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Whether it’s inconsiderate neighbors or roommates or just bedroom windows facing a busy street, all it takes is a few sleepless nights to have you Googling the word soundproofing. It’s notoriously difficult (and expensive) to truly soundproof a room that wasn’t designed and constructed with that goal in mind, though. If you’re in a rental and can’t actually renovate (or you just don’t want to spend the money and time to tear out walls), the situation might seem hopeless—but there are actually a lot of products you can buy that can greatly reduce the amount of noise pollution in your bedroom or other areas of the home. Here are your best options when it comes to a no-renovation soundproofing plan.
One of the fundamental tools of soundproofing is the foam acoustic panel. While these are used to dampen echoes and sound within a room, they can also be very effective at dampening sound coming from exterior sources. If you have a specific wall or window that is transmitting noise (a shared wall with a roommate, or a window facing a loud street, for example), slapping some acoustic panels on the wall or window can help tremendously.
They sell self-adhesive acoustic panels that are easy to mount, but these can cause issues when you try to remove them, as the adhesive can take some paint or other finish off the walls and leave residue on window glass. An alternative solution is to buy some non-adhesive panels and use Command Strips to mount them. This way, when it’s time to get that security deposit back, you won’t have to worry about damaging walls and windows.
For windows, a pricier but more effective option would be a custom window insert, like the ones from Acoustical Solutions or Indow. These companies take your window measurements and construct a panel that fits snugly into your window jamb from the inside, improving the sound-blocking of the window without blocking the light. These sometimes do require some light drilling to install, but they’re 100% removable and can be very effective in reducing the noise entering a room through the windows—but they’re also much more expensive than foam panels; Indow’s inserts average about $372, for example.
Another option for soundproofing a window or door is an acoustic curtain or blanket that covers them. These are essentially heavy acoustic materials sewn inside a fabric casing and can typically be mounted on top of the window or door and rolled up or down. When rolled down, they usually have a Velcro or magnetic seal around the edge to make them tight against noise intrusion.
Ikea makes the Gunnlaug sound absorbing curtain, which is attractive and relatively affordable, for example, and you can also buy insulated door curtains that install over your doors to block noise and drafts (you’ll get better sound-blocking from the slightly more expensive Door Buddy or similar products from soundproofing supply companies). You can also have custom-made acoustic curtains for both windows and doors that are a bit easier to live with because they roll up easily when you’re not using them.
You can also try adding weather stripping to interior doors; these are self-adhesive strips that help seal the door tight when closed, which can go a long way toward reducing noise intrusion. As with all adhesives, removing this might be a concern when you move out, although it might not be noticeable if installed properly.
A final strategy to quiet down your living space without tearing stuff up is to add floor coverings. A thick rug can help block sound in both directions, and adding a rug pad with acoustic properties like this one from RugPadUSA can augment that effect. Rug pads and thick carpets won’t eliminate sound drifting up from below, but they can definitely muffle it, especially if you cover most or all of your floor space.
Noise is no joke—it can have a real negative effect on your health and happiness. Spending a little to make your living space as quiet as possible without risking your security deposit will be some of the best money you’ve ever spent.
I’m one of those people who can’t get comfortable at night until I’ve rotated through every possible sleeping position, ideally twice. But when I was pregnant, I kept hearing the message that we’re all supposed to sleep on our left side, specifically. On the other hand, there’s research suggesting the right side may be better for people with certain health conditions. Let’s consider all the factors and see whether there’s an optimal side for you.
If you have a sleeping position that is comfortable, and you don’t have any medical issues suggesting that you should change it, you’re probably fine to sleep any way you want.
That said, side-sleeping is often recommended as a good thing. If you’re pregnant, sleeping on your stomach stops being an option. Sleeping on your back while pregnant may impede blood flow, since some of our major blood vessels, the aorta and the vena cava, run along the back of our abdominal cavity. Once the uterus gets big enough, it can put pressure on these blood vessels.
If you have obstructive sleep apnea, you’ll probably be advised not to sleep on your back, since people tend to have more apneic episodes on their back. Sleeping on your back is also generally understood to make snoring worse. (PSA: If you haven’t been tested for sleep apnea, but find that you sleep better when you aren’t on your back, you might want to look into getting tested.)
And if you struggle with back pain, side-sleeping tends to be more comfortable than sleeping on your back or your stomach—although this varies from person to person.
The main reason to sleep on the left side has to do with the shape of the stomach. If you’re envisioning your stomach as a sort of round ball, get that image out of your head right away. Your stomach is not only smaller than you’re probably thinking, it’s also asymmetrical. The esophagus (food pipe) enters it on the right-hand side. (Here’s a diagram from the University of Rochester Medical Center showing exactly where it is and how it’s shaped.)
Because of this shape, lying on your left side means that food and digestive juices have an easier time staying inside the stomach where they’re supposed to be. If you have GERD or you get heartburn easily, sleeping on your right side can make it more likely for stomach acid to end up in the esophagus, making your heartburn worse.
(By the way, most of us have our bodies organized this way, but every now and then somebody’s organs will be in a different position than what is in textbooks. A review in the International Journal of Internal Medicine notes that a mirror-style reversal of organs is so rare that “[e]ven a busy surgeon may expect to encounter this anomaly only once or twice in a lifetime.”)
When you sleep on your left side, your stomach might be happier, but your heart changes position. The heart is located slightly to the left of center in your chest, and there is a structure of connective tissue called the mediastinum that is in the very center of your chest.
When you lie on your right side, the mediastinum keeps the heart in place. But when you lie on your left side, your heart sags and rotates slightly. That’s not a problem for most of us, most of the time, but the movement is significant enough that it can be detected from electrocardiogram readings.
For this reason, it’s thought that the heart beats more efficiently when you’re lying on your right side than on your left. This in turn may help you breathe more easily if you have sleep apnea. And this may be why research in animals has shown that side sleeping may improve the clearance of “glymphatic” waste products from the brain—one of the important body-maintenance tasks that happens while we sleep.
First, if your doctor has advised you to sleep in a certain position, follow their advice. That said, if they want you sleeping in a position that you find uncomfortable or impractical, ask them why they recommend that position, and also how much it matters. It may be that the recommendation is just a suggestion for something that they hope will make you more comfortable, not a medical necessity. The only way to know the difference is to ask.
For the rest of us, it’s generally fine to decide on your sleeping position through experimentation. While the shape of our hearts and stomachs may suggest that one position is better than others, we have complex bodies made of many different parts. If you have an old shoulder injury that gets aggravated by sleeping on that side, you may be better off avoiding that position.
Ultimately, outside of certain positions for certain medical conditions, most of us can choose the sleeping position that is most comfortable—and for most of us, it really won’t make much of a difference. The Sleep Foundation advises that the best side for you “depends on your personal preference as well as the support of your mattress and pillow.” For troubleshooting, they suggest the simple rule: “If you experience discomfort or pain, try a different sleeping position.”
The Mac doesn't have a start menu like Windows, but that wasn't always entirely true. In the '90s, Macs offered a list of applications in the Apple Menu, like this:
That's a distant memory at this point—it's been 25 years—so we probably shouldn't count on Apple to bring this feature back. The good news: a free application called XMenu, which I found via App Addict, brings this feature back, more or less. In some ways it's actually better than the vintage option.
Load XMenu and a single menu bar icon, which looks like the Mac Applications icon, will be added. You can click this to browse your Applications folder.
It's not a perfect start menu replacement, especially if you have a lot of apps, but you can organize things a little. Any applications that in are folders will show up as a sub-menu, meaning you can organize things a little by putting applications into particular folders within Finder.
You can also add more icons in the settings. There's support for your Documents and Home folder, meaning you can use this to browse all of your files.
There's also support for the Developer and Snippets folder, if you're the kind of user who uses those, and a User-Defined folder which you can fill with whatever you want. You can create an alias of any folder in Finder by right-clicking and then clicking Create Alias. You can drag various aliases over ~/Library/Application Support/XMenu/Custom to build your own custom menu that includes all the folders you care about most. It takes a little more time, granted, but it will work exactly the way you want.
The first time you do barbell squats, they can hurt. I remember using a bar pad when I first started squatting, and I couldn’t imagine doing without. These days I think nothing of getting under a bar of any weight without a pad—but I totally understand those beginner struggles. So let’s look at what you need to do differently if you find the pad-less bar is hurting your neck or shoulders.
The most important thing to know is that the barbell shouldn’t just sit on skin and bone. Your back muscles need to create a “shelf” for the bar to rest on. For high bar squats, the kind most people start with, that shelf is made primarily of your upper trapezius muscles. Shrug your shoulders and you’ll feel these muscles contracting; they are at the sides and back of your neck, where your neck connects to your shoulders.
In addition to shrugging up, you’ll find that you can also bring your shoulder blades toward each other, further fluffing up the meat pillow just below your neck. This is where the bar should rest. If you don’t squeeze your shoulders together, there’s no pillow, no shelf, and no good place for the bar.
You do the shoulder squeeze described above before you put the bar on your back. Get under the bar and set it on top of that meat cushion you just created. Move around a bit if necessary to find the most comfortable spot. You’ll find that the bar won’t rest on any of your neck or shoulder bones this way. If you still feel the bar against the vertebrae of your neck, you probably have it too high. Try placing the bar a smidge lower.
You can also experiment with “low bar” squats, which have the bar resting a few inches lower than what I just described. The bar will be supported by your rear deltoid muscles. Squeezing your shoulders together to create a shelf is still important here.
For some people, the position of their neck can affect how the bar feels. If you have a tendency to look up as you’re squatting, you may find this creates pressure on your neck or encourages you to relax your upper back, which causes you to lose your shelf. If this is happening to you, try tucking your chin toward your chest, or even looking slightly downward, and see if that helps.
One common cue is to look at a spot on the ground about five feet in front of you. That said, some people do better with a cue when they think about looking up. As with many exercise cues, the important thing is whether the cue improves how you lift, not literally where you are looking. Use whichever one helps you keep a stronger and more comfortable position.
You can’t make a meat cushion without meat, so if you’re a beginner who is especially skinny or bony, you may just have to weather through some hard times for a bit. This is a temporary situation. You can speed up the process by doing extra work for your upper back. Shrugs, band pull-aparts, and all kinds of rowing and pulling exercises will help. Check out my picks for the best upper back exercises here.
In the meantime, you may be one of the few people who can truly benefit from a barbell pad. These pads aren’t usually recommended, as they can make the bar feel unstable. But as a beginner, this is a fine stopgap solution. Give the naked bar another try after you’ve been squatting a while, and you’ll probably find it a lot easier.
AI is everywhere right now. If you're a technology company, and you aren't embracing artificial intelligence (ahem, Apple), you look like you're behind the times. But just because generative AI is the trend right now, that doesn't mean companies need to shoehorn it into absolutely everything they do. Maybe more companies need to follow Apple's lead here.
Look, AI certainly has the potential to change the way we interact with technology, for better or for worse: Sometimes, a new application for it rolls around—like OpenAI's shockingly realistic video generator—that demonstrates how much power AI has to disrupt life as we know it. But the way companies are adding AI to their products, for the most part, just isn't it.
Of course, there's no escaping the big names adding AI functionality to their platforms: Google is all-in on Gemini, powering AI features in Android to traditional Google searches. The same can be said for Microsoft, of course: Windows now has Copilot, and envisions you using it for just about everything you do on your PC. Depending on who you are, you may see this type of forced-adoption as helpful or frustrating. I'm a bit indifferent: I'm happy to see new OS-level features use AI if they're genuinely useful, and as long as I can avoid the aspects I don't find necessary, it's not a big deal. You can hide Copilot if you want to, and even though you can adopt Gemini as your Android assistant, you don't have to. (At least, not yet.)
But at a certain point, the amount of in-your-face AI products from big companies starts to feel ridiculous. I know Meta is as big a name as Google or Microsoft, but nobody wants to use Meta AI on Facebook, Instagram, or WhatsApp. Maybe Llama 3 is a world-class LLM, but if I'm on one of Meta's products, it's to catch up with my friends, not to consult AI. That's why AI-powered features are usually the better route: Unlike forced chatbots, these features can be useful, like Instagram's AI image editing, and even if they're not, they're easily avoided.
Apple is also about to jump onto the AI bandwagon, though it's not yet clear in what capacity. I think everyone would be thrilled if Apple kept the bloat to a minimum and added features that made sense for the platform. I'd just be happy if they made Siri better.
But it's not just the big names adding AI to their platforms: Companies left, right, and center are adding AI to things that simply do not need AI in the first place. In effect, AI is becoming the new bloatware, and I'd like it to stop.
Take Logitech, for example. The company recently announced a new mouse, the Logitech Signature AI Edition M750, which comes with one brand new feature: a button for summoning Logi AI Prompt Builder, a ChatGPT-powered app included in Logitech's Logi Options+ software. Without getting too in the weeds here, Logitech wants you to hit the button whenever you want to harness the power of AI to punch up your writing: Rather than leave the app you're in, Logi AI Prompt Builder will invite you to paste your text in a floating window, and give you the usual AI editing tools: Rephrase, summarize, reply, or, oddly, "Create Email." You can also ask Logi AI Prompt Builder to do something specific with your text, adjust the length of the output, and adjust the tone, none of which is particularly radical for a generative AI app.
Maybe I'm the ignorant one here, but I just don't see the practical application for this. How many people buying Logitech mice really want to launch an app for reworking their writing, so much so they'll buy a mouse with a dedicated key just for the privilege?
It isn't going to be much of a help for PC users running Windows 11: Microsoft has already seen to it that a quick Windows key + C shortcut pulls up Copilot—which, by the way, is also powered by ChatGPT. If you really want some AI input on your writing, you certainly don't need Logitech's help to do so. Even if you're using macOS, a largely AI-free operating system, you can keep a window with ChatGPT open in the background to paste your text into. If you prefer Google's bot, you can ask Gemini to help your rewrite your words. If you use Opera, you can have the browser take a look. Hell, give it to Meta AI: There's no shortage of apps to rewrite your words with (and that's kind of my point).
But speaking of Microsoft, Windows PCs are also shipping with an AI button this year. The company added it to this year's Surface Laptops, so new Surface users can hit the Copilot key to pull up the assistant. This, I'm torn on: Regardless of how much you think AI is going to change technology in the near future, dedicating a key to the tech—especially a key on a flagship Microsoft laptop—is a risky bet. How many of us are still hitting the built-in Crackle or Pandora buttons on our TV remotes? (Apologies to any fans of those services.)
The company Nothing, on the other hand, is coming out with earbuds that can activate the ChatGPT app with a press of the stem, in case you need to ask the AI for something with your Nothing buds. Maybe some people who really love AI are going to enjoy this shortcut to ChatGPT, but most people buying earbuds likely aren't going to make their decision based on which brand connects them to ChatGPT fastest. That's not to mention how app after app has integrated AI into their platform in some way, but at least for many apps, these features have their use or are easy to avoid.
The tech industry is certainly not immune to capitalizing on fads and spectacularly failing. Remember 3D movies? Avatar seemed to convince everyone in Hollywood and TV manufacturing alike that 3D was the future: From then on, every blockbuster had to be in 3D, and the latest and greatest TVs had to support 3D as well. The TVs even came with special glasses, like higher-quality versions of the ones the theaters gave you. Of course, 3D TV never really took off, and 3D movies, for the most part, slowly died out. (Thank goodness.)
Speaking of TVs, remember when TiVo, and products like it, seemed like the way of the future? Who wouldn't want to pay to have the power to pause, rewind, and record live TV? Unfortunately, TiVo never saw streaming coming, and with it, a host of us cutting the cord to watch content in any way, shape, or form we liked. Eventually, cable companies added the functionality to their services anyway: If you do still subscribe to cable, you have no reason to buy another product to manipulate your live TV experience. (That said, somehow, TiVo still exists.)
Even VR could be put in the running here. Look, I've loved many of my experiences with VR, but you can't deny the reality that the tech simply hasn't taken off the way you may have assumed it would. When it started rolling out (not counting the launch of the Virtual Boy, of course) who wouldn't have thought that virtual reality was the way of the future? But expensive, clunky hardware (not to mention the total lack of immersion with the real world while in VR) put up too many roadblocks to get the tech mainstream. VR still enjoys some modest success in its niche, but it's not a must-have tech in everyone's homes.
Look, we're still early days on this thing. Right now, most of the AI we're seeing is either being rolled out by big tech, or contained within apps. I can handle that. But what I don't want to see is more companies take the Lenovo or Nothing approach here: You don't need to build an AI app within a product you already sell when that AI app adds nothing of value to the end user. I get it: Companies want to slap keywords like "AI" and "ChatGPT" on their products, because they think it'll impress consumers. But if I buy a mouse and it asks me whether I want to use a proprietary AI app to rework my writing, I might have to box it up and return it.
It's a great time to buy a Steam Deck. Valve's refurbished LCD Steam Decks are back in stock, and for a lower price than ever before. The used devices are available for cheaper than they are new, making them a solid option for folks who want a Steam Deck but don't want to pay full price.
This isn't the first time Valve has offered its handheld gaming PC in refurbished condition, but it is the first time that we've seen the price drop so low. With its stock now refreshed (although it is going fast), Valve is offering the refurbished Steam Decks starting at $279 for the base 64GB eMMC model. That's roughly $70 less than the company currently charges for a brand-new device (and $40 less than when it first started offering refurbished Steam Decks). The 256GB NVMe model and 512GB model are also now available refurbished at $319 and $359, respectively. That makes the largest LCD model more affordable than buying the smallest OLED version brand-new. At this time, there is no word on when or if Valve will offer the OLED model as refurbished.
While buying a device like this refurbished might sound risky, Valve promises that it has thoroughly tested all units, and that the only issues present include cosmetic damage, like marks or scratches. Everything else is promised to deliver the same performance as a brand-new Steam Deck. To back this up, all refurbished models come with the same one-year warranty as a new Steam Deck.
Refurbished decks also come with the same carrying case that brand-new Steam Decks come in, giving you something to keep your handheld safe while transporting it from location to location.
At the time of writing, the refurbished 64GB Steam Deck is sold out, so it's unclear how long the others will have available stock or when the 64GB model will get more in. Either way, this could be a good opportunity for many to get their hands on Valve's handheld gaming PC, which remains one of the best values in gaming handhelds right now.
While the LCD Steam Deck's slightly smaller display might not be as appealing as the Steam Deck OLED's, it remains one of the best ways to jump into handheld PC gaming, especially at these lower prices. If you'd rather hold out for the OLED Steam Deck, then you can always purchase one of those starting at $549 for a 512GB storage option.
https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/delhi-india-july-5-2023-threads-2328446749
If you've successfully moved away from X, you might have found a new home with Threads. But as the Threads network grows, you'll also find you won't want to see everything on your feed. Perhaps you're trying to avoid spoilers for your new favorite TV show, or you're trying to get away from the new meme that just won't die. Either way, you can now use Thread's Hidden Words feature to mute any keyword or emoji to banish them from your feed, once and for all—at least, from your feed. (They'll still show up in the search.)
Muting offensive words or annoying phrases takes a couple of seconds. Here's how it works:
Open the Threads app, and go to your Profile.
Click the Globe icon in the top-left corner to open Privacy settings.
Here, choose Hidden Words.
From the Custom words and phrases section, make sure the feature is enabled. Then, tap Manage custom words and phrases.
Now, add any word, phrase, or emoji in the text field, and tap Add. You can add multiple words or emojis you want to block, each separated by a comma.
Now, hit Back to go back to the Hidden Words page. You can return to this page at any time to add more words to the blocked list. If you want to unmute a word, go back to the Hidden Words section, choose the Manage custom words and phrases option, swipe on a muted word, and tap the Delete button.
Also on this page, you'll notice an Offensive words and phrases section enabled by default. With this feature, any replies to your posts that contain offensive words or phrases will be automatically filtered to the bottom of your posts in a covered "Hidden replies" section. You won't need to see them on your profile, nor will they show up on your feed, but they will be visible by anyone who wants to see them. If you don't like this feature, you can disable it from the Hidden Words section, which will allow these replies to come through.
Standing fans tend to annoy me. I find I’m constantly getting up to adjust them; they’re loud; and they become absolutely filthy with no clear way to clean them. None of these issues seem like they’d be hard to solve—and yet standing fans have been around for a long time without much innovation on how to fix these pain points. Somehow, the DREO PolyFan 704s ($134.99) figured it out, and for that reason, I absolutely recommend it as the perfect standing fan for small to medium rooms.
The PolyFan, whose name refers to the dual motors powering it, stands 43 inches tall when fully extended, with a tapered stem and round base. You can adjust the stem by four inches to shorten it. The fan head itself is on a swing, and can be positioned at any vertical angle (but you won’t need to position it yourself—more on that in a bit). The fan arrives in a few large pieces, and assembly took less than 10 minutes to attach the stem to the base. The Dreo includes a small remote, which is certainly nice—but since you use your phone app for all the remote functions and more, you won’t need it. The PolyFan comes in two colors, a rose gold or matte silver. The tapered stem and rounded edges on the fan head, coupled with the matte finish, make the fan look more expensive than it is.
The Dreo app paired quickly for me on the first try. All of the commands for the fan take place in two panes. First, there's a general pane that allows you to turn the fan on and off, get a temperature reading for the room, see upcoming scheduled runs, and use a slider for fan intensity. If you click on settings, you’ll be offered a second pane with more options for the fan, including a turbo mode, a natural mode and sleep mode. You can use a visual angle control to aim the fan in any 3D direction you’d like, and then control the horizontal and vertical oscillation. I didn’t realize how valuable this was until I experienced not having to get up to adjust the fan, and then it felt downright luxurious.
Like the Dreo Air Purifier Tower Fan I reviewed recently, the air Dreo produced is breezier than a normal fan. At lower speeds, it feels like a light, natural breeze. At a higher intensity, I felt cooler, but not like I was in a wind tunnel. Dreo uses a brushless motor and a dual vortex technology to achieve this, and while it’s not the same as the Dyson Hot+Cool’s cool air, it felt closer to that experience than a traditional standing fan.
The Dreo is impressively quite. Dreo says the fan never goes above 25 dB, and most of the time, it won’t even reach that. It rarely went over 18 dB in my use, but I rarely had it on max settings. You could easily leave it on while in a Zoom call.
I was impressed at how the Dreo air filled the room. You can oscillate the fan 120 degrees horizontally and 85 degrees vertically, which means you get a pretty wide angle swing, and the fan can reach 100 feet, according to the docs. None of my rooms are longer than 30 feet, but you could certainly feel the fan if you stood 30 feet away.
Fans collect dust and then become impossible to clean—I’ve broken many window fans trying to get them open to clean them. Dreo built a fan that you can take apart for these purposes. After only a week of use, I started breaking it apart. The fan comes apart into three parts, and all are easy to wash. It took a minute to take apart and a minute to put back together.
I know, it’s just a fan. But I suspect you’ve bought a lot of cheap fans in your lifetime under that premise and have ended up with old-looking fans gummed up with dust that you haul out every spring. The design of most tower fans has caused them to not be very stable, or to look anything other than cheap. Standing fans also tend to be top heavy. The PolyFan is none of those things, and performs better, is cleanable and quiet. For those reasons, I think it’s a good value. I’m also excited, after seeing these two products from Dreo, to see what else they produce in the future.
Keyboard shortcuts are a boon for productivity on Windows. Many things that take multiple mouse clicks, like taking screenshots, can easily be done with a couple of keystrokes. Windows 11 has several new keyboard shortcuts, but there's merit in learning about all of the best keyboard shortcuts on the platform. Some of these have been around for years, but aren't used often enough. I bet there's at least one shortcut you didn't know about but wish you had.
If you're a Windows 11 user, you're no stranger to adjusting settings, since the OS ships with some not-so-great default options. Here's how you can make your system even quicker:
Windows-i: Opens Windows settings.
Backspace: If you're a few pages deep in your Windows settings, you press Backspace to go up one level. Keep pressing it again and again, and it'll eventually bring you back to the settings home page.
Windows-A: Opens quick settings (the equivalent of Mac's Control Center).
Windows-L: Locks the PC.
Windows-D: Shows the desktop.
Windows-N: Opens the Notification Center and also shows the calendar.
