Setting Up Your Home Office

If you work a job with limited paid time off, you have to be strategic about using it, whether you want to have more short breaks throughout the year or have an extended trip planned that requires banking days and using them all at once. We've written before about how to maximize annual vacation days by stacking them up against weekends as well as federal and state holidays so your time off feels like more than it is. The Stretch My Time Off tool can actually do that for you based on the exact number of PTO days you have—whether you get a paltry two weeks or want to take several dozen days with an unlimited policy—as well as the national holidays in your country (and sta…

Microsoft just dropped its Patch Tuesday security update for February 2025. This is a monthly update for Windows that includes all of the security patches and stability fixes Microsoft has been working on since the last release. But just because these updates arrive without any new user-facing features, that doesn't mean they're not equally as important—if not more so. As reported by Bleeping Computer, this latest Patch Tuesday update fixes 55 security flaws throughout Windows. That includes 22 remote code execution flaws, 19 elevation of privilege flaws, nine denial of service flaws, three spoofing flaws, two security feature bypass flaws, and one information disclosure…

There are many alternatives to dining out on Valentine’s Day, but none as classic as simply cooking a cozy meal at home. While you and your partner might find ordering Taco Bell to be meaningful and romantic (I know a couple that celebrates with chicken nuggets and champagne), if you’re interested in cooking, I’ve got some simple and budget-focused meal suggestions that are still pretty darn romantic. Air fryer stuffed mushroomsThese savory mushroom bites are some of my favorite things on planet Earth. They make for a great appetizer or side dish, and using the air fryer means you can have them on the table in about 10 minutes. Sausage, cream cheese, and some minced arom…

The Leader Key is a popular concept in coding, and it essentially works like a hotkey. In old-school text editor VIM, a leader key is a shortcut starter, a first button to begin a special command. For example, it's similar to how you might enter the "#" key on your TV remote before pressing a code, to enter a hidden menu. Now, The Leader Key Mac app brings the same concept to your entire Mac. You press a predefined shortcut, and then a single key afterward to quickly execute a mapped action. In practice, this means you might press the Globe key and the Right Command key, then S to quickly open the Safari browser. It's similar to the default keyboard shortcuts you're prob…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. When someone experienced uses a rowing machine, it’s almost a thing of beauty—a continuous rhythm, their entire body continuously moving back and forth as the numbers on the screen rise higher and higher. So why, when you get on, does using it immediately feel impossible, and also your back hurts? You probably have the settings wrong, and chances are your technique sucks too. Let's fix both of those. There is a learning curve to the rowing machine (also called an erg), but you can master it—probably more quickly than you think. It’s also common to note the damper setting and assume it works the same way as the resistance s…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Like it or not, Valentine’s Day is right around the corner. “But the holiday is made up!” you cry. “All holidays are made up,” I reply. “You need to get your partner a gift." No matter how badly you want to stick it to the Hallmark industrial complex, and no matter how much your loved one assures you they “really don’t want gifts,” the fact of the matter is that we’ve all been conditioned to feel the need to meet a bare minimum for romantic gift-giving every Feb. 14. And no, you’re not going to successfully overcome a lifetime of Valentine’s propaganda by deciding to stiff your partner on the gift front. Hallmark will neve…

As a teen, I was confused when I read a box of taco directions. I remember the step after cooking the ground beef was something like “drain off the water.” What water? It only took one time, and then I knew what water they were referring to. Cooking ground beef often results in gray, rubbery nubbins, and browning it is even harder because of that pool of liquid. Luckily, there’s an easy remedy for this problem: Cook faster, more tender ground beef with a sprinkle of baking soda. The best way to cook ground beefI have no issues making this claim: This is the best way to cook ground beef. Full stop. Baking soda is a household chemical most folks have readily available in th…

It’s not just eggs—all the basics we need to live our lives are getting more expensive, including the energy we use to run our appliances, heat our homes, and do just about everything else. The average monthly cost for electricity and gas is already over $200, so when your utility bill spikes, it’s often a cause for panic. After all, you can only do so much to cut down on your usage. If you’re looking for ways to manage your utility bills, there is one option worth investigating. Check with your local utility company to see if it offers what’s known as a Time of Use (TOU) plan. While these plans require some adjustment and a healthy dose of personal discipline, they also …

