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Hall of Fame leaders share the lessons, mistakes, and trends shaping the future of firm growth. Gear Up for Growth With Jean Caragher For CPA Trendlines Go PRO for members-only access to more Jean Marie Caragher. View the full article

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. National active housing inventory for sale at the end of March 2025 was up 28.5% compared to March 2024. That’s just 20% below pre-pandemic levels back in March 2019. However, while the national housing market has softened and inventory has surpassed 2019 pre-pandemic levels in some pockets of the Sun Belt, many markets remain far tighter than the national average. Pulling from ResiClub’s monthly inventory tracker, we identified the tightest major housing markets heading into spring 2025 where active inventory is still the furthest below pre-pandemic 2019 levels. These markets are where home sellers have maintained more power compared to most sellers nationwide. Among the nation’s 200 largest metro area housing markets, 42 (see table below) at the end of March 2025 still had at least 50% less active inventory than they did in March 2019. Many of those tight markets are in the Northeast—in particular, in states like New Jersey and Connecticut. Unlike the Sun Belt, many markets in the Northeast and Midwest were less reliant on pandemic-era migration and have fewer new home construction projects in progress. With lower exposure to the negative demand shock caused by the slowdown in pandemic-era migration—and fewer homebuilders in these regions offering affordability adjustments once mortgage rates spiked—active inventory in many Northeast and Midwest housing markets has remained relatively tight, maintaining a seller’s advantage heading into spring 2025. View the full article

