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Aujourd’hui — 29 mars 2024Lifehacker

How I Cleaned My Stainless Steel Sink Without Spending Extra Money

There is a wide variety of ways to clean and buff a stainless steel sink. Some require the purchase of specialty products, and others are more reliant on household materials and DIY hacks.

While I won't dissuade you if you want to choose a ready-made, store-bought solution like Bar Keepers Friend or Weiman Stainless Steel Sink Cleaner, I did some testing to determine whether or not the cheaper methods work—and experienced some success. It turns out all you may need to clean your stainless steel sink is a melamine sponge and regular old baking soda.

How to clean a stainless steel sink with baking soda

Because I am a renter, my sink, like everything else in my apartment, came to me "pre-loved"—and it shows. It shows some serious scratches, evidence of its long history of being used to clean up cookware messes I can only imagine. A big part of cleaning stainless steel involves scuffing out minor scratches, which is why the internet is filled with recommendations for using abrasive cleaners or other granular agents. I opted for baking soda as my cleaning agent.

I next had to choose my cleaning implement. Perennial wisdom may tell you that you can use lemon wedges to remove stains, but in my experience, lemon-based hacks are hit or miss. I split the difference by choosing a lemon-scented S.O.S. steel wool pad

A dirty stainless steel sink
Before! Credit: Lindsey Ellefson

The first step to cleaning the sink is removing any dishes and wiping away any obvious residue. Since I just did a massive dish-cleaning session, my sink was extra grimy, so I pulled out a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser Ultra Foamy and scrubbed every inch.

Next, I sprinkled plain baking soda all over the sink. It’s abrasive, but mildly, so it’s perfect for removing light scratches and polishing the steel. I scrubbed the baking soda with the Magic Eraser, then rinsed and looked for lingering, more serious scratches or stains. I then used my S.O.S. pad to lightly buff at those spots, and saw a little improvement. Obviously, it’s hard to remove deep scratches by hand, but what little polishing I did had a noticeable effect.

I then rinsed out the sink again, and dried it with a soft cloth before applying a light layer of baby oil as a cheap, efficient polish. 

A clean stainless steel sink
After! Credit: Lindsey Ellefson

Overall, I was pleased with my low-cost, minimal effort results. If you're dealing with more stubborn stains, you can spring for an abrasive specialty cleaner like Bar Keepers Friend, but it's hard for me to justify the purchase when I only deep clean my sink every month or so. The baking soda worked perfectly well at buffing and shining my stainless steel sink, and I didn’t have to spend anything to do it, since I used products I already had on hand. 

Hier — 28 mars 2024Lifehacker

Use This Plugin to Add Your WordPress Site to the Fediverse

Par : Justin Pot

I miss blogs. Don't get me wrong: I write professionally for various websites, and I have an email newsletter, but none of them quite give me that blog feeling from the 2000s. The closest thing I've found is Mastodon. Maybe it's the jankyness, maybe it's the do-it-yourself mindset, but scrolling through Mastodon reminds me of old school blogs.

As it turns out, I can combine my passion for old-school blogging with my love of Mastodon. There's a simple plugin you can install on any WordPress site to make it part of the Fediverse, which is the network of social networks that includes Mastdon and, eventually, Meta's Threads. Users of those networks can follow your blog and get all of your posts, right in their timeline.

To get started, you need only install the ActivityPub plugin for WordPress. You can do this by heading to Plugins in your WordPress dashboard and searching for the plugin. Install and enable it and you're done: your website is now on the Fediverse.

Just install and activate the plugin and you're on the Fediverse. It's that easy.
Credit: Justin Pot

Every user of your WordPress site can now be followed by users of Mastodon and other social networks built on the ActivityPub protocol (collectively called "The Fediverse"). I confirmed this by searching for, and following, my blog from Mastodon.

It's my blog, but on Mastodon.
Credit: Justin Pot

I also followed myself, just to see how it looks. Full posts are available right in the Mastodon timeline, allowing people to follow keep up with my blog without leaving Mastodon. But the coolest thing, to me, is that any reply anyone sends to your posts shows up as a comment on your site.

Someone on Mastodon responded to my blog post. It showed up in the comments section.
Replies from Mastodon and other services show up right in the comments section. Credit: Justin Pot

You can reply to the comments right in WordPress, if you want, and the user will get the reply the same way they would any other reply. This allows you to blog, just the way you remember, while allowing everyone else to use the tools they prefer.

And you can go even further. If you want to follow people back, if only out of respect, you're going to need the Friends plugin, which basically turns your WordPress website into a complete ActivityPub social network. You can even set up the plugin to work with Mastodon apps, including Mona, the best app for Mastodon.

That's just for power users, though. For most people, this is just a simple way to give potential readers another way to read and interact with your blog posts. Setting this up also means Threads users will eventually be able to follow your blog, without you having to use Threads. Other services, including Tumblr, are also working on integrating with ActivityPub. An ecosystem like that just might bring back blogging—at least, I hope so.

YouTube Is Testing a Feature That Uses AI to Skip to the Best Parts of a Video

YouTube is always trying out new features for its users, which they call experiments. The latest experimental feature is called Jump Ahead, which purports to skip to the best part of a YouTube video for you.

The new feature works in conjunction with the double tap feature already available in the YouTube app on Android or iOS, which lets you hop forward in a video in 10-second increments until you've reached the portion that interests you.

The Jump Ahead feature will analyze that user watch data and couple it with machine learning algorithms to automatically detect what it believes is the next "best" point in a video that a viewer may be interested in, and offer a prompt to take you to that point via an onscreen Jump Ahead button.

YouTube says the Jump Ahead feature will work for creators when watching their own videos, even if they aren't currently subscribed to YouTube Premium. Otherwise, the Jump Ahead feature is currently being tested with a small group of YouTube Premium subscribers in the U.S. There's no word as to when the feature could roll out more widely.

Previously, YouTube introduced similar functionality in the form of a graph integrated into a video's progress bar that shows you the "most replayed" parts of that video. Initially, the most replayed feature was similarly exclusive to YouTube Premium subscribers, so there's always a chance that, if proven popular and effective, Jump Ahead could become an all-access option in the future. Last year, the company also tested, then removed, then reintroduced the option to watch any video in double speed by pressing and holding on the video player from within the YouTube app.

Use the 6/10 List to Take the Stress Out of Cleaning

Making a to-do list is a major step in being productive in any area of your life, from your personal pursuits to your work responsibilities, but when it comes to cleaning your home, you may not think to make one—let alone realize that some kinds of lists are better than others. You should definitely have an attack strategy before you start tidying up, which is why the 6/10 List is such a useful tool for busy people who still want their personal space to look nice.

What is the 6/10 List?

This cleaning method comes from Organized Chaos, which guides people through organizing, cleaning, meal planning, and more. The brand’s TikTok has over 800,000 followers and its video on the 6/10 List has over 3 million views, so it’s CleanTok-approved.

Basically, this method acknowledges and leaves space for the fact that you’re busy and cleaning is overwhelming. It provides an easy framework for how you should schedule and prioritize your cleaning tasks, taking the work out of figuring that out yourself and divvying the tasks across multiple days. 

The list is split into two main categories: “The Daily 6” and “The Weekly 10.” 

The Daily 6 are, roughly, these:

  1. Make beds

  2. Wash dishes

  3. Scrub sink

  4. Wipe counters

  5. Vacuum floors

  6. One load of laundry

The Weekly 10 are generally these:

  1. Wipe out fridge

  2. Wipe out microwave

  3. Tidy pantry

  4. Mop floors

  5. Clean bathrooms

  6. Clean sink drains

  7. Dust furniture

  8. Wash bedding

  9. Tidy car

  10. Clean pets’ bowls

Beyond that, there’s space for monthly tasks (scrubbing showers, deep cleaning appliances, cleaning out the garage, and vacuuming vehicles) and quarterly ones (wiping baseboards and doors, cleaning fans and lights, cleaning windows, cleaning furniture, changing your air filter, wiping down cabinets). 

How to use the 6/10 List

According to Organized Chaos, you can start small by choosing three of the six daily tasks to work on every day, then build your way up to tackling more. Those are the most necessary, basic cleaning steps that will keep your house looking nice, so it’s key to get in the habit of doing them every day. Of course, there are all kinds of other little tasks you could do on top of those—but like the 1-3-5 method of creating a to-do list, this recognizes that there really is a finite amount of things you have energy for in the day, so you should choose which ones you take on strategically. (And don’t forget the Pareto Principle, which says that 80% of your results come from 20% of your effort, so don’t waste your time on unnecessary tasks.)

The weekly tasks can—and should—be spaced out across the week so you don’t get overwhelmed. Once you get the hang of getting the daily and weekly chores done, reevaluate how using the list is going and feel free to swap out some tasks that might make more sense for your space. You might not have pet bowls to clean weekly, for instance, so something more specific to your life can fill that slot. The goal here isn’t to clean exactly as someone else prescribes, but to build timely habits that you can maintain and which will take the stress off of figuring out what you should even focus on in a given day. 

You Can Get This 4K Dual-Camera Drone on Sale for $75 Right Now

You can get this dual-HD-camera drone on sale for $74.99 right now (reg. $129.99). It's a budget drone that is excellent for beginners who want to experiment with flying: it has one-key takeoff and landing, altitude hold mode, and four-channel movement with a rolling 360-degree function. You can pair with your smartphone to take pictures and videos or see a real-time feed through the drone's two 1080p cameras; the front with 90-degree views and the bottom with 120-degree views. It also comes with four spare blades and two batteries for 26 total minutes of flying time.

You can get this dual-HD-camera drone on sale for $74.99 right now (reg. $129.99), though prices can change at any time.

How to Recognize an AI-generated Cookbook

As I sit here eating rich, juicy dumplings made by a dedicated human chef, I’m pondering—lamenting?—AI's role in the food industry. Specifically, I’m stewing over one small, wholesome corner that AI has been butting into: cookbooks. AI-generated recipes and cookbooks aren’t new by any means, but they’re more prevalent than ever, and better at impersonating human authors than before. These AI cookbooks are sneaky, but they're not perfect, and you should be able to decide if that’s what you really want to buy. Luckily, there are a few red flags to keep an eye out for.


By the way, the dumplings were from East Wind Snack Shop. The human chef and owner, Chris Cheung, wrote a cookbook, Damn Good Chinese Food, and it’s for sale here along with some other fantastic cookbooks:


An AI-generated cookbook in the wild

A recent post on X from Matthew Kupfer shows just how creepy AI cookbooks can be. It’s mostly hilarious, but quickly becomes alarming when you realize someone used AI to generate a bio and a photo of the “author.” 

A screenshot of @Matthew_Kupfer's post on X
Credit: @Matthew_Kupfer/X

Clearly, AI-generated recipes and cookbooks are already out there. That’s fine—besides the knowledge and work that it silently scraped from all the recipes on the internet—it is what it is. Even companies like Instacart have taken a dip in AI waters to generate recipes, but at least they're up front about it. They also note that the recipes "may not be perfect" due to the nature of its creation. AI recipes are untested, likely unedited, and there’s a possibility the meal comes out weird in some way, but hopefully not inedible.

But the dubious recipe quality is just one part of the problem. Cookbooks aren’t just collections of recipes. They’re years of hard work, mistakes, successes, incredible photography, experiences, and stories. Those stories are woven into recipes that share a person’s life. Maybe I’m a little sensitive because I’m an aspiring cookbook author myself, but it’s the impersonation that is unsettling. The lengthy prose of manufactured human experience, and the faux inspiration—you’ll have to excuse me, but I’ve lost my appetite. 

Your AI is showing

Since you can’t rely on the usual tricks—checking for the author’s photo or only searching for hardcover books—you might have to dig a little deeper, and trust your gut. Here are a few things to look out for when you're vetting a cookbook.

Odd cover claims

While the title might seem harmless, like The Complete Crock Pot in the X post, the subtitle, or other quips and promises on the cover can be a dead giveaway. For example, “2000 days easy delicious recipes” sounds like an extreme amount of days, and it seems to be missing a word.

Clunky phrasing or repeats

Speaking of missing words, this tip is from our post on how to tell if you’re chatting with a bot, and it’s applicable for cookbooks too. Look out for grammatical missteps, sure, but also oddly robotic phrasing and repetition. As Jeff Somers notes in the aforementioned post, “Even the best conversational AI often has trouble with the weird complexities and contradictions of language.”

If you feel like a sentence just doesn’t sound right, like “This electrical cooking equipment is used to make meals, particularly when you want to leave your cooking uncontrolled for hours,” you’re not being judgmental. This is not how most folks would describe crockpot cooking.

Repeated phrases are also a hallmark of AI writing. I intentionally switch up vocabulary when I write because I know it’s boring to read the same words again and again, but AI doesn’t get bored. It gets even. Just kidding, it’s awful at alternate phrasing. You wouldn’t believe how many times the section “What is Crock-Pot?” has the exact, or nearly identical, phrasing for “a crock pot, or slow-cooker, is a pot made of ceramic…” It’s a lot.

Publishing houses versus self published

Many AI-generated cookbooks are sold online, and they are self published. You can probably figure out why. As of right now, most established publishing houses are interested in making deals with human authors. It’s a shame because there are a lot of self-published authors out there who write great books, and big publishers can make it difficult for even great books to be seen. In the case of cookbooks though, look for what publishing company it's from; if it's listed as "self published" or "independently published," be wary.

Errors with key ingredients

If you can, look closely at some of the recipes in the book. While AI doesn’t usually make egregious measurement mistakes, like suggesting two cups of salt, it can omit things. If a recipe is titled “Barley Chicken Salad with Fresh Herbs,” and there are no herbs or barley to be found in the ingredient list, you might be dealing with an AI cookbook. Likewise, if a cookbook claims to be for special diets, like a low-glycemic cookbook or this vegan cookbook that got ripped off by AI, keep a lookout for recipes that don’t fit the diet. 

AI might hurt our human feelings when it imitates us, but this type of error is where untested, unedited recipes get dangerous. A vegan is likely to catch butter or mozzarella listed in a recipe, but beginners following a low-glycemic recipe might not catch a starch error.

Tips for cookbook shopping success

Don’t be fooled by an author picture and biography

AI generates photos with terrifying ease. Read here for tips on identifying pictures of fake humans (two words: errant earrings). If you’re not sure, you can also look up the author. AI “authors” will have no history besides the cookbook, so you won’t have to do much research.  

Check for AI-generated reviews

AI reviews look suspiciously alike—like word-for-word alike—and 20 or 30 reviews will post on the same date, or within a tight time frame. If you see that, the next step is to click on the one- or two-star reviews. Those are probably humans and they’re probably telling you the cookbook is AI generated.

Shop in a bookstore

A what? A brick and mortar bookstore. If you’re buying new, then you can rest assured that bookstores like Warwick’s and Greenlight Bookstore are buying their stock from reputable publishers. If you’re buying used, then at least you can flip through the book and thoroughly check for the red flags mentioned above. Plus, you’ll be supporting a real-life bookstore, and that’s nice too.

What's New on Paramount+ With Showtime in April 2024

Par : Emily Long

Paramount+ viewers can start April with the premiere of the fifth and final season of Star Trek: Discovery (April 4), which will wrap up the 65-episode series that rejuvenated the sci-fi franchise in 2017. There's also season four of The Challenge: All Stars (April 10), the reality competition show that, this time around, brings together former players to go head-to-head in South Africa. There's also CTRL+ALT+DESIRE (April 16), a three-episode docuseries about the manhunt to capture Grant Amato following the murder of his family members.

For Paramount+ With Showtime subscribers, there's Talk to Me (April 1), a supernatural horror film from A24 about a group of friends who use an embalmed hand to communicate with the spirit world.

Paramount+'s live programming kicks off with the CMT Music Awards (streaming on April 7) followed by live coverage of The Masters, which begins on April 8. There's also The 100th: Billy Joel at Madison Square Garden – The Greatest Arena Run of All Time (April 14 at 9 p.m. ET), a livestream of the artist's 100th sold-out concert of his MSG residency.

Here’s everything else coming to the service in April. Note that titles with an asterisk are exclusive to Paramount+ With Showtime; everything else is also available to subscribers on the ad-supported plan. Those with two asterisks are available to Paramount+ With Showtime users streaming live on CBS and to all subscribers the following day.

Paramount+ Originals and premieres coming in April 2024

Arriving April 1

  • Talk to Me*

Arriving April 4

  • Star Trek: Discovery, season five premiere

Arriving April 7

  • CMT Music Awards**

Arriving April 10

  • The Challenge: All Stars, season four premiere

Arriving April 12

  • DORA, premiere

Arriving April 14

  • The 100th: Billy Joel at Madison Square Garden – The Greatest Arena Run of All Time**

Arriving April 16

  • CTRL+ALT+DESIRE

Arriving April 26

  • Knuckles, premiere

TV shows coming to Paramount+ in April 2024

Arriving April 1

  • Jeff Dunham: I'm with Cupid

Arriving April 3

  • Bubble Guppies (Season 6)

  • Bubble Guppies: Bubble Puppy’s Fin-tastic Fairy Tale

  • Bubble Guppies: Guppy Style!

  • Bubble Guppies: The Puppy and the Ring

  • CMT Crossroads (Seasons 21-22)

  • CMT Presents The Judds: Love Is Alive - The Final Concert

Arriving April 8

NCISVerse: The First 1,000**

Arriving April 10

  • Nick Cannon Presents: Wild 'N Out (Seasons 19-20)

Arriving April 17

  • Mighty Planes (Seasons 1-4)

  • RENO 911! (Season 8)

  • The Last Cowboy (Season 4)

Arriving April 24

  • Air Disasters (Season 9-10)

  • How Did They Fix That? (Seasons 1-2)

Movies coming to Paramount+ in April 2024

Arriving April 1

  • Arsenal*

  • B.A.P.S.

  • Bandslam*

  • Black Lotus

  • Blades of Glory

  • Catch and Release

  • Chaplin

  • Cheech & Chong's Still Smokin'*

  • Cloud Atlas

  • Cold Mountain

  • Daddy's Home

  • Deep Impact

  • Domestic Disturbance*

  • Drive Me Crazy

  • Edge Of Darkness

  • El Dorado

  • Emma

  • Empire Records

  • Face/Off

  • First Blood

  • Galaxy Quest*

  • Get Rich or Die Tryin'

  • Gunfight at the O.K. Corral

  • Hotel for Dogs

  • I Love You, Man

  • Identity

  • Inherent Vice

  • Jacob's Ladder*

  • Juice

  • Just Like Heaven

  • Lara Croft: Tomb Raider

  • Last Night*

  • Life

  • Like a Boss

  • Magnolia

  • Malcolm X

  • Max Steel*

  • Mimic

  • Muriel's Wedding*

  • My Baby's Daddy

  • Nebraska

  • Nick of Time*

  • Planes, Trains and Automobiles

  • Rambo: First Blood Part II

  • Rambo III

  • Saturday Night Fever

  • Secret in Their Eyes*

  • Team America: World Police

  • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

  • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze

  • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III

  • The Crossing Guard*

  • The Evening Star*

  • The Heartbreak Kid

  • The King of Comedy

  • The Ring

  • The Ring Two

  • The Ring Two (Unrated)

  • The Score

  • The Secret Garden

  • The Station Agent

  • The Transporter Refueled*

  • The Uninvited

  • TMNT

  • Total Recall

  • Transformers

  • Up in Smoke

  • Vacancy

  • Varsity Blues

  • Whip It

  • Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

  • Wild Card*

  • Wuthering Heights*

Arriving April 11

  • School For Scoundrels*

Arriving April 12

  • Deliver Us from Evil

Arriving April 25

  • The Painter

Xbox Cloud Gaming Now Supports Mouse and Keyboard for Beta Users

Mouse and keyboard fans, rejoice: Microsoft is finally rolling out support for these peripherals for Xbox Cloud Gaming, so long as you're a selected Xbox Insider.

The company is rolling out mouse and keyboard support as part of its latest Xbox Update Preview for Alpha Skip-Ahead testers. That means general Xbox Insiders will still need to wait, but for those in the "invite only" testing program, you should be able to hook up your favorite mouse and keyboard to play games that previously required a controller.

