Siri AI Once Previewed the Future, Now It Leaves It to Others

I’m closer to “Inbox Zero” than I’ve been in years today. I’d like to say that’s because of Apple’s spiffy new Siri AI. It isn’t. It doesn’t do that. But Siri AI teases a future and those already accomplishing that future show what Apple needs to do next.

Apple Finally Seems to Get the Mac Mini (And So Should You)

The smallest Mac, which often merely existed to be the cheapest Mac, has been warming up for this moment. Thanks to AI, it is finally a star not a concession. And with this week’s M6 chip announcement, Apple finally has embraced that. You should, too.

The Special Occasion Speaker I Ended Up Using Every Day

Last summer, I was given a JBL Go 3 Bluetooth speaker as a gift. My plan was to use it while swimming — perfect for listening to summer baseball. It’s really a delightful, tiny speaker for that, but not only that, which is good since the weather here in Missouri just doesn’t grant that many suitable days for swimming.

Remember When Logging In Actually Worked?

Most of us contributed to how we got here: we came up with a subpar password and we used it over and over again. Do I admit I used the same “secure” password for almost two decades?

No, I don’t use it any longer. But from the late 1990s until the maturing of iCloud Keychain, I was guilty of often using the same random letters as my password. A web hosting company had generated it for my account in 1997 and my fingers’ muscle memory could type it rapidly.

I knew better — I did use something better on the most important credentials — but I still pretended. Most likely, you did too and our shared guilt has gotten us to a very bad place that makes everything worse for all of us.

Reusing passwords made sense when we needed fast access to accounts and had to depend on our brains as the source of how to get into them. But, in the era of password managers like iCloud Keychain or 1Password, continuing to reuse passwords is not only a bad idea, it isn’t even all that helpful. The beauty of a keychain is that modern ones will generate unique, secure passwords and store them right away — I now have dozens of passwords I’ve never even set my eyes upon for more than an instant. My cybersecurity is no longer dependent on my creativity or memory.

Even great passwords aren’t perfect though, so at some point we were visited upon by the curse of “2FA” — Two Factor Authentication — a necessary evil no matter how you craft your passwords. The most common form, one you probably encounter multiple times day, is the system where you get texted a six digit code as a second “factor” when you enter (or have your password manager enter) a password. Texting itself is insecure, but at least it adds a degree of difficulty if a hacker has to both crack a good password and sniff out your SMS texts to boot.

Even better has been the advent of authenticators. iCloud Keychain itself can generate authorization codes — as most password managers can — and those avoid the insecurity of text messaging and the inconvenience of being chained to one’s phone, too. On sites that let me use authcodes, I simply register the QR code it displays the first time I set it up and iCloud Keychain keeps a rolling (ever changing) code on the ready for when that specific site needs it.

Good and then, a few years back, the even better arrived: passkeys. These are, in essence, the rolling up of those password manager authcodes and passwords into a distinct third thing. Instead of combining a human readable password with some other thing, a much too hard to type in cryptographic key becomes the way to unlock everything in one swoop. Passkeys are secure enough they do not need a second factor at all.

If you’ve had the joy to use this modern ideal, supporting sites become a breeze to sign into. The login page automatically prompts the browser for the passkey if it exists and all we, as the users, have to do is tell the system it is ok to provide it. (On a Mac, for example, I get prompted to use my Touch ID finger print.) No muss, no fuss, more security.

That should be the end of the story, but, unfortunately, our long time laziness seems to have pushed providers a different way. I’ve noticed this plethora of options trying to move us beyond our worst password demons is quickly giving way to something worse and less secure, not this better promised land.

I noticed it first with Instacart or DoorDash. I stopped by to order something and it no longer prompted me for my password, but sent a “magic link” when I typed in my e-mail address or phone number. Given that my computer can nearly instantaneously fill in my password and give an authcode just as fast, waiting for an e-mail or SMS to come in is a massive slowdown not a shortcut.

And that’s when it works. When, as Claude tormented me with yesterday, a company’s mail server gets into a fight with one’s spam filter, it can become a huge ordeal just to log in. It should not take me twenty or thirty times longer — and way more effort — to get into Claude today than it did Amazon.com in 1995.

Worse, it isn’t as if this extra time and effort actually makes us more secure. Quite the opposite. This is the least secure form of 2FA possible, because it isn’t two factors at all: there is no password request, so the e-mail or text code becomes the sole factor. The sole factor sent via two notoriously insecure methods.

While it might be forgivable to use a less-than-secure method as a second factor after already getting a password, anyone who cares about security should already be trying to replace SMS or e-mail 2FA with authenticator app codes or passkeys wherever possible. Making those non-encrypted paths the login workflow isn’t just a regression, it is insanity.

If you’re terrible at remembering or saving passwords, this can feel convenient maybe you actually are glad when you go to DoorDash and it defaults to this infernal method. But, any password manager should cry out in anguish. And just think as more sites adopt this “feature:” a hacker cracks your e-mail and cracks everything.

Now, it is true most sites using magic links do still allow you to hit a button to login with a password (though that often still triggers the very same kind of login link, making the extra effort a worthless exercise), but in an era when most browsers support something so much better why are we going here? Passkeys make breaking into our entire digital life harder. Magic links are gifting the keys to the internet at large.

I wish I had the answer. I suspect it is because someone (perhaps correctly) thought it was better than large portions of their user base having the password “password.”

And so it is, by the tiniest jot. But such security laziness can be so easily redirected now in the passkey era — there is already a better way that is dead simple in a modern browser.

