Do this: Walk the building and list every machine you can control from a phone: the walk-in fridge, the thermostat, the cameras, the door lock, the alarm. Then run this prompt in a free assistant.
PASTE THIS
Act as an IT auditor for a 12-person [shop / dental office / restaurant]. Build a one-page register of every device a business might control remotely, with columns for who can log in, whether login needs a password plus a code, and one action to take this week. Finish with a five-line rule called Who Can Change A Temperature, written for staff who are not technical.
You'll get: A printable register and a rule to post by the thermostat. Overnight, someone flipped fridges at around 40 Belgian supermarkets into defrost mode, pushed them to 50C (122F), and the fresh stock went in the bin. Every one of those stores had a login that could have been listed. Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckpqg8lve73go
The six questions that expose a 'fully autonomous' agent
Every vendor selling an AI agent this quarter will say it works alone. Ask these six before signing; a demo cannot fake the answers.
Anthropic now spends more on its own AI tokens, at list prices, than on paying staff (Business Insider). Token prices fell 67% since May; spending rose more than 120% (a16z). Grok just cut weekly limits because serving it cost more than it earned. Read the limits page before Q4 budgets lock.
Google's Mandiant says criminals are hijacking company AI keys and reselling the computing. One crew charged $100,000 to a victim's cloud account; some firms passed $1 million before cutting access (The Register).
The tell is dull: a pay-as-you-go plan nobody bought, an unfamiliar key, a 3am spike.
So what: this week, open your AI provider's usage page, delete every key no current tool uses, and set a hard monthly cap with an alert at half of it.
Google's own answers are eating its ads
Alphabet lost just over $500bn in value after its business chief said AI answers were cutting into search ad revenue (BBC). The search box that sent strangers to a shop for twenty years is getting worse at it. So what: this month, put a signup card by the till and ask for a phone number, before the Christmas rush is the last easy one.
The banks are blocking the shopping bots
JPMorgan, Schwab, Amazon, Kohl's and Neiman Marcus now block personal agents like Meta's Muse, while Amazon runs its own buying agent on other companies' sites (CNBC). Accenture says 71% of customers would welcome an agent inside their bank app. So what: this week, ask your web host whether agent traffic is allowed, then pick a side on purpose.
The agent checkout is still mostly empty
DoorDash says AI agents have placed only several hundred orders on its platform (TechCrunch). Everyone talks about the agent economy; the till says otherwise. So what: this quarter, do not pay an agency to build an agent-ordering integration; put that money into the channel you still control.
This week's question: a business pays for four AI tools and nobody can tell which ones the staff actually open. How do you find out without asking the team? Do not ask. Ask the invoice. Every paid AI tool has an admin page listing seats with a last-active date, and that date is the honest answer. Export the list, sort by last active, cancel the bottom third today, and tell those people they can request access back in one message. Then set the rule: no seat renews without a login in the past 14 days. It takes 15 minutes and usually pays for the tool that stays.
Should a shop let AI agents buy on a customer's behalf?
A. A. Yes, with approval on every purchase
B. B. Yes, inside rules the shop sets
C. C. No, block them
D. D. Did not know this was happening
Reply with one letter — results next issue.
Apple is reportedly building a tabletop robot with a 9-inch screen and a swivelling arm. About what will it cost?
Answer tomorrow — and no, we are not printing it here.
YESTERDAY'S ANSWER
Which country's under-16 social media ban starts in March, with photo ID and bank records floated as age checks?
The UK. Ofcom named photo ID matching, banking records, face estimation and digital ID as the methods it considers highly effective, ahead of the ban due in March (BBC).
About 5 minutes to read. One thing you can use today every issue.
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