You're bleeding money

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Well, first up we have your digital life hack and after that I'm going to play a call for my weekend national radio show. You're hemorrhaging money right now from apps you forgot even existed. I'm Kim Commando for Carbonite, my number one choice for cloud backup. Get 50% off@carbonite.com Kim live a better digital life with Carbonite. The average person spends over $200 a month on subscriptions and underestimates the cost by 40%. That's thousands of dollars a year down the drain. So here's how to stop the bleeding. First, raid your bank statements, go back three months and scan for anything that repeats. That's your smoking gun. Now check your phone on iPhone, go to settings, tap your name and then subscriptions. Android, open Google Play, store your profile and then subscriptions. I bet you'll find a few apps that you can cancel. Here's the kicker. Tons of services bill you direct. So open every app, Spotify, Adobe, Dropbox, dig into the settings and check billing. Bottom line, if you haven't used it in 30 days, cancel it. Stop lying to yourself about using it. Someday. Join almost a million folks and get my free newsletter@getkim.com Next up, a call for my weekend show, the Kim Commando Show. Enjoy. Have you seen those free phone on us offers from the big wireless companies? I know they sound great. I mean who wouldn't love a free iPhone or Android? But here's the truth. You know deep down, those so called free phones are almost never free. Big carriers stretch the cost of the phone over time with tiny monthly credits. And those only apply if you stay locked into their plan. If you ever want to switch phones or get a new carrier, you're stuck paying off that balance. That free phone ends up costing you your freedom and more money. Consumer cellular, they don't play games. What you see is what you get. And it's amazing, right? Right now for a limited time, you get your second month of service totally and completely free. No hidden fees, no long term contracts. And if you're over 50, you get two lines with unlimited talk, text and data for only $30 for each line. Switch to Consumer Cellular and start saving with your second month free right now. Visit consumercellular.com Kim or use promo code Kim. That's consumercellular.com Kim. New year.

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Same extra value meals at McDonald's. So now get two snack wraps plus and a medium soft drink for just.

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Eight dollars for a limited time only. Prices and participation may vary. Prices may be higher in Hawaii, Alaska and California. And for delivery, let's see. How about we do some phone calls? You think Sherry in Gaithersburg? Is that how you pronounce that? How do you pronounce that, Andrew?

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I can't read it. I don't have my reading glasses on.

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You need readers now, too?

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No, but I still can't read it. There's a glare.

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So, Sherry, what do you think? Is it Gaithersburg?

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It's Gaithersburg. It's Gaithersburg.

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And where is that?

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It's basically a county right above Washington, D.C. oh, beautiful.

3:18

Well, welcome aboard. What's going on?

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Well, I'm a high school teacher of English, so we do a lot of dealing with kids who want to use AI to generate their essay rather than turn in an assignment that shows their own unique thoughts. And we've been battling that for a couple of years. We've come up with a. It's just a trick, a hack that helps, and that is to put in a Trojan horse in the prompt. Because we all know that, you know, to get a AI to generate a essay, you just need to put in the prompt.

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Correct.

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So when they cut and paste the prompt, most of the time they're not looking at the whole of the prompt. So if you type real tiny in white, something that is adjacent but not relate, not directly in line with the assignment, and then you see that word pop up in the essay, then you know. You know that they use AI, and that way you don't have to use six AI trackers and look at draft back or any of the other multiple ways. You can just start with that, you know. So tell me, if you're writing about the Odyssey, why in heaven's name did you talk about Deponia, the daughter of Poseidon and Demeter?

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What do they say? Do they ever come back to you and go, well, because it was my personal experience.

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No, they usually look at me like, I don't know. And then. And then I just said, look, this is not part of the essay, so we're going to start over. And they do, but it's a Useful hack for teachers to have my, my oldest son put me onto it. He teaches at a different school and so he always asked if he happened to teach religion. So talk about the third Council of Trent. There was no third council.

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So that. So as a deal. So this is tough because you want the kids to learn and AI is part of their future. And so how do you get them to use AI like a calculator instead of as just a full blown writer?

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Well, there are three things. Number one is we try to give them like right now they're creating a story board for speculative fiction and we're allowing them to use AI to generate the images for their stories. But they have to write descriptions of the characters in order to get that. So we're kind of having them.

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That's good, that's good.

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The back door. And then the other thing is that we always try to have them connected to their own personal lives. So as a result they will be having to do more of the things.

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Yeah.

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Of it. And the other thing happens is a lot of times they will look up their essay online using AI and then they'll hand copy it. But the bright side of that is their grammar has gotten much better.

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That's funny. That's funny.

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I do think the trend is starting to turn though because the 16 year old, she will use AI, copy, paste, do my work. I want to get this done because I want to get in my car and go out and party all night. But the younger kids see AI as being a try hard and they don't want to go the extra limit. They rather be raw and organic, organic and real than use AI. So I think it's kind of turning with the next generation.

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I would hope so. Yeah. You know, and so as a teacher, here's something that I just want you to think about because, especially because you're an English teacher. So you could give the assignment. Give me a sentence that includes the words defense, defeat and detail. You know what the answer is?

6:37

Defense. No, I don't.

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Defense, defeat and detail. When a horse jumps over defense, defeat, go first and then detail.

6:56

I like that. Very, very nice.

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Thanks so much for calling in and giving some tips along the way. All great stuff right there. Hey, want to stay in the tech now without wasting your time? Join nearly a million folks who get my free newsletter, the Current, where you see the latest in tech in just five minutes every single day. You're just going to love it. It has a five out of five star rating over on Trustpilot. Sign up right now@getkim.com that's getkim.com.

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