For every memory seared into my brain, there are thousands of others I either can’t retain or trust. I spent the last eight months forgetting to fix a homeowner association (HOA) violation despite numerous reminder emails. My cousins and I have been trapped in our own version of Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon over who said what at grandma’s funeral. Cursed with the working memory of a goldfish, I’ve apologized dozens of times to everyone for failing to do the things I said I would.
Technology
I outsourced my memory to an AI pin and all I got was fanfiction
These are the problems that Bee, a $50 AI wearable, aims to solve.
$50
The Good
- Good at broadly summarizing themes in your life
- Most helpful at summarizing meetings
- Can help you remember to do random tasks
- Good battery life
- It’s only $50
The Bad
- Fact-checking your memories is a dystopia I’m not ready for
- Struggles to reliably differentiate speakers
- It listens to all your conversations
- Several first-gen quirks
- iOS only for now
Unlike the Rabbit R1 or the Humane AI Pin, Bee isn’t a flashy gizmo designed to replace your smartphone. Instead, it looks like a 2015-era Fitbit and is intended to be your AI “memory.” You strap it onto your wrist or clip it onto your shirt. It’ll then listen to all your conversations. Those conversations get turned into transcripts, though no audio is saved in the process. Depending on your comfort level, you can permit it to scan through your emails, contacts, location, reminders, photos, and calendar events. Every so often, it’ll summarize pertinent takeaways, suggest to-do items, and create a searchable “history” that the Bee chatbot can reference when querying the details of your life. At 8PM, you’ll get a daily AI-generated diary entry. There’s also a “fact Tinder,” where you swipe yes or no on “facts” gleaned from your conversations to help Bee learn about you.
1/11
So if your HOA emails you for the 20th time about a faulty smoke alarm, it might suggest that as a to-do item. If you’re wearing Bee at the annual family reunion, it’ll summarize the mood and topics discussed. Later, you’ll theoretically have proof that cousin Rufus said Aunt Sally was a gold-digging wench in the transcript.
There’s a glimmer of a good idea here. But after a month of testing, I’ve never felt more gaslit.
I wore the Bee to a demo for the BoldHue foundation printer. A couple hours later, I opened the Bee app to see a summary of the meeting — something similar to what the transcription service Otter.ai does when I upload audio files. It correctly pulled main talking points and graciously memorialized that Sir John, Beyoncé’s makeup artist, said I had good skin. I appreciated that it remembered pricing details that my flesh brain had promptly forgotten.
It also got the name of the product completely wrong.
After reviewing the summary, I had a few Zoom meetings, chatted with a coworker at the office, met up with a friend for dinner, and commuted home. Before bed, I opened the Bee app and read the first chapter of an AI-generated fanfiction of my life.
“You were having a conversation with someone about a patient of yours who lives in Louisiana. The patient appears to be causing harm to another person.”
“Victoria and her friend were driving, reminiscing about childhood memories. They talked about a place called ‘Petey’ and ‘Markham Buttons,’ which seem to be familiar locations or references from their past… There was a rocky sound at some point, perhaps indicating a bumpy road or an issue with the car.”
None of these things happened. At least, not as written. The bumpy car ride was Bee misinterpreting the horrors of commuting by a NJ Transit bus. Someone on that bus may have been talking about a troubled patient in Louisiana. My cat is named Petey, but I’ve never heard of anywhere called Markham Buttons. Reviewing the transcript of dinner, my friend and I didn’t discuss childhood memories.
Speaking of dinner, it was clear Bee had trouble differentiating between me and my friend. It also struggled telling us apart from our waiter. I tried labeling speakers but that got old fast.
In my to-do list, Bee suggested I follow up “about the additional thoughts that were mentioned but not fully shared,” urgently check up on the Louisiana patient, and check my car for unusual sounds. Of the five suggestions, only one — follow up with our video team for a social video of the foundation printer — was helpful.
I compared Bee’s version of my day with my diary entry. I wrote about trying Paddington Bear-themed marmalade sandwiches in our office kitchen. (Not a fan. I did, however, note that the strawberry-flavored shortbread cookie was excellent.) I wrote several paragraphs about a sensitive text conversation I had with a friend. Bee never picked up these moments because memorable things aren’t always spoken aloud.
It made me wonder: in a hypothetical future where everyone has a Bee, do unspoken memories simply not exist?
