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The government guarantor saw close to 25% of probationary employees cut. View the full article

Thinking Machines Lab, an AI startup founded by former OpenAI Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati, has tapped about 30 leading researchers and engineers from competitors such as OpenAI, Meta and Mistral, it said in a blog post on Tuesday. The team — roughly two-thirds of which comprises former OpenAI employees — includes Barret Zoph, a prominent researcher who left the ChatGPT maker on the same day as Murati in late September. Zoph will serve as the startup’s technology chief. OpenAI co-founder John Schulman is the startup’s chief scientist. Schulman left OpenAI for rival Anthropic in August, citing wanting to “focus on AI alignment”. AI alignment refers to a process of encoding human values into AI models to make them safer and more reliable — a key focus for Murati’s startup. Murati is among a growing list of former OpenAI executives, who are responsible for the launch of startups such as Anthropic and Safe Superintelligence. She is raising funds from venture capitalists for her new artificial intelligence startup, Reuters had reported in October. “While current systems excel at programming and mathematics, we’re building AI that can adapt to the full spectrum of human expertise and enable a broader spectrum of applications,” the startup said. The company plans to enable external research on alignment by sharing code, datasets, and model specifications, it said. After Murati joined OpenAI in June 2018, she frequently appeared alongside CEO Sam Altman as the public face of the ChatGPT maker. Her abrupt resignation had marked another high-profile exit from the company as it undergoes major governance structure changes. Prior to OpenAI, she had worked at augmented reality startup Leap Motion and Tesla. —Krystal Hu and Arsheeya Bajwa, Reuters View the full article

After OpenAI, Perplexity AI is joining the "deep research" bandwagon. And it's doing it in a fairly interesting way. Following in the footsteps of DeepSeek's "reasoning" model, Perplexity is the first major AI provider that's offering a Deep Research feature for free users, too. By comparison, OpenAI's Deep Research feature is only available in the $200/month Pro subscription. Deep Research is an upcoming AI feature that takes a bit of time, but performs dozens of related searches, goes over hundreds of resources, and uses a reasoning model to logic out each prompt in a step-by-step process. You can get similar results from tools like Copilot's "Think Deeper" feature, sure, but what sets Deep Research apart is that it puts all of the info it's collected together into a comprehensive, white paper style report. Deep Research is free for all logged-in users, though you're limited to just five queries a day. But if you're paying for Perplexity Pro (which costs $20/month or $200/year), you get up to 500 queries a month. OpenAI's Deep Research feature is limited to 100 queries a month for now. Although, it's not an apples-to-apples comparison. ChatGPT's Deep Research feature takes a lot of time. Up to 20 minutes. It asks follow up questions, shows all the complex steps involved in its process, and spits out a very long report at then end. Perplexity's Deep Research feature is kind of a lite version of that. You get a response in 2-4 minutes, so your results will naturally rely more in searching the web and data collation than deep interpretation on the part of the AI. OpenAI is using its upcoming o3 reasoning model for Deep Research, but Perplexity hasn't mentioned any details about the model it's using. Credit: Perplexity In Humanity's Last Exam, a commonly used AI benchmark consisting of over 3,000 questions across a number of topics, Perplexity's Deep Research scored a 21.1% on accuracy, which is much higher than DeepSeek R1 (8.6%), and Gemini (7.2%). OpenAI's Deep Research still has the lead with a 26.6% completion score, but a silver medal is respectable here given the tool's much lower barrier to entry. So, how does this change how you might use Perplexity? So far, AI chatbots have been all about multiple prompts. You ask a question and prompt again and again to get to detailed answers. But with Deep Research, you can ask a single question and be done with it. The more specific and verbose your prompt, the better the bot's research and report will be, but the AI can now give you pages of info in response to much less prompting. And once your report is generated, you can download it as a PDF. Credit: Perplexity Over on its blog, Perplexity has highlighted multiple examples of the kind of difference Deep Research can make. Where the default model might givee an overview with bullet-point answers, Deep Research will instead come back with multiple paragraphs, detailed reports, and more expanded formatting. View the full article

The new tool taps into Intercontinental Exchange's AllRegs database, which contains over a million pages of guidelines from various sources. View the full article

