Welcome to KnowTechie’s Weekly Download. We know life gets busy, so we've compiled the most important tech stories you might have missed this week. So grab a coffee, and let’s get started! If this email was forwarded to you, click here to subscribe to the newsletter. Missed an issue? Here's an archive of past newsletters.

• 🔨 Tech Tip

• 📰 News

• 🔎 Top finds this week

• 🎁 We have a giveaway winner!

• 🎴Trivia

• 🤷 A new moron of the week

💡 Quick Tech Tip: Creating Custom Vibrations on iPhone 💡

If you hate how aggressive the vibration motor is in the iPhone, you can change it. You can even set different vibration patterns for different people or apps; you can know who's calling or what type of notification you've received without looking at your phone.

• Open the 'Settings' app.

• Scroll down and tap 'Sounds & Haptics'.

• Under the 'Sounds and Vibration Patterns' section, tap the type of alert (like 'Ringtone' or 'Text Tone') for which you want to create a custom vibration.

• Tap 'Vibration' at the top of the screen.

• Scroll down and tap 'Create New Vibration'.

• Tap and hold to create a pattern, then tap 'Stop' when you're done.

• Tap 'Play' to review it, and 'Save' to save it.

Did you know?

There’s a hidden Windows 10 Start menu? There is! Here’s how to access it:

1. Hidden Start Menu in Windows 10:

   • Right-click on the Windows icon in the bottom-left corner.

   • A text-based menu will appear with options like 'Apps and Features', 'Power Options', 'Event Viewer', etc. This can be a faster way to access these settings.

If you like how-to’s like these, we have a whole bunch of them here:

• How to turn on Airplane Mode in Windows 11

• How to change the keypad battery in a Chamberlain garage door opener?

• How to see deleted Reddit posts and comments

As Instagram and other social media feeds get swamped with influencers' professionally created content, average users move to private posting and closed groups

🔔 Tired of the influencer overload on your feed? You're not alone! More and more of us regular Joes and Janes are ditching the public posts and heading for the cozy corners of private groups. Real talk, real people, no filters.

Why it matters: Hey, let's get real. This shift isn't just about dodging the endless parade of picture-perfect avocado toasts. It's a big signal that we're craving genuine human connections online. We're tired of the highlight reels and constant thirst traps. This probably won’t change anything, but here’s to hoping authenticity will make a comeback.

📝 KnowTechie Trivia

(Last week’s answer below)

What was the first product that Sony sold to the public?

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Portable radio (36)

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ Television (22)

🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ Electric rice cooker (14)

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ Walkman (20)

Correct Answer: Electric rice cooker.

Wow, if I didn’t have that answer in front of me, I would have totally gone with the portable radio. For those of you keeping score, the house has won 3-4 since we started doing these. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

🎧 Weekly Gear

Gravastar Supernova: $159.95

The Gravastar Supernova is a Bluetooth speaker unlike any other. Its metallic design resembles a sort of alien spaceship from a unique sci-fi world. It comes with an ambient light on top with up to eight color options, perfect for adding some flavor to your room or on camping trips. Read our review.

What I liked:

• The sci-fi design is incredible and unique

• It's built to last out of zinc alloy with drop and shock protection

• High-quality, powerful sound

Just a heads up, if you buy something through our links, we may get a small share of the sale. It’s one of the ways we keep the lights on here.

🔗 Moron(s) of the week:

🐕 US Army Brags About Plans to Mount Rifle on Robot Dog

Headlines Worth Digging Into

🚗 Tesla drops its prices on the Model S/X. The X is usually a $100K truck. Now it’s like 70K. Plus, they now qualify for US tax credit

📱 iPhone 15 might bring back a fan-favorite color

😬 X updated its privacy policy to let the company use data X collects to train its AI models; Musk says X may use “just public data, not DMs or anything private”

📲 Google jumped the gun and revealed the Pixel 8 Pro

🦹‍♀️ Kias and Hyundais Keep Getting Stolen by the Thousands and Cities Are Suing | A viral Tiktok trend that began in 2021 demonstrated how the companies failed to install a basic anti-theft technology that made them trivially easy to steal.

🍎 Apple’s iPhone 15 launch event set for September 12

💻 Microsoft is killing WordPad in Windows after 28 years. It is automatically installed on Windows systems starting in 1995 since Windows 95 was released.

🔈 New Dolby Atmos feature puts your TV speakers to good use

🏠 LG and Samsung say their smart home apps will work with the other company's appliances and TVs in 2024, as part of the Home Connectivity Alliance formed in 2021.

📣 Google announces Pixel 8 event for October 4

🌍 Meta is considering paid, ad-free versions of Facebook and Instagram for users in the EU.

🔊 Alexa and Google Assistant are together at last on new JBL speakers. They will be the first to offer simultaneous voice assistants, so you can ask Alexa to start the music and then ask Google to stop it.

🎥 Google Meet's AI Now Takes Notes and Attends Meetings on Your Behalf

😯 Elon Musk, Renowned for Throwing Stones, Accused of Building Glass House With Company Funds

🕹️ Lenovo Legion Go officially makes its debut at IFA 2023

🛠️ Top Tool Finds This Week

Meiro: Create tests, quizzes, and games in seconds.

Retool (self-hosted): Retool is a library of tools that lets you patch fully capable working apps.

Magic Eraser: Easy, simple to remove web that lets you remove unwanted things from an image in seconds

Rewind: Rewind captures everything you’ve seen on your Mac and iPhone and makes it searchable with AI. Your colleagues will wonder how you do it all.

Guidde: Helps you magically create how-tos, SOPs, or any walkthrough video or content.

Announcement - We’re moving the deals section to its own page, updated daily.

We have more deals than we can share, and if we just focused on deals on their own, they would take over this whole email and personally, I did want this to be a thing where I try to sell you things each week.

Instead, we built a separate deals page for the newsletter, which you can find here. Keep an eye on that page. I’ve been updating it all week with new deals and offers. There are even freebies, so make sure you’re not missing out on anything.

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