Connexion
You can get Amazon’s Choice radio, the Eton Elite Executive, on sale for $149.99 right now (reg. $250). Radio is a dying art form, but some people still love them—and they’re great to have in an emergency, like a blackout or severe thunderstorm, so you can still hear weather and news updates even if your local network is down. It can receive any type of radio wavelengths like AM and FM with RDS, LW, and shortwave, even VHF aircraft band and Single Sideband (SSB). It has both automatic and manual digital tuning options, as well as options for AC adapter use or battery power. The Eton Elite also comes with a leather carry cover that doesn't block access to the Micro USB charging port or the 35mm audio jack. You can also use four AA batteries as an alternative power source. The Eton Elite Executive radio is a little pricey, but if you want to spend the extra change to get a high-quality radio that’ll actually last more than a few years, this is a great option.
You can get the Eton Elite Executive radio on sale for $149.99 right now (reg. $250), though prices can change at any time.
I write a lot about decluttering and organizing, especially when it comes to closets, and that’s because I am in a constant state of overhauling my own closets. Tiered, cascading hangers that can accommodate multiple items of clothing are a go-to solution for small closets, but there are a few different kinds that do different things. Before you buy the first set you see, let me help you figure out what kind will suit your needs best.
There are a few different kinds of cascading hangers you can get. Currently, I have two: A hanging metal chain variety and a more rigid plastic kind.
In the past, I've mostly used the plastic kind, but the first major downsides of those is that they can break with too much weight on them, or the weight can slowly pull down on the part that hangs around the rod, warping it and ultimately rendering it useless. I have gone through a lot of these plastic ones for those reasons, which is why I ordered the metal ones a few months ago.
The metal ones come with their own challenges, however. While they're a lot sturdier, can hold more weight, and don't warp, the fluid movement of the chain is extremely annoying when you're trying to move it around on the rod. I keep a shelving unit behind my hanging clothes (which is a closet-organizing tip all its own), so I have to move the hanging parts to access the folded items on the shelf all the time. Grabbing the chain hanger from the top and dragging it along the rod almost always causes two or three hangers to fall out of their slots on the chain, which doesn't happen with the more rigid plastic version.
If your clothing is light or you need to move the hangers often, opt for something rigid, like these:
An eight pack of plastic space-saving hangers from Gillraj. ($8.99)
100 standalone hooks that attach to regular hangers, so you can make the chain of clothing as long as you want. ($9.99)
If your clothing is on the heavier side, consider metal versions for maximum holding power:
A six pack of hanging chains. ($6.99)
If you want the best of both worlds—a cascading hanger that is rigid, unwarpable, and strong—split the difference with this slotted metal hanger:
Beyond that, you can also use over-the-door racks to hold heavier items, like coats, blazers, and dresses. They're relatively inexpensive and make it much easier to see all of your items when you open the door. If you pretend hard enough, it's almost like having a walk-in closet.
Amazon owns both Blink and Ring, and while there are major differences between them, you can simply think of Ring as the higher-end product. If you're convinced a Ring product is for you, Amazon is currently discounting many of its cameras, doorbells, and floodlight cameras by up to 44%. Here are the best deals I've found, all of which are either at a record-low prices or matching the lowest price they've been, after checking price-checking tools.
The Ring Stick Up Cam Pro came out in 2023 and is an indoor and outdoor hybrid with two-way audio, 1080p HDR video resolution, and color night vision. One of its special features is the Bird's Eye View, which lets you pick zones that you want to keep your eyes on and leave out the ones you don't. It also shows you where the subject has been with an aerial view. It's on sale for $139.99 (originally $179.99).
If you want to take advantage of a bundle with a Ring doorbell and a camera, you have a choice between the Ring Stick Up Cam or Ring Indoor Cam along with the doorbell. The bundle with the Ring Stick Up Cam is great if you want to have the flexibility to use the Stick Up Cam indoors or outdoors. You can get the bundle for $99.99 (originally $179.99). If you know you'll only be using the camera indoors, go with the Ring Indoor Cam bundle for $79.99 (originally $139.99) to save more.
If you already have a video doorbell and are looking for eyes inside and a floodlight camera, your best bet is the Ring Spotlight Cam and Ring Indoor Cam bundle for $139.99 (originally $229.98). The Ring Spotlight Cam Plus comes with a rechargeable battery, shoots in 1080 HD video, has two LED Lights, has color night vision, and can emit a security siren. It usually goes for $169.99 but is discounted to $129.99 at the time of this writing.
If you're interested in a similar bundle with a Ring Doorbell Camera, consider this bundle for $319.99 (originally $489.97). It comes with the Ring Doorbell Plus (battery version), the Ring Floodlight Cam Pro (wired), and the Ring Indoor Cam, saving you $169.98 when you bundle them together.
Keep in mind that if you want to record your videos, review footage for up to 180 days, and share videos and photos, you'll need a Ring Protect Plan subscription in addition to the purchase of the equipment. Those plans start at $3.99 per month.
If you use Discord, beware: Your activity—in both public messages and voice channels—might have been scraped and sold online for as little as $5.
404Media initially broke the story, reporting that an online service called Spy Pet was scraping over 10,000 servers throughout Discord. The massive amount of data accumulated from this activity is being used for multiple purposes: Spy Pet is selling it for as cheap as $5 via cryptocurrency (including Bitcoin, Ethereum, or Monero) for anyone who wants it, but especially for those in law enforcement as well as organizations looking to train AI systems.
According to the report, Spy Pet essentially turns Discord's fragmented platform, where users can post on thousands of servers of their choosing, into an easy way to target one user's activity. Anyone who pays can decide to see what you posted where in one convenient location. In short, it's not good.
404Media tested out Spy Pet, and found it works as advertised. While the outlet cannot confirm Spy Pet's claims of having the data of over 14,000 servers, 600 million users, and 3 billion messages, it was able to successfully purchase data from the service. Apparently, you can look up a specific user for about 10 cents. (I guess that's all we're worth.)
Spy Pet has data from a variety of different servers, from gaming communities like Minecraft, Among Us, and Runescape-themed services, to servers concerning cryptocurrency. That said, 404Media reports that many of the tens of thousands of servers listed here don't have any data at all, and don't appear likely to be scraped.
This is obviously a massive breach of user privacy, but it's a complicated story. For one, Spy Pet doesn't actually scrape direct messages: Your private messages between other Discord users are safe, it's just the messages you've posted in the servers themselves.
Here's where things get tricky: These messages aren't necessarily private. Anyone who joins the server will be able to see everything you post, and could pull that data themselves. Theoretically, if someone was a part of every Discord server you were active in, they could perform their own Spy Pet scraping of sorts. It would be weird of them, but they could do it.
What Spy Pet is doing, of course, goes beyond that: They're scraping so much data and making it possible to check out all your activity for a dime of crypto. Plus, they're selling it to sources you never consented to. Law enforcement probably doesn't care about your Discord activity, but you didn't expect the cops to scrutinize your Minecraft memes. The same goes for AI companies: I wouldn't want my Discord data being used to train AI models, even if these companies are running out of internet to train their systems on.
Unfortunately, there's not much to do about the data that's already been scraped: Spy Pet doesn't appear to have any interest in removing your data from its servers if it's there.
However, going forward, keep an eye out for any bots that want to join your Discord channels. That's how Spy Pet appears to have scraped all this data in the first place. It's not always easy, as this Reddit thread explains: Some bots don't advertise themselves as such, but will appear as new accounts with no identifying information or profile picture, and will silently stay in the channel to scrape data. Better safe than sorry: Boot fishy lurkers.
If you're in control of the server, consider taking some privacy actions, like setting the server as private, or changing the verification settings for the server. These changes won't guarantee privacy, but they'll help keep bots away from your channels.
While it might not feel as public as something like Twitter, assume everything you post on Discord will be seen by anyone and everyone. That's really a good rule of thumb for anything that isn't end-to-end encrypted, but also, anything you post or send online at all. Even in the most secure of situations, nothing on the internet is foolproof, and someone, somewhere, may see what you said. If you join a Discord server, keep that in mind before you start typing away.
Raycast, which is free for individual users, is my favorite Spotlight replacement. This is an application you can launch with a simple keyboard shortcut to see a simple text box. Type a few characters to do just about anything. There's plenty of functionality built in—you can launch any application just by beginning to type its name and hitting "Enter," for example, or you can type a URL and hit "Enter" to open it in your default browser. You can also search for files or toggle various system settings.
That functionality alone would make Raycast worth installing. The truly great thing about Raycast, however, is the plugins. Now, Raycast is far from the first launcher app to offer plugins, but the application is unique for offering a built-in store that allows you to add these plugins in just a few keystrokes. Just type "Store," hit "Enter," and you can browse the collection. Failing that, you can browse the Raycast store online.
There are a lot of really useful tools here, and which ones are best is going to vary depending on your workflow. Here are the most useful sorts of plugins I've found.
I brew beer and mostly store my recipes in OneNote. I'm also a big Obsidian user—my personal journal and work life both live there. Raycast makes it easy to search these and other note-taking applications. There are extensions for Apple Notes, OneNote, Obsidian, and even Bear. All of these allow you to search your notes right in Raycast and preview them right there. If you want to open the note, no problem: Just hit enter. It is so great being able to quickly find and pull up such information.
Modern password managers integrate well in the browser but it can be annoying to pull up passwords when you're not browsing. The Raycast extensions for Bitwarden, 1Password, Dashlane, and KeePassXC all make it easy to copy any password in a couple of keystrokes. Just open the plugin, type the password you're looking for, and hit enter.
You can take this even further and quickly grab two-factor authentication codes. There's an extension for Authy, which notably still works even though that application no longer offers a desktop app. There's also an extension that can grab 2FA codes from iMessage, meaning you won't have to open up your messages just to copy and paste a code. Both work really well.
I usually know which album I want to listen to next. The Raycast extension for Spotify allows me to quickly type the name of an album and play it. It also works for playlists, artists, and songs. I love being able to quickly start any music without having to fuss around in the Spotify user interface. There's a similar extension for Apple Music, if that's your go-to player.
Wikipedia is an excellent starting point for researching basically anything. The Wikipedia extension for Raycast allows you to search for a page and even read it, all without moving your hands from the keyboard. You can also open the article in your default browser by hitting enter.
Ejecting a drive on the Mac means opening the Finder and clicking the eject button in the left-hand sidebar. It's annoyingly slow. The extension Single Disk Eject shows you all currently connected external drives and allows you to disconnect by hitting Enter. It's great.
There are no end to the number of Mac applications that do nothing but keep your Mac awake. The extension Coffee offers this without the need to install an application. You can trigger it from Raycast or you can enable a menu bar icon if you prefer.
I could go on for a long time. Here's a few more quick highlights:
System monitor lets you quickly look over CPU, memory, and disk use.
MyIP shows you your current IP address.
Speedtest lets you quickly test your internet connection speed.
Shell allows you to run any Terminal command without actually opening the Terminal.
This is just a start: There are so many more tools. I recommend checking out the store to get a better idea of what you can do.
TikTok is full of people “discovering” spy mirrors in their hotel rooms and Airbnbs. Or, more often, they use a normal hotel mirror to demonstrate a trick that supposedly reveals such mirrors. (Phew—this one’s fine! We’re safe!) Unfortunately, these videos rely on a misunderstanding of how mirrors work. Read on and I’ll tell you why these tricks are bullshit, and an easy way of actually telling whether a mirror is two-way. (It doesn’t involve your fingernail.)
The TikToks all say they will show you a way to find out whether you’re being watched. The idea is that either there could be camera hidden behind the mirror, or the mirror might be the kind you see in interrogation rooms on TV, where the “mirror” is actually a window between two rooms. People on the other side can see right in.
These mirrors do exist. They are perhaps most properly known as “one-way mirrors” (since the mirror only works if you’re standing on one side of it) but you’ll also hear them called “two-way mirrors” (since they can act as either a mirror or a window). I’m going to call them “spy mirrors” to avoid confusion.
Now, do spy mirrors exist in hotels? I mean, I kind of doubt that Holiday Inn goes to the trouble and expense of installing a specialized form of glass in all their bathroom mirrors, when they can’t even keep the pancake machine working. But you never know. So let’s dive in to the problems with the TikToks—and then I’ll tell you how these mirrors really work, so you can spot them easily.
My favorite example of the genre is this one, a lengthy step-by-step involving Scotch tape, three colors of dry-erase marker, and one person patiently instructing another on how “a girl” can figure out whether they are “safe” when traveling. The video is three fricking minutes long, and it doesn’t demonstrate anything that putting your fingernail against the mirror wouldn’t do in seconds.
According to TikTok, the telltale sign of a spy mirror is that you cannot see a gap between your finger and its reflection. You may hear the rhyming rule: “If there’s no space, leave this place”—the “space” being that gap between your real finger and your mirror finger.
So why not just use your finger? Good news: people simply putting their fingers against mirrors are all over TikTok, as well. Someone puts their finger up to a hotel mirror, then declares it to be either a spy mirror, or a normal mirror. (Sometimes the camera angle lets us see the gap, too; many videos make it hard to see if the person has done the test correctly.)
It’s true that you’ll see a gap between your fingernail and its reflection in most “real” mirrors.
The most common style of mirror you’ll see in home and hotel bathrooms is made of glass. It has a thin layer of reflective material (“silvering”) that is usually applied to the back surface of the glass. This way, when you put your fingernail against the glass, you’re not directly touching the reflective part. This is called a “back silvered” or “second surface” mirror. So, yes: normally you’ll be able to see a gap.
According to the TikToks, if you don’t see a gap, then the mirror is watching you. That’s not true.
The gap just tells you that the mirror is back-silvered. Real mirrors can be back-silvered or front-silvered and still be legit, normal mirrors. What you’re looking for, if you’ve got your eye out for spy mirrors, is something that is half-silvered. That refers to the type of coating, not just where it’s applied.
The silvering on (half-silvered) spy mirrors is applied to the front, so a front-silvered mirror could be a spy mirror. But it could also be a front-silvered regular mirror. (These aren’t very common, but they exist.)
A mirror that appears to show no gap could also be a back-silvered mirror whose pane of glass is very thin. I tested some mirrors around my house, and saw a large gap on one bathroom mirror, a smaller gap on another, and a very thin, difficult-to-see gap on a pocket-sized makeup mirror. The makeup mirror just has thinner glass than the others.
If you’ve never seen a one-way mirror in person, you might think it’s some super-secret spy technology that’s impossible to spot. In reality, if you own a pair of mirrored sunglasses, you can do your own tests.
Mirrored sunglasses and spy mirrors work the same way. Three things make up the effect:
Light from the front can pass to the back.
Light from the back can pass to the front.
Bright light from the front reflects off the half-silvering, showing you your own reflection instead of whatever is behind the glass.
The whole effect depends on lighting. If the room behind the glass is dark, and the room in front of the glass is bright, then people in the bright room will only see their own reflection. But if the people in the dark room were to turn on their lights, or if the people in the bright room were to turn theirs off, the effect would be lost. It’s like a more dramatic version of how your home’s windows appear at night. You can’t see outdoors because the reflections from indoor lights are brighter than whatever is shining in from outside. The half-silvering just enhances this effect.
Forget the fingernail test. All you really need is to manipulate the lighting, and you can do that in a matter of seconds with your phone’s flashlight. All you need to do is:
Turn off the lights in the room, or cup your hands around your eyes as you peer in. (Same as you would do if you were trying to peek into a car window on a sunny day.)
Put a flashlight right up to the mirror, and shine it through.
If the mirror is fake, you’ll be able to see the inside of the room on the other side of the mirror (or whatever is behind there).
That’s all there is to it. This trick works because you’re shining light into the area behind the glass, and allowing it to bounce back through the glass at you. (You don’t want to shine the flashlight on the exact spot you’re looking through, but if you hold it next to your face instead of right in front of your face, that will do the trick.)
I don’t have a police interrogation room handy, but I do have a pair of mirrored sunglasses, so I took the above photos of them with normal lighting (left) and in the dark with a flashlight (right). With the flashlight trick, you can literally see right through them.
By the way, you’ll also want to check what’s behind the supposed spy mirror, if you think you’ve found one. A mirror on a wall that is shared with an “employees only” room? Yeah, I’d be suspicious. (In that case, the flashlight trick would let you see the peeping Tom’s face, so you’d get a quick confirmation. Somebody please put that on TikTok instead of yet another “look at my fingernail” video.)
But I’ve seen at least one TikTok where the supposed spy mirror looks like a shower door. Mirrored shower doors are a cute design gimmick: the idea is for the person taking the shower to be able to see out, without others being able to see in. (Here’s a public bathroom that uses the same trick.) Half-silvered mirrors are also what enable smart mirrors like this one to exist: when the screen behind the mirror lights up, you see what’s on the screen. Otherwise, you just see your reflection. And finally, polished metal can be reflective and would not show a gap. That’s not a spy mirror either.
I love writing, but with so much to distract us these days, gathering enough focus to start writing can be a job all its own. That’s where distraction-free writing tools have come into play, including the recently released Freewrite Alpha from Astrohaus.
Building off the work the company has done with its previous Freewrite devices, like the clamshell Freewrite Traveler, the Freewrite Alpha promises an ultra-portable design that makes it easy to pick up and start writing. The real kicker here is the super small display, which is designed to only show two to three lines of text at a time.
This is a device for writing first drafts, including all the dirty mistakes that come with them. It’s designed to cut you off from your inner editor, allowing you to focus on telling your story as easily as possible. There are no social media apps to distract you, and there’s no way to browse the internet and get lost in hours of research in the process (although you can still back up your drafts to the cloud). All you can do is write, and that’s a good thing. But is the Alpha really the best tool for the job? I’ve got mixed thoughts.
At a glance, the Freewrite Alpha is a simple, low-profile mechanical keyboard with a small FSTN LCD display above it (like what you'd see on an alarm clock) and a single button to the side. On paper, the form factor is a dream come true for writers like me, who constantly struggle with wanting to ensure they’ve got the best grammar and spelling possible. I like the idea of only displaying a few lines of text at a time, and the fact that I can’t get lost browsing the internet or social media is a nice bonus.
I also love that I can simply pull out the Alpha and power it on to start writing. There's no need to open up a word processor or navigate to Google Docs. I love sending drafts directly to my email for safekeeping, as well as the fact that it automatically connects to the cloud when the internet is on and saves my drafts there. There’s also an option to sync it to your computer via a USB-C cable, and I don’t think I’ve ever had to charge the device after receiving it several weeks ago. These are all features that work seamlessly in the background or with just a few keypresses, and that’s really nice. It's exactly what you would want from a device like this.
In practice, though, the Freewrite Alpha is far from the writing escape I hoped it would be. I’ve spent a good few weeks treating it as my primary writing tool for my personal projects, carrying it everywhere I go along with my usual MacBook Air. While I love how portable it is, there are a few things about the Freewrite Alpha that turn me away, and most of it comes down to the physical components of the device.
Before we get into the nitty gritty here, remember the Freewrite Alpha isn’t supposed to be a replacement for your laptop, or even your iPad or smartphone. These sorts of digital typewriters are still a developing category, so there isn’t really much you can properly compare them to. They were designed to do just one thing: let you write without distractions. As such, I’m very hesitant to make any kind of comparison with other devices, at least as far as features go.
Still, I do think it is important to compare the physical components of the Freewrite Alpha with those from other devices, as there are a few things I believe the Alpha falls short on. It's not a laptop, but it's hard not to want to judge it against the premium feeling of Apple's MacBook Air lineup, which remains extremely light but still feels like a solid piece of tech.
One of the biggest issues I have with the Freewrite Alpha is the build quality. Despite costing over $300, the Alpha is made completely of plastic. I don’t particularly have an issue with plastic in devices, aside from the obvious durability concerns. And I get why Astrohaus used plastic here, since the company wanted to make the Alpha as lightweight as possible. They’ve accomplished that, but it comes at a horrible price for the user.
That’s because the Freewrite Alpha is absolutely atrocious to hold or type on. It feels cheap, and while the included Kailh Choc V2 low-profile key switches feel great on their own, the fact that the entire device is just plastic makes it obnoxiously loud to type on. For writers like me, that's a bit distracting in its own way. There’s just nothing about this device that makes it feel premium, and if I spent $349 ($369 on Amazon) on a device that only does one thing, I would want it to do a little bit more. Sure, the Alpha is light enough for you to carry anywhere, but if you drop it on concrete while making your way into the office, is it going to survive the drop?