Windows-R: Opens the Run window and lets you quickly launch apps.
Windows-S: Allows you to use Windows search.
Windows-V: Shows your clipboard history.
Windows-Spacebar: Switches between keyboards or input languages.
Taking screenshots is quite simple on Windows, but there are a few keyboard shortcuts that will help you do it quickly.
PrtScn: If your keyboard has a print screen button, it's the simplest way to take a screenshot in Windows.
Windows-PrtScn: Takes a screenshot of everything visible on the screen.
Alt-PrtScn: Captures a screenshot of the active window.
Windows-F: Takes a screenshot and opens Windows 11's Feedback Hub. Lets you report any bugs or other issues within your computer to Microsoft.
Windows-Shift-S: Takes a screenshot of a part of the screen. You can define a custom area and Windows will take a screenshot within it.
Windows-Alt-PrtScn: Takes a screenshot of the active game window, using Windows Game Bar.
If the default tools aren't cutting it for you, then you should switch to ShareX, the best screenshot app for Windows.
There are plenty of shortcuts that make it easier to manage open windows in various apps:
Alt-Tab: Perhaps the most famous window management shortcut. Lets you cycle through all open apps and switch between them.
Shift-Alt-Tab: Cycles through open apps in reverse order.
Ctrl-Tab: Cycles through open tabs in your browser, File Explorer, or other apps.
Shift-Ctrl-Tab: Cycles through tabs in reverse.
Ctrl-1: Opens the first tab in the browser. Change the number to anything from 1 to 9, and you'll jump to the corresponding tab.
Tab: Cycles through all clickable elements on the screen. Keep hitting it to go to the next available option.
Ctrl-Tab: The same as Tab, but in reverse.
Windows-Tab: Opens the task view to see your virtual desktops.
Windows-Ctrl-D: Adds a virtual desktop.
Windows-Ctrl-Right Arrow: Switches to the virtual desktop on the right.
Windows-Ctrl-Left Arrow: Switches to the virtual desktop on the left.
Windows-Ctrl-F4: Closes the virtual desktop you're using.
F11: Maximizes the open window or brings it back to its original size.
Alt-F4: Closes the open window.
Windows' File Explorer has a bunch of great shortcuts for productivity:
F2: Quickly renames files. You can also select multiple files and use F2 to create a sequentially numbered naming scheme, such as Grand-Canyon-Trip (1), Grand-Canyon-Trip (2), and so on.
F3: Quickly goes to the search bar in file explorer. Ctrl-E and Ctrl-F also do the same thing.
Ctrl-L: Selects the address bar. Also works in your browser. In the File Explorer, you can also use F4 to do this.
F5: Refreshes the active window.
Alt-Enter: When you select any file or folder, this shortcut opens Properties.
Alt-Left Arrow: Go back to the previous page.
Alt-Right Arrow: Go forward.
Ctrl-T: Opens a new tab.
Ctrl-Shift-N: Creates a new folder.
Alt-P: Opens the preview pane.
There are many, many more keyboard shortcuts in Windows. Here are some of the most useful among them:
Ctrl-C: Copy.
Ctrl-X: Cut.
Ctrl-V: Paste
Ctrl-Shift-V: Paste without formatting.
Ctrl-Z: Undo.
Ctrl-Y: Redo.
Ctrl-D: Deletes the selected item and sends it to the Recycle Bin. You can also press Delete to do this.
Ctrl-Esc: Opens the Start menu. Useful alternative if your keyboard's Windows key isn't working.
Ctrl-Shift-Esc: Opens Task Manager.
Shift-F10: The keyboard version of the right-click.
Shift-Delete: Permanently deletes selected items.
Esc: Helps you escape lots of things, such as pop-ups or accidentally executed actions.
Looking for a new Windows laptop? Our friends at PCMag have a list of the best notebooks for 2024, including:
HP Pavilion Plus 14 (2023, AMD): $831.27
Acer Aspire 3 (A315-24P): $414 (usually $499.99)
Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 12: $1,999 (usually $2,099)
Dell XPS 15 (9530) (2023): $1,650
If you’re a visual sort of person, clutter probably bothers you—but being appalled by it may not necessarily make it any easier to clean up. If you are having a hard time getting motivated, try this little trick that taps into the universal obsession with a good before-and-after pic.
This tip comes from Becoming Minimalist and is really simple on the surface: Pick a small section of your home, like a countertop or junk drawer, and snap a picture of it. Then, clean it up. Just focus on the small area you photographed. Once you’re done, take a new picture and compare the two.
Do this any time you have a few minutes to dedicate to a minor cleaning task, so the pics are right next to each other in your camera roll. When you can see the difference just by swiping between the two photos, you’ll feel motivated to keep going. Without the pictures, it can be hard to remember what the mess even looked like, so you won’t stay as motivated to clean or keep it clean. You need a reminder of where you’ve been to get where you’re going.
Like other popular decluttering techniques, this one asks you to work in short bursts and on smaller spaces. That’s important, especially if you feel overwhelmed when you consider the volume of how much you actually have to clean up. If you frame your organizing in terms of “I have to clean my house,” it’s going to feel like too much, but if you think, “Today, I have to clean the bathroom cabinet,” that’s a lot easier.
I tried this last weekend when I cleaned and organized my makeup, which is as task I haven’t done in… well, a really long time. The “before” photo didn’t really shock me much in isolation, but once I had an “after” photo to compare it to a few hours later and I was able to see the difference when I swiped between them, I was really stunned. While I was cleaning, I got used to the new, organized look, so by the time I was finished, I was happy enough with it, but not super thrilled, since I couldn’t really remember what it had looked like earlier, anyway. The tangible proof in the pictures was rewarding and motivated me to move on swiftly to the shelf I reserve for hair tools and clips.
You want to do this pretty quickly so you don’t lose steam, so make sure you have some baskets on hand where you can sort items into four categories: Keep, toss, donate, and sell. Don’t spend a lot of time debating on what you should keep, either. (If you need help deciding whether or not to keep something, try this related technique.) Your goal is to move swiftly from “before” to “after” so you can see the results of your work and feel motivated to keep grinding.
HBO was, for at least a couple of generations, the home of movies on cable. No one else could quite compete. So the rise of HBO Max seemed like it could well have been the ultimate streaming destination for movie lovers—a designation that the jury's still out on, especially given the decision to drop the "Home Box Office" portion of the name in favor of the simpler, but more generic, Max. Still, Max maintains a collaboration with TCM, giving it a broad range of classic American and foreign films, as well as much of its catalog from HBO itself. It's the primary streaming home for Studio Ghibli and A24, so, even though Max hasn't been in the business of making many originals, it still has a solid assortment of films that you won't find anywhere else.
With all that in mind, here are some of the best of Max's more recent exclusive offerings.
It was a tall order, following up the beloved 1985 version of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, but this adaptation of the subsequent Broadway musical clears those hurdles and then some. If it can't quite replace previous iterations, it offers up a unique, lively, and colorful vision of the story of hard-working, hard-pressed Miss Celie (Fantasia Barrino) surviving and, ultimately, thriving despite being "poor... Black...and ugly" in the rural south of the early 20th century. Danielle Brooks, as Sofia, was nominated for an Academy Award.
You have no idea what you're in store for if you haven't seen this genuinely raucous musical about a couple of separated-at-birth twins (Josh Sharp and Aaron Jackson), both misogynistic jerks, who take to impersonating each other in order to reconcile their long-separated parents (Nathan Lane and Megan Mullally). It's a simple, silly premise—but things quickly get more and more wild. Mom Evelyn's vagina fell off years ago, newly out dad Harrison keeps a couple of mutant "sewer boys" in a giant birdcage in his apartment. It's all wonderfully, jaw-droppingly weird.
The dark, and darkly comic, real-life history of Vernon, New Jersey's once-popular Action Park is jaw-dropping. In 1978, stockbroker Eugene Mulvihill set out to create a theme park with as few restrictions as possible, and as cheaply as possible. The result was a local attraction that drew in teens with promises of a rule-free good time; the hint of danger in the park's shoddiness likely making it more of a draw—at least until the shady deals with local government made it clear that not only injuries, but deaths, were being hushed up.
What's left to say about the movie of 2023? Oppenheimer might have won the Oscars, but Barbie owned the discourse—and the box office, with the pink candy-colored pro-feminist raking in more money than any other movie. Margot Robbie is perfect as the fish-out-of-water doll stranded in the real world, Ryan Gosling is more than Kenough, and it's the third triumph in a row from director Greta Gerwig.
The horrifying Willy Wonka Chocolate Experience might have stolen the spotlight from Timothée Chalamet's turn as our favorite vaguely threatening chocolatier, but that's no reason to sleep on Wonka. An old-school musical with modern production values, Wonka feels like a thoroughly refreshing throwback to a less cynical time, with some memorable songs and emotional beats that really land.
One of the latest from A24 didn't make quite the splash of some of the distributors other recent offerings, but it still pulled in very good reviews and a couple of awards and nominations for lead Nicholas Cage. Here he plays college professor Paul Matthews, who starts appearing in the dreams of dozens of unconnected people, but as a dull and passive observer. Until he isn't, and the appearances start taking on a more menacing, nightmarish quality. The whole thing winds up being an impressively unhinged meditation on fame, A24-style.
The great Sofia Coppola wrote and directed this biopic based on Priscilla Presley's own memoir about her young life and troubled, troubling romance with the older Elvis Presley. Cailee Spaeny and Jacob Elordi offer up great performances, and the result is the portrayal of a relationship that's tender, in its way, but also complicated and deeply unbalanced.
I'm not here to make the case that Aquaman 2 is high art, nor that it's even entirely memorable—but it is a charmingly goofy bit of superhero fun, pairing Jason Momoa and Patrick Wilson as a pair of mismatched super siblings on a quest to save the planet from some greenhouse-gas spewing villains. The stakes are high enough to keep things interesting, but the movie lacks the self-seriousness that plagues so many other super-movies, particularly the DC-adjacent ones.
The second, and last, Wonder Woman movie helped by Patty Jenkins (following a break with the Zack Snyder-era DC universe) takes Diana out of the trenches of World War I and into the shopping malls of the 1980s. Given all the technology-based villains in these types of movies, it's nice to see antagonists Kristen Wiig and Pedro Pascal come at our heroine with mythological magic as a nod to WW's history. A little sad, though, about the post-credits cameo who we won't see more of.
Travel way, way back to the year 2020, when a young pregnant woman might have to travel across several states in order to secure an abortion. Such a thing could never, of course, happen in modern America, during our more enlightened era, a right to bodily autonomy boldly and irrevocably ensconced among our inalienable rights. Ahem. In Unpregnant, Haley Lu Richardson plays Veronica, a young woman who needs to leave her home state of Missouri to avoid her parents preventing her from getting an abortion, joined by a childhood friend Bailey (Barbie Ferreira). If sounds heavy, but the movie is, at heart, a breezy road-trip movie involving a couple of mismatched friends. It's pretty delightful.
For some Muslims in New Delhi, it's long been traditional to feed the black kites (a type of raptor), with the belief that such a good deed will help to ward off trouble. Except that it's become increasingly hard for the birds to survive in the modern city, with the birds falling victim to all manner of dangers—pollution and overpopulation being the prime culprits. The documentary All That Breathes follows brothers Saud and Nadeem, who run a bird sanctuary that's saved tens of thousands of raptors over the past two decades in a story about the interconnectedness of our ecosystems, and also about the virtue of staving off what feels like inevitable decline.
Jonathan Glazer's Oscar winner examines the banality of evil in the story of Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss (Christian Friedel) and his wife Hedwig (the always brilliant Sandra Hüller), living ostensibly ordinary lives while being complicit in the extraordinary evil happening just outside of the frame. It's very specific in its treatment of the Holocaust and the real-life figures portrayed, but also suggests, more universally, that we all are capable of becoming blind to the horrors we have a hand in.
This stylish, intense crime drama follows Robert Pattinson's Connie as he attempts to extracts his disabled brother from police custody following a bank robbery gone wrong, while trying to avoid his own arrest for the same crime. It's one of those great neo-noirs in which everything that can go wrong for our protagonists does; Pattinson turns in a thoroughly impressive performance.
The movie's co-writer Jimmie Fails plays the lead here under his own name, a Black San Franciscan with long roots whose old family house (built by his grandfather) is now in a gentrified neighborhood and and worth millions. Unable to buy the house back even as it sits vacant, Jimmie makes the vacant Victorian a sort of home base for an exploration of his place in the modern, changing city. The beautifully photographed and acted movie had Oscar buzz for a time, though wound up being ignored. It's very much worth a first or second look.
One of the most unambiguously deserving Best Picture Oscar winners of recent years (maybe decades), Bong Joon-Ho's dark satire is a searing indictment of modern capitalism, but also a very funny comedy of manners. Also, a horror movie. Get you a movie that can do it all.
Daniel Kaluuya won an Academy Award as Fred Hampton in this searing biographical drama about the FBI infiltration of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party in the late-1960s Chicago. LaKeith Stanfield plays FBI informant William O'Neal in the movie that was also nominated for Best Picture.
Before Hamilton, Lin-Manuel Miranda wrote the book, music, and lyrics for this musical set over three days in a largely Dominican American neighborhood in Upper Manhattan. The film version captures all the joyousness of the stage version, while adding location shooting that grounds all of the singing and dancing. It's a gorgeous, moving celebration of life, change, and community.
David Lowery's Medieval pastiche, based roughly (but authentically) on the 14th-century chivalric romance Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, is a visual feast as well as a dark, sensuous journey into an imagined past. Dev Patel stars as the title's knight in a movie that adheres more closely to the conventions of middle age storytelling than pretty much any movie I've ever seen. The result is something that feels a bit like a fever dream, but an experience for anyone willing to sink into it.
Rob Reiner directs this delightful documentary about the actor, comedian, director, and screenwriter Albert Brooks, covering his early life as well as a decades-long career that includes SNL, Scorsese movies, Simpsons voices, and an Academy Award nomination. It's mostly just a conversation between Brooks and Reiner, but it's all pretty fascinating, whether or not you're a long-time fan.
A fascinating portrait of photographer, artist, and activist Nan Goldin, whose work documenting the HIV/AIDS crisis and the more recent opioid epidemic after her own near-death from a fentanyl overdose. At the movie's center is a moral conflict: Goldin's tireless work against the Sackler family's companies, for their roles in relentlessly marketing OxyContin, puts her in a tricky spot when it comes to displaying her work. Having encouraged the arts community to divest from these pharmaceutical giants, she also comes to question the value of displaying her work at museums, many of which are heavily funded by the Sacklers. How much must an uncompromising artist compromise for the greater good?
One of the Apple ecosystem's core philosophies is that all Apple devices should work well together. Perhaps the feature that captures that spirit best is Universal Control. With it, you can use the keyboard and mouse on your Mac to control an iPad or a second Mac. On top of that, you can drag and drop files, Safari tabs, and more between machines without the need for AirDrop.
If you use your iPad along with your Mac at your workstation, you really should be using Universal Control. It can even be paired with Sidecar, Apple’s feature that turns your iPad into a touch-less second monitor.
Universal Control is available to all macOS devices running macOS 12.3 (macOS Monterey) and all iPads running iPadOS 15.4 and higher. Hardware wise, every MacBook Pro released after 2016 and MacBook Air released after 2018 will work. Most new Macs from the last 5 years are supported. All models of iPad Pros work, and every iPad starting from the 6th generation, as well as every iPad Air from the 3rd generation on, will work here.
The software side requires a bit of a setup. Both devices need to be signed in from the same Apple ID, and you need to use two-factor authentication. You’ll also have to enable Bluetooth, wifi, and Handoff on your iPad. To enable Handoff, go to Settings > General > Airplay & Handoff > Handoff.
To enable Universal Control on your iPad, go to Settings > General > AirPlay & Handoff and enable the Cursor and Keyboard option. On your Mac, go to System Settings > Displays > Advanced and enable the “Allow your pointer and keyboard to move between any nearby Mac or iPad” feature.
After you set up Universal Control once, just push your cursor to the left or right edge of the screen, towards where the iPad is placed, and your Mac will automatically pick up its location. It's pretty cool.
As you push the cursor towards the iPad, you’ll see a bar appear on the edge of the display. Keep pushing through, and the mouse will turn into an iPad cursor. Voilà: You've just enabled Universal Control.
If you don’t like this pushing gesture, you can also enable Universal Control from Control Center. Expand the Displays menu, and from the Link keyboard and mouse to section, choose your iPad.
Your Mac should automatically pick up where your iPad is placed next to your Mac, but if it’s placed above or below your computer screen, you’ll need to change the setup manually. Go to System Settings > Displays. Click the Arrange button to drag your iPad's screen to match where it is physically. Press Done to go back.
If you have a second Mac that you want to use this way, let’s say an iMac that’s on your desk, you can follow the same instructions above, this time just picking your second Mac instead of your iPad.
Now that it’s all set up, you can move your cursor to your iPad, where you can click on buttons and select fields like you would if the mouse was directly paired with the iPad. This works with your keyboard too. All you need to do select a text field on your iPad and type with your Mac keyboard.
Drag and drop works well here. You can select files or photos from your iPad, drag it over to your Mac screen, and drop them in a Finder folder to copy them over. The same works the other way around, too.
Perhaps one of the most cited ways to improve performance in PC gaming, at least that I've seen in recent years, is to overclock your GPU. While that can definitely give you some additional frames (as in frames per second), it's also exceptionally damaging to your card if you don't know what you're doing—and even sometimes when you do know what you're doing.
Instead, I recommend changing a few key settings in your game to help improve performance. Sure, it might not always lead to the best graphical fidelity, but sometimes you may need to sacrifice the pretty visuals for better performance.
If you're having performance issues, there are a few key settings you'll want to try knocking down first.
For starters, turn off V-Sync. While it promises to smooth out frames, in a lot of games, you'll find that V-Sync actually hurts performance more than it helps. That's because while it does prevent screen tearing, it forces your graphics card to match the refresh rate of your monitor. It can also cause a small amount of input lag, which can sometimes feel like performance issues if you're playing a fast-paced game.
You'll also want to start knocking down shadow quality. While higher shadow settings might look good, they're also extremely demanding, especially in newer games. Sometimes, these shadows are tied to lighting as well, but you'll often find them as separate settings. I recommend turning them down to Medium or High if you have a powerful enough system. Most of the time, Ultra is going to cause more performance issues than visual improvements.
Ambient occlusion is another lighting and shadow-related setting, but it's a bit more complex than that. Ambient occlusion essentially controls how objects create shadows on other objects—for instance, a desk or computer monitor casting shadows on a chair. You can usually turn this setting off without much noticeable difference, and it will often net you a good five to ten extra frames per second (FPS).
While ray tracing has come a long way since its mainstream introduction, this feature continues to be one of the most performance-heavy that current video games offer. As such, I recommend turning it off in most games unless you don't mind losing out on the extra performance it might cost you. (It does look nice.) At the most, I'd say settings like this should be topped out at Low or Medium at the highest. Just remember you're going to see some drastic performance cuts if you use it.
The same goes for reflections. Games like Red Dead Redemption 2 offer specific reflection sliders, so you can choose exactly what quality of reflections you want from mirrors and water. While they might be nice to look at, you're often losing a good few frames per second for those smoother reflections, and, most of the time, there aren't enough reflective surfaces in the game to matter all that much.
You'll also want to tinker with your anti-aliasing effects. While these can help smooth out edges in your gameplay, they can also be quite costly, especially if you're using one of the more intensive options. Anti-aliasing options range from the baseline Supersample Anti-Aliasing (SSAA), which renders the game at a higher resolution before downscaling it to fit the monitor, to faster options like Fast Approximate Anti-Aliasing (FXAA), which uses algorithms to guess what edges need to be smoothed out after the image has been rendered.
Depending on which type of anti-aliasing you choose, you might see smoother edges but a small drop to performance. There are also other types of anti-aliasing, like Multisample Anti-Aliasing (MSAA), which is the most common option. This renders only the edges of a scene at a higher resolution, thus saving on performance while providing similar quality to what SSAA offers. You'll also see an option for Temporal Anti-Aliasing (TAA or TXAA), which works similarly to MSAA by rendering edges at a higher resolution. However, TAA also takes into account temporal details, which means it uses the previous frames to predict what anti-aliasing it needs to use in future frames.
Ultimately, your best option here is going to vary, but I've found a lot of great success with MSAA, as it doesn't have nearly the high cost that SSAA does. However, for the most frames possible, you'll probably want to go with FXAA or TAA, though they both are prone to artifacting (visual bugs that appear on your display) and won't always look the best.
Finally, if you're really struggling with performance, I highly recommend checking out DLSS, FSR, XESS, or Dynamic Resolution. DLSS, which stands for Deep Learning Super Sampling, and FSR (FidelityFX Super Resolution) are both dynamic resolution options that lean on your graphics card to render your game at a lower resolution and then upscale it using AI algorithms. XESS is a similar, but newer and rarer, equivalent. These options can often provide additional FPS without cutting down on visual quality nearly as much as just lowering the resolution would.
DLSS only works on Nvidia graphics cards and is often considered the highest-quality option for this particular functionality. However, AMD's FSR is just as effective at improving performance, just without as much graphical fidelity. It works with both Nvidia and AMD graphics cards, making it a solid option for almost anyone. By and far, DLSS provides the best visuals between the two, so try it out if you have an Nvidia card.
XESS works similarly, though it builds off Intel's various technology features, which are baked into the company's newer CPUs and GPUs. It's even scarcer in games than DLSS and FSR and offers fewer performance gains and bigger cuts to the quality, depending on the title. If you see the option to use it in your game, you can try toggling it on, but don't be surprised if DLSS or FSR provide better results.
If you want to take things a step further, or if DLSS and FSR aren't available, then you can also use Nvidia Image Scaling (NIS). This feature is built directly into Nvidia Control Panel and Nvidia GeForce Experience, and allows you to set a desired resolution for upscaling and a resolution you want to render the game at. You'll need to tweak settings like sharpness manually, though, which makes it all too easy to over-sharpen your image, or decrease the overall image quality in general. It can be handy if you have the time to sit around and find the perfect settings for each game you plan to play, though.
Finally, there's the built-in dynamic resolution option that appears in some games. This isn't a feature powered by AMD or Nvidia, and it's often much worse than DLSS or FSR. Some games do have excellent dynamic resolution, but for the most part, you're going to see even more quality drops by using this feature, as it targets a specific frame rate and dynamically alters your resolution as you play to match it. It sounds good in theory, but in practice, it just creates a wonky experience that isn't very enjoyable.
Unfortunately, the list of games that support DLSS and FSR is still growing, so not every title is going to offer this functionality. Until that happens, try turning to other settings that might be more intensive, like post-processing, texture quality, and view distance.
Of course, the best way to increase your performance is to just bite the bullet and buy some new hardware. Stay tuned to Lifehacker for updates on all the greatest GPU deals, including on Nvidia's new Super cards and AMD's upcoming chip refresh.
For now, here's a list of the most popular AMD and Nvidia graphics cards—the higher the number, the better the card:
Nvidia
Nvidia RTX 4070/4070 Super/4070 Ti/4070 Ti Super
Nvidia RTX 4080/4080 Super
Nvidia RTX 4090
AMD
AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT
AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT
AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT
AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX
Renting a home has never been more challenging. Rents are soaring, there simply aren’t enough apartments and houses to rent, and many people have learned the true impact of inflation in recent years as they’ve seen higher wages buy less stuff—including housing.
All of these factors combine to drive up the rate of evictions, too, as people struggle to afford their homes or find affordable alternatives. If a tenant stops paying rent or breaks their lease in other ways, the property owner has the legal right to begin the eviction process—and when most people hear the word eviction, they panic. After all, the landlord owns the place. They can kick you out if they want to.
That said, they have to follow certain rules. It’s called an eviction process for a reason—landlords are generally required to go to court, obtain an eviction order, and then respect the rights of their tenants. Just because you’re behind on your rent doesn’t mean you’ve waived your fundamental rights. But evictions can cost money in legal fees, and can take anywhere from a few weeks to more than a year to complete, which drives some landlords to try what’s called a “self-help” eviction.