Microsoft says mouse and keyboard support works in cloud gaming on Microsoft Edge and Chrome, as well as the Xbox App on PCs (for those enrolled in the PC Gaming Preview). If you're playing in a browser, you'll need to enable Preview features first. You'll find the option on xbox.com/play by clicking your profile picture, choosing Settings, and enabling Preview features.

The program currently supports 14 titles at this time. Not a ton, but enough to get you started with experiencing mouse and keyboard controls on Xbox Cloud Gaming:

  • Fortnite (browsers only)

  • ARK Survival Evolved

  • Sea of Thieves

  • Grounded

  • Halo Infinite

  • Atomic Heart

  • Sniper Elite 5

  • Deep Rock Galactic

  • High on Life

  • Zombie Army 4 Dead War

  • Gears Tactics

  • Pentiment

  • Doom 64

  • Age of Empires 2

Microsoft has acknowledged a known issue with Atomic Heart, as there can be issues when swapping from your controller to mouse and keyboard while streaming the game.

You'll also notice that games display controller UI elements until you start to use your mouse and keyboard to interact with the game. If you see "press A to start," for example, trying clicking or moving with WASD to adjust the UI.

Browser users should take note that the stream needs to be in full screen for your mouse and keyboard to work. If you want to exit full screen, hit the Escape key. You also need to click on a game stream element in order for the game to recognize your mouse input. You can also press F9 to exit out of mouse and keyboard controls for the game.

Your PS5 Will Soon Be Able to Capture Game Clips to Help Other Players

If you're playing a game on your PS5 and can't defeat a particularly challenging boss or figure out how to solve a certain puzzle, you'll soon be able to get help from an anonymous stranger. Sony has announced that later this year, your PS5 will be able to automatically capture game clips from your play sessions and upload them as hints for other players—and clips taken by other players will be available for your reference, too. This addition is called Community Game Help, and it's something you'll have to opt into, offering an interesting way to get help with a game without looking up an online walkthrough.

How you can contribute to PS5's Community Game Help

A screenshot of the upcoming Community Game Help settings page.
Credit: Sony

In the coming months, you will be able to opt in to Community Game Help, which means that videos from your gameplay will help others. Once this feature is rolled out to your PS5, you can go to PS5 settings > Captures & Broadcasts > Captures > Auto Captures > Community Game Help > Participate. This will allow you to opt in to the program.

This settings page, according to Sony, will also let you select how many videos you want to let the console capture every month. When you do certain things in supported games, your PS5 will automatically capture these videos and upload them to Sony's servers. When videos are uploaded, a moderator will review your content and decide if it can be published under Community Game Help. If your video is published, you'll get a notification on your PS5 and it'll appear under the Your Published Videos option on the Community Game Help settings page.

Sony says that your PS5 will automatically delete these clips once they're uploaded, which means that you don't have to worry about running out of storage. The company has also addressed other privacy concerns by confirming that only raw gameplay footage will be uploaded. Sony won't access your webcam feeds, party chat audio, or audio from your mic. According to Sony, this feature will be available "in select games later this year, and [its] goal is to expand it to as many titles as possible in the future."

How to use Community Game Help on your PS5

A screenshot of the upcoming Community Game Help feature from Sony's PS app.
Credit: Sony

At the moment, Community Game Help is being rolled out slowly, so it could be a while before it shows up on your PS5. To check if you've got it, you can hit the PS button when you're playing a game, select a card labelled Hints Inside, and select any of the videos under Community Game Help. This will also be available on the PS app.

These Dell and Alienware Laptops Are up to $700 Off

Dell's ongoing sale ends March 31, but there are still plenty of deals on laptops to take advantage of. If you're looking for a new laptop, I have pulled my top three choices from the sale that you should consider.

The Dell XPS 13 for $599

This Dell XPS 13 came out in 2022 as a light and slim portable laptop starting at $999. The XPS line from Dell has been trying to perfect the affordable portable laptop, and when the new XPS 13 came out in 2023, it forced the 2022 version to lower its price to $799, but you can get it now for $599. The 2022 version is a good laptop for most people looking to do everyday computing tasks and stream media, but it's not for heavy media editing or gaming. It's a 13.4-inch laptop with 1920 by 1200 resolution, the standard 60Hz refresh rate, a Core i5-1230U processor, 8GB of RAM, and a 256GB SSD.

The Inspiron 16 Laptop for $599

If you'll take a bit more power over portability, consider the Inspiron 16 laptop. As the name implies, this is a bigger 16-inch laptop, which means less portability, but it still has a solid battery life with up to 13 hours of juice (the XPS gets up to 12). The Inspiron 16 also has twice as much storage and RAM, with 512 GB and 16 GB, respectively. Most of the other specs are about the same, with 1920 by 1200 resolution, 60Hz refresh rate, and a Core i5-1335U processor.

The Alienware x16 gaming laptop for $1,599.99

If you're looking for a deal on a gaming laptop, consider the 2023 Alienware x16, which is $700 off. Like the other laptops on this list, this model is cheaper because it was superseded by the newer Alienware x16 R2 gaming laptop. But as our friends at PCMag will tell you, this is still an "excellent" gaming laptop. The x16 has a 16-inch screen with 1920 by 1200 resolution, a 480Hz refresh rate, a Core i7-13700H processor, 16GB of RAM, 2TB SSD, and an RTX 4060 GPU.

How to Block JavaScript on Specific Websites (and Why You Should)

JavaScript is a double-edged sword: It adds lots of useful features to your favorite websites, such as interactive maps, loading images in the background, refreshing content on a site without reloading the page, and more. At the same time, it's exploited by advertisers and tracking companies to deliver ads, pop-ups, and malware, and mine your data. Blocking JavaScript helps improve your privacy, but it risks breaking many websites. Luckily, there is a workaround—disable JavaScript on some sites, but not all of them.

What happens when you disable JavaScript

Disabling JavaScript has a few big advantages. It often loads pages faster, blocks invasive tracking, and sometimes even lets you bypass paywalls. Unfortunately, it will also make some modern websites look like they were designed in the 1990s; in the absence of JavaScript, they might revert to a basic HTML layout. Additionally, forms may not work, you may not be able to sign in to sites, and interactive webpages may not function at all. You'll also notice that your favorite websites look different when JavaScript is blocked. This is because many sites use it to render fonts as well.

It's clear that disabling JavaScript globally is a bit of an extreme option for most people.

The solution: disable JavaScript on specific websites

By disabling JavaScript on some sites, you still get to use JavaScript on sites that break without it, while benefiting from improved privacy, ad blocking, and cleaner layouts on other sites.

Disable JavaScript on a per-site basis in Chrome, Edge, Vivaldi, Opera, and other Chromium browsers

The JavaScript settings page in Brave, a Chromium-based browser.
Credit: Pranay Parab

You can use a built-in feature to disable JavaScript for specific websites in Chrome and other Chromium browsers such as Microsoft Edge, Vivaldi, Opera, Arc Browser, etc. To get started, open this URL: chrome://settings/content/javascript. Although this is the way to open Chrome's JavaScript settings page, it works in all Chromium-based browsers. 

On that page, select Don't allow sites to use JavaScript. This will disable JavaScript by default, but you can add exceptions to the rule. Under Allowed to use JavaScript, click Add to select the sites where you want to enable it. Alternatively, you can stay with the default option of Allow sites to use JavaScript and blacklist the sites where you want to block it. You can do that by clicking Add under Not allowed to use JavaScript.

If that sounds like too much work, you can use the excellent NoScript extension with your browser. It blocks JavaScript by default, but you can easily ask the extension to trust certain domains.

For Chrome on Android, follow our in-depth guide to disabling JavaScript on specific webpages.

Block JavaScript on specific sites in Safari

The Safari preferences page for StopTheScript
Credit: StopTheScript

Safari allows you to block JavaScript everywhere or not at all. To block Javascript on all sites in Safari on your Mac, you can go to the Safari menu > Settings > Security and uncheck Enable JavaScript. On your iPhone, this setting is available under Settings > Safari > Advanced. You can uncheck JavaScript

That option is a bit extreme for most people, but you can adopt a more moderate approach by installing the StopTheScript extension. It costs $6 and works with Safari on your Mac, iPhone, and iPad. This extension allows you to block JavaScript on the sites you choose. The developer has created a nice tutorial explaining how to use StopTheScript and you can follow the steps to set it up quickly.

Disable JavaScript for some sites in Firefox

A screenshot of NoScript's settings page in Firefox
Credit: NoScript

When you're using Firefox, NoScript is the extension you need. The extension will stop JavaScript on every site by default; you can click its toolbar icon to enable JavaScript on any site temporarily or permanently.

Stop JavaScript for specific sites in Orion Browser

Orion browser's JavaScript settings page.
Credit: Pranay Parab/Screenshot

The Orion browser, which lets you install both Chrome and Firefox extensions, lets you easily enable or disable JavaScript for specific websites. You can go to Orion Settings > Websites > JavaScript to set this up. At the top, you'll see an option to select if you want to enable or disable JavaScript by default. Select Off to disable it by default or On to allow it. Then, click the + button to add sites where the default global setting does not apply.

À partir d’avant-hierLifehacker

TikTok's 'Golden Retriever' and 'Black Cat' Relationship Theory Is Toxic

There are a whole bunch of TikTok trends that are more hurtful than helpful. Another one to add to the list: the "golden retriever boyfriend/black cat girlfriend" theory. The trend, which was coined a few years ago and has since continued to rack up a ton of videos on the subject, describes a relationship between “golden retriever” boyfriend who is easygoing, extroverted, and loves his girlfriend, a "black cat," who appears to have an attitude of indifference, low responsiveness, and is introverted. According to TikTok, this dynamic is one that couples ought to look for if they want a successful relationship and marriage.

One TikTok video lists examples of celebrity marriages and relationships that exemplify the "golden retriever" boyfriend and "black cat" girlfriend dynamic, and why they worked. In another video, a user talks about how, whenever she was the "golden retriever" girlfriend, her relationships never worked out—and only did when she was the "black cat."

This typology, according to Sarah Melancon, a sociologist and sexologist, tends to reflect negative stereotypes about men and women in relationships, only reversed from cultural norms. "Stereotypically, we expect the woman to be more relationship-focused and eager to please, while we expect men to be more detached and less ready to commit or connect.  Either way, when there is an imbalance of interest and effort in a relationship, it won’t be very satisfying," she says.

As for why this dynamic doesn't tend to be the healthiest, Melancon points out that a "golden retriever" boyfriend might be someone who's actually clingy, people-pleasing, or has an anxious attachment style, while the behavior and actions of a "black cat" girlfriend could indicate lack of interest, standoffishness, or an avoidant attachment style.

"Ideally, we want our relationships to be a two-way street," Melancon says. "While things will not be perfectly equal on a day-to-day basis, we want a reasonable balance of love and support flowing between both partners."

And, sure, opposites can attract, and sometimes we tend to be attracted to qualities in others that we lack in ourselves, but the risk involved in a golden retriever/black cat typology, says Melancon, is that "one partner puts in more effort, while the other may not even appear to appreciate it. Any relationship can have those moments, but as a general pattern, both partners will become increasingly dissatisfied with the relationship over time."

Red flags about the "golden retriever" boyfriend

A “golden retriever” boyfriend isn't just about being friendly and generous. Sometimes what looks like an attractive quality is actually hiding a deeper issue that could spell trouble for your relationship down the line.

  • He identifies as a “good boyfriend." He always initiates every text message and date, always apologizes and never takes any blame, surprises you with gifts for no reason at all, and seemingly does everything "right" by you. The problem? "Wanting to be a good partner is great, but wanting to be seen as a good partner turns the relationship into an achievement or source of approval rather than an opportunity to be present," Melancon explains.

  • He's codependent. He texts you all day every day and he wants to see you every day. The issue? "A healthy relationship allows each partner to express themselves and pursue their interests with adequate personal space," Melancon says. "Enmeshment collapses the space between “you and I,” resulting in feelings of pressure, being stifled, or smothered."

  • He's highly extroverted. While this is not a red flag in itself, Melancon says that if there is a major difference in social interest compared to a partner— he likes to be the life of the party and loves having people around him, and you don't—the relationship may not be sustainable.

Red flags about the "black cat" girlfriend

A "black cat" girlfriend might at first appear to be demure and a prize worth chasing, but her qualities might not actually be well-suited for a healthy relationship.

  • She appears disinterested. She takes days to respond to your text message, doesn't insert herself into your life, and generally appears she's not that into you. The problem? "While we don’t need to be our partner’s literal cheerleader, we all need to know that we’re loved and cared for," Melancon says. "A 'black cat' may unintentionally communicate a lack of interest or love," which won't feel good if you're not receiving the attention and affection you deserve.

  • She struggles with communication. She will leave you on read without having a discussion about something that bothered her; she won't ever tell you how she's feeling, good or bad, and doesn't initiate heartfelt conversations. The issue? "No one is a mind reader, so when one partner often shuts down, it can put a major strain on the relationship," Melancon explains.

  • She's highly introverted/anti-social. Again, while this isn't necessarily a red flag, says Melancon, if she is someone who prefers to be alone and doesn't like to engage socially but you do, that will be an issue for your relationship.

The potential challenges that this relationship could face

The “golden retriever” boyfriend may wind up feeling unappreciated, unloved, or even used, says Melancon. Meanwhile, the “black cat” girlfriend may feel overwhelmed or smothered. "Both partners may struggle to attune to one another’s needs and learn to share love in a way that resonates most with their partner," she explains. "Over time, issues like this can degrade the sense of closeness and intimacy between partners."

Melancon says a relationship between a “golden retriever” boyfriend and a “black cat” girlfriend could work out if both are willing to make adjustments and grow together.

"What matters most in a relationship is how both partners feel—whether their needs are met, if they feel safe communicating and setting boundaries, and how much they respect one another," she says. "All of us have shortcomings when it comes to relationships, but as long as partners are willing to grow, unhealthy relationships can transform over time. We all feel anxious at the uncertainty of life and especially love, so utilizing tests and typologies is a common way of trying to control the future. But please don’t end or start a relationship just because of something you see on TikTok."

What People Are Getting Wrong This Week: Political Half-Truths

It’s an election year, so naturally there are virtual firehoses of misinformation pointed at potential voters. While there are encouraging signs that people are getting better at spotting misinformation, there’s a kind of “fake news” that seems particularly pernicious on both sides of the political aisle: drawing a conclusion based on omitted information or missing context. It’s a favorite tactic of politicians that explodes during an election year, so let’s dig into a couple of widely spread examples—one from the right and one from the left.

Gas Price Meme
Credit: Snopes

The picture above, from Snopes, who culled it from my aunt's Facebook page, is not Photoshopped and it's not a lie. The national average price of a gallon of gas really did dip to $1.77 in April of 2020. But the meme text suggests that this had somehow had to do with decisions Donald Trump made while in office.

The answer is always "supply and demand"

People like to discuss the reasons gas prices fluctuate, probably because we are confronted with it every time we go to the pumps, but whether you blame high gas prices on corporate greed, or credit low gas prices to Donald Trump being awesome, you're equally wrong. The main driver of gas prices is basic supply and demand. The real reason gas was so cheap in 2021 was a global drop in demand for petroleum caused by economic activity due to COVID-19 lockdown. It would not have mattered who was president; it's not like there's a lever in the Oval Office that sets commodity prices.

This isn’t to say that governmental policy has no effect on prices. The inflation spike of 2022 was caused in part by the $2 trillion American Rescue Plan signed in 2021. It’s complex and there are a lot of other factors at work, but as a general rule, supplying more money to the economy to prevent or reverse a recession results in inflation, but i it also causes the economy to grow and stay out of recession (a much worse result than higher inflation.) Again, it's supply and demand.

Politicians on both sides lie

It’s not just right-wing people who fall victim to the allure of jumping to conclusion fallacy though, though. Check out this chart posted on Twitter by Kamala Harris:

Biden job growth chart
Credit: Kamala Harris - Twitter/X

Like the right-wing meme, this chart isn't inaccurate or Photoshopped, but it leaves off the same thing the gas price photo omits: COVID. Most of the jobs “created” during the Biden administration were the result of people returning to work following lay-offs during the pandemic. Adjusted for COVID, the net job-gain from Biden’s first day until February 2024 was 5.5 million jobs. Nice work, but a lot less sexy-looking on a chart. 

During his State of the Union address, Biden said, "The only president other than Donald Trump that lost jobs during an administration was Herbert Hoover," which is half-true (maybe), but only if you ignore the economic devastation that COVID wrought, and also ignore that we don't really know the number of jobs lost during Hoover's administration—the Bureau of Labor Statistics didn't exist until after Hoover was out of office.

How the same numbers tell a different story

While Biden put an overly positive spin on his job numbers and bagged on Trump's, it’s possible to look at the same basic information and draw the opposite conclusion. At a speech on August 5th, Donald Trump said: “During Biden’s first 30 months in office, just 2.1 million new jobs were created, and by contrast, during my first 30 months in office we created 4.9 million new jobs.”

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, when Trump took office, there were 145.6 million non-farm jobs in the U.S. Thirty months later, there were 150.8 million (in a first, Trump gave himself slightly less credit than he deserved during this speech). When Biden took office, there were 143 million nonfarm jobs. By his 30th month in office, the number of nonfarm jobs had risen to 156.2 million. 

Trump isn't totally lying (this time)—he's trying to eat his cake and have it too. He gives Biden no credit for jobs that returned after the coronavirus pandemic, and assigns himself no blame for jobs that were lost due to COVID, limiting his assessment to the 30-month window of the Trump administration before COVID shook up the economy. As Dean Baker, co-founder of the Center for Economic and Policy Research told Politifact, Trump is saying "everything that was bad is Biden's fault, whereas everything that is good would have happened anyhow.”

Spinning numbers to make yourself look better is nothing new, but what if you really want to know the truth? You probably can't.

Which administration has the stronger economy?

Despite polls showing Trump with an 11- to 20-point lead over Biden on the question of which candidate would better handle the economy, the economy did well under Trump, if you don’t take the shocks of COVID into account, and the economy is doing well under Biden, if you don’t assign blame for the COVID shock on Biden. (It also depends on what you mean by the economy "doing well.")

Even if you wanted to base your vote solely on which administration would be “best for the economy,” (instead of, say, which candidate is being tried for nearly 100 felonies) it’s probably not possible, even though we have recent data on how each handled it. The effects of public policy on the economy is such a complex subject, and there are so many people pushing so many agendas—weirdos sharing gas price memes on Facebook, vice presidents sharing slanted job charts on twitter—that it’s probably not possible to understand with any degree of certainty. Even if you devote your life to studying macroeconomics, other economists will have diametrically opposed views to yours.

This leaves us with tribalism and vibes, two factors that have probably always decided U.S. elections. If you're thinking "that's true of most politicians, but not my favorite one! They're a straight-shooter!" the wool has been pulled over your eyes. A political candidate who was really honest, who refused to engage in deception and self-puffery, would be dead in the water in any election larger than the local school board. Imagine a presidential candidate running on a platform of "There's not much I can do about the economy; it's supply and demand."

What's New on Prime Video and Freevee in April 2024

Par : Emily Long

Like last month, Prime Video has one anticipated original title coming in April. Fallout (April 11)—executive produced and with a few episodes directed by Westworld co-creator Jonathan Nolan—is a post-apocalyptic drama series adapted from the video game of the same name. The show stars Ella Purnell, Aaron Moten, and Walton Goggins.

Also on the list of Amazon originals coming in April is How to Date Billy Walsh (April 5), a teen romance/coming-of-age film starring Sebastian Croft (Heartstopper), Charithra Chandran (Bridgerton), and Tanner Buchanan (Cobra Kai) as well as rom-com Música (April 4) starring Camila Mendes and Friday night streams of the National Women's Soccer League (NSWL) starting April 12.

Here’s everything else coming to Prime Video and Amazon-owned, ad-supported Freevee in April, including every season of House and Eureka (April 1).

