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| Squalane Oil |
To maintain your electric shaver in top condition it's important to regularly clean and lubricate it. The most common recommended lubricants are made from refined mineral oil, but they have two drawbacks:
The secret lubrication alternative is squalane, a natural plant-derived oil that's good for your skin in addition to being good for your shaver, with high heat stability and viscosity. Plus it's inexpensive, available for only about $10 (e.g., at Target).
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| Android Alarm Routine |
As a result of Google messing with Android Tasks and Calendar Events, the presets for announcing them in an Alarm Routine may no longer work.
The work-around is to remove the presets and replace them with Try adding your own custom actions:
Note: The two Adjust Media Volume settings in my example are to first set the volume to 50 for a quiet room, and lastly to set the volume to 85 for normal daytime operation.
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| Havoline Motor Oil |
What makes this so special:
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| Duck.ai by DuckDuckGo |
Should that concern you? Yes! Because your login facilitates harvesting and selling your personal information. It's called monetization, a sign of growing pressure on AI companies to stanch the flood of red ink.
Fortunately, there are a number of good AI alternatives that are less concerning from a privacy and security standpoint. Arguably the best of them is Duck.ai by DuckDuckGo. Private AI Chat. Free. Not only is it privacy-focused, like DuckDuckGo itself, but it also provides useful AI model choices. See Best Free AI Models You Can Run in a Browser Without Login.
If you want to use Perplexity as a guest to avoid the login, either:
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| Google Pixel 9 Pro |
The Google Pixel 9 Pro is a study in contradictions. On the outside, it is one of the most refined, premium-feeling Android phones ever. On the inside, it is powered by a chip that would be more at home in a $500 mid-ranger than a $999 flagship, that's further handicapped by an out-of-date memory interface.
The heart of the Pixel 9 Pro is the Tensor G4. On paper, it is an 8-core processor built on Samsung’s 4nm node. In reality, it is a chip that barely outpaces its predecessor and gets crushed by the competition in raw power. It only has roughly half the multi-core power of a modern Snapdragon or Apple A-series chip.
Worse, to extend battery life, Google has resorted to aggressive power management, especially of background tasks. The result is a phone that lacks the responsiveness and smoothness of a high-end phone. It's particularly noticeable on speech-to-text, where phone struggles make it painful to the point of being unusable.
It also falls down on AI tasks. Google is pushing its Gemini AI to manage the phone, but it lacks the quick and predictable response of the old algorithmic Assistant (which is fortunately still available).
Is there a better phone? Not if you value the compact size. The better phones are bigger.
Bottom Line: It's a decent phone if you get it on sale, tune it carefully, and don't push it too hard.
Note: There is now a Pixel 10 Pro, but it's not much better than the Pixel 9 Pro.
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| Anker Prime Charger |
What makes this wall charger so special:
Most current laptops will comfortably charge at 60 watts, but if you need more power:
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ThinkPad P14s Gen 4 AMD |
What makes this machine so special:
Yes, there is now a Gen 5 AMD, but the Gen 4 AMD is still the one to get.
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| Generic is really AUKEY |
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| Roche Pilot home COVID test |
