Home Office Setup & Equipment

We may earn a commission from links on this page. America is a car-centric culture—more than 90% of U.S. households have at least one vehicle. There are a lot of different kinds of cars, from old classics being maintained with love, to snazzy new electric rides, or luxury cruisers filled with cutting-edge tech. Whichever kind you drive, getting the most out of your vehicle demands regular maintenance and sensible driving practices, but you can also goose just a bit more out of any vehicle with these universal car hacks. Throw some anti-seize lubricant in your trunkIf you’ve been driving for a while, you know that flat tires only come at the worst possible times. Sunny day…

The AI wars continue to heat up. Just weeks after OpenAI declared a "code red" in its race against Google, the latter released its latest lightweight model: Gemini 3 Flash. This particular Flash is the latest in Google's Gemini 3 family, which started with Gemini 3 Pro, and Gemini 3 Deep Think. But while this latest model is meant to be a lighter, less expensive variant of the existing Gemini 3 models, Gemini 3 Flash is actually quite powerful in its own right. In fact, it beats out both Gemini 3 Pro and OpenAI's GPT-5.2 models in some benchmarks. Lightweight models are typically meant for more basic queries, for lower-budget requests, or to be run on lower-powered hardwa…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Call me immature, but I’m about a thousand times more likely to participate in activities that are good for me when they can be gamified. Even the simple pleasures of watching a number go up or earning a digital milestone badge can motivate me to get to the gym, track my meals, or form a new habit. Gamification can be used for focusing and studying, too, and a wide variety of apps exist to serve this purpose. Here are some of the best. Gamification apps for focusingFocusing is notoriously difficult, especially in this hyper-connected era in which many of us can’t go five minutes without getting a text or eat a meal withou…

It's not easy to maintain your privacy when using technology today. That's largely the fault of companies who prioritize data collection over the integrity of their users. But even though I'm quite used to the lack of respect most companies pay towards my privacy and security, I have to admit, I'm a bit taken aback by T-Mobile's latest decision. T-Life, T-Mobile's tech support app, has a rather unconventional and unnerving feature. For some users, it appears T-Life can record your screen whenever you have the app open. This setting is quite hidden, and worse, enabled by default. Who signed off on this? How T-Life's screen recording worksThankfully, the privacy and secur…

With all this talk about spring cleaning, you could be forgiven if you focused on, well, just cleaning in the spring. But the real beauty of spring cleaning is that it can be a jumping-off point for a clean year. Yes, you can put in extra effort right now, restocking and upgrading your cleaning supplies and doing all those intense annual tasks, but if you don't keep up with your tidying all year round, you'll be stuck doing another exhausting round next spring. Use this as a starting point for a big year of your cleanest home ever. First, commit to a cleaning scheduleWhile you're undertaking spring cleaning this year, keep track of what tasks you enjoy (or just hate less…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. For all the talk about Stranger Things taking nearly a decade to produce just five seasons of television, consider The Night Manager: It took this British spy thriller 10 years just to get to season two. Luckily, audiences seem to have been willing to wait, as they show performed decently in the streaming ratings when it dropped on Prime Video earlier this year. There's a reason viewers were anxious for more, even after such a long wait: Based on a John le Carré novel and starring Tom Hiddleston as Jonathan Pine, the series finds the manager of a luxury Cairo hotel running afoul of an Egyptian crime boss with ties to Dicki…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. The Beats Powerbeats Pro 2 were designed with workouts in mind, but their $249.99 list price has made them a harder sell unless you really value a locked-in fit. Right now, however, Grade-A refurbished pairs are $159.99 at Woot. For comparison, new units are listed at around $212 on Amazon, and used pairs are about $168. According to price trackers, the previous low was about $179.95, so this dip is roughly $20 below that mark. All told, that’s a $90 discount if you don’t mind a pre-owned device that has been tested and verified to work as intended.…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. If you’ve been eyeing a headset that toes the line between immersive tech and affordability, the Razer Kaira Pro for PlayStation is currently down to $89.99 on Woot (for six days or until it's sold out). That’s about $30 cheaper than Amazon’s current price and the lowest it’s ever been, according to price trackers. It ships with a 90-day Woot warranty, but do note: shipping isn’t available to Alaska, Hawaii, or P.O. boxes. Razer Kaira Pro for PlayStation …

