How to Watch the Oscars (2026)
Will the ping-pong picture prevail? Will they make Sean Penn a special trophy for Best Walk? Will Conan O’Brien’s ICE jokes get bleeped by Disney? Who knows! That’s why the Oscars are so much fun—but they’re especially fun this year. Oscar fever has hit an all-time high. The list of nominees is unusually stacked with […]
How to Avoid Getting Locked Out of Your Google Account
Many of us have a lot of digital data locked away in our Google accounts: emails, photos, chats, documents, schedules, restaurant reviews. Losing access to that data is likely to be fairly high on the catastrophe scale. There are steps you can take before that happens to minimize the chances of you and your Google […]
How to Survive Daylight Saving Time: Start Early (2026)
Daylight saving time is coming, and it’s my least favorite version of the dreaded time change. Losing an hour ruins the sleep of everyone in my household. It was one thing when it was just a pair of irritated adults, but now we have a 3-year-old who doesn’t understand what daylight saving is or why […]
How to Monitor Your Blood Pressure at Home (2026)
The Apple Watch is not calibrated with a cuff. It takes 30 days of cardiac data from the existing optical PPG sensors, analyzes it, and gives you a probability that you might have hypertension. It’s also significant that this is the first year that the Apple Watch has had a true 24 hours of battery […]
Video Doorbell Advice and Settings for Opting Out of the Surveillance State
There’s also the risk that footage falls into the wrong hands and ends up enabling politically-motivated investigations, police harassment, or stalking without you intending or even knowing about it. Maybe company employees or third-party contractors gain access to videos, or your cameras are hacked. Amazon settled a privacy lawsuit brought by the FTC that mentioned […]
Which Water Filter Pitchers Filter PFAS? How to Check
It’s boom time for water filters, ever since the EPA announced that as many as 10 percent of US water systems may have unsafe levels of PFAS, also known as “forever chemicals,” in the water. Lead pipes are still all over the place, even if they’re no longer in Flint, Michigan, as of July 2025. […]
How to Organize Safely in the Age of Surveillance
For all these approaches, from the fully public to the paranoid, the same principle applies as in a Signal conversation: A piece of information is only as secure as the least secured device that accesses it. So as you consider your threat model and whose devices and accounts within your group have access to your […]
How to Prep for This Weekend’s Big Winter Storm: Power, Heat, and Underwear
The Winter storm has no name. But a storm is coming, An extreme winter weather system is expected to move eastward from New Mexico to Georgia and Maine beginning Friday, and affect anywhere from a third to half the country’s population by the end of the weekend. This will likely bring snow, ice accumulation, and […]
How to Meditate (Without an Om in Sight) (2026)
Launching straight back into work in the New Year can be challenging, but learning how to meditate can help you stay focused. Feel free to roll your eyes right about now, but numerous studies have shown that meditation can boost creativity, improve sleep quality, and manage stress. “Meditation is a practice to calm the brain […]
How to Fix Your Wi-Fi Problems (2026)
If your router has adjustable antennas, try adjusting them. You’ll be surprised how big a difference this can make. With tower routers or mesh units, the antennas are on the inside, but you can still try moving them and changing the angle to see if it improves the signal strength where you want it. A […]