Setting Up Your Home Office

Google is planning a new update for its upcoming Pixel 9a which includes a new feature dedicated to protecting and prolonging the phone's battery. While the goal is longevity, this new battery management feature will actually end up reducing the battery capacity of the Pixel 9a over time. It won't just be the Pixel 9a, as other Pixel series phones will eventually receive the feature too. The kicker, though, is Pixel 9a users can't turn this feature off. Why do Lithium-ion batteries need management?All lithium-ion batteries degrade over time. As you use your smartphone, and as you continue to charge it, the total battery capacity goes down. Eventually, charging your phone …

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. If you’ve ever wanted to wear earbuds that don’t actually go in your ears, the Bose Ultra Open Earbuds might be the oddball pick you’ve been looking for. These open-style earbuds clip on and hook around your ear instead of sitting inside it, letting ambient noise in by design. That makes them great for runs, walks, or commuting—basically, situations where you want to hear your music but also that car barreling around the corner. And for the next six days or until it sells out, Woot’s offering refurbished models of these earbuds, in black, moonstone …

The vernal equinox, marking the first day of spring, occurs in late March every year. Sometime around then, most planting zones encounter what is known as the last frost date, which is the experts' best guess, based on averages, of when your last hard freeze will be. The cherry, plum, and peach blossoms are exploding on trees all around us and tulips are popping up from the ground. There are all kinds of markers that gardening season has arrived, but the most prominent one is the return of people to working on their front yards on sunny days, which should be happening now with some regularity. It is finally full steam ahead for this year, and there are tons of things you …

Like the first few months of the year, April is a relatively quiet month for sky watching, but it does bring one of the oldest meteor showers and a micromoon. April 13: Pink MoonApril's full moon is known as the Pink Moon, so named for the color of ground phlox, a wildflower that blooms during the month—though the moon itself doesn't actually appear pink in the sky. The Pink Moon is also a micromoon, meaning it occurs at that furthest point from Earth. The opposite of a supermoon, it will look about 5% smaller in diameter than usual. April 21: Lyrid meteor shower peakThe main event in April is the Lyrid meteor shower. It starts mid-month (around April 17) and will peak …

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Welcome to “Cookbook of the Week.” This is a series where I highlight cookbooks that are unique, easy to use, or just special to me. While finding a particular recipe online serves a quick purpose, flipping through a truly excellent cookbook has a magic all its own. Every time I see a newly budding tree or a daffodil leaping out of a scruffy patch of grass, it brings me a fresh moment of cheer. Spring is coming to New York. That means sun and spring fashion, but mostly I’m excited for the variety of veggies that’ll be available. I’m choosing to celebrate Spring’s approach with an appropriately veggie-forward Cookbook of t…

Yesterday, Nintendo finally announced its successor to the Nintendo Switch, fittingly named the Switch 2. I already wrote about my general experiences with the console, where I talked about how it’s mostly boring, but probably the right move on Nintendo’s part. Still, I wanted to take a moment to call out one part of the console that definitely isn’t boring: the mouse controls. When you take one of the Switch 2’s controllers, the Joy-Con 2, off the console and put it on its side, it becomes a mouse—simple as that. If you’re playing a compatible game, you’ll instantly see a cursor pop up on screen, and right away, you’ll be playing as if you were on PC. Rotate the controll…

Whether you want to quickly check where a particular city is or grab an address to share with a friend, opening a full-blown maps app sometimes feels like overkill. Mappa Mini is a free Mac app by developer Lucas Raggers that lets you do a quick search without taking up all of your attention. Just click the menu bar icon and search for any business or location. You'll see right where it is in a small pop-up, without having to load any application or website. If there are multiple matches, you'll see them all in a list—click any of them to see the location in context. This is perfect for when you quickly need to check where something is. You can get more details by clickin…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Peppers are one of the best vegetables to grow. They are expensive to buy, even when in season; they don’t take up a lot of garden space; and although there are a limited number of peppers available in stores, there are thousands of varieties are out there that you can grow. Plus, you can choose precisely when to harvest them. The pepper most people choose to grow in their garden—full size bell peppers—are a waste, though, in my opinion. Each plant only yields a few peppers, and because of their size, bell peppers take a while to grow and then to ripen. In that time, the pepper is susceptible to pests and disease. Even in…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. I’ve always preferred to wear my Oura ring on my ring finger. The company says that “for optimal performance and accuracy,” it’s best to wear it on your index finger, but that any finger can work. And if you ask longtime Oura users, you’ll get a variety of opinions. Does it really matter which finger you use? I realized I have the perfect way to test this—I have two gen 3 rings that fit my index and my ring fingers. I wore both for nearly two weeks to compare their readings and answer the question once and for all. Oura Ring 4 …

