All posts tagged: wasting

I rebuilt my Samsung home screen from scratch and stopped wasting time finding apps

I rebuilt my Samsung home screen from scratch and stopped wasting time finding apps

Published by skeptic

Samsung’s One UI has come a long way, but even the best software can’t stop a home screen from becoming a chaotic mess over time. Looking at my Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra, some home screen pages were cluttered beyond repair while others sat entirely empty. I decided to wipe the slate clean and rebuild my layout from scratch. Related I replaced my Samsung home screen with a custom open-source launcher, and I’m never going back My old Samsung feels like new. Get rid of all the unnecessary home screen pages Start with a blank slate The Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra boasts a huge screen, and the last thing you need is sixty different apps staring back at you on the home screen. To start off, get rid of all the home screens except one. This can be achieved by long-pressing the empty spaces on the home screen and deleting every other home screen page. After that, I manually deleted all the app shortcuts, widgets, and folders from the remaining home screen pages until I was …

Stop wasting your phone’s speaker volume — here’s how to unlock the full 85dB

Stop wasting your phone’s speaker volume — here’s how to unlock the full 85dB

Published by skeptic

Most phones have dual speakers that get reasonably loud — until you’re in a noisy restaurant, a car, or trying to share a video with someone across the table and then “reasonably loud” isn’t enough. The good news: you can get a meaningful jump in volume out of the phone you already own, with no accessories and no cost. I measured mine with a decibel meter before and after, and the difference was bigger than I expected. Here’s what actually moved the needle. Related Your phone has hidden shortcut buttons — you just need this free app Your phone’s buttons can do more than you think. You can customize them with a free app. Use physics to instantly make your phone speaker louder Reflect sound waves with your hand or with a cup — it really works! Credit: Brandon Miniman / MakeUseOf If you place your phone’s bottom-firing speaker against the corner of a wall, or you put your phone in a cup or mug (seriously), you can significantly amplify the audio coming out of your …

Stop wasting time on invoices with this AI tool

Stop wasting time on invoices with this $20 AI tool

Published by skeptic

TL;DR: Organize the invoice process once and for all with this lifetime subscription to AI Invoice Maker, on sale now for just $19.99 (reg. $39.99). $19.99 $39.99 Save $20.00   Let’s face it, dealing with invoices is a job in itself. If you’re looking for help with the chaos, meet AI Invoice Maker. This tool can easily convert receipts and notes into structured billing in a few seconds, and right now, a lifetime subscription is just $19.99. It doesn’t matter if you’re a freelancer, contractor, or small business owner — if you have to handle invoices, you know how time-consuming it can get. AI Invoice Maker simplifies the process, so you can get back to more important things. Mashable Deals By signing up, you agree to receive recurring automated SMS marketing messages from Mashable Deals at the number provided. Msg and data rates may apply. Up to 2 messages/day. Reply STOP to opt out, HELP for help. Consent is not a condition of purchase. See our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use. AI Invoice Maker uses …

“Wasting their time”: Trump swats down FBI investigation into Graham’s death

“Wasting their time”: Trump swats down FBI investigation into Graham’s death

Published by Sam Flores

FBI Director Kash Patel put the resources of his agency at the disposal of authorities looking into Sen. Lindsey Graham‘s death. His boss seems to think that’s a mistake. ” I know there’s all sorts of conspiracy theories going along, and I don’t think the FBI… I think the FBI is wasting their time if they’re doing that,” Donald Trump told reporters on Wednesday. The Republican senator from South Carolina died over the weekend at the age of 71. Graham’s office said his death was likely caused by an “aortic dissection,” citing a preliminary report from the Washington, D.C. medical examiner’s office. Trump put stock in that early finding and wished that Graham had taken “better care of himself.” “At first, I heard it was clogged arteries. Because he did have clogged arteries. He had a problem with that,” he said. “But what happened is actually something that’s very hard to detect. It was not related to any blockage.” Start your day with essential news from Salon.Sign up for our free morning newsletter, Crash Course. …

The surprising ways your lights may be hurting your health — and wasting money

The surprising ways your lights may be hurting your health — and wasting money

Published by Daniella Wilson

Get the Well Enough newsletter with Harry Bullmore for tips on living a healthier, happier and longer life Get the Well Enough email with Harry Bullmore Get the Well Enough email with Harry Bullmore Lighting accounts for almost 8% of the world’s energy usage. It makes up around 10-20% of domestic energy bills, with an even higher proportion in commercial premises like offices. But it still has huge potential for improvement. Technological changes and management of consumer behaviour can greatly reduce energy consumption without sacrificing comfort – and even improve health and wellbeing along the way. LED lightbulbs marked a huge leap forward in energy efficiency. They can reduce energy consumption by 50-80% in comparison with older technology, but their impact goes beyond energy savings, as by emitting less heat than older bulbs, they also reduce the need to cool interiors. Type of light also plays a role in our bodies, affecting sleep, attention and metabolism. But its impact mainly depends on intensity. Bluer light – typically emitted by screens and “cold” LED bulbs – …