I get where Astrohaus is coming from here, but this feels like the designers cut the corners a little too sharply. Even putting some padding into the device to make it sound less cheap would have been a nice touch. As it stands now, I’ve used $20 keyboards that are more satisfying to type on, and less obnoxious, too, as they don’t make me feel like I’m boring a hole through my desktop with every keypress.
That isn't a slight against the switches used here, mind. The two-millimeter travel distance for keys isn't bad, and it feels good to type on most of the time. I never felt like I was missing keystrokes or repeating letters because of the travel distance, which is something you can run into with cheaper mechanical keyboards. That said, it's hard to properly enjoy these switches because of how springy the entire contraption feels and sounds when you're typing on it.
Another issue with the Alpha is the lack of any backlight on the display. Look, I love the display and how it limits how much of my manuscript I can see. This is a great feature, and one I’d love to see emulated in the software I use daily. But as it stands, you can only really use the Alpha and see what you’re typing if you’re already in a fairly bright area. This is definitely an area the Alpha could have benefited from an e-ink display, or at least a backlit LCD display. Astrohaus' other digital typewriters have e-ink screens, and while it's understandable that the company might have wanted to cut that feature for its most budget-friendly offering, the substitute here is just not a suitable replacement.
And while the device handles most of its tasks really well, there's still the matter of having to remember its various keybinds. Despite having room for some additional buttons along the top of the device, Astrohaus continues to utilize combinations of key presses to trigger various tasks, like starting a new document, archiving a document, etc. The company does provide handy online documentation to help with that, but it was a bit of a bother having to figure out the different keybinds and then remember them so that I could do everything I needed.
Despite my issues, I don’t hate the Alpha. In fact, it’s probably one of the more useful pieces of tech that I’ve tried in recent years. Sure, it doesn’t have the premium feel that I’d want from an expensive unitasker, but that’s something I can overlook. It does what it says, and it does it well enough. And while typing on this thing isn’t my favorite pastime ever, some folks will prefer the harder typing sounds that the Alpha brings to their writing area.
The Freewrite Alpha isn’t for every writer. But if you’re easily distracted, or if you don’t have a laptop or something else that you can easily carry around with you, then the Alpha can be a great tool to help increase your productivity and writing output. Sure, there are a few things that Astrohaus could do better, and hopefully, the company will improve upon the device in future iterations. As a distraction-free writer, though, the Alpha excels at putting you in the zone, so long as your own typing sounds aren't more likely to distract you than social media.
I very much enjoyed being able to just pull this thing out and get right to work, especially since it saved me from having to stare at my laptop for even longer throughout my day. I already do that enough, so having a dedicated writing tool is a great way to separate my personal projects and passions from the writing that I do to pay the bills. Being able to pull my document up on the computer when I had finished with it was also really nice, and it made moving from the rough draft to the finished copy of a short story I was writing much easier than I expected it to be. The content you create on the Alpha syncs up exceptionally well with the Postbox features that Astrohaus offers to all Freewrite device owners, though I can't help but wish there was a bit more connectivity between the two when actively working on a manuscript or short story. Pulling up a draft on the website removes it from the Alpha's onboard memory, so it really is just a first draft device.
For me, I wouldn’t say writing on the Freewrite Alpha has improved my writing capabilities or output exponentially. But it definitely made it easier to get lost in the words I was spewing out into my manuscript without overthinking them. I can already write a good few thousand words pretty quickly when I get into the right mindset, and the Alpha did make getting in the zone a little bit easier. As a distraction-free writer, the Alpha feels like a good step in the right direction, and despite still being on the expensive end, it is cheaper than the rest of the Freewrite line. Now, Astrohaus just needs to follow through and improve upon this initial idea with a design that makes a better compromise between budget and feel.
Not every decluttering hack works for every person, but there's a decluttering hack out there for everyone. If you're looking to really clear out or revolutionize a room or space in your home, the Peter Walsh method might be the one for you. It's a little intense, but also sure to help you get your space in order.
Peter Walsh is one of those organizational gurus, and he has offered up a lot of organizing tips and tricks ain his books, which include Let It Go: Downsizing Your Way to a Richer, Happier Life and Enough Already!: Clearing Mental Clutter to Become the Best You. A decade ago, the "Enough Already” concept even served as the basis for a show on OWN in Walsh sought to help families across the country realize how destructive their clutter was—and deal with it.
In order to do do that, he used a five-step system that aims to reframe your thinking around not only your clutter, but the space it's currently cluttering up—which is why the first step involves emptying the entire space and creating a vision for what it could be without all the clutter. Research has shown there’s a significant link between clutter and your sense of wellbeing, and that relationship goes both ways: Think of what a downer it is to be in a disorganized room filled with junk, and how being in that negative headspace doesn’t exactly put you in the frame of mind to clean. That's why creating (or recreating) a strong, positive vision of what the space could be (with a little effort) is the crucial first step in Walsh's method.
Here are the five steps to follow to carry out this aggressive process:
Empty out the space. No, really: Clear everything out. If you’re decluttering your kitchen, put everything in bins and stick those bins in the dining room. If a room is too big and contains too much stuff, work in smaller chunks. Instead of pulling everything out of your bedroom at once, for instance, you can work these steps for your closet, then your open space, your desk, etc., one at a time. But be sure you select and define a space, then start by clearing it completely.
Create a vision for the space, and set an intention for it. Your vision and intention for the kitchen could be to have enough room to cook more often, but still have adequate storage space for the tools you’ll need. Your vision for your closet could be to see all of your clothes and accessories more easily so you can get dressed more efficiently. Ask yourself what you want from the space, and envision yourself living it.
Sort everything you removed into two categories: You need a “vision” pile and an “out-the-door” pile. If something aligns with that vision and intention you set, it can stay. If it doesn’t, throw it away or donate it. The point of setting that intention in Step 2 is to give you something concrete to work toward, so use that as a guide.
Get rid of what you don't need: Go through the “out-the-door” pile and designate any items you want to donate, then put the rest in the trash or recycling. Don’t hold onto them or store them anywhere else; Walsh makes it clear that procrastinating on getting rid of stuff will only lead to more clutter. Put your donation bin in your trunk or by your door, and the put the trash bag outside. It can’t stick around.
Reimagine what you want to keep: Move everything from the “vision” pile back into the room, arranging it in a way that will serve your goals for the space. This could involve finding a workable storage solution, like cabinet organizers or over-the-door racks. A crucial component of real organizing and decluttering is making sure everything you do keep has its own place.
Walsh's approach is obviously a little more intense than others, because it involves clearing a whole space and reimagining how you might use it—but keeping that idealized vision at the center of what you’re doing will not only help you declutter, but to keep the space decluttered once you're using it the way you really want to.
Every tech company is getting in on AI. (Even Apple, soon enough.) Opera, the web browser, has an AI chatbot it calls Aria, that at first doesn't seem much different than any other chatbot you may run across in 2024. However, Opera has added some clever features here that actually make the bot a bit more useful than I expected.
Unlike Google or Microsoft, Opera doesn't have its own AI technology. Instead, Opera's chatbot, Aria, is powered by both OpenAI and Google. In that way, none of the responses themselves are that revolutionary, and are pretty much what you'd expect, whether using ChatGPT or Gemini.
Aria lives in the sidebar of Opera, as a funky "A" icon. To use Aria, you need to have an Opera account, so if you haven't set one up yet, Opera will walk you through it. That said, it takes a few tries for the browser to recognize you've connected your account.
Once up and running, Aria presents a typical chatbot interface: I'm presented with three different starting point options if I can't think of anything to ask it. These change every time you refresh the bot, but on my first run through, I was greeted by: "How do I make a great resume?" "Can you suggest fun activities to do indoors on a rainy day?" "What are the most satisfying activities for my free time?"
If you don't find any of the prompts helpful (I usually don't), you can move onto the actual chat box. If you've used ChatGPT or Gemini, the initial experience is the same: Type of what you want to ask, hit send, and wait for a response. Opera takes a moment longer than some other chatbots, but comes back with typical answers.
What's cool, however, is that this AI chatbot has two features I haven't seen with other chatbots: As highlighted by MakeUseOf, if you highlight a selection of text in the response, you'll see some extended options. There's a highlight tool which is fine if you want to keep that text selection in mind the in the future, but more pertinently, you'll find Reuse and Rephrase.
Reuse will drop the text selection just above the text field as a mini tab. If you ask Aria another question, it incorporates your reused selection in your query. You can "reuse" up to five text snippets from a previous query, too, so you have your chance to stack items you found useful. If you're asking Aria about a famous figure, like George Washington, you can pull facts from the response with Reuse and ask Aria to generate a quiz from those data points. If you're looking for dinner suggestions, you can pull elements from one response and ask for a recipe based on that.
On the flip side, there's Rephrase. Now, other chatbots have a rephrase option, which rewrites an entire response if it doesn't seem right. But with Rephrase, you can ask Aria to try again on specific selections of text in the response, rather than the entire response itself. Opera even includes a fun animation as it rewrites the section, changing each letter into any number of alphanumeric characters until landing on the new statement. If the chatbot gets a whole response totally wrong, it'd make sense to have it redo the whole thing. But Rephrase seems like it'd be useful for those times where the response itself is solid, but a line or a paragraph just didn't hit the mark.
Where I've seen this feature struggle most is with punctuation: if you are only changing a sentence at a time, just watch out for Aria accidentally wiping out a period or an exclamation point.
Like other chatbots, Opera also has a refinement tool for Aria to adjust the bot's responses to your liking. This one's pretty good though: First up, you have your choice between style as a blog post, email, essay, presentation, social post, speech, or article. After choosing one, enter what you actually want the chatbot to do, then choose a tone: formal, informal, neutral, academic, business, funny, or sarcastic. (Spoiler alert: Aria is not funny.)
Here's where you can really get into the weeds: Under the "My Style" section, you can train Aria to write in your particular style. Aria first asks you to write a formal complaint to the establishment of your choice in five to 10 sentences, a product review for something you bought recently in four to eight sentences, and a casual text to a friend about weekend plans. Finally, choose whether you want Aria's response to be short, medium, or long. Phew.
If you like a response here, you can save it, and treat it like a normal conversation with Aria—Reuse and Rephrase options included.
If you haven't found AI chatbots all that useful thus far, Aria might not be the groundbreaking new tool you've been looking for. But if you're already using AI on a daily basis, these tools seem useful. I particularly like the reuse option: It seems like an efficient way to break down the most useful parts of a previous response and generate a new one that actually delivers an answer you can run with.
If you're already a fan of the Opera browser, having Aria in the sidebar is an unobtrusive way to add AI to your routine.
Although the Skullcandy Crusher ANC 2 are advertised as active noise-canceling (ANC) headphones, their bass-rumbling feature is the main attraction. For a limited time, Amazon is currently selling these comfortable over-ear headphones for $139.88 (originally $229.99), their lowest price yet, according to price-tracking tools.
If you're all about that bass, you're going to be into these headphones. I love watching music live, and while using the Skullcandy Crusher ANC 2, I feel like I'm at a concert. The thumping bass is powerful, in a good way. You also get full control of it with an easy-to-use wheel that scrolls up or down to increase or reduce the bass. The "crusher" feature is a bass enhancer, but it sounds more calibrated than just shooting up the bass on your EQ settings.
The ANC feature is decent but pales in comparison to what the best over-ear ANC headphones can offer. It also has an aware mode that you can use to hear your surroundings, and like the ANC, it's decent. Besides the bass, these headphones shine in their stylish design and comfort, as well as a well-designed app with customizable controls, EQ options, and features for voice assistance. The battery life is also impressive, with up to 60 hours of juice depending on the volume and features you have on. The addition of the stereo 3.5mm jack is always appreciated.
I've enjoyed using these headphones and pretending I am attending a live show. They're a fun pair of headphones and very good value at $139.88. But again, they're not for everyone. If you are a stickler for a perfect balanced sound, these aren't for you.
It’s rare, but occasionally I’ll drop by a restaurant and come across a peanut butter burger. Peanut butter. On a meat burger. I may be behind the herd, but this sounds like a trick to me. It’s possible that I'm slightly scarred from that awful peanut butter omelet I made once (in my defense, I was 10 years old), but I usually chalk this burger up as the odd restaurant’s playful menu item—pointed at, but never to be ordered. That’s not fair of me though, is it? As they say in the world of earnest food exploration, don’t knock it ‘til ya try it. So I did.
Admittedly, as I rolled into the supermarket to pick up ingredients, I had a negative mindset. I was thinking of ingredients that could make the burger better, assuming from the jump that it would need help. I wasn’t totally wrong, but a tad circumspect I guess.
Peanut butter has a powerful flavor. If it has its druthers, it will command the stage and the entire roof of your mouth. I wanted a few co-stars for balance, so I chose bacon and an aged Dubliner cheese from Kerry Gold. I usually love a burger that's been run through the garden, but this didn’t seem like the right time, so I held off on the usual vegetables.
I expected the burger to be extremely nutty and dull, lacking the normally juicy and umami-packed experience I love when devouring a burger. I was wrong.
I’m surprised I didn’t think of it at first, but peanuts and peanut sauces aren’t new companions to meats and savory dishes. Think of Thai chicken or pork satay with peanuts, or kare-kare, a stew from the Philippines featuring a thick peanut sauce and beef or oxtail.
Peanut butter, especially the unsweetened kind, has an earthy, roasted flavor, and a subtle sweetness. It plays well with fats and spices. Peanut butter sits in a special category with cocoa and cinnamon—flavors initially considered sweet, but they actually have a natural bitterness or tannic quality that can complement a range of dishes. If spicy peanut sauce makes sense on your fried chicken wings, I have to say, it certainly has a place on your burger.
Make a good burger. This might seem obvious, but tell that to the restaurants that made me unseasoned burgers, dry burgers, low-quality, and under-cooked burgers. It’s tempting to try and pile on the condiments in an effort to save the burger, but if the central ingredient is off then it’s over. Peanut butter isn’t going to save a bad burger. Furthermore, peanut butter is sticky and can leave your mouth feeling dry. It needs moisture to help wash it down, and the fat from a thick, juicy burger does exactly that. Season it well, and cook it with love.
Use salty companions. I usually aim for balance when working with powerful ingredients, and the same is true with peanut butter. Peanut butter has a natural sweetness and slight bitter quality I mentioned earlier, and that tastes great with plenty of salt and a hint of acid. To reach these marks I used crispy, old-school bacon (not that low-sodium stuff, or uncured lies), and aged cheddar, which has a faint bite to it. I also tried tomato and pickles on my burger—for science—and while they both work, pickles are better.
Don’t be afraid. I tried one burger with Crazy Richard’s crunchy, unsalted, unsweetened peanut butter. I also tried a burger with Jif and all its sugar-boosted, hydrogenated glory. I’m shocked to say it, but they were both great. Jif is thicker, of course, but the flavor combination, even with the sweetness, never went south. As long as your burger is juicy, the layer of peanut butter won’t be too dry or sticky either.
Should peanut butter go on burgers? Yes. I believe this well-loved condiment is more versatile than I gave it credit for. So go ahead, mix it into your cookie batters, stir it into an umami dipping sauce, and slather it on your meat burgers. When you’re ready for your next food adventure, peanut-butter-topped burgers don’t disappoint.
Every home comes with maintenance, repairs, and surprising challenges, which is why most of us already have the obvious essentials on hand—fire extinguishers, flashlights, basic tools, and the like. But there are a several items you might not think of as a “home essential” that are going to prove very useful to you one day. Here are the unexpected home essentials you’re going to be glad to have on hand.
The first time a contractor needs to park on your street, or your in-laws are visiting and they like to park right in front of your house or you have a broken sidewalk that could lead to a messy personal injury lawsuit, you’re going to want traffic cones. Having a few of these babies out in your shed or down in your basement will make your life a lot easier if you need to block off areas or warn pedestrians or drivers—or just save your parking spot when you run to the store for.
It sounds fancy, but an endoscope tool is just a small camera at the end of a flexible wire. Having one means you’ll be able to see inside small, closed-off spaces without tearing holes in your walls or floors, you’ll be able to discover the reason your kitchen sink won’t drain properly, where that screw wound up when you dropped it, and what is making that disturbing scratching noise in your bedroom wall. There are a lot of affordable ones that work with your phone as a screen, and you’ll be glad you have it.
Blackouts are going to happen, and pilot lights are going to go out. Rather than relying on wooden matches you forget to restock (and that can go bad over time if stored improperly) or a traditional fueled lighter that you can forget to refuel, a rechargeable lighter needs no fuel and has a flexible neck enabling you to get it into tight spots.
You might feel like spiders and insects belong outside, but they do manage to find their way in. Instead of smashing them or trying to catch-and-release with a glass or a paper plate, the Critter Catcher will help you scoop them up and deposit them back outside (without ever having to get too close).
Once you own them, you will use zip ties constantly. You’ll use them to tie stuff together, to tie stuff down, to make temporary repairs, and a dozen other ways. The simplicity, relative durability, and cheapness of zip ties makes them something everyone should have on hand in their home.
Whether it’s a couch, a washing machine, or any other large, heavy, bulky object or appliance, you need a mover’s dolly. Hang it in the garage and forget about it, and then when you need to transport your old fridge to the curb you can glide it out there with ease, or when you decide the living room needs to be totally re-arranged to encourage positive energy flows, you won’t break your back trying to move every piece of furniture by lifting it.
If you’ve ever used that blue gunk to put a poster up on the wall of your dorm room or rental, you know the fundamental nature of Museum Putty. But this stuff is incredibly useful, because you can use it to ensure that nothing ever slips off a shelf. Anything you want to display can be secured in place, and no amount of roughhousing children, clumsy guests, or earthquakes will knock it off. You can also use it to stabilize the shelves themselves if they wobble or rattle on their supports. It won’t damage surfaces and comes right off when you need it to.
We've got so many devices to charge, and all those cords and dongles need somewhere to go—installing USB outlets throughout your home will make your life easier. You won’t have to hunt around for the right adapter, you won’t have things plugged into your laptop all the time, and you’ll be able to plug in immediately if your phone or tablet (or anything else USB-powered) gets a low-battery warning. And they are easy to install even if you have no experience with electricity.
If you've ever dropped (and subsequently lost) a tiny screw or nail into a narrow opening, you need a magnetic pick-up tool like this one. Never lose a screw, bolt, or other tiny metal object again—even if it goes down your bathroom drain.
Peacock has come in from behind with a strong bench of original shows (the greatest of these was/is Poker Face)—but also a solid assortment of original or exclusive movies, some brand new, and some that dropped during quarantine times that you might have missed, being otherwise occupied. There’s some prestige stuff here, but also some slightly more disreputable fare, including a drama from some people you may have liked in Real Housewives, and a bunch of clever Blumhouse horror. There’s a little bit here for everyone.
Ethan Coen goes solo as director (co-writing with Tricia Cooke) on this gloriously unhinged tribute to '70s exploitation romance movies. Marian and Jamie are a couple of friends who, setting off on a road trip to Tallahassee, Florida, discover that they've taken the wrong car. They learn this when they discover a briefcase full of sex toys and a human head. Of such things are great lesbian adventures born.
Paul Giamatti stars alongside Oscar winner Da'Vine Joy Randolph in this Alexander Payne-directed movie about a curmudgeonly teacher at a New England prep school who winds up getting stuck babysitting a bunch of students stuck on campus over a Christmas break. Randolph plays Mary Lamb, a cafeteria worker who recently lost a son; the two bond over shared loss and changing times.
Written by Diablo Cody and directed by Zelda Williams, Lisa Frankenstein didn't do much business at the box office, which is a shame. It's the unique and funny story of a misunderstood '80s goth girl (Kathryn Newton) who accidentally reanimates the corpse of a young man who died in 1837 (Cole Sprouse). Blending tones and genres with a 1980s neon-lit visual style, it's a fun—and surprisingly charming—horror-comedy.