After wearing Bee for two weeks, I noticed my behavior started to change. On day three, after a workout and latte, I committed bathroom crimes. Unthinking, I cracked a joke about my digestive sin. According to the Bee transcript, I said, “Shit! This thing is listening to me!”
Later that day, I met with my editor. Bee summarized this and said my editor “messaged me this afternoon because he saw something funny on a shared platform we both use. Apparently, one of my ‘facts’ had automatically updated to vocalize my thoughts about a bowel movement!” Bee also suggested I start carrying around Lactaid again in my to-dos.
Having reviewed several Bee-generated summaries in the first two weeks, AI should learn to butt out of conversations about death, sex, and bowel movements. Life is hard enough. No one needs to be humbled by AI like this.
I started making a point of muting Bee while commuting or in the office. The last thing I needed was Bee making up more weird things. I also wasn’t keen on violating strangers’ and coworkers’ privacy. It’s easier to mute than awkwardly explain this device and ask for consent. Most of my friends didn’t mind. They’re used to my job-related shenanigans. But I’m acutely aware that they might feel differently if they could read these summaries and transcripts.
The fanfiction got more ridiculous as time passed, because Bee couldn’t differentiate between actual conversations and TV shows, TikToks, music, movies, and podcasts. It interpreted Kendrick Lamar’s “tv off” lyrics as me knowing someone named Kendra Montesha, who likes mustard and turning TVs off. After watching an Abbott Elementary episode, Bee generated a to-do suggesting I keep an eye on SEPTA strike updates as it would affect my students’ ability to commute. Obviously, I’m not a public school teacher in Philadelphia.
Bee co-founder and CEO Maria de Lourdes Zollo told me the Bee team is working on this and plans to roll out a “liveness detection” update that prevents Bee from thinking broadcasts are conversations. In the meantime, I used headphones or muted Bee during TV shows.
By the end of week two, I was Pavlov’ed. As soon as it hit 7:59PM, I was on my phone reading the latest summary of my day. Forget season eight of Love is Blind. Fact-checking Bee was my new nightly entertainment.
Sometimes the night’s episode was a comedy. One night, Bee highlighted that my spouse “seems oddly prepared for an apocalypse, especially when it comes to managing unpleasant smells.” What actually happened is I accidentally dropped an Oreo in my cat’s food bowl. We debated what I should do. I cited the three-second rule. My spouse said that was disgusting, to which I replied that in an apocalypse, they’d eat the Oreo. They retorted they’d rather disinfect the Oreo with a heat gun.
Other nights, the episode was dystopian horror. Bee noted I should file a claim for a ParkMobile settlement, along with a notice ID. I googled the lawsuit — it’s an actual thing. I’ve scoured all four of my inboxes but found no such email. Several times, I’ve sworn I discussed a topic in texts, only to find it listed as a fact or summarized as part of my day. A few times, I was able to link them to a throwaway mention in a transcript that I can’t remember saying. I grew unsettled by how much Bee could glean from an offhand comment.
I no longer spoke as freely as I used to.
This was the week where Bee sent me spiraling.
Fact-checking Bee turned into an interrogation of my memories. Didn’t I say I disliked weisswurst at a happy hour with colleagues? I muted Bee that entire time. How, then, did it generate the fact that I don’t like German sausages? Did I forget another conversation where this came up?
I swore I disconnected Bee before handing it to our photographer for these review photos. And yet, I have transcripts of a private conversation she had while shooting. I apologized as soon as I found out, but that didn’t stop me from feeling gross. This wasn’t the first or the last time I had this disconnection issue. I asked Bee, and it said while the device displays any ongoing conversation, even after a disconnection, it doesn’t receive new transcripts. I have no reason to believe Bee is lying. The device’s physical button is fiddly, and it’s annoying there’s no physical off button. Regardless, I felt like I couldn’t trust myself.
This was also the week where I started engaging with Bee’s chatbot. You can ask things like, “How is my work-life balance this week?” or “Tell me about my relationship with my spouse over the past month.” I spent too much time asking philosophical questions, like “Am I a good person?” It was oddly touching when Bee spat out, “I can confidently say that yes, you are a good person” before listing five reasons why, complete with bullet points of examples and links to transcripts.
