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I was recently gifted a charming, kitschy magnet, and as I tucked it into my wallet for safekeeping, I couldn't seem to remember: Do magnets spell doom for credit cards? Many of us have held onto vague rumors about the potential dangers of magnets interfering with the functionality of our credit cards. Let's take a look at the relationship between magnets and credit cards, and separate fact from fiction.
Traditional credit cards feature a magnetic strip on the back, which stores important information such as your card number, expiration date, and security code. This magnetic strip is susceptible to demagnetization, which can occur due to prolonged exposure to magnetic fields (or physical damage).
When a magnetic strip becomes demagnetized, the data stored on it can become corrupted or unreadable. This means that card readers at stores or ATMs may have difficulty recognizing your card, potentially leading to declined transactions or other issues.
(Sidebar: This is why you've been told not to keep your hotel key card next to your phone; your phone is a potential source of magnet exposure that renders key cards inoperable.)
While it's unlikely that everyday exposure to weak magnetic fields will cause significant damage to your credit card, it's still wise to exercise caution. Stronger magnets, such as those found in speakers, MRI machines, or certain industrial equipment, can pose a real threat to the integrity of your card's magnetic strip.
Additionally, mishandling or scratching the magnetic strip can also contribute to demagnetization, as the physical damage can disrupt the magnetic particles that store your card's data.
To address the vulnerabilities of magnetic strips, the credit card industry has been transitioning towards EMV chip technology. EMV (which stands for Europay, Mastercard, and Visa) cards feature a small, embedded microchip that generates a unique code for each transaction, providing enhanced security and eliminating the risk of demagnetization.
Unlike magnetic strips, these chips are not affected by magnetic fields or physical damage, ensuring that your card's data remains intact and secure.
While magnetic strips are still present on many credit cards for compatibility with older payment terminals, the EMV chip has become the primary method of transaction processing, significantly reducing the potential impact of magnets on your card's functionality.
To minimize the risk of demagnetization and ensure the longevity of your credit cards, you should keep them away from strong magnetic sources and handle them with care. Avoid storing them near speakers, magnets, or other devices that generate powerful magnetic fields, and be mindful of preventing physical damage to the magnetic strip.
As EMV chip technology continues to be the mainstream, the concern over magnets affecting credit cards will become increasingly obsolete. However, it's always wise to exercise caution and follow best practices to safeguard your financial information and ensure smooth transactions.
Curious about those cable machines in your gym? Just as I've guided you through some of the best beginner-friendly exercises to do with kettlebells and with TRX style suspension trainers, today I'm taking a look at some of the best exercises you can do with a cable machine.
These are the machines with a handle of some sort that attaches to a pulley with a stack of weights at the other end. Many gym machines are set up this way, but today, we’re looking at the ones that are multi-purpose. You can do anything with these cables, and aren’t locked into one specific exercise. You may have a single cable, or more often, two cables, one for each hand. And you may have the choice of moving the pulley to the top, bottom, or anywhere in the middle of a vertical track. Ready to see what they can do? Let’s dive in!
Cable machines are great for all sorts of rowing and pulling exercises, and one of the best is a single arm row to work your lats and biceps. You’ll need to stabilize your body with your core and legs as you pull your arm back, so take a half-kneeling position. Set up the cable so that your hand comes to the side of your ribcage each time you pull the cable back.
Attachment: handle
Cable position: middle or bottom (roughly even with your hand)
This one works your triceps (the pushing muscles of your arms) and is a nice alternative to a skullcrusher or French press.
Attachment: rope or straight bar
Cable position: top
In the world of core exercises, the pallof press is a perfect example of an anti-rotational movement. It’s not really a press, because you’re not pushing the cable away from you. Instead, you move your hands in front of you while the cable tries to pull you to the side.
Attachment: handle
Cable position: middle
This is a hinge motion, making it a great accessory (or alternative) to movements like deadlifts and hip thrusts. The movement is a lot like a Romanian deadlift; you use your glutes and hamstrings to stand up and pull the cable through your legs as you do so.
Attachment: rope
Cable position: bottom
Another great core exercise, woodchoppers allow your obliques to pull down and sideways in a way that dumbbells or medicine balls can’t quite replicate (it’s supposed to be an exaggerated version of the motion of chopping wood with an axe). You can do these with the cable at the top, pulling down—or do a “reverse woodchopper” with the cable at the bottom, so you pull up.
Attachment: handle
Cable position: top (or bottom)
What’s a day in the gym without a bicep curl? For a great superset, get one of the machines that has two cable pulleys next to each other. Set one cable at the top with a rope for overhead tricep extensions, and the other with the EZ bar at the bottom (the wiggly one) for curls. Alternate between them.
Attachment: EZ-curl bar, straight bar, or rope
Cable position: bottom
If your gym has a setups with two cable machines facing each other, crossovers are a great way to take advantage of it. (You just have to wait for them both to be free at the same time. Good luck.) Pull both cable handles toward each other for an exercise that’s a bit like a dumbbell fly. Usually the pulleys are at the top for these movements, but they also work with low or middle placement.
Attachment: handles
Cable position: top
Seated cable rows are one of my personal favorite gym machines, but they work best when they’ve got a dedicated bench and footrest attached. To do a two-handed row on a regular cable machine, you can either stand with your hips set slightly back, or go all the way into a squat.
Attachment: v-handle, rope, or straight bar
Cable position: middle
Many lifters swear by this pulling exercise for keeping their shoulders and elbows healthy, and it’s also a good one if you want to work on your posture. They get their name because—get this—you’re pulling the cable straight toward your face.
Attachment: rope
Cable position: top
We already saw a way of working the triceps with your arms overhead, but you can also do a similar exercise by pushing your arms down (hence the name).
Attachment: rope or straight bar
Cable position: top
Some cable machines come with a long, straight bar with holes at both ends. You can attach this to both cables in a paired cable machine. The first time I saw one I tried to do back squats with it, but the cables pulled on the bar in a way that’s hard to stabilize, and I hated it. More recently I tried zerchers instead, and these I love. Get the bar in the crooks of your elbows, squat down, and stand up.
You can do these with a single cable as well, but unless you’re very small, you may find the full stack isn’t enough weight.
Attachment: double-ended straight bar
Cable position: both cables at the bottom
Most pulling exercises work the biceps in addition to the lats, but here’s one that works the triceps instead. It’s just like a regular lat pulldown (and you can use a lat pulldown machine if you like) but you keep your arms straight.
Attachment: straight bar
Cable position: top
Sick of doing unweighted crunches by the dozens? Do them with a cable machine and you can add weight for low-rep sets. To set this up, kneel on the ground and hold the cable with your hands against the top of your head. Crunch down, and you’ll find it activates the same muscles as those floor crunches.
Attachment: rope
Cable position: top
The Surface Laptop Studio 2 is a good option for creative professionals, with solid specs to run heavy applications, a premium touch screen, and the ability to swap between a laptop and tablet configuration as needed. Right now, you can get this premium 3-in-1 hybrid laptop for $2,241.33 (originally $2,799.99), the lowest price it has ever been, according to price-checking tools.
This Surface Laptop Studio 2 has an Intel Core i7-13700KF, 32GB of RAM, 1TB SSD storage, and an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4050 graphics card. (You can also get the model with the more powerful NVIDIA RTX 2000 Ada graphic card for $700 off.) The 14.4-inch IPS touchscreen has a 2400 by 1600 native resolution with a refresh rate of 120 Hz. What makes this laptop special is the ability to move the screen forward past the keyboard, offering an alternative to the usual tablet design, which it can also do (hence the 3-in-1 name). This mode can be great for watching movies or playing video games, which this laptop can handle well.
PCMag gave this laptop an "outstanding" review for its capable performance, premium screen, and versatility, but it did have some issues: The color coverage in the Adobe RGB and DCI-P3 color spaces was "okay," which can be a problem for designers and artists looking for the best color-matching options. Another issue among reviewers was the short battery life. Although it is marketed for up to 18 hours of battery, PCMag got 15 hours, and other reviewers experienced much less juice over time.
Everything old is new again. After killing the pre-TikTok short-form video platform Vine in 2017, Twitter is using its new overhaul as X to relaunch its video initiative. That includes a smart TV app, according to X CEO Linda Yaccarino.
Tweet may have been deleted
In a post on her personal X account yesterday, Yaccarino previewed the app’s UI and laid out some of its earliest features. The result looks like something of a cross between TikTok and YouTube.
On the more YouTube side of things, the app looks like it’ll be structured around various tabs that users scroll through horizontally, with their account info resting in a left hand sidebar. Also in line with YouTube is the length of videos. Despite X’s current association with short videos, some of the examples in Yaccarino’s post are multiple hours long.
But to compete with TikTok (which is facing its own problems), X is also placing a greater emphasis on algorithms and AI. The trending tab is right at the top of the app’s UI, and while YouTube’s TV app does something similar when users aren’t logged in, X is also promising to supplement its algorithm with “AI-Powered Topics” and “Enhanced Video Search.”
It’s unclear how exactly these promises will play out in reality. The announcement follows Yaccarino’s earlier promise that X will become “a video first platform,” as platform owner Elon Musk continues to secure deals with content providers like WWE.
Notable among Musk’s deals is the platform’s spotlight on controversial figures including Tulsi Gabbard and Tucker Carlson, the latter of whom appears in Yaccarino’s preview of the app’s UI.
X is fighting an uphill battle to establish itself as a video platform, especially as its more traditional text-based business is currently being overrun with malware and spam. To help with the transition, X won’t have ads in its app at launch, according to a note to corporate partners seen by The Hollywood Reporter. A release date has not been specified.
This refurbished Lenovo ThinkCentre M900 desktop console is on sale for $179.97 right now (reg. $350) through April 30. It's a compact desktop computer that has a grade “A” refurbished rating, meaning the device is in near-mint condition with very minimal to zero amounts of cosmetic wear, and it's backed by a 1-year parts and labor warranty. It’s shorter than a #2 pencil, with an Intel Core i5 processor, 16GB of RAM, Windows 10 Pro 64-bit OS, 256GB SSD storage, and VGA, LAN, DisplayPort, and six USB 3.0 connections. It comes with its own keyboard, mouse, and Wi-Fi dongle, so you only need to add your monitor of choice.
You can get this grade “A” refurbished Lenovo ThinkCentre M900 desktop console on sale for $179.97 right now (reg. $349.99) through April 30 at 11:59 p.m. PT, though prices can change at any time.
Netflix's May lineup is heavy on comedy—headlined by a six-part live event from John Mulaney—coinciding with the 2024 Netflix Is A Joke Fest that runs from May 2–12 in Los Angeles. John Mulaney Presents: Everybody’s In L.A will air in installments beginning on May 3 and wrapping up on May 10. Also streaming live are Katt Williams: Woke Foke (May 4) and Roast of Tom Brady (May 5) with an award show special featuring Kevin Hart (Mark Twain Prize Award: Kevin Hart, May 11). Other comedy specials dropping in May are from Udom Taephanich (Deaw Special: Soft Super Power, May 1) and Rachel Feinstein (Big Guy, May 21).
The true crime documentary slate includes The Final: Attack on Wembley (May 8), chronicling the violence that took place at the Euro 2020 final held in July 2021 when ticketless fans stormed the stadium; Cooking Up Murder: Uncovering the Story of César Román (May 10), a docuseries about a murder case involving a Spanish chef; and Ashley Madison: Sex, Lies & Scandal (May 15) about the data hack of the infamous dating site. Later in the month, three-part docuseries Dancing for the Devil: The 7M TikTok Cult (May 29) covers the TikTok dancers trapped in a cult fronted by management company 7M.
Other May highlights include part one of season 3 of Bridgerton (May 16) and Unfrosted (May 3), a comedy film directed by and starring Jerry Seinfeld (along with Melissa McCarthy, Jim Gaffigan, Hugh Grant, and Amy Schumer) that loosely tells the Pop-Tarts creation story.
Here’s everything else coming to (and leaving) Netflix in May.
Buying London—Netflix Series
The Life You Wanted—Netflix Series
Monster—Netflix Film
Deaw Special: Super Soft Power—Netflix Comedy
Down The Rabbit Hole—Netflix Film
Frankly Speaking—Netflix Series
Heeramandi: The Diamond Bazaar—Netflix Series
Airport
Airport '77
Airport 1975
The Best Man Holiday
Blended
Blue Mountain State: Season 1
Blue Mountain State: Season 2
Blue Mountain State: Season 3
Blue Mountain State: The Rise of Thadland
Eat Pray Love
The Edge of Seventeen
The Equalizer
The Gentlemen
Hellboy (2019)
Hulk
Jumanji (1995)
Liar Liar
Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa
The Matrix Resurrections
Mortal Kombat (2021)
Mr. & Mrs. Smith
The Nutty Professor
The Nutty Professor II: The Klumps
Outlander: Season 6
Patriots Day
Public Enemies
Ride Along
Shrek
Shrek Forever After
Starship Troopers
Traffic
The Wedding Planner
White House Down
Woody Woodpecker
The Young Victoria
A Man in Full—Netflix Series
Beautiful Rebel—Netflix Film
Lola
Secrets of the Neanderthals—Netflix Documentary
T・P BON—Netflix Anime
2 Hearts
John Mulaney Presents: Everybody’s In L.A—Netflix Comedy Special (Live Event)
Postcards—Netflix Series
Selling the OC: Season 3—Netflix Series
The Unbroken Voice: Season 2—Netflix Series
Unfrosted—Netflix Film
The Atypical Family—Netflix Series
Katt Williams: Woke Foke—Netflix Comedy Special (Live Event)
The Peanut Butter Falcon
Roast of Tom Brady—Netflix Comedy Special (Live Event)
30 for 30: Broke
30 for 30: Deion's Double Play
30 for 30: The Two Escobars
Reba: Seasons 1-6
Super Rich in Korea—Netflix Series
The Final: Attack on Wembley—Netflix Documentary
War Dogs
Bodkin—Netflix Series
The Guardian of the Monarchs—Netflix Documentary
Mother of The Bride—Netflix Film
Sing Street
Thank You, Next—Netflix Series
Cooking Up Murder: Uncovering the Story of César Román—Netflix Documentary
Living with Leopards—Netflix Documentary
Pokémon Horizons: The Series Part 2—Netflix Family
The Ultimatum: South Africa—Netflix Series
Mark Twain Prize Award: Kevin Hart—Netflix Comedy Special
Archer: Seasons 1-13
Princess Power: Season 3—Netflix Family
Married at First Sight: Season 15
Ashley Madison: Sex, Lies & Scandal—Netflix Documentary
The Clovehitch Killer
Bridgerton: Season 3 Part 1—Netflix Series
Dumb and Dumber To
Maestro in Blue: Season 2—Netflix Series
Upgrade
The 8 Show—Netflix Series
Power—Netflix Documentary
Thelma the Unicorn—Netflix Family
A Simple Favor
Golden Kamuy—Netflix Film
The Parisian Agency: Exclusive Properties: Season 4—Netflix Series
Rachel Feinstein: Big Guy—Netflix Comedy
Wildfire: Seasons 1-4
Act Your Age: Season 1
Toughest Forces on Earth
El vendedor de ilusiones: El caso Generación Zoe—Netflix Documentary
Franco Escamilla: Ladies' Man—Netflix Comedy
Garouden: The Way of the Lone Wolf—Netflix Anime
In Good Hands 2—Netflix Film
Tires—Netflix Series
Atlas—Netflix Film
Butterfly in the Sky: The Story of Reading Rainbow
Jurassic World: Chaos Theory—Netflix Family
Mulligan: Part 2—Netflix Series
My Oni Girl—Netflix Film
Burnt
Bionic—Netflix Film
Colors of Evil: Red—Netflix Film
Dancing for the Devil: The 7M TikTok Cult—Netflix Documentary
Patrick Melrose
Eric—Netflix Series
Geek Girl—Netflix Series
A Part of You—Netflix Film
Chola Chabuca
How to Ruin Love: The Proposal—Netflix Series
Raising Voices—Netflix Series
Tòkunbọ̀—Netflix Film
Bennett's War
Magic Mike's Last Dance
Survive the Night
Arctic Dogs
Uncut Gems
Puss in Boots: The Last Wish
St. Vincent
Where the Crawdads Sing
Sam Smith: Love Goes - Live at Abbey Road Studios
Fifty Shades of Black
Rosario Tijeras (Mexico): Seasons 1-3
The Boxtrolls
Mako Mermaids: An H2O Adventure: Seasons 3-4
2012
Boyz n the Hood
Burlesque
The Choice
The Disaster Artist
Forever My Girl
The Great Gatsby
Happy Gilmore
The Hunger Games
The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2
The Impossible
Insidious
L.A. Confidential
Lakeview Terrace
The Mick: Seasons 1-2
Noah
Oh, Ramona!
The Other Guys
Silent Hill
Skyscraper
Split
Think Like a Man
Think Like a Man Too
You've Got Mail
Not everyone was born to camp. I participate due to peer pressure from friends and a dog, who are all enthusiasts of the great outdoors. Whether you relish the great outdoors or just tolerate it, there’s so much smart gear to improve the experience. While bringing smart tech on a camping trip might feel counter intuitive, the right tech can make nature more accessible, safer and even more comfortable.
Even those who brave the Pacific Coast Trail bring tech along with them (according to the hikers I follow on TikTok, which is as close as I’m getting it). That tech needs power, and your tent is a passive way to collect it. While there have been a lot of concept products, very few seem to have made it to market for consumers. A Green Origin has two for sale (below) that have a flexible solar panel that’s made to attach to the tent itself. The Dragon V1 Solar Tent has been successfully funded on Kickstarter and should ship soon. It, too, has a solar panel, but it’s integrated into the tent itself. In the future, even these flexible panels will likely be obsolete; fabric with energy-harvesting technology woven into the fabric itself will be used for tents as well as clothing.