Do sweet and salty foods taste good to you? Is your sleep maybe not the best? Do you have some belly fat? The answer to these questions is probably yes, because you are human, but that’s not important right now! TikTok influencers would like you to consider another possibility: that your cortisol is too high, and that you should buy their supplements (link in bio!) to control it. Then you’ll be relaxed at night and energetic in the morning, you’ll enjoy the taste of kale, and—most importantly—you’ll become thin and beautiful. This cortisol dysregulation idea has become a sort of mega-phenomenon, absorbing the power and anxieties of anything it touches. If you look up cortisol on TikTok, you’ll find weight loss tips, sleep hygiene tips, massage techniques, and more. You’ll be served videos not only on cortisol, but also on gut issues, mood issues, healing from trauma, smoothie recipes, menstrual cycle syncing, when you should and shouldn’t use caffeine, and just about any other health issue a woman might search for. (Sorry, men—most of this content isn't for you. Yet.) Scroll those videos long enough, and you’ll see a claim about any symptom or inconvenience you’ve ever experienced. It’s all due to your high cortisol, they say. What is cortisol, anyway?Stepping away from TikTok-land for a moment to talk about actual physiology, cortisol is a hormone that we produce from our adrenal glands, which sit on top of our kidneys. The adrenal glands most famously produce epinephrine, which you might recognize as the “fight or flight” hormone we call adrenaline. (In the United States, epinephrine is the medical name. Both words refer to the same thing: ad + renal is the Latin way you say “on top of the kidneys,” and epi + nephro is the same in Greek.) Besides epinephrine/adrenaline, the adrenal gland also produces hormones that regulate water and electrolyte balance, and small amounts of sex hormones. And—relevant to our topic today—they also produce cortisol. Where epinephrine is involved in momentary “fight or flight” reactions, cortisol is the hormone that helps us deal with stress in the longer term, like days to weeks or longer. Your cortisol levels increase when you’re sick, pregnant, severely dehydrated, recovering from surgery, or your body is otherwise dealing with major stress. And these cortisol levels should go up—this is a good thing! People who don’t produce enough cortisol in these situations can experience an adrenal crisis, which can be deadly. In other words, cortisol helps our bodies respond appropriately to stress, especially serious, life-threatening physical stress. If you’ve ever taken a glucocorticoid medication (with a name like cortisone, prednisone, or dexamethasone), or used hydrocortisone cream on a rash, those are all variations of cortisol. There are medical conditions where your body doesn’t make enough cortisol, like Addison’s disease, and medical conditions where your body makes too much, like Cushing’s disease. Both of these are issues to discuss with your doctor, not your friendly local TikToker, but more about those in a bit. What people say about cortisol on social mediaWe’ve covered some of the claims about cortisol above, but to give you a few more examples, here are some of the things healthfluencers say are signs that your cortisol is too high: Waking up between 2 a.m. and 4 a.m. at night Being tired in the morning and “wired” or overthinking at night Craving sweet and/or salty foods Having belly fat or love handles (“cortisol belly”) Round face (“moon face”) Cognitive difficulties like “brain fog” or trouble making decisions Feeling anxious or irritable Acne Swelling or fluid in the face, belly, or other areas Gut issues (any kind) Feeling shaky due to (presumed) high blood sugar What “high cortisol” symptoms actually meanIn reality, these symptoms aren’t specific enough to point to elevated cortisol, or to anything else, really. Some of these are common and minor enough that probably everybody experiences them sometimes; who doesn’t crave candy? I find it especially interesting that these symptoms are trendy among women who promote weight loss tips or who search for weight loss tips. If you’re dieting all the time, you might have a lot of these symptoms! Being low on energy (calories) is associated with poor sleep, brain fog, gut issues, feeling irritable, feeling lightheaded or shaky due to low blood sugar—and, for many people, obsessing over whatever fat they have, be it a small or large amount. Others could signal serious medical issues if they are severe enough. For example, you might think you have a “moon face” if your normal face shape is round; that’s not actually a problem. But if your face has always been thin and then becomes round over the span of a few months or years, that’s a textbook symptom of Cushing syndrome; you should go see an endocrinologist. This is “adrenal fatigue” all over againThe “high cortisol” branding for these symptoms is new, but it seems to have evolved from the exact opposite. About five years ago, adrenal fatigue was the bugbear of the day. Remember when Gwyneth Paltrow launched a vitamin packet specifically to address it? The idea behind adrenal fatigue was that your body is so stressed it has burned out and stopped producing stress hormones; the symptoms include fatigue, weight gain, and cravings for salt and sugar. Sound familiar? Adrenal fatigue has been thoroughly debunked by scientists; the symptoms don’t even match the supposed cause. On the other hand, those symptoms do match—sort of—with high cortisol. Somewhat hilariously, there are TikToks that call “adrenal fatigue” another name for “high cortisol,” which is nonsensical; both can't be true. But the high-cortisol myth collects other myths as it goes, so it seamlessly absorbed this one, too. Another phrase that’s now used, both by medical professionals and (perhaps more often) by TikTokers who are making shit up, is “HPA axis dysfunction.” Those letters refer to three parts of your body that are involved in regulating cortisol levels: The hypothalamus (H) is a part of your brain that can produce corticotropin-releasing hormone, or CRH, which signals the pituitary. The pituitary (P) gland sits just below the hypothalamus, and when it receives CRH, it produces adrenocorticotropic hormone, or ACTH, to signal the cortisol-producing portion of the adrenal gland. The adrenal (A) gland releases cortisol in response to ACTH. High cortisol causes the hypothalamus and pituitary to stop making, or to make less of, their respective cortisol-triggering hormones. If something in this system were to get screwed up—one of the components not properly responding to its signals, perhaps—that would be a problem. “HPA axis dysfunction” is an umbrella term (not a specific diagnosis) for ways that this can go wrong. On TikTok, though, it’s sometimes used as a drop-in replacement for “adrenal fatigue.” What influencers say causes high cortisolInfluencers are much bigger on spotting symptoms of high cortisol than they are at explaining why we all have this supposed hormone dysfunction. Still, there are a few scapegoats. Since cortisol is often described (legitimately) as a stress hormone, the TikTok hormone gurus seem to assume that it affects everybody who feels stressed or leads a busy life—which is basically all of us. Caffeine is also mentioned in some of these social media posts, but there isn’t any strong evidence to suggest that your morning coffee is messing with your hormones. Where the fearmongering really goes off the rails, though, is in implicating exercise. Longtime Lifehacker readers will remember when I covered the popular TikTok myth that HIIT (interval training) and lifting weights increase your cortisol and make you fat, while Pilates keeps you lean. (This is not true.) Please indulge me while I quote myself: "Cortisol levels in the blood are elevated after high intensity exercise, but these levels return to normal within an hour. We also adapt pretty quickly to high intensity exercise, as exercise physiologist John Hough points out here: Work from his research group showed that after 11 days of high-intensity cycling, those transient cortisol spikes got a lot lower. (Other research backs this up.) In other words, we get better at handling physiological stress the more practice we get—which any athlete or trainer could have told you. The cortisol release that’s triggered by exercise is just not considered to be a significant factor in weight gain, when you talk to actual endocrinologists (hormone specialists) or scientists who study exercise or metabolism." There’s another myth connected to this one: the idea that, if you ovulate and menstruate (as many women who aren’t on hormonal birth control do), that intense exercise during certain phases of your cycle will increase your cortisol to extreme levels and cause the symptoms previously discussed. This is not true either. What actually causes high cortisolHere’s where we’ll make a brief stop in reality-land: There are medical conditions that cause high cortisol levels in the body, and these can be serious and even life-threatening. Keep in mind that cortisol is a hormone that is supposed to rise in response to stress; levels are two to four times higher than normal during pregnancy, for example. It also rises and falls each day, typically peaking in the morning around the time we wake up; it’s lowest at night. (The size of this fluctuation, and even whether you have it, varies considerably from person to person. Don’t trust a naturopath or chiropractor who wants to diagnose you with high cortisol based solely on a measurement of this curve.) So, slightly elevated cortisol as a result of normal life stresses is not usually a medical issue. But abnormally elevated cortisol is. Here’s a great example that shows both what the TikToks get right and what they get wrong. Bridget Houser, profiled in the Washington Post’s medical mysteries series, experienced headaches, anxiety, thinning hair, and a tendency toward weight gain that she managed by exercising more. Her face became round. Several doctors suggested her symptoms might be due to stress from her impending (or, as the symptoms continued, recent) wedding. Ultimately, she turned out to have cancer—a tumor in her lung was sending out ACTH, a hormone that normally is a signal from the pituitary gland (located in your head, under your brain) that adjusts levels of cortisol in the body. Rogue cancer cells can sometimes butt into that hormonal conversation, and that’s what happened to Houser. After she got surgery to remove the tumor, her cortisol levels subsided and her symptoms went away. There are other conditions besides cancer that can cause similar symptoms, but they occur under extreme stress. This review article lists several scenarios where pathologically high cortisol has been observed, including: alcohol use disorder late stage chronic kidney disease major depression, anxiety, and some other mental health diagnoses If you think you have high cortisol, to the point where it’s affecting your health, please go see a real doctor. How to lower your cortisol, according to TikTokUnscrupulous influencers, having convinced you that you have a health problem, have no shortage of answers for you. Most of these answers end up putting money in their pocket: There are dozens if not hundreds of “adrenal support” supplements out there, which TikTokers with affiliate codes will happily sell you. You can also part with your money by purchasing courses on specific types of massage or meditation, like EFT tapping (you tap on “meridian points” on your body while focusing on negative emotions) or “trauma-releasing” floor exercises. Influencers are always happy to pick you up on the “food is medicine” bandwagon, so there are plenty of video clips showing foods you should or should not eat, and “adrenal cocktails” you can mix up and drink every morning. Among the supplements you "should" take are plenty of ordinary vitamins (specific B vitamins, sometimes) and recommendations to take supplements with adaptogens like ashwagandha. There is no solid research connecting these recommendations with adrenal health, but eating veggies and protein are good for us anyway. If TikTok tells you to eat more kale, you may not need to, but it won’t necessarily hurt. Along the same lines, social media posts will call out sleep disturbances as a symptom of high cortisol, and then recommend basic sleep hygiene steps as a supposed treatment for high cortisol. Cortisol is an unnecessary middleman here, whether it’s actually involved or not; if your sleep sucks, you should try to sleep better. I’ll just add that if your sleep still sucks after setting up a no-phone bedtime routine and taking morning walks in the sunshine, maybe you should ask your doctor about getting evaluated for sleep apnea. Why you should not listen to TikTok about how to lower your cortisolAccording to TikTok, high cortisol is so significant that you must fix it, and fixing it will change your life; but it’s also minor enough that you don’t need to seek medical care for it, and you can fix it yourself. Those two ideas don’t really fit together. That combination gets dangerous when real medical issues are involved—imagine if Bridget Houser, the woman with cancer, had taken to TikTok to diagnose and treat herself. Or to take another example, there’s a corner of TikTok where women tell each other that your husband’s “short fuse” is really a sign of high cortisol. I’m sorry, but if your husband has anger management issues, the type of help you need is not a video instructing you on what supplements to tell him to take. Ultimately, if you think you have symptoms of high cortisol, it’s important that you consider how severe your symptoms are—and act accordingly. If you feel stressed and think you might benefit from some yoga or an “adrenal cocktail” of orange juice and coconut water, be my guest. Maybe it will help, and if not, no harm, no foul. On the other hand, if you’re having symptoms that are seriously affecting your life and your health, see a real doctor. An endocrinologist can diagnose hormonal problems, but you might have better luck starting with your symptoms instead of guessing at the cause. For example, if you often wake up in the night and feel groggy in the morning, you might want to consider talking to a sleep specialist. One last note: If you’re scrolling TikTok and think you might have a problem with your hormones, there are plenty of “hormone balance coaches” who will offer to take you under their wing and order a bunch of expensive tests to figure out what’s going on. This is not the same as going to a doctor who actually knows what they are doing. These hormone coaches may order the wrong kinds of tests, and usually do not have access to the types of tests used in medical diagnosis of hormone issues. Please go see a real doctor. View the full article

YouTube introduces the ability to promote Shorts videos, letting channels get short-form content in front of more viewers. The post YouTube Lets Channels Boost Shorts Videos appeared first on Search Engine Journal. View the full article