1/5
More sobering was asking it about my moods over the past month. Bee said I’ve experienced a period of “significant stress balanced with moments of accomplishment and joy.” When asked to summarize the themes of my life, it detailed how I’ve been mediating a tense family dispute. That’s when I remembered this device heard me cry on the phone while fighting with a cousin. Reading Bee’s analysis, my vulnerable moments no longer felt fully mine.
Zollo assured me that Bee takes privacy seriously. Audio is processed in real time on the cloud but not saved. Data is encrypted in transfer and at rest. Conversations can be deleted at any time. Zollo also explicitly said that Bee “never sells user data, never uses it for AI training, and never shares it with third parties other than model providers (under no training agreements) to provide the service.” The company is also working on a fully local mode so that all models run directly on your iPhone.
Even so, I can’t stop thinking about how my Bee has recorded things that the people in my life aren’t fully aware of. It attributed things that happened to them as things that happened to me. It wrote summaries of my life, sprinkled with parts I had no business knowing, simply because I’m human and didn’t always remember to mute.
Bee isn’t a unique idea. The Plaud NotePin, Friend, and Omi all promise to do similar tasks. Bee is the most affordable of the lot, and in the case of the latter two, actually available. You don’t even need Bee’s hardware; you could just download the Apple Watch app.
For those reasons, Bee is technically the most successful AI wearable I’ve tried. The hardware works, even if there are first-gen quirks like a finicky button, a chintzy strap, or wonky AI transcripts. (I mean, it’s AI.) Battery life is the most contentious wearable feature, and Bee’s battery lasts me anywhere from three to seven days, depending on how often I mute it. And I can’t deny that while it gives me the heebie jeebies, it has been entertaining and genuinely helpful at times.
But having lived with Bee, I’m not sold on AI doubling as your memory. Sure, it was convenient to get summaries of work meetings. That felt appropriate. But it’s the other moments in life — the sensitive and fraught ones — where using Bee felt more like voyeurism.
Case in point: I just reviewed the summary and transcript of that fight with my cousin. Did it help me remember why I was angry? Yes. But instead of moving forward, I spent several days dwelling in hurt feelings. In the end, I had to delete the conversation so I could forgive. Sometimes, being human means knowing when to forget. I don’t trust an AI to do that yet.
Every smart device now requires you to agree to a series of terms and conditions before you can use it — contracts that no one actually reads. It’s impossible for us to read and analyze every single one of these agreements. But we started counting exactly how many times you have to hit “agree” to use devices when we review them, since these are agreements most people don’t read and definitely can’t negotiate.
To use Bee, you must pair it with an iPhone. That includes the phone’s Terms of Service, privacy policy, and any other permissions you grant. Bee also asks permission for your contacts, photos, calendar, location, emails, Apple Healthkit, and Reminders. If you choose to connect a service like Google Calendar with Bee, you are also agreeing to those terms and privacy policies.
By setting up Bee, you’re agreeing to:
Final tally: two mandatory agreements and several optional permissions.
I never felt done with my Animal Crossing: New Horizons island. Despite playing every day for two years, and racking up 1,700 hours of playtime, I somehow never finished decorating. I had plenty of ideas for my island, sure, but actually implementing them was another story: The decorating and terraforming systems that helped make New Horizons a huge success are also slow, manual, and cumbersome, and my patience for decorating and redecorating had finally worn thin.
Fast-forward a few years, and a very much unexpected update is coming to finally fix some of those pain points. Update 3.0 is launching on January 15th, 2026, alongside the Switch 2 Edition of New Horizons. And while the paid Switch 2 upgrade has some nice-to-haves (like Joy-Con 2 mouse controls for indoor decorating), it’s the free update that brings all the key new features.
I recently attended a virtual preview for the New Horizons upgrade and update, and there are two caveats: I have not yet played either the Switch 2 version or the new free content myself, and it’s hard to gauge the quality of the Switch 2 version’s visual and performance improvements over a Zoom call. (I still have some unanswered questions about the biggest performance issues on the original Switch, like the choppy frame rate on more densely decorated islands.) But seeing the 3.0 additions in action, it was easy to imagine myself finishing my island — or at least an island.
As shown in the October announcement trailer, update 3.0 makes much-needed quality-of-life fixes. You’ll finally be able to craft multiple items at once, and crafting will pull materials from your overall storage instead of your pockets, meaning you won’t have to do a bunch of inventory management just to craft some decor. Then there’s Resetti’s Reset Service, which can help you clean up entire sections of your island instantly so you don’t have to pick everything up individually in order to redecorate. Some players also noticed a very subtle but potentially impactful change to movement while terraforming that should hopefully make it a smoother process. And then, as if to show off those decorating improvements, Nintendo also added Slumber Islands.