For three weeks now, OK Go has been on set in Budapest’s largest train station. The temperature in this wing is somewhere around 45 degrees, and much of the Hungarian filming crew has long ago gone numb. Against Keleti station’s baroque backdrop of frescos and pink marble pillars, the band has been working with roboticists and production designers to build one of its most complex music videos ever for a new song called “Love”. The video’s 140-foot-long contraption is built from 29 robots holding 60 mirrors that, in one long tracking shot, will crescendo into a brain-bending photonic spectacle of car-size kaleidoscopes and glimpses into the infinite. It’s almost lunchtime on the last day of filming. The sun will set in six hours. And OK Go has not captured a single frame. The crew is still choreographing the tricky final shot, which involves four Kuka robot arms—industrial grade automatons capable of lifting a car—spinning four sharp mirrors, while OK Go front man and the video’s codirector, Damian Kulash, stands singing in the middle of the action donning a glittering mirrored suit. Even testing the Kuka system at half speed with an operator holding a kill switch, tensions are high. “Three people just died!” shouts the assistant director. The robots must build Kulash three walls of an infinity room, while four strapping Hungarians—who have a penchant for shaking their rumps at the start of each take—erect the fourth. Just the day before, the Kuka mirrors hit the mirror with so much force that they shattered the fourth wall and pushed the entire stage by nine inches. This accident led to some last minute reprogramming and a change in the choreography, and made the entire gizmo look more like a Gundam deathtrap than a Yayoi Kusama exhibit. “Nobody died,” counters Kulash in a careful channel of calm. By the murmurs on set from people who know him best, Kulash doesn’t exactly have a reputation for zen. And he warns the AD, “We’ve gotta start fucking running this, or we’ll still be doing this at 6 p.m.,” before quick back pats hammer out a temporary reconciliation. Now, a little older than the last time you’ve seen him—a little grayer, a little horser, a little more contemplative—Kulash swallows his emotions before resetting to his first mark. He tunes out the mounting costs of the shoot, the skepticism of the crew, and the beyond looming deadline, and focuses on the reason they’re making the video in the first place: to capture the infinite sensation of love. Ornella MariFast Company The return of OK Go On April 11th, after a decade of quiet, OK Go will return with its fifth studio album titled And the Adjacent Possible. The band hasn’t released music since 2017, but its members assure you they haven’t been stagnant. Ok Go has been working on And the Adjacent Possible since 2019; and they developed a touring show for art centers where they played along with their music videos. Kulash spent two years directing the Apple TV movie The Beanie Bubble with his wife; bassist Tim Nordwind made an independent film. Three out of four of the band have fully embraced dad status. (Green room discussions involved topics like how much screen time is too much, and at one point, guitarist Andy Ross pauses our interview mid-sentence to call his children before they head to school.) For Kulash, “having kids was the biggest reset,” he says, noting that his family rescued him from burnout. “While it’s the most difficult and intense thing I’ve ever done, it also resets all sorts of wonder and all sorts of excitement about the universe in general. And it sort of made music fresh to me again and made art fresh to me in a whole new way.” Dubbed the “first post-internet band,” OK Go came into its own alongside the rise of YouTube. Before we had interviews over hot wings and bedrotting TikToks, OK Go defined millennial multimedia with its ambitious performance art videos. And to fund them, the band turned to an unlikely source: not a label, but a sponsor. In an era when the stamp of a logo generally meant selling out, OK Go established the fine line of commercial art, presaging a new creator economy subsidized by brands. In 2010, the band partnered with State Farm to sponsor its Rube Goldberg-esque video for “This Too Shall Pass.” Since then, most OK Go videos have been made with sponsorship funding, including Morton Salt, S7 Airlines, and Chevrolet. For “Love,” the band is working with Meta to bring its ambitious video to life. Before this year, the last significant video OK Go produced was from 2017. The final shoot for their last album, Hungry Ghosts, involved the band members dangling from wires to a backdrop of 567 printers. Stop motion captured each new print a frame at a time, with shoots that stretched to 4 a.m. Kulash remembers sleeping ten hours over four days. Whether or not this was the final straw, it was the final video before OK Go took a break. In the years since their last major video hit, the digital world that OK Go defined has gone through a generational shift. Horizontal video has given way to the vertical streams of TikTok and Reels. Artists have given way to “content creators” that churn out a steady stream of low-lift production to appease algorithms more than Facebook shares. “We are still figuring out how to navigate the new social media world, which is, you know, very different from the old social media world, which is very different from the YouTube world, which was very different from the MTV world,” says Kulash. “This universe is not built for anyone except for Mr. Beast, right?” Amidst all of these trends, OK Go believes, more instinctually than metrically, that there’s still value in doing things the real, hard way. And that they can still break out by producing one or two absurdly produced videos a year. Kulash admits that the views on OK Go’s first comeback video of 2025—shot across a mosaic of phones that required over 1,000 individual videos—was lower than the band hoped. But he felt that the media pickup around the video still had a similar scale to the old days. With little more guiding the decision than artistic license, OK Go has decided that the ambitious videos it creates will still be ambitious. And they will be shot in landscape rather than portrait. The band’s vision won’t bend for the predominant video style of our era. “It feels almost like an existential threat to what we do,” he says. “When something is vertical, it also becomes disposable.” Ornella MariFast Company Short ride in a fast machine By lunchtime on the Budapest set, Nordwind is laying his worried head right on the table, pressing his fingertips into his freshly cue balled scalp. Kulash has removed his brown suit jacket and two tearaway shirts, as he picks at a plate of food. During this break, he still needs to finish programming the lighting sequence of the final shot. Only then can the band begin filming as many takes as possible before the end of day. An OK Go video is a short ride in a fast machine—each feels like an attempt at breaking a sort of creative land speed record just before the bolts blow off. In this sense, an OK Go video is not like a traditional music video, which often functions simply as a new medium for a hit song. When I first spoke to Kulash in February, Kendrick Lamar had just won a Grammy for “Not Like Us.” Kulash, an astute observer of music videos, used it as a point of comparison. “Does that feel like you’re in the room with Kendrick?” he asked. “I feel the brand of Kendrick Lamar, but I don’t feel like this is an art piece of Kendrick Lamar. This is an advertisement for Kendrick Lamar music. It’s a great advertisement! That’s the purpose of a music video. You get the brand of Kendrick Lamar; I want to be more like him and move more like him and hang with his friends . . . but none of it feels like what we’re hoping to do with our videos.” Kulash wants the people on the other side of the screen to feel like they’re in the same room with the band. There is no constructed narrative beyond the experience itself. “You know that space between the speakers, where the only point is to feel this emotion? And that’s it?” he continued. “You’re not using that emotion to get somewhere else. That emotion is the end point . . . [In our videos] the only thing that matters is those three minutes of emotion. The video refers to itself, nothing else.” To create this sensation for “Love,” OK Go recruited cinematographer Jordan Buck and camera operator Pete Whitcombe, the latter of whom worked on the same crew crew behind the Oscar nominated WW1 epic 1917’s famous single take tracking shot. The production designer, Will Field, has made surrealist commercials for Pepsi and KFC, while moonlighting as an infinity mirror aficionado. The codirector Aaron Duffy, cofounder of the agency Special Guest, has worked for Apple and filmed OK Go’s illusion-loaded video for “The Writing’s on the Wall.” When the roboticist Miguel Espada, who served as the third codirector, isn’t filming projects as part of Special Guest, he’s a professor at the Complutense University of Madrid. For “Love,” Kulash was inspired by two closet mirrors that he and his sister would turn to form an infinite reflection in which they’d play for hours. It was a memory jogged during COVID when, picking up toys left out by his twins, Kulash caught their reflection in a mirror. These both felt like portraits of love. The initial melody came from Nordwind. The lyrics came from Kulash. The video’s earliest visual experiments started with Kulash, Nordwind, Ross, and Duffy spending a week in Los Angeles with Espada playing with about 20 small mirrors by hand. There, they established a vocabulary of tricks that would be neat, and only possible, for robots to choreograph. At the same time, production designer Field began developing a pre-visualization to imagine how the robots and mirrors would look and squeeze into a space. Later, Kulash and Ross flew to Barcelona where they met with Universal Robotics, which lent the team most of its equipment for the shoot. But being on set it’s easy to see how the best laid plans are just a sketch of what might be possible. Ross and Nordwind spend a solid hour shifting their feet by millimeters and balancing on slivers of wood, while Duffy holds a measuring tape to the floor, just so they are lined up in the exact sweet spot of head-swapping mirrors that they’ll need to hit from a jog. “I shoot a lot of commercials, 40–50 a year, and there’s such a seemingly risky idea to what you’re doing, but there’s also so much risk mitigation. It’s ‘we know we can do that, so we’re gonna do that,’” says Buck. “There were a few things for this [shoot], when before you get here . . . you’re like, ‘let’s see!’ Which is [fun] and excruciatingly anxious at the same time.” Field’s team built every mirror contraption on set or nearby, but over the course of planning and shooting, the mirrors ever-so slightly warped from temperatures dropping to a frigid 10 degrees at night. Earlier in the week, Field had to MacGyver a machine from fishing line and clips so the band could pull cords to make pool inflatables drop, which serve as the colors behind a kaleidoscope. Espada rewrote his own robot animation software, replacing frames per second with beats per minute, to sync each movement perfectly with the music. Together, these creatives push the limits, experimenting in ways that would never be feasible in a commercial shoot, feature film, or about any other industry that thrives on predictability. “The guy who sits there all day long with a six axis industrial robot that could lift the fucking building walks onto a job, and they’re like, ‘make it move the toothbrush,’” muses Kulash. “But no one’s ever gonna pay him to go, ‘what are the 1,000 other things this can do you’ve never seen?’” Part of the appeal to the viewer is that you can innately sense these stakes in an OK Go video. “You have to feel the risk involved, like it has to feel like it’s not going to work, right?” says Kulash. “It’s the unexpected, when that gear is doing something that gear isn’t supposed to do, that charges it with emotion.” In Budapest, that charge of emotion is almost crackling as something almost unsaid: This time, we actually might not pull it off. With half a day left and no frames captured on film, producers have taken to pacing back and forth with stoic faces and whispered conversations. “For people who do this commercially, this is not an acceptable place to be. You can’t ask people to do this every single day,” Kulash sighs. “But for us, it’s a once in every six months, once a year, once every five years kind of thing. And we are like, ’it is gonna happen,’ you know?” Ornella MariFast Company Building the band Before becoming the internet’s favorite spectacle, OK Go was just another indie band trying to break through. The beginnings of OK Go trace back all the way to 1987. Kulash and Nordwind have been friends since they were 11, after meeting at the artsy Interlochen summer camp in Michigan. Following that summer, Kulash (in D.C.) and Nordwind (in Kalamazoo) would mail each other mix tapes, and even visit each other across the country. In this pre-smartphone age, they’d set up the camcorder and act out sketches to make themselves laugh. (In one early skit they dressed up in flannels mocking the sacrosanct Seattle grunge movement.) Eventually the play codified to a plan: They’d go to college, and upon responsibly landing degrees, they promised to launch their own band. With Kulash at Brown, Nordwind set up at Depaul in Chicago, where he pieced together the earliest bits of OK Go. A fellow Interlochen alumni named Andy Duncan brought some theatrical energy and skill with guitar (to be replaced by Andy Ross a few years later), while the duo hunted for the perfect drummer. “There was a girl in my dorm who knew a guy that lived in the suburbs of Chicago who played drums. I was like, great, give me his number,” recalls Nordwind. “So we met [drummer Dan Konopka] at a cafe and asked him to do a beat on a table. He drummed on the table, and we were like, ‘You seem pretty good!’ And then got into a rehearsal space with him, and he really was good.” Kulash joined back up with Nordwind in Chicago, meshed quickly with the band, and in 1998, they took to the road in a van. Their theatrical quirk became a fixture in their stage performances, and they performed a mock boy band dance as they opened for acts like They Might Be Giants and Ira Glass’s This American Life. Kulash moonlighted in graphic design to pay for the tour, and the group quickly found its stride. It was signed by Capital Records in 2001. When OK Go’s first album arrived in 2002, it was part of a resurgent wave of indie rock including the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Dirty Projectors, and Jet. Their label was obsessed with packaging OK Go with the same hardedge aesthetic of The Strokes, and their early videos were amplified with the typical wide angle lenses and testosterone beloved by MTV. “It’s all overplaying and acting,” says Konopka. “And if you’re playing drums correctly, you’re not going like . . .” (Konopka gestures his hands wildly over his head). “This is a show!” But despite playing by the label’s rules, OK Go wasn’t a breakout hit. They peaked at 20 on the alternative charts with Get Over It, just enough to get their second record greenlit, albeit without the full promotional investment of the label. “You have infinite potential before you’ve released anything,” says Kulash. “And once you release something, you’re limited by reality, and they go on to dream about the next bunch of 18-year-olds.” As they planned to go on tour to promote the second album, OK Go knew they needed to refresh their well-trodden boy band dance. So in 2005, the otherwise hard-edged rockers enlisted Kulash’s professional ballroom dancing sister to choreograph a new number—a sort of renaissance court dance to their single “A Million Ways.” Shot on Mini DV Tape in the backyard of Kulash’s childhood home in Washington, D.C., the band danced the routine live on tour, and they burned DVDs of it to hand out at the shows. “I remember showing it to the head of the new media arm of Capitol Records, whose first words were, ‘If this gets out, you’re sunk,’” recalls Kulash. “Because this would kill the image of any rock band.” Indeed, the humble home demo melted any lingering Gen X rocker aesthetic, making way for internet-beloved irony. Nordwind, in particular, demonstrates a certain unearned panache, taking a peacockian pride as he executes the simple dance steps. Somehow—the band still claims not to know—the dance ended up on the early video site iFilm, where it was downloaded hundreds of thousands of times. And months later, Kulash recalls getting an email from “chad@youtube.com” (Chad Hurley, who cofounded the site) asking they copy it over. It amassed millions of views, now dwarfing streams of their label’s official music video for the song by 12x. Following ”A Million Ways,“ OK Go codified their approach. They landed on the first of their big ideas—treadmills. And then they found the song in their catalog to best articulate it. Kulash confesses that, originally, the treadmills were shot to a song with a marching beat, to feel like a marching band. “When we started moving, it didn’t feel right. So we played the whole record, and we got on the treadmills, and filmed ourselves moving, and one of them felt right,” he says. The song was “Here It Goes Again,” which would propel OK Go’s fame to new heights. “It seems so fucking obvious [now]!” laughs Kulash. “Maybe that’s why it felt right. It’s because it’s literally the point of the song, you know!” “Here it Goes Again” amassed a million views within a week (and 42 million views before the first version was taken down). But it wasn’t just viral; it became an international pop culture sensation, with an early video cloned and re-created by fans online. OK Go performed the act live on stage at the MTV’s Video Music Awards later that year and bagged a Grammy for their performance. It’s still the most favorited music video ever on YouTube. After that, OK Go recognized a fork in the road. “It felt like we could either decide that we were too cool for this; we’re a band first, and so we’re just going to leave it here and go back to a more traditional route. Or we could lean into this,” says Nordwind. “If we’re going to do it, it seems like we need to continue to challenge ourselves, make sure that we don’t become bored with that process and start growing the scale of things, and ratchet up the level of challenge, absurdity, and all the rest of it.” The shoot begins The shooting starts after lunch. It’s 1:33 p.m. Buck shakes out his hands, which are sweating up his camera controls. The set grows eerily quiet with the anticipation in the air. The music kicks on and . . . it takes 20 seconds before Nordwind stumbles and someone bumps a robot. 1:46 p.m. Take 2 Cut, the camera is too close. 2:13 p.m. Take 7 The band makes it halfway, until something goes wrong with a ball drop. “Fastest reset possible, fewest notes we can,” shouts Kulash. Konopka’s rubber gloves are stuck on his hands. “Yeah but if we hit a mirror we’re fucked!” yells Buck over the intercom. 2:22 Take 8 Kulash has a wardrobe malfunction when his brown suit gets caught in his sparkle jacket, ruining the finale. But technically, the band has captured its first complete take. 3:24 Take 14 Producers note it takes about 15 minutes to reset between each attempt. That gives the band eight more takes before the sun goes down. Cut—Kulash’s tearaway shirt fails to tear away. Progress is slow, but try after try, the crew gets better. The band gets better. And you can begin to discern, comparing shot-to-shot, how the littlest of details matter—how soccer and ping-pong balls dropped into a mirror can sometimes look like silly toys, and sometimes look like a trip through the galaxy. The machine hones itself toward one purpose. And every failure stings a little more. “I’m getting angry, which is a good sign,” says Ross, critiquing his own deftness at poking a tennis ball on a stick during his guitar solo between takes. As we continue on, their patience for small talk wears thin. Following their first remotely useable take at 3:27 p.m., you can feel a most certain drop in cortisol across the room, but the celebration is nonexistent. The camera was a little sideways, and the technical execution still lacks any cohesive feeling of magic. Being close is somehow more unsettling than being far. Now is the time to grind. “After five good takes, I’ll feel like I’m on ecstasy,” says Konopka, who finds himself sweating despite the chilly temperatures. “But we’re not there yet.” 4:52 Take 19 Whiffs of magic fill the air as the band hits each mark for their best take yet. It’s still imperfect, and everyone knows it. But in a release of emotion, the band huddles together in a firm, cathartic hug. Ornella MariFast Company There’s no business being OK Go This shoot in Budapest is sponsored by Meta, which is a match made in part by the video’s production partner, Special Guest. Norwind, iconic for his glasses, admits some trepidation at being the corporate mascot for this shoot, but he seems settled by the time he’s donning the Ray-Bans in the initial frame to record a first-person perspective of the video. And at the very end of the run—after the band holds the letters “LOVE” up to the gundam robot mirrors—he says, “hey Meta, stop recording.” After several runthroughs, though, the final moment is still cringe. By 5:32 p.m. during what felt like a solid take, the energy across the train station seems to crescendo. With every hit mark, perfection feels ever more precarious until someone yells “cut.” But this run-through is going well. Very well. It might be The Take. Kulash’s sixth sense knew they were close, and he had already advised the crew to rush in and celebrate the end on camera. The band sticks the landing. The crew runs forward. You can almost taste the champagne—until, a terrible silence, and the words “Hey Meta” suck the air from the room. A sponsored video suddenly feels like the most laboriously produced ad in history. Silent tensions flare as the team rushes back to set up for another take, mulling this final creative hurdle. Producers pull Kulash aside, warning that they’re going into overtime—Meta, like OK Go’s other sponsors, don’t cover overages, which leads to mental math like, “how many live concerts will we need to play to pay for this?” The producers are also increasingly fearful that a tired crew or tenuous machinery will reach some catastrophic failure. “These things aren’t meant to stand a large amount of time in a space,” Field says of the set. “It was up for two weeks while people ran around testing, and then it had to survive two days of shooting.” However, Kulash shrugs off the out-of-pocket expense. Managing potential overtime is one reason they’re filming in Hungary, not California. It’s also a testament to OK Go’s careful creative structure: On most shoots, directors answer to producers, while anyone filming a commercial answers to a brand. But on this set? Everyone was hired by OK Go. The band gets to be its own thoroughly irrational client. Some OK Go videos do make the band money. Others do not. “We would always waste some money or forgo profit to make the better thing,” says Kulash, who notes that the band’s only business plan is akin to road runner darting off a cliff without looking down. Members of the group live relatively modest lifestyles. They each pursue projects outside the band including producing, coding, acting, and directing, while always enjoying a drip of residuals from licensing. They will even re-create a video for more formalized commercials if the payday is significant enough, as they did for the Chinese furniture brand Red Star Macalline back in 2015. And so they continue to expect that, “if one out of ten projects pays off 11-fold, you’re fine,” according to Kulash. By 5:50, the team gathers to review the latest footage on the monitor. With the sun now setting, the carefully lit sets make less sense as you can see night peeking in through the windows. Buck asks for an hour to relight. Kulash says no. “It’s not up to my standards,” says Buck. “I know it’s less professional, but the takes are getting so much better,” says Kulash. “I don’t usually do work at this level.” “I think it’s better to get five more takes, sorry.” “This is kind of always the crux of these videos,” Kulash explains later. “You have to stick your finger past the line impossible to, like, briefly touch the impossible and pull it back before anyone kills you.” 6:40 p.m., Take 27 The camera smacks Kulash right in the lips. * * * The morning after the shoot, Nordwind and Kulash sit down for an early hotel breakfast. Ross and Konopka are already on a flight out. Their new album features a track called Going Home, a celebration of being on the road too long and knowing you’re returning to your family. Their silence sits in the air as the song’s fourth verse. The band skipped out on the after-party, settling for lukewarm Dreher tallboys in the train station instead. Hugs followed as weeks of creative debates gelled into mutual appreciation. Every mirror illusion felt special. Nordwind hit the “hey Meta” so naturally that I literally didn’t even notice it. Buck circled back in the end, content with the shot and knowing anything odd could be fixed. It’s the happiest of endings. As Kulash sips an earned espresso over eggs and his preferred preparation of bacon (soggy), he confesses that he still hasn’t even watched the final take yet—the one in which, to thunderous applause, he declared for the camera “I think that’s the one!” and then, in a sudden earnest realization, “that truly was the one!!” The ultimate decider for Kulash was that this was one of the only two shoots all day where he felt present in the song. And if he ran the machine any longer, he could sense the bolts were about to blow off. Their cars to the airport arrive in just 20 minutes, and for now, everything is right in the world of OK Go. It seems like everyone in the production stops by our table to say a quick thank you, what the heck did we pull off? And goodbye. It all feels like something familiar, something I haven’t experienced in a long time. Nordwind, sensing the camaraderie—tossing a tired smile to his friend since grade school—offers the perfect observation. “It felt like summer camp,” he says. 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’ve been holding out for a 240Hz gaming monitor without blowing your budget, the Samsung Odyssey G4 is currently at its lowest price ever, according to price trackers—$179.99 (down from $279.99). Samsung Odyssey G4 Gaming Monitor $179.99 at Amazon /images/amazon-prime.svg $279.99 Save $100.00 Get Deal Get Deal $179.99 at Amazon /images/amazon-prime.svg $279.99 Save $100.00 It’s a 25-inch, 1080p entry-level panel made for speed, not flash. No RGB backlighting or fancy extras here. The stand is basic and a little wobbly, and the design leans more “budget gamer” than premium setup. Still, if smooth gameplay tops your list, the G4 pulls through with a fast response time, low input lag, and both FreeSync and G-SYNC compatibility. Whether you're on AMD or NVIDIA, you’ll get tear-free performance as long as you’re using DisplayPort. This monitor is clearly built for PC gaming. At 240Hz with a solid response time across all refresh rates—60Hz, 120Hz, or 240Hz—you’re getting smooth motion with almost no ghosting or blur. It also includes some extra gaming features like a virtual aim point overlay (an always-on crosshair) and ultra-wide simulation mode that stretches your aspect ratio to 21:9 for a broader field of view. However, console gamers might want to skip this one. It doesn’t scale 4K or 1440p well and has poor VRR support on PS5. The Xbox Series X works a bit better, but you still won’t get full use of HDR or high-res modes. So if your gaming happens mostly on a console, this might not be worth the hassle. The image quality is decent for the price, but far from perfect. It handles glare well and gets bright enough for daytime use, but don’t expect deep blacks or dazzling HDR—this monitor doesn’t have local dimming, and the contrast ratio is pretty weak. Blacks often look gray in a dark room. Still, for most gamers playing in well-lit rooms, it holds up fine. The viewing angles are wide enough for side-by-side co-op without major color washout. The dual HDMI 2.0 ports, a single DisplayPort, and a 3.5mm audio jack cover the basics, and you also get other features like auto source switching, blue light filtering, and power-saving modes. View the full article