Lumio, a newly launched company specializing in AI-driven solutions for professional services firms, aims to transform how elite practitioners navigate commercial and strategic challenges. Founded by legal industry veterans, Lumio introduces AI-powered bionic teaming to enhance decision-making, business development, and firm leadership in a rapidly evolving market. The legal industry faces increasing competition and volatile demand, with traditional operating models struggling to keep pace. While firms have invested billions in modernization, partners remain underserved in core business functions such as client insights and strategic decision-making. Lumio’s AI-driven solutions seek to fill this gap by offering real-time commercial enablement tailored to the legal sector. “Our mission is to equip knowledge workers and professional service firms—starting with high-performing law firm partners—with the insights, creativity, and tools they need to excel,” said Jason Marty, Co-Founder and CEO of Lumio. “Generative AI represents a seismic shift in how professional services operate, and the first firms to achieve responsible, strategic AI workforce integration will enjoy a durable advantage. By embedding cutting-edge technology with deep industry expertise, Lumio helps elite professionals work smarter, grow faster, and lead with confidence in an era of accelerating change.” Lumio’s AI solutions are designed to go beyond workflow automation, providing domain-specific intelligence that enhances how professionals think, decide, and act in competitive markets. Key Benefits of Lumio’s AI Solutions Market Insights for Decision Support – AI-driven analysis to refine competitive strategy and business positioning. Sustainable Revenue Growth – Guidance on pricing, client relationships, and selling strategies. Real-Time, Personalized Assistance – AI solutions that adapt to a firm’s culture and evolving business needs. Rather than focusing AI applications on legal task automation, Lumio aims to leverage AI for firm-wide strategic leadership and business growth. “Many seek to leverage generative AI against the tasks of core legal work,” said Ed Sohn, Co-Founder, Chief Product Officer and General Counsel of Lumio. “At Lumio, we focus instead on harnessing AI’s intelligence and scale across the work of commercial and organizational leadership, especially to lead strategy and growth for complex firms in a complex time. Our teams of expert AI agents will also possess real command in navigating the modern, high-performing legal workplace. Lumio’s AI agents can finally create intuitive experiences for elite lawyers in demanding environments, unlocking new levels of human accomplishment.” Lumio’s AI agents are designed to navigate high-performing legal environments and enhance the leadership capacity of elite lawyers, ensuring strategic growth and improved firm performance. This article, "Lumio Launches to Bring AI-Powered Business Enablement to Professional Services" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

Lumio, a newly launched company specializing in AI-driven solutions for professional services firms, aims to transform how elite practitioners navigate commercial and strategic challenges. Founded by legal industry veterans, Lumio introduces AI-powered bionic teaming to enhance decision-making, business development, and firm leadership in a rapidly evolving market. The legal industry faces increasing competition and volatile demand, with traditional operating models struggling to keep pace. While firms have invested billions in modernization, partners remain underserved in core business functions such as client insights and strategic decision-making. Lumio’s AI-driven solutions seek to fill this gap by offering real-time commercial enablement tailored to the legal sector. “Our mission is to equip knowledge workers and professional service firms—starting with high-performing law firm partners—with the insights, creativity, and tools they need to excel,” said Jason Marty, Co-Founder and CEO of Lumio. “Generative AI represents a seismic shift in how professional services operate, and the first firms to achieve responsible, strategic AI workforce integration will enjoy a durable advantage. By embedding cutting-edge technology with deep industry expertise, Lumio helps elite professionals work smarter, grow faster, and lead with confidence in an era of accelerating change.” Lumio’s AI solutions are designed to go beyond workflow automation, providing domain-specific intelligence that enhances how professionals think, decide, and act in competitive markets. Key Benefits of Lumio’s AI Solutions Market Insights for Decision Support – AI-driven analysis to refine competitive strategy and business positioning. Sustainable Revenue Growth – Guidance on pricing, client relationships, and selling strategies. Real-Time, Personalized Assistance – AI solutions that adapt to a firm’s culture and evolving business needs. Rather than focusing AI applications on legal task automation, Lumio aims to leverage AI for firm-wide strategic leadership and business growth. “Many seek to leverage generative AI against the tasks of core legal work,” said Ed Sohn, Co-Founder, Chief Product Officer and General Counsel of Lumio. “At Lumio, we focus instead on harnessing AI’s intelligence and scale across the work of commercial and organizational leadership, especially to lead strategy and growth for complex firms in a complex time. Our teams of expert AI agents will also possess real command in navigating the modern, high-performing legal workplace. Lumio’s AI agents can finally create intuitive experiences for elite lawyers in demanding environments, unlocking new levels of human accomplishment.” Lumio’s AI agents are designed to navigate high-performing legal environments and enhance the leadership capacity of elite lawyers, ensuring strategic growth and improved firm performance. This article, "Lumio Launches to Bring AI-Powered Business Enablement to Professional Services" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