Although home burglaries are trending downward overall, there are still more than 800,000 break-ins every year. Aside from the potential damage to your property and the loss of your belongings, there also the concern for your family’s safety—no one wants criminals wandering around your house. The obvious solution is to go with technology—alarm systems and security cameras. While these kinds of systems can definitely help defend against unwanted guests on your property (and give you peace of mind), there’s more you can do to keep your home secure. Your landscaping is a surprisingly key element of your home’s security—or it can be, if you plan it thoughtfully. Here are a fe…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. 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. (16 GB) – larger 7" glare-free display – Cyber …

Nintendo has never been known for high-performance hardware, but that certainly hasn't hurt its bottom line—especially in the Switch age. The company's decision to use more basic components for the Switch back in 2017 helped keep the console cheaper than any of its competitors. It's tough to get too hung up on the lack of 4K 60fps support when you can play the latest Zelda on a handheld that can cost less than $200. But lo, a new Switch is here, and with it, a new price. The Switch 2 is, indeed, a more powerful version of the Switch, and comes with a number of advantages: a larger 1080p HDR display with a 120Hz refresh rate, a dock equipped with a fan to support 4K 60fps …

On Monday, Apple released iOS 18.4, iPadOS 18.4, and macOS Sequoia 15.4 for compatible devices. But Apple Watch owners might have noticed watchOS 11.4 curiously missing from the list. Apple pulled the update at the last minute, something of a rarity from the company that likes to release all software updates together. But now, the new watchOS update is finally available to everyone, and the slight delay was worth it. This update enables a feature that many Apple Watch users have wanted for a long time: the ability to break through Silent mode when an alarm goes off. The iPhone already does this really well. You're in Silent mode, or you have Do Not Disturb enabled, but y…

Zelle, the digital payment platform that allows you to send money directly to friends and family, has shuttered its standalone app. But while the Zelle app is no longer, you can likely still send and receive money with Zelle through your bank or credit union—Zelle is already integrated into over 2,200 bank apps, and you can use this search tool to find out if yours is one of them. Otherwise, you'll have to send money using another tool. Here are four of the best Zelle alternatives for peer-to-peer payments. VenmoVenmo allows you to request money or pay other users and send up to $60,000 a week once you've verified your identity within the app. You can transfer funds in y…

Nintendo Switch 2 is officially coming to stores on June 5. In just over two months, you might have the opportunity to own Nintendo's newest (and most expensive) console and play the latest Switch 2 exclusives (Mario Kart World looks ridiculously fun), assuming you can snag one of them. Because if you want to boot up a Switch 2 on launch day, you'll almost certainly need to preorder it. Unless you're lucky enough to find a store that has extra consoles in stock, or there turns out to be exceptionally low demand (unlikely given eight years of building anticipation among the Nintendo faithful), these things are going to be a rare commodity. One option, of course, is to pre…

Zelle has been around as a convenient digital payment platform since 2017, but has now closed down payments inside its standalone apps for Android and iOS, as it promised it would last October—though the move is a sign of Zelle's success rather than its failure, and most Zelle users aren't going to need to change anything. If you're one of the 150 million or so people who make use of Zelle, you're no longer going to be able to use the Zelle app to send money to friends, family, and businesses. However, Zelle lives on as a platform: It's now integrated into the operations of more than 2,200 financial institutions, so you'll still be able to use it through your banking app.…

