Setting Up Your Home Office

The deadline for obtaining a REAL ID has come and gone. If you're planning on flying or entering a federal building, you'll need a driver's license or state identification card that complies with the Department of Homeland Security's new requirements (or an alternative like a passport or Trusted Traveler card). There are plenty of people who still need to upgrade to a REAL ID for upcoming travel—in some states, fewer than half of residents have a compliant license and may encounter long lines to obtain one. And where there's urgency, there's opportunity for scammers to strike. Here's what to know about REAL ID scams and how to avoid them. How REAL ID scams workScammers …

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Before I moved to Portland, I didn’t understand how passionate people can be about strawberries. But once I started growing strawberries, I came to understand that a disproportionate percentage of berries I grew would be lost to bugs, wildlife, and disease. Since summer is short, I’ve worked hard to minimize my losses, and I have suggestions for protecting these precious garden jewels. Keep strawberries off the ground This is how most people grow strawberries—on the ground. Credit: Amanda Blum …

If you're wondering what your computer's BIOS or UEFI is, and whether or not you need to update it, you've come to the right place. I'll explain what these terms mean, what these pieces of software do, and why it might (or might not) be a good idea to install updates for them. What does BIOS and UEFI mean?The BIOS (Basic Input/Output System) or UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) is something every computer has, though unless you're running an ancient computer, you'll have a UEFI installed rather than a BIOS. And we're dealing specifically with Windows computers here: Macs take their own custom approach to this, as Apple is in control of the operating system and …

It doesn't mean much to anyone with a job, but summer's coming in quick, and only grade-grubbers are still paying attention in school. The other kids are wasting their time exactly how you'd expect: watching kitten body horror videos, discovering 20-year-old RPGs, and throwing bowling balls into helicopter blades. Here's what's shaping (and warping) young minds this week. The rise of terrifying AI kittens on YouTubeIf you have younger kids, summer can mean more screen time, and I wanted to check out what kids are watching when their guardian hands them that tablet, so I spent some time on YouTube looking at animated videos that seem geared to children. The place is lousy …

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. If you’ve been waiting for the right time to upgrade your Apple Watch, the Series 10 has quietly become one of the best-value picks around. It launched in September and has already dropped to $299 on Amazon—that’s $100 off the $399 sticker price. Apple Watch Series 10 GPS 42mm Smartwatch (Rose Gold, Plum Sports Loop) $299.00 at Amazon…

While apples and broccoli have become basic—constantly on the grocery store shelves year-round—rhubarb is a vegetable unicorn. It only appears for a very short and magical window. I'll spot it in the market for maybe a month and before I know it, I’ve missed it. That’s why I buy bundles of it when I do happen to catch it, and I get right to work. Not cooking it down in a pot with a cup of sugar, no: My favorite way to prepare rhubarb for pies and cakes is roasting. Roasting keeps things from getting soggyMy first time working with rhubarb was right out of culinary school, making dozens of miniature strawberry and rhubarb tarts. It was actually my first time eating it to…

Jonathan Goldstein’s Heavyweight, where he helps people confront things from their past, is one of the most beloved podcasts of all time. In 2023 when Spotify was making huge cuts, it was one of them. But earlier this year, Malcolm Gladwell’s Pushkin Industries picked it back up, and episodes will be returning soon. If you want more Heavyweight-ish stuff now, this list of podcasts will keep you satisfied. They share Heavyweight’s ethos—curiosity, empathy, a sense of humor, and beautiful audio. Wiretap Credit: Wiretap Wiretap i…

Two-factor authentication (2FA) is a great way to boost the security of your accounts. But even with that added layer of security, malicious actors are finding ways to break in. So-called adversary-in-the-middle attacks take advantage of weaker authentication methods to access accounts. Your two-factor and multi-factor authentication (MFA) may be weak, but, luckily, there's something you can do about it. How multi-factor authentication worksMFA uses two or more checkpoints to confirm a user's identity for accessing an account or system. This is more secure than relying on just a username and password combination, especially given how easy many passwords are to crack, and…

