💀 Passwords are "adorable"

Welcome to your Saturday, {{first_name | friend}}. Remember the first YouTube video? A guy at the zoo. Not exactly Oscar-worthy content, but it started a revolution. Fast-forward to today, and we’ve got everything from beauty tutorials to folks who have clearly spent too much time alone with the internet.

If for some reason, you wanted to watch literally every single minute of video that’s ever been uploaded from day one, how long would it take you? A) 100 years, B) 500 years, C) 1,000 years or D) Over 1,500 years? Keep reading, your eyeballs might twitch at the answer at the end.  

⏳ Three days left to win. One reader still scores up to $500 in Amazon gift cards every day, and the $1,000 grand prize drawing is coming up soon. Take a moment to check today’s Golden Ticket.

📻 Hear ye, hear me: My national radio show is airing all weekend across the USA. With over 420 stations strong, find your closest one by using our super-duper station locator map, or listen commercial-free on Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, iHeart or in the Komando Community. — Kim

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For over 30 years, logging into websites has worked the same way. You create a password, the website saves it, and you both cross your fingers it never gets stolen. Adorable.

But in a world of nonstop data breaches, hackers and scammers running wild, that system is broken. And admit it, you’ve reused the same password.

Instead of you typing a long password, passkeys flip the whole process. Think of them as a digital key that lives on your device, not on a website.

Here is what happens. Your phone or computer creates two cryptographic keys. One stays private and locked on your device. The other is shared with the website. When you sign in, you simply unlock your device with Face ID, your fingerprint or a PIN. Your device proves it’s you without ever sending the secret key over the internet.

You probably already use passkeys. When Google, Apple, Amazon or Microsoft lets you sign in with Face ID or a fingerprint instead of a password, that’s a passkey at work.

So what’s the big deal? There’s nothing for hackers to steal. No password to phish. No brute force attack to run. Even if a company gets breached, all criminals get is a public key that’s useless. Brilliant.

Now the part no one loves to talk about. Managing passkeys can be a pain. A passkey on your iPhone may live happily in Apple’s ecosystem but not show up on your Windows laptop or Android tablet. 

It gets worse if you upgrade or lose a device. If your passkeys are saved only on that phone or computer, you can lock yourself out of your own accounts. No reset email. No “forgot password” link. Just a very long afternoon.

Passkeys are absolutely the future. But like any powerful tool, you need to know how they behave. Make sure your passkeys are backed up, synced across your devices and accessible if something goes wrong. 

Do that, and passkeys become a security upgrade instead of a log-in nightmare.

NordPass, a sponsor of my show, is set up to be a secure vault for both your passkeys and passwords. That’s key, no pun intended. It syncs across your phone, tablet and computer, whether you use iOS, Android, Windows or Mac. 

This means you don’t have to remember which passkey is saved where. Everything stays encrypted and available when you need it. It’s the passkey and password manager I use.

Passwords are going away. Passkeys are safer, faster and easier. Right now, get 58% off plus 4 extra months using my special radio link. Btw, I get no kickbacks or residuals if you get it.

🎬 TikTok’s custody battle: Oracle, you are not the father! But you’re still getting a chunk of TikTok U.S. After years of court drama, TikTok’s finally getting new American stepparents: Oracle, Silver Lake and MGX get 45%. ByteDance keeps a baby slice (20%) but won’t be driving. The U.S. side gets full control of data and moderation. Deal closes Jan. 22. 

Redditor breaks murder case: So a guy walks into a bathroom at Brown, spots someone acting off (winter jacket in 50 degrees, zany eyes). He follows the shady perp and posts a Reddit tip about the car (paywall link), a gray Nissan with Florida plates, and boom. That blew open two cases, leading police to ID the Brown shooter, himself a former Brown physics PhD student, and tying him to a murdered MIT professor. The suspect fatally shot himself in a New Hampshire storage unit.

That’s not ideal: SpaceX says one of its Starlink satellites suffered an “anomaly,” lost contact, dropped altitude, vented its tank and left debris. Translation? It blew up. It’ll burn up on reentry, but the real concern is orbit crowding. We’ve got 24,000+ things up there. The crazy part? We can expect 70,000 more by 2030. SpaceX also reported a near-miss with a Chinese satellite last week. It’s raining metal, hallelujah.