A few weeks ago, I posted a story about the proliferation of AI-created fake news videos about Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt. Because I am fair (and balanced!), this week I'm looking at the AI distortion of a hero from the left: Dallas-based congressperson Jasmine Crockett. The real Crockett is sharp, confrontational, and isn't afraid to curse people out. AI-Jasmine Crockett is a folk hero who spends her life STUNNING, DESTROYING, and OBLITERATING various talk show hosts, actors, and political opponents. She took on Bill Maher, humiliated Seth Meyers, made Ellen DeGeneres regret insulting her, and still had time to have a judge arrested. On YouTube. The real Jasmine …

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Recently, a few spots on the hardwood floors in my house have become mysteriously slippery—so slippery that they're kind of dangerous. I really feel like my feet might go out from under me when I walk there, and there were a few close calls before I started avoiding them (or at least bracing myself to walk over them more carefully). This is no way to live, so I started looking into solutions, starting with the root cause. Why your wood floors are suddenly slipperyTurns out it’s not uncommon for hardwood floors to become spontaneously slippery, and it can happen for a variety of reasons. Wax or polish: If you apply any kin…

Amazon hasn't yet released a full list of what's coming to Prime Video in June, but we do know what original titles are slated to premiere throughout the month. Prime original action comedy Deep Cover (June 12) has a stacked cast that includes Bryce Dallas Howard, Orlando Bloom, Nick Mohammed, and Sean Bean. In the film, Howard plays an improv comedy teacher who recruits two of her students (played by Bloom and Mohammed) to infiltrate London's gangs by pretending to be criminals. Countdown (June 25) is a new crime thriller series from Chicago Fire showrunner Derek Haas. An LAPD detective is recruited to a secret task force to investigate the murder of a Departm…

There are warning signs that your home network may have been compromised, such as unusual traffic patterns and slowdowns in system performance, but now there's a simple tool to help determine if your router or connected devices are being used to conduct malicious activity. IP Check, from threat monitoring firm GreyNoise, will alert you if your IP address has been observed scanning the internet as part of a botnet or residential proxy network. As GreyNoise outlines, residential IP compromise often isn't obvious to the user because you're still able to conduct business as usual, such as streaming, emailing, and web browsing. All the while, though, threat actors are routing…

2025 is limping to a merciful end, so I'm taking a look back at the year in slang. Below are ten examples of youth patois, chosen for both their popularity and for what they reveal about generations A and Z. Like most slang, these words and phrases evolved over time, so while many didn't first appear in 2025, but this is the year they gained popularity. (If you want a more complete list of youth slang, check out my guide to Gen Z and Alpha slang.) 6-7By far the most popular slang word of 2025 was "6-7." These two previously unremarkable numerals rose to unprecedented popularity with young people this year, to the consternation of legions of educators and parents. It's …

Science fiction and science leaders alike have warned us that artificial intelligence may one day take over the world, but until those predictions come to pass, generative AI's biggest impact on my life has been overloading my social media feeds with slop. It seems I can't open TikTok, Instagram, or YouTube without running smack into bizarre and troubling AI concoctions featuring babies in danger and cats having affairs. It really is the wild west (or maybe Westworld) out there. I think few among us really believe these videos are any good, and it's pretty obvious they aren't good for us, or for the world. Short-form video is already numbing enough, but this AI content i…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. There are a lot of fantastic settings to use on the Vitamix Ascent X5, but one of my favorites is the soup setting (the nut butter function is a close second). If you didn’t already know, it’s not just for blending already cooked soup. You can actually cook with the blender. It might take a moment to wrap your head around the idea, but personally, I had to see for myself to become fully convinced. Here’s how to do it. How can a blender cook soup?It turns out, if you have an engine powerful enough, you can create enough friction with the blender’s blades to heat up a few pints of liquid ingredients until it’s well into coo…

Scroll through r/Garmin, r/ouraring, or r/whoop and you'll find threads from users debating the merits of pairing devices. Common combinations include a GPS smartwatch like a Garmin or Apple Watch alongside a recovery-focused tracker like Whoop or Oura, with users assigning each device a distinct purpose: notifications and workout tracking from the watch, sleep and recovery data from the ring or band, and so on. As wearable technology becomes increasingly sophisticated—not to mention increasingly embedded in how we think about our health—at what point does all this monitoring stop helping you and start just generating noise? …

The internet has become a vital tool for human connection, but it comes with its fair share of risks, with the biggest being your privacy and security. With the big tech giants hungry for every ounce of your data they can get and scammers looking to target you every day, you do need to take a few precautions to protect your online privacy and security. There's no foolproof approach to these two things, and unfortunately, the onus is on you to take care of your data. Before you start looking for a VPN or ways to delete your online accounts, you should take a moment to understand your privacy and security needs. Once you do, it'll be a lot easier to take a few proactive ste…