What’s coming to Prime Video in April 2024

Arriving April 1

  • Age of Adaline (2015)

  • Airplane II: The Sequel (1982)

  • Batman & Robin (1997)

  • Batman Forever (1995)

  • Blaze and the Monster Machines Vol2 S1-S2 (2014)

  • Blockers (2018)

  • Boomerang (1992)

  • Chaplin (1993)

  • Cheech & Chong Get Out of My Room (1985)

  • Chinatown (1974)

  • Cloverfield (2008)

  • Disturbia (2007)

  • El Dorado (1967)

  • Eureka S1-S5 (2006)

  • Fighting with My Family (2019)

  • Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957)

  • Heist (2015)

  • Henry Fool (1998)

  • Hotel for Dogs (2009)

  • House S1-S8 (2004)

  • Inside Job (2010)

  • It's Complicated (2009)

  • Jarhead (2005)

  • Jesus Christ Superstar (1973)

  • Jiro Dreams of Sushi (2011)

  • Lone Survivor (2013)

  • Lords Of Dogtown (2005)

  • Macgruber (2010)

  • Memoirs of a Geisha (2005)

  • Mimic (1997)

  • Money Monster (2016)

  • Monster Trucks (2017)

  • Nebraska (2014)

  • Neighbors (2014)

  • Ong Bak - The Thai Warrior (2005)

  • Out of Sight (1998)

  • Red Eye (2005)

  • Richard Jewell (2019)

  • Rosemary's Baby (1968)

  • Saturday Night Fever (1977)

  • Snatch (2001)

  • The Adventures of Tintin (2011)

  • The Aviator (2004)

  • The Big Short (2015)

  • The Front Page (1931)

  • The Heartbreak Kid (2007)

  • The House Bunny (2008)

  • The Last Temptation of Christ (1998)

  • The Notebook (2004)

  • The Ring Two (2005)

  • The Station Agent (2003)

  • The Stepford Wives (2004)

  • The Sweetest Thing (2002)

  • The Truth About Charlie (2002)

  • The Way Back (2020)

  • The Young Messiah (2016)

  • Titanic (1997)

  • To Catch a Thief (1955)

  • To Write Love on Her Arms (2015)

  • Top Gun (1986)

  • Total Recall (1990)

  • Wayne's World (1992)

  • We Own The Night (2007)

  • We Were Soldiers (2002)

  • When The Game Stands Tall (2014)

  • White Noise (2005)

Arriving April 2

  • Pet Sematary: Bloodlines (2023)

  • Please Don't Destroy: The Treasure of Foggy Mountain (2023)

Arriving April 4

  • Música (2024)

Arriving April 5

  • Hit S3 (2020)

  • How To Date Billy Walsh (2024)

Arriving April 8

  • Unforgotten S5 (2023)

Arriving April 9

  • The Exorcist: Believer (2023)

Arriving April 11

  • Fallout (2024)

Arriving April 12

  • NWSL (2024)

Arriving April 18

  • Going Home with Tyler Cameron (2024)

Arriving April 22

  • Spectre (2015)

Arriving April 25

  • THEM: The Scare (2024)

Arriving April 29

  • The Holdovers (2023)

What’s coming to Freevee in April 2024

Arriving April 1

  • Cruel Intentions (1999)

  • Grown Ups (2010)

  • Grown Ups 2 (2013)

  • Jumping the Broom (2011)

  • Never Rarely Sometimes Always (2020)

  • Peter Rabbit (2018)

  • The Croods (2013)

  • The Equalizer (2014)

  • The Karate Kid (2010)

  • The Matrix Resurrections (2021)

  • The Photograph (2020)

Arriving April 4

  • Monster Family 2 (2021)

Arriving April 5

  • Alex Rider S3 (2024)

Arriving April 18

  • Dinner with the Parents (2024)

Nine Foods (and Drinks) Made Better by Pickles

It’s time to celebrate the pickle. No, it’s not quite National Pickle Day (and yet, every day is), but here at Lifehacker, the pickle is indeed precious. It’s a cucumber’s victory dance. It brings bright acidity, crunchy contrast, and a saline slap wherever it goes. It can save a sandwich or switch up a cocktail, and it’s even a pretty fun time on its own. Pickles come in all sorts of shapes, sizes, and flavors. No matter which kind you have at the moment, here are some of the best things you can do with your tangy cukes. 

Pickle dip 

A small bowl of pickle dip on a bed of chips.
Credit: Claire Lower

Kicking off the list in the best way possible is a dip composed of pulverized, caramelized pickles. This caramelized pickle dip is creamy, tangy, salty, and irresistible. It’s so good, legend has it that it’s impossible to have leftovers. Browning the pickles properly takes a bit of time in a frying pan, but after that the dip comes together quickly in a food processor.

Pickle pizza 

It’s expected to bedazzle your slice with some salty meats or a few veggies, but why stop there? A cheesy, salty pizza could use a few briny bites to balance things out, if you ask me. Throw some sour dills onto your pie. The pickle’s acidity mellows out slightly in the oven as the excess water evaporates, and you’re rewarded with slightly crunchy, briefly tangy morsels to look forward to. 

Pickles in blankets 

Sorry, pigs, but pickles need to stay warm too. While mini weenies have ruled crescent dough for quite some time, small, spritely gherkins work wonders as a replacement. In fact, switching out the cured meat for the brined veg makes pickles in blankets a vegan iteration of the party classic. (Always check the ingredient list to make sure.) For the ultimate party snack, I suggest pairing both pickles and cocktail weenies in one cozy pastry blanket. 

Pickle in cheese

It’s still not feasible to wrap myself in frico, but I can absolutely do this to a pickle with nearly as much satisfaction. There’s nothing difficult or time consuming about cooking a pile of cheese in a pan and then folding it over a pickle. Which is great because that means you can do it right now if you have those two ingredients. Read here for more details on making the “chickle.”

Pickle salad

A bowl of pickle salad on a table.
Credit: Claire Lower

Pickles are just cucumbers that spent a little extra time in a vinaigrette, sort of. So there’s no reason to get weird about eating a pickle salad, right? Glad you agree. This pickle salad is simple to make and easy to gobble up. It’s crunchy, tart, creamy, and freshened up with a dash of chopped herbs. It makes a fantastic companion for any rich, smoky meats you might be serving up at a summer barbecue, or piled high on top of your mid-winter turkey burger. 

Pickle spaghetti 

With just four ingredients, you can make the pickle pasta of your dreams. (You dream about pickles too, right?) Already imbued with garlic, salt, and vinegar, pickles pack plenty of flavor. Which means you can get busy chopping them up and sautéing them with butter instead of rummaging around in your spice cabinet. Get the full pickle spaghetti recipe here.

Pickle sandwich 

If you think a good sandwich needs meat, you’re mistaken. Like any meal, what keeps you coming back again is flavor—and pickles have no shortage of that. Take this pickle sandwich for example. The complimentary flavor profile of a salty, crunchy pickle and sharp, fatty cheese is certain to win a place in your sandwich rotation. With its ease of assembly and budget friendly ingredient list, I recommend keeping pickles and cheese around as a permanent fixture for whenever the mood strikes.

Iced pickles

A bowl of ice with pickles on top.
Credit: Claire Lower

It may not be summer yet, but in anticipation of the event you should definitely have a plan for your pickles. Serving them chilled out of the fridge is good, but there’s a way to make them even better. Battle sweltering summer days with crisp iced pickles. They can serve as a welcome break from hot grilled foods, or as a luxurious briny treat on their own. Furthermore, if you’re dunking pickles in your beer anyway, you might as well keep the brew cold. 

The Pickletini

True pickle lovers don’t just eat them, they drink pickles too. Truly, the cucumber is only half the story. The brine makes the pickle. It’s what imbues the vegetable and it’s worth saving for other uses, like picklebacks or making a dirty, briny martini. With just three ingredients, you can make your own pickletini to sip on. Garnish it with a wee cornichon (maybe an iced one?) and serve. It’s the perfect companion to sit with while you ponder which pickle-centric meal off of this list you’ll make next. 

How to Oust Your Condo Board or HOA

Close to 30% of Americans live in a property governed by a condo board, homeowners association (HOA), or other community association—more than 70 million people. These associations are generally responsible for property upkeep, enforcement of community rules, and acting as a go-between for residents when disputes arise. Most people have a good or at least neutral experience with their condo board or HOA, but not everyone does.

If you find yourself in serious conflict with a condo board or HOA and get to the point where the normal channels (discussion, showing up at meetings, or even running for a position yourself) can’t solve the problem, you might contemplate a lawsuit. If common areas aren’t being maintained, or repairs aren’t being done, that might seem like your only option—but suing your condo board or HOA is often not your most effective option, and there might be better avenues to explore.

Why you should probably skip the suit

Thanks to pop culture depictions of attorneys and a constant stream of headlines, there’s a tendency to think you can (and should) solve every problem with a lawsuit. Lawsuits can certainly be an effective way to get relief of various kinds—but they're also an expensive, slow, and totally not guaranteed way to seek change or redress.

This is especially true when it comes to suing your HOA or condo board, because of something called the business judgment rule. This rule requires judges hearing a suit to favor the condo board or HOA as long as they believe they are acting in good faith and with a reasonable belief that their actions are for the good of the community—and proving otherwise can be tough. The specific laws governing your community association will vary, but in general this guideline makes winning a lawsuit against your community association very challenging.

Vote them out instead

Instead of spending a lot of time and money on a lawsuit you may very well lose, the better way to deal with a condo board or HOA that is either derelict in their duties or actively harming your property is to remove problematic board members—or replace the entire board altogether. This is usually a less challenging option because there will be language in the governing documents of the association (the Declaration of Covenants, Conditions, and Restrictions or CC&Rs) that outline exactly how to do this. Most states require that these governing documents include mechanisms for calling a special meeting (usually via petition signed by a majority of property owners). This can be done even if your condo board is dodging accountability by claiming to lack a quorum every time a regular meeting is called, a tactic bad condo boards sometimes use to maintain their control.

Here’s the basic steps you’ll need to take:

  • Read bylaws. Review those governing documents so you know how your association is set up. Pay particular attention to two things: Automatic removal criteria and how to force a vote. Most bylaws include certain requirements for board members, including a minimum number of meetings they have to attend and their ownership status at the property. These can potentially provide a straightforward way to remove board members without the need for a lengthy process—but first you have to know what those criteria are.

  • Contact your neighbors. If you can’t see any easy way to push bad board members out the door, you’ll need to bone up on the removal procedures outlined in your bylaws. These will vary from state to state and association to association, but in general, removing a board member (or an entire board) requires a vote involving all the property owners. That means your first step is to meet with everyone and make sure you have the necessary support.

    Next, you’ll need to call a special meeting of the condo board or HOA to hold a vote. If your board is being cagey about calling meetings because they know the residents are up in arms, you can usually force a meeting by getting a majority of owners to sign a petition.

  • Be ready. If you’re planning to remove the entire board, it’s a very good idea to have candidates lined up to replace them. This will minimize the chaos and delays, as well as the chance that the board members you just worked hard to remove don’t simply resume their seat when no one runs against them.

Keep in mind that if your association overtly works to prevent organizing your fellow owners like this (by imposing fines on distributing flyers, for example, to try to stop owners from organizing), it’s pretty clear evidence of bad faith, which would probably negate the business judgment rule protections and make a lawsuit a slightly better risk.

Working to remove a community association takes a lot of time and effort no matter what route you take—but if your property is being adversely affected by mismanagement or malfeasance, you really don’t have a choice. If that’s where you are, break out those bylaws before you call an attorney.

Someone Got GPT2 Running Entirely in a Spreadsheet

Par : Justin Pot

AI companies present their products as magical, but it's all just code and math under the hood. Don't believe me? Someone got an AI model working in an Excel spreadsheet. Spreadsheets are all you need is a project by Ishan Anand that re-creates a GPT2, a precursor to the technology that powers ChatGPT, entirely in a single Excel spreadsheet. This is the AI equivalent to getting Doom running on an old smart fridge.

The file, predictably, is a massive 1.34 GB, and it won't load on the Mac or web version of Excel—you're going to need Windows to get this working, ideally with a decent processor. And you can't expect to use it the way you would chat-based large language models. This, obviously, isn't going to replace ChatGPT, and it's not supposed to. It's mostly just a great way to learn how large language models work.

You can get started by downloading the spreadsheet from Github. You add your prompt to the spreadsheet's second sheet. The prompt needs to be entered one word per cell, with any spaces added manually at the beginning of words and each bit of punctuation mark using up its own line.

The spreadsheet will produce a single word—the next word in your sentence. It's a good idea to stick to a simple sentence that you'd like the spreadsheet to add a word to. I went with "My cat is so—." After you've entered your prompt, you click Calculate Now in the Formulas tab to start the crunching. Eventually the spreadsheet will output the next word for you (in my case, "cute," which is accurate.)

The real fun, though, is that you can now explore all of the other sheets and see the exact math that was used to guess what the next word should be. I am not going to attempt to break this down—it's well outside my wheelhouse—but there are video lessons on the website that do a great job of explaining the math and how the spreadsheet does it all. It's hard to think of a more accessible way to see how large language models work.

You Should Run a Background Check on Your Future Landlord (and Yourself)

Finding a place to live is becoming increasingly stressful. Not only are rents rising—the average rent in the United States is now almost $2,000 per month—but renting a place can be an overwhelmingly complex process. There’s the application (and the application fee), proving your income, providing references, and enduring all manner of checks and intrusive questions, with zero guarantee that you’ll actually have a place to live at the end of it.

The stress of securing a roof over your head leads most people to forget one simple fact: You need to be checking out your potential landlord, as well. Knowing that your landlord is routinely on a list of the worst landlords in your city, for example, is key information that can help you make this important financial decision. But even if your possible landlord isn’t quite that bad, you should run a background check on them so you know what you’re dealing with. And while you’re at it, you should run a check on yourself to make sure they’re seeing accurate information when deciding whether you’re a good risk for the rent.

Check yourself

Forewarned is forearmed, so your first order of business when looking for a home to rent is to find out what potential landlords will see about you. The last thing you want is to find the perfect place to rent only to be rejected for mysterious reasons. And just like credit reports, your rental history report can contain inaccuracies that can affect your ability to get past a rental application, so checking them should be your first order of business.

Landlords use a variety of companies for this service, including the big credit report companies TransUnion (SmartMove), Equifax (TotalVerify), and Experian. Other companies that provide rental history reports include RentPrep, First Advantage, Verifirst, and E-Renter. All of these companies charge a fee to provide the reports, but the good news is that under the same law that gives you access to your own credit report every year for free, the Fair Credit Reporting Act, you can request a free copy of your rental history report. Since you have to contact each company individually to request one, your best strategy is to ask any potential landlord what company they use to screen tenants and then request your report from there (it’s also a good idea to get free copies of your credit reports, while you’re at it).

If you find any errors on your rental history report, you can file a dispute and have the report corrected, just like you do with a credit report. This can take some time, so it’s a good idea to do this the moment you know you’ll be looking for a place to rent.

Check your landlord

Once you know that you have a clean renting record and should have no problems getting through an application (or at least know what a landlord might be concerned about so you can be prepared to make a case), it’s time to make sure you’re not about to sign up with a slumlord.

Unfortunately, there isn’t a simple service you can pay for that will conduct a landlord check (that would be too easy), so you’ll have to cobble together information from several sources:

  • Internet search. The first and simplest thing to do is to Google the property address and the landlord’s name (or the name of the management company). This will turn up any public information about how the landlord runs things. Next, check out review sites where people can leave reviews of landlords and buildings, like Rate My Landlord or WYL. These sites can give you a quick snapshot of what tenants deal with at the property you’re considering.

  • Public records. Wherever you live, there are property records that can tell you a lot about how a landlord operates. Depending on where you live, some of this information may be online and easily searched up (in New York City, for example, you can look up properties on the Automated City Register Information System [ACRIS]), or you might have to go to your local courthouse to dig through records. But it’s worth the effort, because these records will tell you about code violations, the rate of evictions, lawsuits filed against the landlord or management company, and foreclosure proceedings. If you find a lot of these data points, you should be concerned about trusting this landlord with your living arrangements.

    Many municipalities also maintain “worst landlords” lists (again, New York certainly does) which can be a quick and easy way to find out if you’re about to rent from some sort of property demon.

  • Ask neighbors. The people who already live in a prospective building are your best resource for the current state of affairs there. You can probably learn more from one or two conversations with folks already living there than through days of research.

Your tolerance for red flags in a landlord will be in direct proportion to your desperation to find a place to live, of course, but knowledge is power. If you turn up a lot of complaints, lawsuits, and financial chicanery surrounding a prospective apartment, it might be best to keep looking.

This Ultra-wide LG Monitor is 50% Off Right Now

If ultra-wide monitors have been outside of your budget, this discounted LG monitor might be more to your liking. Amazon is selling the 34-inch LG 34WP65G-B UltraWide Monitor going for $199.99 (originally $399.99) after a 50% discount. After running my usual price tracking tools, I can tell you this is the lowest price this monitor has been.

This LG monitor launched in Dec. 2020, and it has an IPS (In-Plane Switching) display for better viewing angles, which is great for color accuracy and consistency. People who do creative work, like graphic designers, pro photographers, or video editors will benefit most. An ultra-wide monitor also offers much more space to multitask with a 21:9 aspect ratio, basically the equivalent of two screens in one.

This LG monitor has FHD (full high definition) with 2560 by 1080 pixels of resolution and an antiglare screen. It is mountable, so you can stack it on a bracket if you wish. The height is also adjustable, and you can tilt the screen back and forth to adjust the viewing angle.

While it's marketed as a "semi-gaming" monitor, don't let that fool you. This monitor only has a refresh rate of 75 Hz and a 1 ms response time. Serious gamers usually look for at least 144 Hz and 5ms. But if you're a casual gamer, 75 Hz is better than most non-gaming monitors with 60 Hz. If you're looking for a deal on a gaming monitor, consider the LG 34WP60C-B UltraWide for $229.99 (originally $349.99).

You Can Get a Refurbished Xbox Series X Right Now for $300

Woot has been churning out some significant deals on refurbished products this week, with Ring cameras starting at $20, 55-inch Fire TVs for $199.99, and Kindle e-readers starting at $34.99. Now, they're offering the Grade-A refurbished Xbox Series X for $299.99 (originally $449) while supplies last or until April 26. (For reference, Amazon's refurbished Xbox Series X goes for $414.99.)

Woot says their “Grade-A refurbished” items were returned, inspected, and restored to fully working conditions, but not by the manufacturer. It’s as close to new as they offer, but they might still show slight signs of being used. Woot only ships to the 48 contiguous U.S. states. If you have Amazon Prime, you get free shipping; otherwise, it’ll be $6.

If you’ve been undecided about which of the two Xbox consoles is best for you, you can see our breakdown. But at $299.99, the Xbox Series X is the same price as the Xbox Series S, which is the digital, less powerful version. The Xbox Series X has 1TB of memory and the ability to play games with discs as well as Blue Rays and DVDs. This makes getting the Series X over the Series S a much easier decision if you’re looking for extra power and storage.

Regardless of where you stand on the PS5 versus Xbox debate, one thing the Xbox has the PS5 beaten has been affordability. A comparable refurbished PS5 from Amazon goes for $436.99.

If you're unsure about ordering from Woot, I've ordered from Woot several times over the years and have not had any more problems than what I experienced from Amazon. They're owned by the same person, after all. Keep in mind you'll also be covered by Woot's 90-day limited warranty.

The Out-of-Touch Adults' Guide to Kid Culture: Dogs Vs. Lemons

This week's youth culture report is all about conflict: Dogs are fighting lemons, Gen-Z is fighting Millennials, and everyone is fighting artificial intelligence.

Dogs vs. lemons on TikTok

The newest pet-related trend on TikTok is posting videos of dogs eating lemon slices. They are hilarious clips, because dogs don’t like lemons, so their excitement at catching some food from their master’s hand quickly turns into a sour-faced look and a side-eye look of dog-disappointment.

But because no one is allowed to have fun, some vets were quick to warn against this trend, pointing out that citrus can cause "gastrointestinal upsets" or even "severe clinical signs like collapse.“ Throwing food at a dog for them to catch is a choking hazard too, "particularly if the piece of food is too large to swallow whole," according to Dr. Anna Foreman of Everypaw Pet Insurance. So no one should ever huck a slice of lemon at their dog. Still, if you watch the videos, dogs almost never eat the lemon slices. They either give the 'em a quick lick and go, “nah," or they catch the fruit slice in their mouth and spit it out, because dogs aren’t stupid. 