We may earn a commission from links on this page. The Powerbeats Pro 2 are a new set of headphones with a really interesting feature—Apple says they can measure your heart rate during workouts. Huge if true—imagine if you could leave your watch at home (or not bother to buy one in the first place) and still get a heart rate reading to go with your workout. But that's only going to be a useful feature if the data is reasonably accurate. I was curious how good a reading they can actually get from your ears, so I compared the Powerbeats Pro 2 to a traditional chest strap, and to the Apple Watch for good measure. So how do these headphones stack up against those established methods? Not well, I’m afraid. Not well at all. Beats Powerbeats Pro 2 $249.00 at Amazon /images/amazon-prime.svg Shop Now Shop Now $249.00 at Amazon /images/amazon-prime.svg My first hint that the heart rate functionality may be a bit underwhelming was that Apple says on their support page for the Powerbeats Pro 2 that “If you’re wearing an Apple Watch during your workout…the Apple Watch heart rate monitor data is prioritized,” suggesting that the headphones’ heart rate data isn’t as good as the Apple Watch’s heart rate data, and they know it. Okay, so, maybe the headphones’ data is slightly less accurate, or slightly less reliable. But how much less? I’ve been doing heart rate comparisons whenever I review or compare devices, wearing a chest strap alongside the device I’m testing and seeing whether the device can keep up. For some examples, see my reviews of the Coros Pace 3 for a watch with an impressively accurate heart rate sensor, and of Whoop for one that tries hard to keep up, but doesn’t always succeed. So I ran the same type of test for the Powerbeats Pro 2, and got some surprising data—that is, when I could get the headphones to pair and the “compatible” apps to play nice. The bottom line: These aren’t going to replace a heart rate monitor for serious athletes, and probably aren’t even good enough for casual use for anyone who wants to track their heart rate. But take a look at my results and see for yourself. The little black window next to the ear tip is the heart rate sensor. Credit: Beth Skwarecki How I tested the Powerbeats Pro 2’s heart rate functionalityI took these headphones for several runs, some outdoors and some on a treadmill. I tried a variety of apps, but most of the data you see below is from tests done with Runna on iPhone (iPhone 12 Mini) and Strava on Android (Pixel 9). Outdoors, it was cold, and I wore a buff over my ears. Indoors, I was in a busy public gym, with nothing on my ears but the Powerbeats Pro 2. I did the same mini workout for each test, except where noted. This was: Two minutes warmup (if on a treadmill, this was a jog at 5-6 mph) Five rounds of one minute running (7.0 mph) followed by one minute walking (3.0 mph) No cooldown—I typically rested or walked while reviewing my results and setting up the next test. (Quiz for those following my fitness coverage: is this a SIT or a HIIT workout? Answer key here.) I chose this interval workout because intervals do the best job of showing the performance of a heart rate sensor. If I just did a steady run, you’d expect a more or less steady line, and we’d be quibbling over whether the line is a little more (or less) wobbly than it’s supposed to be. But when my actual heart rate surges up and drops down repeatedly, it’s easy to see when a sensor lags behind, or doesn’t quite reach the peak, or stays consistently too high or too low compared to the chest strap. A chest strap, by the way, is as close as you can get to a gold standard for heart rate field tests like this. I used my trusty Coospo paired to a Garmin 265S. For each of the graphs below, the data from both devices was collected at the same time. The software used to make the graphs is DC Rainmaker's analyzer. The heart rate data was often inaccurate or just plain uselessTesting a heart rate feature on a device is usually simple: I record a workout on the new device, compare to the readings I get from a heart rate chest strap, and report here on how it did its job. But testing the Powerbeats Pro 2 was more like solving a mystery. I believe I’ve figured out what the heck is going on here, and it’s not good news. The first time I took the headphones out for testing, with the iPhone app Runna, I got laughably poor readings—two or three data points each, instead of the hundreds that should have been there. Was it Runna’s fault? The headband I wore over my ears on that cold day? Or are the headphones really that bad? Powerbeats Pro 2 in orange, chest strap heart rate monitor (for reference) in black. Credit: Beth Skwarecki For comparison, I did another interval run with the Runna app but using a Series 10 Apple Watch as the sensor. Apple Watches have always had pretty good heart rate sensors, and you can see the drastic difference here. (The Apple Watch is in red.) Apple Watch in red, chest strap heart rate monitor (for reference) in black. Credit: Beth Skwarecki Strangely, one of my tests that day—on an Android phone, with the headphones paired to the Strava app—saw the heart rate trace meander aimlessly, and then suddenly snap on to the true data for the second half of the workout. OK, so the headphones can report a correct heart rate, but when and how? And why don’t they do it more often? More research was needed. The next day, I took the headphones to a gym to use the treadmill (meaning that there was no ear covering for the rest of my tests). With the headphones paired to an app on a phone in front of me, and my Garmin on my wrist, I could compare the two mid-run and clearly see that the headphones were just not doing their job in the heart rate department. The headphones would often report a heart rate that was far higher than what the watch was showing, often by 10 beats or more. (The worst I noticed was a 34-beat difference, where the headphones reported 168 while the chest strap was reading 134.) Sorry for the blurry photos, but this is a representative sample of what I saw while I was running. Heart rate is the bottom number on the watch. Credit: Beth Skwarecki I had to choose between sound quality and accurate heart rate readingsI gave this mystery a good long think. I thought about all the factors that may have influenced the readings. I checked out other reviews of the Powerbeats Pro 2, and saw that, while they were also disappointed in its performance, they got more usable heart rate graphs than I did. What could be going wrong? In the settings for the Powerbeats Pro 2, I noticed something—an “ear tip fit test.” I had already selected the rubbery ear tips that fit my ears the best (XS), so I didn’t think I needed this. But I did the test, and the app told me that I needed to adjust something, either the ear tips or the position of the headphones in my ears. I finally got a good seal by angling the headphones a lot further forward than I would have expected. The marketing photos typically show people with the ear hooks right in front of their ears, nearly vertical, but mine had to be pointing forward at least at a 45-degree angle for Apple to give me the all-clear. Maybe fit was the answer to my mystery. So I hit the gym again. Left: results of the fit test telling me I had a good seal. Right: instructions to wear the headphones in a way that did not give me a good seal. Credit: Beth Skwarecki (Fun fact: the fit test requires a quiet environment. I wanted to do the fit test immediately before my run, so I started it while standing on the treadmill at the gym. I got an error message saying my environment was too noisy. Oh well. I did my best to get the headphones in the same position as when I had done the test, and I made sure that it felt and sounded like I was getting a good seal.) Left: the results of the fit test, which felt and sounded great. Right: the only position I could find that got me good heart rate data (and terrible sound quality) Credit: Beth Skwarecki It turns out that fit was the answer, but not the way I expected. I ran with the ear hooks in their approved position, and got terrible readings. Often 20-30 beats too high, and occasionally the headphones would fail to send data to the app they were paired to, leaving a blank “- -” in the space where heart rate was supposed to appear. And then I had an idea. What if I deliberately fit the headphones as badly as possible? I cranked them backward so the ear hooks were vertical. The sound got tinny, the active noise canceling did nothing, and they kind of hurt. I could hear the guy on the treadmill next to me breathing and messing with his phone. You know, the stuff that you wear headphones to block out. But my heart rate data? It was nearly perfect. Top: wearing the headphones as recommended by the ear tip fit test. Bottom: wearing the headphones with ear hooks vertical and sound quality terrible. In both graphs, orange is the Powerbeats Pro 2 and black is the chest strap reading used for reference. Credit: Beth Skwarecki I did a few more tests in each headphone position, and confirmed that—whether I paired them to an Android running Strava or an iPhone using Runna—I had the choice of two experiences: Uncomfortable fit, tinny music, poor audio seal, but good heart rate data Good seal, comfortable fit, music sounds great, sounds of the gym are blocked out—but useless heart rate data I’m not sure if this is a “me” problem or an “everyone” problem. Maybe I have weird ears. But even if so, I can’t be the only one with weird ears. Will you, dear reader, find that you pay $249 for a pair of headphones only to find one of their touted features is unusable? I can’t tell you the odds, but I can tell you they’re much greater than zero. Oh, and you’ll have a green light shining from your ears How you'll look in dim light. Credit: Beth Skwarecki The first night I had the headphones, I used them in the evening while I was doing my nightly wind-down routine of playing word games while listening to music. (Yes, I use my phone in bed. Sleep experts, you may disapprove.) My husband was trying to sleep next to me, and I became aware of a bright green light somewhere in the room. Was it coming from some device of his? It sure wasn’t anything of mine. Then I realized: It must be coming from my ears. (He looked over and groggily confirmed.) As with other photoplesmythographic devices, these things measure heart rate by shining a green light through your skin and measuring how much gets reflected back. This can be used to give a (theoretically) fairly accurate reading of your heart rate. That’s why the back of your smartwatch glows green from time to time, and why even the Oura ring (generations 3 onward) shines at you when you’re trying to sleep. (I miss the Oura gen 2’s decision to use non-visible infrared light, but those days are in the past. Sigh.) To confirm, I went to the Settings app on my iPhone, selected the Powerbeats Pro, and switched off heart rate sensing. The room went dark. I turned heart rate sensing back on. Green light again. I turned the sensing back off for the night, and then the next day was perplexed at why I couldn’t get the heart rate feature working before I realized, duh, I turned it off. How to use the heart rate feature on iPhone Ironically for an Apple product, the heart rate feature is less accessible on an iPhone than it is on Android. The headphones pair nicely, and you get a dedicated section for them in the main Settings app, which is where you can adjust their noise-canceling or transparency mode, try the fit test, or turn heart rate monitoring on or off. But when it comes to actually using the heart rate feature during a workout, you need to use one of seven "partner apps." A reviewer's guide from Apple lists these as: Nike Run Club, Runna, Ladder, Slopes, Open (a meditation app), Peloton, and YaoYao (a jump rope app). Notably, there are no "just track a run" apps in this list—no Strava, for example—so even my testing was tricky. Nike Run Club is free, but doesn't export files that include heart rate data. Peloton is a paid app, and I couldn't find a way to export data without an active subscription (paid members may be able to export to Strava). Runna is paid, but I was able to use the "free run" feature on a free trial. Ladder is a paid workout app. Slopes is for skiing—and admittedly I didn't try that one. Open is a meditation app, and I couldn't find any way to use it as a replacement for a workout app. Apple says that the data from your Powerbeats Pro 2 will end up in the Apple Health app, but it's not in any usable format like a graph of heart rate from your workout. Heart rate data as shown in the Apple Health app. The data next to a bluetooth symbol is from the Powerbeats Pro 2. I think. Credit: Beth Skwarecki The above is what you'll see if you go into Apple Health, then Heart Rate, then Show All Data. All right, how do you actually turn this on? Here's what I did. Pair the Powerbeats Pro 2 to your phone using the instructions that came with them. (You'll open the case, headphones still inside, near your phone. Then just follow the prompts.) Make sure the heart rate sensor is on (it is by default). Go into the Health app, then Heart Rate, then Data Sources and Access. Make sure your chosen app has access to read heart rate data. Do a workout from one of those partner apps (Runna, etc). How to use the heart rate feature on AndroidAndroid users, this is an easier one for you, and you have a much broader choice of apps. You can use any app that can connect to a bluetooth heart rate monitor, like Strava, or Wahoo, or Polar Beat. (I used Strava for my testing.) Pair the headphones as you would any Bluetooth headphones Download the Beats app if desired—I did this first, but it didn't seem to be necessary to pair the sound or heart rate. Go into your chosen app—say, Strava. Tap whatever icon or menu allows you to connect to a heart rate sensor. Double click and hold the "b" button on your headphones (either side works). So that's click, release, then click and hold. The Powerbeats Pro 2 should show up as an available heart rate sensor. Select it, and then go ahead and do your workout. The bottom line: Don’t rely on the Powerbeats Pro 2 for accurate heart rate dataIf you train by heart rate in any kind of serious way, do not bother with this feature. Sometimes it may not work (as in my initial tests with Runna). Sometimes it may show that your heart rate is 15, 20, even 34(!) beats higher than it really is. Sometimes it may be correct, or close to correct—but if you don’t know when a heart rate sensor is correct and when it’s way off, what good is it? This isn’t just a small difference, either. If the headphones were a few beats off here and there, I wouldn’t worry about it. But these 20+ beat discrepancies are enough to make you think you’re in zone 4 when you’re actually in zone 2 or 3. That’s enough to throw off your workout, and if this data ends up being used for a VO2max calculation, it will give you a wildly inaccurate idea of your cardio fitness. The heart rate data from the Powerbeats Pro 2 is just not good enough to do the job it’s trying to do. Which is sad! I wish this could work! But, alas, it does not. View the full article