Welcome back to The Out of Touch Adult’s Guide to Kid Culture, your weekly reminder that the internet is raising children in ways no one understands. This week, we've got kids setting their laptops on fire for clicks, a clueless millennial stepping into a cultural and linguistic minefield, and chicken Alfredo (but make it R&B). "Low GPA Activity" trend sees kids burning their laptopsIn last week's column, I explained the "low GPA activity" trend that was taking off on TikTok. To quote me: "It's the kind of trend that went from funny to a little harmful quickly, so check out these videos now, before TikTok bans the entire genre." I must be psychic, because the trend t…

You might be having a bad week, but AI is having a worse one. First there was the "racism glitch" that beset Grok, and now music platform SoundCloud is facing some serious criticism for a clause buried in its terms of service. The imbroglio began in February 2024, when SoundCloud quietly changed its TOS to include: In the absence of a separate agreement that states otherwise, You explicitly agree that your Content may be used to inform, train, develop or serve as input to artificial intelligence or machine intelligence technologies or services as part of and for providing the services. That quietly sat there in the TOS for more than a year, but this week, Ed Newton notice…

Not to be outdone by Apple's "Lockdown Mode," Meta is rolling out new security features for WhatsApp designed to protect high-risk users—journalists, activists, and government officials, for example—from cyber attacks. Strict Account Settings is a "lockdown-style" mode that builds on the platform's existing end-to-end encryption, adding stronger privacy features and additional restrictions against unknown contacts. For most WhatsApp users, this level of lockdown is overkill. However, people with access to sensitive data that is potentially valuable to threat actors actually have been targeted with spyware campaigns through messaging platforms like WhatsApp, so for users …

Some Grubhub users have received a tempting email offer from the food delivery service: Send $1,000 in bitcoin to a specified wallet, and get 10 times that amount back. Unfortunately, this is very much a scam. As BleepingComputer reports, these promo emails were sent from addresses on b.grubhub.com, a legitimate Grubhub subdomain, so they appear verified in recipients' inboxes. Two examples of senders include merry-christmast@b.grubhub.com and crypto-promotion@b.grubhub.com. Beyond that, there are some pretty clear red flags. The subject line reads "30 minutes left - We'll 10x your Bitcoin!" to promote a sense of urgency and an offer too good to be true (but also too g…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. 360-degree cameras like the GoPro Max2 are designed for creators who want to capture more than what a single-lens camera, like the GoPro Hero series, can handle. Right now, the GoPro Max2 action camera is down from $499 to $399 on Amazon, marking its lowest price ever. GoPro Max2 Action Camera $399.00 at Amazon …

You can pinpoint the exact minute of the high-water mark for tech-based enthusiasm: January 9, 2007, 9:41 AM PST, the moment Apple CEO Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone to the world. Cell phones weren’t new—neither were cellphones with touch screens—but this one was different: so high-tech it seemed like it couldn’t be real, but so perfectly designed, it felt inevitable. And people were hyped. Not just tech nerds: normal people. The crowd at the 2007 Macworld Conference & Expo broke into rapturous applause when Jobs showed off the iPhone’s multi-touch—an ovation for a software feature!—because it seemed like Jobs was touching a better future. The iPhone, people said,…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. On Monday, Apple released a new AirTag—but you wouldn't know that from looking at it. The new AirTag is visibly identical to the old one, despite dropping nearly five years later. But the point of this refresh wasn't to introduce a new design, or even a remarkably improved tracker. Instead, Apple added a couple subtle upgrades that benefit new buyers, without displacing existing AirTag users. There are two key improvements here: The first impacts Precision Finding, Apple's system to guide you to lost items. Your device uses its ultra wideband (UWB) chip to give you detailed directions to the location of your AirTag, inclu…

This week, OpenAI announced its latest models: o3 and o4-mini. These are reasoning models, which break down a prompt into multiple parts that are then addressed one at a time. The goal is for the bot to “think” through a request more deeply than other models might, and arrive at a deeper, more accurate result. While there are many possible functions for OpenAI’s “most powerful” reasoning model, one use that has blown up a bit on social media is for geoguessing—the act of identifying a location by analyzing only what you can see in an image. As TechCrunch reported, users on X are posting about their experiences asking o3 to pinpoint locations from random photos, and showi…