📺 Cut your TV bill to zero

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📬 Did someone forward this to you? Sign up here. Tomorrow:  The free school laptop comes home with a spy inside. Every parent needs to know what this is.

It’s Monday, {{first_name | friend}}. Remember when a phone was for calling people and ignoring voicemails like a civilized adult? Now it buzzes once, and your brain leaves the present moment. UC Irvine researcher Gloria Mark actually timed office workers after interruptions. 

🤓 How long does it take to fully refocus after an interruption? A) 90 seconds, B) Five minutes, C) 23 minutes or D) About an hour? Take your best guess, the answer is lurking at the end.

🔒 They found a notebook in the killer's car: When police searched the man who assassinated a Minnesota lawmaker and her husband in their own home, they found a handwritten list of 11 websites. Not weapons sites. Data broker sites, the kind that sell your home address for a couple of bucks. Type your name into one right now and there you are: your address, your phone, your family, a photo of your front door. That's why I use Incogni. Get 60% off.* — Kim

🤯 WOW! The average household pays $69 a month ($828 a year) for streaming, and 73% of us are fed up with the price hikes. Tubi will hand you more than 300,000 movies and shows for free, and Nielsen says free streamers are beating some paid giants.

The Short Version: Cancel your least-watched paid service, replace it with The Roku Channel, Tubi or Pluto TV for 30 days and pocket up to $240 a year. Steps below.

📖 Read time: 2 minutes

Raise your hand if this sounds familiar: four streaming subscriptions, $69 a month and you still spent 20 minutes last night hunting for something to watch.

That’s not a guess. It’s straight from Deloitte’s new Digital Media Trends study. The average U.S. streaming household pays $69 a month, 73% of us are fed up with price hikes and 61% say they’d cancel over one more $5 increase.

Here’s what nobody’s telling you: The free stuff got good. So good, Hollywood is sweating.

Nielsen’s latest ratings dropped a bombshell. The Roku Channel is America’s most-watched free streaming service, pulling more viewing time than Tubi and Pluto TV. And Disney is reportedly cooking up a free, all-ads tier of Disney+. When the Mouse starts giving things away, the game has changed.

🆓 The big three, and what each does best

You pay with ads and with data. These services track what you watch, so they know where to aim commercials. That’s the deal, and it’s the same deal 68% of you accepted the day you downgraded Netflix to the ad tier. At least here, the trade gets you a bill of zero. 

So dig into your TV’s settings and turn on Limit ad tracking. And stick to the big names. Those sketchy “free movie” websites your nephew uses? Malware buffets.

Here’s your move, friend.

Worst case, you crawl back next month. They’ll take you back, no questions asked. They’re used to it: 40% of subscribers cancel every year.

Free TV. The 1950s called. Turns out they were onto something.

🎯 Send this to someone who pays for five streaming services and still rewatches the same three shows.

📱 Text-worthy: Nielsen says The Roku Channel is the most-watched FREE streaming service. 500+ live channels, $0. And Tubi has 300,000+ free movies and shows. Cancel one paid app, and try these instead.

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A listener got bit by her neighbor’s dogs. Twice. She never sees them coming. Now she will with the cameras we recommended. 

Listen now before everyone else is talking about it. 👇

▶️ Catch loose dogs before they bite →

🎒 Coach wants cash: You’re standing in the kitchen, signing a permission slip, when Coach texts that team dues are late and you need to hit a payment app now. You feel that little burst of parental guilt. That’s the scam. The IRS says crooks are posing as nurses, coaches and principals to steal birthdays, money and gift cards. Call the school through its official number before paying. 

🥶 A "cold" crypto wallet just got a very expensive fever: COLDCARD, a hardware wallet built to keep Bitcoin offline and safe, shipped firmware with a broken random number generator, so the "unguessable" secret keys were ... guessable. Thieves drained 1,367 Bitcoin, about $88 MILLION, from more than 4,500 wallets, grabbing $30 million in the first 10 minutes alone. Own one? Update the firmware, generate a fresh seed, and move your coins to new addresses today. Turns out cold storage doesn't help much when someone else has a copy of the key.

🏡 Your home can be stolen while you sleep: No gun. No locksmith. A scammer forges your deed at the county recorder’s office, and legally, your house belongs to them. You won’t find out until it’s too late. Home title fraud is exploding, and reversing it takes an average of 12 months of lawyers and court dates. I use Home Title Lock to monitor my title 24/7. Get your free Title History Report, and see every document ever filed against your property. Start your trial now.* 

🤖 Silicon Valley crossed the line robot makers swore they never would: Foundation showed off Phantom, a humanlike robot, loading a mortar, making its own shoot-or-don't calls on the battlefield. It already has a $24 million Pentagon contract and has been tested in Ukraine, while Washington rewrites the rules to make room. For years, the big robotics firms publicly pledged not to arm their creations. So much for that. "The Terminator" was supposed to be a warning, friend, not a product roadmap. It’s happening. Now.