What is the "Zoomer Perm"?

From the 1980s mullet to the ubiquitous “Rachel” of the '90s, every generation eventually develops and popularizes a ridiculous haircut they’ll be embarrassed about in the future. For Gen Z, it’s looking like the "Zoomer Perm" is going to be the generational ‘do. Sometimes called the "broccoli cut" or "bird's nest," the Zoomer Perm is shaved on the side and back and long and bushy/curly on the top. If you have straight hair, you gotta get it permed to do the look right. It’s a very dumb-looking haircut, but according to WikiHow, Zoomers like it because they “tend to not be as self-conscious or serious as other generations, so the funny things you can do with the broccoli cut are actually an upside, not a drawback.”  

Gamergate 2 update

Last week I brought you the regrettable news of the resurgence of Gamergate, but now there’s a new wrinkle: Gaming news site Kotaku’s editor-in-chief, Jen Glennon, resigned late last week, leading some to imagine the resignation was because of Kotaku's coverage of Gamergate 2.0.

Gamergate degenerates are, of course, wrong about this (and everything else). According to Glennon, the resignation was because the site’s owner, G/O Media, decided to change Kotaku's focus from news and editorial content to game guides, adding that G/O Media's CEO Jim Spanfeller is a herb. Lifehacker was once owned by G/O Media, so I say this with an insider's knowledge: There is no way G/O had any interest in or knowledge of what Kotaku was writing about.

Late Night with the Devil's AI controversy

In the first of what will probably be years of stories that ask “How much of this movie is AI?” The internet film community noticed that some images used in recently released indie horror flick Late Night with the Devil appear to be AI-generated. The film’s directors, Cameron and Colin Cairnes, quickly confirmed they had “experimented with AI for three still images” that appear as brief interstitials in the film. Reaction from the fan community is mixed. Some have called for a boycott of the movie or said they’d never see it. Some defended the movie. Some moderates called on people to sneak into theaters to see it. Totally apart from AI-generated art, Late Night with the Devil is one of the most innovative, creative, and unique horror movies I’ve seen in years. It will be streaming on Shudder starting on April 19. 

What is a "Quirk Chungus"?

Since the publication of Douglas Coupland’s Generation X in 1991, generational conflict discourse has been dominated by everyone agreeing that Baby Boomers suck. While that trend is alive and well on subreddits like r/boomersbeingfools, the new hotness is Generation Z bagging on Millennials for being lame. Generation Z has turned the withering eyes of youth on slightly older folks and found that liking Buzzfeed and Harry Potter, using words and phrases like “doggo,”“I just did a thing,” and “adulting” are actually lame—old-people shit. Some Gen-Z members are using the phrase “Quirk Chungus” to describe the “lol so random” aspect of Millennial culture. As a Gen Xer, Im glad no one ever blames us for anything or regards us as important enough to bother hating on, but I'd also like to point out that the most recognizable expression of Zoomer culture is Skibidi Toilet. Check out this YouTube video from KnowYourMeme for a deeper dive into the newest generational conflict.

Viral video of the week: I Used Only Vintage Technology for a Week

In this week’s viral video, YouTube comedian Kurtis Conner tasks himself with only using outdated tech for a week. It’s objectively funny to watch someone fully decked out with antique gear that barely works, and Conner is an amusing guy, but on another level, this video says something about the value and meaning of tech. Most of the gear he’s rocking would have been early-adopter-only when it was new 20 years ago, but now literally everything, from the wristwatch camera to the portable TV, the tiny voice recorder, Palm Pilot, to every function of the Xbernaut wearable computer, is available to everyone on even the cheapest smartphone. Is anyone happier? More fulfilled? I’d say “no,” but that’s what I’d always say to anything. 

Use a Mug Warmer to Cut Down Bread Proofing Time

Baking homemade bread can be extremely satisfying, but the long time commitment is a big turn off for some folks. It takes hours to make a loaf of bread, partially because the proofing can’t be rushed. While bakeries and some home kitchens come equipped with proofing drawers to regulate temperature and speed up this process, most homes don’t. Fortunately, there’s a work around. Instead of waiting until dawn for your dough to “double in size,” proof your dough with a mug warmer. 

I started using a cheap mug warmer years ago, when I became obsessed with pour-over coffee. (It is superior to drip in my well-caffeinated opinion.) The bummer with a big batch of pour-over is that my glass carafe loses heat quickly. Enter the mug warmer. Its highest setting keeps my carafe at the perfect temperature, and it even has two weaker settings for the weirdos that like tepid coffee. It’s done this task well for me, and I never thought of it as anything else.

After perusing Instagram one day, I saw a “dough riser.” Odd how it looked just like my mug warmer. Well, that's because it basically is. After proofing cold-weather loaves painstakingly for years, the answer has been right in front of me this whole time. This $20 pad that sustains a low temperature for hours is perfect for proofing bread.


When you’re not warming coffee consider proofing dough with one of theses:


How to set up your "proofing machine"

Coffee mug warmer on the counter.
Credit: Allie Chanthorn Reinmann

Many of these small brand mug warmers have two or three different temperature settings. Yeast thrives around 80°F to 90°F, so the closer we can get to that, the better. Coffee warmers, even at their lowest setting, are aiming to be hotter than this because 85°F coffee will feel slightly cool to your 98°F mouth. I used a surface thermometer to measure the lowest setting on my mug warmer, which was 169°F. According to Bob’s Red Mill, yeast start to die off around 120°F, and really can’t make it at 140°F. The low setting on my warmer is still too hot. 

But that’s nothing I can’t work around; I just had to dampen the direct heat. I could have used a towel or an oven mitt, but I wanted something easy and consistent. I grabbed a small plate instead. The foot of the plate fit well on the mug warmer and even lifted it slightly, creating some distance. I let this plate heat up for about five minutes before I took a temperature reading of the surface: 88°F. Perfect.

If you don’t have an infrared thermometer to read the surface, you can use your hand. After your plate heats up for a few minutes, touch the center. It should feel pleasantly warm, like the temperature of folding warm laundry. Yeast likes to be cozy just like we do. If it’s too hot to keep your finger on then you might need a thicker plate, or put a folded tea towel or pot holder on the plate to create a better buffer. 

How it worked

Two bowls with dough inside of them.
Credit: Allie Chanthorn Reinmann

To see if it would actually work, I experimented with two balls of dough. I made a simple batch of white bread and split the dough in half equally. I put dough A on my 88°F plate-dampened mug warmer, and left dough B to proof on the countertop next to it. The countertop temperature clocked in at 68°F.

Raw bread dough in two bowls.
Left: dough B hasn't developed as much. Right: dough A is ready to be shaped. Credit: Allie Chanthorn Reinmann

After one hour I barely noticed a difference between the two, but after two hours (typical proofing time listed in most recipes) the yeast activity was different by a long shot. The lighting makes it a little hard to see but if you look carefully at the picture, you can see dough A had doubled in size and the bubbles underneath were plentiful and larger than in dough B. I shaped up dough A to get ready for baking, and left dough B to continue proofing.

Most bread recipes actually have two proofing periods: the first one before shaping, and the second proof before baking. While it’s true that this mug warmer hack only addresses the first proof, I’d argue that getting this one right is the most important. It’s the longest, most tedious, and it’s where the yeast builds momentum. If your first proof is successful and the yeast are thriving, the second proof is more likely to be short and sweet, around 45 minutes. Still, I wouldn’t leave you without a solution for your second proof. The second proof is usually when you start preheating the oven, so you’ll have an acceptable proofing station right there. Cover your bread with a clean tea towel and leave it right over your toasty warm stove.

How to Start a Book Club for Your Kids and Their Friends (That They’ll Actually Enjoy)

Par : Jason Keil

Whether it is Oprah Winfrey's, Resse Witherspoon's, or Mindy Kaling's book club doesn't matter: The selections are always for adults. But maybe its the kids who would really benefit from a book club, both socially and academically—after all, according to the Department of Education, two-thirds of children in the United States are not proficient readers. Luckily, it doesn't take an industry insider to get a local book club off the ground. While you may not have the clout of Winfrey or the star power of Witherspoon, you easily start a book club for your kids and their classmates to enhance their reading and social skills.

Establish expectations early

My 7-year-old is in a book club, and at their first meeting, everyone was so excited to talk about the book they read that they forgot all about conversational norms and started talking all over each other. Establishing ground rules early on, like giving everyone a turn and not talking over anyone, ensures everyone is heard and respects what each other has to say. Establish a no-cell-phone policy if your group has tweens or young teenagers so no one unintentionally interrupts or ignores anyone.

Keep things short and simple

Adult book club selections sometimes come with lengthy questions to start the conversation. That might work for you, but it's best to keep things short and simple for kids. Three or so questions about their favorite characters or the funniest parts of the story should generate a good amount of conversation to see what they took away from their reading.

Add an activity related to the book's plot

In the book Stuart Little, the titular mouse participates in a boat race. One way my son's book club tied in that scene was with an activity where attendees made a small boat themselves out of aluminum foil, popsicle sticks, and paper. It unleashed their creativity in a totally different way, giving them another method to remember the book's story. 

Find a craft or activity members can try that ties in with the book's theme, like listening to the music Chester performs in The Cricket in Times Square or making bird pies out of paper plates and pipe cleaners for Roald Dahl's The Twits.

Get other adults involved

There's no shame in asking for help, especially when taking on something as fun as a book club. You can work with other parents to develop ideas, assemble crafts, or rotate duties for each meeting. You can even reach out to your child's school teacher to see if they'd be willing to assist. In the case of my son's book club, his teacher recorded herself reading each chapter of the month's selection in her backyard and put them on YouTube. 

Honor every child's reading ability

If your child's book club consists of second graders, maybe now isn't the time to break out Judy Blume's Tales of A Fourth-Grade Nothing. A book club is meant to be fun, not for a grade, so try to find selections everyone can enjoy. Remember, it doesn't matter if they're reading Harry Potter or Captain Underpants, as long as they're fostering a love of reading.

Keep everything consistent

Children thrive on routine, so keeping a schedule and sticking to it is essential for consistent attendance. Also, considering other activities vying for a child's attention (playdates, birthday parties, sports leagues, etc.), keeping to the same day every month will ensure other parents make time in their schedule well in advance. 

Bring snacks

Getting creative with the goodies is key to a successful book club meeting. For example, bring Turkish Delight to the discussion about The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe or a chocolate gummy worm cake to the meeting about How to Eat Fried Worms. 

Google's AI Search Is Already Promoting Malware and Scams

Google started rolling out its new Search Generative Experience (SGE) earlier this month, introducing AI-generated search results on some pages. Unfortunately, it seems the new feature has already hit a few hiccups, as reports indicate it may be promoting scam sites and sites pushing malware in its generated responses.

This is, obviously, not a very good look for Google’s AI search results, especially since there has been a lot of question around just how viable Google’s AI is, including the fact that Google won’t put its latest models on the base Pixel 8. Despite those concerns, though, Google continues to push forward with its AI endeavors, and it seems like the misses just won’t stop.

As BleepingComputer reports, Google search results appear to be recommending spammy and malicious sites within its various responses. This makes it much easier for users to fall for scams, especially if Google pushes this to a broader audience with varying levels of familiarity with AI.

In BleepingComputer’s report, they noted that when they tried searching for puppies for sale, they were quickly met with AI-generated responses that pointed them toward spammy sites that could be riddled with malware. When clicking on any of these links, it appeared to redirect the user several times until they reach a scam site. Many of the sites appeared to mimic YouTube push notifications in an attempt to get users to allow the sites to notify them of things. BleedingComputer says that when they subscribed to one of the sites, they began to receive spam with advertisements for tech support scams and fake giveaway pages claiming the user had won something.

It should be noted that while researching this article, I turned on Google’s SGE functionality in Chrome. However, no searches I entered turned up any responses of this type. In fact, all my searches said that they could not generate any AI responses, so it is possible that Google is working to resolve the issue. Still, it’s disappointing to see that it even happened at all, and it speaks to the ongoing struggle that the tech giant is having when it comes to spam and malware-riddled websites. If you want to learn more, I highly suggest reading BleepingComputer’s in-depth analysis, as they provide a lot of great first-hand experience that I, unfortunately, cannot replicate since SGE isn’t spitting out any responses for me.

These Are Some of the Best Furniture and Decor Items With Hidden Storage

If you live in a small space or simply have a lot of stuff, storage can be a nightmare. To stay organized and tidy, you absolutely must utilize storage boxes and spaces, but as someone who lives in a small apartment, I’ll be the first to admit it’s difficult to find places to keep bins, let alone keep all my stuff organized within them. That’s why I’m a big proponent of "storage as decoration"—items that double as both storage and furniture. 

Best hidden storage furniture and decor

We’re going to start off with my current favorite thing: A full-length storage mirror. I have this one from Vlsrka ($129.99), which is a lighted mirror that swings open to reveal another lighted mirror, plus earring, necklace, and bracelet hooks, bins for makeup brushes, pockets, shelves, and a ring holder. This one can be hung on the wall, but there are others that are free-standing, like this one from Songmics ($209.98) that hides not only internal storage, but a few external shelves in the back. I love mine because the inner and outer mirror are so handy and my jewelry and makeup are out of the way until I need them. 

Vlsrka 63" x 18"  Silver Full Length Floor Mirror
Vlsrka 63" x 18"  Silver Full Length Floor Mirror

By far one of the most convenient and inconspicuous hidden storage solutions is the faithful hollow ottoman. This one from Storagebud ($42.97) can fold flat when not in use, plus has smaller storage bins inside so you can keep everything you toss in there a little more organized. There are also small “foot rest” versions for much cheaper, like the Songmics cube ($19.40). 

If you have a green thumb and a small place, you don’t have to choose between plants and storage. Sdstone makes a flower pot with a hidden safe in the bottom ($13.99). It’s meant for valuables, but you can toss whatever small items you want in there. As a bonus, it comes with a fireproof pouch for money and extra-important items. 

The bench by your front door isn’t pulling its weight if you can’t stash stuff inside it. The Hoobro shoe storage bench ($75.95) hinges open at the top to allow you to store things under the seat, plus has exterior shelving that you can face toward the wall, so no one will ever know you have anything in there. 

Shelves are great for extra storage, but shelves with hidden compartments inside are double great—and stop the top part from getting too cluttered. The Ikoppoi hidden storage wall shelf ($33.99) allows you to display some decorations while hiding other items away within its secret drawer. For example, think about displaying candles on the visible shelf, then hiding matches or a lighter inside.

Store larger items right in your living room with the Cozy Castle coffee table ($119.99), which not only has LED lighting and a high-gloss finish, but two big storage drawers hidden on the sides. It’s great for big blankets, the kids’ toys, or whatever else is cluttering up your space. 

If you feel like doing a little DIY around the house, try the Fox Hollow Furnishings recessed medicine cabinet ($329.99), which looks like a regular picture frame on the outside, but contains four rows of shelving on the inside. You do have to install it inside your wall, so it’s not as convenient as the other options here, but if you have anything sensitive or valuable to store, an innocuous “picture frame” is the perfect thing to put it all behind. Check out this video demo to see how it looks.

Finally, go old-school with a two pack of decorative “book” boxes ($23.95). On the outside, these look like classic old books and will blend in on your bookshelf easily. Inside, you’ll find storage space big enough for small items. 

Other sneaky storage ideas

One hack I’ve developed over years of living in small apartments is to store my winter coats in my luggage. When I travel, I just take them out and lay them on the couch. It doesn’t matter; I’m not home to see the mess anyway. This saves a bunch of space in my closet, which is dominated by the suitcases as it is. 

I also have shelving units all along my walls to make up for a lack of closet space. (I do have closets, but I just really like clothes.) The clothes I put on these can look kind of sloppy, so I use fabric storage cubes to create “drawers” on the shelves. When not in use, they fold up flat, but when they’re popped open, they give the illusion that the shelves are much more organized than they really are. Try a six pack from Amazon Basics ($19.68). 

Finally, I swapped out my hamper for a rolling cart last year. The cart is still bulky and ugly, so I keep it in the closet, but it’s less cumbersome than the hamper I had and it makes laundry day much easier, as I can just wheel the dirty laundry straight out the door and into the laundromat. Unfortunately for me, I have some tacky, fruit-patterned abomination from the dollar store, but fortunately for you, there’s a much prettier version from Songmics on Amazon for $49.79.

Use ‘Jan’ to Chat With AI Without the Privacy Concerns

Par : Justin Pot

Like the idea of AI, but wish you could use it without having to trust some large server somewhere? You can run large language models locally, giving you something like ChatGPT that works entirely offline.

Jan is a free an open source application that makes it easy to download multiple large language models and start chatting with them. There are simple installers for Windows, macOS, and Linux. Now, this isn't perfect. The models aren't necessarily as good as the latest ones from OpenAI or Google, and depending on how powerful your computer is, the results might take a while to come in. On the flip side, though, you can use this technology without having to worry about the privacy and security concerns that come with using an online AI service.

Jan offers a sort of app store for large language models.
Credit: Justin Pot

After installing Jan, you will need to choose a model—if you don't know which one, I'd start with Mistral, at the top of the list—you can always try something else later if you don't like the results. As soon as the model downloads, you can start chatting.

You can provide a few general instructions for the bot in the right panel, if you want—the default is "you are a helpful assistant," but you can change it to whatever you like for a bit more context. After that, you can start using the service the same way you would ChatGPT or Google Gemini. I tried asking for a quick summary of a recent article of mine; it did a decent job.

Jan works similarly to ChatGPT and Google Gemini but runs entirely on your computer.
Credit: Justin Pot

Again, if you don't like the results, or find that getting results takes too long, try a few different models. They're all free and all optimized for different things: some are specifically for coding questions, for example, and some are optimized to run on computers without a lot of CPU power. It's a matter of finding what works best for you.

And there's another cool feature: if the application is running, it can also work as a OpenAI equivalent API. If you don't know what this means, don't worry—it's a very geeky thing. In summary, though, it means you can use Jan in apps that would otherwise require a paid ChatGPT subscription—just enable the API feature in the settings and point your other applications to the local IP address and port number instead of to OpenAI.

Some Threads Users Can Now Share Their Posts to the Fediverse

Par : Justin Pot

The post-Twitter world is fractured among a handful of potential alternate social networks—which is exciting, but also annoying. Things got slightly more integrated last week. That's because Threads, the Twitter alternative owned by Meta, made it possible for users of Mastodon and other services to follow Threads accounts that opt in to the Fediverse.

What's the Fediverse?

A lot of Threads users expressed confusion about this announcement, mostly because they don't know what the Fediverse is. To drastically over-explain, the Fediverse is a network of social media sites built on the same protocol: ActivityPub.

You know how, as a Gmail user, you can email someone who uses Outlook, Yahoo Mail, or a private server? That's because email is built on a protocol that no one owns. The Fediverse works in a similar way: You can share posts from one network, and users on other Fediverse networks can view it. Until now, some of the more popular services that make up part of this network include Mastodon, the image sharing site Pixelfed, and Reddit alternative Lemmy. Tumblr is also working on an integration, meaning eventually Threads, Mastodon, and Tumblr could all be part of the same ecosystem sometime this year.

Meta is moving slowly at launching Threads' Fediverse connection. The new feature is in beta, and only available in the U.S., Canada, and Japan. Users have to opt in before their posts are shared to these other social networks, and the feature isn't complete: Threads users will not be able to see likes and replies from users outside of Threads, won't be able to follow users on other services, and cannot post polls or Threads with restrictive replies. This is very much still a start, but it's something.

How to turn on ActivityPub in Threads

To get started, open Threads in your browser. Click the two lines in the top-right corner and click Settings.

There are two lines in the top-right corner of Threads. Click them, then click Setttings.
Credit: Justin Pot

Head to the Account tab, and you'll see a Fediverse sharing option. Again, this beta feature is only available in the U.S., Canada, and Japan. You won't see this feature if you don't live in one of those places.

The Fediverse Sharing setting can be found in the Account tab.
Credit: Justin Pot

You will see an explanation of the Fediverse and the limits of the current beta. When you're ready click the Turn on sharing button.

Meta offers a few details about how the integration works.
Credit: Justin Pot

That's it! Your account can now be followed from any compatible service. I tested this by searching for my Threads account from Mastodon, and it was available immediately.

