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September 6, 2023 |
In partnership with LinkedIn |
Welcome, Wednesday! You know how we start: Trivia! Whatβs the most hated font in the world, meaning you should never use it, especially on a resume? Is it β¦ Arial, Comic Sans, Courier or Roboto? Youβll find the answer at the end. π Win an iPad, MacBook or Windows laptop β your choice, valued at $1,200! How? It's simple: Share your unique referral link at the bottom of this email with friends, family and anyone who would love our free newsletter. Hold on to your hats, folks. Todayβs tech news is coming in hot and heavy, so letβs dive in! β Kim π« First-time reader? Sign up here. (Itβs free!) IN THIS ISSUEπ€ This is fonted upπ¨ S*xtortion scam warningποΈββοΈ Best and worst ISPs in the U.S. |
TODAY'S TOP STORYThe fonts secretly tracking you onlineBig Tech makes big money tracking what you do online. You may have heard of tracking pixels, cookies and scripts. I bet you didnβt know fonts can track you, too. Google gives away special fonts for website owners to use. At last count, theyβre installed on over 60 million websites. Google says its free tracking fonts help websites load quickly and look the same across your iPhone, Android, Windows PC, Mac and tablet. Thatβs true, but nothing's free. It comes at the price of your privacy. Secret exposedWhen you visit a site that uses Google Fonts, you automatically hand over to Google: Your IP address, aka your unique online identifier tied to your device.Every webpage you visited and how long you spent there.The links you click on that page.This gets lumped in with all the other data Google collects on you everywhere else. If you want to be shocked, these three creepy lists show everything Google knows about you. What can you do about it?Right now, only Firefox allows you to set your own font choice. Thatβs why software developer Jeff Johnson created a browser extension that does it for you. StopTheFonts block fonts from sources like Google with built-in tracking codes. Right now, the extension is only available on Safari. If you use Chrome, Edge or any other browser, your best bet is telling Google to forget your search history and activity. Itβs not a perfect solution, but it beats not doing anything. Luckily, thatβs easy to do, and you can set it up to happen automatically. Go to myaccount.google.com and log in.Click Data & privacy on the left side of the screen.In the History settings section, checkmarks are next to Web & App Activity, Location History and YouTube History. Click each to adjust your settings.On these pages, set up Auto-delete for future activity. Select your activity to delete automatically every three months.β Your search history will be gone, but thereβs another step to take. You must also disable tracking through apps, your location history and YouTube. Get all the steps to do that here. |
DEAL OF THE DAY
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WEB WATERCOOLERA pizza dat: Thereβs a scary s*xtortion scam you need to know about. Scammers are pretending to have images or videos of you β yes, you β performing, well, adult acts. They demand you pay anywhere from $500 to $5,000, or those videos are going out to everyone you know. If you get a message like this, ignore it. They donβt have anything. π΄ Red card: Artificial intelligence (AI) experts say within 20 years, bots will take over the very important job of referees. The more growth in AI, the more data digital refs will have to train on. If itβs 20 years until an AI ref, itβll be 20 years and about 12 minutes until everyone hates it. No cruise control: A patient died in an ambulance on the way to the hospital β and the San Francisco Fire Department says two self-driving Cruise taxis that blocked the ambulance are partially to blame. Cruise says their taxis never impeded the ambulance. These robocars just arenβt ready for prime time. Finally, Google took a small step for mankind: Hate the scammy ads that slide through its approval process? Maybe theyβre going to slow down. A new policy limits how many ads appear from a brand without a history of good behavior, and advertisers will now need to go through an identity verification step. $53,000: Thatβs how much the federal government is paying to connect each household and workplace in a rural Nebraska area. Connecting remote communities, like the Winnebago Tribe, via fiber-optic cable is wildly expensive. The government has given $15.3 billion to Elon Musk to launch Starlink satellite service. Ahem, use that! ποΈ New career alert: Vacation photographer! Want to capture perfect candid shots and no more bad selfies? Folks are paying around $125 an hour for someone to follow them around for vacation pictures. Honestly, not a bad idea if you want to use those pics for holiday cards. Another dumb social media challenge death: A 14-year-old Massachusetts boy died after eating a spicy chip from the brand Pacqui. Get this: The companyβs βone-chip challengeβ invites consumers to post videos eating chips made from two of the hottest peppers, the Carolina Reaper and Scorpion. Talk to your kids, please. π€οΈ An ABBA-riginal: ABBA performs seven times a week to a sold-out crowd in London. The show has brought in $150 million in sales in 15 months, and the venueβs at 99% capacity every night. Whoβs on stage? Not the 70-something rockers but AI avatars of their 28-year-old selves. βMamma mia, here I go again!β (You just sang that in your head, right?) |
