The Current + Musk’s Grok shock, insurance scam, Belkin bricks gear, facial recognition arrest and tech smarts you need - In partnership with LinkedIn | Hey hey, it’s a tech taco Tuesday, friend. Ever accidentally delete all your vacation pics? Now imagine that, but instead of beach selfies, it’s a cosmic-level “my bad.” 🎥 NASA accidentally recorded over historic footage back in the ’80s. Take a guess what it was: A) First shuttle launch, B) Apollo 11 moon landing footage, C) Buzz Aldrin’s spacewalk or D) Secret UFO briefings. Think you know it? Check out the answer at the end. ✋🏼 Want to keep seeing my newsletter? Don’t take chances. Just hit reply and say hi, drop an emoji, anything! It tells your email provider you actually want my newsletter (not spam). Thanks, I appreciate you! — Kim 📫 First-time reader? Sign up here. (It’s free!) | TODAY'S DEEP DIVE Storage side hustles Image: ChatGPT One of the best calls I’ve had recently on my show came from a listener named Stacy. He casually told me he’s made $80,000 renting the vacant land he covered with gravel behind his house. That’s it. A rectangle of rocks. No building. No tenants. No fancy business plan. Just a patch of dirt he wasn’t using. Stacy listed it on an app called Neighbor, which connects people who need storage (RVs, boats, trailers, buses) with folks who have extra space. Since listing it, he’s had over 60 people park everything from luxury campers to school buses. He charges $90 to $200 a month, and he’s booked solid. He didn’t build anything. Didn’t babysit anyone’s stuff. Didn’t even have Wi-Fi out there. And it’s paid off big-time. Want to do the same? You don’t need acres. Got a driveway? A garage you haven’t opened since 2011? A little side yard? People are willing to pay for space to park or store their stuff, and apps make it ridiculously easy. Yes, Neighbor is one option. But there’s also: - Spacer and JustPark for driveways and parking spots.
- Hipcamp, if you’ve got land and don’t mind a camper or two.
- Sniffspot, yes, you can even rent your fenced backyard to dog owners.
Real people are doing this: - A guy in Indiana gets $175 a month for his dusty garage.
- A couple in Arizona stores a neighbor’s boat in their side yard for $250 a month.
- One woman turned her unused barn into year-round RV storage. She doesn’t want to say how much she makes. I bet it’s a lot.
So take a walk outside and look at that forgotten patch of land or extra space. That’s your weird-flex-but-OK income stream waiting to happen. 🤔 If you do give it a shot (or have another unique way of making money), let me know. I want your success story on the show next. |
THE KIM KOMANDO SHOW How to start your own newsletter Super-smart eighth grader Gagan from Washington calls in asking how to start his own tech newsletter for his pals. So cool! I cover a new Bitcoin ATM scam, today’s most vulnerable jobs and how to get cheap tickets on your next flight. Listen on Komando.com → |
DEALS OF THE DAY I found your next favorite gadgets 🧠 Upgrading your tech game shouldn’t melt your brain (or your wallet). - 🔌 Running out of ports? Plug in a five-in-one USB-C hub (50% off). Whoa, 4.6 stars and 185,000+ reviews!
- 🐶 Fetch this steal: Keep tabs on your doggo 24/7 and fling treats with a 360° dog camera (56% off).
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⚡ More power-ups: Tap this secret link for more tech deals. My Amazon storefront is packed with the best sales. |
WEB WATERCOOLER 🦎 Gecko gotcha: Carrie just wanted cheaper car insurance, but Google served her scam. She clicked a fake Geico link, handed over everything (yes, even her SSN) and Venmo’d $400 to fraudsters. Didn’t realize the con until Geico HQ had no record of payment. Gotta watch where you click, folks. What would you do? A San Jose woman got buried in hundreds and hundreds of Amazon packages. Think faux leather cheap car seat covers she never ordered from a seller in China. Turns out, shady return scammers were dumping rejected goods on her doorstep. Amazon’s response? A $100 gift card and radio silence … until the news shamed them into action. 🚘 What a bunch of Grok: Tesla just shoved its chaotic AI chatbot, Grok, into new cars, and it’s coming for older ones, too. It won’t drive or blast AC (yet), but it will banter, joke, and yes, there’s an “Unhinged” mode. You need Wi-Fi or a Premium plan to chat, but no account required. Twerked, tagged, tracked: Ohio police arrested two brain-trust women who twerked on a parked cop car. The dance party left dents and scratches, so authorities ran footage through Clearview AI facial recognition. Got ’em! Now, the women are facing charges. 🔌 Belkin bricks tech: Say goodbye to 27 models of its Wemo smart home devices, including some sold as recently as 2023. After January 2026, they’ll lose app access, Alexa integrations and cloud features. Warranty users might get partial refunds. Everyone else? Straight to e-waste. Your “smart” hardware’s about to get real dumb. 🙄 Sick of Comcast? Two guys in Michigan got so fed up with the service that they started their own internet company. It’s all fiber (read: reliable), with no data caps or contracts, and it’s already in about 1,500 homes. The twist? Comcast caught wind and started calling ex-customers with discounts and new unlimited deals. Shocker. |