2-3 People Rechargeable Solar Power Tent ($380.00)
5~6 people High Quality Solar Power Tent ($1,499.00)
Coolers used to be a race against time managing refrigerated and frozen food with ice cubes. Now, many coolers carry on-board power, meaning they can keep the cooler at a temp that ensures safe food handling, and no more ice management. In some cases, these coolers can also act as chargers or speakers, or allow you to manage the cooler via an app. Being able to designate each section as a fridge or freezer means you can use the power you need, and keep food at the right temperature.
Anker EverFrost 50 Powered Cooler ($949.00)
Iceco Jp30 Portable Refrigerator Fridge Freezer, 30 Liters ($399)
When you gather with friends at night to cook, eat, or just relax, you'll probably want a little light—and you've got a couple of options. There are lots of solar lanterns on the market, which just need to sit out during the day to recharge. But for a little more ambiance, bring a power bank with you and string up some LED lights, as they require less energy to run than other lights.
Generally, we think of having wifi anywhere we go now and when it’s not available, we fall back to our cellular signal. When you don’t want to blow through your wireless plan, you can rely on a backup device that provides a signal through the 4G network and you pay as you go.
RoamWiFi 4G LTE Mobile Hotspot Router ($143.99)
Going “off grid” has really changed now that there are so many portable power stations that give you a way to charge up while you’re away through a solar panel. 1,000-watt units are enough to power most of the devices you’ll use while away, while still being light enough to move around.
If you’re trying to upgrade your porch or patio, or if you have some gardening updates planned, your DIY projects can go a lot easier with some simple build plans. Having measurements and scale can help you purchase the right amount of lumber, and most plans also have suggested hardware as well. I've collected some of my favorite build plans for you—and bonus, they're free.
Your yard, deck, or patio can always be made more comfy with some good chairs. For a modern look, you can try this set of plans from The Creative Mom on the Kreg website. This project plan comes with detailed build drawings, a materials list, a cut list, and instructions. While it says this is an easy project, it does require use of a saw, a pocket hole jig, and some other measuring and marking tools. For a chair that doesn’t need cushions, you can try your hand at this one from Ana White. These plans also come with detailed build drawings, a materials list, cut list, and instructions; you can also choose to print out a PDF of the various steps involved so you don’t need to have a phone or tablet out while you’re working.
Building in some seating for gatherings or to stretch out for an afternoon nap can level up your outdoor space. This simple 2x4 bench from Construct 101 is a project you could probably complete in a day. It comes with build drawings, materials and cut lists, and step-by-step instructions with illustrations. The only drawback to the materials list is that it lists the number of boxes of screws you will need instead of the number of screws. Make sure to double check that your count is accurate before heading to the hardware store. There’s also a reclined 2x6 bench plan from Rogue Engineer that comes with drawings, a materials and tools list, and illustrated instructions. If you’d rather have a couch than a bench, you can try your hand at building this outdoor sofa from Angela Marie Made. It has photos, a materials list, detailed instructions, and a link to a video tutorial. In addition, the author regularly posts updates about how to find the right cushions for your DIY couch project.
This porch swing from Plank and Pillow has a materials and tools list, drawings, and detailed instructions. It uses a crib mattress as its cushion, making it a big, comfy swing. You can also try a simpler bench swing from Yellow Brick Home. These plans come with detailed photos, instructions, and a tools and materials list. It’s important when you're planning your porch swing to take weight and proper hanging points into consideration so that you don’t damage your porch (or injure your porch swinger).
To build a deck, you’ll need to make sure to check zoning rules and you will likely also need to dig footings. These require a higher skill level than furniture projects, but if you have some experience, they can be a DIY project. These plans from Decks.com are a good resource for detailed instructions. The plans have materials lists, instructions, drawings, and specs that are all downloadable. You can customize your deck size and get plans that fit with your particular space.
A good set of plans will either have detailed schematics and illustrations or photos that include measurements. In addition, materials and tools lists are helpful, as well as instructions. Look for plans that contain not just finished measurements, but also measurements for each cut, a cut list, and an overview of how to make the cuts with the lumber included in the materials list. If there isn’t a materials list, you should be able to easily calculate what you’ll need from the included dimensions and drawings. If the plans don’t have this info, chances are the instructions aren’t very good.
You can get this 12V battery jump starter and 8,000mAh power bank on sale for $69.99 right now (reg. $119.99). The jumper cables connect to the battery of gasoline engines up to 6.0L or diesel engines up to 3.0L, and the LCD screen gibes step-by-step instructions. The UL-certified jumper has safety features like polarity protection, reverse charging protection, and low-voltage protection, and the gadget also has an LED light that has a flashlight, red flashing light, strobe lights, and Morse code patterns. It also works as an 8,000mAh power bank with a built-in USB-C cable and Qi-wireless charging pad on the flat surface.
You can get this 12V battery jump starter and 8,000mAh power bank on sale for $69.99 right now (reg. $119.99), though prices can change at any time.
Microsoft now bundles its Office products in the Microsoft 365 subscription. The Microsoft 365 Personal bundle comes with access to all Office programs, plus 1TB storage space in OneDrive. But it also costs $69.99 per year for individuals, and $100 for the Family plan. And now, Microsoft has a new plan called Microsoft 365 Basic, which provides access to all Office apps, plus 100GB OneDrive storage, for $1.99/month or $19.99/year, which is a step in the right direction.
But what if you don’t want to pay for Office at all? What if you only use it sporadically, or can’t afford a subscription? There are a couple of legit ways to access Microsoft Office apps like PowerPoint, Word, and Excel for free.
If you’re a student or teacher, Microsoft will provide the entire suite to you for free, including Teams and classroom tools, as long as you are a part of an eligible institution. All you need is to enter your school’s official email address on the Microsoft Office Education page to get started. If your domain is verified, you’ll be granted access to Office tools using an automated authentication process. But if your institution still needs to be verified, it might take up to a month to complete the account setup.
There are some caveats here, and Microsoft isn’t overly clear how everything works. If your school is eligible, you should be good to go. However, it appears it’s possible you’ll only be eligible for the free Office web app, in addition to Microsoft Teams and OneDrive. In other cases, your school might not be eligible for any of it.
In those cases, Microsoft offers a discounted rate of $2.99 per month for all college students with a valid college email address. That subscription includes all Office products, along with 1TB OneDrive storage space, something you’d normally have to spend $6.99 per month for.
If you’re not a student, you can still access Microsoft Office apps like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneDrive, Outlook, Calendar, My Content, Skype, Designer and Clipchamp for free.
First, go to the Microsoft 365 website. Here, click the Sign up for the free version of Office button if this is the first time you're using a Microsoft product. If you already have a Microsoft account, click the Sign in button instead.
This will open up the Microsoft 365 online portal, with handy options for creating a new Word document, PowerPoint presentation, Excel workbook, and more. You can click any of the buttons to get started.
Then, choose the app you would like to work with, and it will open up instantly. All your work will be saved automatically in your OneDrive account.
While these Office apps are truly free, there is one catch: They aren’t the full-fledged desktop version that you’re used to. You only have access to the web app version of each app, but that isn’t necessarily bad. These web apps are solid, and sport the most important features for each app, so you’ll be able to get all of your regular work done in these apps. In fact, collaboration features are still available here. The downside, of course, is that they only work in the browser, so you’ll need an active internet connection.
If you need desktop Office apps, you can always get a one-month free trial of Microsoft 365 by entering your credit card details. Just make sure to cancel the subscription before you’re charged.
If you find the online version of Microsoft Office to be limiting, or just finicky, there are other free options out there.
While Google Workspace is completely online, it can serve as a full-fledged replacement for Microsoft Office, for free. All features for creating documents, spreadsheets, and presentations are available online, with superior collaboration features. What Google Workspace lacks in features, it can make up with its add-ons and APIs, where third-party developers offer up additional functionality on top of the basic features.
If you miss the old days of Microsoft Office, the one where you bought a software, and it stayed the same for years at an end, working consistently, you might like FreeOffice. FreeOffice can open all your Microsoft Office files, for free, and the interface is quite closely aligned with Microsoft Office apps. It's not going to be as feature-rich as Microsoft 365, but if you want a straightforward and compatible suite of apps for personal and work use, FreeOffice might be it.
LibreOffice is open-source, developed by the community, and completely free to use. It supports a wide variety of Office formats. Because it's open-source, it has an active community that keeps updating the app, making sure it runs smoothly as new versions of Windows and macOS ship.
LibreOffice has a customizable interface. This is its biggest strength—and also a downside. If you love tweaking apps and UI, you'll enjoy setting up LibreOffice just the way you want. But if you're the kind of person that likes a plug-and-play kind of experience, the interface itself might be an annoyance. In that case, we would suggest you use FreeOffice, or the next option on the list.
Think of OpenOffice as a more mature cousin of LibreOffice. It too is open-source, and has a long-standing reputation in the industry. But it has a much slower development cycle, with fewer add-on features. OpenOffice gets the basics right, and sticks to it. If you want a more traditional office suite experience, with the knowledge that's supported by an open-source community, Apache OpenOffice is a good choice for you.
Left unchecked, our smartphones can become constant distractions, buzzing and bleeping all throughout the day—so much so that it can be difficult to do anything else in between reading and replying to messages, and scrolling through feeds. Are you in an unmanageable number of group chats? Yeah, me too.
There is hope: Spending a few minutes going through the notification settings on your Android phone can make a significant difference in terms of which apps can ping you and on what terms. Over the years, notification management on Android has slowly improved, up to the point where you now get a very decent level of granular control.
Android being Android, there are variations between different phones, so you may have to adapt the instructions below slightly. They've been written to apply to Google Pixel phones running Android 14 or later, and Samsung Galaxy phones running Android 14 and OneUI 6.1 or later.
From Settings, head to Notifications, then App notifications, then tap on an app: You'll see a toggle switch that lets you turn all notifications on or off for the app, so you can quickly silence apps you don't want to hear from—you'll need to actually open up the app to see what's new.
If you're on a Pixel phone, you'll see a list of notification channels (or types): For the Clock app, for example, they include alarms, timers, and stopwatch alerts. Tap on any channel to turn the particular notification on or off, or to switch it between the Default (using your phone's current alert setting) or Silent (the notification will show on screen, but won't trigger a noise or vibration, irrespective of your phone's setting).
On Galaxy phones, you need to do a bit of extra work to see these channels. From the main Notifications screen, pick Advanced settings, then enable Manage notification categories for each app. This then gives you access to the individual channels, under Notification categories, when you select a particular app.
Each individual app page lets you control whether its notifications trigger pop-ups on screen, and dots or badges on the app icon (in the app drawer and on the home screens). Sounds and vibrations can be handled separately too, and you'll also see lock screen options: App notifications can appear in full on the lock screen, or appear without a preview (just in case someone else is looking at your phone), or not appear at all.
Head back to the main Notifications screen to find more options, though they vary slightly between Pixel phones and Galaxy phones. You can set certain conversations in your messaging apps as higher priority, so they appear at the top of chat and notification lists, and control whether or not notifications can appear as floating bubbles on top of other apps. You're also able to enable or disable notification snoozing, and see your notification history (handy if you missed an alert).
To set the default sound and vibration setting for notifications, head to Sound and vibration (Pixel) or Sounds and vibration (Galaxy) from Settings. Note that apps can have their own individual notification sound if needed, which you can set by going back to the notification channels we looked at before, but vibration patterns can't be configured on an app-by-app basis.
You don't necessarily want the same notification settings to apply all day and all night, which is where Do Not Disturb comes in. You can get to it from Notifications in Settings, and you'll see you can either turn the mode on and off manually, or have it automatically enabled or disabled based on a schedule. Unless you make any changes, Do Not Disturb hides and mutes all incoming notifications.
Multiple schedules can be set up, so you might, for example, have one that applies overnight, and one that applies in the mornings on weekdays. Each schedule can either have its own individual settings in terms of the notifications you do and don't see, or it can follow the default Do Not Disturb configuration.
To set that configuration, you've got three main options. The first is People (Pixel) or Calls and messages (Galaxy): Here you can specify contacts whose calls and texts will override Do Not Disturb. Then there's Apps (Pixel) or App notifications (Galaxy), where you can choose specific apps that Do Not Disturb doesn't apply to.
The third option is Alarms and other interruptions (Pixel) or Alarms and sounds (Galaxy). Here you're able to control whether or not alarms, games, and media apps (such as your favorite podcast player) can interrupt you when Do Not Disturb is enabled. Once you've set up these three options for Do Not Disturb, and for each of your schedules, your notifications should be quite comprehensively tailored to your needs.
Tap Display options for hidden notifications (Pixel) or Hide notifications (Galaxy) and you can choose how alerts are hidden when Do Not Disturb is active—you can choose to hide them completely so you're none the wiser, for example, or have them show up on screen but not make a sound or trigger a vibration.
The final option to bear in mind here is your phone's silent mode options. On a Pixel, tap the volume up or down button, then the icon above the slider; on a Galaxy, swipe down from the top of the screen, then tap the top left icon in Quick Settings. There are three options—sounds and vibrations enabled, vibrations only, or sounds and vibrations both muted—and they'll apply across all of your apps and notifications.
Most people assume that Roombas, which are nearly synonymous with robot vacuums, are still the best option on the market—but that could not be further from the truth. Roombas are fine, generally speaking, but it has been struggling to keep up with the competition for a while, long before its Amazon deal fell through and the layoffs began, leaving many people wondering what the future of Roomba will look like. Meanwhile, the competition has been picking up where Roomba left off.
Roborock, one of the most promising robot vacuum brands, makes some of the best high-end robot vacuums that you can buy right now. The Roborock S8 Pro Ultra is one such example, and according to price-checking tools, it is currently at its lowest price ever via Amazon. It's on sale for $999.99 (originally $1,599.99) after a $600 discount. Yes, it is still expensive, but this is truly a premium robot vacuum.
This vacuum's 6,000Pa suction power is powerful. For reference, the comparable vacuum from Roomba, the Roomba Combo j9+, is estimated (because Roomba doesn't like publishing suction power figures) to be around 2,200Pa, according to T3's review. Like most premium vacuums, the S8 Pro Ultra is self-washing, self-drying, self-emptying, self-refilling, and self-cleaning. It has a 200 ml water tank capacity for mopping and a runtime of 180 minutes.
While this is a premium robot vacuum, it is not perfect. PCMag's reviewer said it lightly scratched their floor during testing. There is no camera for monitoring the vacuum while you're away from home, which other competitors at this price point do have. Also, the mop cloth is not detachable, so if you have a plush carpet, it might get stuck, and there's not much you can do about it.
You can get this PoooliPrint pocket-sized thermal printer on sale for $69.99 right now (reg. $160). The PoooliPrint is great for printing pictures, notes, and to-do lists, and it's small enough to fit into pockets, backpacks, or suitcases. It works by connecting to the Poooli app (available on iPhone and Android) and uploading pictures, notes, or to-do lists, then just hitting print. It comes with enough thermal paper to print around 100 small pages, and the brand, rated at 4.2 out of 5 stars on TrustPilot, sells additional rolls of colored, transparent, sticker, and other papers. The printer offers 200 dpi quality, a printing width of 1.9 inches, and up to 24 hours of battery life from a full micro USB charge.
You can get the PoooliPrint pocket-sized thermal printer on sale for $69.99 right now (reg. $159.90), though prices can change at any time.
Photoshop maker Adobe is no stranger to AI images, but today marks a new milestone in the company’s efforts to make accessible, ethical generative AI. For the first time ever in the Photoshop app, users can now generate full images from scratch without ever needing to leave the program. The innovation is powered by the company’s new Firefly Image 3 model, and comes alongside the abilities to generate backgrounds, upload reference images, and iterate on existing AI art.
Firefly is Adobe's own take on an AI art generator, and while it’s been slightly integrated into Photoshop since last year, enabling features like the aspect ratio stretching generative expand, the ability to generate imagery from scratch has, until now, been restricted to the Firefly web app (barring some cheats with using generative fill on a blank canvas).
Firefly differentiates itself from other AI art models by limiting its training data to stock photography and art that Adobe owns, with the goal being to make it safer for commercial use. Firefly Image 3 is the latest update to the model, promising “higher-quality images” with a greater focus on composition and lighting as well as better understanding of prompts.
First, download the Photoshop beta desktop app because these features are technically still in testing. Next, open a new project, navigate to the Contextual Task Bar, and click “Generate Image.” If you can’t find it, you can also navigate to Edit > Generate Image or look in your Tools panel.
Then enter your prompt. You should also see buttons in the Contextual Task Bar for swapping the Content Type between Photo and Art, and for applying Style Effects to your result. These can be applied both before and after generation—you should also see them in the Properties Panel.
Photoshop doesn’t restrict you to generating images from scratch. You can also use an existing image to give the AI an idea of what to make.
To use a reference image when generating AI art in Photoshop, first generate a base image using the instructions above. Then, navigate to the Contextual Task Bar or Properties Panel and select Reference Image. Upload your image and run your prompt again to tweak it to better match your reference. Photoshop also comes with a number of its own reference images that you can use instead of an upload.
Included in the most recent Photoshop beta is a “Generate Similar” feature, which allows for slight tweaking of already generated AI images. Essentially, this works like the “Reference Image” feature, but allows you to use freshly generated images rather than requiring you to download and re-upload them.
To Generate Similar AI art, first follow the steps in this article’s second subheading to generate an AI image from scratch. Then, select your image and click on Generate Similar from either the Contextual Task Bar or under the three dots icon in the Variations Panel. You’ll be able to view your generated variations from the Properties Panel.
You can also remove backgrounds from existing images and replace them with new ones generated by AI. To do this, first select Import Image on a blank canvas, then Remove background in either the Contextual Task Bar or Discover Panel.
Then, navigate to either the Contextual Task Bar or Edit Menu and select Generate Background, where you’ll be able to follow a similar workflow to generating an image from scratch.
The final AI feature in the new Photoshop beta is the ability to Enhance Detail. This is an adjustment to Generative Fill, which you can select in either the Contextual Task Bar or Edit Menu. Unlike Generate Image, Generative Fill will generate objects only in specific parts of your canvas.