Tony Shalhoub is back as America's favorite obsessive-compulsive detective, Adrian Monk, picking up the role 14 years after the end of the series. Impressively, he doesn't have appeared to miss a beat in a movie that, very sensibly, addresses the impact of Covid on the life of the fastidious and phobic Monk as he becomes embroiled in a case involving his stepdaughter's dead fiancé.
An unlikely rom-com in space stars Anthony Mackie and Zoë Chao as a couple of astronauts who've been adrift for three years on a ship without navigation. Everybody back home thinks they're dead, so, for them, they're literally the last two people around. Kristian Mercado's movie finds them poles apart, on opposite ends of almost every conversation, but with a need to communicate that draws them closer together. It's charmingly old-fashioned in its willingness to rely on dialogue to carry us forward.
This Blumhouse slasher dropped on Peacock at the height of the Covid pandemic which was, well, a lot. Now that enough time has passed that we can pretend it never happened/isn't still happening, it's a bit easier to swallow this wonderfully nasty cabin-in-the-woods slasher. Scream's Kevin Williamson wrote the tale of murder in quarantine.
You might have heard of the latest Christopher Nolan joint, the explosive story of Manhattan Project director and ambivalent father of the atom bomb: J. Robert Oppenheimer. The movie took home seven Academy Awards, including for Best Picture. Its box office success offers hope for a post-superhero future.
Billy Eichner (who also co-wrote the movie) stars alongside Luke McFarlane in this cute, funny, and charmingly old-school rom-com that blends genre tropes with a refreshingly pro-queer context. Bros turned off a lot of straight moviegoers at the box office, but it makes for fun home viewing.
Another unique Blumhouse slasher, this one set at an LGBTQ conversion camp. Scary enough, even before the bodies start to drop. The talented cast includes Carrie Preston, Anna Chlumsky, and Kevin Bacon. Not everything lands perfectly, but everyone’s having fun with the spin on a classic premise.
That gorgeous rental property that you’re looking at might not be all it’s cracked up to be—particularly when the architect was an occult-obsessed polygamist who keeps making his presence known decades after the house was built. A Covid-stressed doctor and her husband head off for a rest at the very cool house, only to get caught up in a bunch of deeply weird shit. It doesn’t all hang together, but it’s effective enough at moments to make for a spooky time at the rental office.
This effective Peacock original documentary serves as a still-needed reminder that the Rosa Parks of our collective imagination is largely a work of fiction. Far from the little old lady too tired to give up her seat, Parks, at the time of the Montgomery bus boycott, was a young-ish activist who’d been planning and strategizing around civil rights for years. Her resolve and radical politics shine through here.
Another Blumhouse horror, another creepy house—and more Kevin Bacon. There might be an emerging flavor to Peacock’s horror offerings and, honestly, I’m not mad about it. Here, Bacon is joined by Amanda Seyfried as his too-young actress wife, of whom he’s perpetually jealous—a situation complicated and exacerbated by their Welsh vacation house. The property itself seems to be loaded with malicious intent, mirroring the marital troubles of our unhappy couple.
Though it hits plenty of stock biopic notes, this sports drama offers an inspiring origin story for LeBron James, starring Mookie Cook as a young LeBron who, along with his friends, formed the #1 high school basketball team in the country. It’s based on the book of the same name co-written by Buzz Bissinger, best known for Friday Night Lights.
Awkward name aside (presumably there are a lot of movies named The Pass?), this one’s an entertainingly soapy drama from the titular Real Housewives of Atlanta power couple. Drew Sidora and Rob Riley star as a couple that give each other one night off from fidelity, with predictably steamy results. Nothing wrong with a movie that gives exactly what it promises.
Writer/director Alex Heller also stars here, alongside J. Smith-Cameron and Steve Buscemi, as a young college dropout coping with bipolar disorder who returns home to her challenging family. Heller’s great, the dialogue is clever, and the movie gets high marks for its more-authentic-than-usual portrayal of life with bipolar disorder.
Jordan Peele’s latest managed a thoroughly unnerving atmosphere even as it blends comedy and scares in an alien invasion horror film that’s also a little bit of a western. Daniel Kaluuya and Keke Palmer star in another unclassifiable and original triumph.
Solid reviews met abysmal box office returns when this docudrama was released way back in 2020, but it’s worth a look. With some of the style of great journalism-themed dramas of days past, She Said looks at the investigation that ultimately exposed Harvey Weinstein’s history of abuse and assault, as led by New York Times reporters Jodi Kantor (Zoe Kazan) and Megan Twohey (Carey Mulligan).
A London cleaning lady (circa 1957) becomes enamored with a client’s Dior dress, and heads off to Paris to get one of her own when she comes into a bit of extra money. In the process, she falls into the world of haute couture and high culture. Lesley Manville is an absolute delight as the lead in this adaptation of Paul Gallico’s 1958 novel.
Cassie (Carey Mulligan) seemed like she had everything going for her before she dropped out of medical school and started spending her nights hanging out at bars, seemingly easy prey for skeezy guys. Except that there’s more to Cassie than meets the eye, and those dudes at the bar have no idea what’s coming. Writer/director Emerald Fennell (who followed this up with the similarly tough-to-classify Saltburn) blends comedy with revenge thriller themes and wraps it all in an ultra-stylish candy-colored package.
Based on a memoir from Quawntay “Bosco” Adams (here played by Aubrey Joseph), who was sentenced in 2004 to 35 years in a maximum security prison for the heinous and unforgivable crime of—well, the movie keeps that under wraps for quite a while. Suffice it to say that it’s not hard to root for him as he plans an ingenious and fairly spectacular escape with the help of a prison pen pal played by Nikki Blonsky.
Ridley Scott hasn’t had a ton of luck with his big historical epics, but this very slightly smaller film about the Gucci dynasty had more success at the box office, and generally positive reviews. Lady Gaga and Adam Driver star in the glitzy, moderately campy crime drama about the battle for control of the fashion brand.
Writer/director Bryce McGuire expands his 2014 short to feature length with somewhat mixed results, but the horror-fantasy kicks off with a fun premise: this one's about a haunted swimming pool—keeping, I suppose, in line with the "spooky property" theme of other Peacock horrors. It doesn't all float, but Wyatt Russell and Kerry Condon are effective leads, and there's some legitimately scary stuff going on.
Old school survival drama (based on true events) about a family living in the backwoods confronted by a horrific fire. Peter Facinelli and Fiona Dourif star.
A broad approach to the history (and present) of the American Civil Rights movement can be useful, but it's often more illuminating to zoom in. This smart doc uses interviews and archival footage to tell the story of the title county in the 1960s, a time when the area was rough 80% Black in population, but with zero non-white voters.
Feels a little late in the day, perhaps, for a movie parodying boy bands, but this third Trolls movie is otherwise well on par with the series: It's joke-heavy, family-friendly, and just generally silly fun. Justin Timberlake heads up one of those all-star voice casts that includes Anna Kendrick, Keenan Thompson, Ron Funches, and RuPaul. There's also a sing-along version for brave parents.
You can get this 5-in-1 MagSafe-compatible charging station on sale for $49.97 right now (reg. $79) through April 21. It has three wireless charging areas: One charging stand is for iPhones (12 to 15 series) or other Qi-enabled phones, the lower area is for AirPods, and the last one is for Apple Watches. The wired part of the charging station is a USB-A port. It also has a nightlight feature that allows you to choose between three dimmable brightness levels.
You can get this 5-in-1 MagSafe-compatible charging station on sale for $49.97 right now (reg. $79) through April 21 at 11:59 p.m. PT, though prices can change at any time.
Trying to keep on top of securing all your various digital accounts can seem daunting, but sometimes the simplest checks are the most effective. Case in point: Seeing how many different devices you're logged into at the moment.
This is useful for two reasons. First of all, it might flag up a device that has accessed your account without your permission or knowledge—perhaps an unwelcome and uninvited guest, someone who has got hold of your login credentials.
Second, it can show you where your accounts might still be active on older hardware that you're no longer using—maybe gadgets you've sold or given away. These devices might not be currently compromised, but they could be if you're still logged in on them.
You can easily do do this for your Google account, and it's also possible to do it for your Apple account—the ones you're probably logged into on your main desktop or laptop computer. It's worth checking—you might have more active logins than you realize.
The easiest place to manage the devices logged in to your Apple ID is from a Mac or an iPhone. From a Mac, open the Apple menu then System Settings, then click your name at the top of the sidebar. You'll see a list of all of the devices you're currently logged in to, and you can click on any of them to get more details.
These devices might include your phone and laptop, but also your Apple Watch, HomePod smart speakers, and streaming devices that you've signed into Apple TV Plus. The information you can get on each device will vary, but might include a serial number and the software version the device is running, which can help you work out what's what.
To disconnect a device from your Apple ID, click Remove from Account. Remember that you can always sign in again on these devices, so you're not cutting them off for good—but if someone is using your device without your permission, then they'll suddenly find their access has been cut off.
You can find the same list of devices and options in other places as well. On an iPhone, for example, open up the iOS Settings screen, then tap your name at the top. In a web browser, you can head to your Apple ID account page, then click Devices. Devices can be unlinked from any of these locations too.
On the same screens—on macOS, iOS, and the web—you'll also notice a Sign-In & Security page. Once you've disconnected any suspicious devices from your Apple account, head to this page to make sure it's difficult for anyone to sign in as you again. You can manage changing your password, turning on two-factor authentication, and adjusting your account recovery settings from here.
Like them or hate them, YouTube Shorts are here to stay. If they wish they weren't constantly popping up on your feed, you can do a few things to weaken their pull on your already declining attention span. YouTube's own option lets you temporarily hide them, but you need third-party extensions to banish them forever.
The quickest way to remove YouTube Shorts from view on Chrome is to click the X (Not interested) button on the top-right of the Shorts row. But there are two things to note:
This is a temporary solution, as YouTube will resume recommending Shorts after 30 days.
The Not interested button only works for Chrome on desktop and not on the mobile apps for iOS and Android.
Even if you remove it from the homepage, Shorts make an appearance on the sidebar when you are watching a particular video. While you can tell YouTube that you are "Not Interested" in a specific Short, you cannot remove the suggestions from view.
You cannot remove all shorts in the apps for iOS and Android. But you can train the algorithm to stop showing you certain Shorts by selecting the three vertical dots on each short and choosing Not interested in the menu. Tapping on Report and Send feedback are options if you find certain Shorts in bad taste. I've had limited success with the mobile options, honestly—it's like pushing back against a firehose.
While Chrome might give you a tiny bit of control, other browsers don't. Chrome or not, if you really want to remove YouTube Shorts, look at these browser extensions and add-ons.
ShortsBlocker (Chrome and Firefox): This extension improves your YouTube experience by hiding Shorts from your view entirely. This includes the homepage, subscriptions, search results, the navigation column on the left, and the video recommendations column on the right.
Unhook (Chrome, Firefox, and Edge): This extension gives you more control about what you want to hide on the YouTube homepage. The setting includes the option to hide YouTube Shorts along with other distractions like related videos, comments, homepage recommendations, trending tab, etc.
YouTube Shorts Blocker (Chrome): This extension removes Shorts from view from the necessary pages. But it also gives you a custom block list to selectively block content from channels you don't want on your feed. You can choose to automatically convert Shorts videos into a regular format if you want to watch specific Shorts from some channels.
BlockYT for Safari: This Safari extension makes YouTube distraction-free by blocking Shorts, comments, and recommendations. It also works on the Safari browser on iPhones and iPads.
Like all extensions, these, too, come from third-party developers. Use them with caution and stay aware of bugs and bug fixes.
Most LinkedIn users are probably familiar with the site's longtime offerings, including job postings, the newsfeed, and congratulating people you met once at a conference on their work anniversary. But unless you spend a lot of time on the professional networking site, you may not be aware of some of its more recent additions, like the "I'm interested" button that some companies have on their profile.
In short, the "I'm interested" feature allows users to privately express interest in working for a particular company without applying for a specific role. Think of it as the digital equivalent of sending your resume to a company with a note asking their hiring team to keep it on file and consider you for future job openings as they arise.
The "I'm interested" button is located on either the "About" or "Life" tabs of a company's profile, or on the "About the company" section of individual job listings. If you can't find it, the company either doesn't have active LinkedIn Career Page and Recruiter contracts, or they've disabled the feature.
Once you've found and clicked the button, you become part of the company's "Talent Interest Pipeline"—meaning that the next time their recruiters need to fill a role, they have the option of searching for qualified candidates who have already indicated that they want to work for the organization. The recruiters can view your profile and share it with other members of the hiring team, but that's it. When you express interest in a company, it's not visible on your public profile, LinkedIn's newsfeed, or to any other companies or recruiters.
If your situation changes, you can withdraw your interest in a company at any time by returning to the location of their "I'm interested" button and clicking "undo;" otherwise, you'll remain part of their Talent Interest Pipeline for one year.
By giving users more control over who can see that they're looking for new opportunities, the "I'm interested" feature is a lower-stakes alternative to adding the "Open to Work" badge to their public profile, or even limiting its visibility to recruiters. But according to Matthew Warzel, the president of MJW Careers, how and when you use it matters.
LinkedIn markets the tool to recruiters as a way to easily identify candidates who are not only interested in working for their company, but also possess the same values. So, before clicking or expressing interest in anything, Warzel—who has more than 15 years of experience in recruitment, outplacement, and career coaching—recommends looking into a company to make sure that its values align with yours, and that it's a good match for your career goals and skills.
This also matters because LinkedIn users are limited to expressing interest in up to 50 companies. "It's crucial to reserve this feature for organizations that are top priorities," Warzel says. "Job seekers should focus on companies where they genuinely see themselves thriving and progressing in their careers."
Here are some other tips for using the feature, courtesy of Warzel:
DO click the "I'm interested" button proactively before formally applying for a position at a company. "It allows job seekers to stand out from the competition and potentially get noticed by recruiters earlier in the hiring process," he says.
DON'T wait for a job opening to signal interest in a company. "You might be a good fit for a future, unadvertised role the company might be creating," Warzel says. "By expressing interest, you're in the pool for potential consideration."
DO take the time to ensure that your profile is up-to-date and aligns with a company's values and needs.
DO use the feature to improve your overall experience. "LinkedIn's algorithm takes into account the companies you've expressed interest in when suggesting connections and job opportunities," he says. Signaling interest in unrelated or less desirable companies could also skew these recommendations.
DON'T go overboard. According to Warzel, excessive use of the "I'm interested" feature—especially without tailored follow-up actions or research—may convey a sense of desperation to recruiters or hiring managers.
DO click "I'm Interested" after connecting with someone at the company. "It strengthens your connection, shows you're serious about exploring opportunities, and allows for a more targeted approach when reaching out to recruiters at a company directly," Warzel says.
DO prioritize companies strategically. "In highly competitive industries or job markets, job seekers may opt to save their 'I'm interested' slots for companies where they have a higher chance of standing out or securing an interview," he says.
Ultimately, if you're not putting the necessary time and effort into your job search, clicking "I'm interested" 50 times won't magically make offers materialize. But when you're attempting to stand out in a sea of qualified candidates and get your resume in front of the right person, you might as well take advantage of the tools at your disposal. "Remember: The button is just one piece of the puzzle," Warzel says. "Following the company, engaging with their content, and directly reaching out to recruiters all work together to create a more comprehensive impression."
Gardening is proven to be beneficial for your physical and mental health. There’s sunshine, and exercise, and all the fresh fruits and vegetables. Still, gardening can be a lot—and smart devices can take some of the burden off your garden responsibilities, keeping you free for the stuff you really enjoy. These devices don’t just free up time—they can often give you valuable data, which means you can treat your garden more appropriately, based on its needs. This year there are lots of new entries into the market that can make the great outdoors a little smarter.
At a basic level, composting is just piling up your organic scraps; if the ratio of nitrogen and carbon are about the same and there’s enough heat, you get compost. This is sometimes aided by worms. Still the market of composting devices is huge, and I think most people still just pile organic materials in and cross their fingers. A device like Monty, which has just been released in the states, can help make it less confusing. Monty looks like a smart probe; you stick it into the top of your compost pile and then pair it with the Monty app. I found Monty really only works when the compost pile is exposed and not in a compost container. Once the Bluetooth pairs, Monty will give you insight into the status of your compost and how to correct anything that’s going wrong.
You can, of course, get the weather report from your local newspaper or weather.com and you might get lucky and have an official weather station relatively near you. But if you live a bit aways from the airport, where those stations are usually located, the weather will not be hyper accurate. Most people don’t know (I certainly didn’t) that there exist a vast network of private weather stations. You can access this network if you get a device that relies on weather data, like a smart sprinkler system. I found a station a block away, and that kind of hyperlocal information about when the rain started and how much wind there was really fine-tuned my irrigation system. I was excited to try it out for myself, so this year I added a Tempest. Installation took less than a minute, and I mounted it to the top of a fence. I get alerts when it starts to rain and what the wind looks like, a really accurate heat index, air quality reading and more. An added side benefit was that if you sync it to Wunderground, which is easy to do, you get Wunderground access, ad free.
Soil sensors are a tricky thing. The environment (wet, dirty) makes it hard to keep the sensor accurate over time. Even smart sprinkler systems have generally required underground wire to the sensors, which means digging. There are a few brands that make wireless sensors, which means you can get hydration levels from the different garden areas across your yard, and adjust your irrigation appropriately.
Wireless soil sensors to try:
Moen Smart Wireless Soil Sensor, $69.99
Much like a robot vacuum surfs the ground looking for detritus, there are robots that traverse your garden looking for weeds—namely, the Tertill. As tickled as I am by smart tech, my main issue with Tertill is that it requires a lot of space between plants, which I don’t have. Still, if you maintain a pristine garden with some roominess, having a robot handle weeding sounds fantastic. Farmbot takes it a step further and automates absolutely everything. A robot on a track continually runs over the top of the garden, analyzing what’s growing using “Farmduino,” a modified Arduino running on open source language. It measures soil moisture, nutrients, even soil height, as well as the health of your plants and weeds. It can be attached to almost any raised bed, and requires no programming knowledge. I haven’t tried it, and after seeing it a few times on social media, I was highly skeptical. However, in digging into the documentation, I think it could provide accessibility as well as help people learn about gardening. While unrealistic for a home user at scale because of cost, the idea is great.
While grass lawns are terrible for the planet, your soil, local beneficial insects and the water table, people still have them. Robot lawnmowers are an exploding vertical, and having tested a few of them in the last few months, I’ve been surprised by how effective they really are. They’re expensive, but if you assume you mow as much as you vacuum, the pricing starts to make sense.
Robot lawnmowers to consider:
Mammotion Luba 2, starting at $2899
Segway Navimow, starting at $999.00
The Amazon Fire Max 11 tablet offers the biggest screen in the Fire Tablet lineup—and right now, the Fire Max 11 bundle, which comes with the official keyboard, stylus, and cover, is on sale for $279.99 (originally $404.97). That price marks the lowest this bundle has sold for, after checking price-tracking tools.
The bundle includes the Amazon Stylus Pen for Fire Max 11, which costs $34.99, and the Amazon Fire Max 11 Keyboard Case, which usually runs for $89.99. The bundle adds a $125 value for $50 more than the list price of the Fire Max 11, or $80 more than its current discounted price of $199.99 (originally $229.99).
This 13th-generation Fire tablet was released last summer with an "excellent" review from PCMag for the quality of its screen, upgrades in design, good performance, and access to the Amazon ecosystem. The tablet is a 2,000 by 1,200-pixel resolution tablet with up to 14 hours of playtime, 4 GB of RAM, an 8 MP front and rear camera, and 128 GB of storage. This is also the version without any lock-screen ads.
One of the biggest complaints regarding Amazon tablets is the restriction on apps. Because they are Amazon products, the default app store is the Amazon app store, but there are workarounds.
Generative AI is an exciting, powerful, controversial new technology, and if Mark Zuckerberg is anything to go by, it’s not going away anytime soon. If you use any of Meta’s mobile apps, including Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, or WhatsApp, you’ve probably already noticed the new Meta AI integration freshly embedded into them as of late. It’s all part of a new rollout for Meta AI’s latest large language model, Llama 3. But while Llama 3 is more powerful than prior versions, these new buttons and prompts make it harder than ever to ignore.
Let’s say you’re not yet convinced on AI and you want to keep doing your searches and scrolling the old-fashioned way. Can you turn the new Meta AI integration off, and how do you go about doing it?
