Setting Up Your Home Office

Aside from the launch of the sky blue M4-powered MacBook Air, this week's flurry of Apple announcements saw the introduction of the most powerful Apple silicon desktop processor yet. Given Apple's numbering scheme for its own chipsets, you'd think that would be one with an M4 label attached, but it's actually the M3 Ultra, which will power the newest Mac Studio. Since Apple started releasing its own chipsets with the M designation, we've seen a variety of different labels attached. First came the standard processor, then the Pro, then the Max, and then the Ultra, with performance improving with each iteration. We're now up to the M4 Max and the M3 Ultra. When preordering …

On Tuesday, Apple announced Apple Invites, a new app for iPhones that creates custom event invitations "for any occasion." If that sounds a lot like popular party planning apps like Partiful, that's because, well, it is—only, this app integrates with the greater iOS experience, which is likely bad news for third-party competitors. This isn't a surprise to anyone follow Apple rumors closely. As reported by Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, Apple has been working on an invite system for iOS, internally referred to as "Confetti." It wasn't clear whether those plans would manifest as a standalone app, or rather as options built-into existing apps like Calendar and iMessage. Of course,…

As someone whose job involves testing and writing about Mac apps, a crowded menu bar is an occupational hazard. Until its ownership change last year, my go-to recommendation for tidying up your menu bar was Bartender. But once it became clear that we don't really know who owns Bartender now, I tried a few alternatives, and none of them had all the features I was looking for. So, I abandoned menu bar managers until recently, when the apps in my menu bar began extending more than halfway into my screen and I was finding it hard to even locate which app I was looking for. That's when I discovered Barbee, a powerful menu bar manager for Mac. It can do everything from hiding …

We may earn a commission from links on this page. From viral hacks to your grandmother, someone or something has, at some point, told you to clean with baking soda and vinegar. Even I have told you to clean with baking soda and vinegar. Yesterday, sadly, I learned that this approach isn't all it's cracked up to be. Let's discuss. Why you shouldn't mix baking soda and vinegar to cleanThe good news is that this mixture isn't toxic or dangerous in any way. You're not poisoning yourself over time if you mix vinegar and baking soda to get a bubbly paste to scrub onto your walls, countertops, or tile. The bad news is that it just doesn't do much. See, yesterday, I wrote about…

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…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. Two TVs are better than one, especially when you only had to pay for one of them. Best Buy is currently offering a free 40-inch Samsung Class 5 Series LED Full HD Smart Tizen TV (a value of $249.99) when you buy one of three massive Samsung TVs. Here are your three options, followed by a quick description of each to help you determine which is best for you. Resolution: 4K (2160p), Screen Size: 85 inches, Display Type: LED, …

Bluesky is setting itself up to be a social media jack of all trades. There's the main experience, of course, which replaces something like X or Threads. But it's not all about the text posts: Soon, you'll be able to use an app like Flashes to transform Bluesky into a kind of Instagram. Before that drops, however, you can use a different app to turn Bluesky into TikTok. It's not quite there yet, but it's a fascinating look into a unique kind of social media client—an app that turns one platform into something else entirely. Introducing Bluescreen for Bluesky Bluescreen is a Bluesky client with one singular purpose: It identifies the videos from your Bluesky feed and deliv…

Bluesky's latest update adds a few more useful options to its impressive arsenal of anti-harassment tools. The changes make it easier to hide direct messages (DMs) from strangers, and to mute accounts even faster. You don't need to do anything to receive these features, too. As long as you're using the latest version of Bluesky's apps or log in to the website on any browser, you should see them. Here's everything that's now available as a part of Bluesky's 1.99 update. Block DMs from strangersNo one wants a bunch of DMs from strangers, and Bluesky has now acknowledged that. If you're on the end of a targeted harassment campaign, you'll now be able to sort out DMs from str…

As egg prices skyrocket, you too may be considering if it would be cheaper going straight to the source and raising your own flock. As the steward of four sweet but dimwitted backyard chickens, I'll caution that it's more expensive than you think—but with prices spiking as high as $1 per egg in some areas, it may be worth considering. Each day, I reliably pull three or four gorgeously colored eggs out of my backyard chicken coop. “They're free!” I think to myself. But these eggs are only “free” if one ignores the costs of feeding, sheltering, protecting, and entertaining a flock of tiny, feathered dinosaurs. Now, most people with backyard birds aren’t going the cheap rou…