Once you’ve generated an object with Generative Fill, navigate to the Properties Panel and then Variations, where you can pick a specific version of that object and click the Enhance Detail icon to increase its sharpness and general detail.
Joining this new suite of AI features is the Adjustment Brush, which can apply non-destructive, non-AI-powered color and lighting edits to specific parts of an image. For instance, turning a section of blue hair into green hair.
To use the Adjustment Brush, select it within the Brush Tool in the Tools Panel. From there, choose your adjustments and paint where you’d like them to be applied. They’ll show up in a new layer that won’t change the underlying image file.
Alongside the Adjustment Brush, the new Photoshop beta also includes an improved font browser that will allow direct access to fonts stored in the cloud without requiring the user to leave the program.
Taylor Swift released a new album this week. While the singer is 34 years old—practically middle-aged—her music speaks to young people directly, and they are speaking back. Less mainstream young people are becoming huge fans of a Chinese industrial chemical company. Read on, and I'll explain why.
The Tortured Poets Department released this week, and people have opinions. Swift’s 11th studio album offers 31 new songs to listen to, analyze, and love or hate. Critics are nearly unanimous in their praise, but are they being cowed into it? Paste magazine gave Tay-Tay’s latest a bad review, but didn’t include a byline on its post “due to how, in 2019 when Paste reviewed Lover, the writer was sent threats of violence from readers who disagreed with the work.”
Fans seem to like the new album too, but some of Swift's lyrics are churning up mild controversy. First there’s this line from "I Hate It Here”: "My friends used to play a game where/ We would pick a decade/ We wished we could live in instead of this/I’d say the 1830s but without all the racists.” This has led some to speculate that Swift is secretly racist, a running theme among dorks on the far right. Truth: taken in context, the line is not objectionable.
Then there’s, “You wouldn’t last an hour in the asylum where they raised me” from “Who's Afraid Of Little Old Me.” Some have pointed out that Swift’s father was a bank president and she was raised in an upper middle class household, like that's a huge "gotcha." But it's art; come on. Some critics have an issue with this line from “So High School” too: “You know how to ball, I know Aristotle/Brand new, full throttle/Touch me while your bros play Grand Theft Auto,” pointing out that Swift is 34 years old and isn't that ridiculous. But it’s a song about high school. (Now that I have defended Taylor Swift, I intend to use her fans as a personal army because they owe me.)
This is one of those jokes that is dismantled by an explanation, so before I ruin it, I'll wait while you check out Chinese manufacturing company Donghua Junlong's TikTok. The chemical company set up the account recently to post genial videos about the many uses of glycine, an amino acid. Something about them appealed to TikTok’s ironic crowd, and videos like “Stronger piglets start with a high quality Iron Glycine supplement!” And “Food-Grade Glycine: Indispensable in Everyday Life” went mildly viral, with Donghua Junlong stans posting hundreds of hilarious comments about their admiration for the company and the food grade glycine it produces. (See how my explanation makes the joke less funny?) Fans started posting fan videos. This guy visited the factory. Here’s an interesting response from a Chinese woman about the grassroots cultural exchange.
The company eventually noticed the attention and posted a video just for the fans the other day. They seem happy but confused about all the attention, which probably means the trend is over, as future Donghua Junlong videos will be produced with this new audience in mind, and will likely lose their outsider appeal.
This week popular YouTubers Steven Lim, Ryan Bergara, and Shane Madej, the founders of Watcher Entertainment, announced the channel was leaving YouTube for the greener pastures of a subscription-based platform. The news was met with a chorus of dismay from fans, prompting the company to announce that it wasn’t leaving YouTube after all, but would instead post videos on YouTube a month after it posted on its subscription site.
Watcher helped develop and the popularize the professionally produced style that defines YouTube in 2024 through its popular series like “Ghost Files” and “Puppet History." Its half departure is only the latest exodus of an “old guard” content creator. Once ubiquitous, multimillion subscriber stars like Pewdiepie, Tom Scott, MeatCanyon, MatPat, Seth Everman and others have recently left YouTube. The reasons vary, but the most common theme of the “I’m outie” videos I’ve watched is simple: “I’m tired.” Creating, maintaining, and marketing a popular video channel has always been a 24-hours-a-day job, but the market is more competitive than it was a decade ago, and that means more work for less money. Pair that with the fact that with YouTube’s ability to arbitrarily demonetize videos and/or change its recommendation algorithm whenever it wants, and “YouTube influencer” becomes an unstable, stressful job, the kind that makes you burn out if you're past your 20s.
I’d like to say AI-produced art is terrible and irredeemable, but a couple of YouTube channels have me begrudgingly admitting that artificial intelligence can make funny parody music—maybe. Obscurest Vinyl uses AI to create filthy songs in old-school musical genres. “I Glued My Balls to my Butthole Again” and “This Baptism Fucking Blows" are crude, but they're hilarious. There I Ruined It takes a different tact and uses artificial intelligence to "ruin the music you love" by approximate what it would sound like if Elvis Presley covered “I Like Big Butts, The Beach Boys sang “99 Problems,” or NWA played Octoberfest. I don't like that this music is funny, but I can't deny it made me laugh (or at least snort). On the other hand, attempts to dig deeper into the genre reveal that imitators' AI covers are nearly universally bad, so AI doesn't give us a "be funny" button; humor still depends on the person who creates the joke not the AI that helps tell it. But if I were Weird Al Yankovich, I’d be worried.
Things don’t really “break the internet” like they used to, but if they did, the trailer for Deadpool & Wolverine would have this place in shambles. In only its first day online, this Marvel universe team-up racked up over 21 million views on YouTube. The movie seems like it will be a superhero Odd Couple story with grim Wolverine providing a straight man foil to Deadpool’s wiseassery. The advanced interest in Deadpool & Wolverine, and the similar response to the teaser for DC’s Joker: Folie à Deux released a few weeks ago suggest that the superhero genre might not be as dead as some have suggested. Instead, audiences seem tired of the “traditional” superheroes stories like Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom and The Marvels but remain interested in popular characters presented in new ways. Whether either of these movies will live up to the pre-release hype can’t be determined. Hitting the artistic/commercial bullseye when placing a comic book hero in an unfamiliar context seems way harder than cranking out another formulaic flick, but even if they don't work, at least the resulting movies will be interesting failures.
I’ve tried a lot of strange workouts in the name of science, but there was no experience quite like seeing myself in an EMS suit for the first time. It’s all black, with straps and buckles everywhere. A long wire is about to connect me to a computer. I feel like I’m suiting up to operate a spaceship or a giant robot. Instead, I’m about to do lunges and pushups while being told that I’m getting a much better workout than those suckers who just go to a regular gym.
To try it out for myself, I accepted an offer of a free session at BODY20, a growing chain of EMS fitness studios. Its workouts are pricey, at $40 to $100 per session depending on where the studio is located and what kind of membership you sign up for.
So, is an EMS workout any better than the regular thing? Probably not. (We’ll get into the details in a minute.) But after seeing myself in the mirror, I kind of get the appeal.
Electrical muscle stimulation (EMS) workouts are having a moment—not for the first time, and probably not for the last—based on their futuristic vibes and the fitness industry’s constant quest to sell you newer, cooler workouts than what everyone else is doing.
Electrical muscle stimulation is a family of techniques and technologies that trigger your muscles to contract by passing a mild electric current through your body. You may be familiar with some of the other uses of passing electric current through your body for health and fitness purposes, so I'll describe them for comparison.
If you’ve used a TENS machine for pain relief, you know one type. You'll put sticky electrodes on your skin, and turn on a handheld machine that's connected to them by wires. TENS uses a mild current that feels like tingling, but it doesn’t make your muscles twitch or contract. The idea is that the tingling feeling interferes with pain signals. TENS stands for transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation, meaning that the electrical current crosses the skin and the sensation is picked up by your nerves, but it’s not designed to contract muscles.
On the other hand, if you’ve used e-stim at a physical therapy appointment, that’s more like what’s happening in EMS workouts. When I was rehabbing after ACL surgery on my knee, rebuilding my quad muscle was a high priority. So I’d do leg presses and leg extensions, and at the end of the session, the PT would sit me down in a chair and apply sticky electrodes to my thigh. He’d slowly turn a knob and my quad would start contracting. When we hit a level that was mildly painful but tolerable, he’d leave the machine at that setting and we’d let the machine work my quad muscle for, as I recall, 10 minutes or so.
EMS workouts are closer to the e-stim machine, but the experience is very different. When you do an EMS workout, you’re strapped into a full-body suit that applies current to multiple muscle groups at once. The current isn’t as strong as in my PT sessions, but you also won’t just be sitting in a chair—you’ll be doing workouts while the electrodes make your muscles contract harder than they would from the exercises alone.
For my EMS workout, I showed up at a boutique fitness studio in a suburban area, next door to a veterinary clinic and within sight of a yoga studio. I had to sign a waiver that included a disclaimer recommending I not participate if I had a pacemaker, metal implants like plates or rods, or if I had epilepsy or cancer, or was pregnant. There were also items on the list that referenced dehydration, history of rhabdo, “strenuous physical exercise” in the last 72 hours, or another EMS workout in the previous five days.
The studio manager ran me through this and explained that I’d only be able to do a fairly short workout, without weights, my first day. Over the course of several sessions, people are introduced to longer and harder workouts, although you’re never doing more than 20 minutes in a session.
The area behind the desk was separated into two main rooms. There was a small fitness studio with mirrors and black flooring, where the workouts happen. Behind that was a room with an InBody scanner and several locker-like cubbies, brightly lit, with an XBody suit hanging in each.
(I played along and got the InBody scan, even though I know it’s not very accurate at determining body composition. It gave me flattering numbers, so I can’t be too mad.)
I was given a set of clothes to change into, a black form-fitting shirt with three-quarter length sleeves and a similarly cropped pair of pants.
I’d read that some EMS studios recommend not wearing underwear; at this studio, it seems you’re intended to keep yours on. Fine with me. I’ll just note, for planning purposes, that the clothes you wear under the suit will get wet. You might want to bring a change of dry undies for after.
While I put on the provided workout clothes, a Body20 staffer sprayed down the inside of the EMS suit that I would wear with water. Instead of sticking electrodes onto your body, like you might with a TENS machine, these electrodes are built into the suit. They each have an absorbent pad, and this is what she was wetting down. The water provides a conductor between the electrode and your skin. This means you’ll end up with wet patches on your biceps, your belly, your quads, your butt, and so on.
There are no electrodes on your calves or forearms, which didn’t surprise me; they’re not high priority muscles for most people to train. It did surprise me that the deltoids (your most obvious shoulder muscles) aren’t covered by electrodes, either. This must be to allow for movement at the shoulder, but it seemed like a strange omission when these are an area that many people want to train, either for looks or for functional reasons.
The workout itself was pretty basic, and short. The suit turns on, and you do a set of exercises, like lunges or squats. Then it turns off and you get a short break—just a few seconds—before you begin again.
Body20 offers strength and cardio classes. The strength classes are the main event, it seems, and the rules restrict you from doing them too often. Cardio workouts are done with less current going through the suit, and you’re moving around from exercise to exercise, much like those bodyweight circuit training videos you may have done on YouTube. Those workouts you're allowed to do more often.
The staff at Body20 kept referring to rules about frequency and intensity as being set by “the FDA,” but when I asked about this in a follow-up email, I was told that the rules actually come from XBody, the suit manufacturer. The FDA does regulate EMS devices, and requires them to be cleared before use. They say they have gotten reports of shocks, burns, and other issues from devices that are illegally sold without being cleared. Bottom line, these rules from the manufacturer sound reasonable to me; I would be wary of buying any EMS equipment if you can’t verify that it’s FDA-cleared.
Much like my e-stim experience at physical therapy, the beginning of my Body20 session involved the trainer turning up the current and asking me to stop him when it felt strong but bearable. Too high, and it could feel painful or crampy; too low, and you might not feel anything at all. (The e-stim at PT ended up being a lot stronger than what we were going for in this session.)
During the exercises, I could definitely feel the current making my muscle contractions stronger. Once or twice, doing a tricep movement, I felt my tricep sort of lock up. It wasn’t painful, but it felt like my arm wanted to stay straightened, almost like a mild cramp in my tricep.
There were dumbbells in the room, but we didn’t use these for my introductory workout. Instead, the trainer had me hold balls in my hands (like stress balls) and move them as if I were curling a dumbbell or doing a tricep kickback. Because of the current, these did feel like I was doing something.
That said, it wasn’t a hard workout. I kept hearing that I should expect to be sore afterward. Instead, I left the studio and headed straight to my weightlifting gym for my usual Monday workout (jerks, power snatches, power cleans, pendlay rows). I felt a little more fatigued than when I come to the workout fresh, but it was more like “just did a thorough warmup” than “did a whole ’nother workout first.” I was not sore the next day.
For somebody who doesn’t fling barbells around on a daily basis, it sounds reasonable to expect some soreness. The lighter, shorter workout for the first session makes sense if you don’t know how your body is going to react. But, based on my experience, it really doesn’t feel that different from a normal strength workout. If anything, it feels like less of a muscular stimulus than a strength day at the gym. You’re just not doing that much.
I’m a big-tent person when it comes to exercise: if you enjoy it, or if something about your chosen form of exercise gets you excited to do it and to keep coming back, then I support you, whether that’s Pilates or powerlifting or anything in between. I’m sure there are people who find it fun to do lunges in an EMS suit, but who wouldn’t bother doing lunges at home for free. If an EMS studio membership is what gets you into the habit (and you have the cash to burn), knock yourself out.
But we have to talk about something: the fact that every dang one of these studios makes a claim that EMS workouts are either better than regular workouts, or that they deliver the same results in a fraction of the time. For example, Bodystreet says you “only need to train 20 minutes per week.” Tummo says “One 20 minute session is equal to 3-4 days in the gym.” We202 says that a 20-minute class “equals 3 hours of traditional training.” Fitopia claims that its 20-minute workouts “are equivalent to 90 minutes of conventional workouts.” Body20, the place I went, is no exception: it say its classes let you “achieve results in just 20 minutes that would require hours in a traditional gym.”
So, of course, I asked about it. The PR person who had introduced me to Body20 sent a list of studies, and pointed specifically to this 2016 study that compared whole body EMS to high intensity resistance exercise. It concluded that EMS workouts “can be considered as a time-efficient but [pricey alternative] to [high intensity]-resistance exercise for people aiming at the improvement of general strength and body composition.”
I dug in, eager to crunch the numbers. As promised, the study included an EMS workout similar to the ones offered by Body20 and other studios. And it did find that both the EMS and non-EMS groups had similar increases in muscle mass and strength.
But the claim that you need hours in the gym to equal one EMS workout? That was not backed up at all by this study. The non-EMS workouts were 30 minutes long. (Or, to be more specific, 30.3 minutes plus or minus 2.3 minutes.) Even if the rest of the study’s results are completely true and trustworthy and apply to you personally, you’re only saving ten minutes per workout, not hours.
And I do have my doubts about the applicability of the study, even aside from the time issue. The study was done on 48 healthy men between the ages of 30 and 50, and all were “untrained,” so the results need to be taken with a grain of salt. Almost anything works on people with no exercise background. If you already go to some kind of gym or fitness studio, and are thinking of switching to EMS workouts, I wouldn’t expect much from EMS, to be honest. It might be just as good. It might be worse. We don’t have evidence that it would be better.
Taken together, I think the only reason to do EMS workouts would be if you think it’s a fun way to spend your money. (We all have our indulgences and our silly hobbies; maybe this is yours.) It’s not a smarter or better way to work out than going to a gym, or taking up some sporty hobby like running or rock climbing.
In Europe, Samsung released the Samsung Galaxy A35 5G A Series in March, but it just launched in the U.S. on April 18. The phone continues Samsung's A-series lineup of budget phones, but this Samsung Galaxy A35 has a large, premium display and long battery life, making it a great choice for anyone looking for a new budget-friendly phone. And if you order it through Amazon, it costs $399.99 and includes a $40 Amazon gift card.
The Amazon gift card bundle runs until April 28 and may ship separately from the phone. (Why it's not just a digital gift card, we may never know.) The Galaxy A35 comes unlocked and has 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage, but you can always expand it up to 1TB with Micro SD cards.
What sets the Galaxy A35 apart from other budget phones at its price point is its large 6.6-inch Full High Definition (FHD) AMOLED screen with a 120Hz refresh rate. For reference, the comparable Google Pixel 7a comes with a 6.1-inch FHD screen (Apple's budget iPhone SE is just 4.7 inches). The Exynos 1380 processor, however, is not as high-powered as what you'd get from a higher-end phone—but it should still be enough for most people's daily use.
With a 5,000mAh, the battery in the Galaxy A35 matches the Galaxy S24 Ultra's battery size. According to Samsung, that should give you two days worth of juice with a single charge.
Be mindful that because this is Samsung's A-series, it will lack some more premium features, like the high-end camera the S-series has, and the Galaxy AI features that launched in January—but there is a possibility that Samsung could bring the AI stuff to the Galaxy A35 later.
Considering the expense and trouble involved in buying a home, it’s kind of amazing that most people only perform cursory research into the property. They might stop by a few times to walk around; they will probably hire an inspector to take a slightly more in-depth look (though most home inspections aren’t exactly what you might call exhaustive), and rely on a title search as part of the lender’s normal due diligence. Other than that, the place you’re about to drop a small fortune on is probably a bit of a mystery box.
For example: That deck in the back, that new second bathroom the Realtor wouldn’t stop mentioning, that new swimming pool—were permits pulled for those projects? Or was that work done by the owner themselves on the down-low? A home inspector, no matter how thorough, won’t be able to tell if a permit was pulled just by looking at the work (though DIY-quality work might alert them to the possibility that the project didn't have a permit). And you need to know, because un-permitted work on that house will become your problem if something goes wonky with it, and can have an impact on the future value of the house.