ποΈ Stay tech-savvy in just 2 minutes!I turn tech complexity into simplicity with my Daily Tech Update podcast. Iβll give you the top tech news and a useful digital life hack, all in under two minutes. It's the perfect match for your daily routine β no tech expertise required. |
TRENDINGFastest internet providers from best to worstSick of slow Wi-Fi? Your provider might be to blame. Letβs look at the fastest (and slowest) average download speeds for providers across the U.S. in megabits per second (Mbps): Spectrum: 243.02 MbpsCox: 241.78 MbpsXfinity: 233.25 MbpsAT&T Internet: 210.12 MbpsFrontier: 200.95 MbpsOptimum: 200.41 MbpsVerizon: 184.03 MbpsYour mileage may varyTest your connection speed here. Oh, I hear you β βMy speed isnβt anywhere near those, Kim.β It depends on your location, plan, number of connections and lots more. Even your devices can limit connection. You wonβt see 300 Mbps on a 10-year-old laptop, sorry. Router feng shui is criticalDon't expect a strong signal in the living room if your router is in some far corner of the house. Put your router in a central location, away from kitchen appliances, Bluetooth devices and other electronics.Place it high up on a bookshelf or mount it to the wall to ensure the signals can go where needed.Put kids and guests on their own network. When too many devices share the same network, internet speeds can grind to a halt.π God said to set up a router and free Wi-Fi in the Tabernacle. But Moses is having a little trouble finding the promised LAN. |
DEVICE ADVICEHidden smartphone gemsYou loved the hidden apps I shared. (Itβs here on my site if you missed that.) Here are a couple more handy features you might not realize are there already β no downloads necessary! For my iPhone palsMarkup lets you edit screenshots and photos, add signatures to PDFs or other documents, insert text, and draw on images. I use it all the time. Open a photo and tap Edit, then the Markup button. It looks like a pencil inside a circle.Tap the Plus button to add a description, text or signature, or tap Magnifier to zoom in.Tap Done twice to finish up.For the Android peopleDoes someone need to use your phone? Create a new profile so they canβt see your texts and pics. Boy, I wish you could do this on an iPhone. Open Settings and search for βguest.βYou may need to enable multiple profiles, then you can set one up. Follow the on-screen instructions.π More tech smarts: My Tech Hacks email is packed with great tidbits like this. Get it each afternoon to up your game. Itβs free! |
Hiring? The best FREE way to reach just the best candidatesThink "hiring" and what site comes to mind? Yup, LinkedIn. Every week, nearly 52 million job seekers visit LinkedIn β and with good reason. With LinkedIn, you can find the right person for any job, fast and free. Pro tip: Add your posted job and the purple "hiring" frame to your LinkedIn profile photo to spread the word. Love this: LinkedIn screens questions and has other great tools that automatically weed out resumes that don't fit. Such a timesaver. β Right now, post a job totally FREE using my special link. β |
BY THE NUMBERS2 Hours you have after your order is delivered to change your tip on Instacart. After my groceries arrived and half were missing, I wanted to reduce my shopperβs tip. Nope, I could only increase it. I complained to the great Instacart bot in the cloud but got no reply. 38% to 65% Jobs in Las Vegas that could be automated by 2035. Think check-in kiosks instead of hotel staff, text bots replacing human concierges, and robots that pour drinks and serve food. Expect strikes, folks. 12 Years a lost dog spent away from his family before being reunited. Maricopa County Animal Control in Arizona picked up a senior pup who was βa little shy and kind of sad.β They scanned his microchip and, 12 years later, found Minionβs family. See the happy family here. Love this! |
WHAT THE TECH?And she got all the money β I mean, βalimony.β |
UNTIL NEXT TIME ...The answer: Comic Sans is despised by many because it looks like a kidβs handwriting. Now, this is interesting. Comic Sans is very useful for dyslexic people because its asymmetrical style means the letters are easier to discern. π₯ Look below and youβll see your unique referral link. That, my friend, is your golden ticket to winning a $1,200 Apple iPad or Windows laptop. Share that link on Facebook, Twitter, Nextdoor or LinkedIn. The more people you encourage to sign up for my free newsletter, the greater your chances of winning! Since itβs Wednesday, eat some watermelon. Smile, too, because you just expanded your tech know-how with the greatest tech newsletter in the world! β Kim |
Komando Referral ProgramShare this newsletter β Earn prizes!Step 1: Copy your unique referral link:https://www.komando.com/friends/?referralCode=0rvmdp6&refSource=copy Step 2: Share your link!Post it on social media, send it in a text or paste it into an email to a pal. If they sign up using that link, you get the credit! |
How'd we do?What did you think of today's issue? π Fantasticπ Just OKπ Waste of time |
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Photo credit(s): Speedtest.net, Google Fonts, Komando.com |
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