More government-backed loans shifted out of forbearance, while the share of portfolio and private-label securities loans remained flat from December. View the full article

The traditional marketing funnel doesn’t reflect how users actually search and engage with content today—and it’s hurting your SEO. With access to more data than ever before, marketers now have a better framework for driving organic traffic: the spiderweb. By structuring your content strategy around interconnected, high-value pages, you can drive faster rankings, more organic traffic, and better user experiences. Join Think Spiderwebs, Not Funnels For Remarkable SEO Results with Ryan Brock to learn: Why traditional funnels waste organic traffic opportunities What Gartner and leading researchers say about the modern buyer’s journey How to shift your content strategy to improve rankings and engagement Don’t let outdated SEO strategies hold you back. Sign up today! View the full article

If you've never considered the Kindle Kids e-reader because of the label, you've been missing out on some sweet perks. The 16 GB Amazon Kindle Paperwhite Kids is $139.99 (originally $179.99), the lowest price it has ever been, according to price-tracking tools. Here's why this is a great deal for everyone, not just kids. Display type: 7" glare-free, Resolution: 300 ppi, Storage: 16 GB, Battery life: up to 12 weeks. Amazon Kindle Paperwhite Kids– Cyber City $139.99 at Amazon /images/amazon-prime.svg $179.99 Save $40.00 Get Deal Get Deal $139.99 at Amazon /images/amazon-prime.svg $179.99 Save $40.00 Display type: 7" glare-free, Resolution: 300 ppi, Storage: 16 GB, Battery life: up to 12 weeks. Amazon Kindle Paperwhite Kids- Starfish $139.99 at Amazon /images/amazon-prime.svg $179.99 Save $40.00 Get Deal Get Deal $139.99 at Amazon /images/amazon-prime.svg $179.99 Save $40.00 Display type: 7" glare-free, Resolution: 300 ppi, Storage: 16 GB, Battery life: up to 12 weeks. Amazon Kindle Paperwhite Kids– Diary of a Wimpy Kid $144.99 at Amazon /images/amazon-prime.svg $189.99 Save $45.00 Get Deal Get Deal $144.99 at Amazon /images/amazon-prime.svg $189.99 Save $45.00 SEE 0 MORE The kids' Kindle version includes a free case (about a $30 value), an ad-free experience ($20 value), six months of Amazon Kindle Kids + subscription ($36 value), and a two-year warranty (as opposed to the one-year warranty on the standard version). All that value for $20 less than the “adult” version is a no-brainer. The cases for these models are obviously tailored for kids, but it's hard to argue with free. The Amazon Kindle Kids + subscription will charge you automatically after the first six months, but you can cancel it beforehand. On these Kindle models, the kids’ mode feature is turned on by default. You can easily turn it off in the settings, but this will bring the ads back to the lock screen—the Kindle Kids also has some cool features even adults will appreciate, like the awards feature, as this video explains. With the six months of Amazon Kindle Kids + subscription, you can get unlimited access to thousands of kids' books, including all of the Harry Potter series. The Paperwhite Kindle is the same as the adults, in the sense that it's waterproof, has adjustable warm light, a 12-week battery, and Audible access through Bluetooth. You can read the full review of the 2024 Amazon Kindle Paperwhite Kids from PCMag here. If you still don't know which Kindle is best for you, check out our complete breakdown. View the full article