We may earn a commission from links on this page. If you tend to get overwhelmed by the prospect of cleaning your house, here’s some good news: One of the best cleaning methods out there is designed for people like you. Called the 20/10 rule, it’s been around for a few years, but has really withstood the test of time because of its simplicity and how effective it is. What is the 20/10 method of cleaning?The 20/10 method comes from Rachel Hoffman’s 2017 book, Unf*ck Your Habitat: You’re Better Than Your Mess. The title is at once bracing and comforting, just what you need as motivation to clean your place and keep it clean. While the book goes into a lot of detail about al…

As convenient as the internet is, when big tech companies chase endless growth, that can mean bloat. Nowadays, it feels like every company wants to lure me into an algorithm trap, convince me to use their AI services, or try to make me pay a premium to browse like I used to. One of my favorite tools for fighting back against these trends is Tapestry. It's a timeline app for iPhone and iPad that lets you combine multiple feeds from blogs, YouTube, podcasts, and social media, then view them in chronological order, with a beautiful interface. Essentially, you can use it to make your own curated version of (nearly) the entire internet. Tapestry is designed by The Iconfactory,…

From security and privacy concerns to good old-fashioned cringe, there are all kinds of reasons you might want to delete your old social media posts. And there are plenty of tools for the job out there. The problem: most tend to focus on one or two social media networks. Redact, however, is a paid tool with support for deleting posts on 28 different services. You can use it to scan for old posts and choose what to delete, or you can search for posts that mention specific topics. It can also be used to delete posts on a schedule—this is perfect if, for example, you wanted to delete all Bluesky posts a month after you post them. It's a lot of power, basically, and it runs l…

There are a lot of music streaming services to choose from right now. Many of us subscribe to Spotify or Apple Music, but still others may use YouTube Music, Amazon Music, or Tidal. They all have their pros and cons, but if price is the most important factor for you, it's a good time to check out Apple's offering. Apple Music usually costs $10.99 for individual users, $16.99 for families, and $5.99 for students—pretty standard for music streaming pricing. Today, however, Apple announced an impressive deal for eligible new subscribers: Six months of Apple Music for $2.99. That's not three dollars per months, but three dollars total. Who's eligibleThat's a pretty great val…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Like any surface, a wood floor can get stained and dirty, but you have to be really careful with how you clean it. You shouldn't use harsh chemicals, whether your floor is sealed or unsealed, because you don't want to damage the wood itself, but that leaves you with fewer options. I tried two—well, three, but we'll get to that—simple techniques that didn't require any intense chemicals today and they both worked well. Remove stains from wood floors with vinegarFirst, I assessed the stains I was dealing with, which I noticed while cleaning under my couch earlier in the week. They appeared to be leftover from a project I di…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. The Apple Watch—and other smartwatches—are designed to be worn on your wrist. But why not wear it elsewhere? I’ve worn an Apple Watch on my ankle to keep it out of the way during kettlebell workouts, and that’s also a common placement for people who walk while they work, or who have a job or hobby that isn’t compatible with constant watch-wearing. So how do you do this, why might you do this, and is the data really just as accurate? Here’s what you need to know. How to wear your Apple Watch on your ankleLet’s get the “how” out of the way first. If you have small feet (and ankles), you can just slip your regular wristband …

Peer-to-peer payment apps like Venmo offer an easy way to send money to friends and family as well as businesses selling goods and services—but that ease makes them a target for scams involving theft and fraud. Here are the most common Venmo scams to watch for. The mistaken payment scamIf you receive money you weren't expecting from someone you don't know by "accident," it's not actually an accident. Scammers will Venmo you, claim it was a mistake, and ask for the money back as a new payment. This may seem harmless, but it typically involves scammers charging so-called mistaken payments to stolen credit cards then connecting their personal cards to receive payments in r…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. It's a potentially concerning sign of the times, but my morning is dictated by my apps. On an average day, I start off by putting in a mobile Dunkin' order, checking my sales on Poshmark and my rentals on Pickle, and playing the New York Times games before shifting over to the more serious work apps. As of last week, I added a new app to the morning mix: Finch, which is sort of like a to-do list mixed with a Tamagotchi. My ultimate goal with this whole morning app rotation is to resist the siren call of social media and, with it, an unproductive start to the day. This app, I reasoned, would help me be even more productive …

