😬 Anti-goblin policy

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You made it to Friday, {{first_name | friend}}. Let’s celebrate with a trivia question even your GPS didn’t see coming.

📍 That little red teardrop-shaped pin on Google Maps? It’s one of the most recognized symbols on the entire planet. Launched in 2005, it spread to every mapping app, every delivery confirmation, every “I’m outside” text ever sent. 

You’ve trusted it with your pizza. Your blind dates. Probably a few questionable late-night decisions. So here’s the question. What is its official name? A) Locator, B) GeoTag, C) Pointy McRedface or D) It has no official name? Take your best guess, the answer drops at the end! 

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⚡ TL;DR

📖 Read time: 3 minutes

David in Ohio sent me an email last week. Subject line: “I lost everything. What can I do?” I called him immediately.

His computer had been freezing all morning. Pop-ups everywhere. Browser crawling. Then his phone rang. “Microsoft Security Department.” The voice was calm, professional and knew about his computer problems.

“Hackers are in your system right now.” David had been fighting that computer for hours. This felt like a miracle.

The “technician” walked him through downloading TeamViewer, legitimate remote-access software that real IT people use. That’s what makes this so cruel. Everything looked real.

David clicked “Accept.”

“I watched my cursor move by itself,” he told me. “Opening programs I’d never seen. I thought he was fixing things.” He wasn’t fixing anything.

While David went to get his credit card, the scammer quietly moved $5,000 out of his savings. Then came back on the line.

“The hackers already stole $5,000. We have to protect the rest. NOW.”

David made three calls to his bank. Cash withdrawn for fake home renovations. Money deposited at seven different Bitcoin ATMs at gas stations around town.

“He said Bitcoin would protect my money from the hackers digitally.” His voice broke when he said that. $247,000. His entire retirement. Gone in one afternoon.

Microsoft does not call customers. Neither does Apple, Google or your bank’s fraud department out of nowhere. That call is always a scammer. Period.

The urgency is fake. Panic is their product. A racing heartbeat means slow down, not speed up.

David did everything a trusting, reasonable person would do. The scammers counted on that. Don’t let his story become yours.

📩 Send this to someone who still answers calls from unknown numbers and trusts whoever’s on the other end. Tap those icons below to share this now.

Ever feel like the casino was chasing you? It actually might be. There’s a viral video of a Las Vegas slot machine that follows you.

▶️ Slot machines on the move →

🎓 Too much screen time: A middle schooler watched 13,000 YouTube videos during school hours over three months. On his school-issued Chromebook. That’s roughly 144 videos a day. Teachers thought he was doing classwork. He was not. The school’s content filter? Apparently decorative. His parents had no idea until the data showed up in a report. The lesson here isn’t about screen time. It’s about assuming “school device” means “supervised device.” It doesn’t.

Priced and prejudiced: Maryland became the first state to ban surveillance pricing in grocery stores, where retailers use your personal data to charge you more than the person standing next to you. I covered this one back when it was a warning. The new law prohibits using your location, browsing history or buying patterns to set individualized prices. One state down. Forty-nine to go.

Drone to be wild: A United 737 on approach to San Diego Wednesday may have hit a drone at 3,000 feet. That’s nearly eight times higher than FAA rules allow for recreational drones. Think of it as merging your go-kart onto I-95 at rush hour. The pilot spotted a small red object near the aircraft. Safe landing, no damage. But a planeload of passengers came this close to a very different story. Fly your drone at the park. Not into a 737.

👻 Up to 40% of job postings are “ghost” jobs: Those are listings that companies have no intention of filling. It’s frustrating candidates and making it impossible for real companies to be heard. If you are trying to hire, you are fighting through a sea of noise. You can’t just post and pray anymore. You need a platform that cuts through the clutter. That is why I rely on LinkedIn Hiring Pro. Use my link, and your first job posting is on me.*

Forbidden creature talk: I need to know what happened inside OpenAI that led to a written, repeated rule telling GPT-5.5 not to bring up goblins, gremlins, raccoons, trolls, ogres or pigeons unless you ask. OpenAI says it’s a quirk they’re working to fix. Relatable. My neighbor Gary once spent an entire dinner party talking about Lord of the Rings. Awkward. Nothing says cutting-edge software like a firm anti-goblin policy.