IN PARTNERSHIP WITH | | | Finding the perfect candidate for an open job can feel like hunting for a needle in a haystack. Enter LinkedIn. With millions of job seekers at your fingertips, LinkedIn is a treasure trove of skilled folks ready to make a difference. I’ve used LinkedIn to assemble my standout team who help put together this newsletter, my national radio show, our podcast and everything else we do. LinkedIn’s advanced tools make the hiring process smoother than ever. They even help you put together the ideal job description so you can focus on what matters — growing your business. Post your job for FREE! → Please support our sponsors! |
Daily Tech Update There’s a sucker born every minute There’s a new phone scam that’s defrauded millions of Americans. Here’s how it works. Listen on Komando.com → |
DEVICE ADVICE ⚡️ 3-second tech genius: On Android, double press the power button to instantly launch the Camera. On iPhone (15/16), set the Action button to open the Camera in Settings > Action Button. “Say yoga!” 🧘♀️ That makes your mouth look more relaxed. 🤳 Hide Instagram stories: If your account’s public, anyone can view your stories by tapping your profile pic. Want to block certain followers? Go to your Profile > tap the Menu (three lines) > Who can see your content > Hide story and live > Hide story and live from, then select accounts. Bye, nosy ex. 🔐 Principle of least privilege: Business owners, ask your IT team if user accounts are set up this way. It means people and systems only get access to what they need to do their jobs, and nothing more. It’s a simple but effective way to protect your data from security breaches or costly mistakes. 💸 iSaved you money: AirTag batteries last about a year, but you don’t need to toss the whole thing. Just pop in a new CR2032 coin cell battery … you can literally get them for under $5. No tools needed, it’s a super easy swap. I made a quick video to show you how to do it! Read your Kindle sideways: Prefer a wider view? While reading, tap the screen and hit the Aa formatting button. Go to Layout, then under Orientation, choose the Landscape icon. Handy if your iPad habits are hard to shake. 🖱️ Windows trick: A secret button on the taskbar minimizes everything you have open. Look in the bottom-right corner of your screen. It’s a small silver line. Click to clear your screen, click again to bring your windows back. Faster than closing them one by one. 💰 Find the subscriptions you forgot about: I use Rocket Money, an app that finds all your recurring subscriptions and lets you easily cancel anything you don’t want. The first time I logged in, it saved me $435!* |
BY THE NUMBERS $36 million That’s how much AI “nudify” sites are making each year turning regular photos into fake nudes. New research examined 85 deepfake websites where someone could take your selfie and, with a few clicks, turn it into something you definitely didn’t sign off on. 91.8% That’s how often an AI nailed a pancreatic cancer diagnosis on fresh CT scans. It’s not psychic, it’s just very, very good at reading medical images. It even found cancer in 53.9% of scans taken a year before diagnosis. At this rate, AI’s going to make “too late to treat” a thing of the past. Around 1 in 3 U.S. counties have no full-time local journalist. That number has dropped 75% since 2002. The fix? Experts say we need more funding and policy changes. Kinda scary to think no one in the public eye is watching over local government, businesses or schools. |
WHAT THE TECH?  | | Remember that boring old trackpad on your laptop? It’s about to get to work. E Ink and Intel have teamed up to replace it with something smart and weirdly paper-like. Their new ePaper touchpad slaps a full-color, ultra-low-power display where your fingers usually go. It’s more than a screen, it’s like a second brain. Need notes, calendar alerts, weather updates or personalized AI blabber? It’ll show up right under your fingertips, even when the laptop’s off. Useful, I guess. 🏔️ Speaking of … How do you greet a friendly laptop in the mountains? Yo Dell! (Oh, tough crowd!) |
LOGGING OUT ... Answer: B) Apollo 11 moon landing footage. Yep. The reels got recorded over during the ’80s because NASA had a shortage of magnetic data tapes. The original slow-scan TV (SSTV) footage captured directly from the lunar surface of the 1969 moon landing was among the hundreds of tapes on the recycling block. 🌝 This is something. Neil Armstrong’s “one small step” moment we’ve all seen? That’s a secondary recording: a scan of a TV monitor, made during the live feed broadcast. I guess you had to be there. This is the #1 tech newsletter in the United States that would never delete the original footage. Tomorrow, I’m talking about why tech-savvy millennials are falling for online scams, and how not to be next. 👍 Be sure to hit the ratings below and leave me a nice comment. I read them all. And at some point today, I want you to look in the mirror and say, “Hello, gorgeous, I’m tech ahead and I know it!” 💌 — Kim 📣 Don’t keep me a secret: Share this email with friends (or copy URL here) |
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