🐿️ Scientists launched an OnlyFans. For marmots. With federal research money drying up, UCLA scientists at Colorado's Rocky Mountain Biological Lab made a page called OnlyMarms to keep a study alive that's been running since 1962. Before you clutch your pearls, it's strictly G-rated. Chunky little marmots digging, playing and hauling wildflowers home to their burrows. Free to follow, tips welcome, pup videos coming. Sixty-five years of science, saved by the internet's cutest hustle. When the going gets tough, the tough get marmoting.

I have a new show segment, and I’m so excited for you to see it. It’s called Five Minutes from the Future, and the whole idea is simple: I sit down with the people actually building tomorrow. Founders, innovators and tech leaders who are rewriting the rules with AI right now.

Come watch. 👇

▶️ Guy Kawasaki on AI, Canva and the future →

⚡️ 3-second tech genius: Keep YouTube playing while you get something else done. In Chrome, right-click the video, then right-click it again. Yes, twice. Choose Picture in picture from the second menu, and the video pops into a small floating window above your other tabs. Multitasking unlocked, and YouTube Premium didn’t get a cent. 🤭

🌿 One chat, two directions: Got a ChatGPT conversation going but want to chase a different idea without messing it up? On the website, hover over the message where you want to split, click the three dots and choose Branch in new chat. A copy opens there, while the original stays untouched.

📶 The Wi-Fi spelling test is over: When a guest has an Android, don’t start reading out every capital letter and symbol. Open the Passwords app on your iPhone, tap Wi-Fi and choose your network. Tap Show Network QR Code and have them point their camera at it. One scan and they’re in. No awkward third attempt.

😱 Facebook might be open somewhere else: That old tablet in a drawer or phone you handed down could still be signed into your account. In the mobile app, go to Settings > Accounts Center > Password and security > Where you’re logged in. Check every device, and log out of anything old or unfamiliar. No snooping allowed. 

💡 Why does this room feel clinical? Look at the tiny number on your light bulbs. Anything over 5000K throws out a cool, bluish light that can keep your brain in daytime mode. Swap bedroom and living room bulbs for 2700K to 3000K for a warmer glow. Or grab smart bulbs, and pick any color, using Alexa or Google Home.

🪟 Microsoft just patched a record 600+ Windows bugs in a single month: Why so many? Anthropic’s new AI bug-hunter found them faster than humans ever could, triple the old record. If you’ve been snoozing that update, do it now: Settings > Windows Update > Check for updates. Somebody get Windows a bigger bug swatter.

Be on my show! AI is reshaping the workforce. Worried? Or want to use it to get ahead? I want to hear your story. Let me help you figure it all out. Tell me here.

Your Amazon driver may soon stop risking a workers’ comp claim over the air fryer you ordered at 11:46 p.m.

Amazon-backed RIVR is testing delivery robots in snow, ice and rough terrain, including staircases that would make a human reconsider free two-day shipping. The four-legged machine can climb up and down slick steps while carrying packages, basically a robotic mountain goat that doesn’t complain. 

It’s genuinely useful, right up until one accidentally breaks through your door. Four legs, no complaints, never once asks for a tip. Somewhere, an Instacart delivery guy or gal updated a résumé.

Watch them move. Incredible. Don’t miss it!

🎓 What you learned today: Free streamers can save you real money, scammers are posing as coaches and principals to shake down parents, your iPhone shares Wi-Fi with a QR code, and delivery robots now climb stairs. Not bad for one email. Tomorrow, half of all American schools are spying on kids. I’ll tell you what you need to do about it.

🧠 The answer: C) 23 minutes. Yep, that’s the average time it took workers to fully return to a task after an interruption. Your brain doesn’t have a “resume” button. It has to reload everything: what you were doing, why and what comes next. Scientists call the leftover mental clutter “attention residue.” I call it your cash walking out the door.

Do the math, and it gets scary. The average office worker gets interrupted every 11 minutes. That’s a pinball machine more than it is a workplace. 

Here’s how to lock it down: (Note, I checked these steps but depending on your device, model, OS and more, it may be a little different.)

One protected hour beats four interrupted ones. Every time.

Turns out the real notification was the focus we lost along the way. OK, one more: My phone and I need a break. It’s not me, it’s DND.

🔒 You lock your doors every night. Tonight, lock down your address. Those data broker sites sell your home address, your phone and your family's names to anyone with a few bucks, and you'll never know who looked. Incogni scrubbed me from over 400 sites while I did exactly nothing. So the next time a stranger searches your name, let them find nothing. Get 60% off.*

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

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🎉 Keep it going! You got this! — Kim

Photo credit(s): ChatGPT/Kim Komando, HOTO, @Cointelegraph via X

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