🛄 Bots with baggage: So robots are picking up airport work in Tokyo. Yep, humanoids will soon be loading Japan Airlines baggage and cleaning cabins. The logic is simple: Airports were built for humans, so human-shaped bots fit without ripping everything apart. Trial starts this month. Next, they’ll be launching tiny bags of pretzels at you full speed mid-flight with precision whether you’re sitting in 10A or 49E. 

Your manager has negotiated a lot more salaries than you have. That’s why the average person misses out on $10,000 every year. Use AI to level the playing field.

Listen on Komando.com →

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

⚡️ 3-second tech genius: Type a movie you love into Movie-Map, and the whole screen fills with similar titles. The closer something appears, the better the match. No algorithm. No ads. No rabbit hole. Just your next movie, already waiting. Yes, I saved your entire weekend.

🕵️ Myth buster about private browsing: Spoiler: It’s not private. Your internet provider still sees and sells every site you visit, along with every search you make. Creepy. I use ExpressVPN to stop them. It encrypts your connection, so no one, not Big Tech and not your ISP, can spy on you. It’s the only VPN I trust to keep me safe. Works on up to 14 devices. Take back your privacy and get four extra months.*

Give your fingers a break: Stop typing long messages. On Windows, click where you want text and press Win + H to start voice typing instantly. On Mac, go to System Settings > Keyboard > Dictation, flip it on, then double-tap the mic key. It works in Notes, Chrome, Google Docs, practically everywhere. Faster than you type. More accurate than you’d expect. Your keyboard got a day off.

🌐 Clean out your browser: Those old extensions and ad blockers are not simply sitting there. They could be slowing things down or helping themselves to your data. In Chrome, go to Menu > Extensions > Manage Extensions. On Safari, click Settings > Extensions. Scroll through the list and delete everything you are not using. Takes less than a minute.

AirDrop for everyone: If you’ve tried sending a big file from your iPhone to a Windows PC, you know the pain. Blip fixes that. It’s free, works across every device and platform, has zero size limits, and files go directly from one device to the other without touching any cloud server. Get it from the App Store or Google Play, grab the PC version, too, and you’re set. FYI, your name is visible to other Blip users, so don’t be alarmed if a stranger tries to send you something.

📺 Your TV is lying to you about picture quality: Every TV ships in “Vivid” or “Dynamic” mode, calibrated to pop under a store’s bright fluorescent lights. In your living room, it looks overblown and fake. TV repair techs switch it immediately. Go to Settings > Picture > Picture Mode and change it to Movie or Cinema. Colors get richer, skin tones look real and eyestrain drops. Takes 10 seconds. You’ve been watching a showroom demo in your own home.

Missing a free throw in front of people is character building. Toyota’s robot skipped the character and kept the jumper.

Meet CUE, Toyota’s 7-foot-tall basketball humanoid that rolled onto a court and turned halftime into a very polite but serious introduction. And the crowd goes silent. The project started in 2017 as a random Toyota side quest, then became official after it got too good. 

I’m so looking forward to a real-life humans vs. robots Space Jam. Watch the basketball humanoid for now here. After all, they can never go on vacation. They aren’t allowed to travel.

🔜 Tomorrow: Criminals are selling your old passwords. On dark web marketplaces, stolen logins get bought and sold like items in a shopping cart. Tomorrow, I’ll show you exactly how it works and the simple steps that shut them out for good.

The answer: D) It has no official name. Yep, Google never officially named the red pin. Internally, teams have called it various things over the years, but no single name was ever standardized or announced publicly. 

Other companies copied it so fast it became the symbol for location across the entire internet before anyone stopped to name it. It’s understood on billions of screens every day, but it’s completely anonymous. Might I suggest calling it the red location pin thingy? 

🪦 Never use GPS to navigate to a cemetery. Nobody wants to hear “You have reached your final destination.” 

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P.S. Folks like you are already collecting prizes through “Share The Current.” Three referrals get you my AI Prompt Hack Pack instantly. Keep going and there is merch, a hoodie and eventually a virtual sit-down with me on the other side. Your unique link is at the bottom of every issue. Go share it.

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, eufy Security, @millionaire_mentor via Instagram

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