🌷 Full circle moment: How about good news? A shy kindergartner promised her teacher she’d say hello again after high school. Twenty years, two degrees and two kids later, Calyssa found that teacher, thanks to a single TikTok photo. Turns out, both were student moms from UC Davis and had the same grit. Sometimes the internet actually delivers a happy ending.
📱 I want you: I’m posting tech tips, behind-the-scenes moments and real talk about your digital life over on TikTok. Come hang out, scroll smarter and tap that follow button, no dancing required (unless it’s for science). 👉 tiktok.com/@kimkomando
🧰 Remember Facebook’s “Local Jobs”? Meta’s reviving the feature they axed in 2022, but now it’s tucked inside Marketplace, Groups and Pages, so people can find nearby work and message employers right in Messenger. You can expect to see it pop up this week. Basically Craigslist meets LinkedIn, but with more moms selling restored furniture.
🤓 OMG DIY VR: Get this, a YouTuber just made his own virtual reality headset for $150. Normally, a good one runs anywhere from $300 for Meta’s base model to nearly $1,000 for the fancy PC rigs. Check out the video. This guy 3D-printed the shell, grabbed some screens off AliExpress, tossed in an Arduino sensor, and boom, homemade VR that actually works.
📺 Monetized redemption: YouTube’s letting some banned creators come back, if they’ve been gone over a year and play nice this time. No copyright cheats, no repeat offenders. They’ll have to rebuild from scratch, monetization and all. Basically, it’s creator purgatory with ads.
👩🏼🍼 Born into the limelight: A Twitch streamer did an eight-hour broadcast for 50,000 people of her giving birth complete with an inflatable pool, contractions and all. Twitch CEO Dan Clancy popped into the chat to say congrats. Kind of feels like a pilot episode for The Truman Show. Finally, a stream that delivers.
💬 Hide your WhatsApp status: Planning a surprise and don’t want everyone to know? When creating a status, tap Updates > Add status. In the bottom left, where it says Status (Contacts), choose My contacts except. Pick who shouldn’t see it, hit Done and your secret’s safe.
📱 Save data on Facebook: Watching videos eats up your mobile plan fast. You can cut usage by up to 40% by lowering video quality. Just tap the three-dot menu (top right) > Settings & privacy > Settings > Media > toggle on Data Saver. While you’re there, set Autoplay in Feed and Stories to Wi-Fi only.
Make AI dad go away: Zelda Williams slammed fans for sending AI-generated clips of her late father, Robin Williams, calling them “disgusting, over-processed hotdogs” of human art. She said he’d never want his voice or face used that way, and I get it. Let him rest, folks. Chill out on the deepfake Sora 2 celeb videos.
🎛️ ChatGPT’s got apps: You can summon Spotify, Zillow or Canva inside ChatGPT, no tab-hopping required. Make playlists, design posts or house-hunt mid-convo. Expedia, DoorDash and Uber are next. It’s all fun and games until $1,000 worth of Taco Bell shows up at your door. Update is rolling out now.
🧡 Taylor’s bad blood with AI bots: After the pop star hyped an elaborate “orange door” puzzle in her Life of a Showgirl release, Swifties learned the visuals were AI-generated and not handcrafted clues. Now she’s down a million Instagram followers and up a million think pieces on “authenticity.” Don’t be sad. The Life of a Showgirl has already sold over 3 million copies in the U.S. In just the first two days, its songs racked up more than 300 million official on-demand streams and counting. I think she’s gonna be OK.
🏝️ Paradise.ai: Here’s something to tell your friends that will make them say, “Wow, you’re so smart.” Tiny Anguilla (population 15,000) stumbled into a digital jackpot, owning the “.ai” domain every startup wants. In 2024 alone, those two letters brought in $39 million selling domain names to startups like Character.ai and Perplexity.ai. That’s nearly a quarter of the island’s government revenue. When in a gold rush, sell vowels.
AI chat ad trap: Meta’s creepy AI chats will fuel even creepier ad targeting. Starting in December, anything you tell the chatbot, “best hikes in Sedona” or “I have IBS,” could shape your ads and feed. One billion users, one giant data grab. So yeah, maybe don’t trauma-dump to the algorithm unless you want an ad for probiotics.
Musk vs. Wikipedia: Elon Musk says he’s building Grokipedia, an AI-powered rival to Wikipedia using his Grok chatbot. He claims it’ll fix “bias” and “half-truths.” Meanwhile, Wikipedia’s founder basically went, “Good luck, buddy.” Hey, I’m just hoping my own Wikipedia page doesn’t get “corrected” into fan fiction. (Yes, it’s real: Kim Komando).
🚀 My rocket’s bigger: I just finished reading the book Rocket Dreams, and wow, Elon and Jeff have turned space into a billionaire soap opera. Through secret meetings, Twitter spats and NASA bidding wars, the book shows Musk and Bezos chasing space, not just for ego but because they actually believe we’ll live there. It’s messy but so interesting.
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DIY movie star: Picture this. Tell OpenAI’s new Sora app, “Make me doing a sick skateboard trick,” and boom, it spits out a movie-quality clip (paywall link), up to 20 seconds. There’s even a “Cameo” mode that drops your likeness into AI worlds. The first viral hit? A fake Sam Altman stealing graphics cards. The app works like TikTok or YouTube Shorts: You can follow, like and comment on other AI slop.
🧻 Pay-to-wipe: Going to China? New viral footage shows a woman in a public restroom forced to scan a QR code to get toilet paper. Over there, you either pay a few cents or watch an ad before the dispenser spits out your ration. The idea is to cut down on toilet paper theft, but this is just Hulu with higher stakes.
💍 Ring of fire: YouTuber Daniel Rotar’s Samsung Galaxy Ring swelled mid-trip, clamping his finger like a lithium bear trap. Airport security screeners wanted him to take the ring off, but he couldn’t, forcing him and his bulbous device to wait until doctors iced and lubed it off. Samsung paid his hotel, but he’s done with smart rings.
⚠️ Scamming scammers: Some TikTokers claimed you could file a fake CFPB complaint and get a check from Zelle or Cash App. Millions watched. Some paid $77 for their “templates” and $24.99 for credit repair guides. It’s all bogus. “Just lie to the government” is not financial advice.