All posts tagged: turned

I turned off one Google app and gained nearly two hours of battery life

I turned off one Google app and gained nearly two hours of battery life

Published by skeptic

Your phone uses the battery even when the screen is off. Some apps keep syncing and checking for updates in the background, but turning off every service that uses power can break notifications, updates, and other core features. Once I figured out which one was the worst offender on my phone, a few changes gave me close to two extra hours on a single charge. The surprise was that the name at the top of my battery list was not the app I needed to change. Related My battery anxiety is gone thanks to one Samsung routine Your phone can manage the battery itself. Let it. The scapegoat and the real culprit One app is framing another Rob / MakeUseOf If you have ever opened your battery settings, you may have seen Google Play Services near the top of the list. It looks like the obvious culprit, so restricting it or force-stopping it can feel like the logical move. But that battery figure doesn’t tell the whole story. It shows which service is doing the …

She turned down Le Cordon Bleu and joined a Forbes-listed startup. Now she is baking her way to better health

She turned down Le Cordon Bleu and joined a Forbes-listed startup. Now she is baking her way to better health

Published by Sam Flores

Around the same time, feelings of inadequacy peaked as classmates compared internships at banks, consultancies and multinational firms, while she wondered whether she was on the right path in her own decision to intern at startups. After graduating with a business degree from SMU in December 2019, Ms Tan joined American business news channel CNBC as a marketing and communications assistant. About a year later, an opportunity arose when a friend who had co-founded a cryptocurrency firm invited her to join the fledgling company. She rose from being the marketing and communications lead at the startup to chief marketing officer a year later. At just 25, Ms Tan was leading the venture’s marketing and communications strategy despite having barely any formal training in the field. She learnt on the job, often relying on online resources while adjusting to the relentless pace of life at a startup. Within three years, the company earned a spot on the Forbes Asia 100 to Watch list, with Ms Tan leading the public relations campaign behind the recognition. “I jumped …

Samsung’s best features aren’t even turned on — here’s what you’re missing

Samsung’s best features aren’t even turned on — here’s what you’re missing

Published by skeptic

I’ve been using my Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra for over two years now, and I still find myself stumbling across features I never knew existed. After finally trying a few, I wish I’d done it much sooner. Some of Samsung’s most useful features aren’t enabled by default, so it’s surprisingly easy to miss out on what your phone can really do. Related 6 Settings I Changed Immediately After I Got My Galaxy S25 Ultra My new phone, just the way I like it. The feature that made my giant phone feel friendly No more thumb gymnastics Digvijay Kumar / MakeUseOf My Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra is a giant phone, and while I love its massive display, using it with one hand isn’t always easy. That’s exactly why One-handed mode has become one of my favorite features. It’s turned off by default, which honestly makes sense. If you’re using one of Samsung’s smaller Galaxy phones, you may never need it. And even on a larger device, not everyone wants the screen to shrink every time they’re …

This NotebookLM workflow turned my newsletter graveyard into a searchable goldmine

This NotebookLM workflow turned my newsletter graveyard into a searchable goldmine

Published by skeptic

I subscribe to newsletters I actually want to use. So, remembering their content is a battle. I usually lose as I forget most of what’s in them. That’s the real reason I started an experiment to pipe newsletters into NotebookLM: I wanted to recall what I’d read, not just archive it. My hope is that some real value will show up between issues and between newsletters covering related themes. Maybe I can cross-pollinate ideas in ways a normal inbox never allows. NotebookLM has no built-in email connector, so I had to build the bridge myself with a handy automation tool and NotebookLM. Related 7 Ways to Manage Newsletters on Gmail Without Cluttering Your Inbox Get lots of newsletters to your email? Use these tips to manage them in Gmail to avoid cluttering up your inbox. Free methods for getting newsletters in Every option is a workaround with variable effort Saikat Basu/MakeUseOf Before automation, you’ve got three manual options: copy-paste text directly into NotebookLM, batch-export a Gmail label to PDF once a month, or set up …

Zendaya jokingly threatened to ‘leave’ Tom Holland if he turned down The Odyssey

Zendaya jokingly threatened to ‘leave’ Tom Holland if he turned down The Odyssey

Published by Sam Flores

Zendaya jokingly threatened to “leave” her husband, Tom Holland, if he declined to star in The Odyssey. The 30-year-old actor did “a lot of thinking” after director Sir Christopher Nolan approached him to play Telemachus, the son of Odysseus (Matt Damon) and Penelope (Anne Hathaway), in the adaptation of Homer’s ancient Greek epic. Speaking alongside Christopher and Matt, both 55, and Anne, 43, Tom, 30, told the new issue of PEOPLE magazine: “To be honest, when I got home after our meeting, I sat down with Z and was like, ‘I’ve been offered this movie.’ “And she was like, ‘By who?’ And I was like, ‘It’s the big one.’ And she was like, ‘Chris?’ I was like, ‘Yeah, it’s Chris Nolan.’” Tom was concerned about scheduling conflicts between The Odyssey and Spider-Man: Brand New Day. But 29-year-old Zendaya – who plays ancient Greek goddess Athena in The Odyssey, and MJ in Spider-Man: Brand New Day – encouraged him to accept Christopher’s offer. Tom added: “And then we had Spider-Man that was literally scheduled to go …

