🔧 What’s wrong with my website? Ask your favorite AI chatbot for a critique. At worst, you wasted 30 seconds. At best, you save a bunch of money in consulting fees. Try this prompt: “Analyze my website for usability, design and SEO. Identify issues with the loading speed, mobile responsiveness, readability and navigation. Suggest improvements to enhance user experience, engagement and search rankings.” My result: “Incorporate interactive elements such as polls or quizzes to increase user engagement.” It’s right!
How to get a job as a mystery diner
Any restaurant worth its salt wants to know what it’s doing right and what it’s screwing up. And they’re willing to pay you for that info. But they can’t just judge servers and kitchen staff when they’re on their best behavior. They need someone undercover.
Enter mystery dining. Restaurants get genuine feedback and you get to eat out for free. I found out how to have your cake and eat review it.
How it works
Yes, you really get your food free of charge, including tips and travel expenses, usually in the form of a voucher or gift card.
It is a job, though. You’ll have to give a ton of feedback about your restaurant visit. How was the food? How was the service? What could’ve been better? You’ll need to have an eye for detail and a good memory. You’ll also need to take some photos as part of the trip.
Oh, and you won’t need to worry about an awkward confrontation at the table. You’ll submit all your intel afterward to the company you’re working for.
Most of them have online portals, too. Once in their system, log into your account, check available assignments, choose one to complete and upload your results.
Who are these “mystery” companies?
Mystery dining agencies act as a middleman between you and larger restaurants that pay them for intel. Here are a few of the most reputable:
- Second to None has been in the biz for 30 years and can get you gigs in high-end and fast-food dining. Pretty sure getting paid to critique an In-N-Out burger is Barry’s dream job. They also work in retail if shopping’s more your speed.
- Eye Spy CC focuses on dining and has excellent reviews from reviewers who, uh, review for them. Shoppers report getting large enough budgets to go to high-end restaurants and really enjoy themselves. Nice!
- Market Force is another heavy-hitter in dining and retail. Diners say vouchers usually start small, but once you’ve worked with a company for a while, you can get larger assignments and additional pay.
FYI: This is a “secret” from restaurants but not from the IRS. If you make over $600 with any org, you must file a 1099 like a regular independent contractor.
How to apply
Carmakers fight a rule that could save thousands of lives
I want you to stay ahead of the tech stories the mainstream media won’t touch. The other day I watched a Waymo speed up to run a red light. No matter how safe the autonomous car industry says they are, I still won’t get in one. I’d rather trust my own eyes.
Avoid this costly internet mistake
Providers want you to lock in a long-term deal. But with speeds rising and prices falling, you could end up paying more than you should.
Apple’s shiny new modem: The iPhone 16e is the first iPhone to feature Apple’s own C1 modem, marking a move away from Qualcomm. So how’s it doing? Depends on your carrier. On AT&T and Verizon, the 16e had better download and upload speeds than the regular iPhone 16. But on T-Mobile, the iPhone 16 still had slightly better upload speeds.
5 minutes
China’s top battery makers have reached five-minute charging speeds for EVs, more or less the time it takes at a gas station. CATL and BYD just flexed batteries that can deliver up to 320+ miles of range off a five-minute charge. Meanwhile, most U.S. EVs take 15 to 30 minutes.
CES 2025: What’s coming at this year’s tech show
© Mathieu Le Mauff | Dreamstime.com
The big CES 2025 event kicks off tomorrow in Las Vegas with over 100,000 attendees. I’ve got the inside scoop on what’s hot this year.
LG’s hoping to steal the show with its Zero Connect box. No cables — it wirelessly transmits 4K video at 144Hz. Plus, LG will introduce its Dynamic QNED Color Solution system, better HDR and sound optimization, and a Magic Remote, a voice-controlled and gesture-enabled universal remote that doubles as a mouse for your TV. (Smart — the LG remote is horrible now.) They’ll also unveil the UltraGear GX9, a bendable 45-inch monitor with a 5K2K resolution (5120×2160) and a 21:9 aspect ratio.
Fix your website! 4 ways to get more people to your site using SEO
A savvy business owner knows the value of website optimization. In today’s cutthroat digital marketplace, an SEO-friendly website with solid keyword research, meta tags, good page speed and backlinks helps you stand out. If you want to know how to improve search engine rankings for small business websites, you’ve come to the right place.
4,000 mph
Speed the SR-72, a top secret hypersonic jet, is said to reach. The U.S. aircraft is anticipated to break the sound barrier this year at speeds exceeding Mach 6, making it the fastest plane ever. You could fly from New York to Los Angeles in under 37 minutes. Vroom-vroom! Watch this video about it now.
OpenAI makes a move ahead of schedule: Instead of waiting until spring, OpenAI just dropped its newest AI models, o3-mini and o3-mini-high, which have o1-level reasoning with 4o-level speed. Translation? They’re fast, smart, cheap and built to crush DeepSeek (paywall link). Try them now in ChatGPT under the dropdown Model Menu. I’m using it, and it’s another major jump forward in AI.
844 mph
Speed Boom’s Supersonic XB-1 jet reached in tests. It’s the first civilian aircraft to break the sound barrier, aka Mach 1.1. The company has raised $700 million to build a plane that’ll carry 64 passengers at 1,300 mph (Mach 1.7) by 2030. At that speed, you could fly from LA to NYC in about two hours.
5 years
Length of time automaker General Motors is banned from selling customer geolocation and driving behavior data. GM was caught collecting all kinds of driving habits (think hard braking, speed and driving at night) every three seconds and selling it to insurance companies and third-party brokers, all without consent. Shame on them.
Speed up your phone in 2025
Overwhelmed by cluttered apps and storage-hogging files? With a few simple steps, you can tidy up your phone and reclaim space. Let’s get started.
Get your business up to speed: AI isn’t going anywhere, but using it in your operations can get expensive. Take a free test drive of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure now at Oracle.com/kim to see if they can cut your bill in half.
280 mph
Top speed for China’s new bullet train prototype. That’s a world record and fast enough to zip from New York to Chicago in under three hours. China’s current fastest trains max out at 220 mph. The fastest Amtrak trains go 160 mph, but most top out closer to 100 mph. We really need better trains in the U.S.
301 terabits per second
New internet speed world record. That’s 4.5 million times faster than the average broadband connection. Some context: At that speed, it’d take one minute to download every single movie listed on IMDb. Speaking of … How do you know the speed of light is much faster than the speed of sound? Because some people appear bright until they open their mouths.
38% of webpages
Have disappeared since 2013. Where’d they go? Websites got shut down, URLs changed and articles were deleted. About one-third of local news sites may be gone by next year. This is just the beginning; AI will only speed things up by deciding what’s important on the web.
✈️ This is going to take off: A Chinese company is developing a supersonic civilian jet that can travel four times the speed of sound. In tests, its engine clocked 3,045 mph at altitudes over 65,600 feet. That means it could take you from London to New York in under two hours, complete with a view of the earth’s curvature. Look for commercial flights by 2030.
🐭 Zoom-zoom! You can change how fast your cursor moves around your screen. On a Windows PC, click on the Start menu icon in your taskbar and type mouse. Click on Mouse settings, and use the Mouse pointer speed slider to adjust your cursor speed. You can also change the number of lines your mouse wheel scrolls at a time, too.
The truth about insurance smart driving programs
Thinking about signing up for your insurance company’s driving tracker for a discount? Find out how it monitors your habits, from speed and braking to late-night trips.