year — a smart switch at a smart price.* |
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DAILY TECH UPDATE Influencers bought and sold The Los Angeles Times uncovered a covert electioneering campaign involving over 500 social media creators. Here’s the scoop. Listen on Komando.com → |
DEVICE ADVICE ⚡️ 3-second tech genius: On iPhone, go to Settings > Battery > Battery Health & Charging to check if you need a replacement battery. Brillant, I know. Skip the store: Before you head out for that quick errand, ask ChatGPT or any chatbot, “Find me [item] options on Amazon that arrive within [time frame] and cost under [budget].” You’ll save time, money and a crowded parking lot. ✍️ ABC = Always Be Selling: I know that’s not a C. Adding a call to action turns your email signature into marketing gold. It can be a link, a special offer or anything else you want to promote. Here’s how to change them. But don’t stop there. Put CTAs in your social media bio, website footer and even your store’s Wi-Fi name. 📱 Seeing double: Need to check your notes while writing an email? Android lets you use two apps at once. Go to Recent Apps, press and hold the first app you want, then choose Split screen. Tap your second app, and a black bar will separate them. Done? Drag the black bar to the app you want to close. Read me: Getting to your home screen on Kindle can be tricky. If you have a book open, tap the top of the screen > back arrow > Home. From the Kindle store, hit the X icon > Home. FYI, if your Kindle is older, look for a house icon (top left) or a physical home button. 💬 Name dropper: Give your family and friends fun nicknames on Facebook Messenger. Just open a conversation from the Chats tab. Tap their name at the top, and go to Nicknames > [their name] > Save (iOS) or Set (Android) when you’re done. The other person will see it, so keep it friendly. |
BY THE NUMBERS Less than 100 That’s how many shark bites are reported globally each year. Not a huge number, but it’s been going up. Why? Blame social media. Some influencers are telling tourists to snap selfies or reach out for a pat. Add to that the fact that most people can’t tell a reef shark from a bull shark. Yeah, natural selection in action. Nearly $400,000 What someone paid at auction for a chilling letter from a Titanic survivor. The first-class passenger wrote it five days before the Titanic went down, saying, “It is a fine ship, but I shall await my journey’s end before I pass judgment on her.” The cruel twist? He still died a few months later from health issues made worse by the wreck. $10 million How much revenue TikTok creators are collectively pulling in daily. New data also shows it’s now the second most-watched livestreaming platform on the net. So far in Q1: Twitch has 4.85 billion hours, TikTok Live 8.03 billion and YouTube leads with 14.98 billion hours. Dang, that’s crazy. |
WHAT THE TECH?  | | Image: Zverev on Instagram |
| | Alexander Zverev went full CSI: Tennis Clay Court Edition during his recent wacky Madrid Open match against Alejandro Davidovich Fokina. After a sketchy line call ruled by the Electronic Line Calling (ELC), Zverev lost it, pleading with the umpire, “The machine is not working. Look at this mark. Don’t overrule it, please come down.” Then, he turned into German Sherlock Holmes with a racket who says love means nothing to him, pointing to a visible ball mark on the clay. When the umpire refused to inspect the mark, since ELC overrides human judgment, Zverev pulled out his phone and snapped a photo. ELC has a few millimeters of baked-in error, which sounds small, until it decides the fate of your paycheck. |
UNTIL NEXT TIME … Answer: B) Watching ants clean up food crumbs. The inventor of the Roomba was inspired while watching ants carry crumbs off his kitchen floor. He thought, “What if a robot could do that?” Simple, smart and nonstop, just like ants. That tiny moment of real-life inspiration led to the creation of one of the most popular robot vacuums ever. 🧼 🐜 One for the colony: Five ants rent an apartment. They realize there is plenty of room, so they invite another five ants to join them. They are now tenants. (Yes, that was bad. I admit it. Let’s see you write jokes for free!) Anyhoo, you just finished reading the most entertaining and informative tech newsletter this side of the internet. 🥳 Tomorrow, how to make a USB drive that self-destructs if you lose it. Until next time, go out there and tech like you mean it. 🚀💻— Kim 📣 Don’t keep me a secret: Share this email with friends (or copy URL here) |
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