A “self-help” eviction is when a landlord bypasses the legal system and tries to get you to leave the apartment by making your life miserable. Common self-help eviction tactics include:
Changing the locks (or removing the door entirely)
Removing a renter’s property from the unit
Refusing to make repairs
Making verbal or written threats
Turning off utilities
Some forms of self-help eviction are more subtle. For example, a lack of maintenance that degrades the experience of living there without crossing over into making the place uninhabitable, or a general campaign of harassment (constant visits, intimidation tactics, using adjoining properties for activities that create noise issues) can be used to “encourage” a tenant to vacate.
Some tenants assume their landlords are allowed to do these things, or that there’s no recourse to fight back, but that’s not true. Self-help evictions are usually illegal for two basic reasons:
They violate the right of due process that all American citizens enjoy.
They threaten the health and safety of the tenant. Landlords have a responsibility to maintain a “habitable” environment for their tenants—meaning the home must provide the basics for secure, safe shelter. Turning off the water, for example, makes the apartment or house uninhabitable, and thus is an illegal tactic.
Almost every state in the country has an explicit law against self-help evictions. Those that don’t have a specific statute (like West Virginia) still make it clear that self-help evictions are not generally legal. No matter how behind you are on rent or what other disputes you have with your landlord, if they want you out, they have to go to court and follow the legal eviction process.
If your landlord is trying to harass you out of your home, there’s only one weapon at your disposal: You can sue.
In most states, laws explicitly state the damages a tenant can get if they successfully sue their landlord for a self-help eviction. In New York, for example, a tenant can be awarded three times their actual damages (a value determined by the court to represent what the tenant lost in monetary terms due to the landlord’s actions). There can also be separate penalties for the landlord ranging from $1,000 to $10,000. Some states don’t have specific damages in their laws and leave it up to the court to determine, but almost all states impose damages and penalties of some kind on landlords that attempt self-help evictions. Some states will also force landlords who lose the case to pay the tenant’s legal bills, and sometimes even order that the tenant be allowed to remain in the home.
First, become familiar with your state’s laws surrounding evictions and self-help evictions. If your landlord has threatened you or prevented you from accessing your home by changing the locks or physically barring you, your first step is to call the police, who can instruct the landlord to cease the illegal activity and will provide you with a police report. You should also document anything you can that will support your case.
Next, hire an attorney. If you can’t afford to do so, contact your state’s legal aid office or tenant legal services office, if one exists. If not, there are some national resources you can reach out to. These entities can provide form letters that you can send (via certified mail) to your landlord demanding they stop their illegal practices, and put you in touch with an attorney who can advise and represent you if you decide to sue.
As we've covered before, an emergency fund is a stash of money set aside to cover unexpected expenses. If you're hit with a sudden car repair, medical bill, or period of unemployment, you'll be grateful that you have designated funds to draw from for this very purpose. But where exactly are you pulling those funds from?
Stuffing cash under your mattress may seem like an easy option, but there are better choices that allow you to earn interest—while still keeping your funds safe and liquid.
(Or a shoebox, or piggy bank—you get the idea.)
Pros: Immediately accessible, no fees or account minimums
Cons: Zero interest earned, security risks, can be lost or destroyed
While hiding cash around the house seems like the ultimate in easy access, it's simply not a smart move. Your money will lose value over time due to inflation, and there are risks of theft, fire, or just plain losing track of where you stashed those bills. An emergency fund needs to be secure yet still readily available when you need it.
Pros: Quick access, insured by FDIC, interest-bearing
Cons: Very low interest rates, may have fees/minimums
Savings accounts used to be a decent place to stash your rainy-day fund. With easy access via your local branch or online transfers, they're highly liquid. And as long as your bank is FDIC-insured, your money is safe. The downside these days is that most savings accounts pay interest rates of just 0.01%-0.05% APY. So your money will grow very, very slowly over time. Better than under the mattress, at least!
Pros: Higher interest earned, still liquid, FDIC-insured
Cons: Must meet requirements, rates can drop over time
For a better return without sacrificing access, consider opening an online high-yield savings account. While rates have come down from their peak, you can still find accounts offering around 5% annual percentage yields from reputable banks. Here’s our guide to choosing a high-yield savings account.
Pros: Competitive interest rates, check-writing, FDIC-insured
Cons: May have high minimum balance and fees
A money market account (MMA) is a way to earn higher interest rates than you would with a regular savings account. MMAs are notable for having the features of a checking account, like debit cards and limited check-writing privileges. However, MMAs are not ideal for people starting out with smaller savings, since they require a higher minimum balance than most savings accounts (usually between $5,000 to $10,000).
Pros: Higher interest rates than savings, low-risk
Cons: Funds are less liquid, with early withdrawal penalties
CDs are time-based, usually offered in terms ranging from three months to five years. Longer terms come with higher interest rates. However, if you withdraw your money from the account before the set time period, you pay a penalty.
The key for your emergency fund is to find the right balance between earning a return while still keeping your money safe and accessible. While a high-yield savings account may be ideal for your full six to nine month cash reserve, using a CD ladder or money market account for a portion can boost your earnings as long as you have enough liquidity. Just be sure to review rates and terms periodically, as the best accounts can change over time. But wherever you decide to store your rainy day fund, do so intentionally—because the money under your mattress won't do you much good when you need it most.
Plenty of apps come in both mobile and web versions now—in fact it's increasingly rare to find a phone app that you can't also access through a desktop or laptop—and there are four in particular that I find I'm loading up in a browser tab on my computer more often than I'm launching them on my smartphone.
While there's still a lot to be said for the mobile versions of these apps (not least the ability to take photos and videos directly), being able to use a larger screen and a proper keyboard makes a huge difference.
If you've never used these apps on Windows or macOS, give them a go—you might be surprised at how many of their features and functions are carried over. These web versions are also easier to switch to while you're working on something else, so you're spending less time unlocking your phone and switching between devices unnecessarily.
Head to WhatsApp on the web in your browser, and you'll be presented with a QR code. You can scan it from your phone by tapping the three dots on the Chats tab (Android) or the Settings tab (iOS), then Linked devices and Link a device. Your phone's camera opens and you can scan the QR code being displayed in your browser.
When you've got a lot of messaging to do, you can't beat a keyboard for typing—in just a few minutes I can be caught up on all the one-to-one and group chats I've been neglecting, and it's super easy to jump between conversations. You can quickly select multiple chats to mute them, or mark them as read or unread, and there's a filter function for quickly seeing all your unread conversations in one place.
You're able to load up files, photos, and videos from your computer as well as snapping photos and videos with your webcam, so WhatsApp for the web really helps when you need to share stuff from your computer rather than your phone—for me it's used most often when I'm trying to organize something, and I need to get a lot of documents to a lot of people at the same time.
In fact, there's not much you can't do in the web version of WhatsApp compared to the mobile version, except for sharing your location. It's great for deleting messages or archiving chats en masse, and there are a good number of settings to play around with too, covering everything from notifications to group chat access. Keyboard shortcuts are supported too, so you can do your WhatsApping even faster.
Direct your browser to Google Messages on the web, and if you're already signed into Google, getting connected is as easy as picking the account you want to use, and opening Google Messages on your phone to confirm the link. You can also use a QR code to connect, which you can scan by opening the mobile Google Messages app, tapping your avatar (top right), then choosing Device pairing.
The Google Messages web app isn't as fully featured as the WhatsApp one—you can't select multiple conversations at once, for example, or filter messages—but there's still a lot that you can do. Messages can be muted, deleted, and archived in just a few clicks, and starting new chats (or group chats) is simple as well.
One of the best uses I've found for Google Messages on the web is organizing a weekly sports event, because I can copy and paste the same messages to all the players involved without setting up yet another group chat—and nobody really needs another one of those. RCS features, including individual message replies and emoji reactions, are included too.
You get a decent collection of settings here as well: There are dark modes and high contrast modes you can switch to, plus a range of options around notifications in your browser (including message previews) to alert you to new messages. As with WhatsApp, there's support for a bunch of keyboard shortcuts, to speed up your texting even further.
Instagram on the web made its debut all the way back in 2012, and in the years since it's added just about every feature from the mobile version of the app. You can now do most of the stuff you do on Instagram from a desktop or laptop—except for snapping photos and recording videos. (What do you mean you don't use your laptop webcam to take vacation snaps?)
You get your main feed down the center of the screen (a mouse scroll wheel will have you caught up in no time), you get your stories along the top, and via the links to the left you're able to access search, the Explore page, Reels, and your direct messages. You can also create new posts too, assuming you've got the photos or videos you need stored somewhere on your computer.
Scrolling through stories works particularly well on the web, because you can click forwards and backwards, or click to pause, and even skip several stories ahead to get to the friends that you're actually interested in. You can reply to stories and add emoji reactions, just like you can on your phone.
Instagram on the web is also a place where you can view and curate your own profile—there are tools for editing your profile, seeing posts you've saved and posts you're tagged in, and even changing your account settings. If there's something I need to do on Instagram these days, I usually do it on the web—and you can improve the experience even more with browser extensions for Instagram.
Snapchat on the web isn't quite as fully featured as the Instagram equivalent, but there's still a lot you can do—including sending snaps to your contacts via whatever webcam or other camera might be hooked up to your computer. If you use Snapchat as an instant messenger, like I do, then having the keyboard and mouse really helps.
What you can't do—not yet at least—is view snaps sent directly to you. That puts the web interface a step behind the mobile app in terms of functionality, but perhaps that's intentional on Snapchat's part: You can see that new snaps have come in, but you can't view them. You can, however, view stories, and they sit snugly up on the right of the interface next to your chats.
You can send photos and videos inline in conversations, so if you have files you want to share on your computer, the web interface is the place to do it. You're also able to make video and audio calls to your contacts on Snapchat on the web, which again is handy if you use Snapchat as a communication hub rather than just somewhere to sit back and scroll through content.
As far as other features go, you can respond to and initiate friend requests on the web; you can set up new group chats (and calls); you can configure browser notifications; and you can choose between light and dark themes—all on a large monitor screen that's easier to work with than your phone's much smaller display.
I've never been great at picking out thoughtful presents. I’m not the worst at presents, but I’m inconsistent. Sometimes I hit a triple and sometimes I’m tagged out at first, but I never hit that grand slam “I never knew I always needed this” present. My obligatory gifts usually go well—I give thoughtful and appropriate Secret Santa gifts to co-workers—but when I'm choosing a present for someone I love, I get overwhelmed and paralyzed searching for an object that measures up to the feelings I have, so I end up stopping at CVS and buying them a pack of batteries or something. Maybe I’m reading too much into it, but it makes me wonder if I’m not empathetic or caring or creative enough to be an all-time great present-picker-outer. So I turned to AI for an assist.
From piloting automatous vehicles to diagnosing cancer to letting us hear what it would sound like if Hank Williams Sr. sung "Straight Outta Compton," AI is transforming our culture quickly and ruthlessly. But there are some seemingly simple tasks that AI still can't do well—like, as I quickly figured out, picking out a thoughtful gift for a family member. When it comes to matters of the heart, AI just doesn't cut it.
There are a lot of websites and apps that promise to use AI to help people find great gifts, so I started my hunt there. Judging by Google search results, over the last few years, hundreds, maybe thousands, of people have secured domain names like “bestAIGift.co," thrown together some HTML, and set up shop in the AI gift industry. It doesn’t seem to be going well for them.
The majority of sites I looked at from the top tranche of Google recommendations have that greasy, thrown-together feel of scam websites, and most of them are broken. DreamGift at least looks legit; the website says it has been featured in the New York Times, and it offers a “personal AI gift shopper” named Bliss who asks questions about your giftee in a chat window. But Bliss doesn’t provide the suggestions she promised. When I used it, Bliss just timed out, like someone stopped paying the bill on the plugin.
Of the AI gift recommendation sites that function, most don’t use “artificial intelligence” as it is commonly understood. Instead, you fill in drop-down menus with the gift recipient’s age, gender, and your relationship to them, and it spits back a generic set of catalog links. (Thanks for the help, Giftbox, but I asked him, and my son does not want “a high-quality skateboard complete with custom grip tape” or “A DIY robotics kit for building and programming his own robots” for his birthday.)
I did find a few working sites that really use large language model AI programs to provide gift advice. But they work by opening a window to ChatGPT or other AI brains, so I decided to cut out the middleman and ask some of the biggest, most advanced AI platforms for help directly. I started each chat with “Can you help me choose the perfect gift for my son’s birthday?” and let the AI direct the conversation from there.
I started with the most well-known AI: OpenAI's ChatGPT. I put my question in, and ChatGPT responded by asking for information about my son: age, interests, personality, hobbies, etc. I entered them, and it responded with the most generic gift list possible.
I said he liked video games, hip-hop, graphic design, and baseball caps. ChatGPT said I should “research limited edition or vintage baseball caps featuring designs related to his favorite video games, hip-hop artists, or graphic design themes.”
I told ChatGPT that he is intelligent, and it suggested “an interesting book” and “a blank journal.”
That’s not bad advice or anything, but a book he might like and things related to his interests are so generic that the list is fairly useless. The only specific gift ChatGPT mentioned was "vinyl records of hip-hop artists." I ran that by my kid and he scoffed and said "It's 2024. Who has a record player?"
That said, if you were having trouble understanding how a person’s hobby could be “shopped for” it might help you brainstorm basic ideas.
Rating: 3 out of 5.
My next stop was Microsoft Copilot. I asked “Can you help me choose the perfect gift for my son’s 17th birthday?” It didn’t ask about him at at all; it just replied with a link to a box of survivalist tools from Temu.
I admire Copilot’s decisiveness, but I’m not sure what my kid would do with a flint stone and “fake shrimp bait” in Los Angeles, and the knife is a little much. Besides, if you’re paying 23 dollars for survivalist gear from Temu, you probably don’t want to survive that much.
I responded to Copilot with “Whoa. My kid is not Rambo. Try again.” And it immediately sent a link to a “Gentleman’s Gasher” hunting knife.
I am not sure why Copilot thinks my child should have weapons, but I’m mildly terrified at the implications.
Rating: 1 out of 5.
Qualified is a B2B company that just launched an “AI SDR” named Piper to help the company “disrupt the modern pipeline generation process by giving marketing and sales leaders a newer, faster way to grow pipeline.” I don’t know what any of that means, but it looks like this:
Here's how our chat went:
A direct approach clearly wasn't going to work, so I tried to speak the AI's language.
A dead end. So I changed tactics:
After more cajoling and coaching, this actually started working, and Piper began planning my kids' party:
But just as I was about about to get the present recommendation...
... a human at Qualified noticed what I was doing and butted in.
So I bid a hasty retreat.
Qualified was cool, and its bot handled my weird request really well, so I'm sure it's great at B2B pipeline-based business metric analytics and quarterly profit stock markets or whatever, but I ultimately wasn't able to determine its ability to recommend a good gift.
Rating: 2 out of 5
If AIs were people, Claude is the only one I'd hang out with. From its presentation to its responses, Claude comes across as warm and approachable. It's not as generic as ChatGPT, it doesn't think my son should have weapons like Copilot, and it isn't a hard-driving careerist like Piper. Still, its initial gift list was was nearly as generic as ChatGPT's.
But I realized maybe the problem was me. Maybe I hadn't gotten specific enough about who my son is, who I am, and what the gift a father gives to his son on his 17th birthday means to us both. So I opened an emotional vein and spent hours (literally) telling the machine everything about myself, my son, and our relationship. (AIs are good listeners.). Then I asked it for the ultimate recommendation: Here's what it said:
I would have never thought of that gift! So maybe it was actually the perfect present. I asked my son what he would think if I got him a vintage typewriter for his birthday and he thought the idea was hilariously, laughably terrible, "the worst present you could possibly get me." Worse than anything off the list of generic gifts from ChatGPT.
Rank: 1 out of 5
AI is bad at picking out presents for the same reason it's bad at telling jokes. When AI isn't being psychotic like Copilot, it works by analyzing billions of sentences and picking out the most likely response to a question without weighing whether its sources are good or bad. It's aiming for the middle, so any joke it tells is going to be mildly amusing and never wildly creative, and the gift list it provides is always going to be "a blank journal" or "an interesting book." If you press for details, the interesting book will be a book that the most people other people have called "interesting"—in other words, a book that isn't interesting at all.
Although running AI's suggestions by my son was hilarious, and we ended up having a long, interesting conversation about AI's limitations and how funny but also scary it is when AI gets things wrong. So maybe that was the gift the artificial intelligence was guiding me to all along. Or not. In the end, I'll probably just get him some Steam cards.
When you need to borrow money, you generally have two options: secured loans or unsecured loans. A secured loan is one where you put up an asset like a house or car as collateral, meaning the lender can seize that asset if you fail to repay the loan. An unsecured loan, on the other hand, requires no collateral—but it has some downsides.
With an unsecured loan, lenders approve you to borrow money based solely on your creditworthiness and income rather than any assets you own. Some common types of unsecured loans include credit cards, student loans, and personal loans.
The biggest advantage of an unsecured loan is that you don't have to risk any of your property or assets to get the money you need. The downside is that these loans typically have higher interest rates than secured loans to offset the increased risk for the lender. Your credit score plays a big role in determining what interest rate you'll qualify for on an unsecured loan.
An unsecured loan can be a good option in several situations:
If your credit score is good to excellent, you'll likely qualify for relatively low interest rates on an unsecured personal loan compared to other borrowing options like credit cards.
With no collateral involved, an unsecured loan protects your home, car, investments, and other assets if you run into trouble repaying the debt.
Unsecured personal loans can provide funds for nearly any purpose, from consolidating credit card debt to covering emergency expenses.
However, there are also times when a secured loan may be preferable, especially if you have poor credit and high interest rates make an unsecured loan unaffordable. Putting up collateral on a secured loan can qualify borrowers for lower rates.
So you're sold on the idea of borrowing money without pledging collateral. Can you stroll into your bank and ask for just that? Not quite.
The application process for an unsecured personal loan is more involved. Lenders will check your credit report, credit score, income, employment status, outstanding debts and overall financial situation before deciding whether to approve you for a loan and at what interest rate.
The most common sources for unsecured personal loans include banks, credit unions, and online lenders. Many allow you to begin the process by submitting an application online or over the phone. You'll need to provide information like your name, contact details, social security number, income, desired loan amount, and what you plan to use the funds for. The lender will then pull your credit report and other financial details before letting you know if you're approved or denied.
Overall, unsecured loans offer flexibility and convenience for borrowers with solid credit histories. Just be sure to understand the costs over the full loan term and have a plan to repay the debt. By weighing your options, you can decide if an unsecured loan is the right choice for your situation. For more, here are tips for paying off your loans early.
If you're looking for a solid outdoor portable speaker for a good price, the Tribit Stormbox Micro 2 is now at its lowest price ever (according to price-checking tools) of $42.99 (originally $79.99) after a 40% discount and a $5 on-page coupon.
Tritbit has been making affordable outdoor speakers since 2017, and the StormBox Micro is the smallest speaker in the lineup. This second-generation StormBox Micro was launched in 2022 with improvements in battery life and better Bluetooth support, according to PCMag's "good" review. For its size, it offers powerful sound and bass, and its 12-hour battery life and speakerphone set it apart from the JBL Go 3, its main competitor.
If you're looking for a bigger speaker that is still easy to carry, the StormBox Flow is $59.99 (originally $79.99) after using the 25% on-page coupon. PCMag gave it a "good" review for its powerful sound and long battery life. The less portable but still outdoor StormBox Pro speaker is $89.99 (originally $135.99) after a $30 on-page coupon. PCMag gave this speaker an "excellent" review for its stereo sound, speakerphone and voice assistant features, and waterproof rating.
Kickstarter and crowdfunding platforms like it have generally been thought of as a place for startups to gain enough capital to bring projects to life. While it’s never been explicitly stated by Kickstarter, most people believe that the platform is for businesses or ideas that are just starting out. Recently, however, I’ve noticed several well-established smart tech companies using the platform to launch products. All of these companies—notably Eufy, Aqara and Switchbot—already have a library of traditionally launched, successful projects, a healthy customer base and name recognition. It led me to wonder the cause of this trend and if it has implications for the brands or consumers.
Campaigns on Kickstarter follow a certain formula: a well-produced video pitch, fancy graphics, and perks. In the case of consumer goods, the perks are the product. Companies set a goal for their funding, and if backers meet the goal, the project moves forward. If it fails, everyone gets their money back. There are risks for everyone—obviously, the company may not hit the goal, and even if they do, they now have to fulfill the perks. Producing one concept gadget is different from making 5,000 gadgets and very different from 500,000. For the backer, there’s a chance they don’t get the product at all—the company may never be able to get the concept product to full production. The product could also be vastly different from what was promised in the campaign, could take longer to arrive, or just not live up to expectations. There’s no consumer protection—if you back a project, the creator is only expected to bring things to a "satisfying conclusion," which may not include fulfillment. The platform claims to be proactive about fraud, but the only possible repercussion for the creator not fulfilling the campaign is suspension from the platform—Kickstarter does not offer refunds. There have been plenty of cases in the past where backers didn’t get products they backed or refunds—just sad explanations about how companies got in over their head.
The stakes are different for established companies—they already have a user base, they already have capital, and because of that, they have more liability and exposure. They know how to build, produce, launch and support a product. What’s the upside of Kickstarter for them? According to Switchbot and Eufy, using Kickstarter creates a long period of direct consumer feedback. Kickstarter users, whether or not they become backers, can view the campaign materials, and respond either in the comments, to the company directly or out in the public domain— and all the while, the company is listening and adjusting. According to Switchbot’s marketing manager, Anna Huang, “We love to receive feedback from users at the very early stage for such a niche product, which is primarily why Kickstarter is a good platform for us to reach our target users as early as possible.” Eric Villines, Head of Global Communications for Eufy’s parent company, Anker, says that working with the crowdfunding platforms is about honoring the voice of the consumer. “It allows us to innovate jointly with the customer—we're getting real-time feedback. We've had products that we've launched and looking at comments, what we thought was cool isn't coming across, so in real time we're able to adapt the marketing."
These backers are the first to experience the new product, which has benefits and risks—they can’t help but be a test market. Villines admits the hardware or software itself may be modified before going retail, based on backer response. “By the time we get to the end customer, we have a product that’s been thought through a little better; we've been able to fix from the original batch of backers."
For an established company, a success on Kickstarter isn’t an anxiety-inducing race to figure out how to scale; companies like Eufy and Aqara already have those systems in place. In fact, in most cases the “concept” in the campaign is already quite close to production-ready, and supply chains have already been established. Crowdfunding campaigns are less of a risk than a traditional launch or a startup campaign, since now they simply need to produce based on demand and have raised the capital to do so. Kickstarter can actually be a cost saver— Villines elaborates that these campaigns “eliminate the risk building in supply chain issues, reduces cost and time. Ultimately we're not producing more than we need. If you look at how companies innovate, it's a slow process. Crowdfunding allows us to more quickly bring our biggest and craziest ideas to the table in a way that if we were to fail, we fail fast and move on. "
Crowdfunding also appeals to companies because of the patrons themselves. “Compared to regular consumers on a larger scale, the native users of Kickstarter consist of a great amount of geeks," Huang says. "They are relatively more open to technology discovery with more willingness to give feedback and conduct discussions on a technical level, which helps us greatly to cultivate our products so that the products could be more than ready for regular consumers.”
An established company that has produced products before is vastly more likely to get a final product shipped. That reduces risks to the backer overall. But these pools of early adopters are still getting the first version of the product, which will be improved based on their experiences. The tradeoff here is that they’re getting it at a lower price than the eventual retail price (usually). Still, waiting for a retail version might mean getting a product with less glitches.
Unlike most other Kickstarter campaigns, ones from companies like Eufy, Aqara and Switchbot already have established customer service channels to support the product, including the possibility of returning it. You don’t have to worry about the company having the capital to support refunds.