Samsung may have announced three Galaxy phones today, including the Galaxy S25, S25+, and S25 Ultra, but that didn’t stop the company from teasing a fourth. Alongside detailed specs of the new lineup arriving on Feb. 7, Samsung also hinted at a more mysterious future phone called the Galaxy S25 Edge. This announcement came towards the tail end of Samsung’s Unpacked event, and didn’t give viewers much more to work off of than a name and some renders. From the looks of it, though, the Edge seems to be a thinner version of the Galaxy S25, with a dual lens camera bump swapped in to help accommodate the smaller body. …

We may earn a commission from links on this page. During his Presidential campaign, new Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. promised an eight-year halt on infectious disease research, presumably because our chances of encountering any sort of infectious disease will be nearly zero once the fluoride is gone from our water supply. As we celebrate the disease-free world of the very near future, let's take a look back at movies that explore worlds in which viruses and diseases (or related metaphors) run rampant. These movies vary wildly in their tones and styles, but there are some recurring themes: Science and scientists (however flawed) are almost alwa…

Not all apps are safe. It's why I always recommend downloading apps from official app stores, like the iOS App Store and Google Play Store, rather than a random website: Apple and Google both have policies to scan for malware and stop them before reaching app stores. But neither company is perfect, and apps infected with malware end up on official app marketplaces more often that we'd like to think. These apps usually pop up on the Play Store more than the App Store given that Apple is extremely strict, but that doesn't mean the App Store is impervious to malware—it definitely happens, and we've covered it before. In fact, researchers just found a batch of apps containing…

With iOS 19 expected to be unveiled in June 2025 at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), rumors about its features have been coming in fast. Although none of these rumors can be confirmed at the moment, they still give us a good idea about what Apple might be considering behind the scenes. Since AI is the flavor of the month, Apple Intelligence improvements are expected for iOS 19, but the camera app might also be getting some attention. Here's everything that's been leaked so far. The merging of Siri and Apple IntelligenceAccording to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, Apple plans to merge Siri with Apple Intelligence sometime during the iOS 19 patch cycle. Yes, the ass…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. The romantic comedy is one of cinema’s oldest and most reliable genres for good reason: Real-life romance is complicated and sometimes exhausting. That can be true for characters in movies, too, but their problems are generally funnier than our own and, anyway, they’re not our problems. We’re comforted either because we know everything will work out fine, or because we know we won’t have to deal with the hilarious and/or poignant consequences of interacting with other humans. Sadly, the golden ago of the rom-com has passed us by. Worse, Netflix in particular has pulled back on its selection of older (meaning anything much…

In the dry months of winter, a humidifier is a godsend, infusing the air with moisture and doing its part to keep your skin and sinuses from getting parched. Since you’re probably regularly adding fresh water to it, you may not think you need to clean it that frequently. But you do—and more often than you might guess. In addition to helping it run better, cleaning your humidifier stops the machine from dispersing microorganisms and minerals into the air. Practice proper humidifier maintenanceDistilled or demineralized water is better than tap water; the latter can contain minerals that could hasten bacteria growth. The minerals can also cause what looks like white dust t…

Back in December, OpenAI rolled out a new way to chat with ChatGPT: You can reach out to the generative AI by calling 1-800-CHATGPT (no, really)—or, if you have WhatsApp, you can text that same number to share what's on your mind. While many of ChatGPT's distinct features were missing, the core of the experience was still present. You text or ask ChatGPT something out loud, and the bot responds in kind. For WhatsApp users, that largely feels like texting a friend—only, that friend happens to respond right away with a detailed response generated entirely by AI. (We all have one of those friends, right?) Now, less than two months after rolling out this new way to contact …

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. Apple has been top dog in the premium tablet space for years, and the iPad Pro with an M4 chip released last year is no exception. If you've been waiting for a discount on the best-performing tablet you can get, consider the 11-inch M4 iPad Pro for $849.99 (originally $999.99) after the additional $50 discount at checkout. This brings it down to the lowest price the this iPad model has been since its release, according to price-tracking tools. Apple iPad Pro 11-Inch (M4) …

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Cleaning can be overwhelming to everyone at some point—and creating a habit or schedule you'll actually stick to can be a big part of the problem. As is this case with other tasks like decluttering and organizing, though, one way to break through the procrastination is by finding the method that works best for you. Here are five of my favorites for you to try. The FlyLady technique, for stress-free cleaningThe FlyLady cleaning method, popularized by organizational guru Marla Cilley, is all about getting into a soothing, easy cleaning routine that won't stress you out. To tap into the usefulness of this method, break your h…