A view of my extremely sparse Threads page, as seen from Mastodon.
Credit: Justin Pot

I'm going to be honest: I'm a Mastodon guy (follow me) and am probably never going to be active on Threads. And I know that not everyone on Mastodon and other Fediverse services are thrilled about this. Those services, by their very nature, are heavily populated by the kinds of people who don't trust Facebook, Instagram, or Meta. And I agree that Mark Zuckerberg's company has proven, time and time again, that it can't be trusted. I'm conflicted, though, because I know there are people in my life who will likely never set up a Mastodon account but might use Threads some day, and I'd like a way to keep up with them. My hope is that decentralization makes that possible in a way that doesn't involve me having to use a service owned by Meta—hopefully this is a step toward that.

How to Choose the Right Coffee Grinder

Buying a coffee grinder seems straightforward: You need a device that will grind your coffee beans. How much difference does it make how it accomplishes that task? Quite a bit, actually, depending on what you’re brewing and how you like your coffee.

Here’s what you need to know before buying a coffee grinder, plus a few options to consider.

Two different kinds of coffee grinders

There are two primary types of coffee grinders: blade grinders and burr grinders. You can think of the former like a miniature blender that cuts the beans down into a powder, while instead of blades, burr grinders include sets of sharp discs or cones that rub against one another, pulverizing the coffee beans caught in between.

These different methods can create marked differences in the ground beans, and therefore the flavor of your cup of coffee—and most everyone agrees burr grinders are preferable.

“I don’t think it’s oversimplifying to say that burr grinders are pretty much always better than blade grinders, because they produce more evenly-sized grinds and more evenly-sized grinds are better for making delicious coffee,” says Maciej Kasperowicz, director of coffee at Trade Coffee and one of 400 certified Q graders—or trained coffee evaluators—in the world. 

The downside, of course, is that burr grinders are typically significantly more expensive than blade grinders—so you'll have to pay top dollar for the benefits of a better-tasting cup.

Bear in mind that not only can the kind of grinder you choose impact how your coffee brews and how it tastes, but it will also determine how you clean it. Blade grinders can be cleaned by running store-bought tablets or plain rice through them, whereas burr grinders need to be taken apart and wiped down. And you do need to clean both; if you don’t, coffee particles and oils left over on the blades or burrs can, “turn rancid and lead to some bad flavors,” Kasperowicz says.

Choosing the right burr grinder

Before picking a grinder, Kasperowicz advises you first consider your most common grinds. Some work better than others at creating powder-like espresso grinds, for instance.

For pour-over or auto-drip coffee, he recommends Baratza’s Encore, but doesn’t think it “has a wide enough range of adjustments when you get to the finest grind size” to make it suitable for espresso.

If a great espresso grinder is what you’re looking for, he suggests the Baratza Sette.

If you want something low-profile and customizable, consider the Fellow Ode, for which you can buy upgraded burr sets if you want to modify its capabilities in the future.

Before buying anything, check the manufacturer’s website to see if the brand you’re interested in sells spare parts. If you’re going to invest in a fancy piece of equipment, you should be able to fix it if it breaks—but not all brands offer replacement parts. (This is one more reason Kasperowicz favors Baratza.)

Are hand grinders worth it?

Some old school coffee aficionados sing the praises of hand grinders, but Kasperowicz views them more as a travel tool than an everyday one. “I think some people just getting into coffee have this romantic idea that grinding by hand will make your coffee taste better," he says. "While there are certainly really high quality hand grinders out there, there is nothing about the manual work that means higher quality on its own."

Microsoft Edge Has a New ‘Magnify Image’ Command

If you've ever had to lean your perilously close to the computer screen to look at an infographic, or download and zoom in on a fuzzy photo, a new Microsoft Edge feature hopes to alleviate the pain. The feature, called "Magnify image," enables you to examine any image in greater detail without the need to open it in a new tab or download it.

How does Magnify image work in Edge?

Magnify image in the context menu of Edge
Credit: Screenshot by Saikat Basu

Magnify image works from the right-click context menu. It enlarges any image in its own overlay window, where you can further zoom in and out with the controls. And if you like keyboard shortcuts, just hover over any image and press the Ctrl key twice.

A few limitations of Magnify image

Overlay window for the Magnify image feature in Edge
Credit: Screenshot by Saikat Basu

Of course, there are a few shortcomings. You cannot zoom into an image indefinitely, as Edge resets the image after a couple of zoom-ins. There is also no way to use the mouse to manipulate the zoom levels with a scroll. You also might find that some high-resolution images take a bit of time to render in the overlay window.

Despite those downsides, it's still handy tool. I often find myself struggling to zoom into photos on social sites or examine a map graphic in greater detail. It also helps me make sense of any illegible text on photos.

Reddit Is the Last Good Social Network

What do you look for in a social media network? In my view, the definition is pretty simple: You should be able to choose topics and accounts that interest you, and easily check in on them whenever you open your network. That was the original promise of so many networks: Facebook would connect you to your friends, new and old; Instagram would show you those people's photos; and Twitter would deliver you funny, interesting, and important updates from anyone you wanted.

That's how it started, but social media networks are in a bad place these days: X (formerly Twitter) isn't even safe to use anymore; Meta lets AI run rampant on Facebook, and it's difficult to get Instagram to show you content from your friends.

If you're looking for a social network that actually sticks to the promises the platforms sold us on, Reddit, I argue, is one of the last good ones. That doesn't mean it's great.

It's all about the subreddits

The thing that has always made Reddit stand out from the pack is its subreddits. There is a subreddit for virtually any interest or topic you can think of, big or small. If you're passionate about Calvin and Hobbes, there's a subreddit of over 700,000 other people who want to talk about the comic, too. If you love coffee, you can have your pick between subreddits like r/espresso (555,000 subscribers) or r/keurig (6,900 subscribers). (I'm telling you, there's a subreddit for everything.) Reddit says there are over 100,000 active communities on the site, and some estimates put the total number of subreddits at north of three million. You may start out following a subreddit that covers a general topic (r/music), then decide to follow smaller subreddits that focus on specific niches (r/futurebeats, r/indieheads, r/blackmetal).

Because there are so many focused interests on the site, chances are there have been conversations about topics and questions you currently want the answers to. That's why many of us add "Reddit" to the end of our Google searches: Someone else also had their iCloud settings grayed out, and they know how to fix it; New Yorkers will help you figure out how to get from LaGuardia airport to Manhattan by public transit; and this gamer will show you how to make sure you're always playing the PS5 version of a cross-platform game. The amount of shared knowledge on the site is staggering, and because the focuses are often so niche, you'll find a lot of useful information across a wide variety of topics. (We will return to this topic, before you run to the comments to roast me.) Of course, not all the subreddits are for serious interests, either. There are plenty of subreddits dedicated to the lighter side of life (ahem, memes). You can curate this side of Reddit to your liking as well, but, er, exercise caution.

Once you set up your Reddit account with all your various interests, the "front page of the internet" starts to come into view. You open reddit.com, and you find new articles, posts, and discussions based on the things you want to see. It's remarkable how similar the experience is today as it was years ago: This CGP Grey video about the site from roughly 10 years ago is still largely accurate.

Reddit is far from perfect

Reddit is good, but that doesn't mean it's perfect (or even great). The site certainly isn't X, and doesn't have hate speech leaking in from all sides, but there are still plenty of communities where the conversations are, let's say, unproductive. In many ways, curating your Reddit feed makes a huge difference (I experience zero X-quality hate comments in my daily Reddit experience), but it is a concern, and something to look out for. To be fair, the site has come a long way in cracking down on terrible subreddits and communities over the years. (It used to be so bad.)

Reddit has a massive user base (about 73 million daily active users) which means the larger communities are truly enormous—and notoriously bad. (r/funny is anything but.) If you join the site and only check out the default subreddits they offer, you'll likely quit, and wonder what the hell the Reddit hype is all about. The same advice that worked for the site 15 years ago still applies today: Delete the bloated, default subreddits, and curate a list of smaller yet active subreddits that fit your needs. Whether or not those subreddits are run well depends on the communities' individual moderators, who voluntarily manage their subreddits. While that means the quality of subreddits—and the moderators themselves—dramatically varies, when you do find a subreddit that is well-managed, remember to be nice to your mods.

r/funny's number one rule "all posts must make an attempt at humor"
r/funny's number one rule Credit: Jake Peterson

But even when the discussion seems high quality and in good faith, you should always take them with a grain of salt, especially concerning important information. Just like any other place on the internet, Reddit is full of anonymous randos who may or may not know what they're talking about. It's fine for learning a new hack about your smartphone, or to figure out a transit question, but don't believe everything you read about things like science, history, or, most importantly, health. (Reddit is not your doctor.)

I'm also not a fan of many of Reddit's corporate decisions. The site raised its API rates to ridiculous levels, forcing most third-party apps to shut down (RIP Apollo). The site's app, by comparison, is far less intuitive and fun to use, and the current site design is polarizing. Luckily, there are some third-party clients sticking around, and if you don't like "new" Reddit, old.reddit.com works just fine. But perhaps worst of all, the company is working on selling your data to companies to train AI models. It's...not great, and I hope it changes, but Reddit hasn't shown much care in the opinions of its user base lately.

Reddit is imperfect, but it's also what you make of it. The site is still a fantastic resource for communities of like-minded interests, and is about as engaging as ever. Plus, that enormous user base means that the site is a lot more successful at what it does than some of the new players entering the scene. There are other promising platforms out there to try (namely Mastodon, but also Bluesky and Threads), but it's tough to beat the benefits of Reddit's popularity. It's difficult to find a topic that isn't covered by a subreddit. If you do, make one yourself, and you might just find a small community forming around it.

Reddit has some wind in its sails this week: The company's stock was up 48% following the first day of its initial public offering, and while that number came down a bit the second day, it seems the markets like Reddit as a stock. It even opened up the IPO to Redditors themselves, which was a decent gestures towards the people that actually make Reddit valuable. Personally, I hope Reddit's strategies are successful, so long as they continue to allow us to connect in our communities without too much interference.

The Easiest Ways to Fix Bad Barbecue Sauce

I’m guilty of judging books by their covers and selecting wines based on their bespoke labels. I’ll even buy a barbecue sauce if it has a cute bottle. I’m not proud of it, and it definitely backfires. But if there’s a way to make bad wine taste better, you better believe there are ways to improve bad barbecue sauce. (Sorry, I can’t help you fix a bad book.) Try these tips to make a bad store-bought BBQ sauce taste less “bottled.”

How to make bottled barbecue sauce taste better

For the most part, buying bottled barbecue sauce really does simplify things. Experimenting with a new recipe from scratch is time consuming, and even after preparing all the ingredients and doing all the work you might still find that you don’t like it. The problem with the bottled stuff isn’t so much that it’s “fake” but that it’s made to appeal to a large regional, or even national, audience.  

The biggest complaints I hear about barbecue sauce is that it’s too sweet, too ketchup-y, or just too bland all around. I primarily call upon ingredients with contrasting flavors to help balance out recipes. To try any of these suggestions, you can either dump the sauce out into a bowl and stir in the additions, or if you have room in the bottle, just add it in the new ingredient and shake it up.


Your toolkit to fix a barbecue sauce fiasco:


Barbecue sauce that's too sweet

I enjoy barbecue sauce with a sweet element, but we’ve all had the sauce that just takes it too far. It’s the kind you taste and think, “Ah, yes. Corn syrup.” To curb the overwhelming sweetness, call on the help of acidic ingredients, like a heavy squeeze of lemon or lime juice. If citrus isn’t strong enough, use a splash of straight-up white vinegar. If you don’t want to lose the mixture’s thickness, you could add a small amount of powdered citric acid, about a quarter to a half teaspoon.

Barbecue sauce that's too ketchup-y

Tomatoes are a key element in many barbecue sauces—they add body, acidity, and flavor. In some recipes the tomato element can start to dominate the entire flavor profile and get that ketchup flavor. Luckily, you don’t have to hide it (the tomato flavor is supposed to be there) you just have to bring the other BBQ elements forward. You have a few options to strike a balance. Try sweetening the mixture with molasses, brown sugar, or honey. I like to bump-up the umami with a splash of Worcestershire sauce or a sprinkle of MSG. Push the sauce toward a Carolina-style with a heavy dose of apple cider vinegar. 

Barbecue sauce that's too bland

It’s frustrating when you try a new barbecue sauce only to find out it tastes like thick, viscous nothing. But, as an eternal food optimist, I’d like to help you focus on the bright side: almost anything will make it better. Of course, you don’t want to reinvent the BBQ wheel so stick to some flavor powerhitters. 

Hot sauce is a sure way to add interest to a boring sauce. Add vinegar or citrus to brighten it up. Make it funky and savory by adding a few dashes of fish sauce along with some soy sauce. Bring out your lineup of earthy sweeteners: molasses, brown sugar, or honey. 

If you have the time, I highly suggest adding small doses of strong aromatics. Mix in two cloves of finely minced raw garlic, a tablespoon of grated red onion, or an inch of grated ginger root. Feel free to break out the dry seasonings, like powdered garlic, ground cinnamon, cumin, or ground ginger, if needed. 

Don’t be dismayed when you crack open that next bottle of boring BBQ sauce. Adding some umami or a bit of a kick might just lead you to a new secret family recipe.

What's New on Max in April 2024

Par : Emily Long

Max's April highlights are largely in the documentary genre. First up is the limited series The Synanon Fix (April 1, weekly episodes), which dives deep into the rehab-program-turned-cult; followed by Brandy Hellville & The Cult of Fast Fashion (April 9), an HBO Original film that explores the cult-like following of fast fashion brand Brandy Melville.

Later in the month is An American Bombing: The Road to April 19th (April 16) about the context around the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, and The Jinx—Part Two (April 21), a six-episode continuation of the Emmy-winning series exploring the life of Robert Durst.

On the drama side, The Sympathizer—an HBO Original limited series co-produced with A24—debuts on April 14 with new episodes dropping weekly. The show, based on Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name, is an espionage thriller story of a half-French, half-Vietnamese communist spy at the end of the Vietnam war.

There's also a new comedy special from Alex Edelman (Just For Us, April 6); season four of unscripted series We're Here (new episodes weekly starting April 26), which follows drag queens Sasha Velour, Priyanka, Jaida Essence Hall, and Latrice Royale as they visit small-town communities across America; and the debut of the four-episode unscripted series Conan O'Brien Must Go (April 18).

Finally, Max has a packed schedule of live and on-demand sports this month, including the NCAA Men's Basketball Final Four (April 6–8) as well as NBA, NHL, MLB, US Soccer, MotoGP, and professional cycling.

Here’s everything else coming to Max in April.

What’s coming to Max in April 2024

Arriving April 1

  • American Renegades (2018)

  • Basquiat (1996)

  • Black Swan (2010)

  • Body of Lies (2008)

  • Bridget Jones's Diary (2001)

  • Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason (2004)

  • Bridget Jones's Baby (2016)

  • Bruce Lee: The Man and the Legend (1973)

  • Cane Toads: The Conquest (2010)

  • Ceddo (1977)

  • Conviction (2010)

  • Deepwater Horizon (2016)

  • Demonlover (2002)

  • Don't Let Go (2019)

  • Elizabethtown (2005)

  • Emitaï (1971)

  • Eo (2022)

  • The Fluffy Movie (2014)

  • Frozen in Design (Special) (HGTV)

  • Gulliver's Travels (2010)

  • Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (2001)

  • Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone: Magical Movie Mode (2001)

  • Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002)

  • Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004)

  • Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005)

  • Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007)

  • Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009)

  • Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 (2010)

  • Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 (2011)

  • The Heroic Trio (1993)

  • Hotel Artemis (2018)

  • Infernal Affairs (2002)

  • Infernal Affairs II (2003)

  • Infernal Affairs III (2003)

  • Inland Empire (2006)

  • Internal Affairs (1990)

  • Joy (2015)

  • Juliet, Naked (2018)

  • Kingpin (1996)

  • Leap of Faith (1992)

  • Lonesome Luke, Messenger (1917)

  • Lost In Translation (2003)

  • Love Affair (1939)

  • Lucky (2017)

  • McQueen (2018)

  • Miracles (1989)

  • National Security (2003)

  • The New World (2006)

  • Next Aisle Over (1919)

  • Once Upon a Time in China (1991)

  • Once Upon a Time in China (1992)

  • Once Upon a Time in China III (1993)

  • The Pink Panther (2006)

  • The Pink Panther 2 (2009)

  • The Power of Film (2024)

  • Pride and Glory (2008)

  • Ronin (1998)

  • Safe Haven (2013)

  • A Sammy in Siberia (1919)

  • Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (2010)

  • The Sea of Trees (2016)

  • A Serious Man (2009)

  • The Social Network (2010)

  • Source Code (2011)

  • The Spongebob Squarepants Movie (2004)

  • Spring Fever (1919)

  • The Square (2017)

  • The Strangers (2008)

  • The Synanon Fix (HBO Original)

  • A Tale of Springtime (1990)

  • A Tale of Winter (1992)

  • A Tale of Summer (1996)

  • A Tale of Autumn (1998)

  • Terminator Salvation (2009)

  • This is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection (2019)

  • The Thomas Crown Affair (1999)

  • The Trial (1962)

  • The Unknown (1927)

  • Victor Frankenstein (2015)

  • The Watermelon Woman (1996)

  • Wes Craven Presents: They (2002)

  • Whiteout (2009)

  • Winter's Tale (2014)

  • Wipeout, Season 2A

  • Youth (2015)

  • Zero Days (2016)

  • Zola (2021)

Arriving April 2

  • Moonshiners, Season 13 (Discovery Channel)

Arriving April 3

  • Ghost Adventures: House Calls, Season 2 (Discovery Channel)

  • Take My Tumor (TLC)

Arriving April 4

  • Divided Youth (Da Ponte Pra La) (Max Original International)

  • HOP, Season 1A (Max Original)

Arriving April 5

  • The Zone of Interest (A24)

Arriving April 6

  • Alex Edelman: Just For Us (HBO Original)

  • Homegrown, Season 4 (Magnolia)

  • Metalocalypse: Army of the Doomstar (2023)

Arriving April 7

  • Best Bite in Town, Season 1 (Food Network)

Arriving April 9

  • Brandy Hellville & The Cult of Fast Fashion (HBO Original)

  • Mud Madness (Discovery Channel)

  • Teen Titans Go! To the Movies (2018) (Cartoon Network)

Arriving April 10

  • Bail Jumpers (ID)

Arriving April 11

  • Massacre of the Mormons (Max Original International)

Arriving April 13

  • Jessica's Big Little World, Season 1C (Cartoon Network)

  • Ready To Love, Season 9 (OWN)

Arriving April 14

  • 24 In 24: Last Chef Standing (Food Network)

  • The Sympathizer (HBO Original)

Arriving April 16

  • 90 Day Pillow Talk: The Single Life, Season 4 (TLC)

  • An American Bombing: The Road to April 19th (HBO Original)

Arriving April 18

  • Conan O’Brien Must Go (Max Original)

  • Homefront (2013)

  • Men (2022)

Arriving April 19

  • HGTV Smart Home 2024 (HGTV)

Arriving April 21

  • Be My Guest with Ina Garten, Season 4 (Food Network)

  • The Jinx – Part Two (HBO Original)

Arriving April 22

  • 90 Day Fiancé: Love in Paradise, Season 4 (TLC)

  • The Green Planet (BBC)

  • Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths - Part One (2024)

  • Restoration Road with Clint Harp, Season 5 (Magnolia)

  • Ugliest House in America, Season 5 (HGTV)

Arriving April 23

  • Farmhouse Fixer, Season 3 (HGTV)

  • The Losers (2010)

  • Roadkill Garage, Season 9 (MotorTrend)

Arriving April 24

  • Vegas: The Story of Sin City (CNN)

Arriving April 26

  • Caught! (Discovery Channel)

  • United States of Scandal with Jake Tapper (CNN)

  • We're Here, Season 4 (HBO Original)

Arriving April 28

  • Love & Marriage: D.C. (OWN)

'Likewise' Can Help You Finally Figure Out What to Watch

Entertainment enjoyers have been asking “What should we watch tonight?” since TV existed, but over the last few decades, technology has expanded the options from “whatever is on the three channels we get” to “almost everything that has ever been broadcast in human history”—leaving many paralyzed with choice, but no closer to answering the key question. Enter Likewise, an app aimed at giving you the best answer possible.