I'm a big fan of the USPS' "Informed Delivery" option. When you enroll, the USPS will send you daily emails that show all mail and packages you're set to receive that day. (The mail scans arrive in grayscale, address-side only.) If you like to be surprised every time you open your mailbox, it's not the service for you. But for the rest of us, it's a helpful way to keep an eye on the day's incoming mail. Now, the USPS is expanding the feature, working on a dedicated Informed Delivery app. The app will send you push notifications whenever you have new mail and packages on the way, and will let you share the status of packages with other people. If you sent a friend a packa…

Your digestive system is a hugely important part of your body, and keeping it healthly is hugely important. Without good gut health, you might be in pain, or suffer embarrassing symptoms, or worse. But it does not follow that you need to load up on foods or products that promise to improve your gut health. Gut health, it turns out, is not a well-defined concept. That means it’s not always possible to tell whether it’s improving or whether you even have a problem with it in the first place. Two researchers from the Food & Mood Centre at Deakin University wrote in a Lancet journal article and on the Conversation about the fact that gut health has become more of a market…

Mother’s Day is supposed to be wholesome and sort of boring: some flowers, a Hallmark card, maybe doing some chores around the house for once. But the American version of Mother's Day wasn’t born in a garden. It was forged in the smoke and death of the Civil War, shaped by radical women, and became a battleground between profit and principle—a holiday so contentious its own creator devoted her life trying to destroy it. Mother's Day's history is dramatic as hell. The ancient ancestors of Mother's DayMoms have been around for a long time, and so have celebrations to honor them. These kinds of celebrations have been around at least since the ancient Greeks and Romans threw…

Chrome on Android can be a bit much. It's undeniably a heavy browser, with not that many features to boot. There's no built-in reading mode, no ad-blocker, no tab management, no VPN, nothing. Chrome isn't even that customizable. If you want more from your Android browser, you're not wrong. If you're willing to switch to a third-party browser, you can get a browser that's faster than Chrome, uses less resources, provides all those features I just talked about, and more. There are many options to choose from, but here are my top 5 picks for Chrome alternatives, depending on what kind of user you are. Vivaldi: Best for large screen devices …

We may earn a commission from links on this page. There are plenty of places worth investing your money for long-term growth. But what about short-term savings? Shouldn’t you be able to earn a little something extra on that, too? A high-yield savings account functions like a traditional savings account but offers significantly higher interest rates. More specifically, the average interest rate on savings accounts is currently 0.41% per the FDIC. Compared to those meager returns on a traditional savings account, high-yield alternatives can deliver more than 4.50% APY—turning a potential $50 annual return on $10,000 into $450 or more. These accounts are typically offered b…

Our hearts beat faster when we exercise, which is why heart rate training can be so useful. But when we aren’t doing anything, our heart rate can still be useful to know. If you have a wearable that measures your resting heart rate (RHR), here’s how to understand what it’s telling you. What is a normal resting heart rate? Medical professionals usually consider anything between 60 and 100 beats per minute (bpm) to be a “normal” resting heart rate. But they are usually measuring resting heart rate in people who are in a healthcare setting, sitting quietly. Notably, they are awake, and some may be a bit nervous about being in a doctor’s office. Your smartwatch or other wea…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. A quick public service announcement: Mother’s Day is this Sunday. If this holiday snuck up on you again this year (I’m in the same boat), it’s not too late to grab a thoughtful gift. Here’s a list of gift ideas for the chef, baker, coffee connoisseur, and everyone in between. While you may not have time to get something engraved or monogrammed, these gifts still say “You deserve to do more of what you love.” The vendors listed below offer expedited shipping so your gift will arrive on time. Just make sure to check the two-day shipping option during checkout. …

When you're planning a trip with friends, there's a good chance your group chat will be full of links to and screenshots of places you want to visit or cafés you want to hit. To help you keep track of all that, Google is now rolling out a new feature to add multiple locations to a Google Maps list for you using screenshots. This feature scans your phone and uses Gemini AI to work out the places mentioned in your screenshots. It's starting out first first on iPhones (which is odd for Google), and it's limited to the US for now. However, Android and global releases are planned for the future. How to automatically add places to Google Maps using screenshots …

