Although not yet available in the U.S. and the pricing has yet to be released (but it could be under $1K), the Acer Swift Blade 14 has risen to the top of my list when looking for a new computer. Although I prefer the black of the LG Gram, the marshmallow blue is distinctive enough, but the real draw is this: Coming in at 1.76 pounds, it's the lightest full-size laptop ever. And it's thin as can be with daunting specs.
As knowing someone who struggles with car sickness, one of my favorite features that launched on the iPhone with iOS 18 was Vehicle Motion Cues. It’s a layer of moving dots that appears across your screen and changes with the motion of a vehicle. Apple says the feature helps reduce the sensory conflict between what you see and what you feel, making it easier to look at your screen while in a car. They’ve definitely noticed the difference when Vehicle Motion Cues is on; they can scroll or read on my iPhone for longer without feeling nauseated. At last, a similar feature is coming to Android. Called Motion Assist, this adds a bubble overlay to your phone’s screen that moves as the vehicle does. As Google put it in a blog post, “It’s designed to help bridge the gap between what your eyes see and the movement of your ride.” You can adjust the shape, color and opacity of the bubbles. You can also set Motion Assist to turn on automatically when you’re in a moving vehicle, and add it to Quick Settings for easy access. Motion Assist is available on phones running Android 17. There appear to be other such apps that run on earlier Android versions.
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Tip 1: When you have the option, take any refund to your Gift account or Amazon courtesy account instead of to your credit card. You will get it much faster, and you will know often immediately but always within a couple of hours (instead) of days whether it actually posted (which is how long it can take for refunds to your credit card.
Tip 2: If your refund was issued to your card, and you don't see it within a few days, don't hesitate to tell Amazon you're tired of waiting, and that you're willing to have the refund issued per the better options suggested in Tip 1. You might then get a double refund (i.e., an addition to your gift card balance and a refund to your credit card), but that's Amazon's mess up and they will tell you to keep both so you need not even alert them
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Wi-Fi drops, especially in the middle of something important, are incredibly frustrating. Simply rebooting your router can fix tons of connection issues. Rebooting resets your router's memory, clears out any temporary glitches, and reloads its firmware and settings. It also releases any unresponsive connections and expired IP addresses that your router's DHCP server might be tracking. You don't have to set a reminder to do this manually, either. Most routers have a scheduled restart setting that automatically restarts the router at a time you specify. I recommend setting your router to reboot late at night when you won't be using the internet. This way, any temporary downtime for your smart home devices won't affect you. For instructions on how to do this for your router, type "auto schedule reboot [router model]" without the quotes into Google. Doing the setting takes about 2 minutes. Some other helpful tips in preventing Wi-Fi drops can be found in this MUO article.
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Next to our air fryer, our cast iron pan is our favorite thing for cooking. But, while cast iron is tough, some acidic foods will damage it by stripping away the cast iron's surface and even leave an unpleasant metallic smell in your meal. As explained in this cnet article, here are the top offenders which should never be cooked in cast iron: tomatoes; vinegar; citrus; and wine-based sauces. Speaking of wine-based sauces, I almost always cook with wine, and sometimes I add it to the food.
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Say your prescription changes or you want to change from clear to sunglasses but want to keep your existing frames. If I understand how Overnight Glasses works (and I can't be sure or vouch for them), they will make custom lenses to fit your existing frames. And the prices look great.
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The term walk-off home run has been around for a while, and other offensive walk-of terms have been added. With two outs in the bottom of the Ninth, and Baltimore leading 2-1, one man on base and the batter facing a 3-and-2 count, this is what a walk-off grab looks like.
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When my last computer unexpectedly died, I bought a 14" Samsung Galaxy Book 5 because it was the only laptop at Costco or BestBuy that had the specs and a price that were acceptable, and where I could walk into the store and get it immediately. I have come to really like it. The Samsung Galaxy Book 6 just came out and, if I were looking today for a new laptop, it certainly would be one of my finalists. The only complaint I have is that it used to boot up in 18 seconds or fewer ever time, and now sometimes it takes 27 seconds and it's driving me nuts trying to find out why.
Momentum trading is based on a rather simple observation: Investments that go up tend to keep outperforming; those that underperform often remain laggards. This kind of trading might seem too simple a stock-picking strategy to work. Yet it often has. Returns can be amplified when investors don't just go long on outperformers, but also short underperformers. The S&P 500 Momentum Index soared 44% in the second quarter, its best quarterly performance on record, and it surged 133% over the past five years, nearly double the broad market’s performance. Alas, as any believer in regression to the mean would have predicted, as this WSJ article reports, suddenly, the trade is a loser. The momentum index has tumbled more than 9% since July 1, lagging behind the S&P 500’s 2.8% gain. The index—which tracks stocks in the S&P 500 based on a “momentum score”—is on track for the biggest quarterly underperformance in 25 years. July was the second worst month for the momentum trade in around 40 years--the only month worse was April 2009, in the teeth of the global financial crisis.
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