🫣 Almost eaten alive

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📬 Did someone forward this to you? Sign up here. Tomorrow: That smart gadget you bought isn’t really yours. I’ll show you what to look for before you spend another dollar. 

👋 Let’s get this Monday started, {{first_name | friend}}. Tiny question: How many phone features are hiding in plain sight because nobody handed us a manual? We all bought a $1,000 rectangle and learned them through pure trial, error and mild panic.

Your keyboard is one of the worst offenders. It looks simple: letters, numbers, emoji, backspace. But tucked inside are a few tricks most people never find. I found the space bar trick by accident, mid-text, and gasped out loud.

📲 What happens when you press and hold the space bar while typing on your phone? A) The keyboard turns into a trackpad you slide to move the cursor anywhere, B) It double-spaces your whole message, C) It pulls up a row of hidden arrow keys, D) Nothing. Take a guess. Answer’s coming later.

📞 Be honest: Your phone bill is on auto-pay, and you haven’t looked at it since 2019. If you’re over 50 and paying more than $100 a month, stop. Get an additional $50 off when you use promo code KIM50. That’s $900 back in your pocket annually. Check out Consumer Cellular now.* — Kim

⚡ TL;DR

📖 Read time: 2.5 minutes

Years ago, way deep in the Amazon jungle with my son, Ian, I slipped our guide $50 and asked him to show us a real tribe. Two days later, he whispered, “Back of the boat. 7 a.m.” We hopped in a Zodiac and sped 20 minutes upriver. Waiting on the bank: about 25 villagers in a half moon. Ian handed out crayons and toys. Then the guide walked me over to the tribal leader, a woman who started chanting and waving her hands over my head. I smiled. I nodded. I had no clue.

Suddenly our guide’s face went white. He grabbed us both by the arms. “We have to go. NOW.”

Safely back in the Zodiac, I asked what the woman had said. His answer: She liked my magical blue eyes, admired that I was lean and muscular and figured I’d be very tasty. Then he muttered, “I thought they stopped that years ago.”

Yes. THAT kind of tasty.

I still wonder how differently that morning would have gone if I’d had Google Translate in my pocket. Because here’s what most people don’t know. The language barrier basically collapsed, and live translation is built into the gadgets you carry right now. Nobody’s putting me on the menu twice.

Point the newest phones at someone speaking another language, and you get their words back in yours, spoken or on screen, almost instantly. Newer earbuds do it hands-free, whispering the translation into your ear while the other person talks.

The latest smart glasses handle it, too. Real conversations, not just menu words, across dozens of languages. This is the rare bit of tech that makes life warmer. Order dinner in Lisbon. Ask directions in Tokyo. 

Talk with an in-law you’ve never been able to chat with. I tested this myself, and the first genuine exchange across a language gap feels like magic.

Start with the free one that works on any phone. Download Google Translate, open Conversation mode and pick your two languages. It runs on iPhone and Android and handles around 249 languages.

One catch for Europe: The AirPods and Meta glasses translation isn’t available in the EU yet.

A few limits. Translations nail everyday talk but stumble on slang, heavy accents and legal or medical details where a wrong word matters. For anything high stakes, a human still wins. And tell the person you’re using a translator and show them the screen. Most people light up.

Download it before your next trip. Because the only thing that should ever get roasted on vacation is you, by your family, in the group chat.

📩 Send this to someone traveling abroad. It might keep them off the menu.

Share this now:

Mexico has its own Batman. Tapes motorcycle thieves to lampposts. And draws on their face with a Sharpie. The kicker? The police are after him now.

Hit the link below, so you’re in the know. 👇

▶️ Real-life Batman goes viral →

🎙️ Big news from the Komando household: Barry is taking over the airwaves. Yes, the man who can't find the remote is hosting a full hour on SiriusXM's 60s channel, spinning the songs he swears sounded better on vinyl. (His words, not mine.) He debuts tomorrow, Monday, July 6 at 7:00 PM ET, with encores Thursday, July 9 at 11:00 PM ET and Saturday, July 11 at 9:00 AM ET. Miss it live? It'll be on the SiriusXM app starting Monday after the first airing. Tune in and give the guy some love. Something tells me he's going to get a good reception.

💸 The pricey speaker: $6.5 billion is a lot to reinvent yelling at a cylinder. OpenAI and Jony Ive, Apple’s former design priest, may ship their first consumer AI gadget in 2027. It’s probably a screenless smart speaker thing for the home. OpenAI bought Ive’s startup last year for about $6.5B, probably to give ChatGPT a body and permission to hear you ask where the scissors went. Siri should be nervous. Well, more nervous.

Tiny code robbery: Here’s your daily dose of “please don’t fall for this.” The FBI is warning Microsoft 365 users about Kali365, a scam that skips the usual stolen password routine. Crooks send you a device code pretending to be a shared file, you type it into the real Microsoft login page, and then they’re in your Outlook, Teams and OneDrive. Small businesses are the buffet. Rule: You start the sign-in, or nobody does.