First, know thine enemy. Meta’s AI Assistant has actually been around since September 2023, but the most recent update puts it directly in the search boxes and sometimes even feeds of apps, including Facebook and Instagram. The integration is a little different from app to app, but in general, clicking on the search box (or sometimes chat button) in a Meta app will now show an iridescent rainbow circle with a prompt next to it saying, “Ask Meta AI anything.”
If you take Meta up on the offer, you’ll be able to have Meta AI answer writing or image generation prompts, which are classic AI assistant features. The app will even give you a few suggestions, and with Llama 3, it can also now generate gifs and return real-time search results from either Google or Bing.
The problem with these functions is that they’re mixed in with non-AI features, so it can be a little confusing to tell them apart. Here’s how to disable Meta AI, or if you can’t, at least how to ignore it.
The Facebook app has one of the most prominent Meta AI integrations. Opening the app and clicking on the magnifying glass icon in the top right corner will still take you to the search bar, but will now show the Meta AI logo, example prompts for what to ask Meta AI, and a brief command to “Ask Meta AI anything.”
Don’t panic. Your regular search function hasn’t gone away. Search for a friend’s name, or a specific event, or even “New York Yankees fans,” and you’ll get the same results you always have. The difference is that, mixed in with those results, you’ll also now get AI-powered suggested searches, indicated by the Meta AI logo to their left (non-AI suggestions will instead have a magnifying glass next to them). Clicking on a response with the Meta AI logo will take you from your search into a chat window with Meta AI, where you can interact with it like any chatbot, or go back to your search by pressing the “X” button in the top left corner. Pressing enter without clicking on any of the suggested searches will also continue the search as usual.
Similarly, scrolling through your feed might also prompt you to use Meta AI, either through a generic card interspersed between posts, or through a small footer at the bottom of some posts offering to use AI to tell you more about that post’s subject.
Because the AI is so integrated into the typical flow of using the app, it makes sense that some users might not want to get interrupted with it.
Unfortunately, there’s not an easy way to turn it off for now. Facebook’s support page offers no such solutions, and asking Meta AI how to disable it gives conflicting answers, none of which worked in our testing.
That doesn’t mean there’s no hope, though. Mercifully, all Meta AI integration is currently marked with the Meta AI logo, so if you’re not seeing it, you know that your content is coming from a real person (or at least a more old-fashioned kind of bot). Additionally, when you’re in a chat with Meta AI, you can long press an answer to rate it, remove it, pin it, or copy it. Group owners can also stop Meta AI from latching itself onto their posts by going to their group, tapping on the three dots in the top right, tapping “Add features,” scrolling to Meta AI, and clicking “remove” in the settings tab next to “Help members get info.”
Instagram’s Meta AI integration is more tame than Facebook’s, as it will only show up when you click on the search bar, and functions in much the same way as on its sister app. Its search suggestions will be mixed in with more traditional ones and marked with its iridescent Meta AI logo, while non-AI search suggestions will instead have a magnifying glass next to them. Clicking on a Meta AI suggestion will open a chat—actually the same chat log from Facebook or any other Meta app—where you will be able to rate or remove its answers.
Sadly, there’s also no way to strictly disable Meta AI here, which can be doubly frustrating, since I’m probably more likely to search for “how to peel an onion” or “how to cut an avocado” here than on Facebook proper. Just pay attention to the icon next to your suggested searches, and you should be able to avoid the AI for now.
Messenger and WhatsApp have the lightest Meta AI integration—here, the chatbot is essentially just treated as another person in your contacts. Clicking on your conversation with it will open the chatbot, which again will remember any questions you might have asked it in any other Meta-owned apps.
Aside from that, the only other integration is a small icon in either the lower center or upper right hand corner of your screen, depending on your app. Clicking on the icon will also open your conversation with Meta AI, which is important if you delete your chat.
That’s right, there’s actually a way to “remove” Meta AI from these apps. Just delete your conversation with it like any other, and it’ll disappear from your contacts list. The small icon will remain elsewhere in the app's UI, presumably to give you a way to start up a new conversation if you accidentally delete yours, but aside from that, the AI presence here is entirely unobtrusive.
The first over-the-counter (OTC) birth control pill was approved last year. It's called Opill, and over the past month or so, it has finally started showing up on pharmacy shelves. Finally I can answer those questions everyone was asking when it was first approved: How much does it actually cost? And will insurance cover it?
The price for Opill you’ll see on almost every website is $19.99 per pack. (This is sometimes described as a “monthly” pack, but there are only 28 pills per pack; as is common with birth control. You’ll go through about 13 packs per year.)
Some sellers have single packs available for slightly less. Right now, Amazon and Walmart are both charging $18.97, saving you about a dollar.
You can save a few bucks by buying two or three packs at a time. The sticker price for a three-“month” pack of Opill is $49.99, or $16.66 per pack.
If you don’t have insurance, you live in the U.S., and your household income is below 200% of the federal poverty line, you’re eligible for Opill maker Perrigo’s cost assistance program, which will provide the medication at "reduced or no cost." To find out more and to sign up, visit the cost assistance program page here.
Maybe! In general, the Affordable Care Act requires insurance plans to cover birth control pills as a form of preventive care. The law doesn’t specifically require them to cover this brand of pills, or to cover OTC pills, so they aren’t automatically included.
That said, if your insurance uses CVS Caremark for its pharmacy benefits, you’ll be happy to know that CVS has included Opill on its list of zero-cost contraceptives. Contact your insurance provider for specifics on your coverage.
Several states have also passed laws requiring over-the-counter birth control to be covered by insurance, although the details vary by state. The Kaiser Family Foundation has a rundown of state laws here. California, Colorado, Maryland, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, and Washington all have state laws that theoretically could apply to Opill. Again, check with your insurance company to find out what coverage is available for you.
Most people shopping for a rowing machine will fit into one of two categories: those who are already committed to the rowing lifestyle, and those who just want a good workout. I fall into the latter. I was recently provided with one of Merach's magnetic rowing machines to test out, and I found that it's been a great home workout option that's quiet, portable, and affordable while I work to rehab my ACL—but it may not be for everyone.
This rowing machine comes in three variations: the QS1 Magnetic, the Q1SW Magnetic Silent, and the Q1S Pro Electromagnetic. I tested the middle-of-the-pack Q1SW Magnetic silent. It's advertised to make less than 20 decibels of noise, but judging from a decibel sound scale, it's closer to 40 decibels. That said, I can work out in full swing while still being able to hear the TV and without bothering my fiancée as she works from home. It was also very easy to install, taking me about 30 minutes.
As I mentioned earlier, one of the main things I was looking for in a home rowing machine was portability. I wanted something that was practical to use, move around, and stow. The Q1SW does that well. It has wheels at the front that makes moving it around very easy, it is light enough to maneuver with one arm, and it fits neatly against a wall with minimum effort (you just need to tuck the screen down).
The Q1SW rowing machine feels very stable, and I never worried about tipping to the sides, even when going all out. That said, it may not be a comfortable experience for tall rowers.
Merach advertises this machine as suitable for users up to 6 feet 5 inches tall, but I can't imagine it being a comfortable experience. I'm 5 feet 7 inches tall, and I found that the handlebars sit very low to the ground and don't come out far enough at the start of the drive. This made it feel like I was cramped up in a small row boat. It also made it harder to get any tension in my arms at the beginning of my stroke unless I leaned back far enough—which, as any rower will tell you, is not good form. This is a relatively minor issue that likely won't bother anyone like me who is just trying to get a workout in, but it might drive a rower mad.
The Q1SW has 16 levels of resistance that you manually adjust with a rotating lever, but for me, even the highest resistance still feels pretty weak. However, as senior health editor Beth Skwarecki noted in her post about common rowing mistakes, you don't want a lot of resistance when you row since the point is to mimic the resistance of water. If you're a rower, that's probably important to you. If you're someone trying to just get your heart pumping and get a leg workout and back workout, don't expect to get the same resistance you would find in a rowing machine at your local gym.
The display screen really shows where Merach was making cuts. It's underwhelming and feels cheap. There is also no backlight, so I couldn't see it when the room lights were dimmed. However, Merach does make up for this somewhat with its Bluetooth compatibility and free companion app. I could very easily connect the rower with my phone and get a lot more information on my workouts with the app. I typically propped my phone up in front of the machine's screen and got a much better idea of what I was doing.
The app also logs data and shows a lot more information once the workout is complete, like calories burned, average frequency, average resistance, max power, etc. The app also has "ultra burning," "target practice," "timed practice," and "free training" preloaded workouts.
Merach's Q1SW row machine is a good choice among a sea of budget rowing machines on Amazon, especially with its surprisingly solid companion app experience. The machine feels durable, and it is very practical for those looking for a quiet and practical workout at home. If you're a rower, though, you might not be content with the design that almost encourages poor form. And if you're taller than 6 feet, the rowing machine might feel too cramped for you.
While the listing price is $329.99, you can easily find this rowing machine well below $300, which is a pretty solid price for something like this. At the time of this writing, there's a $90 on-page coupon on Amazon, bringing the price down to $239.99.
Using a Microsoft account with Windows 11 is the best way to access all of its features, including Microsoft Copilot, OneDrive, and more. But some people just don’t want to use a Microsoft Account and have all of their data connected to the cloud, and that’s fine. If you’re one of those people, or if you just plan to give the PC you’re setting up to a friend, you can follow a few simple steps to use a local account instead.
You used to be able to use a command in Window’s Command Prompt, but Microsoft seems to have patched that trick out in recent updates. As such, the easiest method to bypass the Microsoft Account requirement is to follow these steps:
Set up Windows 11 like you normally would. However, when you get to the Unlock your Microsoft Experience section, choose Sign In and then enter in a fake email. This can be anything, but try to go for something that isn’t likely to be a real email, as you don’t want to trigger any account safety features on anyone’s actual Microsoft Account.
Choose Next and then enter in a fake password before selecting Sign In. Give it a few moments, and then the setup should send you to a screen that says Oops, something went wrong. Clicking Next here will take you to a new screen that asks Who’s going to use this device? Input your preferred name, and then click Next. Now enter in a password and let Microsoft continue setting up Windows 11.
The important thing to remember here is that Microsoft could patch this method at any point. It’s possible you could one day have to turn your local account into an online account. If that happens, you can easily do that from Settings > “Your profile name” > Your Info > Sign in with an online account and then follow the steps that appear on the screen.
One of the key reasons that Microsoft tries to get you to sign up for an online account is because of all the various features it offers. Now, I’m not going to go on a tirade about how these features tie into privacy standards, because like any online account, these features are intended to collect some data for you to help Microsoft in some way—whether that’s ads, training up Copilot, or just improving the features overall.
That being said, here’s a list of some really key Windows 11 features that you’ll miss out on if you don’t sign up for an online account:
Copilot access
OneDrive syncing
The Microsoft Store (tons of apps you can download)
Restoring Windows from backups saved to OneDrive
Personalization syncing
Whether these features matter to you or not is completely up to you. But, if you want to get the most out of Windows 11 and all the things Microsoft is adding to it, you’ll probably want to sign up for an online account instead.
It’s hard to imagine a time when hotels didn’t have smart TVs. Not all that long ago, some even made their TVs a selling point, plastering “free HBO” all over their roadside signs. These days, guests are more likely to stick to their phones, sacrificing their room’s beautiful 48-inch flatscreen on the altar of TikTok and YouTube. But with just a little extra work, you can get the best of both worlds, as cast whatever is on your phone to your hotel room's smart TV.
There’s official and unofficial options to send what's on your iPhone to a TV. Let’s start with the most legit.
Beginning today, iPhones can now use AirPlay to stream content from their phone directly to a TV at select hotels. The feature is launching at “more than 60” IHG Hotels & Resorts locations across the US, Canada, and Mexico, so give it a try the next time you’re staying at a Holiday Inn or Candlewood Suites.
The process is pretty painless: Upon turning your TV on, you should notice a QR code on the welcome screen. Simply scan it with a compatible Apple device to both connect to wifi and authorize AirPlay to that screen.
And that’s it—because the QR code is unique to your hotel room, you shouldn’t find yourself accidentally streaming to other guests' sets, or vice-versa. Apple says more locations will be added “in the coming months,” which makes sense–the limited rollout probably has something to do with the special LG TVs required for the setup.
But what if you’re not staying at an IHG property? This is where the hacks come in.
There’s plenty of dongles, like Roku and Fire TV sticks, that work with AirPlay right out of the box. The problem is getting a hotel TV to accept them.
Hotel TVs tend to be a bit strict about which devices they’ll let you plug in. That’s thanks to special control boxes that lock them down. Luckily, if you can physically get to your TV’s hookups, you can (carefully) remove these boxes. Lifehacker has covered it before, but the gist is to look for an ethernet cable (or possibly an HDMI cable), gently remove it, and restart the TV before hooking up your accessories. Depending on your hotel, you might also want to disconnect the control box from power if you’re able.
Once your device is plugged in, try swapping the TV input to your dongle and seeing if it works. If it does, simply connect it to wifi (you might need to open a browser page to do it, depending on your hotel) and you’re good to go. If using the hotel's wifi isn’t an option, don’t worry—AirPlay can work without it, and you can always fall back on a mobile hotspot.
(Just be sure to hook your TV’s control box up again before checking out!)
Streaming an Android phone, like a Pixel 8 Pro or Galaxy S24 Ultra, to a hotel TV is much like streaming an iPhone, but with a few extra quirks, some of which can work in your favor. For instance, hotel chains like Wyndham and Hyatt already have Chromecasts built into their TVs, letting you cast from your phone, or at least log into your streaming services, depending on how locked down they are. If you’re lucky enough to have a Chromecast officially set up from the start, just follow your hotel’s instructions and you should be good to go.
For everyone else, you’re probably going to want to bring your own dongle, like a Fire TV Stick or Chromecast. While it’s possible to stream content from an Android phone to a TV without a dongle, it’s probably not going to be easy in a hotel environment, since these workarounds usually require accessing specific smart TV apps or functions that you can’t depend on your hotel to have or allow you to access.
For the most seamless experience, I recommend a Chromecast, as certain other dongles can only mirror your screen, rather than cast content across devices. With casting, you’ll ensure you get the best resolution, and generally have a more intuitive experience. (Note, though, that Chromecasts do require wifi when they boot.)
Once you’re in your hotel room with your dongle, you’ll want to connect it to your TV following the same steps outlined in the iPhone section above: gently remove the hotel control box’s connection to the TV, restart the TV, plug your Chromecast in, and swap to the proper input to test that everything worked.
If it did, try to connect your dongle to wifi (again, you may need to open a browser page). If the hotel’s wifi isn’t working, you can either use a mobile hotspot to try casting, or you can screen mirror without using wifi at all, depending on your dongle (the Fire TV Stick is a good choice if this is a concern).
If Instagram stole TikTok's schtick when rolling out Reels, it seems TikTok is keen to repay the favor. The company is working on a new app, TikTok Notes, that seems remarkably like Meta's popular photo sharing platform.
The company originally teased this idea earlier this month through notifications sent to users, with the title "Your photo posts will be show on TikTok Notes." The alert explains how TikTok Notes is a new app for photo posts, so future public TikTok photo posts will be displayed on the company's new dedicated app. It provided an option for users to opt out of TikTok Notes if they preferred to keep their photo posts to TikTok itself.
Wednesday, the company posted on X (formerly Twitter) officially announcing TikTok Notes as an app for sharing both photos and text. TikTok is initially testing TikTok Notes in just Australia and Canada for now, so those of us outside of those countries can't try it out yet, but the post does give us some insight into how the app will work.
Tweet may have been deleted
Based on the four screenshots provided, TikTok Notes will have a For You page, just like TikTok, but perhaps more in-line with Instagram's Explore page. This For You page shows multiple photo posts at once from users across the platform, but if you prefer, it seems you can hit the "Following" tab to check out posts from just the people you specifically follow.
The posts themselves are, as you might expect, a cross between a TikTok and an Instagram post. You can upload multiple photos at once and attach a caption. Along the bottom, you'll find the comments, as well as a space to leave your own thoughts. From here, there are the usual like, save, and comment buttons, with how many likes, saves, and comments users have left.
Will this catch on? I honestly don't know. TikTok is massively popular, of course, but Instagram has very little competition in the photo sharing space. While TikTok has a dedicated legion of fans, I don't know if they'd feel compelled to make the switch to a new app, especially if they also have an established presence on Instagram for their photo-sharing needs.
What I'm mostly curious about, however, is if they launch an app in the U.S. Right now, the test is extremely limited, but once it starts rolling the app out to more countries, will it bother with one that's actively trying to ban its products in the first place? The U.S. is Meta's home turf, though, so it might be worth it to TikTok (and ByteDance) to pick a fight, however short-lived it may be.
I recently upgraded my "unsupported" PC to Windows 11 and was immediately bombarded with banner alerts, ads, and current affairs news that I'd rather not be force fed by my operating system. Windows 11 doesn't exactly offer a pleasant experience out of the box, but you can adjust a few settings to fix most of its issues.
You may be tempted to use a third-party tool to disable all of Microsoft's invasive tracking with one click. While this may sound like the easier method that following this guide, I don't recommend it—it's difficult to know what kinds of changes such tools are making under the hood, and if anything goes wrong, it'll be hard to troubleshoot the problem, as these apps generally tweak dozens of settings in one go.
If you hate the Windows 11 Start menu, you can replace it entirely. However, if you're willing to put up with it, you can at least remove ads from the Start menu. To do this, go to Windows 11's Settings menu. Then navigate to Personalization > Start and disable the following options:
Show recommendations for tips, shortcuts, new apps, and more
Show recently added apps
Show recently opened items in Start, Jump Lists, and File Explorer
These options will give you more control over the Start menu and prevent random files and apps from appearing there. Next, remove the ads masquerading as pinned apps. To do this, open the Start menu and right-click the app icon for apps you'll never use, such as LinkedIn or Instagram, and select Uninstall or Unpin from Start.
It's unfortunate that Microsoft doesn't want you to enjoy a clean, beautiful lock screen. Yes, the company has used the space to show you ads too. You can fix this by going to Settings > Personalization > Lock screen. Click the drop-down menu next to Personalize your lock screen and select Picture or Slideshow. A new option will appear below the photo selector, labeled Get fun facts, tips, tricks, and more on your lock screen. Disable this to stop promotional content from showing up there.
Microsoft loves to nag you about signing up for OneDrive. To stop these ads too, go to Settings > System > Notifications and turn off alerts from OneDrive. Next, open File Explorer and click the three dots icon in the toolbar. Select Options, followed by the View tab. Now scroll down and disable Show sync provider notifications.
Speaking of spammy alerts, you should also take a moment to disable unwanted notifications. Go to Settings > System > Notifications and disable notifications for every app that spams you. Some apps don't appear in this list; in such cases, you'll have to open that app and disable alerts from its notification settings.
By default, Microsoft collects your data to show you ads. Put a stop to this by going to Settings > Privacy & security > General and disabling everything on the page.
Windows 11 tracks your device usage as another way to serve you ads. Go to Settings > Personalization > Device Usage and disable each setting on this page to stop them.
If you don't want to use Microsoft's Copilot AI or see the news widgets in the taskbar, then you can hide them. Go to Settings > Personalization > Taskbar and turn off the following options:
Copilot
Task view
Widgets
This will give you a cleaner taskbar with just the Start button and the apps you've pinned. If you prefer to have weather on the taskbar, you can enable Task view from the settings mentioned above. Its icon will appear in the bottom-left corner of the screen. Click it and hide widgets manually until only the weather widget (and any others you actually want) remain.
Finally, you can stop Microsoft from collecting diagnostics data for ads. To do so, go to Settings > Privacy & security > Diagnostics and feedback and disable Tailored experiences. For good measure, you should also disable Send optional diagnostics data.
When you're cleaning your home, you fall into one of two categories: Someone who's cleaning up after people and someone who's cleaning up after people and pets. There is little reasoning to be done with a dog or cat, and accidents happen more than we'd like—so it's helpful to have the best products and tools on hand to combat them when they do.
These are the best products for battling fur, odors, and stains:
First, you need a vacuum that's equipped to deal with pet hair—and not all of them are. Pet-loving TikTokkers recommend the Bissell CleanView Swivel ($106.44) for its ability to suck up long hairs without getting clogged like a stick vacuum, and the Hoover Powerdash Pet ($109.99) is popular on pet care sites.