Most local authorities require permits for a range of major renovations to a home. The list of projects that typically require permits includes major changes like additions, adding pools, changing the roofline, or major electrical and plumbing work. A permit can be expensive and time-consuming, but it ensures that the work will be done according to local building codes because it triggers an inspection process and updates the home’s valuation for tax purposes. In other words, pulling a permit keeps the work on the up and up.
But some people avoid pulling permits for the same reasons: They don’t want to spend the extra time and money, they don’t want to be bothered with inspections (possibly because they’re cutting corners and not doing the work properly), and they don’t want their property taxes to go up because they remodeled their kitchen. It’s not too difficult to get away without getting a permit, especially if the work isn’t easily seen from the street.
If you buy a house with a lot of un-permitted improvements, all of those potential problems become your potential problems. And those problems can be major:
Physical danger stemming from poor work – e.g., electrical fires from substandard wiring, gas leaks from DIY water heater installations, a collapsed deck due to improper construction
Fines and expense if the work is discovered. You may be required to tear out un-permitted wiring, for example, and have it redone at your expense—and it will be your responsibility as the current property owner, even if you had nothing to do with the original work.
Tax penalties if the home’s assessment should have increased after a major improvement.
Insurance may deny any claims involving work done without proper permits and inspections, so if disaster strikes ,you might find yourself paying for repairs out of pocket.
Even if the work was done to a very high standard and you have no problems or complaints, un-permitted work can come back to haunt you.
Luckily, it’s generally not hard to look up the permit history of a property. Here are the basic steps you should take:
Ask the current owner. If the current owner claims all the work on the house was permitted, they should be able to supply you with the permit paperwork and inspection information.
Contact the local construction office. Most municipalities have public records available online. You may have to create an account to access them, but then you should be able to conduct a search on the address and see all the permits that were pulled. Check these against any work you see that should have required a permit, or anything that your home inspector flagged as suspicious. If there’s no online portal, you might need to go to the office in person to request the records.
Square footage. Compare the official square footage on file for the home with the square footage you actually see. Many municipal offices can give you this information; if not, sites like Property Shark may be able to supply it. If there’s a drastic difference—say there’s 500 more square feet in the house than listed in official records—it might mean an addition that wasn’t permitted.
If you discover un-permitted work before buying the house, you have a few options:
Have the current owner fix the problems: They may be able to retroactively pull permits if they pay a fine and arrange for an inspection. If the local authorities require removal or replacement of the work, they can pay to have it done.
Ask for a price reduction. You can estimate the costs of pulling retroactive permits yourself and the costs of re-doing the work or removing un-permitted work, and ask the seller to reduce the sale price to compensate you, or even pay you a cash amount to cover the costs.
Finally, of course, you can just walk away: If a house has a lot of un-permitted work it might be more trouble than it’s worth—and if the sellers are already covering up their actions, you might not be able to trust them anyway.
Buying a used car can be risky business if you don't do your due diligence. One of the most important steps is to get the vehicle's VIN (Vehicle Identification Number) checked for any unsavory histories like past accidents, flood damage, or odometer rollback fraud. Fortunately, there are ways to get a free VIN check that can alert you to potential issues before you seal the deal.
The VIN is a 17-character code that uniquely identifies a vehicle. By decoding the VIN and cross-checking it against databases like NMVIC and vehicle history report providers, you can uncover details about the car's background, such as:
Previous ownership
Accident and damage records
Odometer readings
Lemon/manufacturer buyback status
Flood damage
Theft records
Recall notices
This insider information can help you steer clear of clunkers, cut your losses on a bad deal, and negotiate a better price if issues are uncovered.
While some vehicle history report providers charge for VIN checks, there are a few legitimate free (or cheap) options:
National Motor Vehicle Title Information System (NMVIC). This federal database allows you to check for brand history like "junk," "salvage," or "flood" titles that may have been issued in another state for just $3.
Vehicle History Report Samples. Sites like vehiclehistory.com let you view a sample report for free by entering the VIN. This provides basic details on past owners, accidents, and service records and can flag any major issues.
NICB VIN Check. The National Insurance Crime Bureau offers a free VIN check service to detect if a vehicle has been reported as stolen—an important red flag.
When buying from a private seller, always get the VIN beforehand and run it through the above free checking services. For added peace of mind, you can also purchase an affordable comprehensive report from providers like CarFax for around $40.
If the notifications on your Galaxy smartphone are all messed up, you're not alone. As reported by Android Police, Samsung's latest One UI 6.1 update has inadvertently affected notification categories on some users' Galaxy devices, throwing their carefully curated alert settings out the window. Luckily, there's a fix.
Notification categories, or notification channels as Google calls them, is a feature that allows you to enable or disable specific types of notifications on an app-by-app basis. For example, you may choose to enable DM notifications from an app, but disable all other types of alerts, including promotions, friend requests, breaking news, etc.
If you have a ton of apps on your smartphone that you've manually adjusted notification categories for, you don't want that work to go away overnight. Unfortunately, that's what happened for some users with the One UI 6.1 update: In addition to adding new AI features like Circle to Search and Live Translate, this new version of One UI adds a new Manage notification categories for each app setting, which allows you to toggle the feature on and off on your Galaxy. That's fine in theory—more choice is usually a good thing—but Samsung apparently decided to turn this feature off by default in the latest update.
As such, users found their notification categories settings removed following the update, meaning all of those notification types they didn't want to see began delivering away. (Hello, friend requests. Goodbye, sanity.)
Luckily, there's an easy fix for the problem: toggle the feature on instead. One UI 6.1 reportedly remembers your notification categories settings even when you disable the feature, so you can always return to the way you had these option set if you turn the feature back on. So, even though the option is disabled by default, a simple flip of the switch is all it takes to bring it back online.
To find the option, head to Settings > Notifications > Advanced settings. Scroll down, and you'll find Manage notification categories for each app. Toggle it on, and your previous notification category settings should be restored.
Looking for a Galaxy that can run One UI 6.1? Here's the full list of Galaxy smartphones compatible with the latest update:
A clean home is a peaceful home—but what if the act of cleaning it could be peaceful, too? That’s the guiding principle behind the FlyLady cleaning method, popularized by organizational guru Marla Cilley. Let’s go over what the FlyLady method is—and why you should employ it now to start seeing some benefits in your space over time. You won’t get instant results, but you’ll get long-lasting ones that will contribute more to your sense of overall cleanliness and peace.
Cilley’s method has been around for more than two decades, but it’s found new life on TikTok, where CleanTok influencers have brought it to the digital masses.
The goal of using this method is to be less overwhelmed by the prospect of cleaning—and maybe even start to enjoy it. You do this by changing how you approach cleaning altogether. On her website, Cilley instructs would-be method adherents to break their home up into “zones” and set aside just 15 minutes per day to clean through them at a set time each month. She promises there will be a noticeable difference after a week: “It didn’t get dirty in a day, and it is not going to get clean overnight.”
There are only five zones to think about in this method, but they're pretty all-encompassing. Here’s how the zones are broken up:
Zone 1 is your entryway, front porch, and dining room. You complete this zone in the first week of the month.
Zone 2 is the kitchen, which is done during the first full week of the month, meaning the first week in which there are seven full days.
Zone 3 is the main bathroom plus another room in your house, like maybe an office or pantry. This happens during the second full week of the month.
Zone 4 is the master bedroom and its closets and bathroom during the third full week.
Zone 5 is the living room, but because it is not a full week, it may overlap with Zone 1.
Cilley’s primary goal is for cleaners to not burn out, so spending 15 minutes a day in the designated zone for that week is sufficient. Routines are key for maximum, efficient cleaning, so make sure your 15-minute chunk is scheduled and you do it every day, ideally at the same time so it becomes more of a habit than an all-out chore.
While this is great for giving you a schedule and guidelines for what you should be focusing on at a given time, it's pretty vague about how to clean those areas. Call in another method, like the Core 4 technique, to make sure your 15-minute bursts and weekly zones are reaching their maximum potential. Core 4 asks you to clear out, categorize, cut out, and contain your clutter in a systemized way. Once you have all the clutter and overall mess contained, you can more easily do the nitty gritty of cleaning and disinfecting of open spaces, vacuuming, and dusting.
Try using some decorative storage containers for this so you can keep everything organized without compromising on the overall appearance of your home.
Decluttering can be stressful and hard. How do you decide what stays and what goes? How do you part with the things that have taken up your space for so long? One way is by making it kind of fun. Try throwing a “packing party” with your friends to declutter over time.
This idea comes from Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus, a duo known as the Minimalists to the fans of their books and podcasts about decluttering and living a more meaningful, scaled-down life. You may even have seen their documentary on Netflix.
On their blog, Nicodemus shared a story about the origins of his minimalistic lifestyle and how a packing party with friends helped launch it. Before getting into what a packing party looks like, it’s worth mentioning a few things: First, you don’t have to do this with the goal of becoming a total minimalist and restructuring your entire life and philosophy; you can simply want to declutter your house a little bit. Second, having friends help you with cleaning and decluttering can be a smart (and more fun) move, but they're not super necessary for this. You can undertake this on your own if you don’t want to invite people to see your mess or you just want to get cracking on a personal project.
You’re going to need boxes. You’re going to need a lot of boxes. That’s because you’re going to pretend, initially, that you’re moving out of your home. Step one is to pack everything you own into cardboard boxes as if you were heading out to a new place. Make sure you label every box with clear descriptions of the contents, like “kitchen utensils” or “athletic wear.”
While you’re doing this, you can invite over some friends (to add the “party” element to “packing party”), order some pizza, and make a fun night of it. But don’t declutter while you’re packing. They’re not there to make judgment calls on your junk; they’re there to help you stick it in boxes. The actual decluttering will happen later.
Once everything is boxed up and labeled, do nothing. Live your life as normal for three weeks, only pulling out what you need from a box when you need it. At the end of the three weeks, you’ll still have boxes full of stuff, plus the things you actually used in that time put back in their places within your home. For everything you haven't used, seriously consider if you need it in your life. Nicodemus says that after the three weeks, he sold or donated everything that was left in his boxes, which he estimates was a whopping 80% of his possessions.
Obviously, there are exceptions: In those three weeks, for instance, you might not use the suit or nice dress you keep on hand for weddings, or the slow cooker you whip out for holiday meals. The idea of getting rid of everything you don’t use over a 21-day span is nice, but not entirely practical, so use your judgment. Consider sorting everything that remains in the boxes using the 12-12-12 method, setting limits for how many things you’ll throw away, donate, and keep.
For three weeks, you’ll be living like you just moved into a brand-new home, but by the end of the experiment, the home actually will feel a little brand new.
Congrats: Another tax season has come and gone. Time to kick back and await that refund, right? Not so fast. When tax season rolls around next year, you'll once again find yourself frantically searching for receipts, statements, and other documentation needed to file an accurate return. This year, get ahead of the game by using a spreadsheet to track tax-related information throughout the year. And there's no better time than right now, when your tax knowledge is fresh as can be, to make your spreadsheet for next April.
Use spreadsheet software like Excel or Google Sheets to create a master tax document. Using this single file to input and update information in will keep everything centralized. Give it a clear name like "2024 Tax Records" so you can easily reference it.
Within your tax spreadsheet, create separate sections or tabs for different categories of tax information. At minimum, you'll want sections for:
Income. This will track income from jobs, self-employment, investments, retirement distributions, etc.
Deductions. List out anything you plan to itemize or claim as a deduction, such as mortgage interest, charitable giving, medical expenses, etc.
Tax credits. Track estimated expenses that may qualify for a tax credit, like education costs, childcare, etc.
Prior year tax documents. Keep a record of last year's tax return details and any carryover items.
Within each section, create rows and columns to track the details you need for tax time. For example, under Income you may want columns for:
Date earned
Income source/employer
Amount earned
Tax withholdings
For deductions, you may have columns like:
Date paid
Expense category (medical, mortgage interest, charity, etc.)
Amount
As you earn income throughout the year, be diligent about entering the details into your income section right away while it's fresh. Do the same with potential deductions as you incur those expenses. You can update your spreadsheet weekly, monthly or whenever is convenient, as long as you stick to a routine.
Any time you receive tax documentation—like W2s, 1099s, donation receipts or mortgage interest statements— save digital copies and attach or link them within your spreadsheet file. This creates a handy archive of all your tax records in one spot.
Using a spreadsheet to meticulously track your tax information throughout the year will save you the inevitable time and stress of having to reconstruct it all at the last minute. While staying organized requires diligence, that small effort goes a long way when tax season arrives. Your future self will appreciate having these detailed records ready to go. From the most thorough travel plans, to excruciatingly detailed journals, to elaborate to-do lists: If you have a goal, that goal needs a spreadsheet.
WWDC 2024 might be Apple's big software event, but it's not the only announcement the company is making this spring. It turns out Apple also has an event planned for May, and while there are no official details, it seems pretty obvious what this one's all about: iPads.
Apple's new event, dubbed "Let Loose," will kick off Tuesday May 7, at 7 a.m. PT (10 a.m. ET). That's an early start for the Cupertino-based company, which usually holds events at 10 a.m. PT, or 1 p.m. ET.
It isn't the first time in recent memory the company has deviated from this timing, however. For its "Scary Fast" Mac event in October, which launched the M3 line, Apple begun its prerecorded event at 5 p.m. PT (8 p.m. PT). I suppose 10 a.m. PT is now reserved for major events, like WWDC and iPhone announcements.
Like "Scary Fast," the "Let Loose" event will be prerecorded, and will be hosted on apple.com.
Apple hasn't confirmed any of the events details, but it seems likely it'll be all about iPads. The logo for the event is someone holding an Apple Pencil, "painting" the iconic Apple logo. Not to mention, iPad rumors have been in circulation a lot over the past couple of months.
Tweet may have been deleted
As for specifics, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman claims Apple will refresh the iPad Pro line with the latest M3 chips, a larger iPad Pro display, as well as a new OLED display, a first for the iPad. Apple may also launch new Magic Keyboards, specifically with larger trackpads.
If you're more of an iPad Air fan, you're in luck: Gurman says Apple is also refreshing the Airs, this time with its M2 chip as well as two size options: a 10.9-inch (the standard option for the iPad Air), and a 12.9-inch, the current size of the larger iPad Pro. Apple isn't likely to bring OLED to the iPad Air (I guess they think OLED is a "Pro" feature), but some rumors say the company is outfitting the Airs with mini-LED, really the next best thing to OLED.
Mini-LED displays have thousands of local dimming zones to finely control the contrast of the display, so the darker areas of the image seem pitch black. It can't match OLED, which allows all pixels to turn off if they need to, and the tech does suffer from "blooming," where some light bleed will surround elements on screen, but it creates a much better contrast than the traditional LED displays found on the current iPad Airs.
In any case, right now is probably a bad time to buy an iPad.
You can get this 15W wireless charging pad and night light on sale for $39.99 right now (reg. $99.95) with free shipping. It charges compatible smartphones and earbuds while also adding a night light with three touch-controlled brightness levels. The charging pad is small and only takes up 6.6 by 4.3 inches, comes in your choice of a black or white finish, and has protections against overcharging, overcurrent, overvoltage, and high temperatures. It also comes with a 30-day manufacturer’s warranty.
You can get this 15W wireless charging pad and night light on sale for $39.99 right now (reg. $99.95) with free shipping, though prices can change at any time.
Hot on the heels of its biggest competition in the Apple Vision Pro, Meta has announced that it’s going to be fighting Apple using a tried-and-true strategy: Meta wants to become the Android of VR.
In a press release, the company behind the Quest line of headsets revealed that it’s making the Meta Horizon operating system and Quest ecosystem open to third-party manufacturers. That means you might soon be able to buy a headset made by Dell or Sony and log in to see the Meta UI you already know and Meta apps you already own.
It’s a similar approach to Android or Windows, in that while Google and Microsoft make their own products, the software powering their phones and laptops isn’t limited to Google and Microsoft hardware. This allows these companies to maintain parity with Apple devices without having to directly compete with them on every front, while also offering customers a greater degree of choice.
Is it open source? No. But it does mean that Meta could keep up with the Vision Pro simply by relying on a smaller company to hit that niche premium market for it, something the company behind Facebook has had trouble doing itself in the past.
Meta’s more open VR strategy is starting with a three-pronged approach, with two new headsets on the way from laptop makers Lenovo and Asus, as well as an Xbox-branded Quest headset coming straight from Meta itself.
Each headset should target a different audience, allowing Meta to immediately differentiate itself from Apple by appealing to a multitude of use cases. Asus’ headset is coming from that company’s “Republic of Gamers” branch, meaning it will probably be decked out in RGB lighting and the latest and greatest VR gaming specs. Lenovo’s seems to instead be leveraging that company’s experience with ThinkPad, meaning it might target a more professional audience. The Xbox collaboration is focused entirely on design, looking unique but otherwise being a normal Quest 3.
Alongside these lowered barriers to making Meta-branded hardware, Meta is also “beginning the process of removing the barriers between the Meta Horizon Store and App Lab,” which essentially means that smaller developers will now be able to push their content straight to consumers.
“We believe a more open ecosystem is the best way to bring the power of mixed reality to as many people as possible,” Meta wrote in its announcement. “With more devices, this new ecosystem will offer more choice to consumers and businesses around the world.”
In light of mass returns on the impressive but niche Apple Vision Pro, a greater selection of devices, all with different price points and audiences, and all running Meta’s more mature ecosystem, could be exactly what VR needs to hit a mass market.
From the beginning, I’ve been skeptical about robot lawn mowers. I imagined a robot mowing down my flower beds, and wondered why someone wouldn’t just pluck the robot off the lawn and keep walking. Heck, I don’t even think you should grow a lawn, so it’d be a leap for me to recommend a lawn mower. However, there is no denying that robot mowers are here to stay—and so I enlisted the lawns of every neighbor on my block and began testing a fleet of lawnbots.