Early adopters are going to be a test market regardless of how a product is launched, and for many, that’s part of the thrill. That companies are offering a more direct way to participate and offer feedback is likely a perk to consumers. For companies like Eufy, Aqara and Switchbot, crowdfunding isn’t about collecting capital to give life to a new idea, but a marketing method to support a product launch. Despite Switchbot and Eufy pointing out to me that they used crowdfunding for products in a new vertical, or those that are niche, both of them have already produced robot vacuums before, so the products they’re crowdfunding now aren’t new verticals. And none of these items could be considered "niche." Still, for consumers, compared to most Kickstarter campaigns, they could potentially get a less-expensive version of a product they've been coveting. They’re incredibly likely to get the product, and it will likely be close to what is in the marketing materials. And if they don’t, or if there’s a problem with the product, there’s an established company standing behind it.
Beneath their surfaces, word processors like Google Docs have a treasure trove of hidden features that make it easier to draft large documents and collaborate on them with coworkers. I have covered a few Google Docs tips before, but now I have a few more to share.
Google Docs supports some of the Markdown syntax. This offers a simple way to format documents using plain text symbols, making them easy to read and write while allowing for conversion into richer formats. If you are proficient with Markdown, it can help you draft documents faster, quickly formatting your text with italics, bold, strikethrough, and links. To enable it, go to Tools > Preferences > Automatically detect Markdown.
But do remember: Google Docs supports a limited subset of Markdown syntax, not all of it.
With the help of the humble line number, you and your collaborators can easily reference and pinpoint exact locations in complex and long documents. They can also help you take precise notes as you can connect them to the line numbers. But note that line numbers work only in the Pages format and not in the Pageless view.
Enable them by going to Tools > Line numbers. In the line numbers sidebar, select Show line numbers.
Images help your doc, but they can't be "seen" by screen readers. Adding alt text to your images helps people using screen readers understand what the image depicts.
To add alt text, right-click on an image and select Alt Text. In the Image options sidebar, describe the image in short. Don't include "image of" or "picture of," just focus on the information the image shows.
Google Docs won't replace a language learning course anytime soon, but it uses the same Google Translate wizardry to translate a document into any language. You can share translated documents with collaborators and use them to practice writing in a foreign language.
Open your document. Go to Tools > Translate document. In the overlay window, choose your language, and Google Docs will create a copy in the foreign language.
Remember, you can also use Google Sheets to translate languages.
You may come across instances when you want to share a document but want the collaborator to make edits in their own copy of the original. Docs doesn't have an official method to force a copy, but there's a neat little unofficial hack that works.
Click on Share on the top right of the document. Change the link settings to Anyone with the link and choose Editor from the dropdown next to it. Now, copy the link and paste it into the email or messenger you are using to share the document. Before hitting send, edit the end of the link by replacing the word "edit" and everything after it with template/preview.
When the receiver opens the document to edit it, it will be their own copy. The "template/preview" URL suffix allows them to view the document contents before they start editing them (select the Use Template button in the preview).
You don't need to send a long document to a collaborator as an attachment. Email it directly from Google Docs to the receiver's inbox as an embedded document. This makes sharing documents easier and cuts down the number of attachments everyone has to trawl through.
Go to File > Email > Email this file. Write a message in the field provided. Then, select the checkbox for Don't attach. Include content in the email.
When combined with the long-form writing in Google Docs, the minimal Google Keep (Google's free, digital notepad app for capturing thoughts, lists, and reminders) can be a handy brainstorming aid.
Capture fleeting ideas as notes or lists. When you need those ideas in your Doc, open the Keep side panel (the yellow light bulb icon on the right) and drag and drop your notes directly into your document. You can also copy text from your Doc and save it as a Keep note for easy access later.
Gmail offers collaborative inboxes to Google Workspace accounts, but there's another way to collaborate on an email for free that uses Google Docs. In a Google Doc, insert an email building block from Insert > Building blocks > Email draft. Alternatively, type "@email" in the doc and press Enter. You can also go to File > Email draft.
Write the email and fill out the fields. Then, click Preview in Gmail at the top left of the draft. When you're done, hit Send.
The trove of features and tips doesn't end here. The Google Drive suite is more versatile than ever before, and you can always find different ways of working with Google Docs that fit your specific needs.
When the Samsung Galaxy S24 lineup was released earlier this year, they came with Amazon gift cards of up to $200 if you preordered from Amazon. Now, you can get those same gift card amounts directly discounted from the list prices. The Galaxy S24, Galaxy S24+, and Galaxy S24 Ultra are all at their lowest price since their January release, according to price checking tools.
The Galaxy S24 lineup has a big emphasis on AI. Some features include "Live Translate," which translates both text and voice during phone calls, and "Interpreter," which splits your Galaxy's screen in half and translates a two-way conversation in real-time through text. If you're not sure which one is the best phone in the lineup for you, you can see PCMag's breakdown to help you make up your mind.
The Galaxy S24 is the most basic phone in the lineup, but it still has the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 Galaxy chip. It's also the smallest and lightest phone of the three, with a 6.2-inch screen and 2,340 by 1,080 pixels of resolution. If you don't need the fast charging speeds, better resolution, and higher RAM of the higher-end models, the S24 is still a great phone for $724.99 (originally $799.99).
The middle of the pack Galaxy S24+, which received an "excellent" review from PCMag, is a good in-between choice with notable upgrades from the basic model. You'll get 12GB of RAM instead of 8GB, a bigger 6.7-inch screen with 3,120 by 1,440 pixels of resolution, and a bigger 4,900mAh battery over the S24's 4,000mAh. It's on sale for $849.99 (originally $999.99).
The most premium phone in the lineup, the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra, is one of Samsung's best ever, even surprising Lifehacker tech writer Joshua Hawkins during his review. He called it "a strong enough contender that I'd be willing to ditch my iPhone and make the jump to Android." Its screen is 0.1 inches bigger, and the battery is 100mAh larger, than the S24+, but you'll see the biggest difference in the camera. Both the S24+ and Ultra have a 12MP ultra-wide camera, a 50MP shooter, and a 10MP telephoto rear camera with a 12MP front camera, but the S24 Ultra has a 200MP main camera and a second 50MP telephoto lens camera. You can get the S24 Ultra for $1,099.99 (originally $1,299.99).
Keep in mind that S24 users have pointed out some issues with their phone's display and cameras shortly after their release, but the experiences don't seem to be consistent for everyone.
This solar lantern with a remote and power bank is on sale for $24.97 right now (reg. $70) through April 30. Its LED light lasts for up to six hours on a full charge from the built-in solar panel or a USB cord. You can view its battery life on the indicator lights, and you can hang it from a tree, tent, or a hook with the sturdy ABS handle and adjust the brightness with a remote control. The lantern has three brightness levels up to 800 lumens. The lantern can also be used as a power bank for your devices by connecting a charging cable to the USB port.
You can get this solar lantern with a remote and power bank on sale for $24.97 right now (reg. $70) through April 30 at 11:59 p.m. PT, though prices can change at any time.
A typical strength- or muscle-building workout happens in sets. You lift the weight a certain number of times (“reps”), then you put it down for a quick rest before going again. But how long should that rest be? The answer will depend on a few factors, including the purpose of the workout.
There are legitimate reasons for powerlifters to wait five minutes between sets of squats, or for calisthenics devotees to set a 30-second timer before jumping back up for another set of pullups. There’s also a good argument that, for many of us, rest times don’t matter that much.
The longer you rest between sets, the more recovered you'll feel. But the shorter your rests, the more work you'll be able to do in a given gym session.
Choosing the most appropriate rest time for each exercise will get you the best gains in the gym. But the optimal rest time will depend on what kind of exercise you're doing and what your goals are. So let's go over some pros and cons of long and short rest times.
Longer rests (say, three minutes or more) are best for strength workouts where the goal is to improve both your strength and your skill at lifting heavy weights. After all, you need practice at lifting heavy if you want to be able to lift heavy. After you put a heavy barbell down, you'll need several minutes for your body to be ready to do another big lift.
In the three to five minutes you might rest between sets of (say) barbell squats, the ATP in your muscles regenerates. You get some blood flow to bring oxygen and nutrients into your muscle cells, and flush away metabolic byproducts. Resting for several minutes gives you the best chance of coming back to the next set at full strength.
The longer you rest—within reason—the more fully recovered you’ll be for the next set. If you only allow yourself one minute, you’ll still be fatigued when you pick up the weight again. But if you wait longer, you’ll be able to handle more weight.
The main disadvantage of long rest times is time management. Your workouts will be longer if you rest five minutes between exercises instead of one or two. You may also find yourself getting distracted between sets. You scroll social media for a bit, and somehow it's been eight minutes since you last touched a weight. Setting a rest timer can help with this.
Some people get antsy during long rests, and will pass the time by doing pushups or jumping jacks. That kind of defeats the purpose of long rests. Save the supersets for your accessory work afterwards, not the main lift where you're trying to go heavy.
For an exercise where you're using large muscle groups (like a squat or deadlift), five minutes is typical once you're up to your working weights for the day. Warmup sets don't need as much time.
For exercises where you're working on strength but it's a lighter lift or uses smaller muscles (like overhead press), three minutes is usually plenty.
When it comes to muscle growth, also called hypertrophy, shorter rests can make more sense. To be clear, strength and muscle growth are related, but not the same thing. If you aren't interested in lifting the heaviest weight possible, just in making your muscles bigger or your body more "toned," you would want to pay attention to the best rest times for hypertrophy. These will be shorter than for pure strength.
Traditionally, trainers say that 90 seconds or less is a good rule of thumb. (The National Academy of Sports Medicine recommends 0 to 60 seconds; the personal training textbooks from the National Strength and Conditioning Association and the American Council on Exercise both recommend 30 to 90 seconds.)
But research has shown that short rest periods may not actually be better for muscle growth than longer ones. A 2016 study found that three-minute rest periods actually yielded more muscle growth than one-minute rests. The authors think this is because the men in their three-minute group (yep, the study was only done on men) were able to use heavier weights than the men in the one-minute group. Since the number of sets was the same in both groups, this means the three-minute group lifted more weight.
A more recent meta-analysis (not yet fully peer reviewed and published) also comes down on the side of longer rests. According to the studies they included in the analysis, the authors found that 30 to 60 seconds is likely too short. Resting one to two minutes between sets is best for muscle growth, they say. More than two minutes doesn't really help.
The shorter your rests, the lighter weights you'll work with. This is fine if you're trying to make do with light dumbbells, but it means you're not getting practice with heavier weights. Most of us want to be jacked and strong, so short rest times mean you're biasing yourself to the muscle size side of the equation.
Very short rest times (less than a minute) may also interfere with your ability to make the biggest gains, as the studies above noted. You may be able to make up for this by doing more sets of the exercise. If you enjoy the go-go-go feeling of short rests, that may be totally fine with you. Add an extra set or two and you know you're using your time well. For the rest of us, though, slowing down and taking a full minute between sets will be better than rushing it.
One to two minutes is likely the sweet spot, according to recent studies. That's on the higher end of the recommended 30 to 90 seconds. It's fine to do some of your rests shorter and some longer, but if you'd like me to tell you what to punch in on your timer, go with 90 seconds.
Ultimately, you may be best off using a mix of long and short rest times, which is how a lot of programs are designed. Use longer rest times for a few big compound lifts at the beginning of the workout (like squats or bench press) and shorter rest times for circuits, accessories, or isolation exercises afterward (like curls or glute bridges).
Supersets are a great way to split the difference. If you work different muscle groups in two different exercises, you can do one exercise while the other muscles rest. This isn't your best option if you truly want all your energy and focus to go toward one lift (like if you're working up to a PR on your bench press) but it's a great way to do hypertrophy work. For example, try this:
Do a set of pullups
Rest 30 seconds
Do a set of pushups
Rest 30 seconds
In this example, if it takes you 30 seconds to do the set of pushups, you've rested 90 total seconds in between your first set of pullups and your second set of pullups.
Okay, but what if you want to get stronger and grow muscle? What if you want to stop overthinking the specifics and do whatever rest period makes you look like a normal person at the gym who knows what they’re doing? Here’s a cheat sheet:
For pushups and pullups: If you do a small to medium number of reps (less than 12), treat them as a strength exercise and wait three to five minutes between sets. If you’re one of those people banging out 20 or 50 at a time, you probably want to take rests of about a minute so that fatigue can make your next set a bit shorter and you can finish your workout in this lifetime.
For barbell squats and deadlifts: These are compound lifts that use many muscles in your body. They’re pretty much always done (relatively) heavy, and it’s useful to build strength in these moves. Treat them as a strength exercise and wait three to five minutes.
For bench press, overhead press, chest press, and shoulder press: These involve smaller muscles and less weight than squats and deadlifts, but they still qualify as compound, strength-focused exercises. Two to three minutes will be enough, most of the time, but take up to five on heavy sets if you need to.
For rows and lat pulldowns: Same as the presses, for the same reasons. Two to three minutes may be enough, but up to five would still be reasonable.
For isolation exercises: if you’re trying to feel the burn or the pump, short rests will really help you here. Take 30 seconds between sets.
These are just guidelines, so feel free to experiment. If you want to work on your cardiovascular conditioning, take a little less rest between sets. If you’ve already done a big set of bench presses today, do the rest of your arm and chest accessories with shorter rest periods.
Let's do a lightning round, since I know rest times are a huge subject of discussion among people who are getting the hang of the gym routine. But first, a plea for you to not overthink this: if you simply rest until you feel ready to go again, you'll probably do ok.
No. If you're trying to move a heavy weight, you probably want to rest a minimum of three minutes. If you're training for muscle size (and don't care as much about strength), you could shorten your rests a bit. Still, it's not bad to rest too long, just slightly inefficient.
At that point I wouldn't call it a rest time, just a different workout. When you come back to the gym after that hour, you'll need to warm up all over again. I would say if it's been more than 10 or 15 minutes between sets, or if you feel like you're physically cooling down, it's worth doing some kind of exercise just to keep your body ready. This could be pushups while you're waiting for a bench to free up, for example.
As a noob, you're probably not lifting very heavy (yet). That means you don't have a lot to rest from. Say you're doing squats: your body is still learning how to squat at all. You aren't taking 300 pounds for a ride and needing to rest several minutes to recover.
For that reason, newer people may not need to rest as much. Two minutes between squat sets? Sure, that's fine if you feel ready. The pitfall here is that if you get used to taking short rests, you could end up working with weights that are too light for you. After your first few weeks at the gym, make sure to do some of your heavier lifts with longer rest times (at least three minutes) and see if you feel fresher.
If you can do multiple sets of an exercise without resting in between, you're not using an appropriate weight. There's supposed to be a difference between three sets of 10, and one set of 30. If your workout says to do 3x10, you're supposed to feel tired enough after that 10th rep that you need to rest at least a minute or two before going again.
And yes, it can be awkward to be standing around in the squat rack, doing nothing or even scrolling on your phone while others are waiting. But remember: Everybody rests between sets! Or at least, they should.
Like so much else, decluttering requires you to consider both the theoretical and the practical. Yes, you have to get in there at some point and physically start throwing things away and organizing what you keep, but you also have to do a little work on and with yourself.
Not to sound all woo-woo, but there is an element of visualization and self-knowledge that comes into play. For instance, some of the most popular decluttering methods call on you to visualize your ideal space so when you start actually decluttering, you’re always building toward the creation of that vision. The deep thinking doesn’t end when you get to work, either: You should be intellectualizing your choice of whether to keep or get rid of every single item, too. Try asking yourself just two simple questions about each thing.
This approach, like the “packing party” decluttering method, comes from organizational gurus The Minimalists. It’s called the 20/20 Rule and to use it, you need to ask yourself two easy questions when you’re deciding between keeping or getting rid of an item. It’s especially important when you think you’ve found something you ought to keep around “just in case” you need it some time in the future.
First, ask yourself, “Could I replace this item for less than $20?” Then, ask yourself, “Could I replace it in less than 20 minutes?”
If the answer to those questions is “yes,” you can afford to get rid of the thing. A good example is, say, a lighter. If you’re not someone who regularly lights candles or smokes, you may never use a lighter, but it’s something that could easily strike you as a “just in case” item. You might rationalize you need it just in case someone comes over with a cigar or just in case you host a birthday party. But realistically, that’s not going to happen. And if it does, the few bucks you spend on another one at the corner store down the street are worth the space you save by getting rid of the original one.
If this sounds familiar, it’s because the 20/20 rule isn’t the only example of an easy, two-question quiz you can give yourself when decluttering. When following the “Decluttering at the Speed of Life” method, you are supposed to ask yourself, “If I needed this item, where would I look for it?” If you can’t answer that, you ask yourself, “If I needed this item, would it occur to me that I already own one?” Those “just in case” items you hold onto are usually so infrequently used that you don’t even remember you have them at all, let alone have a specific spot to store them.
For some people (myself included, for transparency) decluttering is hard because of a hangup on these “just in case” items. I can rationalize keeping anything on the basis that I might need it one day, but the truth is I just never do. That’s where the two questions come in: They’re objective, yes-or-no questions that remove the sentimentality and guesswork from deciding whether to keep something. They remove the emotions and provide you with a backup plan (spending less than $20 without inconveniencing yourself) in the event you ever actually do need something, so you don’t have to get hung up on worries about the future and can just trash the item and move on.
If you own a home these days you’re increasingly lucky in a lot of ways. If you bought before the recent interest rate hikes, you’re probably sitting on a nice, low rate that makes current buyers seethe with jealousy. And considering that there’s a lack of available homes to buy (the housing deficit in the U.S. is estimated to remain between 1-2 million for the foreseeable future), your property is worth more and more every day.
This explains a common experience among homeowners: The unsolicited call, text, or piece of mail offering to buy your house even though it isn’t listed for sale. A lot of homeowners are surprised when these start rolling in, because they assume you have to officially list your house to sell it—but of course you can sell your home at any time, to anyone, for any price (well, your lender might have something to say about the price, but as long as you can pay off your mortgage you can do what you want).
If you have no plans to sell your home but the convenience of a buyer just showing up and handing you a bag of cash for the place is appealing, however, you should think twice: There are three big reasons you should never respond to an unsolicited offer on your house.
Reason number one to ignore unsolicited real estate offers: They might be scams. Pretty much any time someone contacts you with an offer that seems too easy or too profitable to be true, it is. A few ways scammers utilize cold calling like this include:
Up-front fees. They’ll tell you that they have a nice cash offer on your house, but you have to pay some administrative fees to get the ball rolling. No legitimate real estate professional will ask you for an up-front fee.
Bank details. Some scammers are in it for your bank details, which they tell you they need in order to do a wire transfer. Instead, of course, they use the information to drain your accounts.
Title. Sometimes the scammers lure you in with a “cash offer” that turns out to be an offer to sell your house on your behalf—and then they ask you to sign over the title to them to facilitate the process. They then legally own your home, and can do whatever they want with it.
It’s always hard to tell if an unsolicited call is a scam—so your best bet is to just ignore them.
Most unsolicited real estate offers aren’t outright scams—but that doesn’t mean they’re a good idea. One big reason is simple: An unsolicited offer is usually going to be a lowball offer that won’t get you the most money for your property. That’s because these offers come from three main groups of people:
Wholesalers. Wholesalers enter into purchase contracts on properties, then turn around and sell the house to a third party. Sometimes they already have a buyer for your home, sometimes they just think finding one will be easy. In either case, they’re going to lowball you on the sale price because they need to make a profit. If your home can get $250,000 on the market, they will offer you $200,000 and hope to make $50k in profit. They hope that the convenience of getting an unsolicited offer will tempt you into making an “easy” sale.
Flippers. You’re probably familiar with the concept of house-flipping, where investors buy run-down properties for cheap, renovate them quickly, and sell them before they get too deep into mortgage payments. You might assume flippers always target foreclosures, but they also do cold-call outreach if your neighborhood is desirable—and it’s the nature of their business to lowball you on the price in order to maximize their profits.
Individual buyers. Sometimes that unsolicited offer comes from someone who legitimately wants to buy your house for themselves. Homes are expensive these days—the median home price is about $413,000—so some folks try to beat the market by making unsolicited lowball offers in the hope that the current owner just jumps at it instead of doing their due diligence.
Even if the buyer isn’t trying to scam you—and even if they make a fair offer on the property—you still might lose out because the unsolicited offer prevents any bidding wars that might drive up the price of your home and increase your profit on the sale. If an unsolicited offer makes you decide to sell your home, you’ll probably make more money if you list it.
A third reason to ignore all unsolicited real estate calls is because responding to one forces you to work with someone you know nothing about. They may not be licensed real estate professionals at all, and might encourage you not to involve a real estate pro in order to avoid their fees, or pressure you to work with their team to close the sale. In other words, they’ll appeal to your greed.
Bypassing a real estate agent can save you some money, but it also leaves you without their expert guidance and knowledge of both the market and the law—and leaves you reliant on some rando who called you out of the blue for your information. If the unexpected offer is appealing, you should seek the advice of a professional and research the entity making the offer to understand if they’re on the up-and-up or sketchy AF.
If an unsolicited call about selling your house makes you think it might be the right move, you’ll almost always do better by going through the usual process of selling your home. An unsolicited offer indicates your home is valuable, so you’ll probably get a better offer from the open market, and working with a legit real estate agent who understands your market will also probably maximize your profit even when fees are taken into consideration. Just like everything in life, the easy route is rarely the best one.
If you have subscriptions to services like Netflix and Uber Eats—or you simply love to sign up for free trials that require you to enter a credit card—you should consider using virtual cards as your go-to payment method.
Unlike your physical credit cards, virtual cards generate unique account numbers that can be used for transactions, meaning that your actual card number is protected. You can have different card numbers for each online store or subscription service, and you can set spending limits and expiration dates as well as lock or delete virtual cards without impacting your actual payment account.
(Note that this is different from paying with a digital wallet—Apple Pay or Google Pay—which uses your real card number for transactions.)
Using a virtual card for your subscriptions makes it easier to cancel subscriptions or let your account lapse, which could save you money. For example, if you sign up for a free trial with a one-time virtual card or a card you can deactivate, it doesn't matter if you forget to cancel before the trial period ends—the transaction won't go through.
Similarly, deactivating your virtual card is a simple way to cancel ongoing subscriptions, as the service won't be able to charge you going forward (though it's also best to complete the official cancellation process directly with the subscription service).
Of course, if you want to keep a subscription, a virtual card also has merit. A multi-use virtual card number will still be valid even if the physical card associated with the account has to be replaced due to theft, loss, or expiration, so you won't miss a minute of your shows or a single food delivery.
Another obvious benefit of a virtual card: security. If your information is part of a hack or leak, your real card number is protected. Plus, if your virtual card is one-time use only, no one will be able to make purchases to your account.
Many credit card issuers allow you to enroll for a virtual card using your physical card. You might need to add the card to a digital wallet and check out using a browser extension or app, through which you'll be able to generate a one-time card number or receive a unique code to enter at checkout. American Express, Capital One, Citi, Mastercard, and Visa all support virtual cards.
Alternatively, services like Privacy.com and password managers like 1Password (via a Privacy.com partnership) offer the option to create and pay with virtual cards.
Whether or not you use the app, you've probably heard a thing or two about the "TikTok ban." It's true: President Biden signed the legislation into law on Wednesday, following an unusual bipartisan effort in both chambers of Congress. How did we get here, and is TikTok really going away for good?
TikTok hasn't always been TikTok. The app so many Americans know and love started out life as Musical.ly, an app designed for sharing 15-second lip-syncing videos. Musical.ly survived in this form from 2014 until 2018, when its new owner, ByteDance, rebranded the app to TikTok.
Since the rebrand, the app has absolutely exploded in popularity around the world, especially in the U.S. According to ByteDance, the app has had a 1,239.29 percent user base increase between 2018 and 2023. That's 11.2 million to over 150 million. What started as an app for young adults to send lip sync videos to their friends transformed seemingly overnight into an entertainment revolution.
TikTok was ByteDance's second video app venture: Its first, Douyin, is, to this day, a Chinese-exclusive app. In many ways, Douyin is a close cousin to TikTok: Users scroll through vertical videos delivered to them via an addictive algorithm. Like TikTok, Douyin relies on advertising and shopping to drive profits. However, contrary to what you might think, Douyin is really ByteDance's main source of revenue, accounting for about 80 percent of the company's $54 billion takings in the first half of last year. TikTok, which is massively popular all over the world, accounted for the other 20 percent.
Sure, TikTok is popular, but plenty of other apps are popular as well. Why would the U.S. government single out TikTok, rather than, say, any of Meta's products (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp) or something like Snapchat, plenty of which have Americans addicted? In short, the Chinese government.