For smaller areas, rugs, and upholstery, try a pet hair rake. These are also wildly popular on TikTok and there are a ton of very similar ones on Amazon, like this well-rated two-pack for $8.99.
Arm & Hammer Pet Fresh odor eliminator ($18.29 for a pack of three) comes recommended by the pet experts at Rover, who say it truly does mask bad odors in your carpet. Just sprinkle it on before you vacuum.
Before you mask smells, of course, you do have to get that pee out of the carpet. Try the Resolve Ultra Pet Odor and Stain Remover spray ($9.46), which is formulated for this exact task. When dealing with bodily fluids, animal or otherwise, it's best to get a real cleaner than try any homemade hacks.
Because the best defense is a good offense:
To stay on top of hair and shedding, don't just stop at periodically brushing your pet and bringing them to the groomer. Take matters into your own hands with tech designed to groom and dry your dog. Try the Airrobo dog hair vacuum ($89.99), which has brushing attachments you can use while you literally suck the loose fur off your pet, or the Shelandy Groomer Partner dryer ($75.00) that is safe to use on your animal after a bath.
Get the right brush. According to Rover, a slicker brush ($9.99) works well for maintenance of any kind of fur, while a Furminator ($35.25) is especially good for dogs with double coats. You can also try a shedding glove ($6.99) if your pet is afraid of the brushes or you simply want to get in some extra petting and scratching time.
Mesh wifi is a newer way to distribute internet across homes with thick walls, multiple stories, or larger square footage while still keeping a strong connection. Mesh networks work differently from extenders and boosters and do a much better job of keeping your signal strong. If you've tried solutions like mounting your router on the ceiling and are still not getting the speeds you need, a mesh network might be in order. Depending on your situation, certain mesh wifi systems will be a better fit than others, but there is one particular mesh system deal also offering Wi-Fi 7 that you should consider.
For a limited time, TP-Link's three-pack Deco BE85 BE22000 Tri-Band Whole Home Mesh Wi-Fi 7 System is $1,299.99 (originally $1,499.99) after a $200 discount, the lowest price I've seen after checking price tracking tools. These three nodes can cover up to 9,600 square feet with the latest Wi-Fi 7.
Of course, not everyone needs that much coverage. The two-pack is $899.99 (originally $999.99) after a $100 discount and covers up to 6,400 square feet. A one node mesh system is $499.99 and covers 3,200 square feet. You can take advantage of the better three-pack discount if you know other people who could benefit from a mesh system; that way, each node would come out to $433.
The Deco BE85 BE22000 nodes came out in 2023 with an "excellent" review from PCMag and do more than just extend your wifi to justify their high price. The nodes are easy to install and manage with their dedicated Deco mobile app. They provide free basic parental control and basic HomeShield network security to protect you and your devices. They also offer multiple wired LAN ports on each node and a USB port, which you don't see in most mesh systems. Other top mesh systems like the Netgear Orbi 970 series are more expensive, while others like Eero's Max 7 don't cover as much square footage.
Where once it was standard to have just one bathroom in our homes, the number of bathrooms considered normal has steadily grown over the years, and the majority of new-build homes have at least two bathrooms these days. It makes sense: Why not have a private bathroom just for you and a second bathroom (or two) for the kids or guests?
This often leads us to wish for more bathrooms, for a lot of reasons: If you only have one, adding an en-suite bath feels luxurious, and having a dedicated guest bath makes your home feel more inviting. If you’re going to have a long-term guest (like a parent or close friend living with you for a while) or have frequent long-term visitors, a bathroom just for them almost feels essential. And if you plan to renovate your one existing bathroom, you might hesitate because you don’t want to run across the street to use a public restroom in your local coffee shop every day.
But adding bathrooms is expensive—it costs $90,000 on average to add a bathroom. Not to mention the non-monetary costs of time, inconvenience, and disruption. If all you need is a functioning bathroom, however, you can actually add one to just about any spot in your home for much less, without the need for plumbing, permits, or months of your life. All you need is a room. Here’s how to add a bathroom without plumbing.
First, think about where your bathroom should be. You’re not limited by the location of water or sewer lines, because you won’t need either one. A few ideas include:
Closets. If your goal is to have an ersatz en suite bathroom, a moderately-sized closet can work. You’ll need to measure out all the stuff you’ll be cramming in there, of course, but a general rule of thumb is 15 square feet for a half-bath concept, and 30 for a three-part bath. Those numbers assume you need to pull permits and pass inspection, and thus incorporate typical minimum spacing for drains and such, so you can likely go a little smaller.
Spare rooms. If you have a bedroom you’re not really using, or a flex space that was never defined, it can become a more spacious bathroom. Ideally, of course, you’d want a door—though you could always add an adjustable wall with a door to turn a bonus space or even a large landing into an additional bathroom.
A big consideration is water access. You don’t need to have water, drain, and sewer lines run—but if you want a shower in the room, it’s a lot easier if you can position it near a functioning water line like an existing bathroom or a washer hookup. If that’s not possible, you still have options, however.
Here’s what you need:
A dry-flush toilet. The most important thing to have in a bathroom is a place for you or your guests to relieve themselves. Composting toilets don’t require plumbing or a drain, but they do require a vent pipe, which would require cutting through a wall or roof. A better option is a battery-powered dry-flush toilet like this one. It uses a vacuum-sealed mylar bagging system, and can be operated literally anywhere.
A portable sink. Portable sinks can look just like regular vanities, but have two tanks inside the cabinet—one holding fresh, clean water, one holding the drained-off gray water after use. They usually require a plug to run a pump for the faucet, as well. All you need to do is dump the gray water and fill up the fresh water tank as needed.
A portable shower. To really go for it, adding a shower to your unplumbed bathroom is the real power move. The Shower AnyPlace portable indoor shower hooks up to any faucet and pumps the gray water to any drain using a hose, which makes it a great choice if your bathroom location is near another bathroom or a laundry area, or even a kitchen or outdoor space. The EMS Portable Shower from Freedom Showers operates on a similar design.
If you want to be a little more luxurious, you could also consider adding a portable tub like this one, as long as you can run the drain hose to an appropriate spot and can easily get hot water to it.
Whether you need it for a few weeks to accommodate visitors or a renovation, or want the convenience of an extra bathroom without the cost, it’s a viable option—and since nothing is permanently installed, you can always remove it later. For just a few thousand bucks, you can have a usable bathroom in just about any room in your house, without any construction or plumbing needed.
So many apps and websites these days have dark mode that it's a bit jarring when one doesn't. While most of Google's products offer dark mode (Gmail offers a ton of customizable themes), the company has continued to leave users of many of its web apps in the, well, light. That is, at least, until now: Google Drive has dark mode, people.
According to Android Police, Google has been working on this rollout for about a month, starting with a limited release. As of Tuesday, however, it should now be rolling out to all users, although it might take until May 1 for all users to see it. As part of that rollout, Google is prompting users about the change with a pop-up that reads "New! Dark mode: Continue to enjoy Drive in the dark." When you receive the pop-up, you'll be able to easily change your Drive theme from Light to Dark, or to Device, which will set Drive's theme to whichever theme your machine is currently set to.
Depending on when you're seeing this post, however, you might not see this pop-up, and, without it, you may never know Google Drive actually added dark mode as a feature. That's because there's no obvious toggle or option for dark mode when you're using Drive, like some web apps have. If you want to find the option, you'll need to click the setting gear at the top of the page, hit Settings, then look for Appearance. Here, you'll find the same three theme options as the pop-up: Light, Dark, and Device default.
Google Drive on mobile already matches your system theme. You can change this option in the settings menu of your Google Drive app on Android, while on iOS, Drive will always match your system theme. That's fine for people like me who use light mode during the day and dark mode at night, but it'd be nice to have some control for Drive users on iPhone.
Now that Google Drive won't blind us when we're accessing our files at night, it'd be great to see some other Google apps join the fray. If I could check my schedule on Google Calendar or type up some notes in Google Docs with the same dark theme as my computer, that'd be great.
Some people organize their book shelves by author name, book title, or even by color—but if you take a more chaotic approach and can never find the book you're looking for, the optical character recognition (OCR) feature on the iPhone can help you out. Just take a photo, wait a few minutes, and search for the book title in the photos app. Your phone will point to the book.
Reddit Gtapex user pointed this out last week and I couldn't stop thinking about it. I tested it out by taking a picture of my book shelf, waiting a minute for the OCR processing to happen, and searching for the word "Plato", intentionally choosing one of the physically smaller books on the shelf. The result came up right away.
I tapped the photo and, sure enough, there was even a yellow marker showing me where the exact book is.
Not bad, especially considering that this wasn't a very good photo—the angle was awkward and the lighting was bad. I could imagine this being even more useful if I had a much larger bookshelf.
And it's not just useful for bookshelves. You could use this to browse your DVD, Blu-Ray, or CD collection. It could also come in very handy if you ever find yourself looking for something specific in a thrift store, or any other chaotic space with a lot of media—just take a photo, run a search, and see where the thing you're looking for is.
The Redditor speculated that this feature could also work on an Android device, and there's no reason I can think of why that wouldn't be the case. When I tried using both a Samsung phone, however, searching for book titles in Google Photos gave no results whatsoever. I tried again using the web version of Google Photos and it still didn't work. I would love to be wrong, though—if any Android users get this working, please let me know.
Personally, I think any variation of bread and cheese is appropriate for most meals, but it usually functions like a snack, a partner dish, or an appetizer. Finally I’ve had a cheesy bread that feels like a meal—khachapuri. This brilliant Georgian dish is all the melty cheese you could dream of, surrounded by carbs. And with this pizza dough hack, you don’t even need to proof the bread for hours.
Khachapuri originated in Georgia (the country, not the state) and is so beloved, it’s Georgia’s national dish. This particular type of khachapuri is Adjarian khachapuri, named for the region of Georgia. The bread is shaped like a boat, and its passengers are a pool of cheese, an egg yolk or whole egg, and a pat of butter. This is a boat I’d like to be in.
Traditionally the bread portion is a yeast dough made from scratch in a fairly typical manner— knead, proof, deflate, shape, and proof again. Though I’ve seen recipes that may incorporate milk, sugar, or yogurt, many are simply composed of flour, liquid, yeast, and salt. Perfect. Your grocery store sells bread just like this and the hard part is done already. Grab a ball of pizza dough from the freezer section or the refrigerated aisle. We’re building a boat.
If you're using frozen dough, you’ll need to thaw it first. I usually put it in the fridge overnight but if you’re short on time use this water bath method. Split the dough ball. A 20-ounce ball of dough can make four personal-sized khachapuris, or you can cut the dough in half for two big shareable ones.
Since the finished shape will be an oval, the dough should start in an oval too. The best way to do this is to shape the cut segments into dough balls. (Check out my video if you need a dough ball tutorial.) Now you can use a rolling pin—or use your hands if the dough is relaxed enough—to start stretching out the dough in one direction to get a flat oval. My store-bought dough was pre-rolled into a large circle (a luxury I seldom have), so I just cut it in half and stretched the center out a bit. Put the ovals on a parchment lined baking sheet, and cover it with a tea towel.
Besides the unique shape, the cheese mixture is khachapuri’s signature feature. In Georgia it’s common to use imeruli or sulguni cheese. The cheese melts, has a bit of stretch to it, a fine curd texture, and a pleasant tanginess. If those cheeses aren’t available or reasonably accessible you can use a cheese mixture that replicates their characteristics. I used a mixture of shredded mozzarella, muenster, ricotta, and feta cheeses. The next time I make it I think I’ll use more feta because I missed the tangy flavor. Mix the chopped or shredded cheeses in a bowl along with an egg, salt, pepper, and freshly chopped parsley if you like.
Uncover the bread boats and split the cheese mixture evenly among them. Put the cheese mixture in the center and flatten it out in an oval shape, but leave a one or two-inch border of dough. Roll the edges of the dough up against the cheese center so the dough curls over the edges of the cheese slightly but don’t cover the mixture completely. Twist the ends to hold the shape.
My boats had a lot of excess dough on the ends because of the pointed shape I started with. There’s no need to aim for that; just seal or twist the ends however it feels natural.
Egg wash the dough edges and bake the boats in a preheated 375°F oven for 20 to 25 minutes, or until the bread browns, and the cheese sets and begins to slightly puff on the edges. Take the khachapuri out of the oven. Use the back of a spoon to press a small divot into the cheese and drop a raw egg yolk into the depression. Add a pat of butter and serve it immediately. Alternatively, if you’re weirded out by raw egg, take the bread out of the oven halfway through the bake time, make a divot in the cheese, and drop a whole egg onto the bread. Return it to the oven to complete the bake time and cook the egg.
The cheese should still be hot when you serve the bread. Use a fork to scramble up the cheese with the melted butter and egg yolk, so the yolk cooks in the residual heat and the mixture becomes thick and spreadable. Rip off chunks of the boat and make sure you pick up some of the cheese mixture from the center.
Pizza dough cooked at this temperature stays soft and easily rippable, and this mixture of cheeses provides a nice balance of tangy, melty stretch. I have a feeling all the other variations of khachapuri are as good as this one, and I can’t wait to try them. I think I might need to get a cheese-only fridge.
Ingredients:
1 ball of pre-made pizza dough (cut in half or quarters)
1 egg
½ cup whole milk ricotta cheese
1 cup shredded whole milk mozzarella
½ cup shredded muenster cheese
¾ cup crumbled feta cheese
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon black pepper
1 tablespoon chopped fresh parsley
Egg wash for the bread
2-4 eggs or egg yolks (one per boat)
Pats of butter for finishing
1. Stretch out the dough balls, or roll them with a pin, until you have a long oval (about 14 inches long for half the dough, or eight inches long for personal size). Place the ovals on parchment lined baking sheets. Cover the dough with a tea towel and set aside. Preheat the oven to 375°F.
2. In a medium-sized bowl, mix the egg, cheeses, salt, pepper, and parsley together until well combined.
3. Uncover the dough boats and divide the cheese mixture among them. Spread out the cheese mixture to fill the center, but leave a one to two-inch border all the way around. Roll the edges up to the cheese and have it curl over the filling a bit. Don’t cover the filling completely. Twist the ends to hold the shape. Repeat this with the other boats.
4. Egg wash the edges and bake the khachapuri breads for 20 to 25 minutes, or until the bread browns and the cheese is melted and ever so slightly puffing around the edges. Use the back of a spoon to press an indent into the cheese and add a raw egg yolk. Add a pat of butter and immediately serve the boats piping hot.
For cooked eggs, remove the khachapuri halfway through the cooking time. Press an indent into the cheese with a spoon and add a whole egg to each boat. Return them to the oven for the rest of the cooking time, until the eggs are cooked to your liking. Serve immediately.
In my home growing up, “spring cleaning” was kind of a misnomer. We didn’t clean so much as we decluttered—my hometown even had a day every spring where people were invited to put all their junk on the curb and the city would remove it by the next day (of course, the true self-starters used this as an excuse to go around in big trucks at night scooping up anything of value).
Maybe it's my upbringing talking, but I think spring decluttering is better than spring cleaning, because it sets you up to have a neater home all year. And decluttering isn’t even that hard if you have a good system to follow. The 12-12-12 method is a good system.
This idea comes from Joshua Becker of Becoming Minimalist. He has rounded up 14 achievable methods you can use to declutter, and 12-12-12 tops the list. It's simple: Every day, you find 12 things to throw away, 12 things to donate, and 12 things to be put away where they actually go.
Twelve is a good number to work with. It’s small enough to feel achievable, but big enough to present a bit of a challenge. The first five or so things you throw away will be easy: Find some trash and some broken stuff and toss it. But then keep going, being a little more judicious (or ambitious) so you can hit 12.
Pre-determining how many items you want to get rid of helps you stay on task and gives you a more concrete goal, which is key if you tend to back off a cleaning project when you start feeling overwhelmed. If you surpass 12 in any category, good for you! But keeping that as the benchmark can give you a little push when you're struggling.
Here’s the thing: Becker’s explanation of this method is just three sentences and one of those sentences is simply, “That’s it.” There’s a lot of wiggle room for you to adapt it to your specific needs.
I suggest going room by room, tackling a different room every day. I live in a studio apartment, so I don’t have “rooms” to take on, but I have “areas.” In my spring decluttering this year, I’ve chosen one a day, from my sitting area, to my eating area, to my kitchen, my bathroom, my bed loft, and, most dauntingly, my closets. Don’t overwhelm yourself by trying to do two rooms in a day—for bigger rooms (say, the garage) you can even break it down so you’re attacking the same one for two or three days or more. (In the spirit of transparency, I have been battling my closets for a week and a half.) It's a good idea to take it slow rather than rush through, as that's a surefire way to get rid of things you might regret later, or get fatigued and start holding onto things you should really part with.
Choosing what to throw or donate can present a challenge, so I recommend starting with two categories: One will be the 12 things you need to put back in their proper place, and the other will be the 24 things you want to get rid of in some way—whether by throwing them away or donating them. If you’re having a hard time parting with things early on, call in reinforcements: An objective person, like a friend, is more likely to harshly (but lovingly) talk you out of holding onto something useless.
I’ve used this method in various ways for a few weeks now, setting goals for how many items I want to get rid of every day. I’ve also added in a bonus category: Items to sell. If you want something gone immediately, throw out or donate it. But if you could stand to hold onto it a while and it has a little value, list it or designate it to a pile bound for the consignment shop. I sell a lot of bags and shoes on Poshmark, for instance, but only list things I know I’ll keep wearing in the time it takes for someone else to find and buy them. If I truly don’t see myself wearing it again (and the resale value is low), into the donation box it goes.
If you aren't sure if something is worth selling, google it with "used" or "resale" to see how much others are selling it for, and decide if that amount is worth keeping around until it sells. A lot of resale sites, like Poshmark and Vestiaire Collective, will even show you how long someone's item has been listed, so you can get a sense of the demand for it. If someone else has had that item listed for six months and you don't want to keep yours around for six months, it's donation time.
Make the whole process easier by picking up a set of storage bins so you can do a sweep through each room or area, tentatively putting items into the “toss,” “donate,” “organize,” or “sell” box instead of dealing with everything one by one. Even two boxes—"get rid" and "keep"—will streamline things. As a bonus, you can use those bins for seasonal storage once you're done with your big decluttering.
If you own a house with some trees on the property, you probably don’t think about them much unless they require maintenance—and in those moments you think of them as expenses. Sure, those trees have value due to their natural beauty and shade (or possibly the fruit they grow), but few people think about the trees in their yards in terms of having a monetary value.
But you should, because trees on your property actually do have value—and that value is often substantial. First of all, maintained trees in good condition add property value in general—as much as 15%. But some species of tree can be worth a lot of cash if they’ve been allowed to grow to enormous proportions in your yard—a nondescript elm tree with a 20-inch trunk, for example, might be worth as much as $30,000. And some trees have been appraised for more than six figures. Some trees are so valuable poachers actually invade people’s property to steal them.
If you’re currently peering out your window at the trees in your yard and wondering if you’re sitting on some sort of woody goldmine, here’s how to find out the tree value on your property.
The simplest way to get an idea of how much your trees might be worth is to use an online calculator like this one, which uses the USDA Forest Service’s i-Tree software, or the slightly simpler ones here. These calculators rely on you to input accurate information, so you might need to sleuth out the species of your tree and do some measurements and observations in order to get a truly accurate valuation.
It’s important to note that these tools offer a sense of the value your trees are adding to your property—by providing shade, cleaning the air, removing carbon, and cooling your home. If the calculator says your tree is worth $15,000, you probably can’t just sell it for $15,000, or add that amount to your home’s listing price when you sell your house. But these tools do offer a starting point for valuing your tree.
If you want to get a more accurate value for your tree, you’ll need to hire an arborist to conduct an appraisal, which is a real, actual thing with a lot of science behind it. You can find a consulting arborist at the American Society of Consulting Arborists (ASCA) website.