A project management dashboard is one of the essential tools for delivering projects as planned. That’s because a project dashboard is a visual representation of key performance indicators (KPIs) that provide a high-level overview of key project metrics. For those not ready to upgrade to project management software, there’s an alternative: Excel dashboard templates. Dashboard templates are designed to track a variety of different metrics that provide vital data for project managers and their teams. We have free dashboard templates that will help track budget, workload, progress and more. Monitoring this allows project managers to determine if the project is on schedule and not overspending. If it is, adjustments can be made to get back on track before it impacts the success of the project. Download these Excel dashboard templates for free or sign up for a free 30-day trial of our software and see what real-time dashboards can do when managing a project, program or portfolio. We’ll talk more about that later, but first, let’s get to the Excel dashboard templates for free download. 1. Project Dashboard Template for Excel Excel dashboard templates are important for a high-level overview of the project. This free project dashboard template for Excel is an excellent choice. It allows project managers and their teams to monitor project progress on several different bar charts and pie charts. Four dashboards together paint a clear picture of the project and where it stands concerning where it should be in terms of the project plan. /wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Project-Dashboard-template-UPDATE.png There’s a pie chart that captures the project tasks. It makes it easy to see at a glance what percentage of the team’s tasks have been completed, are in progress, aren’t yet started or are overdue, as well as the total. A workload bar chart shows the resource allocation for the project team. It’s color-coded to show work in progress, not started and overdue. A task length chart shows duration and a cost chart helps track the actual cost against the budget for that period. All of this information is crucial to managing a project, but so is working efficiently. Excel dashboard templates are just not going to provide the efficiency that is built into project management software. ProjectManager is award-winning project and portfolio management software with real-time dashboards for either a project and multiple projects. Because our dashboard is online, it collects live data automatically, there’s no need to manually update a template. Our live dashboards provide a current overview of the project’s performance and progress, which allows project managers to quickly make adjustments if necessary to get the work back on track. Templates can’t do that. Get started with ProjectManager today for free. /wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Light-mode-portfolio-dashboard-CTA.pngProjectManager’s real-time dashboards are better than Excel dashboards. Learn more 2. KPI Dashboard Template for Excel But, again, not everyone is ready to upgrade to project management software with real-time data visualization. For those looking for Excel dashboard templates to help as a task tracker, download this free KPI dashboard template for Excel. This is a great tool for providing critical information as it monitors, analyzes and displays KPIs to better manage organizations and projects. /wp-content/uploads/2024/08/KPI-Dashboard-Template-Screenshot.png This Excel dashboard has even more charts and graphs to help track the project timeline, budget and more. There’s even a yearly profit and loss overview with two charts, one showing revenue over time and the other expenses. This will help keep organizations aware of whether they’re in the red or the black. That data is even broken further down to monthly revenue, quarterly revenue, monthly expenses and quarterly expenses. There’s also a chart capturing workload analysis and one for resource planning, among others. 3. Budget Dashboard Template for Excel One of the most important KPIs to track is cost. This free budget dashboard template for Excel is a robust breakdown of project costs essential for keeping track of the budget and delivering projects without suffering cost overruns. There’s also space to add the job number, customer name, job description and start and completion dates. This is certainly one of the Excel dashboard templates needed to keep track of budgets. /wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Budget-Dashboard-Template.png Beneath that are colorful pie charts that make this Excel spreadsheet easy to read and understand. For example, there’s one to show the planned costs against the actual costs, which helps project managers see if their current spending aligns with where the budget said they should be at this time. There are also pie charts for direct material costs, direct labor costs, direct equipment costs and overhead costs. A bar chart collects the total costs for an overview of the budget, which is another reason this Excel dashboard comes in handy when managing the budget. 4. Workload Dashboard Template for Excel We’ve mentioned workload a few times already, but for those who aren’t familiar with the term, workload refers to the total amount of work assigned to a team member or group within a project. It’s usually measured in hours or tasks. Keeping track of workload ensures that team members are working at capacity, but not overallocated to the point of suffering from burnout, which erodes morale. Therefore, this is one of the Excel dashboard templates that everyone needs. /wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Workload-Dashboard-Template.png The free workload dashboard template for Excel is made up of four bar charts. On the left side are color-coded monthly resource allocation charts that show each team member’s resource availability (hours per month) in black and current workload allocation (again in hours per month) in yellow. This provides a monthly overview of the team’s resource allocation and can help project managers to balance their workload. Workload can also help with tracking labor costs. The right side of the Excel dashboard shows labor costs by employee in a chart for each month they’re working on the project. 5. Task Tracker Dashboard Template for Excel Project managers use a task tracker to organize, prioritize and monitor the progress of individual tasks within a project. This free task tracker dashboard template for Excel is a centralized location to manage all project details and improve collaboration between team members while helping project managers know what needs to be done, who is responsible and when each task is due. /wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Task-Tracker-Dashboard-Template.png As Excel dashboard templates go, this one is another must-have. It is made up of a couple of charts and pie charts that are color-coded to make it easy to digest them easily and fast. There’s one for task priority levels, which has the status on the left column, which goes from very low to critical. There are also columns for count and percentage. There’s another, set up the same, only this tracks task status, from on hold to not started. This information is then translated to pie charts that visually show the percentage and color codes for those who prefer to get their information that way. Benefits of Using Excel Dashboard Templates We’ve been talking about the importance of Excel dashboard templates and why they’re beneficial to project managers and their teams. To reiterate and provide more detail, we’ve listed the benefits of using an Excel dashboard in project management below. Dashboards bring together various project data in a centralized location, which makes it easier to track and monitor progress across different aspects. Excel dashboards can be updated regularly to reflect close-to-real-time data, giving project managers an updated view of how the project is progressing. With data presented in an easily digestible format, project managers can quickly identify problems or areas that need attention and make informed decisions faster. Graphs and charts help simplify complex data, making it easier for stakeholders to understand and access the project status without needing to dive into raw data. Disadvantages of Using Excel Dashboard Templates While Excel dashboard templates can be useful, they’re not a perfect project management tool. We’ve already noted some ways they are inferior to project management software. Here are some general disadvantages. Many pre-designed templates have fixed structures, which might not suit every project’s unique needs. Customizing templates is time-consuming and challenging. As the project grows or becomes more complex, the template might not scale effectively, creating issues with handling large amounts of data, slow performance or clutterness. Excel dashboards rely heavily on manual data entry or data imports. If the data isn’t consistently updated or entered correctly, it can lead to inaccurate results, which could impact decision-making. Unless specifically designed with automation or integration features, Excel templates don’t typically pull real-time data from other sources, which could result in outdated information unless manually refreshed. ProjectManager Is a Better Project Tracking Tool Than Excel Dashboard Templates While Excel dashboard templates have a place in project management, it’s mostly a stepping stone to more sophisticated tools. Sure, try out these free dashboard templates and get a handle on how useful they are in monitoring project metrics to meet deadlines and stay on budget. But chances are frustration will settle in soon enough. After all, these are only static documents that must be manually updated and are poor collaboration tools. ProjectManager is award-winning project and portfolio management software with real-time project and portfolio management dashboards. But that’s only one feature of many to deliver successful projects. Multiple Project Planning and Scheduling Views Before one can track data, projects must be planned and tasks, resources and costs scheduled. Our software has multiple project views to do that and execute the work. Project managers prefer the robust Gantt charts that schedule tasks, resources and costs, but also link all four types of task dependencies to avoid delays and cost overruns. They can filter for the critical path rather than go through timely and complicated calculations. Then, once a baseline is set, progress and performance are tracked in real time. Plans are shared across the visual workflow of kanban boards and powerful task lists for teams to execute their work, while stakeholders can stay updated with the calendar view. /wp-content/uploads/2024/04/critical-path-light-mode-gantt-construction-1.png Robust Resource Management Features Many of the dashboards include workload, as does ours, but real project management software will have resource management tools, as well. As noted above, both human and nonhuman resources can be scheduled on the Gantt. When onboarding teams, project managers can set their availability according to PTO, vacation and global holidays, as well as skill sets, which makes assigning tasks easier. There’s a color-coded workload page to view resource allocation and balance team workload to keep everyone working at capacity. Our team page summarizes team activities, which can be filtered by priority, progress and more. Even our secure timesheets, which streamline payroll, also measure how far each team member has gotten in completing tasks. /wp-content/uploads/2023/01/Team-Light-2554x1372-1.png Of course, there’s more. Automated workflows with task approvals for quality control, version control, global search and unlimited file storage, email and in-app notifications and risk management tools. But first, try the free Excel dashboard templates, then take a free trial and join the successful teams at Avis, Nestle and Siemens who use our software to deliver successful projects. Get started with ProjectManager today for free. The post 5 Free Excel Dashboard Templates appeared first on ProjectManager. View the full article

It feels like every social media site now has a 'reply guy' problem. You'll post about something that you know your followers will get, but if the post goes any degree of viral, multiple random strangers will appear in the replies questioning all your decisions and putting you down for making a harmless quip or a minor error. Bluesky is now helping you do something to address this problem. The site's moderation tools are among the best I've seen on social media platforms and in its latest update (1.98), Bluesky is doubling down on its efforts to help you keep harassment at bay. You can now restrict replies to only your followers, which is another great tool to reduce the negative effects of going viral. How to restrict replies to followers only on Bluesky Credit: Pranay Parab There are two easy ways to restrict replies on Bluesky. One way is to open any of your posts on and click the Everybody can reply button next to the post date. This will open a small pop-up, where you can select Your followers and hit Save. In my experience, Bluesky's community has been pretty civil, but you can use this option in case your post gets a little too popular on the Discover feed and invites unwanted attention. Alternatively, you can go to a new settings page, also introduced with Bluesky 1.98, to automate setting your replies to followers only. To do this, click Settings in the left pane on Bluesky's desktop site (or on the app, tap the three-lines menu in the top-left and select Settings). Now, go to Moderation > Interaction settings and select your preferred defaults for all new posts. Even if you select a restrictive reply preferences here, you can always change it for individual posts, just in case you're open to inviting opinions from strangers on specific topics. Other Bluesky updates Credit: Pranay Parab The latest update also included a few search improvements. You can now go to any user's profile on Bluesky to search through their posts. This is an easy way to find a useful post from a specific person. For instance, you can visit my profile on Bluesky, hit the three-dots button in the top-right, and select Search posts. Use the search bar up top to look for "iPhone" or any other search term you like. You can do this for any profile on Bluesky. Other than this, there are minor improvements to Bluesky's search page, and the site's translation feature now supports Interlingua. View the full article

Owning a car is expensive—even new cars need tune-ups, regular maintenance, and occasional repair, and it all adds up (to an average of about $1,452 every year). Car warranties help mitigate those costs, but they typically only cover three years or up to 36,000 miles, which goes by pretty fast, considering most people drive about 15,000 miles per year. That drives people to look for ways to save money on car repairs, especially if the car is outside the warranty period. But are you sure your car is out of warranty? It’s possible that even if the official warranty has expired, your car is covered to some extent by what’s variously known as “policy adjustments,” “service campaigns,” or “good-will programs.” Whatever the official name, let’s call them what they really are: They’re “secret warranties,” and they could potentially save you a lot of money. What’s a secret warranty?A secret warranty comes into being when a car manufacturer realizes that a part or component in one of their car models is defective, usually due to unusually high failure rates or other problems. To manage the situation and protect themselves from liability, they will extend the warranty on that part, offering free replacement parts using new versions or discounts on service work. So what makes them secret? These warranty extensions aren’t official recalls—they’re voluntary programs from the manufacturer—so there’s actually no law that compels them to notify people. While vehicle owners are sometimes notified of these extended warranties, this is usually done by mail and many people simply don’t read the letters. Additionally, no effort is made to contact secondary owners who bought the vehicle pre-owned, and dealers rarely reach out to publicize free or discounted repairs. The Center for Auto Safety estimates that at any given time there are more than 500 secret warranties active from all the auto manufacturers combined. Each one represents repair and safety work you might be able to get at no cost or at a discounted rate—if you can find out about them. How to checkSecret warranties are typically communicated to dealers via what’s known as a technical service bulletin (TSB), which lets the dealer know that they can replace a part or perform some kind of service on specific models (sometimes even specific ranges of Vehicle Identification Numbers, or VINs) at a reduced rate or no cost. You can potentially find out about TSBs and secret warranties in three ways: State laws. While no federal law exists requiring the disclosure of secret warranties, five states have these laws on the books: California, Connecticut, Maryland, Virginia, and Wisconsin. These states require car dealerships to notify you when the warranty on your car is extended or otherwise modified. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) site. The NHTSA maintains a database of TSBs. You can enter your car’s information and see a list of “Manufacturer Communications.” These can be a chore to read through and understand, but it can be worth the trouble if you find out you can have your car serviced for free. For example, here’s a memo from Ford detailing an extended warranty on a range of Escape SUVs and Fusion sedans. One caveat: Just because there’s a TSB (or several) for your car’s make and model doesn’t mean there’s a secret warranty—they just indicate that a problem exists and the dealer has been given instructions on how to fix it. But having a copy of that communication from the manufacturer will help you find out from your dealer if there’s a secret warranty you can take advantage of. Call the dealer. Finally, you can try simply calling the dealer who sold you the car and ask. Have your VIN ready and ask them to check for warranty adjustments or extensions. Note that just like the original warranty, these “secret” warranties have deadlines. If you find out about them after their effective period has expired, you won’t be able to take advantage of them. View the full article