Not that long ago, sending a message was final. It didn't matter if you had an embarrassing typo, or you sent a message to the wrong person: Once you tapped that "send" button, you were locked in, and whoever that message was sent to would have it as long as they wanted. These days, however, we have the technology to save ourselves from such embarrassment. Many chat apps now have options to retrieve a message after it was sent, whether by editing the message to fix a mistake, or the ability to delete a message from everyone in the chat. It doesn't guarantee that the people who received the message didn't see it, but it does remove that message from view. If they didn't c…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Though relatively new on the Hollywood scene (its first original film was released in 2019), Apple TV+'s slate of original films has included not just charming indies, but award-winning prestige pictures. CODA was Oscar's best picture just a couple of years ago (the first film from a streaming service to claim the honor), and the streamer's movies earned it 13 nominations for 2023, even if it got nothing for 2024. (We all have off years.) Given the complexities of film financing today, you might be excused for believing that many of these movies were typical theatrical releases—but, strictly speaking, these are all Apple T…

Now more than ever, it's time to curb your online shopping habit. The The President administration's tariffs will hit American families hard, with estimates ranging from nearly $4,000 to almost $8,000 per household. With a general attitude of "recession indicators" all around us, one thing is clear: Times are tight. And as time goes on, your restrictive behavior can swing too far in the other direction, leading to something called “revenge spending.” If you’ve found yourself responding to tight times with overcompensatory spending, here’s what you can do to get your budget back on track. What is "revenge spending"?As the name suggests, revenge spending occurs when you th…

I don't really use AI. At least part of this, I think, is the user interface most large language models (LLMs) are presented in: the chatbot. I never think to open a dedicated window and ask a fictional person for help—I find it a clumsy way to interact with a computer. Why can't the AI help me in the places I'm already working? That's the idea behind Cotypist, a (currently) free Mac application by developer Daniel Gräfe that adds mobile-style autocomplete to every application on your Mac. The tool, which uses an offline LLM running on your device, requires an Apple Silicon processor (16 GB of RAM is recommended). While you're typing, predictive text (in gray) appears to …

AI bots want to help with your web searches as well as everything else, and Claude is the latest artificial intelligence assistant to get the ability to look up information online—whether that's the latest news headlines or the latest prices on gadgets. "With web search, Claude has access to the latest events and information, boosting its accuracy on tasks that benefit from the most recent data," says developer Anthropic. The feature is available now across all paid plans, and is "coming soon" for free users. Web search is a different kind of challenge for AI models, testing their ability to sift through and assess content published on the web, rather than embedded in its…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. If you’re looking to breathe new life into an older HD television—or even just want an affordable way to stream your favorite shows—the Amazon Fire TV Stick HD makes a strong case for itself. It's going for $19.99 on Amazon right now. Amazon Fire TV Stick HD $19.99 at Amazon $…

When a big-box store files for bankruptcy and goes out of business, there's often an opportunity to buy its products at rock-bottom prices. But scammers are taking advantage of our love of a good deal: The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is warning consumers about online clearance sales being advertised by fraudsters impersonating Joann Fabric and Crafts. Joann Fabric and Crafts filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy (twice) and in February 2025 announced plans to shutter its stores with going-out-of-business sales. On March 5, the business disabled purchases on its website, but scammers have been promoting online clearance sales using ads on social media sites and running away …

Letterboxd is the best thing to happen to film nerds since IMDb, which is almost surprising given how straightforward it is. Like the Film Twitter answer to Goodreads, it is a social network/online catalogue where you can rate or review movies, pick a few of your favorites to highlight on your profile, and follow your friends and favorite critics. Yet, Letterboxd is more than just "what if social media, but for movies?" Dig a little deeper and you'll find some useful tools for managing your cinema obsession. If you haven't used Letterboxd before, it's available for Android, iOS, or on the web. Anyone can access it to browse movies, read reviews, and see user ratings, but …