Beige is the new black: Ever notice websites are starting to look like clones? A New Yorker piece nailed why. AI design tools, like Anthropic's Claude Design, spit out the same look by default: cream backgrounds, rusty-orange accents, big italic serif fonts, and little scrolling news-ticker bars. The fix if you use these tools? Push back and ask for something original. Guess great minds really do design alike.

🎓 Rich kids, robot tutors: The WSJ says wealthy families are pulling kids (paywall link) out of traditional classrooms for AI-powered schools. At places like Alpha School, tuition runs about $50,000 a year, kids do only two hours of core academics with an AI tutor, then spend afternoons on life skills like public speaking and money smarts. Teachers? Now called guides. My teachers always told me I'd never amount to much because I procrastinated so badly. I told them, just you wait. Good luck getting a robot tutor to appreciate a comeback like that.

Pets are wired to hide their pain. AI detects it in seconds. Plus, Sue’s son lost everything in the Altadena fire. He couldn’t prove what he owned. We help Sue make a home inventory with AI.

Listen on Komando.com →

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

⚡️ 3-second tech genius: Phone volume buttons move in chunks, so one bump can be too soft and the next too loud. On iPhone, open Control Center, press and hold the volume slider, then drag up or down. On Android, swipe down to Quick Settings and drag the volume slider left or right. Bluetooth speakers need this.

💳 Great deal. Terrible location. You would never read your credit card number out loud in a coffee shop. But shopping on public Wi-Fi is basically the same thing. ExpressVPN encrypts your connection, so nobody on that network can see what you are doing. One tap, 14 devices covered. Get four extra months when you use my name.*

Hide junk in Safari: Some websites are packed with pop-ups, banners and random boxes that make reading annoying. On Mac, open the page, click the Page Menu in the address bar and choose Hide Distracting Items. Select the stuff you don’t want to see. It's not an ad blocker. It's better. Bliss.

📧 Gmail without Wi-Fi: Gmail can still work when the internet disappears. On desktop, open See all settings (top right), click the Offline tab and select Enable offline mail. You can read, search and draft replies without a connection. Anything you send waits, then goes out when you’re back online. I draft replies on flights, then they whoosh out at landing. Feels like cheating.

Free up Windows space: Need a quick way to get storage back on your PC? Go to Settings > System > Storage > Temporary files. You’ll see previous Windows installations, Downloads and the Recycle Bin. Select what you don’t need, then delete it. Careful with Downloads. That can include photos, videos and documents.

📈 Google Finance got smarter: It's becoming more than a place to check stock prices. In the beta version, you can track what you own, add investments manually or describe your portfolio, then ask questions and set up daily market updates. Think a quick crypto or stock briefing before the market opens.. Try it on the web or the new Android app.

BYD’s YangWang U9 Xtreme hit 308.33 mph, which makes it less of a car and more of a ground-based weather event. 

The electric hypercar made the run at Germany’s Papenburg test track, becoming the fastest production car on Earth. It runs on four motors, nearly 3,000 horsepower and the kind of engineering that makes a Bugatti quietly update its résumé. I’ve got a Porsche in the garage, and it just felt slow.

The regular U9 can even hop over potholes with its DiSus-X suspension, because driving around road damage is apparently for peasants.

Give it a gander here.

✅ What you learned today: A language barrier nearly got me eaten (your phone now solves that in real time), OpenAI wants to park a screenless gadget in your kitchen, one typed code can hand crooks your entire Microsoft account, shopping on public Wi-Fi is basically reading your card number to the room, your space bar has been a secret trackpad since 2018, and a Chinese EV just hit 308 mph. Six things smarter, and unlike me in the Amazon, you never left the safety of your inbox. Not bad for a Monday. Tomorrow, I'll show you why that smart gadget you bought may not really be yours, and how to dodge a very expensive paperweight.

😅 The answer: A) The keyboard turns into a trackpad you slide to move the cursor anywhere. On an iPhone, press and hold the space bar. The letters fade away, and the whole keyboard becomes a tiny touchpad. 

Slide your thumb, and the cursor glides exactly where you want it. No more poking. Apple has had this since iOS 12 in 2018, and most people never once used it.

Android does it too. On Gboard, slide along the space bar. On SwiftKey, hold it, then swipe. One boring key, one precise cursor, a lifetime of frustrated jabbing, finally over.

One for the road: Why did the astronaut walk into the bar? He was looking for the space bar. 🚀

💲 What is your phone bill actually costing you? If you are paying over $100 a month, you are overspending. Save an additional $50 when you use promo code KIM50. Same networks. Solid coverage. No contract. See how much you could save.*

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

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Photo credit(s): ChatGPT/Kim Komando, HELLEE, CarNewsChina

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