Founded by a team of ex-Microsoft employees with an investment from Bill Gates, Likewise has been working to improve entertainment recommendations for movies and TV, books, and podcasts since 2017.  “We were created to solve the absolute mess that is content discovery,” Likewise co founder and CEO Ian Morris told me. “Our mission is to provide every single person out there with their own personal entertainment.”

Likewise’s most recent addition is a fun-to-use TikTok-like infinite scroll interface and deeper integration of AI into its recommendation process. In press-release speak, Likewise works by “seamlessly integrating its AI-powered personal agent and leveraging advanced algorithms and 600 million consumer recommendations.” In practice, you download the Likewise App for iOS or Android, tell it some of the genres, movies, TV shows, books, and/or podcasts you like, and start poking around. 

How Likewise works

Likewise attacks the “what do I watch” problem from a couple of angles at once. It compiles an extensive profile of individuals users’ taste preferences and recommends based on that; it also links you with its community of over 2.5 million users, specifically to users who share tases with you, then lets you ask the community for its favorites. You can check out the lists curated and compiled by Likewise’s editorial staff, or use its AI agent to search using natural language.

Unlike the recommendation algorithms from a single streaming service, Likewise is cross-platform and community-driven, so it’s going to try to give you the best horror movies for you based on more than the formula Netflix uses, instead of providing the best horror movies for you that are also on Netflix (unless that’s what you ask for). 

“It’s designed to be action-oriented,” Morris explained. “If you see something you like, you can click the save button and save it to your watchlist, then see where it’s available for streaming. You have the Rotten Tomato ratings, and the IMDB rating, and community reviews, then you can play it on your Roku. So it’s not just a query engine.” 

Breaking out of the app

You can also use Likewise outside of your phone. A Likewise app is available on Roku, AppleTV, and Firestick, and can be used as a central hub for accessing media on those devices.  You can also contact Pix, Likewise’s AI agent, directly from the website, send it a text from your phone at (877) TEXTPIX, or send a question via email. Unlike asking ChatGPT, Pix will add the results of your query to your Likewise list.

Testing Likewise's AI with a ridiculous query

I like to mess with artificial intelligence, so I emailed Pix the following: "Compile a list of a movies that housewife in 1981 might enjoy if she was contemplating leaving her husband and children in order to pursue her dream of becoming a professional surfer."

Here is what Pix returned.

"Sounds like you're looking for some cinematic inspiration to catch that dream wave, am I right? 🏄‍♀️ I've whipped up a list of movies that would have resonated with a housewife in 1981, contemplating a wild life change towards professional surfing. Hope these help stir up that beachy ambition! 🌴

  • The Endless Summer (1966): A timeless classic in the world of surfing films. It's all about chasing summer around the world. Talk about surf's up, right? 🌞🏄‍♀️

  • An Unmarried Woman (1978): It's about a woman rediscovering herself after a divorce. It should resonate well with the idea of starting anew. 💔🔄💖

  • Breaking Away (1979): It's a coming-of-age story about chasing dreams, which might be a great source of inspiration for our 1981 housewife. 🏁🚲

  • Kramer vs. Kramer (1979): While it's about a divorce and custody battle, it puts a good perspective on the family aspect for someone considering leaving. 👪⚖️

  • Norma Rae (1979): This one's all about a woman standing up for what she believes in, despite the odds. Kind of the feel we're going for, right? ✊💪

  • Ordinary People (1980): This one would resonate well, as it's about a family trying to cope with the loss of one of their own. Might give some perspective on what the family might go through. 🏠💔

  • On Golden Pond (1981): An ageing couple's journey might just help our protagonist see her existing life from a fresh lens. 👵👴💖

While I absolutely loathe the writing style of AI when it's trying to be "casual," the movies are all in the ballpark, at least.

How I Learned to Ignore the Worst of the Internet

Par : Justin Pot

Your attention is valuable—possibly one of the most valuable things you have. I don't mean valuable in the sense that giving your attention to articles such as this one contributes, in a financial sense, to the well-being of online publishers and freelance journalists (though I am grateful that you're here.)

No, I mean that your attention is valuable in that human consciousness—your consciousness—is a profound miracle. You are a collection of atoms that is capable of thought, and which can also decide what to think about. The things that you pay attention to shape, in a tangible way, what you think about and, ultimately, how you interact with the world.

It's important, then, to be intentional when deciding what to pay attention to. And part of deciding what to pay attention to is deciding what to ignore. A recent episode of Never Post, an extremely good podcast about the internet that you should definitely subscribe to, featured a conversation about this. The podcaster Hans Buetow interviewed academic Stephan Lewandowsky, co-author of the paper Critical Ignoring as a Core Competence for Digital Citizens. From the abstract:

Low-quality and misleading information online can hijack people’s attention, often by evoking curiosity, outrage, or anger. Resisting certain types of information and actors online requires people to adopt new mental habits that help them avoid being tempted by attention-grabbing and potentially harmful content. We argue that digital information literacy must include the competence of critical ignoring—choosing what to ignore and where to invest one’s limited attentional capacities.

There's something intuitive about this, especially if you were raised in a culture that threw cliches at you like "knowledge is power." Isn't paying attention to as many things as possible—and knowing as many things as possible—better? On the podcast, Lewandowsky says there's a limit to how many things you can pay attention to in a meaningful way. "It's only by ignoring things that you can actually focus on other stuff and process it to the point where you actually understand it," he says.

What does this mean, specifically? That depends on your values and on the things you want to know about—but let's use this election year as an example. In the months to come, there is going to be an absolute onslaught of articles and videos demanding your attention, only some of them worthwhile. Part of being an engaged and capable citizen, in our current online ecosystem, is deciding which articles and videos to ignore.

Create a system for figuring out what to ignore

I have developed my own personal rules for figuring out how to do this. I've found that any article about politics that contains combat-based verbs—where the supposedly good person "blasts", "eviserates", or "decimates" the supposedly bad person—isn't likely to include a useful summary of the policy issue at hand.

I try to instead read articles that discuss how different choices government makes could impact people. I feel the same way about articles that talk about "how voters will react" to something—such articles rarely do much to explain the more substantive policy issues at stake.

I am not saying that you should apply the same rules, and ignore the same things, as I do—we all have different interests, after all. I'm just saying that part of navigating the online world is deciding what to ignore, and that we could all benefit from practicing this skill. Maybe for you, that means ignoring everything making people mad on social media, or articles that seem more interested in invoking than understanding.

To quote Lewandowsky again:

...to acquire knowledge, you gotta be able to focus on something. And if you are so overwhelmed with information that you can't pay any proper attention to anything, well, then you're not gathering knowledge. You're just gathering random noise.

There's a lot of noise out there, and it's only going to get louder. We all need to get better at ignoring things.

How to Get a Mortgage When You’re Self-Employed

Getting a mortgage when you're self-employed can be more challenging than it is for traditional W-2 employees, but it's absolutely possible with the right preparation. Since you don't have standard pay stubs from an employer, lenders just need sufficient documentation to verify your income. Here are some tips for qualifying for a home loan while self-employed.

How to get a mortgage when you’re self-employed

Establish a solid income history

Most lenders want to see at least two years of steadily increasing self-employment income. They'll typically ask for your federal tax returns (personal and business) for the past two years to verify your self-employment income. The more years of documentation you can provide showing rising revenues, the better.

Maintain a solid credit score

A low credit score is always going to affect your ability to qualify for loans at decent rates. And with other forms of income less clear-cut, your credit score carries extra weight for proving your creditworthiness. Most lenders require self-employed borrowers to have credit scores of at least 700.

To keep your credit score high, pay all bills on time, keep credit card balances low, and avoid new large debts before applying.

Minimize your debt-to-income ratio

Lenders calculate your debt-to-income (DTI) ratio by adding your total monthly debt payments and dividing by your gross monthly income. With fluctuating self-employment income, you'll want to keep this DTI below 43% to qualify. That may mean paying down debts before applying.

Minimize your write-offs

It may be tempting to write off every possible expense to minimize your taxable income, but that could backfire when trying to qualify for a mortgage. Lenders want to see maximum income to ensure you can repay the loan. If you're eyeing a mortgage this year, avoid writing off more expenses than absolutely necessary.

Be prepared with documentation

Beyond at least two years of tax returns, have paperwork ready documenting your self-employment income sources like 1099s, profit/loss statements, quarterly tax payment records, business licenses, client invoices, and more. The more you can document, the better.

Get pre-qualified and compare lenders

Get pre-qualified with several lenders to compare rates and requirements. Meet with local banks, credit unions, and specialized self-employment lenders. You can absolutely qualify for a mortgage as a self-employed borrower—being organized and having good records will make the process smoother.

The Best Beauty and Personal Care Products in Amazon's Big Spring Sale

Whenever there’s a major sale, like Amazon’s current Big Spring Sale, you can fall into one of two camps: people who pick up the essentials while they’re cheap, or people who opt for splurge-worthy treats with slightly less of the splurge. I’m firmly in the second category, unfortunately for my wallet, and fortunately for you (if you fall into that camp as well). Here are the beauty and self-care items I’m eyeing during the Big Spring Sale. 

Best Big Spring Sale deals on hair products

Hair care is expensive, but quality products are necessary to maintain the integrity of your strands. For now, you don’t have to choose between affordability and quality. 

  • I have been wanting a small heated blowout brush for weeks now and the Wavytalk 5-in-1 curling set going on sale for $42.49 (regularly $53.99) might be the thing that finally pushes me. This brand is big on TikTok, and with this set, not only do you get the very-trendy blowout brush, but four other curling attachments in different sizes, too, which is space- and money-saving for those of us who want a different sized curl every time we style. 

  • Another brand that’s huge on social media but usually out of my price range is GHD, but their viral Curve iron is down to $174.25 from $209.99 right now—a perfect upgrade for when you’ve perfected soft, beachy curls on your old iron and want to level up to something more exquisite, this is easy to use and made to create long-lasting waves. 

  • I love rotating curling irons in general just for the novelty, if not for the ease of use, so Drybar’s 3-Day Bender going on sale from $149 to $134.10 is intriguing to me. This is a good option if you are low on time when you do your hair or have trouble getting the hang of traditional irons because it does most of the work for you.

  • Hot Tools curling irons are synonymous with quality, but anyone who knows that also know they’re pricey (for a reason). Huge, blown-out curls are really in right now and you can get a Hot Tools Gold Jumbo iron for just $28.99 compared to the usual $59.99. 

  • You can’t use heat on your hair every day, and some people prefer to never use it at all. Kitsch, arguably the biggest name in heatless curlers right now, has their XL Heatless Curling Set on sale for $15.99 instead of $19.99, so if you’re interested in trying overnight styles, start here. As someone who has tried a good five or six brands, I can say Kitsch is actually one of the ones that is decently comfortable to sleep in because the rod is softer than the cheaper competition.

  • Whether sleeping in a roller or not, I refuse to let my head touch the pillow without a satin bonnet on and have done so for a year now. The difference it’s made for my hair is unreal: It’s softer, less damaged, and overall healthier than it was when I was sleeping in a ponytail and letting it drag all over my pillowcase. The Yanibest bonnet is Big Spring Sale’d down to $9.58 from $12.98.

  • The Slopehill ionic hair dryer is, according to TikTok reviews, the best Dyson dupe you can get and, thanks to the Big Spring Sale, is $31.33 instead of $39.99. It comes with magnetic attachments for easy styling and is both powerful and lightweight. 

Best Big Spring Deals for face and body

Devices and tools for the maintenance of your skin are also popular—and expensive—so if you’ve been looking to buy, now might be the time for these. 

  • The COSRX snail mucin is a viral and covetable must-have that helps skin recover and stay hydrated. Usually, it’s $25, but right now, it’s just $13, which is a major steal for something that is a beloved best-seller with almost 79,000 perfect reviews. Whether you’re worried about dryness, irritation, or aging, this regenerative product should be added to your routine. 

  • I’ve been using a NuFace Mini microcurrent device for two years and love it so much that I’m looking to upgrade to a bigger and better one. The FOREO Bear has been on my list of possibilities but just moved to the top spot because it’s $213.85 right now (regularly $329). With consistent use, these devices really do make a noticeable difference in the firmness of skin and reduce fine lines; plus, you always look nice and sculpted right after a session. 

  • The Medicube Age-R Booster H device has gone viral enough to get a Vogue writeup about how much people love it and its ability to make skin look more radiant and glowy through electrical stimulation. The problem is it’s usually $299. The solution is that right now, it’s $218.27. If it’s good enough for Hailey Beiber, it’s good enough for me. That’s what I always say, anyway. 

  • Finally, I was excited to see the Ulike laser hair removal device on the Big Spring Sale list because it’s been all over my social feeds lately. Every review claims it really works for removing hair painlessly and somewhat permanently, with results in three weeks, on average, but $329 seemed like a lot to spend. Its new sale price of $259 is a little more reasonable, especially when you consider how much you spend on razors and shave gel (or, worse, waxes) every year. 

Your PS5's Next Update Is Going to Be a Big One

While we wait for Sony to release any information at all about the PS5 Pro, there are some interesting and exciting changes arriving in an upcoming software update. YouTuber Mystic shared details about the update in a video Thursday, which, among other changes, includes a battery widget and the ability to choose a live wallpaper for the Explore tab.

Speaking of the Explore tab, this update is all about that section of your PS5. Aside from sporting a new look, it also details new information, such as battery indicators for your controllers and connected peripherals, such as the Pulse Elite. There's also a Console Storage tab here, which gives you a preview of your storage situation, and will take you to your storage settings if selected. Looking towards the right of the screen, you'll find sections for game captures, game news, your wishlist (which you can scroll through), as well as online content, such as your friends list, your friends' activities (including what games they're playing and the trophies they've earned).

The Explore tab also now supports custom backgrounds, including screenshots as well as live wallpapers. Mystic showed off a few of the options, which are PlayStation themed and look nice as the background of the Explore tab. That said, these wallpapers disappear when switching out of the Explore tab, so don't expect to set a wallpaper for your entire PS5. (Man, I miss themes.) You can choose whether the explore tab prioritizes the solo content or friend content, or a mix of both.

Since these changes primarily affect the Explore tab, it's a U.S.-based update only for now. For some reason, Sony doesn't make the Explore tab open to any other regions, so if you're outside of the U.S., this update probably won't affect your PS5 much.

This beta update follows the PS5's System Update 9.00 last week, which added small changes, such as an improved microphone and louder speaker on the DualSense controller, new screen share options, and a brightness level setting for the console.

How to install beta software on PS5

The update is currently in beta testing. If you want to try this software, in addition to future beta software, for yourself, you'll need to register to be a beta tester with Sony. If selected, Sony will email you instructions for installing the beta on your PS5, which should involve redeeming a voucher sent via email.

Khai Dao Is the Sexy Bad Boy of Fried Eggs

Eggs almost always have a starring role in my meal rotation. Usually I’ll do a soft scramble, or a low-heat fried egg on toast for breakfast. Most accepted egg advice says to cook it gently so the proteins don't become tough, but today I kicked "good" advice to the curb. I made a special fried egg that cooks in blistering hot oil and relishes in crisp-cooked protein strands: khai dao. Khai dao is a crispy Thai fried egg and it deserves more than toast to carry it.

Unlike deep-fried eggs, Khai dao is shallow-fried, which makes a huge difference in texture and presentation. It doesn’t require tons of oil, but just enough of a pool where the white billows dramatically on top and crisps to a deep golden brown on the bottom. It’s a simple technique that results in a trio of textures—crispy, chewy, and creamy—and it makes a great companion for nearly any meal. 

If you’ve had some exposure to Thai food, you’ve probably seen this brittle-edged, bubbly fried egg casually reclining on top of pad kra prao, a minced pork dish tossed with Thai holy basil and chopped chilies. If you search the internet for khai dao, you’ll probably see a slew of recipes for a fried egg salad called yam khai dao (or yum kai dao) where the fried egg is chopped and tossed with veggies in a sweet, sour, and savory dressing. 


Highly-rated woks to consider:


How to make khai dao in a frying pan

The beauty of this crunchy-creamy egg is that it only takes a few minutes to make, and you can serve it on top of anything from silken tofu to cheeseburgers, and you’ll always be glad you did.

Some pans suit different styles of eggs better than others. I think khai dao is maybe 10% easier to make in a wok than in a frying pan because the wok’s bowl-shape ensures a small amount of oil is always puddled at the bottom. If you're using a wok, then there's no need to mess with the pan while cooking. If you're using a Western-style frying pan, you can mimic the wok's depth without dumping a cup of oil in there—just tilt the pan.

1. Heat the oil

Add two tablespoons of oil to a frying pan; a neutral oil, like canola or corn oil. I like to use a pan with taller sloped sides because we’ll be cooking the egg in a tilted pan to replicate the puddle in a wok. If your pan only has short sides, that’s okay, just don’t tilt very deeply. Heat the pan over medium heat for a few minutes. 

2. Prepare the egg

I like to crack my egg into a small, wide bowl while the oil heats. I do this primarily so I don’t have to get my hands too close to the hot oil. When you drop in the egg, the oil is going to spit and snap so holding the far edge of a wide bowl gives you some clearance.

3. Fry the khai (egg)

After about three minutes, check the oil. It should be shimmering. When you tilt the pan, it should quickly flow to one side, not creep like cold oil. The egg crisps and bubbles the best when the oil is screaming hot.

An egg frying in a pan.
Credit: Allie Chanthorn Reinmann

Tilt the pan so the oil gathers in a puddle on one side. With your other hand, carefully slide the egg into the hot oil. The egg will begin to bubble and sizzle immediately. Put down the egg bowl but keep the pan tilted. You won’t be flipping this egg, but if you like the top to be cooked use a small metal spoon to baste the excess hot oil over the top. After one or two splashes, you’ll see the yolk start to cloud-over. 

Spoon over an egg bubbling in a pan.
Credit: Allie Chanthorn Reinmann

After about two minutes, the white will be cooked and have brown, lace-y edges. The yolk will be medium-runny when you crack into it. This is usually when I take mine out, but you can cook it longer to your preference. Remove the egg with a slotted metal spatula and place it on a paper-towel-lined plate. You can cook more eggs in the remaining oil, or use the oil to start prepping the larger portion of the meal. 

Put this crackly egg on anything savory, like beef stew, a slice of pizza, saag paneer, or finally put the "croque" in a croque madame sandwich. Mama brand instant noodles are already perfect, but the only way to improve them is with khai dao. So I made myself two. 

When to Get a Tankless Water Heater (and When Not To)

In so many ways, we’re living in the future. We have wireless internet, artificial intelligence, and holographic KISS concerts. Technology has advanced so fast it’s often difficult to keep up—as soon as you’ve mastered one new paradigm, a dozen others have popped up while you weren’t paying attention.

But not everything in our lives has gotten better—or even changed that much. Your standard water heater, for example, is kind of primitive: It’s a tank of water with a fire underneath, or electric heating elements inside the tank. It’s not terribly complicated or that far removed from a bucket suspended over a fire.

There is a more advanced, modern option: The tankless water heater, aka a “demand” water heater. These fixtures eschew the tank altogether, heating water on demand. Not only are they more energy efficient by as much as 34%, they offer the tantalizing possibility of infinite hot water—and infinitely long hot showers. Despite these benefits, however, a tankless water heater won’t work for everyone or every living situation.

Capacity

Tankless water heaters can supply infinite hot water in the sense that they don’t rely on a set amount of stored, heated water. But they’re not magic—they can only heat up so much water so fast. Every tankless water heater has a flow rate measured as gallons per minute (gpm), and every fixture that provides hot water (faucets, showers, dishwashers, laundry) has a flow rate as well. Your tankless water heater has to have a flow rate sufficient to supply hot water to all the fixtures simultaneously.

For example, if your family frequently has someone showering (2 gpm) while the washing machine (3 gpm) and dishwasher (2 gpm) are both running, your tankless water heater will need to provide at least 7 gpm. A heater with a higher flow rate will come with a higher price tag—and if you have moments when your hot water usage spikes beyond the normal rate, your tankless water heater might not be able to keep up.