But no, now we wait for e-mails to meander across the internet with our personal information, stopping to smell the flowers as they go. If and when they show up, maybe we can still order food or login to our work accounts. If we even remember what it was we were trying to do.

Speaking of which, excuse me while I wait for another magic link to come in; it might show up today and I might remember what it was for. [*]

Geeking Out on Prime Day 2026

Prime Day isn’t quite the keyboard gripping mad dash for deals it was the heady days of the mid-2010’s. Back then, Amazon had hour by hour changes to the “decor,” musical performances and — my personal favorite — an emphasis on lightning deals that were extremely good, but limited and appearing throughout. With a four earth days to one Prime Day exchange rate and similar Big Spring Sale, Prime Big Deal Days, Black Friday, Cyber Monday and the competitors’ answers — phew — it feels like less of a standout event each year, but there are still some genuinely good deals if you look. Here are a few of my favorite TestyTim-approved options.

Editor’s Note: this article contains no affiliate links, just pure recommendations from Tim’s tech bag.

Power Banks

Before I get into the nerdy nitty gritty, if you use anything rechargeable — which would be pretty much everyone — you can benefit from a power bank or two. While they are nice for phones and such, as phone battery life has improved, I find their most useful place is keeping more powerful devices charged. The first time your not-as-great-as-it-once-was laptop battery fails to chain you to a wall outlet, you’ll be sold. The UGREEN Nexode Power Bank 20,000 mAh 130W is a brilliant combination: it is powerful enough to fuel even powerful laptops like the MacBooks Pro despite a diminutive size and the (unnecessarily, but pleasantly) full color screen that displays useful insights into how everything is charging.

To be sure, it is only 20,000 mAh: plenty of charging speed, but not enough capacity to fully top off more robust laptop batteries. If you want more than a “get me through this one project” type battery, the Anker SOLIX C200 DC Power Bank Station with a whopping 60,000 mAh is no feather weight, but it sports triple the capacity. I like having both on hand so I can choose whether more power or less weight is the order of the day.

Mini PCs

The Raspberry Pi made a meteoric rise a few years back and quickly went from an easy impulse purchase to a frequently out of stock (or marked up) item. The Pi’s charm is its complete flexibility. Pis are small, can be run silently and can be customized with different cases and add-on boards to hit the exact mix you need all while enjoying the rush that once came from piecing together components bought at the local Radio Shack. However, as Pis have become more expensive and harder to obtain, other mini PCs have encroached on its turf when the need is relatively generic and the DIY enjoyment aspect isn’t a driving force. If customized cases and expansion boards are beyond your needs, the various mini PCs that go on sale every Prime Day can do a lot of the same things with the added perk of being regular x86 hardware that works with pretty much any software.

Most come with Windows, but that’s easily replaced with Debian, the base of Raspberry Pi’s own Raspberry Pi OS. The result is essentially the same for most uses, but with broader compatibility and more power under the hood. To be fair, they have their downsides over the Pi: they lack the super easy installation tool that the Pi offers for its special flavor of Linux, they almost certainly draw more (electrical) power for that added (computing) power and many include a fan that — no matter how quiet — can’t best a fanless Pi.

I’ve been very pleased with MeLe, GMKtec and Beelink options and found them essentially identical in performance. On a week like Prime Day, the best thing to do is pull up the different brands and see which one offers the specs your project requires. This GMKtec i3-based option is nicely specced and priced given the escalating prices of computer components. It is likely suitable for most general purposes and will set you back just $179.

NanoKVM

Speaking of Pi and Pi-like devices, the NanoKVM is based on a Pi-inspired RISC-V single board computer, but purchased assembled, you needn’t worry about that unless you want to. It’s just an incredibly tiny Linux box purpose built as a simple a plug-and-forget way to gain remote access to a computer.

When plugged in, you can access that computer via a web browser and Tailscale users can do so through their Tailnet with the integrated support (sadly, no Netbird support yet). A tiny display on the case displays the address of the NanoKVM and its current status. Sipeed is a Chinese company, but to their credit, they’ve released all of the system’s software as open source and the company behind it invites full security audits. The full Linux “micro-PC” base also invites further customization for the adventurous.

Unlike software remote access tools, the NanoKVM works even if something is malfunctioning on your computer — you can even reboot and enter the BIOS through it. I have one hooked up to the Beelink mini PC I use as a router and was able to use its “virtual drive” function to install Linux to it from the comfort of the living room couch while the system hummed away in the garage.

I should note that since it plugs in where you would ordinarily connect your monitor, desktop computers plugged into it become remote only. You’ll need a Prime Day deal on an HDMI splitter or an upgrade to the NanoKVM Pro, with its HDMI pass through port, if you want to, say, attach this to your office computer for use from home without giving up the ability to use it in person, too. If you go the splitter route, check out the “buy used” option — I’ve written before about the hidden gem of Amazon Resale, the retailer’s open box section and this splitter is an example of a product that gains an extra Prime Day 15-20% off on top of the open box discount.

Paramount Roasters Coffee

I ran into this coffee company earlier this year and have been impressed with their various blends. Whether you prefer your coffee plain or would like a dessert blend (the chocolate raspberry is excellent), these are delicious and are on sale for $12.95 for 12 oz. bags. Do yourself a favor and opt for the “Subscribe and Save” discount, that knocks the price down to $9.95 and keeps you stocked and energized for tweaking those mini PCs over your NanoKVM. [*]