🧬 Komando isn’t my name

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Happy Wednesday, {{first_name | friend}}. One minute you’re watching a husky argue with his owner like he’s got a lawyer on retainer. The next, TikTok is serving up videos so weirdly specific to your life, you look around for hidden cameras.

👀 Not an accident. Internal TikTok research confirmed it doesn’t need your age, location or search history. It watches. How long you pause. What you rewatch. What makes you swipe away in the first half-second. That’s it.

So here’s your trivia: How fast does TikTok’s algorithm figure you out? A) About three hours of use, B) Around two hours of use, C) Exactly 35 minutes, D) Several days of consistent use. Pick your poison. Answer’s waiting at the bottom.

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⚡ TL;DR

📖 Read time: 2.5 minutes

My grandmother got on a boat to America alone at 16 because she was the smartest person in her village.

That’s not bragging. That’s what happened. Her small town in Ukraine gave anyone under 21 an intelligence test. The prize? A one-way ticket to America and temporary housing with a former villager already in New York City. Highest score wins. She won. And everything that followed, my father, me, this newsletter, exists because a teenage girl sat down and outscored everyone around her.

My grandfather’s story is different. When he arrived at Ellis Island, the immigration officer had room for seven letters on the form. The name my grandfather carried from Ukraine was replaced in a single moment by a stranger with a pen who had no idea he was rewriting our family history. Komando. That was it.

I’ve been looking for what came before both of them.

Maybe you used this site a few times and never went back. It’s definitely gotten a glow-up. FamilySearch.org is run by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which has spent over a century collecting genealogical records. But it’s open to absolutely everyone, regardless of faith or background. No catch. No subscription. No credit card.

Over 8 billion records. Immigration manifests. Census documents. Birth certificates. Military records. Church ledgers. Covering more than 170 countries, going back centuries.

Create a free account, start a basic family tree with what you know, and the site automatically matches your relatives against its database. Love that.

FamilySearch recently launched an AI Research Assistant. It’s super! It scans your tree against billions of records, surfacing ancestors you likely missed completely. One genealogist had been stuck on the same family line for 20 years. The AI found the breakthrough in weeks.

Sign in, look for the AI Research Assistant box on your home page and let it run. Also check FamilySearch Catalog at the bottom of the page. It uses AI to read handwriting inside old documents and church ledgers that no keyword search could ever crack before. Nearly 2 billion records and growing.

Need a hand? Sign up for a free 20-minute virtual training session. 

Once you find records, open ChatGPT, Claude, Grok or Gemini and paste this:

Suddenly she’s not a line on a census. She’s a real woman who crossed an ocean toward a country that couldn’t even spell her name correctly.

My family was talking a few weeks ago, and somehow I brought up the fact that every state in New England has a town or city in it called “Warren.” I said that there’s a Warren, Vermont, a Warren, Maine, a Warren, New Jersey, a Warren, Rhode Island. Then my son chimed in, “There’s also a Warren Ukraine!” I was so proud.

They're paying people $74/hour to get replaced. No, really. Companies are handing out serious paychecks to workers who teach robots their exact jobs. I also break down the viral Anthropic chart that shows which careers AI is coming for first. Spoiler: the higher your salary, the higher your risk. Watch before you check your job title.

Watch on YouTube →

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

🏫 Felony yearbook season: This is insane. Two boys used AI to make 347 fake porn images and videos of 59 minors and one adult, mostly classmates, at a fancy K-12 school in Lancaster, PA. One student reportedly warned the school after getting sent an image by mistake, and lawyers say the school sat on the information for months. The boys pleaded guilty, but the bigger problem is most schools have no clue how to stop this stuff before it spreads. Nothing says college prep like a felony and crisis PR consultant.

Zuck passes the buck: Mark Zuckerberg is building a personal AI agent to brief him faster on everything happening across Meta. Sounds efficient. Unless you’re one of Meta’s 78,000 employees, because Reuters says reporting cuts could hit 20% while the company dumps another $135 billion into AI. So the boss gets a robot assistant. Workers get a robot replacement. Hoodie not included.

Claude plug-in trap: I already don’t trust sponsored results, and now they’re apparently teaching people to install malware with terminal commands. A Claude user searched Google for help connecting a GitHub plug-in, clicked the top sponsored result and landed on a fake Anthropic docs page hosted on Squarespace. It copied the branding, swapped in a sneaky install line and pointed to a credential-stealing download. Google says it removed the ad and suspended the verified advertiser. Always verify the links, only the paranoid survive malware-free. 