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web. Google has officially made AI Overviews text link back to more Google Search results, no...View the full article

Learn how to do a competitive analysis and compare your brand against your competitors. View the full article

The AICPA clarifies. By CPA Trendlines Research Go PRO for members-only access to more CPA Trendlines Research. View the full article

The AICPA clarifies. By CPA Trendlines Research Go PRO for members-only access to more CPA Trendlines Research. View the full article

Emergency debate comes as ministers race to prevent the collapse of the steelmakerView the full article

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. The Ring Battery Doorbell Plus is currently marked down to $119.99 on StackSocial (was $149.99), and if you’ve been eyeing a smart doorbell that won’t need rewiring or a professional install, it could fit the bill. It runs on a rechargeable battery, so setup is simple—just charge it, pop it in, and connect via the Ring app. That said, you’ll still need to recharge the battery every few months, depending on how often it’s triggered. The camera’s big sell is its expanded 1536p HD+ head-to-toe view, which means you can see visitors and packages in full, not just from the chest up. That might not seem huge until you miss a delivery or can’t make out what’s left on your doorstep. The color night vision works surprisingly well, too, giving you a clear view even in low light, notes PCMag. You can also talk to visitors through the two-way audio or let them know you're busy with one of the preset quick replies. You can also fine-tune the motion detection zones so your phone doesn’t blow up every time someone walks past your gate. It also integrates well with Alexa-enabled devices, so if you’ve got an Echo Show, you can see who’s at the door or get alerts read out loud. Just keep in mind, there’s no support for Google Assistant or Apple HomeKit, which could be a dealbreaker if that’s what your home setup relies on. Real-time notifications come straight to your phone or tablet, and the Ring app lets you adjust settings, view footage, or trigger responses remotely. That said, some of the more advanced features—like 180-day video history, person/package detection, and video previews—are locked behind a Ring Home subscription, which starts at $4.99/month for a single camera. You’ll still get live view and motion alerts without it, but you won’t be able to save or rewatch footage later. And if you want smarter AI features like video previews and one-tap emergency response, that price jumps to $19.99/month. So while this is a solid midrange option for those already in the Ring or Alexa ecosystem, it may not be the best pick if you want everything to work subscription-free. View the full article

All sense of survivors’ guilt was fleeting for those residents whose homes remained standing after wildfires ripped through the Los Angeles area three months ago. Many worried that smoke from the Eaton wildfire that destroyed more than 9,000 structures and killed 18 people may have carried toxins, including lead, asbestos and heavy metals, into their homes. But they struggled to convince their insurers to test their properties to ensure it was safe to return. Nicole Maccalla, a data scientist, said embers burned more than half of her roof, several windows and eaves were damaged, and her house in Altadena was left filled with ash, debris, soot and damaged appliances. She said her insurance adjuster said USAA would pay for contamination testing, but after choosing a company and coming back with the results, her claim was rejected. The adjuster said the company only covered testing in homes with major damage. “Every single item is a battle,” said Maccalla. “It’s denials and appeals and denials and appeals, and you wait weeks and weeks and weeks for responses.” Crowdsourcing contamination data Maccalla and others banded together as Eaton Fire Residents Unite, sharing environmental testing data and compiling the results in an online map. Of 81 homes tested so far for lead, all show elevated levels, according to the group. “I’ve already had multiple people reach out and say: ‘Thank you for publishing this map … because my insurance company has changed their mind and approved testing,'” said Maccalla, who helped design the data collection to verify results and maintain privacy. Many homeowners paid privately for the testing after their insurance companies refused, revealing gaps in coverage. The group hopes the data will help residents who can’t afford it to convince their insurers to cover testing and remediation. “If I can prove my community is not fit for human habitation then maybe I can show my home won’t be,” said Jane Lawton Potelle, founder of Eaton Fire Residents Unite. It’s not easy to understand how and when it is safe to return home, Lawton Potelle said. The fine print of insurance policies can be frustrating and confusing, and the government has not stepped in to help. The Federal Emergency Management Agency said it has no plans to conduct widespread environmental testing. The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health is tracking environmental testing largely by academic researchers and a handful from government agencies, but most studies assess outdoor contamination. Toxic air and limited coverage Reports from other urban wildfires, in which building materials, appliances, cars and more burn at incredibly high temperatures, show increased levels of heavy metals including lead and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) such as benzene that are tied to negative health risks. But insurance companies haven’t standardized testing for those contaminants. Home insurance broadly covers fire damage, but there is a growing dispute over what damage must be covered when flames don’t torch the property. California Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara released a bulletin in March that put the onus on companies to properly investigate reported smoke damage, saying they cannot deny such claims without investigating thoroughly, including paying for professional testing as warranted. But many residents have been left to fight for coverage anyway. Janet Ruiz, spokesperson for the Insurance Information Institute that represents many major insurance companies, said it’s hard to compare neighbors because every claim is unique due to each home’s physical structure, actual damage and defined insurance coverage limits. “It can vary and insurance companies are sensitive to what the claim is,” Ruiz said. “You have to work with your insurance companies and be reasonable about what may have happened.” Dave Jones, director of the Climate Risk Initiative at University of California, Berkeley, and former state insurance commissioner, said testing should be covered even though some insurance companies disagree. “It’s perfectly reasonable for people to have some kind of environmental test done so that their home is safe and their property is safe,” Jones said. “We’re talking about very catastrophically high temperature fires where all sorts of materials are melted and some of them become toxic.” State plan struggles The state’s insurer of last resort, known as the California Fair Access to Insurance Requirements Plan, has been scrutinized for years over how it handles smoke damage claims. A 2017 change to the FAIR Plan limited coverage to “permanent physical changes,” meaning smoke damage must be visible or detectable without lab testing for claims to be approved. State officials said that threshold was too high and illegal, and ordered a change. Dylan Schaffer, an attorney leading a class action lawsuit challenging FAIR Plan’s threshold, said he was surprised private carriers are disputing similar fire damage claims. “The damage is not due to smoke, the damage is contamination from fire,” Schaffer said. “They make it complicated because it saves them money.” Meanwhile, Altadena residents on the FAIR Plan say their claims are still being denied. Jones believes the debate will only end when lawmakers take action. FAIR Plan spokeswoman Hilary McLean declined to comment on the ongoing litigation and individual cases, but said the FAIR Plan pays all covered claims based on the adjusters’ recommendations. “Our policy, like many others, requires direct physical loss for there to be coverage,” McLean said. Worries over kids’ safety Lawton Potelle said the first inkling that her house might be toxic came after meeting with her AAA insurance adjuster in the days after the fire. Even though she had worn a mask, her chest still ached and her voice rasped, and she wondered whether her home was safe for her 11-year-old. Stephanie Wilcox said her toddler’s pediatrician recommended testing their home. Her Farmers Insurance policy includes coverage for lead and asbestos in addition to her wildfire coverage, but after multiple denials, she paid out of pocket. “After the initial inspection, (Farmers) had told us remediation would cost about $12,000 and that it would be habitable, like we could move back in tomorrow,” she said. “But now there’s no way.” She plans to ask for a new estimate including lead abatement and other costs, citing the results. Similarly, Zach Bailey asked in late January for contamination testing. The house he shares with his wife and toddler sits in an island of largely spared homes among blocks wiped out by the fire. After months of denials, State Farm agreed to pay for lead and asbestos testing because the remediation company cited federal worker safety regulations. It shouldn’t have been that hard, he said. “It feels like the insurance companies should have a playbook at this point,” he said. “They should have a process to keep people safe because this isn’t the first disaster like this.” —Claudia Lauer and Sally Ho, Associated Press View the full article

