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📬 Did someone forward this to you? Sign up here. Tomorrow: Your grocery store’s price tags are a little too smart. I’ll explain how digital shelves, loyalty apps and pricing algorithms can affect what you pay, plus the quick checks to protect your wallet.
Happy Wednesday, {{first_name | friend}}. Somewhere between Rocky running up the museum steps and you choosing the office stairwell like a productivity superhero, your phone started keeping score.
After you take the stairs, your watch proudly says, “8 flights climbed.” Cool, but no one told it you were on the stairs. No camera. No tiny intern counting steps. And if you ride the elevator? Nothing.
🪜 How does your phone or smartwatch know how many flights of stairs you climbed? A) It uses GPS to track your altitude, B) It measures tiny changes in air pressure, C) It listens for the sound of footsteps on stairs or D) It hears you huffing and puffing at the top?
💾 Your files aren’t as safe as you think. Google Drive and iCloud sync your stuff, but syncing isn’t saving. One hard drive crash, and it’s all gone. I want to make sure that never happens to you. Get 60% off Carbonite right now, and never worry about it again.*
💧 I write this for you: Get my Splash of AI free newsletter every Tuesday and Thursday. I’ll show you how to make Halloween costumes from your closet, fix lousy speaker sound with one photo, spot AI-powered shopping scams and stop chatbots from using your private conversations for training. Yours free. Sign up now at SplashOfAI.com, so it hits your inbox tomorrow morning. — Kim
TODAY’S DEEP DIVE
Comet as you are
Image: ChatGPT/Kim Komando
🤯 WOW! Tonight, specks of Halley’s Comet smaller than a grain of sand slam into our sky at 148,000 mph. That’s fast enough to cross the entire country in about a minute. Some explode into fireballs. And the phone in your pocket can catch one.
The Short Version: The Orionids peak tonight. Here’s when and where to look, plus how to snap a shooting star on your phone. Steps below.
📖 Read time: 2 minutes
Halley’s Comet last swung past Earth in 1986. It won’t be back until 2061. (I already have plans that year. Probably.)
But every October, Earth plows through the dusty trail it left behind. Those grains hit our atmosphere and burn up as shooting stars. That’s the Orionid meteor shower, and it peaks tonight, Wednesday, Oct. 21, into Thursday morning.
Under a dark sky, the peak brings about 20 meteors an hour. Orionids are fast and bright, and some explode into fireballs.
The catch? The moon is about 83% lit. The good news: It sets in the wee hours (around 3 a.m. in New York), so the best show is the stretch before dawn. Set an alarm. Bring coffee.
🔭 Find the show
Get your town’s best hour. The free Meteor Tracker at orbitalradar.com shows your local peak time and when the moon goes down. Type in your town.
Download a free sky app like Stellarium (Google Play or Apple Store), or SkyView Lite (Google Play or Apple Store). Hold your phone up, and it points you to Orion and its bright red star, Betelgeuse.
Then look away from Orion. Meteors seem to fly out of it, but the ones farther away leave longer, prettier streaks.
Get dark. Find a spot away from streetlights, lie back on a blanket and give your eyes 20 minutes to adjust. Turn your screen brightness all the way down. Every glance at a bright screen resets the clock.
📸 Catch one on your phone
A meteor lasts about a second, so your phone has to be pointed and shooting before it shows up. Prop it on a cheap tripod or a stack of books, aimed at a wide patch of sky.
iPhone: Night mode turns on by itself in the dark. Once the phone is on a tripod, tap the moon icon and slide it to the max, up to 30 seconds.
Pixel: Switch to Night Sight and keep it still. When the shutter button turns into stars, Astrophotography mode is on.
Samsung Galaxy: Open Pro mode and set the shutter to about 20 seconds.
Use a three-second self-timer, so your tap doesn’t shake the shot. Then shoot again. And again. Most frames will be empty. That’s normal. Pros shoot all night to snag a few streaks.
Cloudy? Thursday night is nearly as good. Orionids keep falling, just fewer of them, through Nov. 7.
How do you get clean in outer space? You take a meteor shower.
🗣️ Text/post this stat: Tonight, bits of Halley’s Comet hit Earth’s sky at 148,000 mph, and the Orionid meteor shower peaks before dawn. Look up. GetKim.com
📩 Send this to someone who is always up at 3 a.m. anyway.
