Comcast made Wi-Fi motion sensing a headline feature on millions of Xfinity gateways. It reads the ripples your body makes in the signal, through walls, no camera. Here’s the five-minute check, friend.
There’s a button on the back of your phone you’ve never pressed. Your AirPods are an FDA-cleared hearing aid. Your carrier will route calls over Wi-Fi, so the basement isn’t a dead zone anymore. And these short phrases get you past any phone tree. Seven tricks, all free, all already on the phone in your hand.
Two arrests, two weeks, two states. Neither man had met the woman he’s accused of stalking. Each saw her on social media and tracked her down. Here’s how strangers do that and how to stop it.
A Google Form, a calendar invite, a “Google Security” call, an AI Overview phone number. Four scams wear Google’s logo, friend, but the company insists it will never call you about security
Fake utility payment websites are getting harder to spot. Learn the one place to check before you enter your credit card, plus the warning signs that can save you from a costly mistake.
Paul in Indiana set up passkeys and wonders why he still needs a password manager. Fair question. Passkeys cover maybe a dozen accounts. The other 150 are still running on “Fluffy2019!” Here’s how the two work together and the one move that ends password chaos for good.
USC researchers found you overpay on nearly 1 in 4 prescriptions, because a middleman sets your copay higher than the drug’s real price and pockets the difference. Pharmacists couldn’t tell you until 2018, and still aren’t required to bring it up. The six-word question, price-check apps and no-middleman pharmacies inside.
Flock’s cameras scan more than 20 billion license plates a month, and they’ve found kidnapped kids and closed murder cases. They’ve also tracked police officers’ ex-girlfriends, shown up in a Virginia woman’s front yard uninvited and nearly ended up on 350,000 Ubers. Now, 30-plus cities have pulled the plug, the company is scrambling to add rules and its own CEO reportedly keeps his plates out of the system. Here’s the whole story, plus the free map that shows every camera near you.
A Catholic sister in a full habit has 198,000 TikTok followers, and one convent video pulled 3.4 million views. The twist: Her order has been chasing the newest media for over a century, from printing presses to trending sounds. Meanwhile, monks in the Wyoming mountains run a thriving online coffee business. How the most unplugged people in America mastered the most online thing there is, without letting it master them.
Turn it up, now it’s blasting, turn it down, have to rewind, “what did she SAY?” A survey found over half of Americans keep subtitles on, mostly because the audio is muddled. The real culprits: razor-thin TVs with speakers firing at the wall, theater sound mixes crammed into your living room and streaming compression.
Homeowners are opening nonrenewal letters triggered by photos taken from planes and satellites: moss on the roof, a tarp, yard clutter. One insurer-backed imagery network says its cameras cover about 99% of the U.S. population. Nobody knocks, nobody calls, the letter just arrives. Four moves fight back, starting with demanding the photo.
ChatGPT will find open tables, book them and even join a Yelp waitlist without you leaving the chat. Here’s how to do it, the prompt that gets the best results and the catch about cancellations.
It’s America’s most-argued tech question. You mention dog food once, and the ad shows up an hour later. Scientists tested 17,000 apps and found zero secret recordings. But one media firm bragged about “Active Listening” tech, Apple paid $95 million over Siri misfires, and 2,230 companies are quietly feeding Facebook your shopping habits. The way ads REALLY find you is creepier than a hot mic. Plus the 5-minute settings fix.
Tonight, Earth plows through a comet’s dust trail: the Perseid meteor shower, up to 100 shooting stars an hour, visible from every state. This year’s peak lands on a new moon, the darkest viewing in years. When to look, where to look and the phone camera settings that can catch a falling star.
The largest security update in Microsoft’s history landed with almost no fanfare. Microsoft turned AI loose on its own code and found holes that had sat there for years. Apple is quietly doing the same thing to your Mac. Here’s the two-minute fix and the gap no patch will ever close.
Your smart TV has a setting called ACR that’s spying on everything you watch. It’s on by default, and every brand buries it somewhere different in settings. Turn it off and nothing changes except the ads get dumber.
Two of the biggest names in home security, breached four months apart by the same crooks using the same trick. Not malware. A phone call to an employee. Here’s what they took, and the five rules that keep you out of the follow-up scam.
GoGuardian watches about 27 million students, roughly half of America’s K-12 schools, and it doesn’t clock out at 3 p.m. Gaggle scans essays, emails and chats in about 1,500 districts, and kids have been flagged for song lyrics and a Bible verse. Four house rules protect your family, starting with the postcard talk.
The average household pays $69 a month for streaming, and 73% are fed up with the price hikes. Nielsen says free services like The Roku Channel beat some paid giants, and Tubi alone has 300,000 free titles. Cancel your least-watched app for 30 days and try one of these instead.
Hackers hit 30+ Minnesota water systems over two days. Here’s what could’ve happened, along with your 15-minute prep plan.