Whether it’s investors or customers, stakeholders are important to every project. But what is a stakeholder? There’s more than one answer to that question. Let’s take some time to define what a stakeholder is, examples of stakeholders and free stakeholder templates that can help with stakeholder management. What Is a Stakeholder? A stakeholder is either an individual, group or organization that’s impacted by the outcome of a project or a business venture. Stakeholders have an interest in the success of the project and can be within or outside the organization that’s sponsoring the project. Stakeholders are important because they can have a positive or negative influence on the project with their decisions. There are also critical or key stakeholders, whose support is needed for the project to exist. A stakeholder is a person, like any other member of the project, and some are easier to manage than others. You’ll have to learn to use stakeholder mapping techniques to identify who your key stakeholders are and make sure you meet their requirements. /wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Stakeholder-Analysis-Template.png Get your free Stakeholder Analysis Template Use this free Stakeholder Analysis Template for Excel to manage your projects better. Download Excel File Stakeholder vs. Shareholder Stakeholders are not the same thing as shareholders. A stakeholder can be a wide variety of people impacted or invested in the project. For example, a stakeholder can be the owner or even the shareholder. But stakeholders can also be employees, bondholders, customers, suppliers and vendors. A shareholder can be a stakeholder. A shareholder, though, is someone who has invested in a corporation through the purchase of stocks. A stakeholder has an interest in the corporation’s overall performance, not stock performance. Types of Stakeholders: Internal vs External Stakeholders Stakeholders can be anyone with influence or anyone who can be influenced by the project. We’ve already seen that there can be many stakeholders, something that we’ll discuss below. All stakeholders can be broken into two groups: internal stakeholders and external stakeholders. Let’s take a look at both. 1. Internal Stakeholders Internal stakeholders are within the organization. The project directly impacts them as they serve and are employed by the organization managing it. Internal stakeholders can include employees, owners, the board of directors, project managers, investors and more. How to Identify Internal Stakeholders To identify internal stakeholders, make a list of everyone in the organization who may be interested in or affected by the project at any level. Then categorize them and analyze their influence and interest. Talk to key individuals directly to understand their perspectives and review project documents such as the business case or the communication plan for identified stakeholders. Be sure to keep them updated regularly throughout the project. 2. External Stakeholders External stakeholders are outside of the organization and are indirectly impacted by the project. They’re influenced by the organization’s work but are not employees of the organization. These people can be suppliers, customers, creditors, clients, intermediaries, competitors, society, government and more. How to Identify External Stakeholders External stakeholders are outside of the organization, so list all external individuals, groups or organizations that care about or may be impacted by the project. Categorize them, such as competitors, customers, government agencies, etc. Then, analyze their influence and interest in the project using a power-interest grid. Communicate with them through surveys, meetings, etc. and be sure to update them regularly in case their views change. Managing both internal and external stakeholders is easier with the right tools. ProjectManager offers in-depth planning, tracking and reporting features, so you can plan projects and keep your stakeholders updated in one place. With unlimited guest licenses and unique summary dashboards, your stakeholders can log into the software and get instant status updates without bothering project managers or team members for manual reports. Try it free today. /wp-content/uploads/2022/03/portfolio-dashboard-cta-1.pngLearn more Stakeholder Examples As we mentioned, there are many types of stakeholders, many of which fall under the internal or external stakeholder categories. Let’s take a look at some of the more common stakeholder examples. Senior management or executives: These are leaders who make strategic decisions and have an interest in the project’s contribution to organizational goals. Investors: These are stakeholders looking for a financial return and can be shareholders and debtholders. They have invested capital in the business and want a return on that investment. Employees: These stakeholders rely on their employment and job security. They have a direct stake in the organization as it supports them and provides them with benefits. Customers: These stakeholders want the product or service that the project delivers and they expect it to be of quality and contain value. Company owners: This person or group of people has a financial stake in the overall success of the organization. Competitors: Other organizations in the same industry may be impacted by the project’s success or failure. Other departments: Adjacent departments or teams in the same organization may be impacted by the project’s outcome or even involved in its implementation (customer service, sales, operations). Suppliers and Vendors: These stakeholders have their revenue tied up with the project as they sell goods and services to the business managing the project. Project success means more business for them. Communities: These stakeholders don’t want the project to negatively impact their health, safety or economic development. The organizations that are housed in their communities or working on projects in their communities can impact job creation, spending and more. Government: These stakeholders get taxes and gross domestic product from a project. They are major stakeholders as they collect taxes from both the company on a corporate level and individually from those it employs. A stakeholder is a person, like any other member of the project, and some will be easier to manage than others. You’re going to have to learn to deal with a variety of personalities and make sure you have a productive dialogue to know the project goals you’ve been hired to meet. But first, who is the stakeholder? Stakeholder Analysis Template Identifying who your project stakeholders are is one of the most important tasks you’ll have as a project manager. For that reason, we’ve created a free stakeholder analysis template that lets you list your stakeholders, their level of influence, and their preferred method of communication, among other relevant information about them. /wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Stakeholder-Analysis-Screenshot.jpgDownload now How to Manage Project Stakeholders Managing stakeholders is easy if you follow the right stakeholder management steps. Here are the steps that any project manager should follow when managing stakeholder relations. 1. Stakeholder Identification Identifying the stakeholders in your project is key as the project’s success depends on it. If your stakeholder isn’t happy, the project isn’t a complete success. You’ll want to start this process as soon as the project charter is created. A good place to start figuring out who your stakeholders are is by reviewing the project charter, which documents the reason for the project and appoints the project manager. Among the information about objects, budget, schedule, assumptions, constraints, project sponsors and top management, you can discern the stakeholders. Make sure to review the contracts as stakeholders might be mentioned in these documents. Are there environmental factors or other organizations with key ties to the project? Look those over as they might supply you with the names of stakeholders. For example, if there are environmental factors dictated by the government, then the government is a stakeholder. Review their regulations and standards to stay on good terms with them. 2. Stakeholder Analysis Once you identify your project stakeholders, it’s time for the stakeholder analysis phase. This is when you’ll gather information and requirements from them. The main goal is to identify, understand and prioritize the stakeholders who can influence the outcome of the project. During this phase, focus on documentation such as a stakeholder register and stakeholder map. The stakeholder register documents and tracks the details about stakeholders, while the stakeholder map is a visual representation of the project’s stakeholders based on their influence and interest in the project’s outcomes. You’ll also need to begin estimating their level of involvement and influence in your project to prepare stakeholder communication strategies and prioritize them. 3. Stakeholder Prioritization A key question for anyone managing a project is how should you manage a stakeholder on the project? To complicate matters, there might be many stakeholders, and you should treat them like you would any other task on your to-do list: by prioritizing them. Over the course of a project, one stakeholder might be more valuable in terms of the project objections and some might demand more attention than others. When you’re building your project schedule, make sure to define who those people are and at what point in the project phase you might need to attend to them more. /wp-content/uploads/2023/01/stakeholder-map-template-quadrants-600x380.pngDownload now 4. Stakeholder Engagement Now we’ve come to the second part of our question. When we talk of stakeholder management, what we mean is creating a positive relationship with your stakeholders by meeting their expectations and whatever objectives they agreed to in the project. This relationship isn’t just granted, however. It must be earned. You can earn the trust and build a positive relationship with stakeholders through proactive communication and by listening to their needs. One way to do this is by interviewing the project stakeholders—not all of them, but certainly the most important ones. You might need to speak to experts to get background information on particular fields or groups so when you do have one-on-one conversations with stakeholders, you’re well-informed and productive. Like everything in project management, there’s a process for this: Document Stakeholder Communications. Do this formally by creating a stakeholder communication plan. Note their names and roles in the organization they represent. Document every conversation you have with these key project partners, both to record their interests and requests, but also to be able to review their information later for accuracy. Enforce Process. Next, you want to keep to a process of communications with stakeholders and make sure that process is transparent so everyone knows what to expect. This includes project requests or feedback. How you’ll document and respond to those requests needs to be subject to a formal process of review and approval. This lets the stakeholders know that requests are subject to review and that you have a process that you adhere to for formal requests. Provide Frequent Status Reports. Providing regular and timely status reports for stakeholders is crucial, but make sure to tailor the reports to the audience. You can go into details with team members while executives typically want more of an overview. Don’t forget to follow up with stakeholders and ask questions to see if they have any feedback. Dispel Myths. Your stakeholder might be working on multiple projects, which means they’re not going to have the same closeness to the project as you. But that doesn’t mean they’re not getting other information about your project from other sources. You don’t want them to be subject to gossip or get incorrect information that might sway their opinions on the project. Keys to Stakeholder Communication: 3 Tips The ability to engage with stakeholders in a meaningful way is invaluable in long-term success. Here are three tips to keep in mind. Be Proactive & Transparent: Communicate with stakeholders early and often instead of waiting for problems to develop before reaching out. Regular updates are helpful, even when there isn’t significant news. Both successes and failures should be shared honestly to help build trust and maintain positive stakeholder relationships. Actively Listen & Seek Feedback: Stakeholder feedback is invaluable. Whenever possible, create opportunities for stakeholders to share their thoughts and concerns. Pay attention to what they are saying and ask any questions to ensure you understand their perspective. This shows them that their input is valued and will be addressed. Manage Expectations: Make sure stakeholders have a realistic understanding of what the project will and won’t deliver. If there are potential challenges or risks, be sure to highlight them early and discuss mitigation strategies. Don’t over-promise and under-deliver; it’s best to be realistic about timelines and resources. Stakeholder Management Templates Managing stakeholders and their expectations is an important part of project management. You need to keep stakeholders updated but you don’t want them interrupting the important work of managing the project. Not only does ProjectManager offer software but also free templates for every stage of your project. Here are a few templates that deal with stakeholder management. Stakeholder Map Template Our free stakeholder map template for Excel helps you see each stakeholder’s level of interest and influence. Their answers help you determine if they must be managed closely, kept satisfied, kept informed or monitored. There’s also a color key to make it easy to read; green means they’re supportive, yellow means they’re neutral and red means they’re a blocker. Communication Plan Template Finally, once you understand your stakeholders, it’s time to set up a way to keep them informed. Our free communication plan template for Word is the ideal tool to define your objectives, channels and regularity by which your stakeholders expect to be updated. The free communication plan template works for all of your project communication needs, not only for communicating with stakeholders. Use ProjectManager for Stakeholder Management Now that you know what a stakeholder is and why it’s important to keep them in the loop during the life cycle of your project, make sure you have the right tools available to help. ProjectManager is work and project management software that helps you manage stakeholder expectations and update them with real-time data. Detailed Reports for Stakeholder Presentations We’ve shown how our real-time dashboard offers a big picture of the project, but stakeholders often want to go deeper into the data. With one click, you can generate the reports that stakeholders want to see, whether that’s project status, time or cost. If stakeholders have questions, know that every report can be filtered to show select data. Reports are easily shareable so stakeholders are always in the know. /wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Reports_Wide_Zoom-150_Project-Status-Report.jpg Create Transparency With Gantt Charts The project plan is the roadmap that charts the direction of the project. It’s a critical document and one that changes throughout the project. Stakeholders need the project plan to keep the project’s progress in context, so project managers want an easy-to-share project plan. With ProjectManager’s Gantt chart view, you can import and export project plans and share them with anyone. As the project plan changes, just send an updated one to your stakeholders and keep them in the loop. /wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Gantt_Manufacturing_Wide_Zoom-150_Focus-on-Tasklist_Spreadsheet.jpg Our tool has project reporting features to help you create project reports in minutes. We give stakeholders the transparency they want to stay informed, allowing the project manager and project team the room they need to complete the project on time, within budget and to stakeholders’ quality expectations. When you’re reporting to stakeholders you want to make sure the process is both streamlined and accurate. ProjectManager makes sharing reports as easy as a click of a button. Our cloud-based project management software updates in real time, so you always have the most accurate, up-to-date project data for yourself and your stakeholders. Try our award-winning software today with this 30-day free trial. The post What Is a Stakeholder? Definitions, Types & Examples appeared first on ProjectManager. View the full article