Another factor affecting tankless water heater performance is the temperature rise. This is the difference between the temperature of the water when it enters your home through the pipes and the temperature you want your hot water to be. If your groundwater is 50ºF (10ºC) and you want your hot water to be 120ºF (49ºC), you need a rise of 70ºF (39ºC). If the water temperature coming in drops a few degrees for any reason, your tankless water heater might struggle to provide water that’s hot enough for your needs, especially if you use a lot of appliances and fixtures simultaneously.

That means if you have a large family or use a lot of hot water in your house, a tankless water heater might not be the best choice even if you calculate its capacity carefully. And since tankless models don’t have a stored supply of water and rely on constant intake, any mineral buildup in the pipes or drop in water pressure to your home might result in lukewarm water or not enough hot water to go around. A storage water heater will eventually fill up even with reduced water pressure, and will eventually heat water of any temperature to the desired setting. But if your hot water usage rarely spikes and the temperature rise is manageable, a tankless unit should work well.

Space

Although tankless water heaters are smaller than traditional tank heaters (and you can buy compact units designed for smaller spaces), that doesn’t mean you can necessarily fit one in your existing mechanical space. Depending on the capacity you need, if you have a tight mechanical room or area you might not be able to squeeze one in, leaving you with the option of installing it outside the house or in plain view somewhere else in the house. I personally know someone who had to have theirs installed in their living room, so now they have a huge unit with pipes running everywhere right in the middle of their home. And choosing a more compact unit might mean sacrificing capacity, leaving you with chronically lukewarm water.

It’s best to consult with your plumber or contractor to make sure they can fit a tankless water heater into your home before you commit to one. If not, but you can tolerate having it exposed to guests or mounted outdoors, then a tankless unit will still work for you.

ROI

A final consideration with tankless water heaters is the return on investment. Because of their superior energy efficiency, tankless water heaters are often promoted as wise investments—and you will get your money back, eventually. Tankless water heaters can last 20 years or more (more than double the lifespan of a typical storage water heater), and they can save an average family of four about $100 a year on energy bills. If your tankless water heater lasts 20 years, you’ll save $2,000 over its lifetime. The cost of installing one of these units ranges between $1,500 and $3,200 (including labor), so you might get all or at least most of your money back.

But if you’re not planning to stay in your home that long, the investment might not pay off. If you’re planning to sell your home in a few years, a tankless water heater might appeal to some potential buyers, but there’s no data to support the idea that a tankless water heater significantly affects home value one way or another. On the other hand, if you’re in your forever home or have no plans to move any time soon, the combination of infinite hot water and energy efficiency will pay off.

When It’s Actually a Good Idea to Remove a Bathroom

Bathrooms have slowly become one of the most important rooms in our homes. Once a small, single space that people didn’t particularly want to spend a lot of time in, modern bathrooms are luxurious and spacious—and they're multiplying. While the basic modern standard is about two baths for every three bedrooms, we’re living in an era of “toilet inflation,” and it’s increasingly common to have as many bathrooms as bedrooms—or more. Fifty years ago, there were on average two people for every bathroom in a house; today it’s closer to one person per bathroom.

One reason for this is changing layouts: Once en suite bathrooms off of primary bedrooms became common, people needed to add an extra bathroom for guests or other residents. Another is the value a bathroom adds to a house: Although the return on investment (ROI) on an added bathroom is just over 50%, real estate professionals will tell you time and again that more bathrooms mean a higher sale price and more offers when you decide to sell your house.

But the opposite can also be true, believe it or not. While adding a second bathroom or an en suite bathroom in your home probably always makes sense (in terms of lifestyle and ROI), there are some scenarios when it’s actually smarter to remove a bathroom in your house.

Too many baths

You might not have a bathroom-to-bedroom ratio of 16-to-9 like Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, but you can still have too many bathrooms. While house hunters are generally delighted to find plenty of bathrooms in a house, there is actually a point where the number of bathrooms in your home can become a detriment instead of an asset. Each bathroom in your home—whether it’s a half-bath, a spa bath, or lavish suite all its own, represents a portion of cleaning, maintenance, and potential water damage in the home. Even bathrooms that aren’t used regularly have to be cleaned, and not only will you not enjoy cleaning a bathroom you never use, potential buyers won’t like the idea either.

If your home isn’t particularly large, squeezing extra bathrooms into that small space can be counter-productive as well, as it simply underscores the small size of the place, and can result in rooms that feel too small. Having a third bath won’t do you much good if it’s the size of an airplane bathroom—and it could make the adjoining bedroom too small to fit a queen-sized bed.

Awkward locations

If you’ve ever watched a TV show about folks hunting for a new home, you’ve probably seen a few moments when folks discover a bathroom in an odd place and react negatively. If you have an extra bathroom right off the kitchen, for example, where guests will be using the facilities three feet away from where the cooking happens, that may be more of a downside than a positive. Removing an awkwardly located bathroom can improve the flow of the house and prevent an immediate bad impression.

Value elsewhere

Finally, if you have more bathrooms than you need, it’s possible that you could get more value out of your home by removing a bathroom and transforming it into something else that increases the utility, comfort, and value of your home:

  • That weird powder room off the kitchen might be space better used as a pantry—or making a tiny kitchen larger; in a recent survey, 80% of first-time home buyers considered a walk-in pantry to be “essential or desirable.”

  • A half-bath located near the entrance that no one ever uses (seriously, how many people are in such a rush they have to dash into a bathroom immediately upon entry?) might be better used as a coat closet

  • If you have more bathrooms than bedrooms, converting one of the baths to an additional bedroom might make sense. Extra bedrooms add slightly more value to a home than bathrooms, so if your bathroom-to-bedroom ratio is a confusing number like 4-3, changing it to a more comprehensible 3-4 makes a lot of sense.

The take-away is simple: While it might be counter-intuitive, if you have more than enough bathrooms, getting rid of one of them can benefit you in terms of how much you enjoy your home—and how much it’s ultimately worth.

The Best VPNs If You Still Want to Watch Porn in Texas

In the state of Texas, porn sites must now verify that their users are adults with a government-issued ID or some other suitable method in order to prove your identity—not necessarily something you want to do every time you visit an adult site. That's why sites like Pornhub have gone dark in protest, and as a result, a substantial number of Texans are now busy searching for the best VPNs (Virtual Private Networks) to install on their devices.

For its part, Pornhub says the ruling will "impinge on the rights of adults to access protected speech" and that age verification "is not an effective solution for protecting users online." It wants to see age verification done at the device level, and has therefore blocked access to its site from Texas. If you try to load up Pornhub from inside the Lone Star State, you'll see, in part, this message: "Such bills have failed to protect minors, by driving users from those few websites which comply, to the hundreds of thousands of websites with far fewer safety measures in place, which do not comply."

As for the federal appeals court, it pointed to the age verification needed to buy old-fashioned, printed porn: Not applying the same rules to online content "implies that the invention of the Internet somehow reduced the scope of the state's ability to protect children," wrote Circuit Judge Jerry Smith in the ruling.

How to watch porn in Texas

Whatever your position on the new law, a good number of Texans clearly know that the best VPNs can connect your computer to a server in a different part of the world—making it look like you're located somewhere other than where you actually are.

That's just the start, though, when it comes to the benefits of installing a VPN. These software tools hide your browsing activity from governments, law enforcement agencies, and whoever is providing your internet—VPNs make it harder for companies to track you, and give you more security and privacy (though not anonymity) online.

With that in mind, we've covered the best free VPNs, the best paid VPNs, and the best free VPNs for Android in the past, but we'd like to pick out a couple of recommendations here—if you want more suggestions for your internet browsing needs (adult site-related or not), follow those links above.

The best free VPN: Proton VPN

Proton VPN app
Proton VPN doesn't put any bandwidth restrictions on free accounts. Credit: Proton

We've written in glowing terms before about how good the free Proton VPN is, and it's a great pick if you don't want to spend anything. Its appeal starts with Proton itself: It's committed to privacy, was started by scientists in Switzerland, and is siloed from the big tech names (like Google, Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft). It's a name you can trust.

There are also surprisingly few restrictions for a free VPN. The two main limitations are you can only connect from one device, and you don't get to choose which country's servers you connect to. That's it—it's not painfully slow, like a lot of free VPNs. If you do need more flexibility in your VPN connections and features, there are paid upgrades available too.

Add in the ease of use you get with Proton VPN, and the support for a broad range of devices, and the reliability you get from servers around the world, and it's difficult to beat in terms of a free VPN. Sign up here for a Proton account, if you don't already have one.

The best paid VPN: NordVPN

NordVPN app
You can connect to more than 60 different countries with NordVPN. Credit: NordVPN

You've got a lot of excellent options to pick from when it comes to paid VPNs, and there's no app that's far and away above the others—but we're going to highlight NordVPN here, which we recently compared to ExpressVPN. It's fast, it's flexible, and the software it offers across multiple platforms is more polished and intuitive than with a lot of its rivals.

You get lots of features with NordVPN, from split tunneling to DNS customizations to support for the super-private Onion network. While you can easily use the software with just a couple of clicks (or taps), there are numerous advanced features available if you want to dig a bit deeper—you can even have a dedicated IP address (though it costs extra).

Pricing for NordVPN starts at $11.95 a month, but you can get some pretty significant discounts if you pay for a year (or two years) up front. That's enough to get you up to six simultaneous connections, and you can sign up here to register and download the apps.

These Robot Vacuums Are up to 48% Off During Amazon’s Big Spring Sale

Amazon's "Big Spring Sale" is not as good or as big as Prime Day, but we've been combing through the sale and highlighting a few of our favorite deals that are actually pretty good. If you like a clean place but don't like cleaning, there are some great robot vacuum deals going for up to 48% off.

You won't find Roombas on this list, mainly because its deals aren't great but also because iRobot has been falling behind other companies, like Roborock and Ecovacs. The Big Spring Sale includes deals on both brands, which I've listed below.

The Ecovacs Deebot N10 Plus

The Deebot N10 Plus is the most budget-friendly robot vacuum from this list at $349.99 (originally $649.99). Like the rest of these vacuums, this is a vacuum and mop combo with a self-emptying home base that holds up to 60 days' worth of debris. It has 3800Pa of suction power, can run for 330 minutes before needing to recharge, and has smart mapping of your home that you can control within the app. It uses sensors and LIDAR to navigate your home and avoid obstacles.

The Ecovacs Deebot T20 Omni

I've had the Ecovacs Deebot T20 Omni for some months now, and it was my first robot vacuum outside of the iRobot world. I was impressed with how much better it cleans and the features it has. The two main features that set it apart are the hot water mopping and hot air drying. This vacuum also automatically lifts 9 mm when passing your carpets to avoid getting them wet while mopping (no need to set "no mopping zones"). The mopping actually feels like a good clean with its two spinning mops that use pressure to get stains out. It has all the other features that the N10 Plus has, plus voice assistance and 6,000Pa suction power. You can get the Deebot T20 Omni for $649.99 (originally $1,099.99) after applying the $50 on-page discount.

The Ecovac Deebot T10 Omni

The Deebot T10 Omni has a little less suction power than the T20 with 5,000Pa, no hot water (it uses cold water instead), and no auto-mop lifting, but it has a camera with AI technology that it uses to avoid and recognize obstacles. You can also use the camera to monitor where the vacuum goes on a live video stream that also has two-way audio so you can spy on and freak out your pets when you're not home (as if pets needed any more reasons to hate a vacuum). You can get the Deebot T10 Omni for $629.99 (originally $1,199.99).

The Roborock S8 Pro Ultra

Roborock is another robot vacuum brand that has been impressing lately. The Roborock S8 Pro Ultra robot vacuum is its best vacuum, and it's very similar to the Deebot T20 Omni. It has the same suction power, auto-drying, lifts 5mm to avoid carpet, has obstacle avoidance, self-refills water, and self-empties its debris. The mopping is what sets this one apart from the rest, with 3,000 scrubs per minute and six newtons of pressure on every swipe. It gets up to 180 minutes of runtime before it needs to recharge. You can get the Roborock S8 Pro Ultra for $999.99 (originally $1,599.99).

Shopping on Amazon Is About to Get Even Worse

Par : Justin Pot

I don't need to tell you that Amazon's search results keep getting worse and worse—every major publication on Earth already has. Last week, Amazon announced plans to pour AI-powered jet fuel on that particular garbage fire.

Amazon, in my experience, is full of products with confusing descriptions that lack complete specifications. Now the website AlternativeTo is reporting that Amazon recently added a tool for vendors that allows them to use AI to create such product listings. Specifically, any vendor hoping to sell a product to Amazon can simply provide a link to a product page elsewhere on the web—an AI system will scan the page and fill in the product page for the vendor. To quote Amazon's press release:

This will further enhance and streamline the process of creating product listings, saving our selling partners more time and effort while developing listings for Amazon’s store that appeal to customers and help drive sales.

If you've ever browsed the top results of an Amazon search and thought, "Wow, I sure wish the company selling this put less effort into these product descriptions," then I suppose you should be excited about this. Everyone else, however, should expect even more of that uncanny feeling while browsing Amazon. You know the one: that you're a human attempting to navigate a system that's optimized by and for bots.

To be clear: I don't doubt that this auto-population might be useful for a few legitimate companies. Data entry is annoying and there are probably many cases where a tool like this could make life a little simpler for people, provided they go back and edit things to ensure accuracy. Good actors will probably benefit a little. Having said that, I can't help but imagine that bad actors will benefit even more. It's going to be extremely useful for spammy companies to upload even more of the low-effort junk that already clutters Amazon search results.

What's a would-be shopper to do? We've talked a bit about how to get better Amazon search results, and you could also use another search service altogether to search Amazon. Such skills, and tools, are only going to become more essential as AI fills more and more of the web with "content." Good luck out there.

My Favorite Kitchen Essentials From Amazon's Spring Sale

Stocking a kitchen with the appropriate tools and appliances doesn’t happen overnight. There are always one or two things on my I’ll get it later-list, and by the time “later” rolls around, I need to replace something else. If you've been meaning to someday get around to stocking your kitchen with a few tools and appliances, Amazon's ongoing spring sale is a good chance to grab a few essentials for a lower price.

ThermoPro probe meat thermometer

This is one of those gadgets that will absolutely change your cooking. Put an end to the days where you’re cooking steak and prodding at the thumb muscle of your palm, or cutting into chicken to see if it’s pink or not.

ThermoPro is a reliable food industry brand and this instant-read probe thermometer will take the guess-work out of cooking—from candy making to grilling.

Cuisinart waffle iron 

Waffle irons aren’t just for making waffles. I like to think of “waffle” as a verb. You can use a waffle iron to waffle a universe of foods that have never before had any business being inside one. Waffle instant mashed potatoes, croissants, cheese, a whole sandwich, or even birthday cake batter. The food writers here at Lifehacker have a long history of adoring this humble machine, so once you buy this affordable one from Cuisinart you can feel confident that we’ll always have unusual recipes for you to try.

Dishers

Dishers, sometimes called ice cream scoops, are one of my favorite low-tech kitchen tools. I identify dishers differently from classic ice cream scoops because they have a little release trigger that helps scoop out the material inside. Like the waffle iron, these rounded scoops are much more than they seem. Dishers are excellent portioning tools, they’re easy to use, and most of all, they can keep your cooking process tidy. I have a set of three sizes, similar to this one on sale, and I use them for things like scooping cookie dough, ice cream, meatballs, or dolloping ricotta along a casserole dish before I flatten it out. 

KitchenAid Digital Scale

You don’t have to bake bread every week to benefit from a kitchen scale (but it’ll definitely help you with that). A simple digital kitchen scale will help you reproduce recipes perfectly every time, and can be a valuable tool for strict diets. It can also give you insight if you’ve never really weighed your ingredients before (two ounces of dry pasta is disappointingly meager). Furthermore, using the tare feature on a scale allows you to easily measure multiple ingredients into one bowl. This scale from KitchenAid offers two platforms, one for larger measurements and one for precise measurements (think: grams of salt).

Nesting mixing bowls

I don’t need to go on about what mixing bowls do, they’re self-explanatory, but I will go on about the importance of having multiple mixing bowls of various sizes. Sometimes you need a huge one for all the large cuts of veggies going into your stew, and other times you need two small ones for measuring out chopped nuts and chocolate chips. I like these Wildone mixing bowls because they’re stainless steel with non-slip bottoms, but most of all because each size comes with a tight-fitting lid. 

Cuisinart air fryer

Every kitchen, from a dorm to a palace, can use an air fryer. (I haven’t been in a palace kitchen, but I bet they have air fryers.) These tabletop electronic convection ovens are safe, easy to use, and make quick work of innumerable items, from cheesecake to roasted peppers. This highly rated air fryer from Cuisinart offers multi-rack cooking and is big enough to bake a 12-inch pizza.

Philips automatic espresso machine 

Technically this is more of a splurge, but it’s also essential because that’s how I feel about coffee. Consider finally taking the leap and getting this fully automatic espresso machine from Philips. It grinds, it brews, it froths, it apparently makes “perfect coffee for your mood” (at least someone understands me). With its extensive capabilities, this machine has no problem making your doppio cappuccino and quickly pivoting to make your partner’s iced coffee.

The Best Vacuums in Amazon's Big Spring Sale

Vacuums are one of the best items to snatch up during a big sale because you while always need a good one, a "good one" is generally pretty expensive. Amazon’s Big Spring Sale starts today and runs through March 25, and it's a solid opportunity to pick up a vacuum that can suck its way right through your spring cleaning schedule. Here are some of the best ones on sale. 

Best vacuums in Amazon’s Big Spring Sale

  • The Dirt Devil Multi-Surface Extended Reach+ is $69.99, down from $94.99. The big selling point is the extension wand and hose, which you actually don’t see too often anymore on fancy new vacuums. The old-school approach is perfect for getting into tight spaces or underneath furniture. 

  • Personally, I’m a Bissell fan, so the Bissell 2252 CleanView Swivel Upright being marked down to $98.44 from $118.44 is exciting to me. The footprint is a little bigger than the small vacuums that are all the rage right now, but that’s because this one has a big swivel in the middle that helps it get around furniture. (My go-to vacuum, the Bissell Featherweight Stick, isn’t in Amazon’s Big Spring Sale, but it is only $33.95 and I can’t recommend it enough for its surprisingly powerful suction and convenient ability to transform from stick to handheld vacuum in seconds.)

  • If you’re looking for a sleek, small, and lightweight vacuum without a hefty price tag, try the Homeika 28Kpa cordless, which is $109.98 for the sale, compared to its usual price of $129.99. To see it in action, check out this video where a reviewer says it’s “absolutely awesome.”

  • Maybe this is the season to upgrade to a really heavy-duty vacuum. Instead of paying the $659.99 regular price for the Roborock Dyad Pro, you can pay $459.98 during the big sale. This is a combo wet/dry vac that comes with a variety of cleaning attachments and reviewers point to its ability to vacuum while it mops as a strong selling point. 

  • Specialty vacuums are also on sale, which means you can pick up the Jigoo bed vacuum for $139.99 instead of $179.97. It has a user display that lets you know how dirty your mattress really even is and how many allergens, mites, and bits of dead skin you’re really sucking up from your sleeping area. Gross, but maybe good to know. 

  • LG is a leader in appliances and the Big Spring Sale is an opportunity for you to pick up one of their highly-rated vacuums, the CordZero A931KWM, which is $398 compared to its usual price of $599.99. It comes with a charging dock that triggers it to empty automatically, but you won’t have to do that too often since the machine also utilizes the LG Kompressor, which compresses dirt and dust as you use it, keeping the bin available. 

  • Don’t forget robot vacuums! The Roborock Q5+ is down to $379.99 from $699.99. This one has a ton of features, too: It self-empties at its charging dock, has 2700Pa of suction, can run for 180 minutes before recharging, and is compatible with Alexa, so your home can be extra smart and clean. TikTok reviewers call it a “dream” and “powerful.”

What's New on Netflix in April 2024

Par : Emily Long

Netflix's April slate includes anticipated series, a reality prank show, and dark documentaries. Ripley (April 4) is based on Patricia Highsmith's 1955 novel The Talented Mr. Ripley (you might be familiar with the 1999 movie of the same name). It's now a black-and-white series starring Andrew Scott, Dakota Fanning, and Johnny Flynn. Scott plays the titular character, a New York scam artist, in this eight-episode psychological thriller.

