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Watch your mouth: On your Mac, you can get Siri to respond with onscreen text rather than a voice. From the Apple menu, pick System Preferences > Siri > click off next to Voice Feedback. This will keep Siri’s responses shushed to captions so the guy next to you in the coffee shop doesn’t know all your business. Sweet.
Tags: Apple, Apple Siri
When you agree to TikTok’s terms of service after downloading the app, you’re handing communist China the keys to the kingdom. I dug up all the creepy things TikTok tracks and how it does it. Plus, how to quickly find red flags in the terms and conditions.
I talked about this on my show last week and got a ton of questions: Automakers and insurance companies are in cahoots to share data on your driving, hard braking, rapid acceleration and more. That’s why your car insurance probably went up. Mine did.
Some spouses are M&M’s – Memories & Mistakes: A Massachusetts mom turned to social media to track down her husband, who left her and their two kids. Her post went viral, and within 14 hours, women claimed to have matched with him on the dating app Bumble, serving up his new address and phone number in Texas. Putz.
✈️ Heads up, jet-setters: If you book a trip with Google Flights’ price guarantee badge and the fare drops, you could get refunded the difference. The drop must be over $5, there’s a $500 cap per year, and you must be signed in with the region as the U.S. (with prices in dollars). You’ll also need Google Pay to claim your cash back.
Siri, clean my room: Apple’s next big idea: Robot butlers. Picture an AI smarty-pants to wash the dishes, clean the house and video chat with you when you’re not home. No word yet as to when it’ll be here. I have Amazon’s Astro patrolling my house. Give me a few weeks, and I’ll let you know how he’s working out.
We may receive a commission when you buy through our links, but our reporting and recommendations are always independent and objective.
Your old photos are worth money to AI: Old public photo storage sites like Photobucket, Myspace and Friendster, which were huge in the 2000s, have a new revenue stream. AI companies will pay up to $1 per photo and $1 or more for videos to train their algorithms. With 13 billion pics on Photobucket, they stand to make $13 billion. Time to take a look at your old accounts and delete them.
Fakes on Facebook: Watch out for bogus ads and sites pushing phony AI image and video generators like Midjourney, Sora, ChatGPT-5 and DALL-E. Instead of limited access to cutting-edge features, you’ll get malware that steals your passwords and credit card details.
📱 iOS 18 exclusivity: Apple’s “biggest update yet” comes out in June, but if you’re rocking an iPhone 8 Plus or older, you’re out of luck. Eligible models? The XR, XS, iPhones 11 to 15, plus the second- and third-gen SEs. If you want those new AI features, it’s time to upgrade. Hit those links to check out a new phone.
We may receive a commission when you buy through our links, but our reporting and recommendations are always independent and objective.
🔄 Android upgrade: Google’s “Find My Device” network is finally working for some folks. It’s Android’s version of Apple Find My. Hooray — you can now track lost items with special Bluetooth trackers if you have access. It’s a gradual rollout, though, so check your Settings app to see if it’s available for you yet.
Sounds about right: Amazon’s “Just Walk Out” tech promised we could skip the checkout line using AI. Turns out, about 1,000 workers in India were watching live footage since the AI wasn’t up to snuff — 700 out of every 1,000 transactions needed a human check. No surprise, they canned the whole project.