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. A reader writes: Lately I’ve been subject to a technique by coworkers that I call “death by a thousand questions.” It goes something like this: Q: Hey, are we getting in the combination llama/alpaca wool? A: I don’t have a date yet, I’m hoping for the 20th. Q: So the 20th. A: It’s not confirmed. I’ll let you know as soon as I know. Q: Who needs to confirm it? A: The freight forwarder. Q: Well, haven’t they confirmed it before? A: Yes, and when they confirm it they will let me know. Q: Why can’t they confirm it now? A: I’m not sure, but they are a reliable company. Q: Is it their provider? A: I don’t know. Q: Is it their supplier? A: I don’t know. Q: Is the problem the llama wool or the alpaca wool? A: I don’t know. Q: Shouldn’t you know? A: There’s no problem that I am aware of. The company is not late. They said on or about the 20th. If it turns out it’s late, they’ll tell me then what the issue is. Q: So is the 21st considered late? A: What? Q: You said on or about the 20th. When do you get late? When do you start asking questions? A: I don’t know. We’ve never had issues with this company. Q: We need to get the date confirmed. A: I agree. It should happen this week. Q: When this week? A: Sometime this week? Is there an issue I need to know about? On or about the 20th is typical delivery time. Is there an emergency? Q: Don’t you think every delivery is important? I think the people relying on that wool think it’s important. A: I know it matters to people. As soon as I have confirmation, I’ll send it out. Q: You know the answer. You just don’t want to share it. I’ve also had email rounds like this. How do I shut this down without killing someone? What on earth is going on in your office that this is happening with multiple people? If it were a single person, I’d think it was just something about them — anxiety interfering with their work, maybe, or an excessive degree of rigidity/inability to deal with any ambiguity, or … well, I don’t know what. But something about them. But multiple people? And with that accusatory twist at the end (“you just don’t want to share it”)? That makes me very curious about the context this is happening in! For example, have there been ongoing issues with late deliveries or other problems, and has no one informed the people affected in a timely way or acted with enough urgency to resolve them? Have there been issues with you or your team hoarding info and not sharing it with people who would benefit from knowing it? Are there other trust issues in play — either trust in people’s competence or trust that everyone is working toward the same goal? If those issues aren’t in play on your team, are there other teams in the company where those have been issues, and so now the people you’re dealing with approach everything through that lens? Or, are they mirroring to you what they get from their own manager? Sometimes when someone works for a manager who micromanages the crap out of their work, they start passing that down the chain; they know their manager will be asking them these questions (“so the 20th? well, who needs to confirm it? well, when will that happen?”) so they try to get out ahead of it by asking you all that up-front. (Sometimes people realize this is dysfunctional but it’s the best way to survive with their boss, and other times they absorb that way of operating as the norm and don’t even realize it’s dysfunctional. Even more fun, sometimes those people then carry that habit with them to other jobs where it’s completely out of left field.) As for how to shut it down, a few options: 1. When you know you’re dealing with someone like this, try to give as much of the info as you can up-front. It’ll take more time initially but it’ll save you time in the long run by cutting out a lot of the back and forth. So for example: Q: Hey, are we getting in the combination llama/alpaca wool? A: I don’t have a firm date yet. I’m hoping for the 20th, but once it’s confirmed they’ll let me know. If it’s not the 20th, I expect it will be within a few days of that. This company is very reliable, but if there’s context on your end that I should be aware of, please let me know! 2. If you find yourself in the middle of one of these long back-and-forths, pause and say, “From your questions, it sounds like there might be special context around this delivery? What’s going on with this one — anything unusual I should factor in?” 3. If it happens repeatedly from the same person or the same team, address the pattern: “You have seemed very concerned about our deliveries lately, so I wanted to give you some big-picture info about how they work. We generally know the rough timeframe something is expected to arrive in, but the exact date isn’t confirmed until the week before. The companies we work with are very reliable, and their estimated dates are usually correct. Is anything going on on your end that’s causing worry about them?” (And if the problem is with multiple people on a team, you might have this conversation with their manager.) View the full article

With an accurate picture of resource demand, you'll be able to better meet your project deadlines, budgets, and scope requirements. Here's how to do resource demand planning, some expert best practices, and which tools to use. The post How To Do Resource Demand Planning: 5 Key Steps appeared first on The Digital Project Manager. View the full article

Thinking Machines Lab to focus on making artificial intelligence ‘more widely understood’View the full article

A new “Advanced Plans” section within Google Ads’ Reach Planner tool was spotted by digital marketing expert Brent Neale. The big picture. The tool represents Google’s continued push toward automated campaign optimization, offering AI-driven recommendations for budget allocation. How it works. Advanced Plans suggests a mix of ad types based on advertisers’ goals, creating specific plans for both conversion creation and capture. Why we care. The feature could help advertisers more effectively allocate their budgets across different ad types based on specific conversion goals. Between the lines. This appears to be part of Google’s broader strategy to simplify campaign planning while leveraging its machine learning capabilities. What’s next. The feature appears to be in testing, suggesting Google may be gathering feedback before a wider rollout. Bottom line. If successful, Advanced Plans could streamline the campaign planning process for advertisers while potentially improving conversion outcomes. View the full article

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. You've probably heard of Sonos smart speakers and soundbars. They're one of the best in the market for audio quality and simple user experience. But unless you're in the weeds of tech audio, you probably missed their debut in the headphone space with the Sonos Ace, which was released last summer. You can get the Sonos Ace for $349 (originally $449), the lowest price they've been according to price tracking tools. Sonos Ace $349.00 at Amazon $449.00 Save $100.00 Get Deal Get Deal $349.00 at Amazon $449.00 Save $100.00 The Sonos Ace are soft, comfortable, and adaptable to different head sizes, thanks to their plastic design. You actually get buttons to control the headphones, which I personally consider a huge plus. The battery life is impressive, with about 30 hours with either the Active Noise Cancellation (ANC) or Aware Mode settings active or about 40 hours with both of those off. The Bluetooth multipoint connectivity means you can connect up to two devices at once and switch seamlessly between them. The headphones perform well, according to PCMag's "excellent" review. The sound is balanced with an EQ adjuster in the app, and the ANC and Aware Mode are top-tier, competing with the best headphones in the market. Unfortunately, the Sonos Ace aren't wifi-enabled, meaning you can't stream media into them like you can with Sonos speakers. However, you can connect to Sonos speakers through Bluetooth and listen to your media that way (if you own Sonos speakers). At their current price, the Sonos Ace are competitive with the best headphones for Apple users, the AirPods Max, and the best headphones for Android users, Sony's WH-1000XM5. If you care about transparency mode or have Sonos speakers are home, the Sonos Ace is your best choice. Otherwise, consider the AirPods Max or the WH-1000XM5. View the full article