The process has won me over for a few reasons, and I’m now a person who would recommend a robot lawn mower to most people with a lawn, if you find the right one for your space. A robot lawn mower all but eliminates the noise of mowing, removes the chore of mowing altogether, and can give your lawn a year-round consistent look. For medium to large lawns, I'd recommend the Mammotion Luba 2. It mowed with accuracy and consistency, rarely deterred by irregularities like dips, hills, holes or obstacles. At $2,899, the price is out of reach for many people, but if you regularly pay for lawn service, and/or have neighbors who can share the bot, it might just be worth it.
It's tempting to compare robot lawn mowers to robot vacuums, but while robot mowers have definitely benefited from everything we’ve learned from robot vacuums over the last 10 years, that may be an unfair correlation. I recently spoke with the engineering staff at Husqvarna, an originator in this space, and they helped me understand the additional challenges that robot lawn mowers face outside in the elements. Inside your home, LiDAR is likely all you need to navigate, but outside, robots need GPS. If you want your bot to mow up to the flower bed but not into the flower bed, you’re talking about precision that comes down to inches. The same is true of boundaries, where your lawn might meet a neighbor’s lawn. For this reason, most lawnbots once relied on buried wire to define the spaces they worked within. It’s only in the last few years that these bots have gone wireless, trusting the GPS to keep them on the straight and (sometimes) narrow.
The Luba 2 requires a fair amount of assembly: There’s the robot itself, which needs a few parts like the bumper connected and screwed in, and then there is the GPS tower and the dock, both of which need some assembly, too. It took an hour to unbox all the components, assemble them, and then find an appropriate place for the base to live and get everything installed at the site. There are also additional components to consider, like a garage ($149 on pre-order), which is just a cover for the robot since it is otherwise exposed to the elements, and a wall mount for the GPS unit ($79 on pre-order)—both of which take time to assemble, too.
The Luba 2 features four equally sized tough wheels across a long, low body. (More later on why this particular shape makes the bot more resilient and results in those highly treasured lines in the lawn.) While the robot is mostly okay in the elements, Mammotion is clear that the garage does help protect your investment. Among other things, it helped conceal the robot a bit when it was docked—and even the most weatherproof device could benefit from shelter. The GPS tower does not need to be installed at the same location as the dock, but if you position the dock right, it can be. The tower needs direct line of sight to the sky, and always needs to have direct line of sight to the robot. Sometimes, this is best served by the tower and dock being in two different locations, but in my case, I was able to locate them close to the house, together, without it being a problem. This has an additional benefit of allowing both the robot and tower to share one electrical plug. If you separate them, you’ll have to snake the cord for the tower back to the outlet, and I struggled to understand how you’d do this safely without burying it, or the robot would go right over it. Pro tip: once the robot is up and running, you’ll never pick it up—there’s a remote control function. Assemble it close to the location you’ll place the dock, because it is a bear to carry around.
Most interactions you’ll have with your new robot mower takes place in the app, and I was worried that my wifi wouldn’t be sufficient through the yard, or it would be a bear to pair. That wasn’t the case, and this is the only lawnmower I’ve tested that paired on the first try. The mesh provided by some new Nest Pro wifi points covered my neighbors' whole yard well enough to work (remember, I was mowing their lawn), and I found that even at the farthest reaches of their yard where the signal was weak, the Luba 2 responded just fine. Each time you want to use the robot, you’ll need to connect to it, which means you need to be in range. Mammotion, like a lot of these robots, relies on a mix of Bluetooth, wifi and 4G. You won’t be controlling the robot from your vacation home (although you can set up schedules for that). Inside the app, you can control how short the grass should be cut and what pattern you want the robot to take across the lawn, from a few zigzag patterns to checkerboard. These settings don’t just affect the lawn's appearance, but how effective the lawn is mowed. I tried all the settings over the course of a month and it turns out, a randomized zigzag produced the best mowing results. Each time you send the robot out on an unscheduled run, you can choose how many times it should circle the perimeter and how it should approach obstacles. The Luba offers options that favor bump and go, LiDAR or both, and generally, I found the best coverage with bump and go only, which surprised me. When I just let the robot experience obstacles by bumping into them, and having to navigate around them, rather than seeing them with LiDAR and trying to avoid them, I got smaller areas of avoidance.
Unlike vacuums, which just venture out from the dock, visualize and map the space on their own and then go about cleaning, most robot lawn mowers including the Luba 2 require you to manually map the space. The robot goes into a remote control mode, and you walk behind it and navigate the perimeter of the space. This part was strangely fun. You can map additional “no go” zones within a space, but I generally allowed the robot to figure that out on its own, since it would bump into a raised bed and navigate around it. If you had a flower bed without a defined wall, you’d map it as a no go zone. You can map as many spaces as you want, and then connect them by building walkway paths between them. When you want to mow, you just choose the areas you want, and the mower will navigate to them using the walkways.
One of my concerns was that someone would steal the mower, and to be honest, makers of these robots don’t help in that area. The units light up at night like a beacon, with bright lights on the GPS unit and the robot itself. The garage helps hide it a little, and I turned the GPS unit so the light was aimed towards the house, but in the darkness, it’s still quite easy to see. I live in an area where people do swipe things from entryways, and yet, in five weeks, the Luba 2 was more a curiosity of the neighborhood than a target. The first week, I watched it each time it ran, out of concern for the robot and flower beds—and more interesting than the robot was the neighbors reaction. Everyone would stop walking and stare. They’d take pictures, and minutes later more people would arrive and they’d all stare together. Cars stopped and reversed to double check that it was, in fact, a robot. They’d talk to each other about the robot and ask questions.
This led to the second concern I had about the robot, which was liability and safety. While on a lawn, it’s likely not to encounter other humans or animals, certainly not at the rate it moves (about half the speed of a human mowing). However, as it navigates sidewalks and driveways between mowing areas, it might encounter them. The Husqvarna team helped explain that this is the main distinguishing feature between vacuums and mowers—that for the latter, safety had to be the first priority. For that reason, all robots have a giant kill button on them. The Luba 2 has a big “STOP” button on it that’s easy to hit. Also, the mower itself is actually much smaller and less threatening than it is on traditional mowers, it’s just a few very small blades in the dead center on the bottom of the robot. The moment the robot is lifted or moves from a flat position, the mower stops. I tried a number of times to create scenarios where the blades could encounter a dog, cat or kid, and each time, the mower simply stopped.
There are a few assessments you should make before you get a robot lawn mower—like how big your lawn is, and how level. Some mowers are better at inclines, and some are better for small lawns that require navigation around a lot of tight spaces. The Luba 2 comes in models that can accommodate from 1,000 square feet up to 10,000 square feet. It’s not terrific for navigating around very tight spaces—it struggled around my path lights, for instance. Where the Luba 2 really shines is in navigating bumpy spaces. Some lawn bots struggled with even a small dip or hill, but the Luba navigated those easily, and even a big trench. This is because of the larger body with the wheels on all four corners. It was able to distribute weight in a way that the wheels were never bothered by terrain or inclines. According to the team at Husqvarna, the weight of the mower affects how well you’ll see those lines in the grass after mowing. Of the mowers I’ve tested so far, only the Mammotion has produced them. In fact, at some point in the future Mammotion plans to offer lawn printing, where you can customize what you see on the lawn.
The Mammotion has some features that felt extraneous, like offering live video of the mower in action. It’s novel to watch the feed for a moment, but ultimately not very useful. One of the most useful features, the ability to manually control the mower via remote control, doesn’t get talked about much. Although the bot only got stuck twice in sixteen runs, rather than picking it up and walking it out, I just used the remote. Remember, the mower is heavy. What no one mentions about robot lawn mowers and should is the blessed silence. I have lived between two mow happy men for years and during the summer mowers run constantly and the noise is insufferable. Robot lawn mowers are so quiet you have to strain to hear them cutting. The cuttings themselves are so chopped up by the blades that there’s no cuttings to move off the lawn. Rather than long blades of grass, it’s just diced up and left on the lawn, and you can’t really tell, even after a big chop. Both neighbors have been really happy with the results of the robots. A little line trimming to clean up around obstacles is all that’s needed.
Ultimately, the Mammotion won me over to robot lawn mowing. After the first week, you’ll only watch it when it leaves the dock and check back to make sure it returned. Then, you’ll grow to trust that it just does it on its own. The cost is stunning, at $2899, but when I started to think about what people pay now for lawn service, it started to make more sense. While landscapers do more than mow the lawn, taking the lawn off your plate might make the rest of the your landscape manageable for you to handle. Also, don’t overlook how much labor mowing the lawn really is—if you live alone, removing the labor might be worth it, just like not having to clean your floors inside. With the range of the Mammotion, I was able to map it to the lawns of four adjoining neighbors, meaning you could easily split the cost of the bot with others.
Twitter—er, sorry, X (formerly Twitter), is down. At least intermittently. I started writing this piece once I noticed the issue on my end: I tried loading the site in Chrome, and after a few moments, I got a blank screen. I tried refreshing again, and again, the site returned no results. I swapped to my phone, and lo and behold, the site was working. So, back to my browser, and yes, it works! Another refresh, however, and blank results again. Yikes.
Something is going on at Twitter HQ, and maybe it'll all be fixed by the time this goes up, but at the moment, you might not be able to load your tweets. It's a funny turn of events: The last time a major social media network went down, it was on Meta's watch, as Instagram, Facebook, and Threads all refused to load. At that time, every flocked to Twitter to check in and laugh about the situation. Now, will people flock to Instagram, Facebook, and Threads to repay the favor to Twitter?
As I move to publish this, the site appears to be loading for me again. Hopefully, it sticks. But considering X, formerly Twitter, is a skeleton crew these days, it isn't hard to imagine there being more problems like this going forward.
Searching for music on the Sonos interface has always been a little frustrating, involving a lot of subpanels and too much back and forth. Today, Sonos is promising to alleviate some of that pain with a new home screen interface across the Sonos app and desktop experience. News of the upcoming changes leaked earlier this month, but now we’re able to see actual screenshots and get details of how this rollout will actually look.
Rolling out globally on May 7, the new interface will emphasize customizations and easy access. While Sonos has the ability to integrate with over 100 streaming services, you likely only interface with a few routinely. The new design will allow you to choose which services you see, and allow you to easily change those preferences. Here are some of the other big changes:
The most painful part of the Sonos navigation process is going to go away. The new home screen will bring all your content to one screen, and you’ll be able to easily jump back into recently played content, your libraries, and recommendations.
You’ll be able to group rows of content together, so you can have a section for podcasts versus music versus audiobooks. Sonos promises these will be easy to rearrange on the fly.
A little cloudier is the promise that you’ll be able to search for a piece of content or creator across all your platforms. Sonos already does this, but hopefully what they’re promising is a better experience. I’ve often been frustrated with the search results being inaccurate or not finding all the content I’m looking for, even when I know a service carries it.
Continuing the “tabs be damned” theme, you’ll be swiping up from the home screen to access your system and a visual overview of what’s playing, on which speakers, at what volume, so it sounds like this will replace the system tab.
Mostly, what the new app experience aims for is faster access, and eliminating the many levels of tabs. The new experience will support all S2 products, which includes newer Sonos products like the Arc, Beam, and Era speakers. Usually, the earlier Sonos products like Play 1, Play 3, and Soundbar are included in all apps, leaving out only legacy products like the Bridge.
We're now much more used to checking emails inside a browser tab, or loading up a mobile app, but for years everyone used desktop clients to get their email and try and get their inboxes into some kind of order—and since way back in 2003, Mozilla Thunderbird has been one of the best programs for the job.
A desktop application like Thunderbird offers several advantages over a web client, not least being able to collect together emails from multiple accounts—Apple, Google, Microsoft, and so on—and put them in one place. It also means you can manage your email even when you're offline (though you can't send and receive messages without an internet connection, of course).
To begin with, Thunderbird is free to download and run, and—unlike Apple Mail, for example—available on Windows, macOS, and Linux, so anyone can use it. There are no extra features you have to pay for, and there's no ongoing subscription you have to keep up with (you probably have enough of those already). You can donate to support Thunderbird's development, if you find it useful and can afford it.
Once you get into the actual application itself, there are a host of features to make use of: support for keyboard shortcuts, quick and simple searching, advanced filters for sorting your messages automatically as they come in, plenty of control over the appearance of the application, and a color-coded tagging feature that lets you organize messages across folders (you could have separate tags for work and personal emails, for example).
You're able to manage calendars, contacts, and tasks inside Thunderbird too, so it's effectively a full suite of productivity tools for your desktop. You can choose the order you see your messages in, you can have the various panes laid out in several different ways, and you can choose to see conversations threaded (like the Gmail default) or unthreaded.
Thunderbird makes use of a tabbed interface by default (though you can change this if you need to), just like your web browser probably does. You can open up individual messages in individual tabs to make them easier to navigate around, and even settings and other pages get their own tabs. What's more, there are plenty of third-party add-ons to pick from, covering everything from language translation to attachment extracting.
Head to the official Thunderbird website to get the software downloaded. During the setup process, you'll be asked to enter the details of one of your email accounts: With most common accounts, including iCloud and Gmail, Thunderbird already knows the necessary configuration options. A lot of the time, all that's required will be your email address and the password you need to access it.
With certain accounts, some preparation might be necessary so that Thunderbird can see your emails properly. If you're using Gmail with Thunderbird, for example, you need to make sure it's opened up to desktop clients: From Gmail on the web, click the gear icon (top right), See all settings, and then Forwarding and POP/IMAP. Make sure IMAP access is enabled for Thunderbird to use.
If your email accounts are protected by two-factor authentication (and they should be), you might need to load up an authenticator app or follow a prompt on your phone to give Thunderbird access. In the case of Apple iCloud accounts protected for two-factor authentication, for instance, you need to head to your Apple account page online, and click App-Specific Passwords to create one for Thunderbird.
Should you run into any problems with any of your accounts, a quick visit to the help pages for that account or a browse of the Thunderbird support forums should get you up and running. After you've got them connected, Thunderbird begins downloading recent messages from your various inboxes, with both folders and accounts given their own entries in the navigation pane on the left.
To get all of your messages from different accounts together, click the three dots at the top of the left-hand navigation pane, then choose Folder modes > Unified Folders. You can get more control over which messages are shown (such as unread or starred) and the order they're displayed in by clicking the filtering buttons above the main message list.
There's a special app menu button next to the search bar that looks like three horizontal lines: Click on this to access a host of layout options and other settings. You can have your main email list to the side of your message threads for example, or on top of them—and there are three different density settings so you can choose how much blank space you're seeing inside the Thunderbird interface too.
To search through your messages, across all of your various accounts, use the search box up at the top of the Thunderbird window. Each new search query shows up in its own tab so keeping track of them isn't difficult, and you can look for emails from (or to) a particular contact, or mentioning particular words, or in a particular folder. There's even a timeline view that shows the frequency of matches over time.
Filters are always useful in email clients too, and can save you a substantial amount of time. Click the app menu button at the top (the three horizontal lines), then Tools > Message Filters, and you can start creating a filter: You can set all kinds of criteria (like message contents or message sender) to lead to all kinds of actions (like archiving messages or adding a star to them).
In 2011, on a flight to Portland, Ore., I saw physicist Michio Kaku doing long hand calculations with a pencil and notepad. I was like, “Damn, I just occupied the same space as Michio Kaku doing physics.” Later that evening, our paths crossed again at the world-famous Powell’s Books where Kaku was signing his latest. Why was the day so memorable to me (but probably not to Michio Kaku)? It was my first time in Portland, my first time at Powell’s, my first time seeing a famous physicist. Also, things become more memorable through repetition, and I’ve probably told that story 100 times.
According to Meik Wiking, founder of The Happiness Institute and author of The Art of Making Memories: How to Create and Remember Happy Moments, there are eight factors that can help help solidify memories: the power of firsts, using your senses, engaging your attention, creating meaning, adding emotions, experiencing highs and lows, sharing stories, and outsourcing your memories. Below you’ll find ideas for how to apply each concept to building memories with your loved ones.
Novel experiences are extra “sticky” in our memory filing cabinets. For example, which do you remember better, your first kiss or your tenth kiss? Try these tips for seeding your memories with more “firsts.”
Wiking recommends visiting a new place every year. You could try to check off a different country every year, or stay close to home. Draw a radius of 100 miles around your home. There are bound to be parks, restaurants, small towns, local monuments, or secluded backroads you’ve never seen before. Even if you have been there before, has your partner or your child been there? Take advantage of their first time to build a new memory together.
Take a class together. Choose something neither of you have tried before so you share the memory of learning together. Try a single kickboxing class or enroll in a whole semester of flower arranging; it's up to you. Virtual classes count too.
If we learned one thing from Marcel Proust, it’s that a cookie dipped in tea can be a powerful memory trigger. You may be most aware of what you see when taking in something memorable, but don’t forget the tastes, smells, sensations, and sounds you pick up.
Sometimes food is an afterthought, but for ideal memory formation, food is an excellent tool for a sensory-rich experience. Whether you are at the splash pad with kids on a summer morning or walking the narrow streets of Rome, look for opportunities to slow down and let food make the memories for you. Try a new agua fresca flavor or a bite of gelato. On any regular day, have your kids pick a range of new foods and head to the park for a tasting picnic.
Start a sensory round robin. Ask your family members to pause and chime in on what they are seeing, smelling, hearing, tasting, and feeling. Getting everyone’s senses engaged in the moment will help you cement memories together. Record these reflections in your notes app or a voice memo to refer to later.
This is what the ubiquitous advice to “practice mindfulness” boils down to: You won’t notice stuff if you aren’t aware, and you can’t remember stuff if you aren’t paying attention. Try these tips to pay more attention and make stronger memories.
Have a digital fast. Try this for an hour, an afternoon or a whole day: Put phones and devices away and engage with each other and what’s around you fully. If not using your phone is not a big enough challenge for you, pretend the power is out and play games by candlelight.
Make note of your “glimmers"—micro moments of joy, safety, peace, or contentment. Among your friends and family, normalize acknowledging when a song gives you shivers or spotting a hummingbird fills you with delight.
Meaning makes moments more memorable, Wiking writes. To turn an ordinary day into a memory, connect it to something personal and significant in your life.