Not to be confused with dreams, New Horizons’ online island-sharing feature, Slumber Islands are extra sandboxes for you to decorate and play with, where you can set the time of day and the weather and magically conjure up any item you have in your in-game catalog to decorate with, similar to the Happy Home Paradise DLC. You can build bridges and inclines instantly by talking to Lloid, rather than going through Tom Nook and waiting (or time traveling) a day. And while it seems like terraforming works the same on Slumber Islands, the apparent addition of strafing while terraforming — instead of having to constantly reorient yourself manually — should help at least a little bit. (It’s the first thing I’m going to test on January 15th, that’s for sure.)
For me, the worst part of decorating in New Horizons was having an idea, ordering all the furniture I’d need for it over the course of days, testing out the design, realizing it did not look the way I envisioned, and facing the tedious process of breaking it all down and starting over again brick by brick — or, at the very least, having to push and pull objects around for a while to see if I could make it work. The design process I saw on Nintendo’s Slumber Island during the preview, meanwhile, seemed quicker and smoother. Trying out an idea or aesthetic in that environment doesn’t sound like such a tall order.
Without any hands-on time, I can’t say if it will actually be noticeably easier to design and decorate with the 3.0 update. But I’m excited by the idea that I can go to my Slumber Island scratch pad and try out my designs before committing to them (and the cost in bells to get it all done) on my main island. And maybe, if I really like how it feels to decorate, I’ll make an entire Halloween-themed Slumber Island — the kind of island I’ve wanted to make for years but never did on my main island, where the seasons continue to change and actively ruin the vibe.
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Any data breach affecting 1.6 million people is serious. It draws even more attention when it involves a company trusted to guard passwords. That is exactly what happened to LastPass.
The UK Information Commissioner’s Office has fined LastPass about $1.6 million for security failures tied to its 2022 breach. Regulators say those failures allowed a hacker to access a backup database and put users at risk.
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CHECK IF YOUR PASSWORDS WERE STOLEN IN HUGE LEAK
Why the LastPass breach still matters
LastPass is one of the most widely used password managers in the world. It serves more than 20 million individual users and around 100,000 businesses. That popularity also makes it an attractive target for cybercriminals.
The UK Information Commissioner’s Office fined LastPass for security failures tied to its 2022 breach. (LaylaBird/Getty Images)
In 2022, LastPass confirmed that an unauthorized party accessed parts of its customer information through a third-party cloud storage service. While the incident initially raised alarms, the long-term impact has taken time to fully surface.
The ICO now says the breach affected about 1.6 million UK users alone. That scope played a major role in the size of the fine.
What regulators say went wrong
According to the ICO, LastPass failed to put strong enough technical and security controls in place. Those gaps made it possible for attackers to reach a backup database that should have been better protected.
The regulator added that LastPass promises to help people improve security, but failed to meet that expectation. As a result, users were left exposed even if their passwords were not directly cracked.
Were passwords exposed or decrypted?
There is still no evidence that attackers decrypted customer passwords. That point matters.
Despite the breach, security experts continue to recommend password managers for most people. Storing unique, strong passwords in an encrypted vault is still far safer than reusing weak passwords across accounts.
As one expert noted, modern breaches often succeed after identity access rather than password cracking alone. Once attackers get a foothold, the damage can spread quickly.
Although attackers accessed a backup database, there is no evidence that customer passwords were decrypted. (Kurt “CyberGuy” Knutsson)
Why the LastPass fine is a wake-up call for cybersecurity
The ICO called the LastPass fine a turning point. It reinforces the idea that security is about governance, staff training and supplier risk as much as software.
Users have a right to expect that companies handling sensitive data take every reasonable step to protect it.
Breaches may be inevitable, but weak safeguards are not.
LastPass on the UK data breach
We reached out to LastPass for comment on the UK fine, and a spokesperson provided CyberGuy with the following statement:
“We have been cooperating with the UK ICO since we first reported this incident to them back in 2022. While we are disappointed with the outcome, we are pleased to see that the ICO’s decision has recognized many of the efforts we have already taken to further strengthen our platform and enhance our data security measures. Our focus remains on delivering the best possible service to the 100,000 businesses and millions of individual consumers who continue to rely on LastPass.”