❄️ A credit freeze has a hole in it: A credit freeze stops crooks from opening new accounts in your name. Good. But it does nothing to stop them from draining the bank accounts you already have. That’s the part nobody talks about. I use NordProtect to cover that blind spot. It watches the dark web around the clock and pings me the second my info shows up somewhere shady. Get 66% off right now. That’s just $4.74 a month. For less than a latte, you’re not an easy target anymore.*

Amazon tries again: Remember Amazon’s last phone face-plant? The Fire Phone, circa 2014, flopped so hard Amazon took a $170 million write-down. They’re back at it again like a guy who lost at blackjack asking for another loan. Their AI phone, code-named Transformer, is less scrolling, more Alexa-style agents doing things for you. It might even tie into Amazon’s Kuiper satellites. Same dream, smarter pitch. Somewhere a Zune is watching this like a retired boxer getting called back into the ring.

👀 Zoom out: I hate how easy it’d be to fall for this. Click a meeting link too fast, land on a fake Zoom page with a waiting room, pretend attendees, even glitchy audio, and your brain goes, sure, this seems annoying enough to be real. Then, an Update Available box pops up. Click it on Windows, and boom, spyware logging keystrokes and screen activity. It’s not even fancy hacker stuff. Attackers are misusing legit employee-monitoring software. Confirm your Zoom call links, always. Think about this for a sec. Zoom meetings are basically seances with the living. “Brian, can you hear us? We can’t hear you. Make a sound or move if you do.” 😵

⚡️ 3-second tech genius: Most routers broadcast two networks, 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz. Some devices default to 2.4 GHz because it has a longer range. But if you’re in the same room as your router, 5 GHz is a ton faster with less interference. In your Wi-Fi settings, look for your network name with a 5G label and switch. Same password usually. No joke, your ping will drop, and your download speed will shoot up. 

Do Not Disturb has a secret loophole: Standard mode silences everything, including real emergencies. But there’s a setting that lets a call through if someone rings twice within three minutes. On iPhone, go to Settings > Focus > Do Not Disturb > People > Allow Repeated Calls. On Android, Settings > Notifications > Do not disturb > Repeat callers. Set it up and sleep without the anxiety of missing something urgent.

🔄 Windows is finally letting you pause updates for as long as you want: No more five-week limit. No more surprise updates on your computer before a big meeting. The new setting will arrive soon in Settings > Windows Update > Pause updates. Restart, shut down, doesn’t matter. It won’t force install either. About time, Microsoft. About time.

Stop duplicating files every time you need a template: Mac has a setting that does it automatically. Find the file in Finder, right-click and hit Get Info. Under General, toggle on Stationery pad. Now every time you double-click it, Mac opens a fresh copy instead of the original. The original stays untouched. Every time. Should’ve known about this sooner.

🚗 Your car knows things it’s never told you: Every car built after 1996 has an OBD-II port hiding under your dashboard, driver’s side, usually near your knee. Plug in an inexpensive Bluetooth OBD-II reader (9% off) and pair it with the free Car Scanner app. Suddenly you can read your own check engine codes before the mechanic does, see real-time fuel economy and clear minor warning lights yourself. That mysterious $150 diagnostic fee at the shop? Gone. Knowledge is horsepower.

Turns out we’ve all potentially been using AirPods wrong for a decade. 

A viral claim says you’re supposed to twist them into your ear, locking them in for better bass and a more secure fit, instead of letting them dangle like tiny white earrings. 

Experts say results depend on your ear shape, which is science’s way of saying, “Sure, whatever works for you, we’re not your mom.” Try it. Worst case, you look slightly more intense at the gym.

Share this now:

🔜 Tomorrow: Your Google Calendar became a scammer’s newest playground. Fake invites are dropping straight onto your phone, and one tap leads to a fake Google login page. I’ll show you exactly how it works and the one setting that stops it cold. You need this intel, do not miss it.

The answer is C) Around 35 minutes. That’s about a sitcom episode. TikTok documents confirmed the algorithm needs less than 40 minutes of passive watching to build an eerily accurate psychological profile. And that’s without a single like, follow or search. It watches your thumb. How long you hover, when you bail, what you rewatch at 2 a.m. when nobody’s looking. 

Your therapist has known you for five years and still asks how that makes you feel. TikTok figured you out in 35 minutes and never even billed you.

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👏🏻 You showed up. You learned something. That’s already a better day than most. Go make it count. Have any questions? Ask me here. — 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): Gemini, Amazon, @whitenigerian via Instagram

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