Celebrate more. Birthdays and anniversaries are memorable because we make them meaningful. Why not stretch “meaning” to fill more days of your life? Celebrate half-birthdays, Fridays, and full moons with your own rituals, a toast, or cupcakes.
Take advantage of obscure holidays to start new traditions. Who cares if they are mostly made-up marketing tactics? May 4 is Herb Day, and coincidentally, a perfect time to refresh your witchy little window garden every year. With hundreds of options, you can find a few “holidays” to turn into an annual family tradition based on what’s important to you.
Big feelings are associated with more vivid memories. What makes you feel excited, terrified, head-over-heels, or triumphant?
Do something scary. You don’t even have to be a thrill seeker who skydives or free climbs. Aim for roller coasters, ghost tours, or karaoke.
Want to get your heart rate up without the actual danger? Try virtual reality. If you can’t be in the same place as your loved ones, or you can’t get away for exotic adventures, replicate the thrills with VR travel and games. Even a chill virtual hangout can be a different way to bond with someone you care about.
Sure, it's cool when everything goes off seamlessly. But in reality, most of life's experiences include a little yuck along with the yum. Make better memories by appreciating both the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat.
Take the longer, harder route. You may, like me, choose to road trip from Texas to Massachusetts instead of flying because you are trying to build childhood memories. We remember both the disappointment of a closed hotel pool and the thrill of an unexpected room upgrade. We struggled in the hot Arkansa sun mining for diamonds, and were delighted to settle for shiny stones purchased in the gift shop. The highs and the lows come together for great memories.
Go for a big goal, noting all the challenges and wins along the way. When you decide to train for a half marathon or remodel your home, there are going to be many challenging moments before the big win at the end. Make the whole experience memorable by paying attention to when things get hard and the relief of getting through each rough spot.
Just like my flying physicist story, your memories grow stronger when you and your loved ones trade stories. Stitch your retellings together into a new, better story with more details than you could have recalled on your own.
Start a collection that turns your memories into tangible story-starters. I think stickers fit the bill perfectly. They don’t take up much space and automatically take you back to the place and time where you bought them. Bonus points if you use your stickers to decorate a memory-keeping journal with details from each experience.
On the anniversary of an event or trip, print out pics and challenge your kids to turn them into a story book or poster with memories from that day. Wiking suggests the end of the year is a good time to pick your Happy 100 photos that tell the story of your whole year. Make it an annual tradition to have your Happy 100 printed in a memory book and to look back on memory books from prior years.
Finally, don't depend on your own neurons for all the memory storage. Think of all the ways you can capture memories outside of your own brain—the aforementioned memory book, a journal, or a collection of souvenirs all serve as memory repositories. Here are a couple more options:
Set up a private social media account just for memory keeping. You get your life’s story with memories and photos in one neat digital package without having to worry about anyone judging or stalking you.
Make a new family playlist for every season or trip. Listen to the same songs for a whole week at the beach, and years later those songs will still remind you of sea breezes and sandy feet.
Roombas have become nearly synonymous with the concept of robot vacuums, and for good reason: They're perhaps not the absolute best robot vacuums on the market, but they do the simple things right, and the iRobot vacuums have some of the best user-friendly in-app experiences around. Roombas also tend to get discounted pretty frequently, like the Roomba Combo j5, which is currently $299(originally $599.99) after a sizable 50% discount.
The Roomba Combo j5 can both vacuum and mop, although calling what it does "mopping" is a bit of a stretch for me. The mopping feature is available when you attach a separate "Roomba Combo bin," which you must fill up with water. The attachment drips water into a cloth on the bottom that is dragged on spaces right after they are vacuumed by the machine. It doesn’t provide much pressure, so it won't get rid of any stains. It's more of a light swipe with a damp towel.
The Roomba Combo j5 is good at avoiding obstacles that are on the floor, like cords or dog poop. The only thing that I've seen my Roomba Combo j5 get stuck on are the strings dangling from my window blinds, which sometimes pool on the ground. The battery lasts three hours and charges itself if it needs to more juice to finish a task.
If you don't like the idea of emptying out the debris on the Roomba Combo j5, you can opt for the Roomba Combo j5+ for $150 more. The Combo j5+ is $449 (originally $799) after a 44% discount. The vacuum itself is the same, but it comes with a home base that auto-empties the debris, with the capacity to hold up to 60 days' worth of junk. If that seems worth it to you, consider getting the home base. If not, $299 for the basic Roomba Combo j5 is a great deal, matching its all-time lowest price.
Fitbit is the most recognizable brand in fitness smartwatches, and the Fitbit Versa 4 is the best Fitbit smartwatch you can get right now, according to PCMag. Right now, the best deal on the Versa 4 comes from Amazon, which currently selling it for $149.95 (originally $199.95). This matches its lowest-ever price, according to price-checking tools. Only the pink sand/copper rose color is available, but it comes with small and large wrist bands.
The Fitbit Versa 4 came out in 2022 as the fourth generation of the Versa smartwatch, improving on aspects like design and responsiveness while keeping its six-day battery life, according to PCMag's "excellent" review. One of this model's new features is the ability to track skin temperature variation when its worn to bed, which can affect our ability to fall asleep and stay asleep. The watch also measures blood oxygen saturation, breathing rate, heart rate variability, and resting heart rate. If you are willing to spend $9.99 per month (or $79.99 per year) for a Fitbit Premium subscription, you'll get some extra features like the "Readiness Score," which advises whether it is more beneficial to do a workout or take a rest day with respect to your recovery.
The Versa 4 also took a hard turn on third-party apps when it was released compared to previous generations. It no longer supports apps outside of its own Fitbit gallery. In other words, if you want to use Adidas Running, Calm, Shazam, Spotify, or apps like Strava, you might want to look at the Versa 3 or other smartwatches. The good news is that the Fitbit gallery still has many apps like City Bikes, Starbucks, Strava, Surfline, and Uber by Fitbit.
One of your smartphone's key features is the ability to make and receive calls and text messages. When this basic functionality stops working, it makes sense that people will complain. That’s been the case with the Pixel 7, Pixel 8, and Pixel Fold: Customers report they are missing calls and texts, as phone aren't ringing and texts aren't coming through.
These issues are exceptionally difficult to deal with (Your phone should be, first and foremost, a phone.) But luckily, a fix is now available. That’s thanks to the second April Pixel OTA update, which Google claims should resolve the pesky cellular bug. The OTA update is now available and is slowly rolling out to Pixel owners with a Pixel 7, Pixel 8, Pixel 8 Pro, or Pixel Fold.
This issue hasn’t plagued all users running a Pixel device, but there have definitely been enough complaints to get Google’s attention. But even if your Pixel is working fine, there's reason to update as soon as it hits your device: The OTA update is part of the Pixel’s Android 14 QPR2 release, which also comes with new security patches for all Pixel devices from the Pixel 7 onward. While you should make a habit of always downloading security updates as soon as their available, customers facing cellular issues have some extra incentives in this case.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like the update is yet available for manual install. When using the Check for Updates option in my Pixel 8’s settings, I haven’t been able to get to it. It won't hurt to check periodically, but this may be an update you have to wait for Google to roll out to you. That’s unfortunate, as I’m sure many would prefer to download the update sooner rather than later, but at least a fix is in sight.
Of course, whether this completely resolves the issues remains to be seen. The Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro both have a lot going for them: I praised Google’s approach to its latest lineup in my Pixel 8 Pro review. Hopefully, this issue is just a small speed bump in a continued string of successes for the Pixel smartphone lineup.
If you need a new Pixel phone, check out these great options:
Pixel Fold: $1,274 (usually $1,799)
Pixel 8 Pro: $799 (usually $999)
Pixel 8: $549 (usually $699)
These guitar lesson courses are on sale for $15.97 right now (reg. $480) through April 21. It comes with unlimited access to 12 e-courses and 78 hours of training, and includes beginner courses like Beginner Guitar Lessons Crash Course, Guitar Lessons for the Curious Guitarist, and Guitar Technique, as well as courses in songwriting, finger style, ear training, and playing music with others. There are even genre-specific lessons in blues, jazz, and children’s and holiday songs. Performer and recording guitarist Dan Dresnok teaches all of the courses.
These guitar lesson courses are on sale for $15.97 right now (reg. $480) through April 21 at 11:59 p.m. PT, though prices can change at any time.
Obsidian is a note-taking app that stores everything in plain text documents on your computer—but that's just the beginning. There are extremely fast search and keyboard shortcuts, plus you can link to any of your notes from any other note. Not everyone gets into it, granted, but if you do, it changes the way you think about writing and note-taking.
But where things get really wild are the plugins. There are over 1,600 of them, all lovingly made by other users, which you can browse and install in the settings. I couldn't begin to tell you which are the best ones—that's going to heavily depend on what you're looking for from the application. But I can tell you that with these plugins, you can turn Obsidian into pretty much exactly the tool you're looking for. The following are the plugins I think new users should check out first, if only to get an idea of what plugins can do.
I'm including links to the Github page for all of these plugins, mostly for reference. It's a great deal easier to install plugins from inside Obsidian than it is to install them manually: Just go to Settings > Community Plugins > Browse and find the plugins there.
We've talked several times about the Kanban method, which involves a series of columns you can drag cards between. There are plenty of dedicated apps for this, most famously Trello, but there's a catch: You have to remember to open them. This is why I like the Kanban plugin for Obsidian. With this, I can create Kanban boards right in Obsidian. Every board is just a text document with multiple lists, meaning they don't take up a lot of space, and you can even edit them directly as text documents if you want.
This is just a great implementation of a useful tool—one that lives right alongside your other notes. I use this to organize my entire writing workflow, from brainstorming to writing to editing to invoicing. I can't recommend it enough.
Obsidian is built around Markdown, a simple way of formatting text files. I, personally, love this: It's a faster way to add simple formatting to documents. It's not for everyone, however, which is where Editing toolbar comes in. This simple extension adds a formatting toolbar to the top of every text window with common formatting options. Everything is still formatted using Markdown, but you can apply that formatting with the click of a mouse button if that's your preference. For some, this is just a way to do formatting tasks until you learn to use Markdown; for others, it can be an alternative to learning Markdown entirely. There's no wrong answers here.
Speaking of formatting: Sometimes you're going to want to copy text from Obsidian and paste it in another app. If the app in question doesn't support Markdown, that's going to be togch. This is why I use Copy as HTML: With this plugin, you can copy and paste with all the formatting in tact. You can trigger this from the command palette, if you like, or you can add a custom keyboard shortcut. I use this to copy text and paste it into Google Docs, Microsoft Word, and even the Lifehacker CMS—it works perfectly every time.
Grabbing articles from the web and marking them up is an essential part of many research workflows. I use the Extract URL extension for this. Similar to reader mode in browsers, this tool can grab the article—and only the article—of any URL you provide to it. My favorite way to use it is with the "Import From Clipboard" command, which you can find in the command palette or by assigning a keyboard shortcut. Just copy a URL, run the command, and the entire article from the URL will be copied to the current note. You could use this to make your own read it later service, if you wanted to.
We've talked about how great it is to use Obsidian as a journalling app. The Journal review makes this process even better. With it, you can set up the sidebar to show you entries from whatever period of time you like. I, personally, like to see entries from one, two, three, four, and five years ago, though I'll inevitably adjust this as I have more and more years of journal entries. I'm really enjoying seeing what past versions of me were thinking about—it's teaching me a lot about the ways in which I am, and am not, growing. This plugin makes that possible.
One of the most frustrating hobbies I ever took up was archery, but not because it’s hard to hit a target on the wall (it is, but I got pretty good at that). My problem was that one of the popular ways to go out and have fun with archery was to do “3D shoots,” where you would have to shoot at a series of statues of animals, each positioned at an unknown distance.
Estimating distance turned out to be my downfall. If you don’t have a good sense of how far away the fake deer is, you’ll end up shooting way over its back or burying your arrow under the ground beneath its feet. At the time, I assumed that estimating distance was less a learnable skill and more a gut feeling. Hence my surprise when I recently came across a quick eyeball-and-mental-math trick that allows anyone to estimate distance pretty accurately.
The technique involves some gut-level estimation, but a much easier type. You just have to guess—or know—the size of an object in the distance. (If you find yourself estimating distances often, you may want to look up the typical sizes of objects like cars. We'll use a car in our example below.)
You just need that guess, your thumb, and the ability to multiply by 10. Here’s how it works:
Hold your thumb in front of you (with your arm fully outstretched), and close one eye. Line up your thumb with an object whose size you have some sense of (for example, a car).
Without moving your thumb, close your open eye, and open the other one. Your thumb will appear to be in a different place.
Estimate how far your thumb “moved” relative to the object you’re looking at. For example, a car is about 15 feet long, so if your thumb moved half a car length, that’s about 7.5 feet.
Multiply by 10. In this example, you’d calculate that the car is about 75 feet away from you.
Too good to be true? I walked around and tried it out. I also carried a laser distance-finder and a tape measure with me to verify. One thing I noticed right away is that I was tempted to measure the space in between my two thumb images; instead, you need to measure from, say, the left side of the first thumb image to the left side of the second thumb image.
Standing in the kitchen, eyeballing the TV in the other room, I figured the TV was somewhere between 3 and 4 feet wide, and that my thumb moved a little more than half its distance, so about 2 feet. Calculation: TV must be 20 feet away. Laser level says: 25 feet. OK, not bad.
From my desk to a nearby bookshelf, my thumb moved 6 inches, maybe a little more. Calculation: 60ish inches. Actual measurement: 59 inches.
From a spot in my driveway to a garden shed: I turned my head sideways to measure against the height of the door. Thumb distance should be about 6 feet (most of the height of the door), thus the shed must be 60 feet away. Actual measurement: around 70 feet. Not perfect, but once again, not too far off.
The reason this trick is supposed to work is that the distance from your eye to your thumb is about 10 times the distance from one eye to the other. I measured this, too. Looking into the mirror with a measuring tape in front of my face, my pupils are 2 and 5/16" apart, or 2.3 inches. The distance from the spot between my eyebrows to my outstretched thumb is 23.5 inches. That’s a factor of 10.2, impressively close to the 10 I was promised.
Bottom line: This trick isn’t going to give you a precise distance, but as a tool for estimating, it actually kind of works! And by the way, if you ever need to estimate how far away a deer-shaped statue is: a deer’s body length is roughly 5 feet.
You know that adage, “The time will pass anyway?” A little over two years ago, I was applying to grad school and telling my friends that I wasn’t sure if I wanted to be 30 years old in a classroom. Someone told me, “The time will pass anyway,” meaning I could either be 32 with a Masters or 32 without one, but I’d end up being 32 either way. I graduate in three weeks, but that lesson will stick with me forever. It applies to many things: Thinking about what you want in the future can be a little demoralizing because there's so much space and potential work between now and then—but the time will pass anyway.
Looking around your home, you might imagine how you want it to look in a year. And whether you start working toward that goal or not, the time will pass anyway, so you might as well spend the next 365 days contributing small efforts towards the decluttered home you want. Here’s how you can work on decluttering your home every day for a year, building the space you want and habits that will last.
The technique is called 365 Less Things. It comes from Colleen Madsen, who decided in 2010 that she wanted to make an impactful New Year’s resolution and set out to get rid of one item in her home every single day. She ended up turning her year-long experiment into a system of decluttering that has grown into something pretty major in the 14 years since it started. And, of course, you don’t have to start on January 1. The real trick here is just committing to getting rid of one thing every single day. You can, of course, get rid of way more, but the primary goal is to just make incremental progress each day.
To start decluttering your home one day at a time, it might be helpful to set a recurring reminder in your phone as you start to develop the habit. The beauty of this method is that while it takes time, the time is actually beneficial: Eventually, it'll become second nature to find and get rid of one thing in your home every day. Plus, decluttering so incrementally is a lot less overwhelming than other methods of home cleaning and organization. Decluttering a whole room in a day, as some techniques call for, can be so daunting that some people can never bring themselves to begin, but one item a day is an easy habit to build and maintain.
That said, you should focus, generally, on one area or room at a time. While you totally can use a more free-wheeling approach and just pick up one item every day when you see one that could get tossed, it's better to move through your home in waves. A few days can be dedicated to the hall closet, a few to the kitchen, and so on. In the course of a year, you’ll certainly end up doubling back on some areas, and that’s fine—something you might not have been able to part with early on in the process could be a little easier to let go of once you’re in the habit. Going space by space will also help you see results a little quicker, which can help keep you motivated, too.
As with most decluttering methods, you'll need to make some decisions beyond “keep” or “get rid of.” For the things you’re getting rid of, you’ll need to decide if they get thrown away, donated, or sold. It might be more useful to adapt this method a little, vowing to throw away one thing a day and, ideally, find something to donate or sell a few times a week, too.
Because this method is almost entirely about getting rid of clutter, whereas other techniques also make space for reorganizing and putting away the things you’re going to keep, you could even consider adding another adaptation that allows you to find one thing to toss, one to sell or donate, and one to put away every day. While you’ll be down 365 items, at least, by the end of the year, the home won’t truly be decluttered if a bunch of your stuff is still where it doesn’t belong.
It’s probably unreasonable to think you’ll make a single trip to the donation center or post office every day, and you might want to save up a pile of things to put away until you have a sizable amount. Using three bins could help—one for what you’re keeping, one for what you’re donating, and one for what you’re selling—so even when you’re not throwing something away, it’s still out of your space. Every week or so, empty them out in accordance with whatever they’re holding.
There may be some days you feel more inspired to do a mass decluttering than others, but to the best of your ability, try to toss one thing every day, even if you don’t feel like it. It can be small, but just make sure you do it. After a year, your home will be transformed and you’ll have built up a solid habit of getting rid of what no longer serves you.
When Samsung’s Galaxy S23 came out in spring of 2023, it earned major praise from sites like PCMag for its pocketability, performance, and high-quality camera setup. Now, a little over a year out from release, you can add affordability to that list. Samsung has added all models of the Galaxy S23, including the base Galaxy S23, the Galaxy S23 Plus, and the Galaxy S23 Ultra to its “Certified Re-Newed” program, which means you can now buy refurbished versions of these phones straight from the manufacturer at a discount.