I tested a smart switch and found a coffee maker wasting ,500 a year in electricity

I tested a $15 smart switch and found a coffee maker wasting $1,500 a year in electricity

Published by skeptic

Follow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source on Google. Has someone in your life ever yelled at you for leaving the lights on? Despite the shift to LED lights, it’s still a good idea to turn things off because, while one light might only cost about a dollar a month to run 24/7/365 (here, I’m assuming it’s a 6-watt bulb and your electricity costs $0.20 per kWh), think about how many light bulbs you have at home. It soon adds up. Also: How I cut my power bill with IFTTT automation – in 4 simple steps But sometimes, something that you leave on might draw a lot more power than you think, and if it’s a pain to turn on and off, or if it looks like it’s not doing much when it’s in standby mode, people are going to be tempted to leave it on. Something like a big coffee machine in a café, perhaps. Small but powerful What you need is a SwitchBot Relay 1PM switch. This is a palm-sized Bluetooth- and Wi-Fi-controlled …

I disabled one Samsung setting and freed up RAM my Galaxy was wasting

I disabled one Samsung setting and freed up RAM my Galaxy was wasting

Published by skeptic

I’ve been using my Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra for quite a while now. And while I know that any phone can start showing its age after months or years of use, that’s not something I’m willing to accept as inevitable — especially from a device I plan to keep for the long haul. I’ve never been the kind of person who upgrades phones at the first sign of trouble. Instead, I usually dig around for a fix, and more often than not, there is one. That approach has served me well over the years. For quite a while now, my Galaxy S24 Ultra started feeling unusually sluggish. Apps were taking longer to open, animations weren’t as smooth, and the overall experience was becoming a little frustrating. I knew something wasn’t quite right. After poking around in the settings, I discovered the culprit: too many apps running in the background, eating up resources. Thankfully, a single setting made a perceptible difference. If your Galaxy phone has been acting the same way, this quick fix might help …

30 Things Every Man Should Stop Wasting Time On

30 Things Every Man Should Stop Wasting Time On

Published by Akaay

Most men waste an astonishing amount of time on things that add absolutely nothing to their lives. Not big, dramatic mistakes either. Small ones. Quiet ones. The kind that slowly eat away at your money, energy, confidence and attention without you really noticing. Arguing with strangers online. Keeping clothes that don’t fit. Staying in jobs they hate because it’s easier than changing. Spending three hours researching speakers they were never actually going to buy. Modern life is full of distractions disguised as necessities, and most of them are complete nonsense. The good news is that getting your life together is often less about adding more and more things, and more about cutting away the stuff that’s clearly not working anymore. The habits, routines and thought patterns that quietly make everything harder than it needs to be. Here are 30 things every man should stop wasting time on. 1. Waiting for the ‘perfect time’ There isn’t one. There’s just varying levels of uncertainty and the occasional lucky break. Most people who start businesses, change careers, move …

Stop wasting tokens on pleasantries — here’s what science says actually works with ChatGPT

Stop wasting tokens on pleasantries — here’s what science says actually works with ChatGPT

Published by skeptic

Writing instructions for an LLM seems straightforward until you realize the output looks nothing like what you wanted. You can spend an hour tweaking your phrasing, but the model still gives you conversational filler, ignores your formatting rules, or skips over critical constraints. However, the problem usually isn’t the model itself; it’s how you structure the prompt. Even on the subscription tiers, you’re getting the regular ChatGPT. There are many studies that prove small shifts in how you frame your instructions can improve the outcome. Related I built one ChatGPT prompt that works for absolutely any scenario This simple ChatGPT prompting structure works for any goal, big or small. Stop being so polite Dropping pleasantries forces the AI to focus on your actual instructions I used to start almost every prompt with “please” because it felt natural, but that habit drops performance and is costly. Bringing everyday politeness into your prompts adds useless token noise to the context window. Most people waste a large chunk of their available tokens on conversational filler without realizing these …

how to use RAG and an embedding model to stop wasting context

how to use RAG and an embedding model to stop wasting context

Published by skeptic

Local LLMs are fantastic, and they keep getting better at a staggering pace. I have non-negotiable reasons for preferring a local setup over relying on cloud giants like Claude or ChatGPT. Because of that, I’ve been relentlessly trying to integrate local models into my actual, day-to-day workflow. But as anyone who has tried will tell you, the DIY route comes with distinct caveats and drawbacks. The absolutely biggest hurdle is the context window. To get better responses from an LLM, we need to give it more context. But context is expensive. And as soon as the context window starts to fill up, the model starts to deteriorate in both speed and quality. So what are we supposed to do? The problem, I realized, was not the LLM itself. The problem was that I was using the LLM for a job it was never meant to do. And the fix was a tiny model I had completely ignored. LLMs and the problem of context It really is expensive Raghav Sethi/MakeUseOf Half of our experience with a …