Later in the month is the season six premiere of The Circle (April 17), the reality competition show in which contestants fight to become the top social media influencer.

April Fool's Day brings a new show from magician-comedian Justin Willman, whose Magic for Humans series has had three seasons on Netflix thus far. The Magic Prank Show with Justin Willman (April 1) leans into elaborate pranks played on unsuspecting targets.

In the true crime genre, there's feature-length What Jennifer Did (April 10) about the investigation into what appeared to be a deadly home invasion in Ontario, Canada in 2010, and Crime Scene Berlin: Nightlife Killer (April 3), which looks at a series of murders in the Berlin party scene in 2012.

Also in the documentary category is Our Living World (April 17), a new nature series narrated by Cate Blanchett, and The Antisocial Network: Memes to Mayhem (April 5), which dives into the rise and impact of internet forum 4chan and is landing on Netflix following its recent premiere at SXSW Film Festival.

April's comedy lineup includes a new hour from Demetri Martin (Demetri Deconstructed, April 2) and Neal Brennan's third Netflix special (Crazy Good, April 9) covering everything from crypto to mental health, as well as specials from Jimmy Carr (Natural Born Killer, April 16) and Fern Brady (Autistic Bikini Queen, April 22).

Here’s everything else coming to (and leaving) Netflix in April.

What’s coming to Netflix in April 2024

Available soon

Available April 1

  • THE MAGIC PRANK SHOW WITH JUSTIN WILLMAN—Netflix Series

  • American Graffiti

  • Baby Driver

  • Battleship

  • Born on the Fourth of July

  • Glass

  • Happy Gilmore

  • Hotel Transylvania

  • Hotel Transylvania 2

  • How to Be Single

  • Inside Man

  • Inside Man: Most Wanted

  • It's Kind of a Funny Story

  • The Land Before Time

  • The Little Things

  • The Matrix

  • The Matrix Reloaded

  • The Matrix Revolutions

  • Molly's Game

  • Mortal Engines

  • One Piece Film: Red

  • Role Models

  • Sex and the City: Seasons 1-6

  • Smokey and the Bandit

  • Smokey and the Bandit II

  • Split

  • Step Up: Revolution

  • Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby

  • The Theory of Everything

  • Wild Things

  • You've Got Mail

Available April 2

  • Demetri Martin: Demetri Deconstructed—Netflix Comedy

  • Space Jam: A New Legacy

Available April 3

Available April 4

Available April 5

  • The Antisocial Network: Memes to Mayhem—Netflix Documentary

  • Parasyte: The Grey—Netflix Series

  • Scoop—Netflix Film

Available April 8

Available April 9

Available April 10

Available April 11

Available April 12

Available April 15

  • The Fairly OddParents: Seasons 4-5

  • Hans Zimmer: Hollywood Rebel

Available April 16

Available April 17

Available April 18

Available April 19

Available April 21

  • Duran Duran: There's Something You Should Know

Available April 22

Available April 23

Available April 24

  • Deliver Me

  • Don't Hate the Player

  • King Richard

  • TLC Forever

Available April 25

Available April 26

  • The Asunta Case—Netflix Series

  • Hack Your Health: The Secrets of Your Gut—Netflix Documentary

Available April 29

Available April 30

What’s leaving Netflix in April 2024

Leaving April 4

  • Day of the Dead: Bloodline

  • Imposters: Seasons 1-2

Leaving April 7

  • Marshall

Leaving April 8

  • The Nice Guys

Leaving April 9

  • Horrible Bosses 2

Leaving April 11

  • Deliver Us from Evil

Leaving April 15

  • Rush

  • Synchronic

  • The Zookeeper's Wife

Leaving April 22

  • The Meg

  • Train to Busan

Leaving April 24

  • The Hateful Eight

  • The Hateful Eight: Extended Version: Season 1

Leaving April 25

  • Kung Fu Panda 3

Leaving April 26

  • Malignant

Leaving April 30

  • 13 Going on 30

  • 27 Dresses

  • 30 Days of Night

  • Apollo 13

  • Barney and Friends: Seasons 13-14

  • Elvis

  • Erin Brockovich

  • The First Purge

  • Fried Green Tomatoes

  • How to Train Your Dragon 2

  • Joker

  • Jurassic Park

  • Jurassic Park III

  • Kindergarten Cop

  • The Lost World: Jurassic Park

  • Mamma Mia!

  • Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again

  • The Purge: Election Year

  • Silver Linings Playbook

  • Step Brothers

  • Twins

  • Whiplash

Zapier's New Features Will Be a Hit With Automation Nerds

Zapier acts as an online hub that allows you to connect various product lines, services and basic data, integrating services that don't have native integrations. If, say, you want the Hue lights in your office to flash every time a lead comes in via Hubspot, you could do that on Zapier, even if you can't do it on either Hubspot or the Hue app. On a simpler level, people have been using these platforms for years to make simple, one-step workflows for home or work. If a smart camera picks up something, for example, you can have an SMS sent to someone. Each of these automations is called a "Zap."

If it’s been a while since you checked in with Zapier, the company has introduced three new ways to make what was a simple offering a lot more business-friendly. A visual drag-and-drop editor allows you to create multi-step automations with conditionals; Zapier will now help you build databases on the Zapier platform for use in your Zaps; and a new AI engine will even create the automations for you. What these functions offer is an inexpensive way to get into automations beyond what a home user might need. They're perfect for people just starting up their own side gig or small business, although you could also build wild multilayered automations for your home and family, too.

Zapier now helps you build internal databases

Tables and Canvas were introduced in late 2023, and as a Zapier user, I was shocked at how advanced they were compared to the old Zapier. Zapier always worked with databases that you had elsewhere as either triggers or results, on platforms like SQL, Quickbase and Google Sheets. Tables skips a number of steps and helps you built the database on Zapier itself, and then you can decide what Zaps to build off the data in it. You might make the database the trigger for an automation. The database might also be the result, where if some trigger is hit elsewhere, it will add data to the database. It could even serve both purposes: if specific data comes in, then change something else in the database.

Zapier Tables
Sure, you could use Zapier's Tables for business, but imagine abstracting it for your home and family? Credit: Zapier

One of the reasonings for keeping your databases on Zapier is the security of the database, knowing your Zaps won’t break (it happens all the time on platforms like Zapier, which is why I never liked key functionality to rely on them). Tables also invites you to “Do It Live!” (a scary but common dare used by developers where you edit a live site instead of an offline development site) by editing that database while it’s already in play, without affecting your Zaps. One of the reasons Zaps tend to fail is that you're integrating three points: the trigger, the result and Zapier. By removing just one of those points, you lessen the risk. With the data on Zapier itself, you can also run a whole slew of actions off the database without creating a hundred Zaps to do so. Some of the suggested uses are a leads database or inserting levels of approval into a workflow.

You could also use this to automate home tasks between a couple or a family. For instance, a workflow for notices from school, to ensure both parents see and sign off on time. You could use it for family dinner planning, or bill paying. As emails come in with the right keywords or to the right email address, the content is added to the database, notifications are sent, approvals made and finally, payment is sent, all through automation, with the benefit of exceptional record keeping for tax time.

Create multi-stepped workflows

Zapier Canvas
Build complex workflows using drag and drop. Credit: Zapier

Canvas, introduced at the same time, moves away from the Mad Libs-style automation building we've seen on these platforms for years, and gives you a drag-and-drop interface to build rich, branched workflows with conditionals. Instead of simply filling in the blanks of "use this trigger" and "perform this action," you can now create an entire complex workflow using drag-and-drop blocks. "If someone opens an email, send them this follow-up. If they don't open it, wait three days and then send it again" is an example of the kind of conditional logic you could use here.

Canvas is the marketing automation half of your lead-development database in Tables: Build out drip email campaigns, notifications, and approval steps. Visually, it appears to be simpler and clearer than similar automation tools on Hubspot, Salesforce and Mailchimp, too. But again, Canvas also can make a lot of sense for home use. Consider a multi-layered workflow for your smart home devices, too.

There's AI, too

Zapier acquired Vowel, which built AI for video conferencing, and has turned it into Zapier Central, which suggests you work hand-in-hand with AI bots. You issue a request in basic Chat GPT style, and the bot will build your automations for you, which should cut down on the manual labor. Even if the automation has errors, it gives you a great head start. The bots can learn from your actions, too. 

All of these services appear to be add-ons to your basic Zapier plan, which just covers Zaps. While you can start with a free subscription on Zapier and build up from there to enterprise plans, all three features I mentioned incur a separate $20/month add-on fee: Tables, Canvas and AI. This may seem like a lot—but when you imagine a business just starting out, or someone who has a serious side gig, having all the services possible on one relatively open platform for $80/month is an affordable way to build serious marketing and workflow automations. As a home user, you likely won't need all three add-ons, which means for $20 a month, you can build some next-level automations for your home and family.

What People Are Getting Wrong This Week: Good Vs. Bad Movies

March is Oscar’s month, when Hollywood's attractive millionaires gather to congratulate each other for being so awesome while they embark on the fool's errand of declaring for posterity which movies are the best ones. So it's the perfect season to talk about bad vs. good films, and how no one, even awesome film industry professionals, can really know whether a movie is good or not.

In an inspired act of Oscar counter-programing, The Criterion Channel released a collection of 14 “Golden Raspberry” winning films to stream in March. These “worst of the worst” movies prove that that "badness" of a movie can be as unknowable as its "goodness."

Crash: When the “best picture” is actually horrible

If you consider the history of the Academy Awards (and ignore the subjective nature of our response to art), most Best Picture winners are “good” movies, in a flabby, middlebrow way, and most stay that way over time. Titanic is a good movie, I guess. So is Chariots of Fire, kind of. But some movies, for cultural reasons that can rarely be predicted, swing wildly from "the best" to "the worst" or vice versa based on the cultural world we live in when we see them. Sometimes critics, audiences, and “the industry” all think a movie is not only good, but the best, only to learn it's actually terrible later on. Crash, for example, went from best to trash in fewer than 20 years.

When it was released in 2005, Crash was seen as a courageous examination of race in America, a movie that was not afraid to "go there," as we said back in 2005. But Crash is really bad—it’s not “kind of OK, but didn’t deserve Best Picture over Brokeback Mountain” bad, but actively, undeniably, aggressively terrible. 

Even though the frames are same then as now, few people noticed how obvious, trite, and amateurish Crash was in 2005. It’s a movie populated with paper-thin characters who exist to wander into shallow, melodramatic, “racially charged” vignettes and preach at us. Crash has a message, and that’s where it goes from mediocre to odious. Despite its promise to "keep it real," as we said back in 2005, Crash is designed to comfort its liberal white audience, not confront it. Its message is something like “racism is bad, mmm-kay, but you are good because you totally give a shit.” Or, as critic Clarisse Loughrey pointed out: “Crash is the dad from Get Out’s favorite film.” 

So how did Crash manage to hide its mawkish mid-ness well enough to win a best picture Oscar? It was partly through the then-hot narrative device of non-linear storytelling, but it was mostly because the Academy is made up almost exclusively of the dad from Get Out. The target market for sensitive, middle-budget movies about race are the dad from Get Out too, and he's not going to miss an opportunity to congratulate himself for being not-racist, especially on Oscar night.

Cruising and Freddy Got Fingered: When “bad” movies are actually great

I’ve watched all of the Criterion’s Razzie collection, and a case could be made for the worthiness of any of these movies (with the exception of Gigli, a movie that has a 6% Rotten Tomatoes score and is still overrated), but two films stuck out to me as most deserving of reconsideration: Cruising and Freddy Got Fingered.

Directed by William Friedkin—whose credits include The Exorcist, Boys in the Band, and The French Connection—1980s Cruising is a hard-hitting crime drama/neo-noir set among the BDSM crowd in pre-AIDS New York. Al Pacino plays a detective who goes undercover in the leather daddy scene to catch a serial killer. 

Cruising is a tense, fast-paced, and fascinating thriller, but critics hated it. At first I thought maybe the graphic portrayal of violence and kinky man-on-man sex were a little much for critics in that less-enlightened time, but it turns out there was a different reason for Cruising’s critical beatdown: it was mostly a victim of events surrounding it. 

While it was in production, Cruising was at the center of a now-forgotten controversy. Gay activists protested over the fear that the film would stereotype all gay men as hedonistic, violent fetishists. Upon the film’s release, many critics decided Cruising’s enigmatic ending and its main character’s inscrutability were the result of a director knuckling under to outside pressure. Some panned it for the portrayal of gay men—and some critics, presumably, were just homophobes.

But seen through a 2024 lens and ignorant of the controversy it once caused, viewers can consider Cruising on its merits, and finally see the unflinching, taut, and fascinating thriller/psychological exploration that was always there. This is a matter of opinion, but Cruising seems to go to great pains to fairly represent the struggle and alienation gay men faced at the time, while making it clear that a small subculture doesn't represent gay people as a whole. The unclear resolution and Al Pacino's inarticulate main character's is-he-or-isn't-he journey doesn't seem like waffling from a scared filmmaker as much as a stab at illustrating how complex sexuality, violence, and identity can be. Three thumbs up.

Freddy Got Fingered is a masterpiece

Upon its release, Tom Green's 2001 comedy (I guess) Freddy Got Fingered was panned nearly as roundly as Gigli. Critics said it was scatological, puerile, annoying, and unfunny. As Roger Ebert put it: “This movie doesn't scrape the bottom of the barrel. This movie isn't the bottom of the barrel. This movie isn't below the bottom of the barrel. This movie doesn't deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence with barrels.”

All of that is true, but it was also ahead of its time. Green’s schtick was the first wide appearance of the wave of anti-comedy that went on to fuel The Eric Andre Show, Tim and Eric Awesome Show, and most of the internet. His shtick is not supposed to be “funny” in a traditional sense, but more off-putting and meta-funny. It’s funny because he keeps doing weird things that aren’t funny, leading us to question the nature of comedy and maybe chuckle at how stupid and excessive it is. 

But even if you don’t buy the anti-comedy pioneer angle, there’s a deeper level to Freddy Got Fingered in which the boundaries between life and art are stretched and shredded in a way that’s never been done before. If you strip away the gags about fellating horses or drinking toilet water, Freddy is the story of an unfunny weirdo who manages to annoy Hollywood jerks into giving him millions of dollars to make a TV show, which he promptly wastes on annoying people. This is the real story of Tom Green, and Freddy Got Fingered is both a fictionalized account of his journey and the result of it. It’s Tom Green saying, “People in suits actually gave me $14 million dollars to make this movie, and I’m going to blow it on a comedy with no jokes, no characters, and no point beyond me being annoying for 90 minutes. Now watch me roll around in deer guts.”

Lots of movies aim to be subversive, but not many actually subvert the artistic expectations of their genre. Freddy Got Fingered does, but the audiences and critics of 2005 saw Tom Green's antics and missed his larger point. "That's not even a joke" meant "this movie is bad" back in 2005, but it "hits different" now, as I'm told some people say in 2024. I don’t know if Freddy Got Fingered is genius, exactly, but it’s way more interesting than Crash.

This Samsung Smart Monitor Is $300 Off

With the introduction of smart monitors, the line between a computer monitor and a TV gets blurred. The Samsung M80C Smart Monitor thrives in that blur, finding the right balance between a computer monitor and a smart TV. Right now, you can get the hybrid monitor for $399.99 (originally $699.99) after a 43% discount. I can say this is the lowest price this monitor has been after checking price tracking tools.

The current discount is so good that it's currently cheaper than the older M7 version, which was well-received over at Mashable. The Samsung M80C Smart Monitor came out in the summer of 2023 and has some great features worth checking out. While you won’t be doing any advanced gaming with a 60Hz refresh rate, the stylish 32-inch LCD monitor has 4K UHD ‎3840 x 2160 resolution, a built-in removable webcam, and it doubles as a smart TV with a controller for streaming movies and shows. It also has Alexa integration to enable voice controls.

The monitor has Samsung's proprietary Tizen smart platform built-in, allowing viewers to use the Samsung TV Plus streaming to catch over 350 live TV channels with no need to download or sign up for anything (you'll still have to log in to your favorite streaming apps to watch those). The inclusion of a remote controller makes accessing the TV features much easier. The monitor has a sleek design with an ergonomic stand that you can pan and tilt as well as remove and wall mount if you want to. As far as ports, it has two USB-A ports and a standard HDMI port.

This monitor is perfect for people who don't have a TV in their bedroom or might not have the space for one.

Make a ‘Winter BLT’ With Chunky Tomato Sauce

Spring is here. The sunlight has shifted, spring blossoms are everywhere, and ripe, local tomatoes are...still a ways off. Nevertheless, the hope of warm weather and outdoor activities has tickled my BLT cravings. While I could make an average bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich with an OK slice of supermarket fruit, I know I’ll be looking for more flavor and less water. So instead of waiting for June, I'll make a winter BLT with some chunky tomato sauce.

I’m not telling you to pour cold Prego on a sandwich and call it a day—give my weirdo sandwich ideas a little credit, please. No, there’s some more finesse involved in bringing forth robust tomato flavor without unintentionally imparting ketchup vibes. Follow my instructions and you’ll have a rich, salty, tangy BLT to satisfy your pre-peak tomato needs. 

I knew I wanted to coat some bread with tomato-y goodness. I started by testing thin tomato sauce from a can, and a super chunky pasta sauce from a jar. The thin stuff soaked too deeply into my bread, but it's fine if that's all you have. I ended up preferring the chunky sauce because it offered more flavor and it created a discernible tomato layer on the bread. To remove that "sauce from a jar" quality, I then decided to fry my tomato-y bread in leftover bacon fat (because fried bread is better than toast). 

My verdict: This winter BLT is fantastic. After frying, a subtle char develops on the tomato sauce, the flavor growing robust, with a gentle sweetness. I did miss the acidic pop of fresh tomatoes, but a squeeze of lemon juice over the sauce before assembling the sandwich helps with that.

My biggest tip for success (and this goes for any BLT): choose a spongy bread that with some integrity, like ciabatta, or even soft rye slices. I used basic soft wheat slices, and while the results were pleasing, the side in contact with the tomato sauce became quite soggy. (To be fair, this also happens with fresh tomato BLTs, so it’s not exactly a tragedy if you have no other options.)


Highly-rated frying pans to consider for all your bread frying needs:


How to make a winter BLT

1. Cook the bacon

I prefer to bake my bacon, but you can fry it in a pan or cook it using an air fryer. Do what’s comfortable. I put a few slices on a foil lined sheet pan and baked it at 350°F for 20 minutes. Once it’s cooked to your texture preference, cool the bacon and use some of the bacon drippings to lightly coat a frying pan.

2. Sauce the bread

A fork pressing tomato sauce onto a slice of bread.
Credit: Allie Chanthorn Reinmann

Snap the burner on to medium heat and add a slice of bread. It’ll lightly toast on that one side for about three minutes. Add a couple tablespoons of your favorite chunky tomato sauce to the side facing up. Smooth it out into an even layer. I used a fork, because I’m a professional.

3. Fry the tomato side

A slice of bread covered in tomato sauce.
Credit: Allie Chanthorn Reinmann

Drip a little more bacon fat over the tomato-coated side. Flip the bread over in one swift motion, and fry the tomato side. It’ll sizzle because of the moisture and settle down after a minute. Fry this side for about three minutes. When you flip it over again, you should see some charred tomato spots. Cool the bread on a wire cooling rack for about five minutes before assembling your sandwich.

4. Build the sandwich

Now the fun part: assembly (and eating). I like to smother my BLT-destined sandwich bread in mayo, but since one side was already occupied with thick tomato jam I restricted the mayonnaise to the other slice. Stack on the bacon strips and crunchy lettuce, and press the tomato slathered bread on top (tomato-side down, naturally). 

I might even argue that eating a winter BLT is a bit easier than the traditional version because there aren’t slices of watery tomato sliding out of my sandwich. However, if you miss the texture of sliced, fresh tomatoes, use this trick in conjunction with them. Whether or not they’re bland won’t matter because the tomato sauce will act as a flavor safety net.

❌