ByteDance is a Chinese-based company, and, as such, must comply with China's corporate laws. These regulations are quite heavy-handed: For example, not only does the Chinese government have a party branch inside ByteDance, which is standard protocol for the country, but it also has a seat on the company's board. On top of that, certain laws, especially the 2017 National Intelligence Law, compels companies to share data with the Chinese government, and to hide the fact they're doing so.
So, lawmakers and intelligence agencies are concerned American user data could end up in the hands of the Chinese government. TikTok, like most social media apps, collects a lot of data, including names, addresses, email addresses, IP addresses, contacts, messages, location data, platform usage, etc. While everyone from Meta to Snapchat collects similar information, they aren't based in another country with complicated, at-times adversarial geopolitical differences.
From here, there are also fears TikTok is manipulating the content American viewers see. Yes, some lawmakers are very much concerned about how TikTok has delivered videos on the war between Israel and Hamas, which has led some users to believe the government dislikes the lack of control of the narrative in this case. But the TikTok problem goes beyond that: Remember Douyin? The Chinese government is very strict about the content it allows to be shown to children and teenagers, with a focus on more educational content. While few are calling for TikTok to censor all non-educational content for users under 18, the existing model of manipulation poses a concern for how TikTok could, theoretically, shape what American users see for the advantage of the Chinese government.
U.S. government officials have had public concerns about TikTok as a national security threat since at least 2019. At that time, TikTok had banned an account from a user in New Jersey: The user claimed they were banned after posting about the Chinese government's persecution of the Uyghurs, while TikTok claimed the ban was for unrelated reasons, and the video in question was taken down because of a "human moderation error." Lawmakers also had concerns about how TikTok could potentially share American users' data with the Chinese government, though there was no known breach of data at that time.
In 2020, the app landed in the crosshairs of the Trump administration: In an executive order, Trump gave ByteDance two choices: Sell TikTok to an American company, or see the app banned in the U.S. (Sound familiar?) At that time, Microsoft was in talks to buy the app, but Oracle came out as the chosen partner to take the lead. No sale happened in the end, however: The courts blocked the executive order in December of 2020, so ByteDance was off the hook.
But Oracle still had a role to play: In 2022, through Project Texas, TikTok started passing all U.S. user data through Oracle servers, as Oracle reviewed TikTok algorithms and moderation policies looking for any evidence of tampering or interference from the Chinese government. But 2022 wasn't the year TikTok earned favor with the U.S. government: In the same year Project Texas rolled out, ByteDance employees scraped the TikTok accounts of American journalists to obtain their IP addresses. The company was looking for sources of ByteDance leaks reported on by these targeted journalists.
In December of 2022, the Biden administration banned TikTok from federal devices, months before TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew testified before Congress, a chaotic scene that made lawmakers look wildly out of touch and aloof, undermining certain legitimate concerns:
Despite Shou Zi Chew's best efforts to depict TikTok as disconnected from the Chinese government, we learned in July of 2023 that, indeed, some U.S. user data is stored in China. This data pertained to creators that get paid for the content they post, rather than average TikTok users, but still, TikTok stored information from those creators, like social security numbers and tax forms, in China. That year, 39 states followed the Biden administration's lead in banning TikTok from government devices. Montana even tried to ban the app from the state entirely, but a judge blocked that ban in December of last year.
When the House of Representatives started getting serious about possibly cracking down on TikTok, the company panicked. Chew posted a plea on the platform, asking users to reach out to their congresspeople in support of saving the app. TikTok fans, predictably, flooded Congress with phone calls. According to The New York Times, this scared the shit out of lawmakers—not because they thought they were doing the wrong thing, but because it showed how much influence TikTok had over its users. The campaigned backfired, and actually sped up legislation.
Following years of debate and discussion, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill that would force ByteDance to divest its stake in the app to an American-based company, tying the legislation to a $95 billion aid package for Ukraine, Israel, and Gaza. The House passed the bill by a vote of 352-65, in a rare bipartisan agreement. And while the bill's fate in the Senate was far from certain, that chamber also passed the bill in a bipartisan effort in April. The President quickly signed it into law, focused mostly on the international aid.
No. In fact, its fate is far from certain. What we know is that you can continue to binge TikTok to your heart's content until at least January of 2025: While the House's original bill forced ByteDance to sell or be banned within six months, the Senate extended that timeline to nine months. President Biden also has the option to extend things by 90 days if it seems ByteDance is meaningfully working on selling. So, no matter what, this won't be a problem until next year.
That means the app will be very much in play for the 2024 elections. We will have to see how that plays out, and how TikTok influences (or doesn't influence) voters' opinions as we hurl towards November. If TikTok is the national security threat the government thinks it is, it'll be one hell of an election season. The videos will no doubt be spicy leading up to a potential January exit.
But TikTok won't have to leave the U.S. if ByteDance sells to an American company. So far, ByteDance has signaled it won't sell, but if it wanted to, it has it choices. Former Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin is interested in buying TikTok, as are former Activision CEO Bobby Kotick and investor Kevin O'Leary. Perhaps Oracle will make a bid, or Microsoft, but nothing is certain.
Don't be so quick to write up TikTok's obituary quite yet.
If you're already using Windows 11, that means you likely set it up using a Microsoft account, unless you already checked out our guide on how to use a local account when setting up Windows 11. If you've already set up a Microsoft account, don't despair: You still aren't locked into using a cloud-based account on your PC. Instead, you can actually disconnect your Microsoft account from the cloud and turn it into a local account instead.
You won't lose any of your information or data if you follow this method, allowing you to cut the ties with Microsoft's various cloud services and still make the most of your Windows 11 PC.
To get started, open the Windows 11 settings menu. This can be found by pressing Windows Key + I or by opening the Start Menu and selecting the Settings cog.
Click Account > Your Info > Sign in with a local account instead. Then, enter a new password for your local account and confirm the change. Windows will save your changes and switch your Microsoft account to a local account that's stored directly on the PC. You can still access your Microsoft account online with the information that you used before, but your Windows 11 PC will no longer be tied directly to that account.
If you're using a school or work account, then removing them is somewhat similar.
Open the Windows settings by pressing Windows Key + I. Navigate to Accounts > Access work or school and then click Disconnect. This will remove your work or school account from Windows 11. Keep in mind it will also lock out any features that you had access to through those accounts, like Microsoft Teams.
Having a Microsoft account tied to your Windows 11 account gives you access to a ton of additional features, like Copilot and OneDrive. But if you want to take a more private approach to how you use your PC, then disconnecting your account cuts off Microsoft's access to your data. It does mean you'll lose out on features like cloud storage, but on the other hand, you'll have more control over what data Microsoft is able to capture and share with advertisers.
It’s not your imagination—spring allergy season really is getting worse every year. (Thanks, climate change.) Pollen seasons now start 20 days earlier and last 10 days longer than they did in 1990, according to research, and pollen counts are up as well. If you’ve been thinking of each spring’s season as something to just whiteknuckle your way through, it may be time to take a different approach.
If you’ve been mostly ignoring your allergies and hoping they pass quickly, let’s go over a few small changes that can help. (Veteran allergy sufferers are probably doing these things already.)
First of all, pollen comes from the outdoors. So do your best to keep it there. Instead of opening the windows on a nice spring day, keep them closed and rely on your house’s ventilation system to adjust the temperature as needed. Replace your system’s air filter with a fresh one that has a high MERV rating; we have more on choosing and changing air filters here. In the car, the recirculate button will keep outdoor air outside.
Besides blowing in on the air, pollen can also enter your house on clothes, shoes, hair, and pet fur. The Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America recommends the following:
Take off your shoes when you come inside.
Change and wash your clothes after you’ve been outside for a while.
Shower and shampoo your hair before bed.
Towel pets off when they come indoors.
Wash your bedding once a week.
To find out when pollen will be at its worst, check a site like pollen.com or your local weather forecast.
The most pollen is in the air in the early morning and around dusk. If you’re going outside during high pollen times, consider wearing sunglasses or even a mask (N95's are great at blocking pollen).
If you’re considering moving (or traveling during pollen season) you may want to take a look at the Asthma and Allergy Foundation’s list of “allergy capitals” where pollen is worst and allergy specialists are harder to find. Wichita, KS; Virginia Beach, VA; Greenville, SC; and Dallas, TX top the list. A few years ago, the rankings also included the best cities for seasonal allergy sufferers, with Fresno, CA; Phoenix, AZ; and Provo, UT emerging as winners.
With the easy things out of the way, it may be time to start looking at tougher decisions. Carpets, for example, can trap pollen. They can also harbor other allergens, like dust and dust mites. If you’re struggling with your allergies, it might be time to pull them up and switch to hardwood or other smooth flooring.
Regular cleaning also helps. Get into the habit of vacuuming frequently, ideally with a vacuum that has a HEPA filter to trap small particles. Remove things you can’t easily clean, and set up a cleaning schedule to make sure you aren’t neglecting the task.
Allergy covers on pillows and mattresses are meant to prevent dust mite allergens from working their way in where they can’t be cleaned. If you have a dust allergy, get a set of these protectors, and make sure you’re washing bedding, curtains, pillows, and other textiles frequently. (Dust mites aren’t seasonal like pollen, but if you’re allergic to both, you don’t need that double-whammy.)
Consider an air purifier as well. These devices filter allergens out of the air and some people find they help reduce symptoms.
Over-the-counter medications like Claritin can help to take the edge off allergy symptoms, but if you’re still miserable even while you’re taking them, it may be time for professional help. See an allergist to find out whether other medications or approaches might be appropriate for you (and to control your asthma, if you have that in addition to allergies).
If you’ve just been living with an assumption that you’re allergic to “something,” an allergy test can help narrow down exactly what your triggers are. Maybe you need to pay more attention to mold than to plant pollens, for example. The more you know, the more targeted an approach you can take.
Microsoft keeps adding more and more stuff to Windows and it often seems to get in the way more than it helps. A "clean" installation of Windows, at this point, forces you to sign up for a Microsoft account, tries to sell you cloud storage space, and is very pushy about getting you to use Microsoft Edge and Copilot. I could go on.
Tiny11Builder is a third-party script that can take a Windows installation ISO, which you can get from Microsoft, and strip it of all of these features. Install Windows using this tool and you'll have a truly clean installation: no News, no OfficeHub, no annoying GetStarted prompts, and no junk entires in the start menu. You can always install these things later, if you want, but you'll be starting with a clean state.
Head to the official Microsoft page for downloading Windows. Scroll down until you see Download Windows 11 Disk Image (ISO) for x64 devices. Select the version of Windows you have a product key for.
Click the Download Now button. This will likely take 15 minutes or so, depending on your internet speed.
Now it's time to download our scripts. Head to the tiny11builder Github page and click the Code button in the top-right corner. Next click Download ZIP.
Unzip that download. Now we need to configure your system to allow PowerScript to make administration changes. Open PowerShell as an administrator, which you can do by searching for "PowerShell" in the start menu and then clicking the Run as Administrator in the right side-bar.
Type or copy the exact command Set-ExecutionPolicy unrestricted and hit Enter.
You will be warned about the security implications of this—confirm that you know what you're doing and are allowing the change. You can always undo the change later by running Set-ExecutionPolicy restricted.
By now your Windows 11 ISO should be finished downloading. Right-click the file and click Mount. This will open the ISO file as a virtual CD, which you can confirm by looking for it in Windows Explorer.
Once you've confirmed that the disk is mounted, you can run the tiny11script, which was in the ZIP file you unzipped earlier. The simplest way to get started is to right-click the file "tiny11maker.ps1" and click Run with PowerShell.
This will start the script. You will be asked for the drive letter of your virtual drive, which you can find in Windows Explorer under My Computer—look for a DVD drive that wasn't there before. You only need to type the letter and hit enter.
After that, the script will ask you which version of Windows you want to make a disc for. Answer with the version you have a product key for.
After that, the script will do its thing, which might take a while. When the process is done, you will see a message letting you know.
There will be a brand-new ISO file in the script's directory. This ISO is perfect for setting up Windows in a virtual machine, which is how I'm hosting it, but it also works for installing to a device. You can burn this ISO file to a DVD, if you have an optical drive, or you can use a USB disk. Microsoft offers official instructions for this, which are pretty easy to follow.
However you install Windows from this ISO, know that it will be completely clean. You will not be prompted to create a Microsoft account, or even to sign in using one, and there will be no Microsoft services other than what you need in order to use the operating system. Seriously, look at this start menu:
There's no clutter whatsoever, meaning you can add the applications you actually want to use. It would be nice if Microsoft offered this officially, but it's nice that there's a way for power users to get it.
You can get this outdoor flashlight and power bank on sale for $39.99 right now (reg. $62.99). It has 1,000 lumens of brightness, a 24-hour battery life, and four speed lighting modes. It's also rechargeable by sunlight with the built-in solar panel or with a USB-C cable, and has a fireplace simulator with adjustable flame settings. You can also use it as a 2,400mAh power bank for your devices with up to 15W of power. It's a great 3-in-1 gadget, and it only measures nine inches long and weighs just over a pound.
You can get this outdoor flashlight and power bank on sale for $39.99 right now (reg. $62.99), though prices can change at any time.
Movies date themselves for all kinds of reasons.
Sometimes what seemed great when we were kids looks silly to adult eyes. Other times the whys are more complicated—think Rambo III and The Living Daylights making heroes of mujahideen jihadists because, at the time, they were fighting the Soviets. Standards change, too, often for the better—we don’t look on the obvious racism of Gone with the Wind with the tolerance we once did, and we don’t celebrate the rape culture that snuck its way into 1980s comedies in the same way (at least, we say we don’t). Or maybe it’s that the language of moviemaking has changed, or that special effects that were OK back in the day are distracting to our more evolved modern eyes.
Looking back with a more critical eye is usually, in my experience, a positive thing. The cost of growth, as individuals and a culture, requires us to look back with a little embarrassment, and strive to do better. It’s not necessarily that the movies are bad (although some of these are, in all honesty, absolute shit); time complicates the legacy of most every films, but these more than most.
Even making allowances for changing attitudes, it's hard to look past the core conceit of this ostensibly charming classic musical: it's about kidnapping women en masse, taking them back to your deep backwoods hovel and holding them hostage until they fall in love with you. The kidnappees already had boyfriends and partners, which is a big part of the reason why they'd refused any such arrangement in the first place. Lest we mistake the intent of the creatives behind the show and film, a central production number called "Sobbin' Women" is all about the mythological and possibly historical rape of the Sabine women—when the men of early Rome decided to build their civilization by capturing and forcibly impregnating the women of a nearby region. The song has a goofy old time with the idea that their "loot" (as the women are referred to) might spend a lot of time sobbin'—but don't worry: "We're gonna make them sobbin' women smile!"
Or else, presumably.
Where to stream (if you care to): Amazon
There was really no need for Blake Edwards’ adaptation of Truman Capote’s novella to indulge in notably caucasian actor Mickey Rooney’s over-the-top, unquestionably racist characterization of I. Y. Yunioshi, Holly Golightly’s Asian landlord. Harkening back to the most horrific stereotypes of the World War II propaganda era, Yunioshi is presented as a squinting, bumbling, buck-toothed Orientalist stereotype whose only purpose is comic relief—the “comedy” having to do entirely with the apparently intrinsic silliness of Japanese people, in general, and funny fake teeth in particular. The character in the novella wasn’t nearly such a caricature, and Rooney’s slapstick-y turn feels out of place against the rest of the film’s subdued tone. Even contemporary reviews noted the character’s dissonance and offensiveness, and I’ve never been able to watch it without his every scene derailing an otherwise pleasurable experience. (If you struggle similarly, good news: Mickey Rooney forgives you.)
Where to stream (if you care to): Paramount+
Franco Zeffirelli’s take on the Shakespeare play is both daring and problematic in ways that have been debated for decades. The sumptuous production dared to cast actual teenagers in the lead roles, an innovation that shouldn’t be surprising...except that it had been done so very rarely before (the previous 1936 screen version cast actors in their 30s). By heightening the emphasis on burgeoning sexuality, Zeffirelli trod a dangerous road; there’s something to be said for a clear-eyed treatment of the subject, but the film’s nudity has been controversial for decades. Just recently, stars Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting filed a lawsuit claiming that they were coerced and tricked into appearing naked in the film, allegations that place a darker cloud over the once-lionized production.
Where to stream (if you care to): Paramount+
Bernardo Bertolucci’s erotic drama finds middle-aged widower Marlon Brando involved in a highly sus relationship with a young Parisian woman played by Maria Schneider. The movie’s most memorable scene, involving forced sex and a stick of butter, was once seen as a bit of oh-so-1970s sexual libertinism, but has since come to stain its reputation. Schneider has spoken out about the abusive treatment she experienced from Bertolucci and Brando, particularly during the filming of that scene.
Where to stream (if you care to): Amazon
The font from which an entire era of raunchy slobs versus snobs teen comedies would spring (think Revenge of the Nerds, Police Academy, Porky’s), Animal House is tough to revisit. There are hilarious moments, but also plenty of scenes that put a spotlight to the culture of sexual aggression we’re still living in. The movie’s gooiest good guy, Pinto (Tom Hulce), has a serious debate about whether or not to rape an unconscious girl, who we later learn is 13 (he doesn’t do it, but still). John Belushi’s Bluto spies on unsuspecting sorority girls in the nude, while a trip to a roadhouse sees the movie’s only Black characters menacing our leads because they want to steal their white dates. Enlightened stuff.
Where to stream (if you care to): Netflix
The late 1970s, a great time for American cinema as a whole, also generated a sub-genre of movies that have become increasingly uncomfortable to modern eyes. This was Woody Allen’s world, in which a movie like Manhattan, about a man in his 40s dating a 17-year-old, felt entirely reasonable, at least to all of the other men having mid-life crises and fantasizing about their own continued sexual relevance. Blue Lagoon is a bit different, in that the two primary actors (Brooke Shields and Christopher Atkins) are at least age-appropriate to each other, but its story of sexual awakening on an island feels excessively prurient—as though we’re meant to appreciate their youthful innocence while gawking at their supple, mostly naked bodies. Shields herself has recently spoken about her discomfort with the film’s marketing and approach, which placed an undue emphasis on her youth (she was 14 at the time).
Where to stream (if you care to): Amazon
I adore Arthur (and its all-time great theme song), but it’s hard not to find the movie’s flippant attitude toward alcoholism distasteful circa 2023. Dudley Moore plays the title character as the venerable lovable drunk, a character type that goes back to Shakespeare’s Falstaff, so it’s not like the mores of the ‘80s are particularly to blame. Still, Arthur drives drunk and has a grand old time whenever he’s not being a bit of a sad-sack, and the plot’s prescription for him is the love of a good woman (a phenomenal Liza Minelli) rather than a trip down the road to recovery.
Where to stream (if you care to): Amazon
Like much of John Hughes ‘80s output, Sixteen Candles blends elements that are thoroughly charming and funny with plot points that dated almost immediately. Most obviously, Gedde Watanabe’s Chinese exchange student Long Duk Dong is a rare instance of a person of color wandering into any of the writer/director’s films, and he is a head-to-toe Asian stereotype, his every entrance accompanied by the sound of a goddam gong. At least Hughes hired an Asian-American actor to play the character, though not distinguishing between the Chinese Dong and Japanese-American Watanabe. Less overt, but just as troubling, is the film’s relationship with consent: Ted (Anthony Michael Hall) pursues vocally uninterested Sam (Molly Ringwald) to the point that she gives him a pair of her underwear in exchange for being left alone. He later exchanges said drawers to another guy to earn some time alone with his unconscious Caroline (Haviland Morris). It’s not entirely clear what happens afterward, but it’s disturbing in any event.
Where to stream (if you care to): Netflix
Always the least of the original Indiana Jones trilogy, Temple of Doom still has enough of a spirit of rollicking adventure (and that memorable performance from Ke Huy Quan) to recommend it, generally. The problem comes in its depiction of Hindus, and Indian culture more broadly. In attempting to recreate the spirit of adventure serials of the 1930s, the film unfortunately carries along much of the related racist baggage. The Indian characters are all either victims to be saved by Indy, or insidious cultists/organ-extracting wizards. It all leans too far into stereotypes; what was controversial at the time of its release looks worse 40 years later.
Where to stream (if you care to): Paramount+ or Disney+
A generally delightful kid-friendly sci-fi comedy about a robot made for war who decides that he’d much rather hang out with Ally Sheedy and Steve Gutenberg (there’s a nice message about personal identity and autonomy) is muddied by goofy comic-relief sidekick character Ben Jabituya, played by white actor Fisher Stevens in brownface makeup, and sporting an exaggerated Apu-from-The Simpsons accent alongside various tiresome malapropisms. Even worse? The character takes over the lead in the sequel.
Where to stream (if you care to): Amazon
The entry point in what became the Rambo series, First Blood, nodded toward dealing Vietnam-era post-traumatic stress, while the second sent Rambo after forgotten POWs. Number three sends him off to Afghanistan to rescue an old friend, and in doing so takes a definite side in the long-running conflict between the Soviet Union and Afghan Mujahideen rebels, cutting a swath through Soviet forces with a machine gun and a rocket launcher and generating a record-breaking body count (literally! Guinness named it the most violent film ever made in 1990). This wasn’t just a fantasy—supporting Afghan militant groups was a centerpiece of U.S. anti-Soviet planning for over a decade; in a sense, this is Stallone bringing dry government policy to life for children who act out American imperialism via toys, comic books, and video games based on the movie.
In the 1980s, there was no bigger threat than the Soviet Union, so anyone opposed to the USSR was automatically one of the goodies. It's complicated, of course, but many of those Afghan militants went on to form the core of what became the Taliban—so that element hasn’t aged very well. In the movie's favor, it dodges some of American cinema's Islamophobic tropes, but speaks more to America's habit of offering unwavering support for a particular faction in a region without considering the long-term consequences there or here.
Where to stream (if you care to): Paramount+
Driving Miss Daisy will forever stand among the ranks of highly praised, well-intentioned Oscar-winners that wowed Academy members by dealing with issues of race by forefronting the experiences and perspective of white Americans. Jessica Tandy and Morgan Freeman give great performances, and the whole thing has an undeniable charm—but that’s rather the point. It’s cute, with a pat “can’t we all just get along?” take on racial harmony. Do the Right Thing, an undeniable classic with a far more complex and nuanced story to tell, came out the same year and wasn’t even nominated.
Where to stream (if you care to): Amazon
From Driving Miss Daisy we jump one year later to 1990's Dances With Wolves, another well-intentioned but awkward attempt by a white filmmaker to tackle race relations. This one mangles history while also including problematic portrayals of indigenous Americans: the Sioux characters are largely in the “noble savage” mode, while the Pawnee characters are exclusively villainous. The biggest problem is the tired white savior narrative, in which a Caucasian character is not only our guide to the world of indigenous Americans, but the hero of the story. Because, as we know from history, white people were definitely on the side of indigenous North Americans.
Where to stream (if you care to): Amazon Prime
Chasing Amy feels like a movie that could have worked, if there were any queer voices behind the scenes. The story of Holden (Ben Affleck’s) pursuit of lesbian-identified Alyssa (Joey Lauren Adams) could have been an exploration of sexual fluidity, or of bisexuality, but instead it plays as a straight guy’s fantasy—spend enough time with the hot lesbian, and you’ll land her eventually. It’s well-intentioned, mostly, and so close to working, but the emphasis on a hetero dude’s desire for an unattainable woman means that it winds up feeling a lot less groundbreaking than it thinks it is.
Where to stream (if you care to): Amazon Prime or Paramount+
For some reason, this splashy Mel Gibson/Julia Roberts-starring, Richard Donner-directed thriller, in which it turns out the paranoid loner’s ramblings about a vast, global network of deception turn out to be exactly spot on, hits different in the post-Jan. 6, mid-pandemic, anti-vax era. Weird. (Also, Mel Gibson, oof.)
Where to stream (if you care to): Amazon
Not spending a lot of time on janky effects here...times change, standards change, and things that look funky to us now might have been cool as sh*t back in the day. Not so much with Spawn, a movie that blends some impressively dark superhero action with some very dumb nonsense...and ties it all together with some CGI that looked silly even at the time. Spawn's visit to hell, in particular, involves shots that look hardly better than video games of the era. the cartoon adaptation does a much better job with the source material.