Parents across the U.S. should soon be able to determine how much lead, arsenic, cadmium, and mercury are in the food they feed their babies, thanks to a California law, the first of its kind, that took effect this year. As of January 1, 2025, every company that sells baby food products in California is required to test for these four heavy metals every month. That comes five years after a congressional report warned about the presence of dangerously high levels of lead and other heavy metals in baby food. Every baby food product packaged in jars, pouches, tubs, and boxes sold in California must carry a QR code on its label that consumers can scan to check the most recent heavy metal readings, although many are not yet complying. Because companies seldom package products for a single state, parents and caregivers across the country will be able to scan these QR codes or go online to the companies’ websites and see the results. I am a pharmacist researcher who has studied heavy metals in mineral supplements, dietary supplements, and baby food for several years. My research highlights how prevalent these toxic agents are in everyday products such as baby food. I believe the new California law offers a solid first step in giving people the ability to limit the intake of these substances. How do heavy metals get into foods? Soil naturally contains heavy metals. The earth formed as a hot molten mass. As it cooled, heavier elements settled into its center regions, called the mantle and core. Volcanic eruptions in certain areas have brought these heavy metals to the surface over time. The volcanic rock erodes to form heavy metal-laden soil, contaminating nearby water supplies. Another major source of soil contamination is the exhaust from fossil fuels, and in particular leaded gasoline. Some synthetic fertilizers contribute, too. Heavy metals in the soil can pass into foods via several routes. Plants that yield foods such as sweet potatoes and carrots, apples, cinnamon, rice, and plant-based protein powder are especially good at extracting them from contaminated soil. Sometimes the contamination happens after harvesting. For example, local water that contains heavy metals is often used to rinse debris and bugs off natural products, such as leaves used to make a widely used supplement called kratom. When the water evaporates, the heavy metals are retained on the surface. Sometimes drying products in the open air, such as cacao beans for dark chocolate, allows dust laden with heavy metals to stick to their surface. Producers can reduce heavy metal contamination in food in several ways, which range from modestly to very effectively. First, they can reserve more contaminated areas for growing crops that are less prone to taking in heavy metals from the soil, such as peppers, beans, squash, melons, and cucumbers, and conversely grow more susceptible crops in less-contaminated areas. They can also dry plants on uncontaminated soil and filter heavy metals out of water before washing produce. Producers are starting to use genetic engineering and crossbreeding to create susceptible plants that take up fewer heavy metals through their roots, but this approach is still in its early stages. Sweet potatoes and other root vegetables are especially susceptible to absorbing heavy metals from soil. [Photo: Hui Sang/Unsplash] How much is too much? Although there is no entirely safe level of chronic heavy metal ingestion, heavy metals are all around us and are impossible to avoid entirely. In January 2025, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration released its first-ever guidance for manufacturers that sets limits on the amount of lead that baby food can contain. But the FDA guidance does not require companies to adhere to the limits. In that guidance, the FDA suggested a limit of 10 parts per billion of lead for baby foods that contain fruits, vegetables, meats, or combinations of those items, with or without grains. Yogurts, custards, and puddings should have the same cutoff, according to the agency. Root vegetables and dry infant cereals, meanwhile, should contain less than 20 parts per billion of lead. The FDA regulations don’t apply to some products babies frequently consume, such as formula, teething crackers, and other snacks. The agency has not defined firm limits for the consumption of other heavy metals, but its campaign against heavy metals in baby food, called Closer to Zero, reflects that a lower dose is better. That campaign also laid out plans to propose limits for other heavy metals such as arsenic and mercury. Modestly exceeding the agency’s recommended dosage for lead or arsenic a few times a month is unlikely to have noticeable negative health effects. However, chronically ingesting too much lead or inorganic arsenic can negatively affect childhood health, including cognitive development, and can cause softening of bones. How California’s QR codes can help parents and other caregivers It’s unclear how many products consistently exceed these recommendations. A study by Consumer Reports in 2018 found that 33 of 50 products had concerning levels of at least one heavy metal. In 2023, researchers repeated testing on seven of the failing products and found that heavy metal levels were now lower in three, the same in one, and slightly higher in three. Because these tests assess products bought and tested at one specific time, they may not reflect the average heavy metal content in the same product over the entire year. These levels can vary over time if the manufacturer sources ingredients from different parts of the country or the world at different times of the year. That’s where California’s new law can help. The law requires manufacturers to gather and divulge real-time information on heavy metal contamination monthly. By scanning a QR code on a box of Gerber Teether Snacks or a jar of Beech Nut Naturals sweet potato puree, parents and caregivers can call up test results on a smartphone and learn how much lead, arsenic, cadmium, and mercury were found in those specific products manufactured recently. These test results can also be accessed by entering a product’s name or batch number on the manufacturer’s website. Slow rollout In an investigation by Consumer Reports and a child advocacy group called Unleaded Kids, only four companies out of 28 were fully in compliance with the California law as of early this year. Some noncompliant companies had developed no infrastructure, some had developed websites but no heavy metal information was logged in, and some had information but required consumers to enter batch numbers to access results, without the required QR codes on the product packaging. The law requires companies to provide this information for foods produced after Jan. 1, 2025, with no provisions for extensions, and the major producers agreed to comply not only for California residents but to provide the results nationwide. California enforces noncompliance by embargoing misbranded baby food products, issuing penalties, and suspending or revoking registrations and licenses. When companies’ testing and reporting systems are fully up and running, a quick scan at the grocery store will allow consumers to adapt their purchases to minimize infants’ exposures to heavy metals. Initially, parents and caregivers may find it overwhelming to decide between one chicken and rice product that is higher in lead but lower in arsenic than a competitor’s product, for example. However, they may also encounter instances where one baby food product clearly contains less of three heavy metals and only slightly more for the fourth heavy metal than a comparable product from a different manufacturer. That information can more clearly inform their choice. Regardless of the readings, health experts advise parents and caregivers not to eliminate all root vegetables, apples, and rice but instead to feed babies a wide variety of foods. C. Michael White is a distinguished professor of pharmacy practice at the University of Connecticut. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. View the full article

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. If you like the idea of running errands or going for a jog without lugging your phone around, the Apple Watch Series 7 (GPS + Cellular) is down to $249.99 on Woot. That’s a $500 discount on its original $749 price tag, but the deal is only live for two days or until it sells out. If you’re an Amazon Prime member, you get free standard shipping, while others will have to pay $6 (keep in mind that Woot won’t ship to Alaska, Hawaii, PO boxes, or APO addresses). Now, if you’re wondering why you should care about the cellular version over the regular GPS model, it's because it doesn’t need to be tethered to your iPhone to have a connection. You can take calls, reply to messages, stream Apple Music, and use Apple Pay without having your phone nearby. That’s especially useful if you like to run without your phone or leave it behind while at the gym. PCMag called the Series 7 the “Best Smartwatch of the Year 2021” and gave it an Editor's Choice award when it launched, thanks to its larger display (meaning bigger buttons, a full QWERTY keyboard for texting, and an easier-to-read interface) and fast charging capabilities, going from 0 to 80% in about 45 minutes (helpful if you use sleep tracking and don’t want to take it off for long). Of course, it's a couple of years old at this point (the Series 10 is the most recent generation), but the Series 7 is still a solid option if you don't care about having the absolutely newest tech available. The Series 7 also comes with an IP6X and WR50 rating, offering strong dust resistance for outdoor workouts and water resistance up to 50 meters (so you can wear it in the shower or take it poolside without worry). Additionally, this model comes with Apple’s limited one-year hardware warranty, which is a nice safety net. Like other Apple Watches, the Series 7 has a full set of health features including heart rate monitoring, ECG, blood oxygen tracking, always-on altimeter, and sleep tracking, among others. It also keeps an eye on your well-being, notifying you if it detects potentially harmful noise levels or irregular heart rhythms, plus fall detection—automatically dialing for help if you take a hard fall and don’t respond. That said, its battery life is around 18 hours, so you’ll need to charge it regularly, which isn’t great, but that’s the Apple Watch standard. If you want something that lasts multiple days, the Ultra models are better, but they cost a lot more. View the full article

Respondents tell us what they’re watching. Does it match what you’re seeing? By CPA Trendlines Research Go PRO for members-only access to more CPA Trendlines Research. View the full article

Respondents tell us what they’re watching. Does it match what you’re seeing? By CPA Trendlines Research Go PRO for members-only access to more CPA Trendlines Research. View the full article

Federal Reserve Gov. Michelle Bowman — who is viewed as a leading contender to be the next Vice Chair for Supervision at the central bank — said changes to the post-financial crisis framework should be a focal point of the central bank's ongoing regulatory policy review. View the full article