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It’s Tuesday, {{first_name | friend}}. Imagine you’re the best stop-motion animator alive. Spielberg himself hired you to bring the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park to life, frame by painstaking frame, the same way movie monsters had been made since King Kong.

Then computer nerds at ILM walk in with a demo. On the screen: a full CGI T. rex walking. No clay. No puppets. No you. That animator was Phil Tippett, and what he said in that screening room became the stuff of Hollywood legend. The craft of stop-motion creature effects largely ended that day, though there have been lovingly hand-crafted exceptions, including Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride and Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio.

🦖 What did Phil Tippett reportedly say after seeing that first CGI dinosaur test? A) “We’re going to need a bigger computer,” B) “I think I’m extinct,” C) “That’s it. I’m going back to film school” or D) “Does anyone want to buy 400 slightly used clay dinosaurs?” Don’t fossilize here, the answer’s waiting at the end.

💧 Forget to drink water again today? Most of us do. This smart water bottle glows and buzzes when it’s time for a sip, so hydration stops being a guessing game. I keep mine on my desk.* 

One small favor: This newsletter is 100% free, and it stays that way because of our sponsors. If an ad in today’s issue looks interesting, click it and check it out. That one click tells them you’re here, and it’s what keeps The Current landing in your inbox free every morning. Now, on with the show. — Kim

🤯 WOW! That “free” school laptop never clocks out. GoGuardian alone watches about 27 million students, roughly half the K-12 schools in America, logging screens and tabs minute by minute, at home, on your Wi-Fi. One monitoring tool flagged a kid over a Bible verse.

The Short Version: Ask the district four questions, make the school laptop school-only, dodge the account trap and have the postcard talk at dinner tonight. Steps below.

📖 Read time: 2 minutes

So the kid’s backpack came home with a free laptop in it, like in 9 of 10 school districts nationwide. Nice of the district, right? FYI, it’s less a gift and more a roommate. One that takes notes.

GoGuardian, the big name in classroom monitoring, watches about 27 million students, roughly half the K-12 schools in America. It logs the screen and open tabs, minute by minute. At home, on your Wi-Fi, at midnight.

Gaggle, running in about 1,500 districts, goes further. It scans what kids type into school accounts. Essays. Emails. Chats. An algorithm hunts for danger words and alerts adults your kid has never met.

The algorithm is jumpy, too. Kids have been flagged for song lyrics, college application sites, even a Bible verse with the word “naked.” The Electronic Frontier Foundation calls the whole system a “Red Flag Machine.”

An Associated Press investigation found nearly 3,500 flagged student files, unredacted, on the open internet with no password. Same probe: At least six kids were nearly outed after writing privately about their sexuality. A RAND report found “scant evidence” any of this prevents tragedies.

And no, nobody’s watching through the webcam. A district got sued for that in 2010, and it’s been legal poison since.

Look, the school isn’t evil. The federal Children’s Internet Protection Act ties educational funding to filtering. But the laptop? Never off the clock. Now you know, and so does your kid. Fair’s fair.

Funny thing about that Chromebook: It’s the only one in class with perfect attendance. And it never stops taking notes.

🎯 Send this to someone who just posed their kid on the front porch with a backpack and a “First Day!” chalkboard sign.

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🎙️ Now playing, DadGPT: I look back at all those little family conversations in the car, and I wouldn’t trade them for anything. Well, get this. Sam Altman suggested plugging your family calendar and your kids’ interests into ChatGPT, then generating a morning podcast about school trips, birthdays and news. Yep, Silicon Valley finally invented a middleman for asking your own kid how school went. Coming soon: AI recaps the soccer game, so you can stay home and answer emails. Hard pass. Some conversations don’t need a subscription.

Pay to talk: That big Siri upgrade Apple keeps teasing? The best of it may cost you. On Tim Cook’s final earnings call, he hinted that heavy Siri AI users could need pricier iCloud plans, because all that computing costs money. Apple mines your app data to make Siri useful. How much will it run you? Even Apple doesn’t know yet. So Siri may finally understand you, right after Billing confirms your payment.

📉 Health tracking spiral: You wake up feeling great. Then your watch flashes a 30/100 sleep score, and suddenly you’re cranky until lunch. Sound familiar? That little screen can turn ordinary body changes into evidence of impending doom, especially for perfectionists or anyone prone to health anxiety, disordered eating or compulsive exercise. When the numbers start outranking how you actually feel, take a break and mute the notifications. Your pulse isn’t a performance review. Neither is your sleep.

Walls have ears: You’re touring a home, whispering to your partner that the kitchen’s dated and you’ll offer $30,000 under asking. Meanwhile, the seller is listening through a countertop hub from across town. Not hypothetical. A survey found 56% of sellers keep smart devices on during walkthroughs, and nearly one in five deliberately eavesdrop. One owner heard buyers mock her paint and plot a lowball, then rejected their offer. Assume every speaker, camera and doorbell in that house is live. Save the strategy talk for the car.