Where to stream (if you care to): Amazon
On the surface, a cute movie starring the consistently delightful Drew Barrymore as a 25-year-old copy editor who takes an assignment to go undercover as a high school student and finds herself getting hot for teacher Michael Vartan. The two begin a flirtatious relationship which (fortunately) doesn’t go anywhere before Barrymore’s character outs herself...at which point the teacher becomes deeply upset about her lies. And possibly about her not being an actual teenager? Without ever quite crossing the line, the movie is rife with creepy subtext. Odds are that the high school student you think is hot is not going to turn out to be secretly older, so probably don’t flirt with them.
Where to stream (if you care to): Amazon
We could spend all day talking about American Beauty's fall from beloved Best Picture winner to a movie that's largely been forgotten, if not openly mocked. Some of that's a little unfair: Suburban ennui in the 1990s was more in the zeitgeist than it is now, and there were people (white people, mostly) who had genuinely come to feel that life had gotten too stable, and boring, and that the draw of conformity was the biggest threat. Following 9/11, the Iraq War, and Donald Trump, those fears have come to look a bit, well, overstated.
But there are more specific reasons why American Beauty plays less well: the first involves Frank Fitts (Chris Cooper) a violent conservative who turns out to be a closeted gay man, and who is driven so insane by the contradiction that he turns to murder. Even the film's gay writer and gay director can't quite make that old trope fly. More than that, though, is in Kevin Spacey's lead character. He's obsessed with Angela Hayes (Mena Suvari), a 16-year-old neighbor, and we're meant to see his leering lust for her as a metaphor of some kind, and also his decision to finally accept her as a human child and not an acceptable object of lust as somehow redemptive. If it was once hard to do that, it's nearly impossible given the actor's fall from grace.
Where to stream (if you care to): Amazon
Shallow Hal stars Jack Black as a man who’s hypnotized into seeing only the inner beauty in people, leading the appropriately shallow character to overlook the weight of new love interest Rosie, played by then-recent Oscar-winner Gwyneth Paltrow in a fat suit. He only sees a skinny Rosie, and it all winds up having something to do with the idea that we shouldn’t be so concerned with what’s on the outside. The problem (and this isn’t uncommon in this kind of movie), is that the feel-good message is completely belied by a near-constant barrage of fat jokes (never mind that fact that representing “inner beauty” by conforming to conventional beauty standards is shallow in a different way). Even the otherwise sweet finale, in which Hal sees and accepts Rosie as she truly is, includes a last jab as Hal tries to pick her up only to find that, of course, he can’t.
Where to stream (if you care to): Amazon
The second Mummy movie is a smudged copy of the throwback adventure of the 1999 original, if enjoyable on its own terms. But oh boy have the VFX dated poorly. To say that the title’s Scorpion King (motion-captured by Dwayne Johnson, in his feature debut) look like something from a video game does a disservice to video games, even 22-year-old ones. Brendan Fraser has defended the effects as janky fun. I’m more or less willing to go down that road with him, but the fact remains what looked subpar in 2001 is positively jarring in 2023.
Where to stream (if you care to): Amazon
Standing tall as one of the many love stories that look less romantic than creepy to modern eyes, The Notebook includes a scene in which the male lead (Ryan Gosling) dangles from the top of a ferris wheel and threatens to fall to his mangled death if Rachel McAdams’ Allie continues to clearly and loudly refuse to date him. Cute!
Where to stream (if you care to): Amazon Prime
“Maybe we’re all a little racist?” is, I guess, the point inexplicable Best Picture winner Crash is trying to make, while pretending that’s some kind of revelation. Excessively ironic, and chockful of redemption arcs for its white characters, it presents a mawkish idea of racial harmony that’s too pat and simplistic, by far, but especially in 2023. It won awards because some Academy members weren’t going to vote for the homo cowboy movie, and I can’t imagine many have bothered watching it since. (Don Cheadle’s great, at least.)
Where to stream (if you care to): Amazon Prime
We talk about Hollywood's history of whitewashing in casting, but casting white people in non-white roles isn't the only potential problem: Here, director Rob Marshall and company assembled a talented Asian cast, but didn't bother distinguishing beyond that. Zhang Ziyi and Michelle Yeoh, Chinese and Malaysian actresses respectively, were cast to play the Japanese leads in this very distinctly Japan-set story. Japanese audiences (or, really, anyone who could be bothered to tell the difference) were disappointed that non-Japanese performers were playing geishas, and Chinese audiences were upset because of the uncomfortable historical connections between geisha culture and sex slavery.
Where to stream (if you care to): Amazon Prime
Oliver Stone's take on the events of September 11 received middling reviews, which would be fine, but its reputation is marred by a couple of things: First, Oliver Stone's increasingly loony conspiracy theories, some of which involve September 11, have made it increasingly difficult to approach his movies objectively. The movie doesn't get into any of that, but it does make a smaller, but altogether uglier casting choice: 9/11 rescuer Jason Thomas is a U.S. Marine who also happens to be a black American. Oliver Stone and company cast white actor William Mapother in the role, which they claimed was just a mistake when pressed. Not buying it.
Where to stream (if you care to): Amazon
This Roland Emmerich’s disaster flick has a pretty fabulous cast: Thandiwe Newton, John Cusack, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Danny Glover, etc. But otherwise, it’s about as generic as these things get. Add to that the fact that it was created to capitalize on the weird idea that the world would to an end in 2012 (thanks to a deliberate misreading of pre-Columbian Mesoamerican calendars), and there’s really no reason to revisit the film. Now if the world had actually ended...
Where to stream (if you care to): Netflix
Sandra Bullock won an Oscar for her performance in The Blind Side; it’s hard to deny her charm, and she gives an excellent performance, but her star power only exacerbates the fundamental problem with this story. While very much based on facts, the emphasis is placed not on star-in-the-making Mike Oher, who spent years shuttling between foster care and his substance-dependent birth mother, but instead on the wealthy white family who "adopted" him. It’s all fairly watchable, but the movie can’t overcome the problems of its white savior narrative. More recently, Michael Oher has alleged that it's all pretty much bullshit—that he was never formally adopted by the family, who instead convinced him to make them his business conservators. The Tuohys and their two birth children all received huge royalties from this film, while Oher himself received nothing. If that's all the case, it rather dramatically drives home the problem with white savior narratives that center the wrong people.
Where to stream (if you care to): Amazon
Though relatively recent, and full of sterling performances that earned Oscar nominations, The Help feels like a throwback in its framing of the Civil Rights movement. On the surface, it feels like a charming, feel-good movie about people coming together, but the experience of Black domestic workers in the 1960s is told from an almost entirely white perspective (perhaps not surprising given that there were very few non-white filmmakers with significant roles behind the camera; also true of the source novel). Despite her Oscar nomination, Viola Davis has expressed her disappointment in very strong terms, saying that by appearing here she "betrayed myself, and my people." More than a decade on, we might (maybe) be more sensitive to the fact that the era was about the challenges faced by, and victories earned by, black Americans—not the learning curve of a white suburban lady named "Skeeter."
Where to stream: Hulu
In Passengers, interspace traveler Jim Preston (Chris Pratt) wakes up in his hibernation pod 90 years too early; the ship is on its way to a new Earth, and he’s now facing the rest of his life awake and alone, with no way to return to sleep. A sad situation, sure, until he notices a pretty face among the other sleepers (Jennifer Lawrence) and decides to cyber-stalk the details of her life (she’s a journalist) before waking her up and pretending it was a malfunction. She eventually discovers his deception—which has destroyed her dreams and plans and condemned her to live out the rest of her life with no one for company but Chris Pratt—and, sure, she’s mad—at first. But she gets over it and they live happily ever after. It’s as good a metaphor for destructive and toxic masculinity as you’re likely to find, except that the self-justifying creep here isn’t just our point-of-view character, he’s presented as the empathetic hero.
Where to stream (if you care to): Amazon
There’s a part of me that appreciates the chaos era of DC superhero films—a time when a movie’s plot could turn on the presence of a jar of piss (thanks, Batman v Superman), but the first wave of Warner Bros’ attempts at a cinematic universe fell apart about midway through its first team-up movie. Contrasted with the airless, meticulous self-management of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the all-over-the-board DC style has been interesting to follow, anyway. Justice League, originally intended to be a huge, two-movie tentpole, was ultimately whittled down and cobbled together by two drastically different directors (Zack Snyder and Joss Whedon), and it never feels like anything other than the Frankenstein’s monster it is. Snyder’s later, much longer cut still isn’t particularly great, but at least it feels like the product of a singular (misguided) vision. Also the special effects look like they cost more than $15.
Where to stream (if you care to): Hulu, Amazon or Max
In a similar vein, though this one feels like an even lower blow: The Flash had aged out of relevance well before it was even released. Delayed, in part, because of Covid, the movie became another victim of the increasingly problematic behavior and legal troubles of its star, Ezra Miller. It's tough to market a superhero tentpole movie when you’re mostly hoping that people will forget who's playing the lead. At the same time, decreasing returns on DC movies in general meant that this attempt at a soft reboot was already pretty well doomed without any of that: By the time it came out, Warner Bros. and company had already made clear that they had no interest in continuing the adventures of the Zack Snyder -era characters. Attempts to create a DC multiverse here felt more ghoulish than anything else, the CGI recreations of beloved actors like Christopher Reeve feeling tacky rather than moving—I suppose that, given recent discussions over actors AI likenesses, that bit might come to feel like a sign of things to come—but, at the moment, just feels like all the more reason to let the dead rest.
Steam's refund policy has been a big hit with players since it was introduced in 2015. You can ask for a refund on any game within two weeks of purchase as long as you haven't played it for more than two hours. This policy is so famous, there are many speedrunners who try to finish games within this two-hour window and get a refund. Until now, this policy had a loophole: Play time didn't count for some pre-release games. This meant you could play any game in Advanced Access for as long as you liked and then refund it, so long as you didn't accrue more than two hours of additional game time after launch.
Steam defines Advanced Access as the ability to play the final version of a game before release. Think of it as being able to pay extra to get into Disney World an hour before everyone else. Plenty of games include a few days or even a week of Advanced Access in their deluxe purchase bundles, and to help make this clearer, Steam has added a new label on the store page for games in Advanced Access.
Advanced Access is different from Early Access, where developers release games that are still in development and use Steam sales as a means of funding. While Early Access games were not vulnerable to this loophole, some players abused the refund policy on Advanced Access games to get dozens of hours of play in before a game's official release, only to refund it and snag all that play time for free.
On Steam's refunds page, the company has changed its policy to stop players from exploiting this loophole. The updated wording is as follows:
REFUNDS ON TITLES PURCHASED PRIOR TO RELEASE DATE
When you purchase a title on Steam prior to the release date, the two-hour playtime limit for refunds will apply (except for beta testing), but the 14-day period for refunds will not start until the release date. For example, if you purchase a game that is in Early Access or Advanced Access, any playtime will count against the two-hour refund limit. If you pre-purchase a title which is not playable prior to the release date, you can request a refund at any time prior to release of that title, and the standard 14-day/two-hour refund period will apply starting on the game’s release date.
Previously, the 14-day/two-hour clock started only after the game's official release date. Now, you'll have to be careful if you're impulse buying games that look promising. At the time of writing, TopSpin 2K25 is in Advanced Access, so if you start playing it now, know that your refund clock will be ticking.
A variety of music-focused content is streaming on Paramount+ with Showtime in May. First up is the second season of Behind the Music (May 1) with episodes featuring Bell Biv DeVoe, Trace Adkins, and Wolfgang Van Halen, followed by Kiss The Future (May 7), a documentary film about U2's awareness-raising campaign for the crisis in Sarajevo, Bosnia, during their 1993 tour. Later in the month, catch LOLLA: The Story of Lollapalooza (May 21) about the birth and impact of the music festival.
On the drama side, there are new episodes of The Chi (May 10) following the characters' lives on the South Side of Chicago, and the final season of the supernatural series Evil (May 23). And on May 17, catch the premieres of both RuPaul's Drag Race All Stars (season 9) and RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars: Untucked (season 6).
Here’s everything else coming to the service in May. Note that titles with an asterisk are exclusive to Paramount+ With Showtime; everything else is also available to subscribers on the ad-supported plan. Those with two asterisks are available to Paramount+ With Showtime users streaming live on CBS and to all subscribers the following day.
Behind the Music, Season 2 premiere
Kiss The Future, premiere
The Chi Season 6, new episodes
Pillowcase Murders, premiere
Mourning in Lod, premiere
RuPaul's Drag Race All Stars, Season 9 premiere
RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars: Untucked, Season 6 premiere
LOLLA: The Story of Lollapalooza, premiere
Evil, final season premiere
Pyramid Game, premiere
Charles: The New King
PAW Patrol (Season 9)
PAW Patrol: Dino Rescue
PAW Patrol: Rescue Knights
The Mightiest (Season 1)
Teen Mom: The Next Chapter (Season 1)
Love & Hip Hop: Miami (Season 5)
Aerial Adventures (Season 1)
CMT Giants (2022)
CMT Storytellers (Seasons 1-2)
CMT Summer Camp Seasons (2022-2023)
CMT Summer Sessions (Season 2)
All About the Benjamins
Annihilation
Anything for Fame*
Baywatch
Before the Devil Knows You're Dead
Belly*
Belly 2: Millionaire Boyz Club*
Big Jake
Big Night
Black Lotus*
Boogie Nights
Clockstoppers
Crawl
Days of Heaven
Double Jeopardy
Ella Enchanted
Everybody Wants Some!!
Faster
Fences
Fire In The Sky
Flight Of The Intruder
Four Brothers
Frida*
Ghost
Harriet The Spy
Hellraiser III: Hell On Earth
Hellraiser IV: Bloodline
Hellraiser V: Inferno
Hellraiser VI: Hellseeker
Hellraiser VII: Deader
Hellraiser VIII: Hellworld
How She Move*
I Know What You Did Last Summer*
I Still Know What You Did Last Summer*
I'll See You in My Dreams*
Imagine That
In the Cut
Indecent Proposal
Jack Reacher: Never Go Back
Joy Ride
Kelly & Cal*
Kinky Boots*
Maid in Manhattan*
Margot At The Wedding*
Marvin's Room*
Mommie Dearest*
No Country for Old Men
Once Upon A Time In The West
Point Break
Revolutionary Road*
Rocketman
Romy and Michele's High School Reunion
Serpico
Shall We Dance?*
Shane
Sliver
Stand By Me*
Terms of Endearment
The Accused
The Back-up Plan
The Gift*
The Golden Child
The Guilt Trip
The Hateful Eight*
The Haunting
The Joy Luck Club
The Longest Yard
The Mechanic
The Original Kings of Comedy*
The Prince Of Tides
The Terminal
True Grit
True Grit
Vantage Point
Virtuosity
What's Eating Gilbert Grape*
What's Your Number?
Zoolander 2
The Boss Baby 2: Family Business
Supernova*
National Lampoon's Van Wilder - The Rise of Taj*
3 Generations*
Black Christmas*
If you want to start tracking how many calories you eat—whether for weight loss, weight gain, or just out of curiosity—here’s a primer. Calorie tracking is pretty easy once you’ve gotten the hang of it, but getting started can be confusing. With the right tools and the right habits, however, you’ll be on top of your own personal calorie numbers in no time.
Calories are a measure of energy. The more exercise you do, for example, the more calories you need to fuel that activity. Everything you eat has a calorie number attached to it (whether it’s on a label or not). In general, we eat about the same number of calories we burn.
Amazingly, our bodies can keep us at a roughly steady weight by making us hungrier if we haven’t eaten enough calories today, or making us feel full if we’ve had a lot. That said, consistently eating less than you burn results in weight loss; eating more than you burn results in weight gain.
Most of the time, you should eat roughly the same number of calories each day that your body burns. That number varies from person to person. A 4’9”, 100-pound woman who only does light exercise might burn 1,440 calories per day. A six-foot, 280-pound man who does heavy workouts twice a day might burn 4,309. Most of us are somewhere in between, in the 2,000 to 3,000 calorie range.
I discuss calorie burn a little more here. Even though food labels use a 2,000-calorie diet to calibrate their “daily values” of various nutrients, the truth is that we each burn a different number of calories, and most of us burn more than 2,000. (The average for adults was, years ago, calculated to be 2,350. The FDA ended up going with 2,000 in part because they thought a round number was easier to understand.)
So if you would like to lose weight, you’ll want to eat slightly less than you burn. If you want to gain weight—as many people do when they’re trying to gain muscle—you’ll want to eat more calories than you burn. A good rule of thumb is to subtract 200-500 calories from what you burn, and that will be a good number for weight loss. Do the opposite if you’re trying to gain.
Now that you understand the logic, you just need a starting estimate of how many calories you burn. If you already track calories, you can probably figure this out by what you usually eat when your weight is stable. Otherwise, plug your information into a TDEE (total daily energy expenditure) calulator like the one at tdeecalculator.net. Remember that any calculated number is only an estimate, and ultimately you’ll find out whether it’s correct by noticing what happens to your weight when you eat that number.
If you use a Fitbit or other gadget that estimates your calorie burn each day, that's also a good place to get a starting number. Just remember that this is also an estimate, and could still be off by a few hundred calories in either direction.
The easiest way to get a calorie number for a food is to look at its label. Or if your food doesn’t have a label, search for the name of the food plus “calories” and pay attention to the serving size and the source of the information. For example, when I google “apple calories,” I get a result telling me that a medium apple, about 3 inches in diameter, is 95 calories. The source is given as the USDA, which maintains a database of common food items. Here’s the entry for apples. It defaults to a 100-gram serving, but you can change the “portion” dropdown to show you the medium apple.
When you’re eating at a restaurant, calorie counts are sometimes shown next to each food item. If they aren’t, check the restaurant’s website, or search the restaurant’s name plus “nutrition information.” Often there’s a PDF hidden somewhere on their website with a bunch of calorie counts—and, often, other information like protein and carbohydrate content.
That said, there’s a simpler way that people usually use when tracking calories: You use a calorie tracking app.
There are tons of good (or at least not horrible) calorie tracking apps out there. Cronometer is my pick: It’s got all the features you need even in the free version, and it’s goal-neutral, so you can use it whether you’re trying to gain weight, lose weight, or neither.
The most popular calorie tracking app is probably MyFitnessPal, which is baffling because it’s easily the worst one out there. The calorie information is often inaccurate, the interface is pretty in-your-face about weight loss whether you’re interested in that or not, and basic features like the barcode scanner are only available in the paid version. We have a roundup of alternatives to MyFitnessPal here.
When you use a calorie tracking app, you’ll search within the app for the food that you just ate (or that you’re about to eat). At first you’ll find this practice clunky: You’ll have to choose the right item from the database, and then try to figure out how large a serving you just ate. Packaged foods are easiest to track, which adds an extra wrinkle if you’re also trying to eat more whole or homemade foods. Bear with this, though: Habits are skills, and as you develop all the mini-skills that make up calorie tracking, the habit becomes second nature.
As you gain more practice, you’ll get pretty good at eyeballing serving sizes. But as you’re getting used to it, make a habit of measuring or weighing food when you can. At this point I can pretty accurately eyeball the difference between a cup of rice and a half-cup of rice, for example. I know that a three-ounce serving of meat is about the size of a deck of cards, or a little smaller than the palm of your hand (depending, I suppose, on how big your hand is). A “serving” of peanut butter is two tablespoons; measure this out at least once so you can get a sense of whether your usual serving is more or less than that.
To be more precise, you can start using a food scale. This makes your life easier in so many ways. For example, you can:
Place your toast on the scale, zero it, and then spread on the peanut butter. Weigh the peanut-buttered toast, and you’ll know exactly how many grams of peanut butter you used.
Weigh out your desired portion of chicken, vegetables, or anything else you’re eating.
Portion a meal equally by weighing the whole thing, and then weighing each portion so that it contains ¼ of the total (if you’re making a four-serving meal).
Place a container of, say, yogurt on the scale, and zero it. Then you can scoop yogurt from that container into the blender as you’re making a smoothie. This requires a “negative tare” feature, but it’s great for when you’re adding ingredients to containers you can’t weigh directly, like a blender or a pot on the stovetop. You just weigh the container the food is coming from.
Your calorie tracking app should have a way of creating a recipe. Add in the ingredients, and make sure to say how many servings the recipe makes if you’re cooking for a group or making multiple servings for meal prep. Make sure to include all the ingredients, including cooking oil and condiments.
If you don’t know exactly what’s in something, you can guess. The easiest way is to look up a restaurant food that is similar and eyeball the portion.
Unfortunately there’s no easy adjustment to make here. Maybe you’re leaving a ton of calories behind, but it will be hard to separate that out mathematically from the other components that you did eat. In this case I just pretend I ate the whole thing, sauce and all. If there’s a ton of sauce and I’m sure I’m leaving lots of calories behind, I’ll log it as 0.9 instead of one serving.
There are no food-tracking police (thank god), so no, you don’t have to do anything. But if you’re trying to get a roughly accurate estimate of how many calories you eat each day, you really should log everything, as much as you can. If you snack on a cookie, put a cookie into your app.
I’ll sometimes skip an entire day of tracking, but I won’t log a partial day. If I eat 1,200 calories before dinner, and then go to a party and eat 15 different little things that are impossible to accurately track, I might say “fuck it” and delete the whole day. But I wouldn’t leave it at 1,200, because looking back, it will seem like that entire day was only 1,200 calories. If I know I ate more than usual and I want to make sure my tracking shows it, I'll pick a placeholder like a restaurant meal (my app actually has an entry for "Thanksgiving") and log whatever gets me, say, 3,000 calories of that.
Along the same lines, it’s tempting to not log things you think you “shouldn’t” be eating, but this backfires. In reality, if I’m eating 2,500 calories and only logging 2,000, I would look at my app and think, wow, I’m eating 2,000 calories and not losing weight. I would start to feel like I needed to eat even less than 2,000, and I might fall into one of those vicious cycles of restricting myself to smaller meals and then finding myself eating more untracked “cheat” meals. This is not a healthy way of eating, and tends to get worse over time. Instead, I log it all. If I know I’m eating 2,500 calories and not losing weight, I would be able to appreciate the fact that my body can put 2,500 calories to good use every day. I would then eat slightly less—maybe 2,200—and see if that might be a more effective and sustainable approach.
Or to put it another way: if you log everything, you can be honest with yourself and kinder to yourself. You just have to look at the numbers as neutral data, not as a judgement on whether you’re being “good.”
No one ever brags about their roof. We all have know people who actually send you photos of their perfectly manicured garden, or someone who speakings lovingly of their new kitchen backsplash. But the roof? No one thinks about their roof—until it starts leaking.
Roof leaks always happen at the least opportune moment—like, when it’s actively pouring out. If you experience the horror of water dripping from places water’s not supposed to drip from, hopefully you have a roofer in your contacts and can get them over for an inspection pronto. But before you make that call, don’t waste any time—you’ve got some roof triage to do if you want to limit the damage from a roof leak.
Your first priority is preventing damage. This is the moment to spring into action:
Move stuff out of the way. Any furniture, electronics, or rugs should be immediately removed from the area where the water is dripping.
Cover the stuff you can’t move, like a big, heavy couch or any built-in furniture. Any kind of plastic sheeting will do in a pinch. If the water leak is significant, you might also place the furniture legs in plastic containers or raise it up on risers if you’re unable to move it.
Contain the water—place a bucket underneath the stream and mop up the floor to prevent the water from soaking into the flooring. If the water leak is causing your ceiling or wall to bulge like a balloon, pop the bulge to let the water drain; otherwise, the water will just slowly soak into areas far away from the leak.
Consider keeping a roof leak diverter (or two) in storage. These tarp-like contraptions attach to the ceiling and divert the water into a hose that can be run to a drain. This way you don’t have to worry about emptying a bucket while keeping your floors dry.
Once you’ve restored order to the interior of your house, it’s time to see if you can put a temporary fix into place.