For decades, the only way to buy a car was to physically go to a dealership. If that idea gives you an anxiety attack, you’re not alone, so it’s a relief to know that the industry is finally embracing online shopping—even Amazon has gotten in on the act, and about half the buyers in one survey shopped for their car online. But just like anything else on the internet, buying a car online comes with the risk of fraud. Scammers are setting up entire fake online dealerships and ripping people off to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars. You might think you’re too savvy to get fleeces like that (who buys a $50,000 car sight unseen anyway?), but the risk is real. These fake…

There are many ways to copy text that can't be easily selected, but few that are as simple and fast as Text Lens ($6)—a new Mac app by prolific developer Sindre Sorhus. Text Lens lets you select any part of your Mac's screen and automatically copy all of the text from that part. This makes it easy to copy text from images, videos, scanned pages, settings menus, and other types of text that are otherwise impossible to grab. Text Lens vs. Apple's Live TextLive Text, which is built into macOS, allows you to capture text from screenshots. While it's good enough to get you started, it works only with Safari, Preview, and the built-in screenshot tool. You can't select text fro…

The Nintendo Switch 2 is quite a bit different than the OG Switch: The Joy-Cons are beefier and connect via magnets; when docked, the console supports 4K 60fps output; and you can finally charge the console when playing in tabletop mode. But at the end of the day, what matters most about a new console like the Switch 2 is the games: If there's nothing new to play, what's the point? Of course, Nintendo shared a number of Switch 2 exclusives during its big Direct on Wednesday. This isn't a repeat of the Nintendo 3DS launch: There are games to play if you buy a Switch 2 on day one. But there are also a number of interesting titles coming soon and later this year. (There's ev…

Producing video content is a particular challenge for generative AI models, which have no real concept of space or physics, and are essentially dreaming up clips frame by frame. It can lead to obvious errors and inconsistencies, as we wrote about in December with OpenAI's Sora, after it served up a video with a disappearing taxi. It's these specific problems that AI video company Runway says it's made some progress in fixing with its new Gen-4 models. The new models offer "a new generation of consistent and controllable media" according to Runway, with characters, objects, and scenes now much more likely to look the same over an entire project. If you've experime…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. If you’ve been eyeing a Nintendo Switch OLED but haven’t wanted to pay full price, you might want to check out this refurbished model (with white Joy-Cons) going for $249.99 on Woot—that’s a solid chunk cheaper than Amazon’s $289 sale-price tag. However, this price is only live for four days or until it sells out, whichever comes first. This is a refurbished unit (tested and certified to work like new), so it may show light cosmetic wear, but performance-wise, you’re getting the same console that PCMag called the “Best Gaming Console of the Year” in…

Nintendo just wrapped up its long-awaited Nintendo Switch 2 Direct, and the experience was almost surreal. The company has avoided talking about the console for so many years, and even after it shared an early preview a few months ago, it's still odd to see Nintendo walk us through the console in such depth. Mind games aside, it's finally official-official, and we now know a lot about Nintendo's upcoming console. The Direct didn't answer every question about its capabilities, but if you're interested in the hardware specs, here's everything there is to know right now. How powerful is the Switch 2?From games to accessories, there's a lot to get excited about with any new …

Google search has steadily been getting worse, but most of its free alternatives just aren't as good at surfacing the things I'm looking for. Since Google makes money through advertising, its primary incentive is to boost revenue by showing you better ads. Of late, this has resulted in a noticeable decline in the quality of my search results. That brought me to the idea of using a paid search engine instead of Google. Enter Kagi. What is Kagi?Kagi is a paid search engine developed by the people behind the Orion browser. It lets you make 100 searches for free, but after that, you can pay between $5/month and $25/month for different tiers of its service. Thanks to search gi…

Want to turn a video file into an MP3? Or any video into an MP4? If you have PowerToys installed on Windows, you don't need a third-party application—a quick copy-and-paste will do the job. We've talked about Powertoys, the longstanding Windows utility that offers all kinds of customizations to the operating system. One of the many tweaks added is the Advanced Paste feature, which can convert copied text into other formats. This is triggered by using the keyboard shortcut Windows-Shift-V to paste, instead of the usual Ctrl-V. A pop-up window asks which format you'd like to paste your text as—Markdown, HTML, and JSON are all offered. You can optionally set this up to use A…