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Knife blocks seem like a great idea at first. You assume there are a variety of useful knives in there, and you get a whole row of steak knives for one low price. You may not eat steak that often, and never with seven other people, but who can say “no” to so many matching knives? You, that’s who. That mass-produced knife set is unlikely to work with your unique food personality. Skip the block of cheap knives (many of which you won’t touch anyway). Instead, focus on fewer, better, personalized knives. A high-quality knife (or three) can be versatile enough to meet all of your needs without blowing your budget. Use this guide to help you pick a knife, based on your specific needs, budget, and available space. The best knife to buy if you can only have one knife…You have to start somewhere. Instead of buying four cheap knives, you’re better off putting that money into one good knife that’s versatile enough to make a lot of different cuts. (Like the six basic knife cuts everyone should know.) For a knife that provides power and maneuverability, and can chop, slice, mince, and carve, two knives stand out: the chef’s knife and the santoku. The chef’s knife Credit: Allie Chanthorn Reinmann The chef’s knife has a wide blade with a curved edge that tapers to a point, giving it the functionality of three knives in one. The wide blade with a deep heel has cleaver-like qualities, making it good for downward chopping with meats and root vegetables. The curved edge caters to a rocking motion, almost like a mezza-luna blade, which is prized for mincing and slicing. The narrow, sharp tip allows for precision carving and finer cuts, whether it’s slicing a strawberry or guiding meat off the bone. If you slice meats, chop veggies, and mince herbs, onions, and other aromatics, this is probably the knife for you. The santoku knife Credit: Allie Chanthorn Reinmann The santoku is a blade shape that originated in Japan and has similar functionality to the western chef’s knife. This knife has a wide blade with a less dramatically curved edge. The tip is noticeably different from the chef’s knife, with a more blunt, downward design. The santoku comes with a smooth blade or a Granton edge (long dimples along the side), which keep food from sticking to your knife. These features make the santoku more cleaver-like, with the Granton edge keeping meats, fruits, and veggies from suctioning onto the blade, allowing for faster, more efficient chopping. The santoku can do what the chef’s knife does, but if you find that you do a lot more chopping in comparison to carving or slicing, this might be the knife best suited for your needs. I chop and cook vegetables almost every meal, so I reach for my santoku far more frequently than my chef’s knife. Mercer Culinary M23590 Renaissance, 7-Inch Santoku Knife $43.60 at Amazon /images/amazon-prime.svg $47.19 Save $3.59 Shop Now Shop Now $43.60 at Amazon /images/amazon-prime.svg $47.19 Save $3.59 The chef's knife or santoku will be your go-to food prep, slicing, and carving knife. Whichever you choose, you want it to be capable of powerful cuts. Look for a knife with a full tang which will lead to a weightier handle. Make sure the handle and bolster are comfortable in your grip. Both of these features will allow you to control the blade better, and put some oomph behind your cuts. The chef’s knife and santoku both come in a variety of sizes, but I think smaller ones afford more maneuverability. Stick with a six- to eight-inch blade. If you can only buy three knives…Three knives will allow you to explore blades with more specific functions. One of the knives should be a workhorse–the chef’s knife or santoku. The other two should be versatile, but hone in on more specialized functions. The following two blades cover a wide variety of foods with more precise handling. The bread knife Credit: Allie Chanthorn Reinmann It might sound like the bread knife only cuts one thing, but it can break down more than a sourdough. A bread knife has a long, thin, narrow blade and a serrated edge, with either sharp or rounded serrations. It’s this feature that makes the bread knife special. Unlike the knives we’ve discussed so far, the edge punctures and saws through food to eliminate drag, and works horizontally, rather than with downward force. Use a bread knife for slicing anything that has a tough outer layer and a softer texture inside, including breads, pies, flaky pastries, eggplant, or tomatoes. Bread knives come in sizes ranging from six to twelve inches. I suggest an eight-inch bread knife to comfortably cut a broad range of ingredients. The utility knifeA utility knife, sometimes called a “petty knife,” is a medium-sized knife with a sturdy blade of about four to six inches. The blade has the same taper as a chef’s knife, but is more narrow. This makes the heel of the knife rather shallow, but overall the knife is versatile and easy to handle because of its more compact size. The utility knife is better suited to slicing and precision cutting, rather than chopping; the heel of the knife may not drop to the cutting board before your knuckles do. Utility knives come serrated or smooth, and can do a lot of the work paring knives do, thanks to their narrow design. Use this knife for slicing, deseeding, or peeling fruits and vegetables, take it on a picnic, or cut through a tall turkey club. WÜSTHOF Gourmet 4.5" Utility Knife, Black $40.00 at Amazon /images/amazon-prime.svg Shop Now Shop Now $40.00 at Amazon /images/amazon-prime.svg If you can buy five kitchen knives…If you have room for five knives in your life you can have a little fun. You already have your chef’s knife or santoku, a utility knife, and a bread knife. Consider the things you prep with those three knives, and what you wish was either easier, or faster. Maybe the utility knife is a bit too big for cutting fruit. Is breaking down a chicken clunky? You might need a more flexible blade. Fileting a lot of fish? That calls for a thin, long blade. Take a look at the following knives and pick two that will best serve your needs. The paring knife Credit: Allie Chanthorn Reinmann A paring knife is the tool you're reach for when you're hulling strawberries, peeling apples, or snacking on cheese. It’s what you want for fine, precision work. A paring knife has a short, thin, tapered blade that may or may not be angled. You can’t put a lot of chopping power behind a paring knife, it's better with small cuts. Most of its value lies in maneuverability. Usually two and a half to three and a half inches, you can use this blade for slicing small ingredients that don’t require a lot of force, like citrus or berries, peeling potatoes, or mincing onions and garlic. I have a cheap Victorinox serrated paring knife, and honestly, it’s a great size and has stayed extremely sharp even with high use. The Opinel paring knife is also a popular choice. The boning knife This knife has a unique shape and feel in comparison to the prior knives listed–it’s long and skinny, thin and razor sharp, and ranges in feel from sturdy to downright flexible. Boning knives are meant to slip under silverskin and around cartilage, to separate meat from the bone, and to get in between bone to separate joints when butchering. If your grown-up kitchen involves taking apart chicken, trimming steak, or breaking down whole fish, this is a good knife to add to your collection. The cleaver Not so subtle in stature, the cleaver has an intimidating look that might make you think it’s only for chopping meat and bones. Not so. While it is good at those things, the cleaver is a veritable multitool in the kitchen. This knife sports a wide, strong, rectangular-shaped blade with plenty of weight, and more weight means more power. Use this knife to chop through a large quantity of veggies or thick fibrous produce like butternut squash, or mow down a whole boneless cut of meat into mince. The tall, flat blade with a deep heel is good for cleanly cutting and separating bread dough, biscuits, or slicing up a finished pizza. Don’t forget the broad side of the blade; use that real estate to crush garlic, or like you would a bench scraper when transferring food from cutting board to pan. The carving knife Credit: Allie Chanthorn Reinmann A carving knife can have a long, narrow blade with a tapered tip or blunt tip, and some carving knives look a lot like overgrown chef's knives. In fact, you may be able to get away with simply using your chef's knife for carving as long as it has a long enough blade. The important thing is to have a carving knife large enough to make thin slices across wide cuts of meat. Instead of trying to navigate halfway across a flank steak or hack apart a Thanksgiving turkey, use a carving knife to make long, clean cuts in a single motion. While these are my main suggestions when you start selecting knives, take a moment to think about what you eat. The point of a knife is to make cooking easier, faster, and less work. A good knife shouldn’t make you tired or give you blisters, and it should perform well for a long time (providing you care for it). These knives will take care of most of your needs, but it’s just a starter list. If you need two santoku knives of different sizes, go ahead and get them. If you prepare one particular food a lot, like raw oysters, well then add an oyster shucking knife to your shopping list. Just don’t get a knife block. You deserve better. View the full article