There's a lot of advice out there for proper password management: Each of your passwords should be strong and unique; use a secure manager to store your passwords; use two-factor authentication (2FA) to add an extra layer of security to your accounts. But there's another piece of advice that is held in the same regard as the others: Change your passwords often—perhaps once every three months. This habit is so emphasized, many companies and organizations will make you change your passwords multiple times a year in the name of security. The thing is, in all likelihood, this isn't actually doing anything to help your security. This idea that changing your passwords multiple …

If you tried to open ChatGPT this morning, only to find the service endlessly loading or erroring out, you're not alone: ChatGPT is up and down this morning, along with other OpenAI services. OpenAI's official status site shows some issues for services across OpenAI's portfolio, but ChatGPT is the most affected. As of this article, all other services are listed as "Operational," but not ChatGPT. The chatbot was previously listed as dealing with a "Partial Outage," but OpenAI has since relabeled it as a "Major Outage." The company has six updates listed on Jan. 23 under "Past Incidents:" The first was at 3:54 PST: "We are currently experiencing elevated error rates in th…

OpenAI has significantly leveled up the image generating capabilities of ChatGPT, adding the update as part of the GPT-4o model introduced last May. The new and improved AI generator is rolling out now for all ChatGPT users, across paid plans and the free tier (though free users are more restricted in how much they can use it). It's been possible to generate images through the ChatGPT interface for a while now, though behind the scenes the work was farmed out to the DALL-E 3 image model. Now, everything will be handled by GPT-4o, for a more consistent and native experience. There are lots of improvements here, which cover some of the areas that AI image creator tools have…

Like many AI chatbots, ChatGPT has offered image generation for some time now. You might be well acquainted with it, seeing as its latest image generation tools have recently gone viral. Putting both the ethics of AI art as well as its errors, quirks, and inconsistencies aside for a moment, you may have noticed some issues with ChatGPT's image generation, especially if you've been using a lot. Since each image is contained to the ChatGPT conversation in which it was generated, it's quite difficult to keep tabs on all your images, unless you're exporting and cataloging them somewhere else manually. OpenAI might not be able to solve the other issues with AI art yet, but it …

Be careful what you share with ChatGPT these days: It'll remember everything you say. That's because OpenAI is rolling out a new update to ChatGPT's memory that allows the bot to access the contents of all of your previous chats. The idea is that by pulling from your past conversations, ChatGPT will be able to offer more relevant results to your questions, queries, and overall discussions. Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, announced the changes on X, touting the usefulness of AI systems that know everything about you: This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed. ChatGPT's memory feature is a little over a year old at this po…

Never learned to play chess and don't know where to start? Duolingo, the gamified education app most famous for its language learning lessons, is adding chess lessons to the iPhone application later this month. You can learn how each piece moves before eventually moving on to tactics, all in the familiar Duolingo user interface. A "limited number of learners" on iOS will get the chess feature on Tuesday, April 22; it will roll out to other English-speaking iPhone users "in weeks following." Other operating systems, along with versions for non-English speakers, are "planned in the months ahead," according to Duolingo. This isn't the first offering outside of language learn…

If you're reading this, chances are you've used ChatGPT. But have you paid for ChatGPT? OpenAI offers a number of ways to do so, but the cheapest plan is $20 per month. It's pretty steep, especially since the company continues to offer premium features for free users. However, there are still plenty of features and perks exclusive to paying customers. If you're interested in these options, and you happen to be a college student in the United States or Canada, good news: ChatGPT Plus is now free for you, for a very limited time. Who is eligible? You can only take advantage of this offer if you are a full or part-time student at a degree-granting school in either the U.S.…