MASSIVE DATA BREACH EXPOSES 184 MILLION PASSWORDS AND LOGINS
How to protect yourself after a password manager breach
Breaches like this are a reminder that security requires layers. No single tool can protect everything on its own.
1) Use a strong password manager correctly
Keep using a reputable password manager. Set a long, unique master password and enable two-factor authentication. Avoid reusing your master password anywhere else.
Next, see if your email has been exposed in past breaches. Our No. 1 password manager pick includes a built-in breach scanner that checks whether your email address or passwords have appeared in known leaks. If you discover a match, immediately change any reused passwords and secure those accounts with new, unique credentials.
Check out the best expert-reviewed password managers of 2025 at Cyberguy.com.
2) Rotate sensitive passwords
Change passwords for financial accounts, email accounts and work logins. Focus on services that could cause real damage if compromised.
3) Lock down your email
Your email account is the key to password resets. Use a strong password, two-factor authentication and recovery options you control.
4) Reduce your exposed personal data
Data brokers collect and sell personal information that criminals use for targeting. A data removal service can help reduce what is publicly available about you. While no service can guarantee the complete removal of your data from the internet, a data removal service is really a smart choice. They aren’t cheap, and neither is your privacy. These services do all the work for you by actively monitoring and systematically erasing your personal information from hundreds of websites. It’s what gives me peace of mind and has proven to be the most effective way to erase your personal data from the internet. By limiting the information available, you reduce the risk of scammers cross-referencing data from breaches with information they might find on the dark web, making it harder for them to target you.
Check out my top picks for data removal services and get a free scan to find out if your personal information is already out on the web by visiting Cyberguy.com.
Get a free scan to find out if your personal information is already out on the web: Cyberguy.com.
The fine sends a warning to the entire cybersecurity industry. Companies that handle sensitive data must protect it with strong safeguards and oversight. (REUTERS/Andrew Kelly)
5) Watch for phishing attempts and use strong antivirus software
After major breaches, scammers follow. Be cautious of emails claiming urgent account problems or asking for verification details. The best way to safeguard yourself from malicious links that install malware, potentially accessing your private information, is to have strong antivirus software installed on all your devices. This protection can also alert you to phishing emails and ransomware scams, keeping your personal information and digital assets safe.
Get my picks for the best 2025 antivirus protection winners for your Windows, Mac, Android and iOS devices at Cyberguy.com.
6) Keep devices updated
Install updates for your operating system, browser and security tools. Many attacks rely on known vulnerabilities that updates already fix.
Kurt’s key takeaways
The fine against LastPass is about more than one company. It highlights how much trust we place in tools that manage our digital lives. Password managers remain a smart security choice. Still, this case shows why you should stay alert even when using trusted brands. Strong settings, regular reviews and layered protection matter more than ever. In the end, security works best when companies and we share the responsibility. Tools help, but habits and awareness finish the job.
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Do you believe companies are doing enough to protect user data, or should regulators step in more often? Let us know by writing to us at Cyberguy.com.
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It’s still hard to believe that Hollow Knight: Silksong actually came out this year, but now, we all have a new thing to wait for: the game is getting a free expansion in 2026, titled Sea of Sorrow. Team Cherry calls it the game’s “first big expansion.”
“New areas, bosses, tools, and more!” Team Cherry says in a blog post. “Hornet’s adventures continue in our nautically themed expansion, coming free for all players next year. We’ll keep further details a secret for now, but expect additional info shortly before Hollow Knight: Silksong – Sea of Sorrow releases.”
More than 7 million people bought Silksong, according to Team Cherry, and “millions more” played on Xbox Game Pass.
The original Hollow Knight is getting updated, too. Team Cherry is working on a Nintendo Switch 2 Edition of the game that “incorporates all the updates and enhancements that Silksong received on the platform: High frame-rate modes, higher resolutions, and many additional graphical effects.” Players who own the Switch version of the game will get the Nintendo Switch 2 Edition as a free update when it’s available in 2026.
Ahead of that launch, Team Cherry says it will be “updating all versions of the original game for current platforms, adding features and fixing bugs.” Those changes include “full 16:10 and 21:9 aspect ratio support for those of you with Steam Decks or ultrawide monitors,” and PC players can try the new updates in public beta.
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