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IN PARTNERSHIP WITH
Your computer crashes. Now what?
Here’s something funny about computers. When they’re working, we trust them with everything. We save files, download documents, organize folders and assume they’ll all be there tomorrow. Until one morning, the computer won’t start. Or ransomware locks you out. Suddenly, you’re wishing you had done that one thing I’m always reminding people to do: Back up your computer!
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October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month. But computer problems don’t follow a calendar. One unexpected crash could mean losing files you can never replace. Sign up for Carbonite today, before a computer failure leaves you wishing you had.
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📺 YOUTUBE: THE KIM KOMANDO SHOW
This ‘self-driving’ car has a driver overseas
This electric car looks like it’s driving itself. The twist? A person is behind the wheel, controlling it remotely from another country. We break down the tech behind a very different kind of “autonomous” car.
Watch now before everyone else is talking about it. 👇
▶️ Watch on YouTube →
WEB WATERCOOLER
🥀 Love beat logic: I hate how this keeps happening. A San Francisco retiree lost $500,000 to a fake online girlfriend, then nearly handed the next one his house. Yep, back-to-back romance scams. A guy believed “Vicky” was an Army medic in Kuwait (photos were stolen) who loved him and needed $45,000 to leave the service. His son stopped transfers, called banks and Apple stores and warned a lender about a $500,000 mortgage. Love should come with fraud alerts these days.
📺 Operation living room: Picture your television loading quickly, minus the promos, while Claude Code quietly removes the junk its maker installed. Android and Google TV owners are doing that wirelessly, letting Claude Code cut tracking, delete bloatware and swap in simpler home screens. It’s free, which feels so good after being forced to watch ads on the television you paid for. Just remember, you’re giving AI access to your set. Botch the procedure, and movie night is ruined.
📱 Got text appeal? One extra text may make your partner feel closer today. Researchers studying daily diaries from 159 young adults found that sending more texts than usual tracked with greater intimacy and relationship satisfaction that same day, the Times of India reports. In-person convo helped, too. I like this advice because it costs nothing and requires less planning than remembering an anniversary before Walgreens closes. Finally, relationship advice that doesn’t require reservations or matching linen shirts. Send the text, you can keep arguing over the dishwasher later.
🔌 Plugged in and nobody’s home: EV sales fell off a cliff, but charger installers keep pouring concrete. Companies are on pace to add about as many public plugs this year as in record-setting 2025, despite new EV sales dropping by half, according to The Wall Street Journal. The bet? EVs will keep demand alive until new-car buyers return. Charges coming before their customers gives me restaurant grand opening vibes. For you, that could mean cheaper electric cars and easier charge ups, or lonely plugs decorating a strip mall.
🛩️ Plane wrong again: So that new potential clue to the Amelia Earhart plane mystery? Seventeen people crossed the Pacific to the island of Nikumaroro to check out a blurry spot in satellite photos and found driftwood and a 30-inch steel pipe. Storms kept the team stuck on the ship for three of their five search days. This saga has the energy of a home renovation where every wall you open hides another wall. They plan to keep searching. Talk about barking up the wrong tree.
👕 The tee that answers every tech question
Every tech support call starts with the same question, so I put it on a shirt. My tee is heavyweight cotton, comes in sizes S to 3XL and costs just $28. Wear it to your next family dinner and see how fast someone hands you their phone.
Want the whole look? Pair it with the beanie, layer up with the crewneck on chilly days and carry it all in the jumbo tote and. Grab one for you and one for your family’s tech genius. My October merch drop is here for one week only.
No restocks. No reprints. No second batch.
DEVICE ADVICE
⚡️ 3-second tech genius: Was that $49 or $59 on the other website? In Chrome, right-click the second tab > New split view with current tab. Both pages appear side by side. No more flipping back and forth and forgetting the price every time.
🔕 OK, that’s enough from you: One app won’t stop pinging, but you’re waiting for a message? On iPhone, swipe left on its notification, tap Options > Mute for 1 Hour or Mute for Today. On Android, hold it, tap Settings, then choose Silent or turn off Sound and vibration. Everything still comes through, but you don’t have to hear about it.