Tree appraisals are mostly used to determine insurance values in case your trees are damaged, destroyed, or improperly removed from your property and you need to make a claim. But you can sell a tree from your yard if the tree is valuable enough, and if you can find a nursery or other entity interested in buying it. And if you have a lot of hardwood trees on your property, you can find companies like Sell Your Trees that will pay you for them, then come and remove them at their own expense (making an appraisal even more important so you know you’re getting fair value for your trees). If your trees are valuable and mature (meaning they’re fully grown and not a sapling, like the trees you buy at a nursery), you can also sell them on an online marketplace like Re-Tree, which can also give you an idea of how much that specific tree is worth.
The most valuable and easiest to sell trees (based on Re-Tree’s catalog) include:
Japanese Maple. These majestic and colorful trees can sell for $400 to more than $8,000 depending on health, maturity, and specific type.
Flowering dogwood. Whether pink or white, these beautiful trees can be worth as much as $4,500.
Tricolor beech. This ornamental tree changes colors with the seasons, making it a beautiful addition to any landscaping project, and can sell for as much as $8,000.
Gingko. These slow-growing trees are terrific shade trees, and can sell for $5,000 to $6,000 each.
Black Walnut. The wood of the Black Walnut is valuable for furniture makers, and can sell for as much as $2,500.
Even if the trees in your yard aren’t super unique and rare, you can still often sell them for a few hundred bucks if they’re healthy and mature. If you’re looking to monetize your trees, it’s worth having them appraised and seeing what the market will bear.
Buying a used Peloton is a smart way to get what is otherwise a pricey exercise bike. I bought mine used, and have no regrets; the seller was honest, as far as I can tell, and I saved a good $500 compared to what I would have paid if I had bought the Bike directly from Peloton. But not all used Bikes are what they seem, and it would have been great if I’d been able to check out the Bike’s history first.
Now, Peloton is launching a tool to do just that. They call it the Peloton History Summary, and it allows you to look up the history of any Bike or Bike+ from its serial number. The big caveat, for now, is that the program is still in beta and won’t return results from every Bike.
I punched in my Bike’s serial number, only to be told my Bike wasn’t included in the beta. (They’re rolling it out slowly, so yours may not be in there, either.)
But Peloton does present an example summary on their website. It suggests that a history report might contain:
Number of hours the Bike/Bike+ has been ridden
Whether the company has ever sent a tech out to repair it
Number of total registered owners, including the current owner
Whether the Bike/Bike+ is currently covered by a protection plan, and if so, when it expires
This is all useful information to have when you’re considering buying a used Peloton. When I bought mine, I grilled the previous owner on the Bike’s history, but there was no way to know if he was telling me the truth. My experience ended up matching what he told me: The Bike had no issues and seemed to have been gently used. The only issue was that it needed a new bearing cartridge, which is a part that is known to wear out over time. (Peloton sent me a new one for $45 and I installed it myself—an inconvenience but not a bad deal at all.)
To use the history summary, you need to find the serial number on your Bike or Bike+. If you scroll down on the history page, Peloton has a guide to finding it: It may be on or behind the front fork, or behind the flywheel. (It is not on the back of the screen; the serial number there is for the screen itself, not the whole Bike/Bike+).
I found the easiest way to read the serial number from its awkward spot was to take a photo of it, then use my iPhone’s text scanning feature to copy and paste the serial number. (Double check that it copied correctly—for example that a zero didn’t get mistaken for the letter O, or vice versa.)
When you’re buying a Bike or Bike+, you can ask the seller for the serial number and then run it through the history tool—much like doing a VIN lookup on a used car. When you show up to collect your new Peloton, make sure to check it’s the same serial number before handing over the payment.
Peloton suggests that sellers might like to be proactive about this, getting the history on their own Bike/Bike+ and posting that in their sales listing. They also note that they’re still working out exactly what information the history will provide, so stay tuned to learn what this feature looks like when it comes out of beta.
There’s a lot of controversy around the role of citrus in the garden: Can it be composted? Will it deter pests? It turns out that while citrus is probably not altogether harmful to your garden, and can—in limited circumstances—be helpful, it's very likely not worth bothering with.
Worms don’t love citrus, and if you are vermicomposting, you don’t want to work against the proletariat. However, the idea that citrus doesn’t compost well is a myth—everything on Earth will eventually break down, and citrus will do so at roughly the same rate as other kitchen scraps, although it’s advised to separate the seeds, fruit, and pith from the peel before you do. Not only is this more work than I’m willing to do for my compost, but it points to one of the problems with composting citrus: The good stuff is largely in the fruit, which will be gone by the time you compost. The seeds will ferment and sprout, and the peels deter your composting worms, so there's no real upside.
While it is also true that citrus fruit is a good source of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium, the building blocks of your soil, it won’t be a shock that it is highly acidic. That can shift your soil pH, and that’s not a good idea, unless you are using it in limited ways, and under plants that want that acidity, like blueberries or azaleas. Even in those cases, you want to monitor the pH, because while those plants will enjoy a higher pH, it’s only a slightly higher range. After that, the pH works against your plants' objectives.
There was a summer when a neighbor's cat had taken up residence in my yard and started using the vegetable garden as a litter box, and as a preventative measure, she spread citrus peels all across my garden. This, too, is an old wives' tale. Citrus, it’s true, can deter some pests, like rats and mice. They don’t enjoy citrus oil, which is in the peels. However, the concentration of oil needed to be effective is higher than you will achieve by just throwing peels around, even indoors. Moreover, those peels dry out quickly, and then the oil is non-existent. Also, the fact that the compound in citrus peels, d-limonene, can be toxic if ingested by animals was concerning in this case. For what it’s worth, the cat was undeterred, and I had a rotten garden year.
I've also seen citrus mentioned as a slug deterrent, but this is also largely a myth. Slugs are attracted to citrus (slugs are attracted to most edibles), so you can use it as a makeshift trap and then dispose of the peel and the slugs. If trapping is the goal, though, beer traps work more effectively without negatively affecting the garden bed. Ultimately though, as someone who lives in a place where slugs are prolific, your best defense against slugs is Sluggo, which is, thankfully, organic.
While d-limonene is part of many mosquito and tick repellents and can be effective, the concentration you'd need to be effective would require a commercial juice production in your home.
For two weeks, I polled gardeners near and far, including many master gardeners, published authors of respected gardening books, and owners of nurseries, and not a single one had ever used citrus in the garden. I couldn’t find a single person with hands-on experience, good or bad. This is likely because whatever benefit you might derive from citrus is easily had with other modern garden materials.
Insurance costs are rising due to inflation just like the price of everything else, and people look to reduce those costs through savings programs and discounts that insurance companies often offer. At the same time, homeowner enthusiasm for smart tech is rising every year. Since smart tech can work to prevent the kind of costly events that result in insurance claims, it makes sense that there’s an emerging trend of insurance companies offering discounts for specific smart tech in the house. A study done last year found that a third of homeowners would switch homeowners or renters insurance companies to get discounts for smart home discounts, and another done by Nationwide showed two thirds of American households already have smart tech in their home.
Smart tech can do a lot for the resident of the house in terms of convenience, but when when done right, they can also dramatically reduce risk. Twenty percent of insurance claims are for water damage, and that’s not all attributable to Mother Nature—plenty of homeowners experience internal leaks from plumbing, and smart tech can do a lot to prevent extensive damage. Whether you use a water leak monitor with a shutoff valve like the Moen Flo, or actual sensors on the floor that detect water, an early alert to a problem can prevent a major disaster. Smart security systems can help to prevent break-ins just like traditional security systems, but have two additional benefits. First, you get earlier alerts, since instead of waiting on a neighbor to hear your alarm, you’ll get alerts to your phone. Smart security systems also come with a lot of sensors to prevent your own family members from creating vulnerabilities, like open windows and doors. And while smart tech can’t prevent events like wind and hail, it can alert you to a problem early so you can work to protect your home in time.
Most insurance companies provide small discounts from 5-13% to use a security system or smart device they’re associated with. Allstate offers a 5% discount if you use their Canary home monitoring. Hippo offers 10-13% off if you invest in Simplisafe, Kangaroo or Notion smart security systems. Other companies offer the discount on the devices themselves. Amica offers 20% off a Moen Flo and other leak-detection devices. One of the best offerings may be from State Farm, who gives subscribers a Ting smart plug and three years of monitoring, plus a discount on the insurance itself. The device specifically monitors your electrical system, looking for causes of fire including faulty wires. Ting’s subscription includes $1000 of coverage in itself. Since this all comes at no additional cost to the State Farm subscriber, it’s a good deal.
Your current insurer may offer a discount for devices you already have, like leak monitors, energy monitors, security devices and fire alarms. The first step should be contacting your current agent to find out if you qualify or what programs exist. If you’re not happy with what they offer, it’s time to shop around. These discount programs and partnerships are going to only grow in the future as insurance agencies recognize how smart tech can hedge against claims.
The introduction of Shortcuts in iOS 13 opened the door for a lot of new little iPhone tricks—but less attention has been given to the Shortcuts and Automations that can be applied to AirPods. I use my AirPods Pro almost every single day, and they're already quite convenient to connect and tweak via the iPhone's settings, but I have set up a couple Shortcuts and Automations to make using them even easier.
Perhaps one of the handiest and most convenient things you can do with Shortcuts is to set up an Automation whenever you connect your AirPods. This can be great for those who like to have their media volume set to the same level all the time, or if you have a certain playlist that you always listen to first.
To set up an Automation that is triggered anytime you connect your AirPods, navigate to Shortcuts > Automation > New Automation and then scroll down until you see the Bluetooth option. Tap it, select Is Connected, then you can choose between Run After Confirmation and Run Immediately. Run After Confirmation will require you to physically press the Run button, but if you do Run Immediately, it will run the Automation without any user input. Finally, make sure to choose your AirPods from the Choose Devices category.
Once you’ve got the basics filled in, select Next, and then you’re free to choose from any of the Shortcuts that it offers here. You can also build a custom Automation using the New Blank Automation option. This particular functionality can be great if, say, you want your iPhone’s media volume to lower to a certain amount when connecting your AirPods or if you want to start a specific playlist from Apple Music.
I’d recommend playing around with some different options here to find what works best for you, as Automations can make things a lot more convenient in the long run, but here are a few really good examples of ways to use Automations that trigger whenever you connect your AirPods to your iPhone.
This Automation can be really handy if you prefer to have a set media volume whenever you're using your AirPods. Some folks may prefer to run theirs at max volume, but others may find that 51 percent or some other setting works best for them. This can be done really easily by setting an Automation that triggers the media volume to a certain level anytime your AirPods connect. To set this up, navigate to the Shortcuts app then select Automation > New Automation (select the + sign in the top right-hand corner if you already have an Automation saved), and then select Bluetooth. Change the trigger time to Is Connected, then set your AirPods in the Device section. If you want to confirm before each run, then select Run After Confirmation, or choose Run Immediately for the most convenience.
Tap Next, then select New Blank Automation. From here, look for Set Volume in the search bar and select it. Tap the percentage showed in blue text to change it to a specific level, and then tap Done to save the Automation. Now, whenever you connect your AirPods to your iPhone, the media volume will automatically be set to whatever percentage you choose.
By default, your AirPods tend to remember which ANC mode you had set when you last used them. That's why having an Automation that sets them to your preferred ANC mode can be really handy. Setting this one up is exceptionally easy, too, as you'll just need to follow these quick steps to do it.
Open Shortcuts and navigate to Automation > New Automation (or use the + icon at the top right if you already have other Automations saved). Tap Bluetooth, then select your AirPods from the Device dropdown and select Is Connected and then choose when you want to run it (after confirmation or immediately). Select New Blank Automation, then search for Set Noise Control Mode. Now make sure you have your AirPods connected to your iPhone and then tap Route and select your AirPods again. Now tap Noise Control mode. Depending on which AirPods you have, you'll have a few different options to choose from here. If you want ANC to be on, select Noise Cancellation. If you want Transparency, then select that. If you have AirPods with the new Adaptive mode, the you can select that, too. Alternatively, if you would like to change the mode you're using a lot, you can have Automation ask you each time.
Another really handy option you can take advantage of with Shortcuts and Automations is to start a playlist or podcast automatically when you connect your AirPods to your iPhone. Unfortunately, Apple Shortcuts and Automations only currently support some apps. As such, I couldn't find a way to get Spotify to work with the playlist command, as it doesn't appear in the Shortcuts app without utilizing an exploit. If you use Apple Music or Apple Podcasts, though, you'll be able to take advantage of both of these Automations without any issue. The following examples assume that you're using Apple Music and Apple Podcasts, as they are the only apps available in Shortcuts for these purposes by default.
Start the Automation just like before, by selecting opening the Shortcuts app, then select Automation > New Automation > Bluetooth. Now, choose your device, select Is Connected, and then choose between Run After Confirmation or Run Immediately. The next few steps can differ depending on whether you want to play a playlist or a podcast.
Setting up a playlist: select Music > Play > Library > Playlists and then tap on the playlist that you want to use. While viewing the playlist, find the + icon at the top and tap it to add it to the Automation.
To start a podcast on connection: select Podcasts > Play and then search for the podcast that you want to start. If you want to just play the next podcast in your queue whenever you connect, you can select Up Next instead of Play after choosing Podcasts.
If you exercise regularly, you can also set up specific Automations that will automatically change the noise transparency settings, which is helpful if you want to be more aware of your surroundings. This is especially helpful if you typically listen to your AirPods in Noise Canceling but want to turn on Transparency or Adaptive modes while running outside.
There are technically two ways you can go about this, with the easiest method requiring the use of Apple Watch workouts to trigger the Automation. I’ll also show you how to do this without an Apple Watch.
To set up this Automation, start by going to Shortcuts > Automation > New Automation and select Apple Watch Workout as the Trigger. From here, you can select the Set Noise Control Mode action to have it turn off noise cancellation (or turn it on) whenever you start a workout on Apple Watch. You can also toy around with the other actions available to change the media volume or even start a specific workout playlist. To do that, select Play Music from the actions, select the blue text, find the playlist you want to use, and tap the + icon to add it to the Action.
To set up an Automation for exercising at a specific time without using an Apple Watch, go to Shortcuts > Automation > New Automation > Bluetooth, then select your AirPods, Is Connected and select Run After Confirmation or Run Immediately. Tap Next, then select New Blank Automation. This one is a bit more complicated to set up, but bear with me. Next, set a few actions into the Automation in this order:
Date
Format Date: select Custom and then change the Format String to HH:mm:ss.
Get time between: select the two times that you want this Automation to check for.
If: this scripting basically lets you set up a branching scenario for your Automation, allowing it to check if you’re doing something and if you are to set the AirPods to the specific mode that you want.
Set Noise Control Mode: You’ll actually need to do two of this Action. One is to turn off Noise Cancellation, and one is to turn it back on.
As I said, it's a bit more complicated than just using the previous Workout Automation that I mentioned, but it’s still a great option if you prefer to use something other than the Apple Watch to trigger your workouts.
Ultimately, there are a lot of things you can do with Shortcuts and your Apple AirPods (or even any other Bluetooth headphones). Toy around with Shortcuts and Automations to find options that work for you, and be sure to give the ones outlined above a try if you want to make things a little bit more convenient for yourself.
You can also download third-party apps to increase the amount of Actions available in the Shortcuts app, so be sure to check those out if you need more options to choose from.
If you go to the gym for your workouts, you can also set your AirPods to automatically start playing music whenever your iPhone detects you are at the gym. You'll need to have the address of the gym for this Automation, but a quick Google search should bring that up. To set this up, follow these steps:
Open Shortcuts and select Automation > New Automation > Arrive. Input the address of your gym into the Location dropdown, then select Any Time or input a specific Time Range if you have a certain time you usually go to the gym. I recommend setting this one to Run After Confirmation, just because you might not want to start your music right away.
After tapping Next, you'll want to set the playlist that you want to start listening to. This can be done using the same steps that I outlined above: Music > Play > Library > Playlists and then tap on the playlist that you want to use.
If you want to do more, like set the volume and the noise mode, then you can set up multiple actions in the Automation by selecting New Blank Automation instead and then adding Play Music, selecting the playlist, then adding in additional actions for Set Volume and Set Noise Control Mode. Here's how that whole setup would look:
Automation > New Automation > Arrive > input gym location and select Any Time or Time Range. Now select New Blank Automation > Play Music (choose the playlist you want), then add Set Volume and select the volume percentage that you prefer. Finally, add Set Noise Control Mode and change it to Noise Cancellation, Transparency, or Adaptive, depending on your preference. Once saved, any time your phone detects you are at your gym, it will offer to start playing your preferred playlist. Unfortunately, there's no way to make this Automation check if your AirPods are connected, which is why I recommend requiring confirmation for this one.
Getting your spring garden into shape, doing some pruning, or planting might call for some new tools. If your tools have been stored outdoors, they might have some rust, or your tools might be worn out after years of service. Even with meticulous maintenance, shears, mowers, and other equipment will wear out over time. Gardening equipment generally need replacing after about six years, although with good maintenance can last as long as 10 to 12 years. If you're running into trouble with some of your gardening tools, Fiskars—known for their high-quality scissors—makes tools with a good reputation for durability and sharpness. Here are some of the best sales on offer this week from Amazon.
For cuts up to ⅝ inches thick, a pair of Fiskars bypass pruning shears will do the job. The pruners are on sale for $9.98 right now, 52% off their regular price. You can also get a set of pruning shears that comes with the bypass pruning shears as well as a pair of micro tip pruning shears on sale right now for $24.40, 40% off their usual price. These are good quality all-steel shears and they come with a lifetime warranty from Fiskars.
For precision trimming your grass around landscaping features, outbuildings, or hedges where a string trimmer won’t work, a pair of Fiskars grass shears is a good solution. These grass shears are on sale right now for $17.99, 44% off their regular price. This set of grass shears has a rotating head to allow both vertical and horizontal cuts to save your wrists when you’re getting into tight spaces or odd angles.
The Fiskars lopper for trimming tree branches up to 1 ½ inches thick is on sale right now for $17.99, 42% off their regular price. The handles of these loppers are extendable from 24 ½ inches up to 37 inches to give you added reach as well as leverage.
If you’re looking for a quieter, zero-emission mower, you can go with a walk-behind push mower. The Fiskars 17” push mower is on sale right now for $171.58, 24% off its normal price. In addition to being quieter and having no emissions, this mower uses no power source besides you, so it’s also the cheapest to run.
If you’re doing some spring planting and find that you need a new garden trowel, the Fiskars ergo trowel is a good buy. It’s a heavy duty trowel that’s designed to be comfortable to hold while you’re digging and it’s on sale right now for $8.79, 32% off its regular price. It has an aluminum head, so rust won’t be a problem, and it’s lightweight as well.
Cutting overgrown weeds and vines can be a challenge—plus, machetes are fun. Fiskars has an 18-inch curved blade machete ax that’s on sale for $39.58, 52% off its normal price. A machete is good for cutting back dense brush and thick, overgrown areas, and the sharp, curved tip can also be used for trimming small branches and cutting through roots.
If you’re anticipating having some bounty from a vegetable garden, a container for harvesting will come in handy. The Fiskars harvest basket is on sale for $21.59, 42% off its usual price. The basket has three compartments, one large one that can double a colander for rinsing produce, one small compartment with smaller drainage holes, and one compartment with no drainage for collecting flowers or other plants you want to keep fresh in water.
If you have some garden beds to dig out, or some dirt to move, you’ll need a good quality shovel. The Fiskars digging shovel is on sale for $28.99, 37% off its regular price. The shovel blade is about 8 ½ inches wide, with a foothold on the top side of it to make it easier to push into the soil with your foot.
Sometimes major life events—like a divorce or a job in a new city—make our real estate decisions for us. The rest of the time, however, we're left to our own devices. While there are a number of factors that determine when, exactly, is the best time to put our home on the market, real estate analysts and forecasters can turn to data from previous years to make a general prediction as far as the time of year when sellers stand to benefit the most.
According to a recent report from realtor.com, this very week—April 14-20, 2024—is the best time this year to sell a home. That may be nice to hear if your home is currently on the market, but it's not necessarily useful information for other would-be sellers, who have missed 2024's sweet spot. The good news is that if they don't need to sell immediately—they can take the next year to get their home ready to list in time for the best time to sell in 2025.