🎸 Fender goes sour: Hang onto your guitar picks. Fender CEO Bud Cole told musicians their cover songs and bandmates are basically analog AI (paywall link). He said it in May, and it resurfaced at the worst possible time: Fender is firing cease-and-desist letters at small builders over Stratocaster body shapes. Now guitar influencers say they’re done buying Fender. I get it. Threaten the little guys, then reduce years of practice to software? That’s no way to get an encore. Fender struck a chord, all right. Just not the one they wanted.

(Starts at 1:29:39) A listener who has a wholesale food business wants ChatGPT to help with everything: marketing, business planning, customer service. The whole operation. We show him how. 

Listen on Komando.com →

🎧 Or search “Komando” wherever you get your podcasts. I’m everywhere.

⚡️ 3-second tech genius: No bars? Don’t stand on the porch waving your phone at the sky. Swipe down, flip on airplane mode, count to 10, flip it off. Your phone lets go of that faraway tower and grabs the closest strong one. Racing a dead battery? Leave airplane mode ON while charging. Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and background apps take five, so the battery fills faster. One button, two rescues. Easy. 

🎙️ Get on the show! Have a question that’s got you stumped? Spill it here. I read every single one, and yours might land you on the air with me. Your 15 minutes of fame starts with one click.

🙏 This message could save your Mac: Lost laptops come home when you make it easy for the honest person who finds them. Put your contact info right on the lock screen. Open System Settings > Lock Screen, turn on Show message when locked, click Set and add your number or email. Then head to Settings > [your name] > iCloud > See All and make sure Find My Mac is on. Two minutes now beats a $1,500 goodbye later. 

🛡️ New laptop, asleep at the wheel already: That shiny new laptop is wide open the second it hits Wi-Fi. Modern hackers don’t crash your PC anymore. They install silent software that watches you type. Passwords, bank logins, everything. Old-school antivirus misses it completely. I use Webroot because it’s cloud-based, lightning-fast and blocks threats in real time without turning your computer into a space heater. Get 62% off Webroot Essentials right now.*

🖨️ Muddy prints? Oh, sheet! Before you blame the cartridge, check the setting almost everyone forgets. Plain paper, glossy stock and cardstock all drink ink differently, and your printer is just guessing. In Windows, open Settings > Bluetooth & devices > Printers & scanners > your printer > Printing preferences and match the paper type to what’s in the tray. Mystery solved. Hopefully. If not, don’t worry. Your printer only jams when it matters most. 

Meta made a video editor with no catch: I looked for the catch twice. Edits turns your phone into a Reels studio on iPhone or Android, no fancy software, no film degree. Captions, music, overlays, green screens, the works. The real shock? Completely free. No watermarks, no ads, no “Pro” tier holding the good tools hostage. Training on what you do? Yes, of course they are!

🖊️ Still paying by check? Your pen is the weak link. Crooks use chemicals to “wash” away ballpoint ink, then rewrite the payee and the amount. 😱 Your $40 water bill becomes their $4,000 payday. Pigmented gel ink, like the kind in a uni-ball 207, bonds with the paper fibers so it won’t budge. At around $1 each, it’s the cheapest fraud protection you'll ever buy. And hey, the pen’s super smooth, too. 

Picking up your dog’s poop is a chore everyone remembers they swore they’d do later, usually after stepping in it.

Meet Poopcopter, an AI drone built for Twinkie the corgi. After mapping the yard with GPS, it patrols 10 to 15 feet overhead while a vision model trained on photos of Twinkie’s poop flags fresh piles. 

Guided by cameras and lidar, it swoops down, grabs each one with a 3D-printed twisting scoop, then hauls the cargo to a disposal area. 

Check it out in action.

💩 The inventor, Caleb, was on my show the other day. Here’s a link to our chat. You’re not going to believe what else he invented.

🎓 What you learned today: School Chromebooks may be less of a free laptop and more supervised glass diary, Sam Altman’s family podcast idea makes breakfast sound like a product demo, smart-home gadgets can overhear buyers during house tours, gel pens make check washing harder for crooks, and an AI drone is handling backyard dog duty from the skies. Not bad for one email. Tomorrow, I’ll show you how your junk drawer might be hiding some serious moola and how to ask AI to check what buyers paid before you donate, toss or sell anything.

🦕 The answer: B) “I think I’m extinct.” Spielberg loved the line so much he put it in the film. When Dr. Grant sees the Brachiosaurus and mutters, “I think we’re out of a job,” Jeff Goldblum fires back, “Don’t you mean extinct?” 

That’s Phil’s real-life gut punch, immortalized on screen. But Phil didn’t go extinct. He retrained his whole team on computers, stayed on as the film’s “dinosaur supervisor” and won the Oscar for it. Yep, the same credit the internet loves to roast: “You had ONE job.”

Phil’s first love didn’t quite fade away either. In 2021, he debuted his feature-length stop-motion-animated film Mad God, a project it took him 30 years to finish.  

What do you call a dinosaur who is good with synonyms? A tyrannathesaurus.

💧 Scrolled past the water bottle? Your body will remind you eventually, usually with a headache. Grab this smart bottle instead and let it nag you before that happens. I love mine!*

Kim Komando • Komando.com • 510+ radio stations • Trusted by millions daily

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Photo credit(s): ChatGPT/Kim Komando, FIBATDOR, @itsolelehmann via X

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