🎧 The only earbuds in my bag: I’ve tested dozens. These are the only ones that stay locked in on my runs, sound rich (not tinny) and have noise cancellation that, for the record, works on a plane. Bonus: a fraction of what the expensive ones cost. I’d tell a friend. I’m telling you. Grab 20% off my top pick.*
🔒 Put your phone on locking duty: Windows can lock your PC automatically when you step away with your phone. Pair the two over Bluetooth, then open Settings > Accounts > Sign-in options > Dynamic lock and turn it on. Once your phone moves out of range, Windows locks up. Getting distracted on the way to the kitchen? Finally, accounted for.
⌚ My Apple Watch can do that? These gestures need a Series 9 or newer, or Ultra 2. On your iPhone, open Watch app > My Watch > Gestures and turn them on. Pinch your thumb and index finger together twice to answer a call or reply to a message. Flick your wrist to dismiss notifications or mute calls. Alarm interrupting something? Put your palm flat over the watch screen to silence it.
🗣️ Stumble over the words at home: Going abroad? Start Voice mode in ChatGPT and ask, “How do I order coffee in Italian?” Repeat it aloud, asking for pronunciation corrections or slower repeats. Then have it play the barista to practice the exchange. Try asking for directions or the bill, too. Pointing only gets you so far.
Be on the show! Your kids are growing up online. Got a story, a tip or a question about keeping them safe? Bring it here.
KIM’S DAILY DEALS
As an Amazon Associate, some links pay us a commission at no extra cost to you. Keeps this newsletter free. Thank you.
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Make serious noise: Pull the pin, and this alarm key chain (20% off, $8, two-pack) triggers a 140 dB siren. That’ll turn heads fast.
🚨 Ready for anything? Browse more ways to stay prepared on my Amazon storefront. →
Prices and deals were accurate at the time of publication.
WHAT THE TECH?
Image: Simbe Robotics
🥕 Aisle be watching you
Ever get the feeling someone’s following you around the grocery store? At Ralphs in Los Angeles, that someone might be a 6-foot robot named Tally.
This beeping, blinking hall monitor on wheels cruises the aisles, scanning shelves for missing products, misplaced items and pricing problems. Kroger has deployed hundreds. The company says Tally frees employees for more important tasks. Unions worry it’s freeing them from employment.
Check them out here. Robots are coming for the guy restocking Cheerios. At least someone’s finally watching the self-checkout machines.
LOGGING OUT …
🎓 What you learned today: Halley’s Comet leaves an annual meteor shower, romance scammers drain fortunes, AI can strip ads from smart TVs, texting strengthens relationships and grocery store robots are keeping tabs on the shelves. Not bad for one email. Same cereal, same store, different price? Tomorrow, I’ll break down what’s happening with digital shelf tags and how to make sure you’re not overpaying.
⏱️ The answer: B) It measures tiny changes in air pressure. Your phone or smartwatch likely has a tiny barometer inside. Weather forecasters use similar tech to track pressure changes. As you climb, air pressure drops slightly, and your device notices.
Pair that with motion data that shows you’re walking, and boom: stair credit. Take the elevator? Same height, none of the effort, no gold star for you.
Most devices count about 10 feet of elevation gain as one flight of stairs, and only upward movement counts. Sorry, dramatically walking down the stairs after a meeting that could’ve been an email doesn’t impress the algorithm.
Not seeing floors? Some budget Android phones skip the barometer. A smartwatch fills the gap.
I don’t trust stairs. They’re always up to something.
💾 Your hard drive will fail. Not if. When. Why risk losing every photo and document you own? I use Carbonite because it backs up everything automatically, no thinking required. Grab my exclusive deal: 60% off for a limited time.*
💛 One extra text costs you nothing and can make someone’s whole day. Send it before you talk yourself out of it. — Kim
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, LYWALT, Simbe Robotics
Companies and products denoted by an asterisk (*) within this publication are paid sponsors or advertisements. As an Amazon Associate, the publisher earns from qualifying purchases. Statements regarding products denoted by a double asterisk (**) have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration; such products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. This newsletter is provided for informational and entertainment purposes only and does not constitute legal, financial, medical, or professional advice of any kind. Readers should consult with a qualified professional before making any decisions based on this content. The publisher disclaims all liability for any loss, damage, or injury resulting from the use of or reliance on the information contained herein.