If you live in Atlanta, Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Colorado Springs, or Rockville (Maryland), Comcast might have just given you a sneak peak at the internet of the future. In collaboration with Apple, Meta, Nvidia, and Valve, the service provider is currently rolling out a new open standard called “L4S,” which seeks to drastically reduce how lag works online, and make gaming and video calls much smoother. What is L4S?Short for “Low Latency, Low Loss, Scalable Throughput,” L4S wants to make this internet feel faster— not by upping bandwidth, but by making data transfer more efficient. Right now, your internet service provider, or ISP, sends data to you in the fo…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Home improvement projects large and small can make us happier, our homes more comfortable and livable, and our property more valuable. But there’s a reason many people hesitate to take on some of these projects: They seem really complicated, difficult, and even dangerous. If you’ve never done any DIY home improvement projects, it’s easy to imagine that you'll quickly get in over your head and make matters worse. All of this is exacerbated in the bathroom, which is vital to our everyday health and hygiene. There are plenty of bathroom repairs best left to the professionals—but even if you’re totally inexperienced and wouldn…

Well, here we go again. With TikTok’s future in the United States still uncertain, parts of Congress are already moving toward banning DeepSeek, a Chinese ChatGPT competitor that quickly usurped ChatGPT on the App Store last week. A new bill introduced by Republican Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri would “prohibit United States persons from advancing artificial intelligence capabilities within the People’s Republic of China.” In other words, it would effectively ban DeepSeek, despite not mentioning the AI chatbot by name. Under the bill, anyone convicted of “the import from or export to China of artificial intelligence technology” could be sentenced with up to 20 years in …

We're now seeing significant AI upgrades from the big players in the field almost every week, with most new features quickly copied by rival companies as each one looks to stay ahead. Now it's time for Microsoft Copilot to play catch-up, as it adds a host of features we've previously seen tested by Microsoft or launched for other AI chatbots. Copilot now has Deep Research, for example, to match all the Deep Research tools elsewhere, while Copilot Search has been upgraded. Microsoft has also rolled out its own AI-hosted podcast generator, a tool that's been available for a while on competing services. There's a lot to explore, and each new feature is explained below. These…

If you have a Samsung Galaxy phone, then you also have access to the Good Lock app from the Galaxy Store or the Play Store. This free app provides a host of extra ways to tweak and customize your handset, above and beyond what you get in One UI, and it covers everything from 3D wallpapers to advanced camera settings. There's a lot to explore in Good Lock, and you can pick and choose from its various modules (mini-apps) as needed. Samsung recently shared the three modules that have been most popular with users since Good Lock first launched back in April 2016, and they're good starting points for anyone new to the app or wanting to explore it further. When you open up Good…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. There’s a difference between cleaning and decluttering. If you have too much stuff (clutter), you’ll have a much harder time sweeping, dusting, sanitizing, and actually cleaning, plus your house will never look clean. But decluttering is harder than cleaning, by far. It’s overwhelming, even, which is why clutter can get out of hand, making cleaning a nearly impossible task. That’s also why we’re always on the hunt for new ways to declutter: Surely, someone out there has cracked the code, right? As it turns out, organizer Kayleen Kelly may have. Her method, Core 4, is wildly popular on TikTok and could be the one that works…

Getting rid of stuff can be hard, even if you’re not exactly a hoarder. It’s hard enough for so many of us in our consumerist society, in fact, that scientists have studied why that is—and are always coming up with ways to overcome an aversion to decluttering our lives. Just in time for spring cleaning season, look to research published in the Journal of Consumer Psychology that suggests there’s a way to ease yourself into parting with old belongings: Instead of throwing them out all at once, banish them to purgatory first. What it means to put clutter in “purgatory”The researchers, Mathew S. Isaac and Poornima Vinoo, kicked off their paper by explaining that people who s…

Digg, the dominant link aggregator of the mid-2000s, is attempting yet another comeback. Kevin Rose, one of Digg's original founders, has acquired the brand name for an undisclosed sum and is teaming up with Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian to build a new-ish social network. The plan was announced this morning in articles on Techcrunch and in the New York Times. There aren't many concrete details in these articles about what the site will look like, though they do note it will use AI as a key moderation tool. "Online communities thrive when there’s a balance between technology and human judgment,” Ohanian told Techcrunch, adding that, "AI should handle the grunt work in the …