Start in the attic, if you have one. You might see the source of your leak immediately, or you might have to go hunting for it. Bring a flashlight and look for damp spots, slow seeping water, or literal holes in your roof. If you see obvious damage, you can try patching it from the inside with some roof cement or roofing tape, but keep in mind that while a successful interior patch might spare the inside of your house from further damage, the leak in your roof will still be there and will require repair.
If you don’t have an attic or you can’t see any obvious leaks from inside, your next step might be to get up on your roof. This is where you should be very careful—it’s a bad idea to head up onto your roof during a rainstorm. Wait for the storm to pass, and follow best safety practices at all times when you do go up there. When you do get up on your roof, it’s time for some detective work:
Remember that water flows, so the source of your leak might not be directly above or even near the spot where the water came out inside your house.
First, look for obvious damage: Missing or visually damaged shingles, flashing that has pulled away, stains or sunken areas, tears or cracks in the roof membrane.
If you don’t see anything immediately obvious, look at the most common problem areas: places where vent pipes emerge from the roof, where two planes meet, flashing around chimneys or skylights, and roof valleys.
Once you’ve identified one or more potential sources of the leak, you can apply some roof cement (make sure it’s explicitly for use in wet conditions if the roof is still damp or if it’s lightly raining) or even some Flex Paste. If you’re dealing with discrete damage to your roof, this might stop the leak until you can have a proper repair done.
If you can’t identify a specific area to patch (or as an added layer of protection if you do patch), you can throw a tarp over the area where you suspect the leak is. The tarp should be at least six millimeters thick, and you’ll need enough of it to extend several feet around the leaking area. In a pinch, you can just weigh the tarp down with some lumber, but ideally you would secure the tarp to your roof using roofing nails.
Finally, document the damage, especially if you have an insurance policy that includes roof coverage. If you wait until after the repairs are done, you might find your insurer reluctant to pay out on the claim. A few quick photos of the inside and outside as well as any damaged furniture or electronics will go a long way toward making that claim go smoothly. Plus, when you contact a licensed roofer about getting your roof repaired or replaced, you can send them the photos so they can determine the scale of the problem.
Windows 11 has a search bar in the taskbar and the Start menu, which lets you look for things both on your computer and on the internet. But if you click any results from the internet, Windows will open them in Microsoft Edge, even if that's not your default browser. Luckily, there's a way to override this and force Windows to open links in your preferred browser.
MSEdgeRedirect is the best way to stop Microsoft Edge from firing up every time you use Windows search. The app will also stop Edge from launching randomly, plus it'll let you use third-party services instead of Microsoft's own options for news, weather, and other live updates. Installing it is as simple as going through a couple of setup screens.
One of these setup screens asks you to choose an installation mode. For most people, Active Mode is recommended. On the next page, you'll see a number of Active Mode preferences. First, select Edge Stable unless you're running a beta build of the browser. After that, go through the preferences to stop other Microsoft redirects such as Bing Discover, Bing Images, Bing Search, MSN News, MSN Weather, etc. For each of these, MSEdgeRedirect offers a few alternatives, so take your pick.
Once the app is installed, Windows 11's search bar will be a lot more useful. Now, internet links will open in your default browser and use your preferred search engine.
MSEdgeRedirect is a great way to fix Windows 11's default settings. But you can take it a step further. Some people really dislike how Microsoft has slowed down the search function by trying to show results from the internet. Luckily, you can remove internet results from Windows search, and focus on the apps and files that live on your PC.
It's no secret that Apple products work well with one another. But you might not know you can actually turn your iPad into a high-quality secondary display for your Mac. Whether you have a desktop setup, or you’re traveling, you can use your iPad as a wireless display to showcase any app from your computer. It’s as easy as screen mirroring your Mac to your TV, thanks to a relatively hidden macOS feature called Sidecar.
First, the requirements. You’ll need a Mac running macOS Catalina or higher, and an iPad running iPadOS 13 or higher. There are some hardware restrictions as well, though every MacBook Pro released after 2016, and MacBook Air released after 2018 will work. In general, the latest Macs from the last 5 years are supported. The same goes for the iPads as well. All models of iPad Pros work, and every iPad 6th generation and newer, as well as iPad Air 3rd generation and newer will work here.
Still, you might need to do some work on the software side. First, both devices have to be signed in from the same Apple ID, and you have to use two-factor authentication. To use this feature wirelessly, you have to enable Bluetooth, wifi, and Handoff on your iPad. To enable Handoff, go to Settings > General > Airplay & Handoff > Handoff. If you’re using tethering on your iPad or your Mac, this feature won’t work.
Now that the housekeeping is done, you can set up your iPad as a secondary display. First, place the iPad next to the Mac, turn on the display, and unlock it.
Next, go to Control Center on your Mac, click Screen Mirroring, and choose your iPad from the list.
To use it as a secondary monitor, make sure you choose the Use As Separate Display option. You’ll notice your iPad will instantly show your Mac’s screen, including the menu bar, and some apps might even move to the iPad screen. To help you out, the iPad can show a sidebar, plus touch bar controls that are useful if you’re using the iPad away from your Mac. If you want more screen space for your Mac apps, we suggest disabling both the sidebar and the touch bar. You can do this on your Mac under System Settings > Displays.
The above instructions will work if you’re using macOS Monterey and higher. If you’re using macOS Big Sur, you’ll find the mirroring menu in Control Center's Display section.
Lastly, make sure how you’ve placed your iPad in physical space aligns with how your macOS software is set up. If you’ve ever attached an external monitor to your Mac, and tried to use it next to your MacBook, you’ll be familiar with this.
Essentially, you can tell macOS that your iPad sits on the left or right of the Mac so that your cursor can seamlessly move from one screen to another. To do this, go to System Settings > Displays. Here, you’ll see the current arrangement of your displays. If the default option works for you, then you don't need to do anything.
If you want to move your iPad screen position, click the Arrange button, freely drag the iPad screen to where it is in your physical space, and click the Done button.
Now that you're all set up, you can freely move your cursor between your Mac display and your iPad, and you can use the iPad like it's any other external display. This is similar to Apple’s other feature, Universal Control, where you can use the keyboard and mouse on your Mac with a connected iPad. The crucial difference with Sidecar, however, is that your Mac screen is also extended to the iPad. With Universal Control, your iPad still displays iPadOS.
If you don’t like dragging and dropping windows between the Mac and the iPad, there’s a shortcut for you. Hover over the Maximize button on any macOS window, and you’ll see an option to move the window to the iPad. I like using this option because it automatically resizes the window to take up the full iPad display.
This feature does disables the touch screen on your iPad, so it's not the touch screen Mac of your dreams. That said, Sidecar does support Apple Pencil. You can use your Pencil to draw on the screen, and you can even go to System Settings > Displays to enable the double-tap feature on the Apple Pencil, which lets you make selections on your iPad.
The gardening world is full of old wives' tales full of purported methods to grow the biggest tomatoes or tallest sunflowers. One of those stories is that tea is beneficial for your garden because it creates nitrogen, and the tannic acid benefits the pH of the soil. In truth, while tea will compost in your garden just like any other organic matter and likely isn’t doing any harm, there’s no science to suggest that tea, itself, has any specific benefit to your yard, either. Absolutely everything you compost will produce nitrogen, and any acid will affect the pH of your soil (which isn’t always desirable). I consulted with many garden centers as well as Concentrates, a well-regarded farm supply known for their mineral and fertilizer supplement stock, as well as their considerable knowledge of organic farming. No one working there had ever practiced this or could figure out any particular way tea would benefit your yard.
Growing herbs in your garden is probably one of the most rewarding crops, particularly perennial herbs. While many herbs, like chamomile and mint, can be used to make herbal tea on their own, real tea leaves come from a tea plant, camellia sinensis. While it’s unlikely your local nursery will sell it, you can order this flower online as a start and plant it in your garden. Once the plant flowers, you can harvest and dry the buds and make your own tea. No matter what you make your tea with, whether it be herbal or camellia, when you’re done drinking, what’s left is bound for the trash unless you compost it. If you’re making tea with what you grew yourself, you likely aren’t using tea bags, so you can just place the spent tea in your compost and go back to your life. It should compost just fine, and would count as a green part of your compost (which is made up of wet, nitrogen-rich matter balanced with dry, carbon-based matter).
If you buy tea, then you need to consider what the teabag is made of. While most teabags are compostable, some have polypropylene in them and those should not be composted. Remove any staples or string, unless you are sure it is 100% cotton string, and remove the paper tag in case it has any coating on it. If you’re concerned about the teabag, you can just empty it into your compost and toss the bag.
Your soil has a delicate pH. Most plants enjoy a neutral pH, and gardeners go to the trouble of measuring the soil’s pH to determine that its in the right range. Some plants benefit from slightly more acidic pH, but slightly is the key word there. Blueberries, azaleas and strawberries are examples of plants that benefit from that higher acidity. Any acid is going to make your soil more acidic, and real tea (not herbal) contains tannins, which produce tannic acid. Just like tea is a plant, tannic acid is produced by trees and other plants as they decay, too. It’s not that tannic acid is specifically bad, it’s that it’s not particularly beneficial, either. If you are adding it into the environment on purpose, you’ll want to ensure the soil pH isn’t becoming too acidic for what you’re trying to grow.
If you garden enough, you’ll hear the phrase “compost tea” and how good it is for your garden, but that phrase does not refer to actual tea. Rather, this is the drippings of your worms or compost, which can produce a highly nutritious water fertilizer for your garden. Many worm towers actually come with spigots to collect this brew for use, but you would never drink this.
I’m a big believer in growing your garden up using trellises, arbors and other supports. Growing up provides three exceptional benefits in a garden. First, it provides more room to grow. While some items naturally grow up, like bean vines, others, like pumpkins don’t traditionally grow up, but rather sprawl out across the ground, taking up a lot of space. Second, creating vertical points of interest in your yard makes the space so much more interesting. Lastly, it creates shade and sun. For the items growing on the support, they’re going to get more sun than they would on the ground, and on the other side of that trellis, shade is created. The shade is good for people and animals, who need respite in the summer, but also for your plants. It creates a microclimate. There’s a screen for wind, and the temperature on the other side is going to dip down a few degrees through the lack of sun.
The key to all of this is to choose the right support and the right plant. A trellis is simply a vertical structure that may be flat or accordion-style. An obelisk-type trellis has a smaller footprint, but more support, as they tend to be round or square, coming to a point at the top. Arches can be skinny or wide, but cross a space that people can walk under. An arbor has vertical and horizontal supports for plants such as berries, grapes or figs. Finally, a pergola or cabana is more specifically for creating a space under for tables, chairs, or whatever you’d want to do with the space. While all of these structures look nice on their own, they have open designs specifically so you can grow plants on them. Now you just have to decide what to grow.
I always like to consider ways to grow food—if not for me, then birds and other local wildlife. Figs and grapes are two plants that love support and can be molded around a structure, but are going to require a lot of hand-holding (this is true generally of both, not just on a pergola). Figs and grapes both grow vigorously and need to be pruned yearly, and should be treated to prevent fungal infections like rust. These both produce fruit, which sounds delightful, but if you do not harvest it, that fruit will drop and make a mess and bring pests. You can work to reduce this problem by thinning the fruit, which means reducing the amount of fruit as a trade-off for bigger, better fruit. Both figs and grapes offer huge leaves that can also be used on their own for eating but will work to provide shade as well. While these plants are perennial, they are not evergreen, so during the winter, you’ll see the vines but not the leaves.
Hops and passionfruit are edge-case edibles. Hops are essential to brewing beer, but even if you don’t, they are magnificently scented flowers on a very prolific vine that will climb on its own. The same is true for passionfruit, which doubles in size year to year and features gorgeous passionflowers. If you let it grow, you will eventually develop passionfruit, too. Because of how prolific these plants are, you really want to consider how you’ll handle them in fall. Passionflower really shouldn’t be pruned much, but hops can be cut almost to the ground year to year and will just come back stronger. Even in the short summer season, they can cover your entire pergola.
If you’d like to fill your space with hummingbirds, bees and other beneficial pollinators, you need to give them something to eat. Floral vines like jasmine, trumpet vines, honeysuckle, clematis and cup-and-saucer vine all provide scented flowers that attract these pollinators while providing shade on the structure. In fact, there are enough varieties of these vines that you can choose multiple honeysuckle vines, each with a different bloom time, and have an entire season of flowers, with different-colored flowers. Vines all have different rules about when and how much you prune them. Clematis has three different pruning groups alone, so you’ll want to make sure you look up how to prune your specific vines.
A great idea for a pergola or trellis is regular vining beans. Beans like scarlet runner or hyacinth beans are edible (but really meant to be grown for their looks) but there’s a whole world of shelling beans that grow prolifically for a season; then, after you harvest the beans, you cut the vines down. These are all annuals, meaning they only live for the season. If you allow the beans to just drop, they will reseed on their own and might eventually perennialize. You’ll want to ensure that you’re choosing pole beans, not bush beans—that information will always be on the seed packet. Most green beans are pole beans, and also grow prolifically in one season. We’ve previously covered how pumpkins and squash can be trellised; if you just grew them alone, they’d provide a lot of shade. You don’t have to choose just one option: You can grow multiple things together, like beans and pumpkins.
Although some people love them, vines like ivy or wisteria can do real damage to a structure and take over a space. Akebia is not technically invasive, but can grow out of hand too easily. Obviously, don’t plant kudzu. Other problematic invasive vines include wintercreeper, porcelain berry, and oriental bittersweet.
Depending on the structure of your trellis or pergola, your plants might be fine on their own finding the support, but if not, consider loose garden ties to train the plants onto the structure. You want to ensure these are never tight, or they won’t allow growth. You need to plant the vines into good soil that is loose and loamy, and has some nutrition in it. If the pergola is planted on the ground rather than a cement or rock base, you can work the soil around the pergola to aerate it and add fertilizer with a broadfork or shovel. If your structure is on cement, you’ll need planters, and they need to be appropriately sized for the plant—so larger than you imagine. You’ll fill them with potting soil, and since potted plants dry out more easily, you’ll need to ensure they get watered routinely and fed yearly with fertilizer. The nice thing about planters is that you can move them around, so if a plant isn’t getting sunlight, you can move it where it will.
It’s been a few years since Lifehacker looked at the slang of Generation Z—long enough that Generation Alpha has had time to develop and spread some of its own special buzzwords and jargon. Below is an alphabetized collection of slang taken from both Gen Z and Gen A, in case someone younger than you says something you don't understand. As with all slang, if you need an online list to know what a word means, you are too old to say it aloud.
Ate/eat: Done particularly well, particularly regarding clothing. ie: "You ate that outfit." See also: "serving"
Aura: Someone who is mysterious and cool is said to "have aura."
Bed-rotting: Staying in bed all day. You may know it as “lazing around.” See also: "Hurkle-durkle."
Bop: A girl who sleeps around. Also: a great song.
Brain-rot: A description of the overuse of stupid slang. See also: “Skibidi”
Bubba truck: A lifted or otherwise modified pick-up truck
Chad: An attractive man; i.e. an “alpha male”
Chat: A reference to streamers addressing their chat windows aloud. Saying “chat” in real life is an ironic joke.
Coomer: A man who masturbates too often
Corn: “Corn” is algo-speak that means “porn.” Used in online spaces where the word might cause your account to be flagged or banned.
Coworker-core: A catch-all description for things that are unfunny or uninteresting in a way that appeals to older people
Delulu: Delusional
Doomer: A person who is overly negative and/or cynical
Drip: A fashionable or stylish look
Edgar: A variation of the Caesar haircut worn especially among hispanic males. Also refers to the kind of person who wears the haircut.
Fanum tax: The theft of food between friends. Named for streamer Fanum, known for “taxing” his friends by taking bites of their meals or stealing fries.
Fent-fold: A description of the bent-over posture of people nodding on heavy drugs
Gamer dent: The temporary indentation left on someone’s hair or skin after wearing headphones for too long
Geeker: Someone who uses a lot of drugs
Glaze: To overly praise someone, often insincerely, or with the hope of getting something in return
Green fn: An interjection one might used when someone does something cool or impressive. Often used ironically.
Gooning: Extended masturbation without orgasm done for the purpose of entering an altered state of consciousness
Gyatt or Gyat: Once an interjection used when seeing someone sexy, like “god-DAMN,” “gyatt” has come to mean “attractive booty.”
Hurkle-durkle: Based on an archaic Scottish word, “hurkle-durkle” means to lounge in bed after it is time to get up. See also: “bed-rotting."
"It's so over": The situation is hopeless. The opposite of "we're so back." See also: "Doomer."
Jelqing: The use of stretching or weights in an attempt to increase penis size
Jit: A kid. Used ironically online
JOMO: A play on FOMO (fear of missing out) JOMO is an acronym that stands for “joy of missing out.”
"Learn Chinese": Sports slang directed at failing players. They are in danger of being sent to play in China, so they should "learn Chinese."
Looksmaxxing: Maximizing one’s physical attractiveness through personal grooming, working out, and dressing stylishly. See also: “-maxxing.”
-maxxing: A suffix used with any word to indicate trying to improve. Seeing your friends could be called "friendmaxxing," working out could be called "gymmaxxing," making jokes could be called "jestermaxxing" etc.
Mewing: A facial exercise meant to strengthen the jawline
Mirror sex: Using a mirror to watch yourself have sex
Mog: To be more attractive than someone, usually in an intentional or aggressive way. Example: "I was rizzing up this girl, but he walked in and totally mogged me."
Neurospicy: A different way of saying “neuro-divergent”
Opp: Short for "opposition." Someone who is out to get you. An enemy.
Regarded: “Regarded” is algo-speak for “retarded"
Rizz: As a noun, "rizz" means charisma. As a verb, rizz or rizz up means attracting someone with your charisma.
Serve: Wearing a particularly stylish outfit. See also: "ate."
Serve cunt: To act in a powerfully and unapologetically feminine way; to slay
Skibidi Toilet: Named after “Skibidi Toilet,” a popular series of YouTube videos, “skibidi” itself has no specific meaning, beyond ridiculing the overuse of slang itself. See “brain-rot.”
Sigma: A “sigma male” is a lone wolf who is powerful and competent, as opposed to a traditional alpha male stereotypes.
Sweat: A person who tries too hard, usually used in reference to video games. The adjective form is "sweaty."
Soyjack: a cartoon image of an emasculated man with an open-mouthed smile and an excited expression. Based on “soy-boy,” or weak man.
Spoopy: Spooky
Striker: Stolen/no-title car
Tradwife: Believer in traditional married gender roles
Unc: Short for "uncle," used to describe slightly older people. Example: "The class of 2024 are unc-status to the class of 2028."
Twelve: Police
Twin: Best friend.
"We're so back": Opposite of "it's so over"
Yapping: Describes a presentational style often seen on online streams of talking a lot and/or quickly while not saying anything worthwhile
Zoomer Perm: A curly on top, short on the sides haircut popular among young people.
There are new seasons of two Max Originals headlining May's lineup. First up is the third installment of comedy series Hacks (May 2), starring Emmy Award winner Jean Smart and nominee Hannah Einbinder. The season debuts with two episodes, with two additional episodes premiering each week until the finale on May 30. Drama series Pretty Little Liars: Summer School (May 9) will follow a similar format, with episodes dropping weekly through June 20.
There's also a new standup special from Nikki Glaser—Someday You'll Die (May 11) covers topics like aging and sexual fantasies—and two film projects from production house A24. The first, Stop Making Sense (May 3), is a restored 4K version of the 1984 Talking Heads concert film shot at the Pantages Theater in Hollywood, followed by The Iron Claw (May 10), a biographical sports drama starring Zac Efron, Jeremy Allen White, and Harris Dickinson as the Von Erich brothers, who were professional wrestlers in the 1980s.
Finally, catch HBO Original documentary MoviePass, MovieCrash (May 29), which chronicles the rise and fall of movie subscription service MoviePass.
Here’s everything else coming to Max in May.
All About My Mother (1999)
Black Christmas (2019)
Crank (2006)
Crank: High Voltage (2009)
The Dead Don't Die (2019)
Don Jon (2013)
Eddie the Eagle (2016)
The Edge (1997)
The Florida Project (2017)
Genius (2016)
Guy's Grocery Games, Season 35 (Food Network)
Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008)
Jack and the Beanstalk (1952)
Jersey Boys (2014)
The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017)
The Lighthouse (2019)
Mad Max (1979)
Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (1981)
Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985)
My 600-lb Life: Where Are They Now? (TLC)
Poltergeist (2015)
Poltergeist II: The Other Side (1986)
Poltergeist III (1988)
Silver Linings Playbook (2012)
Sisters (2015)
The Upside of Anger (2005)
Wild Mountain Thyme (2020)
Wonderland (2003)
Hacks, Season 3 (Max Original)
Selena + Restaurant, Season 1 (Food Network)
Six Is Not A Crowd (Felices Los 6), Season 1 (Max Original)
Turtles All the Way Down (Max Original)
Batwheels, Season 2B (Cartoon Network)
Stop Making Sense (A24 2023 Re-Release)
Teen Titans Go!, Season 8 (Cartoon Network)
Zillow Gone Wild, Season 1 (HGTV)
America's Backyard Gold, Season 1 (Discovery Channel)
People Magazine Killer Investigates, Season 1 (ID)
Mini Beat Power Rockers, S4B
Next Baking Master: Paris, Season 1 (Food Network)
Yellowstone Wardens, Season 4 (Animal Planet)
Mecum Full Throttle: Houston TX 2024 (Motor Trend)
Outdaughtered, Season 10 (TLC)
In Pursuit with John Walsh, Season 5 (ID)
Stupid Pet Tricks, Season 1 (TBS)
Pretty Little Liars: Summer School (Max Original)
The Iron Claw (2023) (A24)
Nikki Glaser: Someday You’ll Die (HBO Original)
Expedition From Hell: The Lost Tapes (Discovery Channel)
Naked and Afraid XL, Season 10 (Discovery Channel)
SMILING FRIENDS, Season 2 (Adult Swim)
Summer Baking Championship, Season 2 (Food Network)
Doubling Down with the Derricos, Season 5 (TLC)
Botched Bariatrics, Season 1 (TLC)
Ghost Adventures, Season 28 (Discovery Channel)
Home Sweet Rome (2023) (Max Original)
Sleepless (2017)
Murder in the Heartland (ID)
My Lottery Dream Home, Season 15 (Discovery Channel)
Design Down Under, Season 2 (Magnolia Network)
Ciao House, Season 2 (Food Network)
Space Shuttle Columbia: The Final Flight, Limited Series (CNN Original Series)
STAX: Soulsville U.S.A (HBO Original)
Elephants vs. Man with Nick Paton Walsh (CNN Original)
Hell on Earth: The Verónica Case (La Mano En El Fuego) (Max Original)
Moonshiners: Master Distiller (Discovery Channel)
Last Chance Garage, Season 1 (Motor Trend)
Romário: The Guy (Romário: O Cara), Season 1 (Max Original)
Texas Metal's Loud and Lifted, Season 2 (Motor Trend)
Thirst with Shay Mitchell (Max Original)
Caught: Wild and Weird America (Discovery Channel)
Diary of an Old Home, Season 4 (Magnolia Network)
Mysteries of the Abandoned: Hidden America (Discovery Channel)
Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice
90 Day Fiancé: UK, Season 3
Two Guys Garage, Season 23 (Motor Trend)
Homicide Hunter: American Detective, Season 4 (ID)
MoviePass, MovieCrash (HBO Original)
Traces of Love (Evidências Do Amor) (Max Original)
Outchef'd, Season 3 (Food Network)
Gold Rush: Parker's Trail, Season 3 (Discovery Channel)
Science says working out in the morning is best—no, wait, in the evening! If you’re looking for the best time to work out, you’ll find studies to support each of your options. Let’s look at the pros and cons of each choice, so you can decide what is best for your schedule.
As with any scientific question, there are many scientific answers. One recent study found that, in a group of Australians with BMIs over 30 (average age 62.2), those who got most of their aerobic exercise in the evening had lower rates of death, cardiovascular disease, and microvascular disease than people who got most of their exercise in the morning or midday.
That’s not the only study that has ever been done on the subject, of course. Just a few months earlier, another study found that people who exercise in the morning tend to have slightly lower BMIs (25.9 versus 27.2) compared to those who exercise in the evening.