The advocacy executive said there was a lot of misinformation regarding Rocket Pro and that the "rumors versus reality is very different." View the full article

Many people have been waking up over the last 24 hours to find that they have received a payment of around $40 from Facebook. The first question people have is whether the payment is legitimate. And the good news is: yes, it is. Here’s what you need to know about the Facebook payment you may have received since yesterday. Why did I get a payment from Facebook? Starting yesterday, people began posting on social media that they had received a payment of around $40 from Facebook. That payment is actually part of a class action lawsuit settlement Facebook agreed to back in 2022. At the center of the class action suit was the allegation that between April 22, 2010, and September 26, 2011, Facebook improperly tracked its users around the web using its then-newish “Like” button that was displayed on non-Facebook websites. Meta Platforms, Facebook’s parent company, denied wrongdoing but ultimately decided to settle the class action lawsuit instead of fighting it in court. As part of that settlement, Facebook agreed to pay $90 million, which would be distributed to its users in the United States who were covered under the settlement (after attorney fees and other associated costs were deducted). The individual user’s payments from that settlement are now being distributed, which is why you may have received one since yesterday. How much is the Facebook internet settlement payment? Users on social media are reporting that they have begun receiving a settlement payment of around $40. On this Reddit thread here, multiple users say their payment was for exactly $40.67. Some users on X are likewise reporting that amount. The payments are showing up as coming from “Facebook Internet Tracking Settlement Administrator,” users are reporting. The effective date of the settlement was February 24, 2025, according to the settlement website. The terms of the settlement mandated that Facebook begin sending out the payments within 45 days of the effective date, which meant that the funds would start being distributed on April 10, 2025. Given the social media reports, that is the same date that people began reporting receiving payments from Facebook. How are people being paid? Claimants could choose how they wanted to receive their settlement payment when they submitted a claim, according to ClaimDepot. Claimants reportedly could select from one of five options: PayPal Venmo Virtual Prepaid Card Zelle Check mailed to an address the claimant provided Can I still submit a claim? No. All claims needed to be submitted by September 22, 2022. If you did not submit a claim by then, you are not eligible for a payment. View the full article

YouTube Music is a decent Spotify alternative, especially if you're already paying for YouTube Premium to remove the ads. There's a big downside, though: Google doesn't offer a desktop app for YouTube Music, meaning you have to run the application in a browser. It also means you can't really customize YouTube Music the way you can with Spotify. That's why YouTube Music Desktop App—a free application not made by Google, to be clear—exists. The app, compatible with Windows, macOS, and Linux puts YouTube Music in its own window, outside of your browser, while also adding extensions for things like downloading songs, skipping the non-music parts of videos, and blocking ads. The get started, simply download the application and launch it. You can log into Google, if you have an account, but you don't have to—you can start searching for and listening to music right away. The application is essentially a browser with a few extensions, so there shouldn't be any security concerns logging in. If you've used YouTube Music at all, everything should look very familiar—it's the web application but in a dedicated window. There are a few tweaks you can make in the Options menu that you should be aware of. You can set the application to run from the system tray, if you want, meaning if you close the window your music keeps playing. You can also choose which page you want to open when you launch the application. Credit: Justin Pot The real fun, though, is found in the Plugins section. Here, there are a wide variety of tweaks you can turn on. SponsorBlock automatically skips the non-music parts of music videos—for example, some music videos have intros or interstitials that you might not want to hear if you're just trying to listen. There's a tool to remove all Google login requests, if you'd rather not log in or be asked about logging in. There's a simple visualizer, if you'd rather see dancing bars in place of album art or the music video. And there's a plugin that lets you prevent videos from playing altogether. You can find a full list of the plugins on Github if you'd like to learn more. All of these features, along with putting YouTube Music in its own window, makes YouTube Music just a lot more pleasant to use. Give this application a shot if you're tired of forgetting which tab in which browser window is handling your music. View the full article

Parking money in America is no longer the routine, fuss-free, neutral optionView the full article

This week, we covered yet again some more Google search ranking volatility. Google Discover will be coming to the desktop version of Google's homepage. Google Search Analytics API now shows hourly data for the past ten...View the full article

Proper conversion tracking with Google Tag offers real insights into ad performance to optimize campaigns and reduce wasted ad spend. The post How To Install The Google Tag For Conversion Tracking appeared first on Search Engine Journal. View the full article