Based on real estate trends in past years, spring is the best time of year to sell a house, according to data from realtor.com. "Housing conditions in April may differ year to year, but seasonality suggests that within a given year, the best time to sell will fall around mid-April," says Hannah Jones, an economic research analyst for realtor.com. "For example, today’s market is relatively challenging and this year’s sellers have adjusted their expectations accordingly, but this spring will be the best combination of conditions within the year for sellers."
So what is it about spring that puts people in the mood to buy new homes? According to Jones, it comes down to two major factors. First, spring "starts the seasonal ascent in home prices, and quickens the pace of sale," she says. Also, because housing inventory typically increases in the spring, but hasn't yet reached the heights of summer and early fall, sellers can expect more buyer attention. "The combination of higher-than-average prices and buyer demand, coupled with quick market pace and low competition from other sellers makes mid-April the best time to sell," Jones says.
Even if you haven't officially gotten the ball rolling—or are still on the fence about selling your home—there's still time to get it ready and listed for next year's spring selling season. While forecasters haven't pinpointed the specific week yet, according to Jones, mid-April 2025 will likely be the best time to sell a home next year, "assuming typical seasonal housing market patterns hold."
Of course, the amount of time you'll need to get your home market-ready depends on variables like its current condition, and how much work (if any) you plan on putting into it before selling. But to give you a general idea, the findings of a different survey from realtor.com indicate that roughly 80% of sellers take between two weeks and six months to prepare their home for sale, with the largest share taking between one and three months.
It's also worth noting that more than half of seller surveyed (56%) said that the process of getting their home ready to list took longer than they had expected—so learn from their mistakes, and make sure you give yourself plenty of time. Not sure where to start? Here are some of the steps you'll likely need to take in order to list your home next spring:
Before reaching out to potential listing agents, you should have a general idea of where you want to be after you sell your home, says Maureen McDermut, a realtor with Sotheby's International in Montecito, California. Are you moving out of state, abroad, or staying local? Whether you're moving to a new state, country, or staying local, start familiarizing yourself with the real estate market in that area so there are no major surprises further down the road.
According to Jones, it's helpful to engage with an experienced listing agent early on in the process. In addition to walking you through what needs to be done in order to get your home ready to list in the spring, they'll also help set your expectations for a listing price based on the area, and help you determine whether it makes more sense to take on major renovations and repairs, or sell your home as-is.
But don't simply hire the first agent who comes up in an online search; keep in mind that this is the person you'll be advising you on how to get top dollar for your home. McDermut recommends looking up reviews for your potential listing agents on Zillow or other real estate websites, then interviewing between three and five local agents before making a decision. "While almost all of us have an agent in the family, it might be a better move to hire someone else, especially to avoid family conflicts," she says.
Ideally, you should have your listing agent in place roughly four to six months before getting your home live on the market, McDermut says. For example, if you want to list your home in April 2025, you should interview agents in December and make your decision by January. "I would absolutely make sure an agent is hired 90 days prior to your target listing date," she says.
After assessing your home, your listing agent will probably have a few recommendations for making it more appealing to potential buyers. Remember that they're on your team and also benefit from your home selling for as much as possible. "While some of the advice might sound insulting—especially when it comes to a large project you undertook on the home—your agent wants to help you get your home in the best shape possible to sell," McDermut says.
Take sliding barn doors, for example. While it wasn't that long ago that they were all the rage, they've since fallen out of favor, and according to McDermut, buyers don't want the hassle of having to replace them. That's why as a listing agent, she would advise sellers to have new doors installed before putting their home on the market.
Start the decluttering process as soon as possible. "In today's market, buyers may wish to move in as quickly as possible, so you want to be ready," McDermut says. "If it isn't a necessity of everyday living, move it into storage or sell it."
While you have some time before you need to worry about interior listing photos, don't put off the exterior shots for too long. More specifically, arrange to have exterior photos taken of your home when it looks its best—which in many cases is when your trees, flowers, and plants are in full bloom and looking lush, says Haley Bartlett, a realtor at iGo Realty Denver. "Planning ahead and taking outside photos during that season can lead to more buyers taking note of your home when it is time to sell," she says.
If you're having your home professionally staged, the interior listing photos are typically taken seven to 14 days before it hits the market, says Ashley Oshinsky, a real estate broker and the owner of Higher Living Real Estate. "The reason for this is staging charges by the month, so the longer it sits in your home the longer it needs to be paid for," she says.
According to McDermut, this is often the hardest step for sellers who have a lot of memories attached to their home. "As you're going through the process, it helps to start thinking of your home as an investment, which it is," she says. "The sooner you can get to that state of mind, the sooner you will be able to carry on with the other tasks of selling your home."
There's a specific purpose the Amazon Fire TV 2-Series can serve very well: give you a functional smart TV with decent features for a budget price. And with 40% off, the TV becomes a good value for those looking for a solid budget TV. Right now, you can get the 32-inch Amazon Fire TV 2-Series for $119.99 (originally $199.99) and the 40-inch Fire TV for $178.99 (originally $249.99). Here's what you can expect from this TV.
When it comes to budget TVs, the bar is low. When a TV offers even decent features, it puts it ahead of the rest, and the Amazon Fire TV 2-Series offers many. Because it's a Fire TV, it comes with the Fire TV OS preinstalled, making it a smart TV capable of casting your phone or computer and downloading apps to stream your favorite shows and movies. Fire TVs can also run Kodi, the software that lets you stream any show or movie for free. If you don't want to go through that process, you can just stream the live TV channels that come with the TV.
If you're deciding between the 32- and 40-inch TVs, keep in mind that there's more than just screen size to consider. The 32-inch only runs 720p HD resolution, while the 40-inch is a 1080p Full HD TV. Both TVs have a 60Hz refresh rate and can be wall-mounted with the 200 by 10mm VESA mounting holes on the rear of the TV. When it comes to ports, you get a digital optical audio out, ethernet, USB 2.0, coaxial cable for live TV, three HDMI 1.4 ports (one with ARC support), an IR emitter, and a headphone jack. The Amazon Alexa remote is actually decent and lets you control the TV with your voice. It's better than the lower-tier Fire TV Stick remotes since you can control the volume with it.
The Amazon Fire TV 2-Series won't blow you away, but for its price and features, you're getting good value for your money.
Apple is finally loosening its strict stance towards video game emulation, meaning iPhone users can now play retro video games right on their phones, even if those games don’t have official mobile apps yet. All it takes is a simple download from the App Store and some setup within the emulator, and your iPhone will be one step closer to being the best gaming phone around. And one of the first emulators to get the official Apple sanction, Delta, makes the whole process surprisingly easy.
First: What is a game emulator, and how could it possibly be legal to play Super Mario World or Sonic the Hedgehog 2 on your phone? Well, as devices like the Super Nintendo or Sega Genesis age, it becomes easier for programmers to reverse engineer them and make apps that can mimic all of their hardware and software interactions, but this time entirely through software.
Basically, an emulator can run a virtual Super Nintendo inside your iPhone, which can then run Super Nintendo games as usual. It can be a taxing and sometimes glitchy process, since your device doesn’t just have to run the game, but also a whole console at the same time. Modern computers are powerful enough, though, that plenty of emulators still eclipse original hardware in some respects, being able to play games at higher-than-usual resolutions or speeds and even save them at a moment’s notice—perfect for portable play.
Thanks to an old U.S. Court case, emulators are also legal, so long as the emulator just mimics the consoles themselves rather than distributing any games or operating systems.
Which brings us to how to actually use Delta to play retro games on your phone. Delta is actually a fairly mature app, and using it is pretty intuitive. It’s been available to sideload for almost half a decade now, with today simply being its first day Apple has allowed it on the App Store.
Delta can run games from the Nintendo Entertainment System, the Super Nintendo, the Nintendo 64, all Game Boy systems, the Nintendo DS, and even the Sega Genesis. The catch is that you’ll need to provide the game files yourselves.
Delta’s site tells you which file formats it supports, but as for where to get your games, you’re on your own. Emulation enthusiasts assure players that U.S. law allows them to make digital backups of games they own, and there are plenty of devices and techniques for doing just that, although the practice has yet to face much legal scrutiny.
Once you have a compatible game file on your phone, you simply need to tap the “+” button in the top right corner of the app, select the file, and you’re good to start playing. Delta will automatically find box art and sort your systems for you.
Note that for Nintendo DS games, you’ll also need to add a bios file to Delta, which you’ll also need to get on your own. Once you have one, just tap on the gear icon in the app’s top left corner, scroll down until you see “Nintendo DS” under “Core Settings,” then add your files under “DS BIOS FILES.”
This is where things get fun. Because of its age, Delta is a robust app with support for touch controls, Bluetooth controllers, haptic feedback, fast forward, cheats, save states, and even cloud backups. You can connect anything from a PS5 controller to Nintendo Switch Joy-Cons to play games on Delta.
When you first load up a game, things will probably look pretty normal. You’ll see the gameplay either up top or in the middle of your screen (depending on whether you’re holding your phone vertically or horizontally). Below or to the sides of your game will be your controls, done up in a snazzy pre-made skin (which you can also swap for custom imported skins later). But hidden among the standard controls should be the menu button. Here, you can enable cheat codes, alter the game speed, set a certain button to be held down, and manage your save states.
Save states are maybe the most convenient feature an emulator can have. They allow you to save a game at absolutely any point, separate from the game’s own save system. It’s a neat trick enabled by the virtual nature of the setup—the program just remembers how it was operating at any point in time, and can recall it later.
Now you don’t need to worry about finishing a level before your bus arrives, and if you’re feeling nefarious, you can save right before a tough boss fight so you can retry right away if you lose without having to replay the whole level again. Your call.
To adjust more settings than the in-game menu button will allow, just navigate back to the Delta main menu (your game will pause) and click the gear icon in the top left corner, where you’ll be able to set up controls for all your players, home screen shortcuts, and optionally link your files and saves to a Dropbox or Google Drive account.
More emulators are likely going to hit the App Store soon, but Delta is the first to stay, as well as the most robust and likely to stick around. Previously, a Game Boy Advance emulator called iGBA was pulled by Apple for violating its spam and copyright rules, which might have something to do with the code’s alleged connection to Delta’s predecessor, according to a statement Delta developer Riley Testut gave to The Verge. A Nintendo Entertainment System emulator called Bimmy was also pulled by its developer “out of fear.”
While emulators are legal, having to fight large companies like Nintendo in court can still be a daunting task, as evidenced by the recent shutdown of Switch emulator Yuzu. Delta's team, however, has been at this for a while, and doesn't show any signs of stopping soon.
Allowing Delta to hit the App Store is also smart on Apple's part, since Google already allows emulators on the Android Play Store. The app's presence will help Apple's ecosystem shore up its retro coverage while the iPhone maker works with larger developers like Capcom to continue to bring recent big budget releases like Resident Evil 4 to its devices.
Touch controls work well, but a Bluetooth controller makes retro gaming on iPhone even better. Here are some great options:
Backbone One (USB-C): $99
8BitDoPro 2: $49.99
8BitDo SN30 Pro: $44.99
Google Maps is rolling out a couple updates that should make sustainable transportation options a little more convenient to access. The first pertains to locating EV chargers, and the second may gently nudge drivers toward public transit.
One of the biggest problems electronic car owners face is locating convenient chargers along their route, especially when they're on a long journey. A new Google Maps feature will show EV owners AI-generated summaries of real people’s experiences with chargers to help them gauge how reliable and busy they are.
Google says the AI summaries will be based on customer reviews, which users may be prompted to complete when they use an EV charger while using Google Maps. The app will encourage users to submit their feedback after using an EV charger so that others can see if the charger is reliable or if they should look for a better option somewhere nearby. Google has offered limited EV charger information, including directions, for quite a few years now, but this is the first time that info will be accompanied by in-depth reliability summaries.
When public transit offers a lower carbon footprint option and a similar travel time to car travel, Google may display that public transit route as an option alongside the car route.
The tech giant says that this functionality is currently rolling out to different cities around the world, though it will start with just 15 at the moment, including Amsterdam, Barcelona, London, Montreal, Paris, Rome, and Sydney. A full list of the cities that will offer lower-carbon travel routes can be found in Google’s announcement.
Google is also making searching for public transit information much easier by providing more information, such as schedules and ticket prices, when searching for something like “train from Boston to Philadelphia.” The company says this should provide more accurate and helpful information so you can better plan your next trip.
Train information is only available in certain countries, though, including Australia, Austria, Bangladesh, Belarus, Belgium, Canada, Croatia, Czechia, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Kazakhstan, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine, United Kingdom, and the United States. Google hasn’t yet said if it plans to expand beyond those countries.
You can get a lifetime subscription to Matt’s Flights Premium Plan on sale for $79.97 right now (reg. $1,800) through April 21. Matt’s Flights sends you at least three discounted or mistake fare flights each week from your home airports as they become available. You also have the option to browse current deals on the platform, with exclusive access to five times as many offers as free users receive, and unlimited custom search requests—you just give Matt's Flights your departure and arrival cities and your travel dates, and the service will send you the lowest fares currently available. Matt's Flights is also accessible 24/7 via email if you need 1-on-1 travel planning support or support.
You can get a lifetime subscription to Matt’s Flights Premium Plan on sale for $79.97 right now (reg. $1,800) through April 21 at 11:59 p.m. PT, though prices can change at any time.
Amazon’s TV adaptation of Fallout is among the best game-to-screen adaptations ever made; it's so good, even people who’ve never played a Fallout game, or any game, are hungry for more of the franchise's unique vibe. If that’s you, and you want to dive into the Fallout game universe but don’t know where to start, read on for a list of which games to play first, and what to know about Fallout before you begin.
There are a lot of games in the Fallout universe, between six and nine, depending on how you count them, but Amazon’s Fallout isn’t a direct adaptation of any of them. The series is an original, standalone story set within the larger Fallout universe, as is each of the individual Fallout games, so you could play any title and not miss important information. That said, all Fallout games aren't created equally, especially if you're a fan of the series, so choose wisely.
While the first two games birthed much of the franchise's unique style, Fallout 3, the first “modern” Fallout game, crafted the raw material of alternative history, atomic-core design, and over-the-top black humor into a masterpiece. Unlike the first two Fallout games, Fallout 3 features action-rich first-person shooter gameplay that has the same whacked-out, so-violent-it-feels-like-a-cartoon style as the series. In other words: It's fun.
Fallout 3's story shares broad strokes with show's as well. Like Lucy in the series, Fallout 3's central character, The Lone Wanderer, was born in a Vault-Tech vault generations after the bombs destroyed earth. The game’s introductory section lets you experience peaceful underground life, like episode one of the series, then thrusts you into the unforgiving wasteland of Washington, D.C. in 2277, like episode 2 in Los Angeles circa 2296. Also like Lucy, The Lone Wanderer is on a quest to find their father and will meet ghouls, the Brotherhood of Steel, mutated creatures, and other familiar delights and horrors in the above-world. You’ll also learn more than you want to know about “The Enclave,” a faction shown briefly in the series during Dr. Siggi Wilzig's escape, and be introduced to Deathclaws and Super-Mutants, both of which, I'm sure, will play prominent roles in Season 2 of the series.
Fallout 4 is also a great starting point for new players. Released in 2015, during the Xbox One and PS 4 era, Fallout 4 took advantage of the extra power of those new-at-the-time consoles to expand and refine the Fallout universe. Fallout 4’s New England is a bigger, more varied world than the settings of previous Fallout games. It's a more colorful, detailed game too, that looks uncannily like the series. Fallout 4’s opening chapter takes place in a shiny pre-apocalypse suburb in 2077 reminiscent of Cooper Howard's flashback adventures in pre-bomb Hollywood. When you end up in 2287, the contrast is a lot like the series flashing forward to 2296. I won't spoil anything, but Fallout 4's starting vault makes a lot more sense when you know what happened in the show's Vault 31. On the negative side, in contrast to the fast-as-charging-Yao Guai pace of Fallout: The Show, Fallout 4 puts a heavy focus on exploration, discovery, side-quests, and colony building, so the story can feel a little slack at times and it’s easy to get side-tracked. A free Fallout 4 next-gen update for Xbox Series X|S and PlayStation 5 is scheduled to come out on April 25, so it's a great time to give it spin.
Set in the American west in 2281, Fallout: New Vegas is a great choice if you are a fan of the dusty cowboy vibe of The Ghoul, you want to learn more about the New California Republic, the faction lead by mysterious revolutionary Moldaver in the Fallout series, or you want to dig into the likely setting of Season 2 of the Amazon show.
New Vegas is widely regarded as the overall best Fallout game by hardcore fans of the franchise. It’s heavier on role-playing than the other modern Fallout games, so it’s a more open-ended experience and it allows players to create more varied characters and overcome challenges in different ways than either Fallout 3 or 4.
While New Vegas is definitely a great game, I didn’t connect with the characters and the extra-gritty setting as strongly as I did with the other games. Story-wise, it feels the least like the series of the modern games to me. But that's probably just a taste thing; it's still a solid introduction to the franchise.
If you want a super-casual Fallout experience, check out Fallout Shelter. This free game can be played on consoles, but it’s really designed for wasting a few minutes on your iPhone or Android. Shelter casts you as the overseer of a Vault-Tech vault. You’re in charge of expanding your home/prison, attracting new residents, and keeping everyone inside safe, sane, and radiation-free until it’s safe to return to the surface (like that will ever happen).
It may be a silly mobile game, but Fallout: Shelter is the only Fallout title that features the characters from the show. A recent update added Lucy MacLean, Maximus, The Ghoul, and (for some reason) Ma June as “legendary dwellers,” who might show up to live in your vault if you’re lucky enough to open the right lunchboxes. You can't play as them, but you can see them, and that's something I guess.
"The beginning" might seem like the most logical place to start a series, but 1997’s Fallout and its sequel Fallout 2 are bad jumping off points for most people, particularly non-gamers. Both are punishingly difficult, hardcore role-playing games with turn-based combat and confusing, antique controls—fun for some, but torturous for most. They're groundbreaking, fascinating titles to be sure, but even if you manage to suffer through the deadly beginning of each game, they don't provide the same feel as the series; the run-and-gun gameplay of Fallout 3, Fallout: New Vegas, and Fallout 4 is way closer to the series than the slow-but-deadly vibe of the early games. Also 3, 4, and New Vegas have a “Very Easy” difficulty setting, so your rip-roaring Fallout adventure won't end in frustration.
While it won't be as deadly as the first two games, Fallout 76 is not a great place to jump into Fallout world either. Released in 2018 and set in Appalachia in 2102, Fallout 76 is an online multiplayer game with a steep learning curve, MMO-style grinding and crafting, and a different overall vibe than the TV show and the other games. It tries to provide a Fallout-like experience, but the addition of other players means you’re not really the main character, and MMO-specific mechanics don't translate well to Fallout. All that plus second-tier writing and voice-acting make Fallout 76 the least Fallout-y modern Fallout game.
I’m a completist, so I’m including these two obscure, non-canonical Fallout games at the bottom of the list. I haven’t played them, but that's OK; according to Todd Howard, director and executive producer at Bethesda Game Studios and executive producer of the Fallout series, “neither Fallout Tactics nor Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel happened." Howard is the God of all things Fallout, so if he says they don't count, they don't count. Skip 'em.
A lot of people with perfectly good computers cannot upgrade to Windows 11. When Microsoft released the latest version of Windows, it put some stringent minimum system requirements in place, the toughest of which was TPM 2.0 support. Plenty of people have PCs with older versions of Trusted Platform Module (TPM) or good gaming machines that lack TPM entirely, which means that Windows 11 is out of their reach. However, there's an easy way to bypass TPM checks and install Windows 11 on your PC.
Let me state the obvious right up front: it's not a good idea to upgrade low-end PCs to Windows 11. Microsoft requires a minimum of 4GB RAM and 64GB of free space to install Windows 11, and if your PC doesn't have that, you should avoid this upgrade. This guide is primarily for those who have perfectly capable PCs, but can't upgrade to Windows 11 due to TPM restrictions.
Microsoft's main reason behind pushing for TPM is to increase security. PCs with TPM are more resilient against malware and ransomware attacks, and are able to store sensitive data locally in a more secure way. The company says that if you install Windows 11 on an unsupported PC, you may face compatibility issues, may not receive support from Microsoft, and may experience poor performance. You're also warned that any damage to your PC won't be covered under warranty.