If you start reading all the studies on exercise timing, you’ll find plenty more seemingly conflicting evidence. One study even broke out its results into groups to say that women got certain benefits from morning exercise, other benefits from evening exercise, and then men got (still different) benefits from evening exercise. Since the study population was just 36 people, I’m going to take those very specific-sounding results with a grain of salt.
Ultimately, the most important thing to know about exercise timing is what the authors of this review on exercise timing wrote in their conclusion: “It is essential to note that exercise at any time of day is of greater benefit than no exercise.”
Morning workouts are the classic sign of a motivated go-getter. The arguments in favor of a morning workout are all about productivity and time management, which are often more important than any biological benefits.
You know you’ll have time to fit it in. If work gets busy, or if you find yourself tired at the end of the day, those issues won’t prevent you from doing your workout—you already got it in.
You may get a mood and energy boost for the rest of the day. Experiences vary, but many people find that exercising in the morning helps their mental health throughout the morning or even the whole day.
Outdoor morning exercise can train your circadian clock. If your exercise is outdoors—like going for a jog—that helps you to get sunlight as well. Morning light can help your body’s clock to stay on track, which in turn can help you to feel sleepy at nighttime.
You can have caffeine before your workout. Caffeine-containing preworkout powders (or energy drinks, or coffee) can help you focus better and work harder in the gym. But taking caffeine late in the day can mess with your sleep. So if you’d like to use a strong preworkout, consider doing your workout in the morning.
So if you want to improve your sleep, have more energy in the morning and throughout the day, and use caffeine during your workout, morning exercise might be the best option for you. Mornings are also great for people whose schedules can be unpredictable during the day. But don’t set your alarm early just yet—there are also benefits to evening workouts.
Evening workouts make a lot of sense for many of us—including those who (like myself) have a hard time getting moving in the morning. Consider these advantages of evening workouts:
You can’t oversleep and miss your workout. If you’re naturally more of a night owl, this might be a real issue.
You may be able to focus better with your work day behind you. Taking the time for a long workout, or mustering the focus for an intense one, can sometimes be easier when most of the day’s obligations have already been taken care of.
You’ll be better fed. It can be a struggle to fuel well before a morning workout. If you work out in the evening, you may need to adjust the exact timing—snack before workout and dinner after, for example—but at least you’ll have something in your belly.
Your performance may be better. Your core temperature tends to be higher in the evening, and some studies show a small performance boost in both strength and oxidative capacity (which relates to your ability to burn fuel for energy). This can mean you’ll more easily see your fitness reflected in how heavy you can lift or how fast you can run.
So if you have a hard time waking up early, eating for a morning workout, or finding the time and focus to exercise before you start your day, evening workouts may be best for you.
Probably one of these options speaks to you more than the other. It may be as simple as knowing whether you’re more of a morning person or a night owl. Your decision may also be an easy one if your daily schedule only has one good time to work out. Whenever that may be—even if it’s noon or 2 a.m.—the smart schedule is whatever you’ll be able to stick to. After all, if a morning workout is ideal but you never manage to make it happen, there’s no need to feel attached to morning workouts.
You also don’t have to consider yourself a devotee of either camp. It’s OK to work out Monday and Thursday mornings, and sleep in Tuesdays and Fridays so you can train in the evenings on those days. Or perhaps you change up your schedule with the seasons: sunrise jogs in the summer are great, but a 6 a.m. winter run is no fun with the dark and snow. Choose what makes sense for you.
If you’re looking to meet people in your neighborhood, buy a robot lawn mower. Over the last few weeks, I’ve been amazed at the traffic generated by using my Mammotion Luba 2. People stop to watch it work, they bring their kids by, and cars have slowed down, backed up, and then pulled over to observe. But the best outcome I discovered by using a robot lawn mower is this: If you can share your robot lawn mower with your closest neighbors, what was a good value becomes a great one.
I live in the city on a street with reasonably sized residential lots of 3,000ish square feet, and almost every house on the block has a lawn. The lawns vary in size, but all are large enough to need a lawnmower, and many people on the block use a lawn service. Since our lots are small enough and the Mammotion Luba 2 is built to handle a lot more space, I found myself wondering if I could make the Luba think additional houses on the block were all part of the same map, and mow them, too. Spoiler: It works. The more houses a single robot can mow, the more value you’re getting from a robot lawnmower (and I generally feel they are a valuable buy, anyway).
An interesting aspect of robot lawnmowers came from a conversation with the team at Husqvarna, who pointed out that robots aren’t great at perceived boundaries like property lines, which is why lots of lawnbots have needed buried wire to mark perimeters with precision. Now that most bots are wireless, we teach the bot where the boundary is by walking them around the perimeter the first time and mapping paths between the different areas. A single property can have multiple mapped areas, just like your home has many rooms for a robot vacuum to consider. Your next door neighbor’s lawn can be just another area, and you can map a pathway to it. Even the street itself is just another area for the robot to cross to get to another mapped area, just like a sidewalk or driveway. At a minimum, robot vacuums are a great way to keep a hellstrip (the narrow space between your sidewalk and street curb) mowed and looking uniform across many properties.
Once I got permission from my neighbors to test this out, I parked the GPS tower for the Luba in a spot that gave line of sight for the two houses across the street and the house next door. Remember, you place that GPS tower with the mapped areas in mind, but if you plan to use it on multiple houses, that mapped area just expands, and you may need to consider a new location for the tower.
Using the remote control, I walked the robot over to the new areas to map and continued adding mapped areas in each of the yards, naming them and making connection pathways between the mapped areas. So, my neighbor across the street had her yard mapped with pathways between the areas on her property, and then my next door neighbor had the same. I did not make a pathway between the homes, which I’ll explain in a moment. At some point, all four homes, two on each side of the street, were mapped, and once the robot was in those spaces, it mowed the areas as well as it would the main home it was mapped to.
While on a lawn, the safety of the robot isn’t really in question (the biggest threat is someone walking up and nabbing it). It also isn't a major safety concern for people or pets while cutting the grass—it just moves too slow. But unattended in the street, it can get run over, and it's more likely to encounter people and dogs on sidewalks. The bottom line is: The robot is safe on your lawn, but when you map a walkway and ask it to leave your lawn, it can engage with the rest of the world, which could be a liability, a risk to your investment, or just a hassle. A better way to handle it is to manually walk the robot over, using the remote, especially across a street.
Now that it’s all mapped, remember that multiple people probably won’t have access to the controls for the robot, because the association lives on one phone. With some robots, you can add additional users, and for others, I’m sure that’s coming. Until then, one solution is scheduling, which would mean that as long as the robot is in mapped area or there’s a walkway mapped to it, it will run a set scheduled mow. If there’s no walkway, you’d need to be responsible for walking the robot over, but it’s not more labor than taking the trash to the curb. A second solution is keeping a cheap tablet with the robot, with the app loaded, so that anyone who wants to use the robot can walk over, grab the tablet and use it to walk the robot to their property and mow and then return it.
Robot lawn mowers range in price from about $1,500 to $5,000. The Mammotion Luba 2 we used for this experiment is $2,899 and while I think that’s a reasonable price to pay for a robot lawnmower, it would be a lot less when shared with a few neighbors. You all agree to maintain the robot collectively and share in the expenses, such as new blades, as needed.
Marie Kondo and Peter Walsh are great organizational masterminds in their own right whose tips on decluttering people's homes and lives have helped tons of people. While their techniques have some similarities, they also have a few differences that make them better suited to different styles and situations, so before you choose one to follow, here’s what you need to know.
Marie Kondo’s infamous KonMari method of organizing follows a few simple steps designed to ensure “you will never again relapse to clutter.” Here’s what she calls for:
Commit yourself to tidying up.
Imagine your ideal lifestyle.
Finish discarding first.
Tidy by category and not by location.
Follow the right order.
Ask yourself if it sparks joy and get rid of it if it doesn't.
In this method, you’re first committing to tidying up and imagining what your life would look like if you were organized and decluttered all the time, then throwing away trash, sticking to a routine, and assessing your clutter so you only keep the things you truly value.
Walsh’s method is a little more intense. The five steps are sort of like Kondo’s, but you’ll notice some differences:
Empty your space.
Create a vision for the space and set an intention for it.
Sort everything you removed into a “vision” pile and an “out-the-door” pile.
Get rid of the “out-the-door pile” by donating or throwing everything away.
Move everything from the “vision” pile back into the space.
Walsh calls on you to remove everything from a space or room, set a specific goal for that room, and be a little brutal by discarding anything that doesn’t align with the vision.
While both Kondo and Walsh advocate for taking some time to visualize how a decluttered space could and would look in your life, their approaches to meeting the goal you set are different.
First, KonMari involves cleaning up by category, not location. Walsh’s technique, on the other hand, is very space-oriented; he suggests doing it room by room. Kondo asks you to start with your clothes, then your books, papers, and miscellaneous items before finishing up with anything that may have some sentimental value. Walsh is much less interested in sentimentality and advises you to chuck out anything that doesn’t align with your “vision” for your future space.
To really perform Walsh's method as he prescribes, you have to totally empty a space or room, then slowly refill it. That can be a little overwhelming, especially when the parameters around what you can keep are so tight. Kondo’s steps are slightly more relaxed and welcoming; they leave some space for you to hold onto things that have meaning to you and work at your own pace.
Both techniques are valuable in their own way; Kondo and Walsh have both sold books and starred in shows because they both have an audience of people who find real benefit in their ideas. Which method you choose depends on a few factors, like how attached you are to your possessions, how much space you have to declutter, and whether you find the task overwhelming.
Whether you're shopping for your very first security camera or already have a system at home you're looking to grow, you'll likely find something worthwhile in Amazon's current sale on Blink cameras. As Amanda Blum, our smart home expert at Lifehacker, mentioned in her review, the Blink Outdoor 4 is a worthwhile entry-level wireless security camera—and right now, it's is $59.99 (originally $99.99) after a 40% discount. This is the lowest price I have seen for this particular camera, after checking price tracking tools, and that is why it's my favorite Amazon deal of the day.
The Blink Outdoor 4 is a wireless camera, meaning you'll be using 2 AA lithium batteries, which last for up to two years. The camera is also weather resistant, has motion-activation alerts, a live-view mode (up to five minutes without a Blink subscription plan), shoots in 1080p, has two-way audio, and works great with the Alexa ecosystem. (Unfortunately, it is not compatible with Google or Apple Home Kit.) You'll get a Sync Module 2 with your order, which gives you local storage for your videos with a USB stick, meaning you don't need to get the Blink subscription if you don't want to. The camera offers a 143-degree diagonal view wherever you set it up, and an optional person-detection feature if you get the Blink subscription plan.
Keep in mind you will need a Blink subscription to use all of its features. The Blink subscription starts at $30 a year for the Blink Basic Plan. You can also get the Blink Plus Plan, which costs $100 a year with more features, the most important of which is having an unlimited number of devices hooked up to your account.
Eufy is a company that, in general, makes products I really like. They make some of the best security cameras in the industry, enough that after testing lots of brands, Eufy’s Solocams are what I keep installed at my house. Anker, their parent company, makes some of my favorite power banks, and I really like my Eufy doorbell. Like a lot of companies making smart tech, they also make vacuums.
The Eufy Robot Vacuum Omni S1 Pro is interesting in a number of ways. Even though Eufy is a well-established brand that has produced and launched many products including other robot vacuums, for this model, they went back to Kickstarter, where their goal was blown out of the water in hours. Second, instead of going for the compact tower design almost all companies have chosen for robot vacuums lately, the S1 has a giant retro tower look to it. Despite my brand loyalty, the interesting design and the vacuum's decent performance, however, I think the Omni S1 Pro isn’t a good buy—there’s a disconnect between the robot Eufy thinks they built and the one I tested. Currently priced at $999 on Kickstarter, the S1 will become available for retail purchase later this spring or early summer at a much higher price.
Generally, robot vacuums and mops now come with a dock and tower that will refill the clean water, empty the dirty water and vacuum, and clean the mop. These towers are impossible to ignore due to size, but brands generally try to make them generic-looking enough so they’ll blend into the landscape of the room around them. Eufy went a different way with the S1. The tower is tall enough you might mistake it for a stick vacuum, and bears the word “MACH” right on the front, which is also the name of the app. Made of molded transparent black plastic, the contents of the tower are veiled, but only barely. While it’s likely made of the same materials as other brands, which are also molded plastic, the see-through plastic occasionally looks cheap. Despite the vertical size, the tower also doesn’t take up much less horizontal space than other robots have. The footprint is about the same, but you can’t tuck this under tables and counters as easily.
The robot itself is like a lot of other modern robot vacuums, with a roller, rotating sweeping brushes and mop brushes—and to its credit, Eufy ships the S1 Pro with plenty of replacement parts, including extra rollers, brushes and filters. But Eufy has promoted this robot as a premium floorbot, with a premium price. In the marketing for the robot, you routinely see words like “groundbreaking” used. In fact, the marketing materials used to say “The World’s First Floor-Washing Robot Vacuum with All-in-One Station” until I asked what was different from other floor-washing robots, since they’re pretty common now. The language disappeared from Kickstarter but remains on the Eufy website. The problem is, it’s not groundbreaking: While this robot was being developed, floor washing robots became routine, and the technology surpassed what this robot offers, with other brands offering extending brushes and mops, on board video, voice assistants and direct connection to water lines. While the S1 includes a lot of features I like on other robots—like a place for cleaning solution built into the tower, and an easy way to divide and merge rooms in the app—most of the other premium robots have that, too.
Most robots come ready to roll out of the box, and the S1 isn’t any different. After unboxing, it just needed to be filled with water and have a few brushes popped into places. In the case of many robot mop combos, you can add cleaning solution to the clean water, but recently, models like Roborock have added a bay for cleaning solution to the dock, so you always have the right amount. As I mentioned, Eufy included this feature, but it relies on Eufy branded cleaning solution in a sealed bottle that you install—to replace it, you’d need to purchase more from Eufy, while other models allow you to choose any solution you want to use. The MACH app is separate from the Eufy Clean app, and I’ve previously talked about how every one of Eufy’s products uses a different app (Clean, Security, Pet, etc), so this was just one more to add to the bunch. Still, it’s a good app, and has the same user interface as most brands. A map is made using LiDAR the first time the robot goes out, and then you can break it into rooms, dividing and merging spaces as you like and naming them. Of all the robots I’ve tested, the S1 mapped the space better than any other (and I’ve had six or seven robots map the same space).
One aspect I did really like was that you can set cleaning preferences per room, instead of doing so per run, and you can also set a priority of rooms rather than let the robot decide. If you want to wash the kitchen floor multiple times but the hallway only once, you can, and you can ask the bot to always clean the bathroom last. The app has schedules, and the same general settings you expect, including the remote control. The app lacks two features I’m seeing in many robots these days: pin and go, or “spot cleaning,” and onboard video. While I don’t think video is all that useful, it’s still a feature you’d get in other models. Pin and go is actually very useful—you can just drop a pin on your map and the robot cleans that spot specifically.
As a floor cleaner, the S1 does an okay job. This is how I felt about the Eufy X10 Pro Omni I reviewed a few months ago. It vacuumed up a lot of debris on the floor, but after three passes on my kitchen had missed a deliberately left onion peel in the dead center of the floor. The S1 does not hug the wall; it lacks those extending arms other models now offer. As a mop, it certainly cleaned up surface level spills, but the rotating brushes did not dig into grime at all, leaving the white tile looking dirty. On 11 ventures out, I’d let the Eufy run at max settings, the highest level of suction and mopping, going over each space two times. In each instance, I would then ask my Roborock S8 MaxV Ultra to make a single run afterwards, and I could watch it grab everything the S1 missed. It happened over and over.
Earlier this week, I spoke with Eric Villines, Head of Global Communications at Anker about the S1 launch and why they chose Kickstarter. I appreciated how proud the team at Anker seemed to be about the way the Eufy encourages innovation, working like an incubator with at least half the staff devoted to research and development. When teams produce great concepts, crowdfunding allows Eufy to find innovative ways to move those products forward. One of the reasons they like crowdfunding for products like the S1 is that it creates a long runway of feedback from enthusiasts and funders, which Villines said usually impacts the products a lot before launch.
To be clear, Eufy doesn’t make bad robot vacuums; they work just fine. But they seem to only work fine—not great. The S1 is positioned as a premium robot vacuum, but for the current $999 price, i think you can do better with the Roborock S8 Pro, at the same price. When the S1 moves to its full retail price in the mid-$1000 range, I think you’d do better with the Roborock S8 Maxv Ultra at $1799. I am also eagerly awaiting the new S10 from Switchbot; if I were shopping for a robot vacuum right now, I'd wait for that to launch, since Switchbot has already made a really great vacuum before.
Some decluttering techniques are really intense and time consuming, requiring you to use a bunch of storage bins or even clear out entire rooms and rebuild them bit by bit. All of that can be pretty overwhelming and, if you’re overwhelmed enough, you may not want to do it at all. If that feels familiar, a simpler, more laid-back technique might be a better fit.
This decluttering method comes from Dana K. White, who has chronicled her “deslobification” journey on a blog since she began in 2009. She took notes of all her wins and failures, keeping track of what worked and what didn’t—and ultimately published a book, Decluttering at the Speed of Life: Winning Your Never-Ending Battle with Stuff.
Though she’s got lots of great content after 15 years of working on different ways to spruce up a home, her tips can be broken down into five easy steps that don’t require extra purchases, any kind of deep visualization, or fancy tricks. Her technique is simple, straightforward, and built around small bursts of cleaning that anyone can manage, even when the overall task is overwhelming.
To follow White’s method, first identify one small area you want to take care of. Don’t try to do a whole room or the entire house. Keep it manageable and opt for a shelf, a cabinet, a tabletop, the floor, or another very specific area. Then, do these five things:
Start with trash, like receipts, wrappers, bags, anything that is broken, expired food or products, or anything you simply don’t need or use at all. Throw all that away.
Do the easy stuff. This means that anything you see that has a place somewhere else should be removed and put back where it belongs. Don’t put everything in a pile and return it all at once; that will just keep your workspace cluttered. Instead, if you find one thing that goes somewhere else, like a hair tie that could be returned to the bathroom, do a quick scan for anything else that belongs there, too, and bring it all.
Categorize “duh clutter,” or anything that could be donated. Keep a box on hand and toss anything worthy of donation into it.
Ask yourself one or two decluttering questions. First, “If I needed this item, where would I look for it?” If you can instantly think of an answer, take the item where it belongs. If you can’t think of an answer, ask a follow-up: “If I needed this item, would it occur to me that I already had one?” A good example of this one is if you aren’t much of a wino, but find a corkscrew in your drawer. If friends were coming for dinner and you picked up some pinot for them, would you even realize you already had an opener at home or would you buy a cheap one at the liquor store checkout counter? If it’s not something you use or seek out often, donate it. Spending a few dollars to repurchase one on the off chance you ever actually need it in the future will be worth the space you save by not keeping that thing around.
Finally, make it fit. This means you can only keep things that you have space for in the area you’re cleaning. Don’t buy new storage containers or force anything to fit. Only the most necessary items get to stay, or else they have to be stored somewhere more appropriate or gotten rid of.
By working through these steps in small spaces, you make incremental progress without getting overwhelmed. All of the steps are designed to keep this easy, in fact, even the little details about removing trash right away to create a more visually decluttered (and motivated) space to work and returning things to their proper place one at a time instead of all at once to avoid creating a secondary box of clutter while you clean.
This method is also great for people who struggle with decision-making. When you start, you know you can’t keep it all. You’re aiming to reduce the amount of items so everything can fit in the space. Asking the two decluttering questions is a helpful way to discern whether something really is necessary to hold onto and removes the sentimentality or excuse-making from tossing something out. If you struggle with motivation and the ability to make quick decisions when you’re decluttering, this could be the method for you.
Gamers have been trying to get the best performance out of their PC games since the dawn of the hobby. Many now turning to the internet to try to find ways to improve their FPS (frames per second) and get a smoother gaming experience. Since Windows 11, we've seen a new "fix" popping up for gaming performance: a recommendation to disable VBS.
While the prospect of disabling performance-hungry settings in Windows isn't exactly a new one, not every setting someone on the internet tells you to disable is actually something you should cut. In fact, you shouldn't disable VBS, as this feature helps protect your computer's core functionality, and disabling it doesn't actually offer that much of a bump in performance.
VBS stands for virtualization-based security. It essentially uses hardware virtualization to create an isolated environment for the root of your operating system. This is designed to help keep the kernel—one of the most important parts of your PC—from being compromised should you accidentally download a virus or malware.
One of the main ways VBS helps protect your computer is by using a solution called memory integrity. This feature essentially causes Windows to run and kernel code with the isolated environment to ensure that it is secure and legitimate. This keeps unsigned and untrusted drivers from being able to change the very core of your PC, thus protecting you from bad actors.
Because it plays such an important part in protecting the core of your PC, you shouldn't mess with VBS, as turning it off could open your computer up to attacks from malware and viruses.
Unfortunately, not all Windows 11 PCs will have VBS enabled by default. Users who upgraded unsupported PCs to Windows 11 are the most likely to see VBS disabled by default, as VBS has certain requirements that need to be met before it can be enabled. Most newer PCs should meet all of these requirements, which is why some older PCs might not have VBS even though VBS actually predates Windows 11. (That's also why VBS is so associated with Windows 11). You can learn a bit more about the requirements for VBS by checking out Microsoft's in-depth writeup. Note that the requirements are very heavy in technical jargon, so it might be a bit difficult to understand them if you don't have a working knowledge of the foundational systems that computers require to run and remain secure.
To check if VBS is enabled on your PC, pull up the Start Menu and search for System Information. This will open a new window with a long list of different functionality and features that your system is currently running. Look for the line that reads Virtualization-based security.
Another way to easily check if VBS is enabled is to search Core Isolation from your Start Menu. From here, check if the Memory integrity function is toggled on or off. If it is on, then memory integrity and VBS are enabled, giving your PC a bit more protection. If you really do want to disable it, you can toggle this off to turn off VBS and remove that extra layer of security.
Not really. VBS offers a good deal of extra protection, and in most cases, you're not going to see more than a five percent increase in performance across Windows and apps. Some users have reported up to 15 percent increases in performance when disabling the feature, although your mileage may vary.
However, as I noted above, VBS is a really important security feature. Unless you're very smart about how you browse the internet, I recommend leaving it on for extra protection. If you are struggling with performance, then you can try these tips to help improve gaming performance before disabling VBS:
Free up storage space: If you're using a solid state drive, then keeping the drive with your operating system on it as empty as possible is always a good idea. That's because SSDs can actually slow down the more full they are. Because of this, I recommend keeping your OS and any important apps separated from other things, like games and apps you don't need directly on your primary drive. If you do have too many apps or games installed on your primary drive, try deleting some of them to see if that makes your performance any better.
Disable startup apps: If your main performance issues are happening at startup, then you can try disabling apps that automatically start when you turn on your PC. A lot of apps have a "launch at login" option, and while you can disable them individually in the apps, the easiest way to do this is to open the Task Manager with Control + Alt + Delete, find the Startup Apps page, and set as many as you can to disabled.
Disable Xbox Game Bar: Ever since Microsoft started blending Xbox and Windows together for its gaming ecosystem, the Xbox Game Bar has caused issues. Sometimes referred to as Game DVR, this service allows you to record game clips and capture screenshots. That all sounds handy, but it can also cause some performance issues. To disable it, navigate to Gaming > Game Bar and toggle the feature off. If you aren't able to disable it this way, you can also disable it in the Registry by following this forum post, though that requires a bit more knowledge of your PC's inner workings. Do not make registry edits if you are not confident that you know what you are doing, as these kinds of edits can break your PC's operating system.
Lower game settings: Of course, the least enjoyable answer to improving PC performance in games is to lower some of the more intensive settings. While they might make your games look pretty, a lot of games just aren't as well optimized as you might hope they would be, especially with all the cool tech advancements we have these days. Try lowering heavy settings like shadows and post-processing, as they can often bog your system down depending on how the developer optimized for them. In many cases, you might not even notice a visual downgrade, but the performance of your game will increase drastically.
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