📘 Stop feeling confused by AI: It’s moving faster than most people can keep up with. Don’t get left behind. Download NetSuite’s free “Demystifying AI” guide for a simple, powerful explanation of how to use this tech to win. It won’t cost you a dime.*

🏫 Teen analog experiment: Since New York banned phones in public schools during class hours, something surprising happened. Kids started talking again (paywall link). Teachers say lunchrooms are louder (in a good way), students are playing cards, sketching, even sharing CDs. One school saw a rise in poker games using hair ties as chips. Isn’t that funny?

Bedside table threat: I never thought of my Kindle as dangerous, but it’s online, always on and one click away from my credit card. A researcher showed that with the right sneaky audiobook or keyboard trick, a hacker could steal your Amazon log-in tokens and potentially move through your other devices. Amazon fixed it, but I’m still side-eying my Kindle. 

Clocked in by Kinko’s: Not in the U.S., but I just had to share this with you. Chinese government workers were caught skipping work by printing out face masks of their coworkers. Why? To trick the office’s facial recognition scanner. One guy clocked in for multiple people by swapping masks. And the kicker? Their boss did it, too, right under a camera. There’s an investigation, but that printer needs a raise. 

⚡️ 3-second tech genius: On a Mac, you can move a window without bringing it to the front. Press and hold the Command key, then drag the window from the top like normal. It will stay in the background while you reposition it.

👎 YouTube Shorts experiment: YouTube might merge Dislike and Not interested into a single thumbs-down button. If you’re in the test, the icon won’t appear on the main video UI anymore. You’ll need to tap the three-dot menu and select Dislike or Not interested, depending on what you see. Either way, it helps fine-tune your feed.

Hide your Facebook account: Ever Googled your own name and seen your Facebook profile right at the top of the results? Yeah, thanks, Zuck. To put a stop to it, go to Settings > How people find and contact you and turn off Do you want search engines outside of Facebook to link to your profile?

⌚ Removing apps from your Apple Watch: ICYDK, if you delete an app from your iPhone, it’s gone from your Watch, too. You can also remove apps on your Watch only. Press the Digital Crown to open the Home Screen. In Grid View, hold the app, tap X, then press the Crown. In List View, swipe left on the app, and tap the trash icon.

Reading a Kindle at night? Schedule the warm light to make things easier on your eyes. Open Settings > Screen and brightness > Brightness and warmth and turn on Warmth schedule. Choose Automatic for sunset to sunrise, or Manual to set your own times. There’s also a slider at the bottom to adjust how warm the screen looks.

🌐 Go away, Edge: Windows 11 still tries to push Microsoft Edge as the default browser, but you never have to see it again. To swap it out for good, go to Settings > Apps > Default apps. Scroll to the browser you actually want (like Chrome), click it, and hit Set default. Next time you open a link, no Copilot, no spam.

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🚨 Way mo’ problems: When Lucky from Los Angeles ordered a Waymo for her daughter, she didn’t expect a man to be hiding in the trunk. She caught it all on video with millions of views. Hear her terrifying story here.

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Or use the links below to listen right now on your schedule.

Your car already watches you, updates itself and judges your driving. Now Tesla wants it connected everywhere, all the time, forever. That’s right, the joy of notifications never stops. 

Tesla’s latest patent swaps traditional roofs for signal-friendly polymers that let satellites communicate directly with the car. Cellular and satellite, baked into the roofline. 

Being in this roaming Wi-Fi turtle means coverage goes from “spotty downtown” to “fine, even in the desert.” Will this ever ship, or live forever as patent fan fiction? Only time will tell. Next up: umbrellas.

🎄 Tomorrow, I’m showing you the best free AI tools to create a great Christmas pic. It’s amazing, truly. You’re reading the #1 free tech newsletter in the United States.

The answer: D) Over 1,500 years. Yep, if you hit “play” on every single YouTube video ever uploaded since launch, you’d be watching for a millennium and a half. That’s longer than the Roman Empire lasted.

🎤 Use this during any holiday get-together for a real groan: I love how all these young YouTubers are getting into classic rock. They’re always telling everyone, “Don’t forget to like Cher and subscribe.” Yup, if I could turn back time!

🐾 Whatever’s on your list today, tackle it like your dog tackles the UPS guy, with zero hesitation. — Kim

📣 Don’t keep me a secret: Send your friends to GetKim.com

Photo credit(s): Gemini, Kodak, Tesla

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