If your PC is under warranty, it's recommended that you don't mess with it. However, if the warranty has expired, you might want to consider upgrading it to Windows 11 anyway because another deadline is looming. Microsoft has announced that it'll be discontinuing updates for these computers starting Oct. 14, 2025.
Once the last security update is issued, it's strongly recommended that you don't use your PC on the internet. You'll be vulnerable to new types of malware, viruses, and other threats from the internet, and there'll be no real security patches to protect you.
You do have the option to pay for updates as part of Microsoft's Extended Security Updates (ESU) program, but that is an expensive proposition. For businesses, it costs $61 per device for the first year, and the price doubles with each subsequent year. Microsoft hasn't revealed the pricing of these updates for individual users yet, but if you're a part of an educational institution, the pricing is $1 per device per year, which goes up to $4 per year by the third year.
If the pricing of ESU for home users is reasonable, it may be a good idea to stick with Windows 10. However, if you have a working Windows 10 license, the upgrade to Windows 11 is free and it comes with free security updates for many years to come.
Before you proceed with upgrades, be sure to back up your PC. You don't want to lose all your data during the upgrade, so please ensure that irreplaceable data such as photos, videos, and documents are all safely stored elsewhere. When all of this is done, you can start the upgrade process. First, download a Windows 11 ISO from Microsoft's website. On that page, scroll down to Download Windows 11 Disk Image (ISO) for x64 devices, select the edition from the drop-down menu, and click Download Now. Follow the directions until you get the option to click 64-bit Download. The ISO file is over 6GB and it'll take a short while to download.
While that's underway, you should download Rufus, which is a free tool that lets you create bootable USB drives. You're also going to need a USB drive with at least 8GB of free space. If you have one of these, take a moment to back up any important data on this drive because it'll be erased as we proceed.
Once the Windows 11 ISO is downloaded, plug in the USB drive, and install and launch Rufus. With this app open, go to the Device drop-down menu, and select the correct USB drive. Click the big SELECT button next to Disk or ISO image and pick the Windows 11 ISO that you just downloaded. Now, click the START button.
You'll see a pop-up asking if you want to customize your Windows installation. This is where you should ideally enable the following options:
Remove requirement for 4GB+ RAM, Secure Boot and TPM 2.0
Remove requirement for an online Microsoft account
Create a local account with username
Disable data collection (Skip privacy questions)
The first option is crucial if you want to install Windows 11 on unsupported PCs. The rest are good to have because they let you skip the online account sign-in process that Microsoft keeps trying to push, and they also skip a few annoying setup questions about data collection. With all this selected, click OK and wait for Rufus to do its thing.
Once it's done, double-check that your data is backed up, and it's time to start the upgrade. On your Windows 10 PC, go to Settings > Update & Security > Recovery and click Restart now under the Advanced startup section. This will reboot your PC and start the Windows 11 setup process from your USB drive.
I used this method to successfully upgrade my PC to Windows 11 and ran into just one hiccup. When the PC restarts for the first time during the upgrade, you should remove all USB drives from the computer (including the one with Windows 11). Otherwise, the installation may get stuck. Other than this, the upgrade went smoothly and I'm now happily running Windows 11. I didn't need to do anything to activate it either. I skipped the step asking me to type the product key and noticed that Windows 11 had activated itself after installation. My Windows 10 Pro key automatically activated Windows 11 Pro post the upgrade.
Movies can reaffirm or further our faith. For decades, they've been used to spread the Almighty's message, whether through epic productions like The Ten Commandments or Ben-Hur or low-budget indie dramas targeted toward church-goers, like Fireproof or Left Behind.
There are other films that, while not overtly Christian, have a subtle, positive message that can be equally inspiring. Here are 12 (one for each apostle) for you to choose from.
One could argue that the writer of Taxi Driver has been making Christian-themed movies all of his life, but Paul Schrader's faith (he is a graduate of Calvin College) is most apparent in this A24 film. It stars Ethan Hawke as a reverend looking for hope as the religious world becomes increasingly corrupt, but his existential journey leads him down a violent path.
Where to stream: Digital rental, Kanopy, Cinemax
Not quite as cynical as First Reformed, M. Night Shyamalan's horror film about an alien invasion has a faithless former priest as its protagonist. The movie's central theme—does the Almighty have a grand plan?—becomes fairly obvious as the plot's secrets become known.
Where to stream: Digital rental
Made at the height of Al Pacino's "shouting" period of his career, this legal thriller/horror hybrid revolves around a young lawyer (Keanu Reeves) whose spotless legal record takes him to a prestigious New York law firm where he is slowly corrupted by his boss (Pacino). The film's excessive nudity and crude language make it inappropriate for family film night, but it does touch on Christian themes such as the seven deadly sins and Lucifer's fall from heaven.
Where to stream: Digital rental, Tubi
When this big-budget adaptation of Madeline L'Engle's novel hit the screens, there were concerns about omitting its Christian elements. However, the film stays true to the book's core themes: There is meaning in our chaotic universe, and our weaknesses can be our greatest strengths.
Where to stream: Digital rental, Disney+
Speaking of young adult fantasy adaptations, this blockbuster about "two sons of Adam and two daughters of Eve" who find a magical land inside a closet delves deep into Christian themes. They become undeniable when Aslan, the wise titular lion, returns to life after sacrificing himself for one of the children at the story's center, much like a certain Christian did for the world.
Where to stream: Digital rental, Disney+
Just like C.S. Lewis, the author of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, writer and devout Catholic J.R.R. Tolkien (also a friend of Lewis) did not shy away from the fact that his novels, upon which these award-winning films are based, are founded on religious themes. A simple Google search will reveal any number of interpretations, from the ring representing temptation to the wizard Gandalf's resurrection after his death.
Where to stream: Digital rental, Max
Between the epic car crash scenes, musical cameos, and classic soundtrack, the plot of this hilarious film, which revolves around a pair of brothers (Dan Aykroyd, John Belushi) who get their band back together to put on a fundraiser for the orphanage they grew up in, has religious undertones. Much like Joan of Arc, the titular characters see a heavenly vision that sets them out on "a mission from God," though it's doubtful He asked them to drive through a shopping mall to escape the police.
Where to stream: Digital rental
Ryan Gosling is having a moment right now, so it wouldn't be prudent not to include one of his films on this list. At first blush, this dramedy about a shy soul who becomes (chaste) friends with a sex doll doesn't seem like a movie that reflects Christian values. However, quite unexpectedly, its themes of tolerance, faith, and love have prompted churches to use the film as an instructional tool.
Where to stream: Fubo, MGM+, Hoople, Tubi, Pluto TV, Kanopy, Digital rental
One runs to overcome intolerance; the other runs to bring God glory. The true story of British sprinters Harold Abrahams, an English Jew, and Eric Liddell, a Christian missionary, at the 1924 Olympics was awarded the Oscar for Best Picture in 1982. What sets this inspirational film apart from other sports dramas is that both men firmly believe their athletic abilities are part of a higher purpose. They each find strength in remaining true to their beliefs.
Where to stream: Digital rental
Frank Capra's film about redemption and life is everyone's favorite holiday film for a reason. It also touches on faith, purpose, and family—many of the touchstones of Christianity.
Where to stream: The Roku Channel, Freevee, Plex, Hoopla, Digital rental
The recent drama between the real-life Michael Oher and his adoptive family aside, this inspirational sports drama wears its themes of charity and faith on its metaphorical sleeve. The Tuohy family openly talks about their Christian beliefs and believes that their faith in God makes everything possible.
Where to stream: Digital rental
This dramedy looks like a typical Steve Martin movie, with the comedian exchanging quips with the likes of Liam Neeson and Debra Winger. The film is about a traveling preacher/con man who performs “miracles” every night at his revivals, but when actual divine events occur, he doesn’t understand why. While the film begins by framing Christianity as a get-rich-quick scheme, it becomes a profound meditation on faith and God's plan.
Where to stream: Max, Digital rental
In this column I try not to cover topics that any normal person already knows are fake. I don’t bother writing about people who think Elvis is alive or that the Earth is flat, because anyone with two brain cells to rub together already knows those are bullshit, and believers are a tiny minority on the fringes of society.
I had considered “chemtrails” in the “no one takes this seriously” column, but I was wrong. This week, legislators in Tennessee passed a state law that bans “the intentional injection, release, or dispersion, by any means, of chemicals … substances, or apparatus … with the express purpose of affecting temperature, weather, or the intensity of the sunlight." In other words, they banned chemtrails.
While the legislation was drafted partly in response to a Federal government report released last year on solar geoengineering—basically the idea of cooling the planet by reflecting sunlight back into space—some lawmakers didn't get the memo. Here’s what Tennessee Sen. Frank Niceley said in support of the law: “This will be my wife’s favorite bill of the year. She has worried about this, I bet, 10 years … If you look up—one day, it’ll be clear. The next day they will look like some angels have been playing tic-tac-toe. They’re everywhere. I’ve got pictures on my phone with Xs right over my house. For years they denied they were doing anything.”
The report that riled up Tennessee legislators explicitly says the research "does not signify any change in policy or activity by the Biden-Harris Administration." We don't even know how or if it would work, so solar geoengineering is a non-starter. Chemtrail conspiracy theories are fake and dumb. But Tennessee's decision to outlaw both could be a great and/or hilarious thing—if they follow the letter of the law they wrote.
Believers call the long, white trails sometimes left in the sky by jet airplanes "chemtrails." They believe chemtrails are the result of the government intentionally spraying biological or chemical agents into the sky in order to change the weather, control the population, and/or make people sick (the specifics depend on who you ask).
But the trails Sen. Nicely has pictures of on his phone are really called "contrails," short for condensation trails, and no one is denying anything. Contrails are the result of water vapor released from aircraft engines’ exhaust. They are mostly ice crystals, basically jet-made clouds, and there is no evidence they can control people’s behavior. But they might actually change the weather. (More on that below.)
Contrails are an interesting conspiracy theory element because you can walk outside and see them for yourself; but sometimes you don’t see them, just like the Senator said. So are some aircraft spraying chemicals and others not? According to the authorities, no one is spraying anything. Contrails only form under certain atmospheric conditions, even if it looks like angels have been playing tic-tac-toe.
Chemtrail conspiracy theorists are partly right, but, as is usual with conspiracy theorists, not in the way they think they are. The U.S. government really is trying to control the weather by releasing a chemical into the air from planes. It’s called cloud-seeding, and the chemical, silver iodide, is harmless to humans. The idea is to prevent droughts by making clouds more productive. Cloud-seeding has been around since the 1940s. It's difficult to say for sure whether it works (it’s hard to get a control group of clouds), but it’s not secret. There are ongoing, relatively small, government funded cloud-seeding programs in several states, including Utah, Wyoming, and Colorado. But not in Tennessee, obviously.
The second part of the chemtrails theory is a little right too. You don’t need to be a conspiracy theorist to accept that the U.S. government has a long, troubling history of secretly dispersing chemical and biological agents in the air over the U.S.; They admit it themselves. But the government (officially) halted biological and chemical weapons programs in the 1960s, and in 2023, the U.S.’s last chemical weapon, a sarin nerve agent-filled M55 rocket rocket, was destroyed, according to the international oversight group The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.
So weather control programs and secret dispersal of chemicals exist, and the U.S. is looking into solar geoengineering, but nothing connects jet engine vapor-trails to any of these things. That doesn't mean contrails are benign though; they might even be worse than conspiracy theorists fear.
In another “a broken clock is right twice a day” victory for conspiracy theorists, legitimate research indicates that contrails are harmful, maybe extremely harmful, but not because they contain population-control nanobots.
It's hard to pin down the specific causes of temperature changes in a system as complex as the climate of a planet, but research has long supported the theory that jets creating tiny clouds in the sky prevents heat from escaping the planet, leading many climate scientists to regard contrails as a major contributor to global warming.
Contrails may be worse than the effect of burning all that jet fuel in the first place. According to the Yale School of the Environment, the constant injection of jet-made clouds has a “daily impact on atmospheric temperatures that is greater than that from the accumulated carbon emissions from all aircraft since the Wright Brothers first took to the skies more than a century ago.” To make matters worse, efforts to cut the CO2 emissions by making jet engines more efficient tends to produce more contrails that last longer.
So yes, conspiracy theorists, those streaks in the sky are a serious problem that could be contributing to a lot of people dying in the future. (Don’t worry, we’re using AI to stop it, which should work out great.)
Tennessee law-makers may have crafted this legislation to thwart a federal program that doesn’t exist and fight a made-up phenomenon, but depending on how it's interpreted and enforced, this law could be the most consequential piece of environmental protection legislation in U.S. history—or it could be a clear enough lesson in what happens when you let conspiracy theorists pass laws that Tennessee won't vote for dumb people anymore. (I can dream, right?)
To really ban "chemtrails" you'd have to ban all jet travel over Tennessee, which would lower the total amount of contrail-based warming on earth. But that's just the beginning. Tennessee outlawed releasing anything that “affects temperature, weather, or the intensity of the sunlight" without defining any of the terms, so it could be read to ban all pollution—from cars, airplanes, factories, or anywhere else—because it contributes to global warming (ie: affects temperature.)
To be fair, the law says the chemicals must be released with “the express purpose of affecting temperature, weather, or the intensity of the sunlight," so it probably wouldn't apply to factories, since raising the temperature of the earth is a secondary effect of industry. But sunglass manufacturers could be in the crosshairs. What is a pair of sunglasses if not an apparatus that affects the intensity of sunlight? Maybe sunglasses only affect sunlight's intensity on a personal level, but the law doesn't define what "affects the intensity of sunlight" means, so it could be read to cover Ray-Bans and beach umbrellas. You could make a case that the letter of Tennessee's law bans heaters, air conditioners, stoves, and ovens too, since they are all apparatuses with the express purpose of changing temperature. Water is a chemical, and spraying it onto people at an amusement park is an attempt to change temperature, so goodbye, cooling misters.
I could go on, but it's all ridiculous. We know that Tennessee is not going to shut down its airports and turn into a post-industrial, sunglass-free state where cooking is outlawed. The law isn't likely to be enforced in any way, and its only real-world effect will be to make people like Senator Niceley's wife happy that someone is finally doing something about those pesky angels playing tic-tac-toe in the sky.
Chances are you have a lot of stuff in your house. Possibly also in a storage unit. And maybe at your parents’ house, your ex’s place, and liberally scattered throughout the globe. We all accumulate a ton of things as we go through life—it’s estimated that the average home has about 300,000 things in it, if you count all the small stuff like that bowl of paper clips on your desk.
Every now and then you get the idea to clean it all out and maybe sell some of it, to free yourself of all that clutter while making a tidy profit on stuff you don’t even use any more. If that’s the mode you’re in right now, consider parting out some of your stuff instead of just selling it whole, because you can potentially make a lot more money that way.
“Parting out” is the process of disassembling something and selling the individual parts, which often have a distinct value all their own. If someone has an old car that won’t run because it needs a replacement part, they probably don’t want to buy an entire replacement car when they could just buy the part they need—and they’re often willing to pay a premium for the convenience.
Parting out your possessions isn’t always easy—it takes time, effort, and some knowledge to do it effectively (not to mention specific tools, in many cases). But if you’ve got a bunch of unused stuff lying around, look into what might be worth parting out instead of just dumping on eBay as-is. You can part out almost anything—if it has parts, there’s a decent chance someone, somewhere is looking for them—but not everything is going to be worth your time and effort unless you’re going to spin it up into a business. For example, parting out vacuum cleaners can be profitable, but also requires a lot of work, and parting out your old vacuum when it stops working won’t necessarily be worth it.
An easy way to tell if the parts in your junk are worth something is to pop into eBay and search around there—this can also give you an idea of the prices you can charge for parts, and whether the potential profit is worth your time. There are also often specific forums or marketplaces online for different parts, so it’s worth googling those as well to see if your parts are in demand.
Cars are by far the most common things to sell for parts. People are keeping their cars for longer than ever, and car parts are in short supply, which drives up their value. And if you have an old, vintage car rusting away in your garage, some of those parts might be worth serious money. Even non-vintage car parts can net you some cash—depending on mileage, condition, and the make and model of the car, the engine might be worth $500 or more by itself, and the airbags could be worth $150-$200. If you have the tools, time, and expertise to part out a car (or a motorcycle, or even a bicycle) you can gather estimated value for each part and compare it to the price you’d get for selling the vehicle as a whole.
If you have a computer, whether it’s a tricked-out desktop gaming machine, a cheap Chromebook, or even a Mac, you can part it out. Between hobbyists building their own machines and frugal folks trying to keep an old warhorse running, there’s a lot of demand for many of the components inside your home computer—and plenty of places to sell them. While some of those components require some tools and knowledge to remove, others, like the RAM sticks and graphics card, are pretty easy to pull with just a screwdriver and some patience.
Laptops can be more challenging because of their compact nature; many components in a laptop are soldered into place or very difficult to access. But if the laptop isn’t functioning anyway, it can still be worth your time to harvest parts. Searching the internet for your specific model of computer and seeing what parts people are looking for or selling will give you an idea of what’s worth salvaging from that old computer.
If you have some old board games piled up in the garage or basement, don’t toss them—they could be pretty valuable to collectors and enthusiasts. And they’re going to generate more money if you part them out, because people often find themselves missing the original pieces from an old game purchased at a garage sale or found in their basement or garage. In fact, eBay has a dedicated section just for board game pieces where you can research what you might make. Most of these pieces don’t sell for a ton of money by themselves, but you can make more money parting out that old game than from selling it as a unit.
Setting up a guitar requires knowledge and skill. Tearing an electric guitar apart requires a screwdriver. Like everything else on this list, unless your guitar is a classic vintage axe that can fetch a lot of money, it’s usually more profitable to part out an old beat-up electric guitar, selling everything from the neck to the humbuckers separately on eBay or another online marketplace. Many musicians want to build their own guitars from specific parts, or need to replace worn out parts on their guitars and want to save some money by doing the work themselves (or have trouble finding a rare part), and you can profit from that.
People who love LEGO are serious about it. As you might imagine, assembling a complex LEGO set only to discover you’re missing a few pieces—or maybe, most infuriatingly, one piece—is incredibly frustrating. That’s why sites like Bricklink exist—so you can find and purchase LEGO parts. If you have some LEGO sets you’re looking to liquidate, you can use Bricklink to find out the rough part out value, which can be a surprisingly high number.
Right now, there are two main ways to charge our devices: plug it into power, or charge it wirelessly using a Qi-enabled device. A lesser-known wireless charging standard, WLC, actually enables devices to charge over NFC—the same tech used for mobile transactions like Apple Pay and Google Pay. As it happens, Google appears to be working on bringing NFC charging to smartphones with its upcoming Android 15 update, but it's not clear why.
Android Authority's Mishaal Rahman discovered the feature in Android 15's first beta, which Google released last week. Rahman noticed Google added a new class to the system app that deals with NFC: NfcCharging. If that wasn't clear enough, Rahman found NfcCharging can start and stop charging via NFC, analyzes NFC charging info payloads, among other functions.
We don't know what the timeline would be for adding NFC charging to Android, but there's no real reason to rush the tech at this time. Charing a device over NFC would be considerably slower than Qi wireless charging (or wired charging, of course), as the standard only supports charging up to 1W. Qi, on the other hand, has a maximum output of 15W, depending on the device and charger. It would take a long time to charge a modern smartphone via NFC. When you can fully charge a phone like the OnePlus 12 in just over a half hour, NFC charging doesn't seem particularly practical.
However, this standard could be more useful for smaller devices that use tiny batteries—think Bluetooth trackers or styluses. While NFC charging will still be slow, it could allow companies to put rechargeable batteries in products that currently use disposable ones. Imagine your Pixel passively charging an AirTag or a Tile tracker whenever they're next to each other, rather than throwing away the battery when it dies. If Google follows through with this tech and adds it to Android 15, it'll be up to the marketplace to take advantage of the standard in new products.
This isn't the first time we've seen a software update add a new wireless charging standard to smartphones. With iOS 17.2, Apple added Qi2 charging to iPhones, an improved version of Qi that allows for a magnetic connection with wireless chargers. That said, this Android update could enable NFC wireless charging from smartphones themselves, rather than allow smartphones to access a new way to charge.
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