Samsung’s Certified Re-Newed phones are backed by the same one-year warranty as brand-new models, and they go through a 147-point inspection process before making their way to consumers. Samsung also gives each of its refurbished phones a new battery and ships them in a new box with a new data cable and ejector pin. The certified Re-Newed Galaxy S23 starts at $619 for the basic version, $769 for the Plus version, and $919 for the Ultra version. That means saving anywhere from $180 to $280, depending on the model.
The Galaxy S23 isn’t the newest or best Samsung smartphone, but it’s still recent and competitive, with a Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chip on all models and up to 200 megapixels of camera prowess on the Ultra model specifically.
Whether you’ll want to take advantage of these deals depends on how much you value Samsung’s certification process, and if you're willing to trade in a qualifying phone (you can check if your phone is supported during checkout), which will save you another $300. Used Galaxy S23 phones can go for as low as $380 on eBay or $414 on Amazon, but buying from third-party vendors always presents a risk. Some marketplaces, like Back Market, run their own verification programs, making them somewhat of a middle ground between buying straight from a seller and going right to Samsung. For more details, check out our guide on the do’s and don’ts of buying a refurbished smartphone.
Regardless of where you buy, rest assured that the Galaxy S23 will still see years of support, including the recent addition of new Galaxy AI features.
The iPhone’s sleep mode has a ton of features that can help you get a better night’s sleep, from silencing notifications to enabling sleep detection with your Apple Watch. Here’s a primer showing how to turn it on and off, and how to get the most out of its features.
The iPhone’s sleep mode is really a sleep focus, so it has all the features of a focus mode, plus a few special things that relate to sleep habits.
You can use any focus mode to:
Silence notifications
Optionally send a message to people who try to text you (“Beth has notifications silenced.”)
Let specific notifications through
Allow calls to come through if the caller tries to ring you repeatedly
Change your home screen and lock screen
There are tons of great uses for focus modes, and we have a guide here to their best features. For example, by customizing your home screen, you can remove work-related apps from your home screen but allow your music and meditation apps to remain. When it’s bedtime, your phone will switch over to showing your sleep-specific home screen. The regular home screen will turn back on in the morning.
In addition to those features, sleep focus also:
Enables sleep detection with your Apple Watch if you go to sleep during this time
Sets an alarm (optionally) to ring when sleep focus is over
You can read more about sleep tracking in our guide to tracking your sleep with your Apple Watch.
To set up the screens and notifications you’ll be able to see while in sleep focus, go to Settings and then Focus. From here, tap Sleep (or tap the + to create a Sleep focus if you don’t already have one). Choose your notification preferences, home screen, and anything else you’d like to customize.
Sleep focus is intended to be used on a schedule. Based on the schedule, sleep focus will turn on and off automatically.
To set the schedule, go to the Health app, tap Sleep, and scroll to the bottom where it says “Your Schedule.” Under Full Schedule & Options, you’ll see a place to edit your schedule. You can set different bedtimes and wakeup times for each day of the week.
On this screen, you can also toggle “use schedule for sleep focus” which tells the phone to turn on sleep focus during the times that are scheduled as your sleep times. While you’re on this screen, scroll to the bottom and set yourself a bedtime reminder, sleep results, and sleep goal (if you’d like).
Once you’ve set up sleep mode, you can turn it on anytime—whether you’ve set a sleep schedule or not. Just go to Control Center (swipe down from the top right corner of your phone) and tap Focus. If no focus is in effect, it will have a moon icon.
You can now choose a focus mode to turn on. Sleep should be in the list. Tap it and you’ll be in sleep mode.
Wake up early? You can turn off sleep focus at any time. Go to Control Center (swipe down from the top right corner of your phone) and you’ll see a button labeled “Sleep: on.” Here you can choose a new focus, like Do Not Disturb or any other focus you’ve created. To turn off Sleep mode without entering any new focus, just tap the Sleep focus and it will turn off.
To turn off or modify the sleep schedule for the future, tap the three dots on the sleep mode button. Tap Settings, and your iPhone will take you right to the settings screen where you can edit or disable your sleep schedule.
You can get the Oclu action camera on sale for $159.97 right now (reg. $299) through April 21. It was the winner of the Red Dot Design Award, the iF Design Award, and the European Product Design Award, with a 0.25-inch tripod mount, electronic image stabilization, two-microphone wind reduction, and IPX7 water-resistance. It has a one-touch record function and offers recordings at 4K at 30 FPS or 1080p at 120 FPS. It can even trim excess footage with the LiveCut feature, saving time and some of the 1,000mAh battery life.
You can get the Oclu action camera on sale for $159.97 right now (reg. $299) through April 21 at 11:59 p.m. PT, though prices can change at any time.
Before you clean your home, you should have to have some kind of plan. Before you have a plan, though, you should know what kind of organizer you are. Some decluttering methodologies help make plans that suits a particular space, but others, like Cassandra Aarssen’s “Clutterbug” philosophy, help with a better sense of who you are as a cleaner and organizer.
Aarssen is a professional organizer and has lots of experience helping the clutter prone to get their lives in order. She co-authored Real Life Organizing: Clean and Clutter-Free in 15 Minutes a Day with another big name in the space, Peter Walsh, and she’s broken down her personal system into four organizing styles that are meant to help figure out how you organize, so you can work with your own style instead of against it.
Overall, Aarssen advocates for determining your organizing style by identifying whether you’re a butterfly, cricket, ladybug, or bee. Once you’ve done that, you're meant to set clear rules about what you want to keep or get rid of, declutter hidden areas first, use bins to sort anything that doesn’t belong in your space and anything sentimental that you want to deal with later, and work in small areas to avoid feeling overwhelmed.
By first determining your organizing style, you can make the process of cleaning and organizing easier. What works for someone else might not work for you, so it’s important to declutter in a personalized way. Aarssen's focus on small spaces is also helpful for stopping you from getting overwhelmed, as it allows you to go at a slower pace, and her acknowledgement that some items are sentimental and deserve a little extra time to go through is less harsh and stressful than other organizers’ more severe calls to throw things away.
The first step in Aarssen’s decluttering method involves a little introspection: There are four organizing styles—butterfly, cricket, ladybug, and bee—and most people fall into one of them.
Ladybugs look nice on the outside but struggle with internal messiness, meaning they don’t have surface clutter, but their mess is hidden away in places like junk drawers and closets. If you’re a ladybug, a casual visitor to your home might think it was clean, but that’s just because they haven’t opened the door to the garage or gotten a good look in the cabinets.
Bees are people who find it hard to put things away or get rid of anything. There have unfinished projects all over the place and useless items strewn around, as bees are the kind of people who cling to things in case they come in handy in the future. If you have a bunch of charging cables or different-sized screws in a drawer somewhere, you’re probably a bee.
Crickets don’t want clutter around at all and are big on organizing everything down to the smallest level. They’re meticulous, but since that can get tedious, they're also easily put off from actually organizing at all. If you dream of having every single item organized just right but get overwhelmed by trying to do it and end up with a big mess, you’re a cricket.
Butterflies are more free-spirited: They don’t organize much at all because they prefer to have everything in their sight. They’re not big on details and would rather know (and see) where everything is all the time. If you walk in the house after work and toss all your stuff on a table near the door, you’re a butterfly.
To really dig into which Clutterbug style you are, try Aarssen’s quiz.
The good thing about realizing which of these categories describes your personal habits is that they also describe how you should be organizing in general. Assessing your style doesn’t mean you have to work hard to overcome it; it just means you have to work with it. For instance, a ladybug that likes a visually pleasing exterior but is hiding clutter should try keeping a bunch of small, decorative storage baskets around the house instead of relying on a stashed-away junk drawer. Better yet, consider multifunction furniture with hidden storage inside. On the other hand, bees and butterflies (or anyone who wants their stuff where they can see it for whatever reason) should opt for clear storage containers. Some, like these, have dividers inside that keep everything neat, but are still transparent, so you know exactly what’s in there when you need it.
Crickets need better time management and to be a little more relaxed and less focused on perfection, so if you fall into that category, try a method like the Core 4 technique to plan out a less overwhelming decluttering session when you have time.
Once you determine your category, you can get the storage solutions you need and start on a real decluttering journey, whether you follow Aarssen’s next steps or a technique like Core 4 or 12-12-12. You may need to try a few different methods, but keeping your own personal habits and tendencies in mind will go a long way toward helping you develop a cleaning strategy you can stick with long term.
My job frequently requires me to switch from Windows to Mac and vice versa, which means it's easy to mix up the differences between the two platforms. For example, I keep forgetting that the "close" button doesn't work the same way on these two platforms. On a Mac, it usually hides the window. But on PC, it gets rid of it entirely. So imagine my annoyance when I recently booted up my Windows PC and accidentally closed Firefox, which had 11 open tabs. Recovering these tabs was easy, if a bit tedious, and I discovered a few useful methods to speed up the process.
The simplest and fastest way to restore your tabs is a single keyboard shortcut. On Windows, this is Ctrl-Shift-T. On a Mac, it's Command-Shift-T. If you've closed or quit the browser, you can open it again and use this shortcut to restore all the tabs you had open.
If the shortcut doesn't work, you can try an alternate method to restore your tabs. In Chrome (or any other Chromium browser), click the three-dots icon in the top-right corner and go to History > X Tabs > Restore Window. Under the History menu, you'll see a sub-menu with the number of tabs you had open from your previous session. Clicking into the menu reveals the option to restore them all.
In Firefox, you can click the three horizontal lines button in the top-right corner and go to History > Restore Previous Session to restore all your tabs.
The simplest way to restore your tabs is to ask your browser to open previously closed tabs each time you fire it up. In Chrome (and other Chromium browsers), you can do this by pasting chrome://settings/onStartup into your address bar, pressing Enter, and selecting Continue where you left off.
Firefox uses a similar process. Open about:preferences#general in the address bar and tick on Open previous windows and tabs under the "Startup" subheading.
Getting a tax refund can feel like receiving a nice windfall of cash. But before you go on a spending spree, consider using your refund money wisely to give your finances a boost. According to a recent study by Bankrate, around 30% of taxpayers plan to deposit their refunds into savings, while another third intend to use it to pay off debts. Both of those are smart moves that can set you up for long-term financial success—but how should you prioritize your different short- and long-term financial goals? I spoke with Michael Hershfield, founder & CEO of embedded wallet Accrue Savings, to better understand how taxpayers can make the most of their refunds this year.
"One common mistake taxpayers make with their refunds is impulsively splurging on unnecessary expenses as soon as the money arrives," Hershfield says. "It can be easy to view a tax refund as extra money, which leads many to forget the importance of strategic financial planning."
To ensure you make the most out of your tax refund, approach it with a clear purpose in mind. Evaluate your financial situation and goals, and make purchases that align with your long-term objectives. Whether it's saving, investing, or paying off debt, prioritize thoughtful decision-making by keeping your long-term financial goals in mind.
Start by creating a comprehensive financial plan for your refund, tailored to your individual goals and values. A good way to do this is by creating a daily, weekly, and monthly budget. Hershfield recommends following the 50/20/30 rule to help you manage your finances effectively. Here’s how it breaks down, in broad strokes:
50% of your monthly spending goes toward essentials. Your home, your transportation, your food, etc.
20% of your monthly spending goes toward savings goals. You can also group debt payments into this category, since paying down debt helps you build savings later.
30% of your monthly spending goes toward everything else. That might include your gym membership, travel, gifts, and dining out.
Unfortunately, there’s no one magic spreadsheet out there. It may take some trial and error to find one that makes sense for your personal situation. Here’s our guide to getting your budget started, and be sure to check out some of the best budgeting apps based on your savings goals.
If one of your goals is paying down high-interest debt, prioritize directing your tax refund toward the debts with the highest interest rates and fees first. This approach will lead to significant long-term debt reduction and financial freedom.
After directing money to paying down debt, turn to your savings goals. Whether it's building an emergency fund, saving for a vacation, or planning for retirement, having specific goals will give your savings a purpose.
After making a plan for this tax refund specifically, remember to abide by certain saving and spending habits year-round.
Avoid the urge to increase your spending when you receive your tax refund. Instead, focus on using the money wisely to improve your financial situation and achieve your long-term goals.
Apps like YNAB and Goodbudget (RIP Mint!) can help you create a budget, track your spending, and set money saving goals. The visualization and notifications they provide can keep you focused and motivated. Again, I recommend checking out the best budgeting apps based on what kind of saver or spender you are. Choose the one that makes it easiest for you to see exactly where your money is going, so you can identify areas where you can cut back.
There are plenty of budgeting spreadsheets and resources online, not to mention apps, that can help you organize where you allocate your tax refund. Here are some great accounting tools to try:
Quicken Simplifi ($2 per month)
RocketMoney ($3 per month)
Intuit QuickBooks Online ($15 per month)
Of course, you should allow yourself to spend some of the money enhancing your life and bringing joy. Just set a reasonable budget for non-essential, quality-of-life spending.
If you already have a Google ecosystem at home and like the voice-activated Google Assistant or have a Nest Hub to control your smart devices, the Google cameras will sync in seamlessly into your home. Google cameras do require a subscription to unlock all of their features, but you still get their basic features subscription-free. Right now, Amazon has a sale on four Google security cameras for up to $80 off. This sale is my favorite Amazon deal of the day and is perfect for people who want to stay within the Google ecosystem.
The wireless Google Nest Doorbell is the classic video doorbell. This one is battery powered, so the installation is as easy as setting up the bracket on your wall and clipping the camera to it. The trade-off is that you'll need to recharge the camera every two and a half months, approximately (depending on your use). The battery version doesn't connect to your chime since it is wireless, so you'll depend on phone notifications (or Google Home speakers if you have them). The Nest Doorbell got a "good" review from PCMag, and you can read more about its specs there. You can get one for $129.99 (originally $179.99), which is its second lowest price according to price-checking tools.
If you need an indoor camera, the wired Google Nest Security Cam is on sale for $69.99 (originally $99.99), the lowest price this camera has been, according to price-checking tools. This camera gives you a three-hour video event history and one-hour local backup storage as long as one hour in case your wifi goes out. It shoots 1080p HDR video, has night vision, can recognize faces (if you pay for the subscription), and has dual-band wifi connectivity. This indoor-only camera got an "excellent" review from PCMag.
For those looking for a security camera with lights, the Google Nest Cam with Floodlight is available for $199.99 (originally $279.99) after an $80 discount. The floodlight camera is bright, with two dimmable 2,400-lumen LED white lamps of 4,000K. It received a "good" review from PCMag because it records in 1080p video and responds to Google Assistant voice commands. The ability to have voice commands is what sets this floodlight camera apart from most of the competition, and if you like having the Google system in your home, it's your only option.
The indoor or outdoor Google Nest Cam is essentially the Google Nest Cam with Floodlight, only without the light—and it's battery-powered. You can get it for $129.99 (originally $179.99). The camera features two-way audio, records in 1080p resolution, has night vision and a 130-degree field of view. You can read more about it from PCMag's "excellent" review.
As most of us learn once we become adults, money has a weird habit of vanishing almost magically. We employ a wide range of psychological tricks to stop ourselves from just YOLOing that cash out into the universe, and sometimes those tricks actually work and we manage to put together a tidy sum in a savings account. The average American, in fact, has more than $60,000 in savings (not counting retirement accounts)—although that number is a little deceptive, as the median average amount of savings is just $8,000, meaning half of Americans have less than $8,000 in savings. If you’re like most Americans, though, eight grand (or even significantly less than eight grand) is still a lot of money—and it’s not easy to save it.
That’s why sudden, large expenses are so tragic—you’ve put so much effort into building up your savings, and now a roof repair, car repair, or medical bill is going to wipe all those savings away. It can be demoralizing to see your savings vanish into the void—plus, if you have to use everything you have to pay a big bill, you're left with no emergency fund. Luckily, if you have savings there’s another option worth considering: a passbook loan.
A passbook loan (aka a savings pledged loan) is a loan secured by your own money. With a passbook loan, your bank freezes the portion of money you’re borrowing, but leaves it in your savings account. Then you pay the loan back as with any other loan, and as you do so the bank releases your savings back to you. You’re essentially paying to borrow money from yourself.
For example, let’s say you have $5,000 in your savings account, and you need to repair your roof (average cost: $1,150). You can take the money from savings and pay the repair bill, but then you would simply lose that money. Or you could charge the repair to a credit card and keep your savings intact—but wind up paying high interest on the loan. Instead, you can take out a passbook loan. The bank freezes $1,150 of your savings, and as you pay the loan back that money becomes accessible again.
Borrowing from yourself—and paying for the privilege—might not seem like such a hack at first blush. If you simply pay the bill from your savings, you avoid paying interest on top of it. But there are several reasons why a passbook loan can make a lot of sense:
You keep your savings. It’s not easy building up savings. If you have a nice little nest egg, depleting it to pay a bill is depressing—and there’s no guarantee you’ll be able to save that amount ever again.
The interest is low. Because a passbook loan is secured against the money you already have in your account, you typically get a really great interest rate—often as low as 2%. It will definitely be cheaper than a personal loan or a credit card (unless you can get a 0% deal, although those have their drawbacks as well).
The paperwork is minimal. Because you’re a customer of the bank, passbook loans are usually easy to arrange, without all the fees and red tape that personal loans incur.
You're still earning interest. The money you borrow is frozen in your account, meaning you can’t access it until you pay back the loan. But it will still earn interest, which helps to both keep your savings plan on track and defray the overall cost of the loan—at least you’ll be getting some money back.
You build credit. If you have a poor credit score, a passbook loan is a good way to build your credit because it is similar to a secured credit card. Your credit score won’t matter because you’re securing the loan with money the bank already has, so there’s zero risk to them, but paying it back on time will probably improve your credit score. Not all banks report passbook loans to credit bureaus, though, so this is something you should check on before assuming anything.
