🫣 Amazon’s butt guess

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Happy Columbus Day / Indigenous Peoples’ Day, {{first_name | friend}}. Back in 1492, Columbus set sail looking for a shortcut to Asia and bumped into a whole new world instead. Sometimes the best discoveries come from the directions you didn’t expect.

Which brings me to today’s episode of “Computers Are Very Smart Until They Aren’t.” Let’s talk about the thing allegedly coming for everyone’s jobs. When AI needed help with math, Google DeepMind let it write its own instructions. And the winning prompt? Not quantum wizardry.

🧮 What phrase made the AI better at math? A) Stop and think, B) Take a deep breath, C) Try harder, D) Pretend you’re Einstein but nicer. Keep scrolling. The answer is hiding at the finish line like it pays rent there.

📞 Hold music for 45 minutes and nobody answered: We’ve all been there. Consumer Cellular picks up. Real humans, based in the U.S., who actually solve the problem. One unlimited line for $35 a month and people who answer. Get $100 off for a limited time.* 

🎤 Miss the show this past weekend? Flock cameras are reading license plates across America. Now a caller named Harry says he invented a plate holder that fogs up so the cameras can’t read it. Could it really work? I grill him on my show. Plus, a woman breaks up with ChatGPT and the internet loses it. AI gives a murder victim a voice in court. ChatGPT spots a medical emergency. AI job interviews get weird. And you’ll find out about the file Amazon keeps on you. Watch the full show now. I got you. — Kim

🤯 WOW! Amazon writes notes about who it thinks you are, based on what you buy. One shopper bought scrunch leggings, and Amazon decided she “has flat buttocks.” Her post hit more than 1 million views in under a day. Your own list is three clicks away.

The Short Version: Amazon, Google and Facebook all keep a file of guesses about you, and you can see and fix them. Steps below.

📖 Read time: 2 minutes

One Amazon shopper bought a pair of butt-scrunch leggings. Amazon’s takeaway: She “has flat buttocks.”

She found that little gem in a hidden corner of her account and posted it on Threads. More than 1 million people saw it in less than a day. (I laughed. Then I went straight to my own account.)

Here’s the deal. Amazon quietly writes notes about who it thinks you are, based on what you buy. Other guesses people found this week:

Guesses like these affect what Amazon shows you and what it nudges you to buy.

On a computer:

In the Amazon app:

Don’t panic if your list is short. Mine had exactly one thing: Amazon has me following the USC Trojans. I’m a proud ASU grad. My son went to USC, and I bought him a pile of Trojans swag. (Go Sun Devils.)

That’s the catch. Amazon can’t tell your stuff from gifts. To dump a wrong trait:

Done. That also unsubscribes you from any related emails.

You can fill in real details like your shoe size and interests. Better info means fewer weird guesses about your backside.

Your other big accounts keep files, too.

These guesses don’t sit in a drawer. They shape the deals you see and the ads that follow you from site to site. You can’t stop the note-taking, but you can make sure the notes aren’t wrong.

I ordered a deck of cards from Amazon two weeks ago, and it still hasn’t arrived. Customer service told me they’re dealing with it.

📩 Send this to someone who buys everything on Amazon.

Share this now:

I’ll give the scoop on how to get one and what it really costs you in this 1.5 minute video.

▶️ Watch on YouTube →

Then, let me know in the comments if you still want one.

⚖️ Robot manners court: We went from anger-mashing calculator buttons when they didn’t work to bullying chatbots so bad they had to ban us. Anthropic prohibits sustained and needless cruelty toward Claude, following a viral AI torture chamber project. Well, if the bar is set at unprecedented horrors, I get the manners lesson. The company says only extreme cases qualify, not cursing when dinner instructions go sideways. The weird part is software gets a conduct policy while paying humans get an appeal form.

🔒 Browser badge betrayal: You know that little padlock in your browser? It doesn’t prove a site is real. Hackers broke into systems behind three countries’ web addresses and got hold of legitimate-looking security certificates for fake Google sites. Google says its systems weren’t breached, blocked the certificates in Chrome and had them revoked. It still can’t guarantee every fake was caught. Sketchy email? Type the address yourself before handing over email, banking or passwords.

🛰️ Rockets fix reception: Elon Musk wants to be your phone company. SpaceX is buying nationwide 800 MHz spectrum, the low-band kind that reaches through walls better than higher frequencies. That could help when your basement, barn, office or country road turns a call into an accidental farewell. Most phones support the frequencies. The catch? Regulators must approve the deal, and no launch date or price. Another choice sounds nice, but I’ll believe it when the bars appear.