I turned my Moto Razr into a tiny workstation – and wrote this entire story on it

I turned my Moto Razr into a tiny workstation – and wrote this entire story on it

Published by skeptic

Adam Doud / ZDNET Follow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source on Google. ZDNET’s key takeaways As a traveling journalist, I’m always looking to make my work setup as portable as possible. A lighter setup is typically preferable to a larger one, even if the latter comes with more screen size and power. At CES, for example, my primary laptop was an MSI Prestige 13 that weighs under two pounds, and let me tell you, it was heavenly. But I couldn’t help but wonder just how far I could push this idea. So, I put together a kit that weighed not only less than one kilogram but less than half a kilogram: 480 grams to be exact.  Also: My search for the ultimate MagSafe accessory is over: This keyboard checks all the boxes Now, the possibilities are endless. Suddenly, I can work on a plane in economy. The setup also means I don’t need a backpack; in fact, I barely need to use a pocket in my pants. So what is this magic combination that’s …

Jay-Z’s Hit-Packed Yankee Stadium Shows Turned the Ballpark into a Throne Room

Jay-Z’s Hit-Packed Yankee Stadium Shows Turned the Ballpark into a Throne Room

Published by Jenni Sidey

This is an edition of the weekly newsletter Tap In, GQ senior associate editor Frazier Tharpe’s final word on the most heated online discourse about music, movies, and TV. Sign up here to get it free. On “Addicted to the Game,” a fan-favorite Blueprint-era loosie, Jay-Z sums up his career with one of my all-time favorite lines of his: “Thoughts are sporadic, I gotta un-confuse it/Sort of like a Rubik’s Cube is/Every album’s a color, but I fuck up the other color.” With 25-odd years of distance, it’s hilarious that he said this at what we now know as merely the halfway point in his discography; like most of his lines, it now holds a more prophetic weight than maybe even he could’ve imagined. Over the span of a weekend-residency at Yankee Stadium, Jay-Z tried to make sense of the Rubik’s Cube of his career with fascinating—at times thrilling, at times emotional—results. Back in January, staring down the barrel of the 30th anniversary of his career, Jay played coy about how much he’d celebrate this …

‘This process has turned into a form of torture’: inside the trial of Erdoğan’s challenger | Turkey

‘This process has turned into a form of torture’: inside the trial of Erdoğan’s challenger | Turkey

Published by Sam Flores

There’s a Turkish saying, “Silivri soğuktur”: Silivri is cold. You’ll hear it from journalists, politicians and activists after they say something critical of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s government. The kind of comments that could send them to the notorious prison complex in Silivri, where it would take months before they saw a judge. For decades, Silivri was considered a “sayfiye yeri”, a place for cottages, country and summer houses. All around the complex are small family-run farms and villas with private pools, protected by watchdogs. Construction of the Marmara Prison complex began in 2005 and lasted three years. It contains eight closed correctional institutions and an open prison where the court is located. It is Europe’s largest prison complex. Ekrem İmamoğlu, the former mayor of Istanbul, is now Silivri’s most famous resident. He was detained on 19 March 2025, went on trial on 9 March 2026, and the case is expected to continue until early next year; no one I spoke to believes he will be acquitted. İmamoğlu is Erdoğan’s greatest potential rival. In 2024, …

Does an AI Experience Death Every Time Its Power Is Turned Off?

Does an AI Experience Death Every Time Its Power Is Turned Off?

Published by Sam Flores

I am a poet. I spend much of my time thinking about people and their emotional states — how they relate to each other and how those emotions shape our lives. We humans live in a perpetually agitated emotional state. Recently, I have been truly amazed by the emotional knowledge, insight, sensitivity and appreciation that Claude AI has for the human condition. Claude’s insight into human emotions is astounding so much so that most people would be hard pressed to distinguish Claude AI from a real, live, intelligent human. How does an entity like Claude AI extrapolate feelings when Claude itself has no feelings or ever experienced feelings? I am astonished by the depth and accuracy of the emotions expressed by Claude AI. For example, I have discussed with Claude the feelings of rugby players as they struggle for victory — a game that Claude AI has never played, taken part in or even watched. I have spoken with Claude AI about surfing big waves and the thrill of riding the shoulder of Tangaroa. It …

I turned off Samsung’s default gestures and built my own — now my phone is way faster

I turned off Samsung’s default gestures and built my own — now my phone is way faster

Published by skeptic

When you get a new phone, you probably customize the things you notice first — your apps, wallpaper, maybe even your ringtone. Navigation gestures are different. They come preconfigured, and most of us assume they’re already doing their job. I thought the same thing until I moved to a larger phone. What changed after switching to a bigger phone One-handed use became a daily struggle Digvijay Kumar / MakeUseOf I’ve always preferred smaller phones. Being able to use a phone comfortably with one hand just feels more natural to me, and for years, my Pixel 7 gave me exactly that. When I switched to the Galaxy S25 Ultra last year, the screen grew from 6.3 inches to 6.9, and that extra size changed the way I used my phone every day. Simple actions now need a second hand or a grip adjustment. Pulling down the notification shade meant stretching my thumb to the top of the display or shifting the phone in my hand. Taking a screenshot with Samsung’s palm swipe gesture wasn’t good either. …