November is busy, the deals are loud, and travel lines are long, the news is crazy, so let’s keep it simple and useful. 😉
In This Issue:
Wildcard Wednesday 9: Travel Smart – shop safe, AirTag sharing, offline maps, and cleaner checkout
Big Think: Don’t Trust the Guess Machine
News: CA one click opt out, airlines and AirTags, BMW’s splashy “EV”
Spotlight: Ethan Mollick’s which AI model for what guide
Security: Browser fingerprinting reality check and smart TV ACR
Tips: Mint 5G home internet, spot the AI with Wikipedia’s checklist
Good News: WeatherStar nostalgia and a laugh with Ray Jessel
If one article in here resonates, that’s a win in our books! Give this issue a read, try a tip, and join us live for the holiday sanity kit on November 12th!
Available for iOS and Android
Holiday travel and shopping are hectic enough. I’ll show how to share an AirTag so someone can help find your bag, grab offline maps and a phrase pack in under a minute, and keep checkouts clean with email aliases and masked cards. An hour with us now means fewer headaches later. 🌞
👉 To get the details next week, sign up for our offers newsletter here:
We keep wiring opaque systems into places where failure is not funny. Finance. Hiring. Health. Security. Weapons. A reminder - our current systems are statistical guessers. Powerful, yes. Also happy to regurgitate falsehoods and hallucinate with sycophantic glee.
The new field of Interpretability helps. Think electronic MRIs for language models. You see shapes. You do not see intent. However, insight is not the same as understanding at production scale. If you cannot explain how “it” got there, you should expect “it” to take weird paths. Not evil inherently. Just machines doing math while we pretend they have judgment.
Now the money part. Think about this - the most valuable AI company hasn’t made any money. Valuations are priced like magic. Record capex on massive data centers chasing demand that might not show. What could go wrong? Vendor lock in. Hidden costs. Downtime that ripples through real businesses. (Ahem, AWS us-east-1 outage last week anyone?)
So ask the boring questions. What are your risks when you inject AI into your processes? What are the off ramps when it drifts? Who owns the mistake? Where is the evidence it works on messy, real data, not a stage demo? If the answers are hand waves, RUN AWAY.
I use AI daily. I also like brakes. Trust tools to assist, not to judge. Build like you expect surprises. Because with statistical heuristics in charge, surprise is by design. 😛
California just made one-click browser opt-out real, forcing Chrome, Safari, and friends to honor a global “do not sell/share my data” signal by early 2027. Great for Californians, and long overdue nationwide.
Headed out for the holidays? Many major airlines (Delta, United, Lufthansa and more) can now use your shared AirTag link to hunt down lost luggage faster. Get the details here before you pack 👇
Sign us up! BMW’s “new EV” is an electric paddleboard made with SipaBoards - cheap(ish), self-inflating, and yes, you’ll have to get wet to enjoy it. Surf’s up, Bavarians. 🏄🏄♂️🌊
We love Ethan Mollick’s stuff, and his fresh guide nails which AI models are good for what tasks right now. This is the perfect refresher if you tuned in to last month’s Wildcard Wednesday. Skim it, then try the right tool for the job. 👍😉
WE KNOW YOU. 🕵️🕵️ Even with blockers and a VPN, your browser’s quirky combo of settings can ID you across the web. Sometimes the safest move is not to stand out. Blend in and read up.
Not surprising - kinda gross. 🤮 Yep, this is why a giant Black Friday TV costs pocket change. Smart TVs use Automatic Content Recognition to log what you watch and even analyze audio and video from consoles and streaming sticks across LG, Samsung, Amazon, Roku, and Google TVs. Learn how your profile gets built.
Finally, a cheaper way to ditch your ISP: Mint’s new 5G Home MINTernet rides T-Mobile’s network and starts around $30 to $40 with prepaid terms. We haven’t tested it yet, but in theory it should feel like T-Mobile 5G, and we’ve been happy Mint customers for years. 📶💸
Got that “hmm this reads like AI” feeling? Wikipedia now lists common tells so you can spot them and sharpen your own coauthoring. From puffery and vague attributions to title case and weird list styles, you’ll spot the AI in no time! 😉🔎
More great stuff in one place! Privacy, passkeys, AI basics, deeper dives, all curated without the noise. Visit our resource page today:
Ahh, nostalgia done right. WeatherStar 4000+ brings back the old Weather Channel vibe with smooth instrumentals and just the local forecast, nothing more, nothing less. In a world of complications and energy, sometimes you need a break. Then share a laugh with Ray Jessel’s “Identity Theft,” a reminder that humor cuts through the noise at any age. And hey, sometimes identity theft ain’t all that bad 😂😂
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