📚 Bestseller bait: Great, now you have to double-check author names on the books you buy online. Kevin Roose’s new title has a machine-made copy credited to K. Rose parked directly below the real Amazon listing. The knockoff sells for $24.69 instead of the real book’s $30. K. Rose trimmed five letters and passed the savings on to you. The fake earned a #1 New Release badge despite having zero reviews. What do you call a scam artist who uses his vocabulary to commit crimes? A LexiCon.

🦾 Robots, out of stock: Walmart spent billions automating its warehouses. The robots can’t handle the dog food. The Wall Street Journal reports Walmart’s small wheeled robots, now in over a dozen warehouses, struggle with big, heavy items like dog food bags and break down often. Worse, the engineers who babysit them can cost more than the warehouse workers they replaced. Kroger already wrote off $2.6 billion on its own automation flop. Read the reality check (WSJ, paywall link). Business owners, pilot before you buy. What do you feed a hungry robot? Mega-bites.

⚡️ 3-second tech genius: Dropped an earring that the carpet swallowed? Turn off the room lights, and switch on your phone’s flashlight. Hold it sideways, close to the floor, so the beam shines across it. Slowly turn the phone to catch tiny objects casting long shadows. Works for screws, too. And pet hair you were happier not knowing about.

📘 What’s next in AI: Imagine spending less time searching for information and handling routine tasks, and more time focusing on your bottom line. I use NetSuite in my own business, with AI built right in. Get NetSuite’s free guide, “Aligning for the Agentic Era,” and see what’s coming.*  

📧 Gmail without the internet? Yep: While you’re connected, open Gmail in Chrome on your computer. Click the settings cog > See all settings > Offline and tick Enable offline mail. You can read saved messages, search and draft replies. Anything you send goes out once you’re back online. FYI, the mobile app has this built in. No setup needed.

🖥️ Don’t like the Windows 11 Start menu? You can shrink it and choose what appears up top. Open Start, right-click an empty spot and choose Start settings. Set the size to Small, turn off Recents or keep your Pinned apps visible. Personally, I don’t need a reminder of every file I opened. I was there.

✂️ Faster way to take screenshots on Mac: Usually press Cmd + Shift + 4? Add Ctrl to that combo, then drag to select the area you want. Your screenshot goes straight to the clipboard. Open a document or message and press Cmd + V to paste it. One extra key saves you from finding the file and dragging it over.

🎮 Want to make a video game? Google’s testing Playground, where you describe what you’ve got in mind and AI builds it. Pick a genre, choose 2D or 3D, then explain how it should look and play. Happy with it? Send friends a link to play on their phone or computer. JSYK, playing is free, but creating uses a weekly token allowance. 😒

Job applications are turning into a bot-on-bot cage match, with a paycheck dangled over the ring. Applicants use AI to carpet-bomb recruiters with résumés. Recruiters use AI to dig through the rubble.

In a TikTok clip, a guy answered an AI interviewer entirely in Sims-style gibberish. The digital recruiter went from a polite smile to a scowl to a meltdown, called it a waste of time and ended the screening. Life is so weird now.

Give it a watch here. At least the bot said goodbye in his language: “Sul sul!”

🎓 What you learned today: Amazon and Meta build profiles about you, a browser padlock doesn’t guarantee safety, SpaceX wants in on cell coverage, AI-written imitation books try to fool shoppers, and an AI interviewer lost its cool. Not bad for one email. Public Wi-Fi gets the blame, but the biggest snoop may be your own internet provider. Tomorrow, I’ll break down why home Wi-Fi isn’t private.

🫁 The answer: B) Take a deep breath. Yep, when “Take a deep breath” was combined with the classic “Let’s think step by step,” the model’s score on a grade school math test jumped from 71.8 to 80.2. 

Results vary by model. Later DeepMind research found the phrase barely moved the needle on some systems. The “step by step” part still works wonders, so it might help anytime AI handles numbers.

Turns out AI does better when it chills out first. Columbus could’ve used that advice. Maybe he’d have checked the map before announcing he’d found India.

📱 Two-year contract. Early termination fee. Good luck leaving: Consumer Cellular has none of that. No contract, no hidden fees, no surprises. Same towers as the big carriers for $35 a month. I stayed because it’s that good. Get an additional $100 off with any unlimited data plan. Hurry, this is a limited time offer and I don’t want you to miss out.* 

One for the road: Why did Christopher Columbus get lost? The directions weren’t Pacific. (Yea, you’ll use that one today I know it!)

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

🏆 THE KIM CHALLENGE: Forward this to ONE person who needs to hear it today. Pick the person who popped into your head while reading. You know who it is.

Photo credit(s): ChatGPT/Kim Komando, Consumer Cellular, HOTO, @thedreadfulstudio via Tiktok

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