If you’re in the market for a new home, there’s a pretty good chance you've toured a few “flipped” houses—properties that were recently purchased, quickly renovated, and just as quickly put back on the market. Even amid the current real estate crunch, house flipping remains a popular business model: In the first quarter of 2024, 67,817 houses were flipped, which amounted to nearly 9% of all the houses sold during that period. Flipping is popular because it can be highly profitable, generating an average return of $73,492 per project. But those profits rely on a fast, efficient renovation—and some flippers may get in over their heads and end up cutting corners, while others might simply set out to rip you off by attempting to hide downright shoddy work. In either scenario, there are some common aspects of any renovation that can clue you in to incompetent or unethical work. When inspecting a house you suspect was a flip, check for these red flags. Glued-in sinksTypically, an undermount kitchen sink will be installed using a combination of adhesive and metal clips to hold it in place. Sometimes a sink will be installed with just adhesive if the clips aren’t absolutely necessary and the installer is worried about cracking the countertop or lacks the space to properly attach the clips, but they'll generally use a powerful, professional-grade adhesive regardless. An unethical house flipper, on the other hand, might use any old silicone-based adhesive to slap a sink into place, skipping the clips simply to save on time and labor costs. The sink will hang on for a while, then fall without warning—probably when it’s full of dirty dishes. When checking out a flipped kitchen, open the cabinet under the sink and look for metal support clips. If you don’t see them, it could be a sign that the flipper either didn’t know what was needed—or intentionally skipped a step. Ventilation fans that don't vent anywhereVentilation and exhaust fans are usually found in bathrooms, over ovens, and in other places where ventilation is required, and they need to be vented outside—but can simply be slapped into the ceiling and wired up, with no outside ventilation connection at all. In other words, they’ll vent the steam from your shower into your ceiling, where it can slowly foster mold and damage your home's wood framing. It’s worth checking that any exhaust fans are vented properly, and not just run into the cavities behind your drywall. Painted tubsIf the house being flipped has a unique classic bathtub—or the flipper is looking to save a few bucks on the renovation—they might decide to refinish the tub instead of replacing it. This is fine in theory, as tubs can certainly be refinished and hold up to years of use—provided the job done by a professional. It’s actually not easy to refinish a tub, as they must endure near-constant water exposure. Even a successful DIY refinish job will typically only last a few years. Refinishing a tub requires it be properly cleaned, etched, and prepped. If the flipper just paints the tub, it might look fine during a walk-through, but it will peel almost immediately once you start using it. In a flipped house, take a very close look at the tubs. Look for fine cracks, spotty coverage around drains and fixtures, and bubbling in the finish. Ask questions if you see any indication of an undisclosed refinishing job. Updated outlets hiding old wiringThe easiest way to save money on a house flip is to leave all the hidden stuff—the plumbing and electrical—untouched, and just cover it up with new fixtures. An unethical flipper might swap out old, ungrounded outlets with new, modern ones and simply not connect the ground—or, worse, jump the ground to the neutral wire (known as a “bootleg” ground). That can be dangerous, but it won’t trigger an error when the outlet is tested. It’s worth it to unscrew a few outlets and take a quick look at what's going on in the walls—if the outlets are new but the wiring is old, be suspicious, and consider having an electrician come in to take a look during the inspection process. Hidden floor damageOne trick desperate flippers will try is simply covering up problems with a new floor. Flooring is expensive, and it’s possible to put carpet or vinyl flooring over damaged hardwood, cracking tile, or other problems. Fresh carpet or planks will look good, and you might not spend enough time walking on them to notice deeper problems until well after you've closed. Another trick flippers will sometimes play is to tear off a bad floor and throw a cheap floor over a damaged subfloor in order to save a little time and money. You can look for a few tells that a cheap new floor is covering up a big old problem: Varying floor heights. If you’re constantly stepping up and down as you pass from room to room, it could be a sign that old floors were just covered over. Sags and soft spots. If the new tile is already showing cracks, or if you can feel parts of the floor are soft when you step on them, this could indicate the new flooring was either laid over a damaged floor, or that the subfloor is rotten. Gaps. If new vinyl planks are separating, it probably means a sub-par installation, and it could also be a sign that the floor under the vinyl is damaged and uneven. Unexpected carpet. Is there just one room in the house with brand-new carpet or other flooring? Be suspicious, and see if you can get a peek underneath. Loose trimWhen a flip runs out of time, it’s usually the trim work that suffers, because it’s the last step in a remodel. If you walk into a kitchen and notice the toe-kicks are missing, or the house lacks door trim, you’d immediately be worried, so some flippers will stick that trim on in fast, cheap ways—like with double-sided tape, caulk, or any old glue. It will all look fine for a while, but the moisture of a kitchen or bathroom will eventually cause it to just pop off. When looking at a remodeled kitchen in a flipped house, it’s worth it to give the trim a gentle tug. If it was installed properly, there’s no way you should be able to budge it without a lot of effort. Missing caulkSimilarly, take a close look at the kitchen and bathrooms. Specifically, look for caulk—or a lack of it. Caulk is usually one of the final steps when finishing up a bath or kitchen remodel, and you might not notice it was skipped if you’re not looking for it. Any “change of plane” (where horizontal and vertical surfaces meet) or gaps should be caulked with an appropriate caulk. Otherwise moisture, crumbs, and other debris will get between and inside things, leading to rot, mold, and other problems. Unconnected HVAC ventsJust like ventilation fans, one way an unethical (or rushing, inexperienced) house flipper might try to skate by is by skipping a crucial step with the home’s central heating and cooling: They might install the vents and returns for the system, and never connect them. Everything looks right, and when you turn on the air conditioning it fires up, but the air never actually gets into your rooms. During your walkthrough or inspection, test the system to ensure the air is flowing. Poorly placed guttersIf your flipped house has a new roof, pay attention to the placement of the gutters. A flipper DIYing a roof installation or spot-hiring subcontractors instead of going with a reputable roofing company might rush through gutter installation, resulting in situations where gutters drain water against the house or directly onto windows and doors. That’s obviously the exact opposite of the whole purpose of gutters, but the mistake won't jump out at you unless it’s actively raining, so try to tour the house under varying weather conditions. Hidden pestsYou can imagine the horror a desperate house flipper experiences when they uncover termite or carpenter ant damage in the house they just bought, and they have no budget for a thorough treatment. Signs of termites and other pests can be easy to hide—often paint is all you need to cover up some light termite damage for a few weeks, which is enough time to get through an inspection—and home inspectors aren’t always thorough, and may not look behind a fresh paint job, or moving heavy furniture to see what might be hidden. If just one area of the home has been recently painted, take a closer look. If the area under the paint is rough and damaged, it might be an attempt to hide a civilization of critters the flipper didn’t know how to evict. You can also look for insect droppings (some termites leave droppings that look like grains of rice or sesame seeds), sawdust piles, shed skins or eggs—and traps and poisons hiding in cabinets or under appliances. View the full article

If you recently bought celery sticks from Walmart, you’ll want to check to make sure they are not of a certain variety. That’s because a select celery stick product is being recalled due to fears that it may be contaminated with Listeria, a potentially deadly bacterium. Here’s what you need to know. What is the reason for the recall? On April 10, Duda Farm Fresh Foods, Inc. of Oxnard, California, issued a voluntary recall for one of its products: a bag of celery sticks sold under the “Marketside” brand, according to a recall notice posted on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) website. The company issued the recall because the celery sticks have the possibility to be contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes. Duda Farm Fresh Foods said the possibility for contamination was discovered when the Georgia Department of Agriculture tested multiple samples, and one came back positive for Listeria monocytogenes. What product is being recalled? Only one product is being recalled: a bag of celery sticks, but the recall impacts 1,587 cases of the product. Here are the details of the product, according to the recall listing on the FDA’s website: Name: Marketside Celery Sticks 4 in/1.6 oz Bundle Pack Product UPC Code: 6 81131 16151 0 Lot Code: P047650 Best If Used by Date: 03/23/2025 Pack Size & Packaging: 4/1.6-ounce, bag It should be noted that while the best-by date of March 23, 2025, has now passed by a few weeks, the recall notice cautions that people may have purchased the celery sticks and kept them frozen in their freezer for use at a later date. Photographs of the recalled product in its packaging can be found here. Where were the recalled products sold? The recalled celery sticks were sold across the nation at Walmart stores in 28 states and the District of Columbia. Here are the states where the recalled products were sold: Alabama California Colorado District of Columbia Delaware Florida Georgia Hawaii Iowa Illinois Indiana Kansas Kentucky Maryland Michigan Missouri Montana North Carolina New Jersey New York Ohio Pennsylvania South Carolina Tennessee Texas Virginia Wisconsin West Virginia Wyoming What is Listeria? Listeria is a bacterium that has the possibility to cause severe illness in people, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The agency says Listeria infections are “the third leading cause of death from foodborne illness in the United States.” It is estimated that 1,600 people become infected each year in the United States, and as many as 260 of those die. Relatively healthy people can fully recover from a Listeria infection. However, infection can present a more grave danger to certain types of people. This includes individuals who are pregnant, newborns, people aged 65 or above, and those with weakened immune systems. What are the symptoms of a Listeria infection? A Listeria infection can present with several symptoms depending on your other physical conditions and the type of infection you have (invasive or intestinal illness). The CDC says that symptoms of invasive illness (where the bacteria has spread beyond the gut) in pregnant people include: Fever Flu-like symptoms, such as muscle aches and fatigue In individuals who are not pregnant, symptoms of invasive illness can include: Fever Flu-like symptoms, such as muscle aches and fatigue Headache Stiff neck Confusion Loss of balance Seizures Those who have intestinal Listeria illness usually have the following symptoms: Diarrhea Vomiting Has anyone been harmed by the recalled product? Thankfully, according to the notice on the FDA website, no illnesses have yet been reported as a result of the products associated with this recall. What do I do if I have the recalled celery sticks? You should check your refrigerators and freezers for the recalled product. If you have it in your possession, you should not consume it. Instead, you should discard the recalled product. “Consumers who have this product in their possession, including in their freezer, should not consume and discard the product,” the recall notice states. You can find the full details of the product recall here. View the full article

Recently, I've been complaining that Google is linking many of its search features back to more search results, this is also includes the AI Overviews. Well, Bing Search is also doing this for some of their AI-based answer snippets.View the full article

A month ago, we reported that Google was testing linking words in the AI Overviews back to its own search results. We felt this set a horrible message but hey, Google did not, instead, Google made it an official feature of AI Overviews because it helps "people more easily explore topics and discover relevant websites," the company told me.View the full article

Google is testing a new ad format that overlays more product ads when you click on a "more" button. This is different from expanding a product carousel, in that this overlays on top of the current search results interface.View the full article

Google will stop showing reviews and ratings on school listings in Google Search and Google Maps. Google Business Profiles said, "Starting April 30, 2025, your school's associated Business Profile will no longer allow reviews and ratings."View the full article