If you can’t get a loan from other sources because of your credit history, a passbook loan might be your best—and possibly only—option to avoid draining your savings to cover an unexpected expense.
Setting up a passbook loan is pretty simple. All you need is a savings account or certificate of deposit (CD) account with sufficient funds to cover the loan amount. Most banks will loan you up to 90% (or even 100%) of your account balance as a passbook loan, and often they have flexible payback terms that allow for pre-payment, so you can get the loan taken care of as quickly as possible.
A passbook loan might not be ideal for everyone. There are some downsides to consider:
The amount of money you can borrow is limited by how much you have in a savings account or CD. If you don’t have enough in your savings account to secure a loan of the required amount, you will need to look for other loan options.
If you borrow a big portion of your savings, you lose access to that money. If another emergency expense comes up you won’t be able to use your savings to pay it, which might push you into an additional (and possibly more predatory) loan.
If you default on the loan, you don’t just suffer a lower credit score and a growing debt—you will literally lose the savings you used to secure the loan.
Even though interest rates on passbook loans are low, it will still cost more than simply paying the bill with your savings.
An air purifier can dramatically improve the air quality in your home, reducing allergens and dust—assuming it is the right size for your space and you change the filters often enough. And smart air purifiers should have two big benefits over traditional dumb purifiers: They can tell you precisely when to change the filters, and they can tell you precisely what’s being pulled out of the air. The Dreo Air Purifier Tower Fan ($269.98), like the Dyson Hot+Cool I reviewed last year, tries to do everything an air purifier should do while also being a fan. And while all the features on the Dreo work well enough, I’m reluctant to recommend it based on two factors: size and value.
The Dreo stands at nearly four feet tall, with a silver fin and a spinning tower. It’s not unattractive, it’s just imposing. Air purifiers work best, as fans do, in the middle of the room, but you won't want to plop this down in the middle of your living room—and it’s not just large, it’s also heavy, weighing in at nearly 18 pounds. (More on that later.) It required no assembly, though; it was ready to go once I pulled the plastic off. At that point, I simply plugged it in and paired it with the Dreo app—and the pairing process was flawless. Additionally, you can add Dreo devices to your Alexa or Google Home hub. While a lot of newer products use Matter to bridge products to HomeKit, Dreo is not HomeKit-compatible at this time. (I did find some suggestions online for workarounds to get Dreo working with HomeKit, but I haven't tested them out.)
The interface of Dreo's app uses a lot of white space, and it doesn’t attempt to do too much: It simply tells you the air quality, the temperature, and how much filter life you have left. You can view the data over the last twenty four hours or thirty days. The app lets you set up schedules and turn the tower on and off by activating the fan, the purifier, or both.
With products like this, it sometimes feels silly or unnecessary to have the additional smart functions, but the ability to turn a purifier on and off remotely from another room, or even away from the house does have some benefits. Yes, you could use them in an automation to respond when the air quality goes over a certain threshold, but being able to turn them on and off remotely means you don't have to go into the space where the purifier is working—and it means you don't have to keep track of all those tiny remote controls. This is a real advantage over the (non-smart) Dyson Hot+Cool, because there are a few features that can only be activated by the remote, rather than the buttons on the face.
The second reason a smart app proves its worth is that it reports back on when to replace the filter. Generally, the rule on purifiers is to replace them every six months, but that is just an estimate. If it's been particularly smokey or dusty, the filters see more use; if it has been clear, you might be replacing them too early. I was a little horrified to see my filters at 75% after only a month of use, which means I'd be replacing them far too infrequently. (The filters for the Dreo, by the way, run about $39.99.)
Here’s where the app fails this purifier: Dreo only offers a very basic ug/m3 measurement, which is a common way to express how polluted the air is. As I write this, the Dreo is reporting 10 ug/m3, which it considers “excellent.” This means there is ten micrograms of pollutant per cubic meter of air in the room. What it doesn’t do is tell you what makes up that pollutant. In comparison, the Dyson Hot+Cool isn’t smart, by which I mean you can’t do much with the app—you control it via the buttons on the face or a small remote you will probably lose (at least I did). But the Dyson reports on the face of the machine what actually makes up the pollutants it filters, such as gases, particulates, and VOCs. I didn’t consider this an important feature on the Dyson until the Dreo was missing it.
One evening, for example, the Dreo app reported “poor” air quality in the room when the up/m3 spiked to 270. I’d like to dig into why it did so, but without that additional information about what the Dreo was pulling out of the air, I can only speculate it was related to the dinner I was cooking in the room next door. However, you can glean some additional information from the PM rating it delivers, which refers to particulate size (particulate material, specifically). I placed the purifier in my office because I was doing drywall work in there, and I was able to watch the purifier bring the PM down significantly from the time I turned it on to a few hours later, and I could even observe how much cleaner the air was after.
I’ve been playing with a few new Dreo products, and one of the aspects I really enjoy is the quality of the breeze the fan produces; it feels less like a fan and more like a genuine breeze. This is likely due to the dual motors powering the Dreo fan, which is also very quiet, even at max fan and purifier settings. Dreo reports that the tower maxes out at 38 Db, and I was never able to measure it going higher, but in sleep mode, it goes down to 25Db.
One thing in particular I liked about the Dreo fan interface is that you can adjust the strength from 1 to 10 with a slider, and it doesn’t jump in power, but softly rolls to the next setting. There’s a sleep feature in case you won’t be intimidated by this behemoth in the bedroom, or you can set it to auto to cycle on and off on its own. The tower can oscillate up to 120 degrees.
I found myself staring at the Dreo often over the last few weeks, trying to figure out where it would fit in. A dentist's office, maybe, or a classroom—large spaces where large appliances wouldn't be conspicuous and the design might feel industrial and cool. But this is where the main issue I have with Dreo became evident: When dealing with purifiers, you want one that is meant for the size of the room you're using it in. This is important because a purifier basically exchanges the air in the room, and you want that to happen often enough that it's meaningful for the people who move in the space. A small purifier would eventually clean the air in a whole house, but it would take a lot longer than it does to clear the air in a single room. If there's a wildfire nearby and smoke is a big problem, you want the right size purifier for the space you have to turn the air over every thirty minutes or less.
The Dreo didn't advertise a suggested room size for this purifier, so I asked them directly, and their response was "150-300 square feet." I sought clarification because there's a big difference between 150 and 300 square feet, and in either case, that is an incredibly small amount of square footage for a purifier of this size. I have five purifiers in my home from companies like Medify, and they are effective for larger spaces in a vastly compacted size; but those are just purifiers (not fans), so perhaps it's an unfair comparison. The Dyson is made for a space at the top end of that equation (290 square feet), but it does so at a third the footprint, all while having a heater on board, too. Both the Dreo and Dyson filter down to .03 microns, which is an average size for purifiers, although some like Medify filter down to .01 micron, which is important for virus control.
The Dreo works just fine. The fan is breezy, the air purifier clearly pulls particulates out of the air, and the price isn't bad at $269.98. But you simply can't overlook the size of the unit; it is a major obstacle for being functional in a home. It feels like an appliance meant for a more industrial space, but it's not built to handle that type of square footage. While the Dyson Pure line is generally more expensive, for less than $100 more, you can grab a Dyson Pure Cool Gen 1 ($365), which is just the fan and purifier. If you've got the money to spare, though, for $749 you can get a Dyson Hot+Cool, which I get a lot of use of year-round, since it functions as a room heater, fan, and purifier all in one.
If you’re planning on embarking on some adventures this season, owning the right gear can make all the difference. In remote locations, having a good light source, ways to navigate, gadgets that can help make chores easier, and the necessary emergency equipment can be the difference between a great trip and a disaster. Plus, some of these just make your time away more fun—and you’re allowed to have fun while you’re exploring.
Having a light source handy when you’re off the beaten path is always wise, but without access to traditional chargers, this can be tricky. A hand crank lantern like this 600 lumen one from Goal Zero will allow you to have a light source even without access to sunlight for charging. You can charge the battery by plugging it in and by using a portable solar charger as well if you choose. For a less bright but slightly more versatile option, you can use a lantern that combines solar charging with hand crank charging and will double as a cell phone charger, like this 200 lumen lantern from Mesqool. For a simpler option, you can opt for a compact flashlight with solar and hand crank charging options like this set of two flashlights from Simpeak. While flashlights have a more limited beam spread than lanterns, they can serve as a more portable option for hikes or emergency kits.
If you’re in a place where cutting your own firewood is an option, a battery-powered chainsaw can be a big help. Ryobi makes a cordless 18-volt chainsaw that can help you quickly tackle branches for firewood. For splitting wood, you can put down your ax if you have a good log splitter, like this one from Speed Force. It’s relatively small, but not portable enough for long hikes. If you plan to be at a remote location for an extended period, you can opt for a Ryobi 40 volt log splitter that will mechanically split your wood for you. This machine and the battery can cost around $1,000, so it’s not a tool for weekenders, but if you have a longer off-grid adventure planned, it can save you some precious time and energy.
For charging your cordless tools on the go, a six-pound, foldable Ryobi solar panel is a good choice because it’s compact, light, and versatile. You’ll need a power source to charge tools with it, but you can charge cell phones and other devices straight from the panel. For charging devices, the FlexSolar 10 watt foldable panel can come in handy because of its compact size and resistance to dust and moisture. Your cell phone and other smaller devices can be plugged directly into this solar panel, or you can use a power bank to save up a charge for when it’s dark outside.
For off-grid adventures, having a good knife is important for cutting food and all manner of other incidental items. For a lightweight option, this fold-out combination knife and rope/seatbelt cutter knife from Good Worker is small and multi-functional. It has a smooth and serrated blade surface for different types of cuts. For campsite cooking, a Gerber Gear Quadrant plain blade knife is a good option; it collapses for safety and space conservation and comes with a lifetime warranty. If you’re not bringing a vehicle on your adventure, a hatchet like this one from 7th Science Gear is a good alternative to battery-powered saws for collecting firewood. It’s small enough to be portable, but big enough at 15 inches to allow you room for a healthy swing when you’re chopping wood.
When you’re out having your adventures, you should always be prepared for the worst. Having a well-stocked emergency kit will give you peace of mind and can save your life as well. Kits like this one from the American Red Cross are a good call for adventures with enough room for a backpack. Having hand warmers, emergency blankets, first aid supplies, and a noisemaker for if you’re lost or stranded are all recommended for those traveling outside of cell phone reception or outside of normal first responders' boundaries. If you’re not able to carry such a large pack, you can opt for a well-stocked first aid kit like this one from Protect Life, but you should supplement it with some other emergency supplies like a whistle and an emergency blanket.
Last week, Meta released its latest update to Meta AI, further integrating the chatbot into the company's apps and adding new capabilities like GIF generation. Debuting with Meta AI is Llama 3, the company’s latest large language model, and a new Meta.ai website for accessing the chatbot outside of Meta’s social media apps.
Llama 3 currently boasts up to 70 billion training parameters, with a version based on 400 billion parameters on the way, so it’s certainly a powerful tool. But for the average person, what can it do that other tools like ChatGPT, DALL-E, and Google Gemini can’t? Here’s where you might want to use Meta AI over the competition.
While the most popular image generation AIs have up until now been limited to still frames, Meta AI can now automatically animate its images for you. Technically, this was already possible in services like DALL-E, but required the user to prompt a sequence of frames and then stitch them together manually. Meta will now do the in-between work for you, although relying on the AI isn’t perfect, as I saw in my testing.
The process is pretty simple. First, ask the chatbot to generate your image.
Then, tell it to animate the image to turn it into a GIF. In my testing, telling it to make a GIF straight from the start hasn’t worked.
And that’s it. The results, though, haven’t been foolproof for me. The above example of a cat chasing a ball of yarn worked well enough, but this hummingbird seems to just be hovering in space and stabbing its feeder with its beak.
Meanwhile, here’s the world’s youngest 17-year-old (my prompt just said "child"), amazed by some magical confetti springing up from his birthday cake. (I asked the AI to make a GIF of him blowing the candles out.)
Also unique to Meta AI is the ability to generate images as you type. Doing so is pretty simple, and while the images suffer from the same dream logic a lot of AI art does, the speed with which they pop up is impressive.
To generate images as you type, just go to Meta.ai (the feature doesn’t seem to work on the company’s social media apps quite yet, at least in my own testing), start with the “imagine” command, and begin describing your image. The chatbot will preview a new result for almost every character you type, allowing you to change the prompt as you type to tune it to your liking.
For instance, when I asked the chatbot to “imagine a dog chasing a ball,” it showed me a different breed of dog with almost every new character. When I told it to specify “imagine a dog chasing a ball down the,” it intuited that I wanted the dog to chase the ball down a street. When I specified that the dog itself should be getting chased by clowns, simply adding the word “and” after “chased by clowns” added a third clown to the frame.
On its own, it’s a dazzling gimmick. I’m used to AI art taking a few seconds to generate each individual frame, and this instead seems to push out the art in real time. But what takes it beyond gimmick territory is that pressing “enter” will give you four different results, and allow you to make a video of all the other options, so you can review your work and go back to the drawing board if needed.
Not every AI chatbot has live access to the internet, at least for free users. This is most noticeable on ChatGPT, where the free version’s data is limited to information from before January 2022. Meta AI, on the other hand, has access to both Google and Bing.
This means you can use Meta AI to answer questions requiring it to access current information. You could ask it “tell me the weather in NYC this weekend” or “did the White House announce anything important today?” You could even ask it to compile information, giving commands like “How is Dragon’s Dogma 2 reviewing?” or “What is the best movie to see this weekend?”
For each of these responses, Meta AI will tell you which search engine it used and which sources it referenced.
Meta isn’t alone in this ability, since Google Gemini also has live internet access. Where Meta’s chatbot differs is that it isn’t limited to Google Search, and that it handles sources differently. Sometimes, the sources that Google Gemini references are “not necessarily what Gemini used to generate its response”—they might just be sources Google thinks you would find useful. Meta AI, meanwhile, seems to always surface the sources it used with 100% certainty, but only those sources.
Whether this is a good or bad thing depends on who you ask, but Meta AI is now included with the Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp apps. Integration is different depending on each app—in Messenger and WhatsApp, Meta AI will show up as a contact. In Instagram, it’ll show up in the search bar. And in Facebook, it will show up in the search bar and in your feed.
For the most part, this means integration is fairly negligible outside of the latter two apps. For search bar integration, Meta AI will now suggest searches and questions as you type them, although these can be ignored by simply not clicking on any suggestions with the Meta AI logo next to it (if you do click on them, you’ll leave your search and enter a conversation with the chatbot). Regular searches will still populate, and they’ll instead have a magnifying glass next to them.
For feed integration in Facebook, it’s a bit more robust. On certain posts, Meta AI will now show up below the post, offering to tell you more information about it or perhaps suggesting questions to ask about it. Your feed may occasionally also get interrupted with a generic card prompting you to use Meta AI, which functions something like an ad.
With its latest update, Meta AI takes a few steps ahead of its most mainstream competition, meaning it’s now probably your best first port of call for AI-generated gifs. Image generation is also strong and now has that unique “imagine” feature, and Meta AI has access to one more search engine than Google Gemini does.
Still, you’re likely going to want to continue using ChatGPT, DALL-E, and Google Gemini alongside it, just so you can browse different results, especially when it comes to the still often dreamlike nature of AI art.
Last year, Princes William and Harry hugged each other at the King's Coronation. Around the same time, an explosion occurred at the Pentagon. If you believe the photos, that is.
When you see (or receive) powerful and emotionally stirring photos, it's tempting to take them on face value and then forward them to your friends and family. But before you do, take a moment and ask yourself: Could the image be fake?
You don't just have to use your critical faculties: Google Search offers free and easy-to-use tools to help you check if an image is real. With them, you can be an amateur fact-checker and press pause on misleading information.
Google's Fact Check Explorer can be your go-to search engine for checking false claims made through photos and videos. While it's especially useful for journalists, anyone can use it to scan the latest suspicious image or video. The home page lists the latest photos and videos that have passed or failed a fact check.
Enter a keyword (here I've used "John Lennon"). Fact Check Explorer will list all real and fake photos that went through existing fact checks from news outlets, research institutions, and sites like Snopes. Every fact-checked image or video will be displayed with a rating ("True," "False," "Misleading," "Misattributed," etc.). Click the cited link to read more about what fact checking was performed by the sources Google has linked to.
Alternatively, you can search by image. Select the image icon next to the search field and provide a URL or upload the image. Fact Check Explorer does a reverse image search and displays the results in the same format as the keyword search.
For instance, I tried it out with a sample image (a mysterious object found on Mars). I downloaded the image first and then uploaded it to the Fact Check Explorer. It turned out that the photograph is genuine, but according to NASA, the secret behind the image is rather mundane—it's a wind-carved rock.
Fact checks must meet specific Google guidelines to be included in the search results.
About this image is a window into any image's history, and it's a fantastic tool we hardly use. Use it to get more context about any image—real or fake.
Perform a Google Image Search, or a reverse image search, with your keywords. Then click on the three dots next to an image in Google Images results, or click “more about this page” in the About this result tool on search results.
"About this image" will tell you when the image first appeared online. Look at a brand-new image more critically than one that reputable sites have used for a longer time. Also, read what published sources are saying about it. If the picture shows up on unknown blogs or social media posts with hyped claims, that's usually a red flag.
Classic fact-checking methods are still practical. An image search like the above with Google Images, Google Lens, or any alternative reverse image search engine like TinEye will yield sufficient results. TinEye often unearths matches that Google misses, so you don't make an error when accurate reporting is necessary.
Finally, let's not forget the power of a good old-fashioned Google search or other search engines like Bing or DuckDuckGo. Try using keywords related to the image content, location, or the event depicted.
There are image analysis sites like Foto Forensics and Forensically. Google's toolbox, however, is powerful enough for the casual fact checker.
Beyond the tools, critical thinking is your best friend, especially when trying to spot well-doctored deepfakes and the fake news around them. Always remain skeptical of sensational claims.
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