BETTER RETURNS

I felt guilty returning a pair of black pants to Amazon. They will probably be dumped, shredded or both. There’s a name for this: “DIF” or “destroy in field.” Defective gadgets, luxury goods and cheap clothing are all candidates for the shredder. An Amazon spokesman told the New Yorker that nothing goes back on sale after the seal is broken or the wrap is torn. Returning stuff is part of a growing trend. A century ago, only two percent of stuff was returned to J.C. Penney’s department stores. Today, 40 percent of clothing on average goes back to US retailers. Returns are about to get even easier no matter where you do your shopping. A company called “Pollen Returns,” run […]

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OBAGGO KEEPS BAGS OUT OF LANDFILLS

Here’s my new habit: Whenever I take the plastic wrap off a roll of paper towels or some other package, it goes straight into my Obaggo, a personal trash compactor about the size of a coffee maker. With a little heat and a lot of pressure, the Obaggo turns Amazon bags, cereal box liners, bubble wrap, zip-lock bags, single-use grocery bags, dry cleaner bags, and dozens of other plastic thingies into frisbie-like disks that recycling centers can shred and stamp into pellets, which are used to make new products. Your local grocery store’s recycling bin will take the disks, or you can get a free label to mail them back to Obaggo. Otherwise, most plastic bags end up in landfills. […]

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PLAGIARISM BY CHATBOTS

Artificially-intelligent bots are plagiarizing known authors. It happened to author Jane Friedman, who reports on the publishing industry. A copycat version of her work was reviewed on Goodreads. Friedman told ZDnet that an author she found on Twitter.com has been plagiarized by AI bots 29 times. It could be a growing problem. Suppose, for example, that you insert the text of a published novel into a site like ChatGPT, and ask for it to be rewritten in the bot’s own words. Next you run the result through an AI content detector. If it scores 100 percent, it’s 100 percent fakey-sounding. So you tweak it a bit before uploading to Kindle Direct Publishing. I decided to test this idea myself. I […]

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ART TV DISPLAYS THOUSANDS OF PAINTINGS

Two decades ago, Bill Gates began filling his enormous mansion with digital picture frames to display the world’s best art. Now you can too. “The Frame” is a Samsung TV made to look like a painting, complete with a matte finish. With a $5 a month subscription, it displays 2,300 pieces of digital art, including a new Salvador Dali collection in partnership with an institution founded by the painter himself. The 2023 model is considered a vast improvement over the version that came out in 2017. For one thing, it’s a lot thinner, nearly melting into the wall.There’s no gap. It’s a smart TV too. But when the TV’s off, the Frame goes back to displaying art. It even has […]

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FACEBOOK CLONES

Recently, I thought I got a Facebook friend request from a cousin, but it turned out to be her clone. Duped again. After accepting that phony friend request, I noticed two red flags: First, I was her only friend. Second, the clone had only three posts. When I typed her name into the Facebook search bar, I saw her real account listed after the fake one, so I immediately unfriended the faker. You might want to search for your own name to see if there are two of you. “What should I do about it?” my cousin asked. Here are the steps to follow. Go to the fake account’s home page and click the three horizontal dots near the word […]

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SOLAR-POWERED LIGHT CUBES DOUBLE AS PHONE CHARGERS

It’s nighttime in a garden full of solar lights hanging in the trees like beautiful paper lanterns. You pull one off a tree to charge your phone. When a power outage strikes, you take the lights indoors to illuminate your home. I’m talking about the $38 MegaPuff, also known as the “Origami Solar Light and Power Bank.” This multi-colored cube, about six inches on all sides, is amazing. It’s not only beautiful, it self-inflates as you pull the handles from a half-inch-high stack of recycled thermoplastic. It’s charged by the sun in ten hours or you can plug it in with a cable. Its light lasts for 12 hours. Carry it anywhere. Solar devices are known for decreasing pollution. Using […]

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HOW TO PREVENT TECH ADDICTION IN KIDS

When a neighbor’s 12 year-old stayed with me for a week, she stayed up past midnight every night to shop on her phone. Where were parental controls when I needed them? It turned out she was buying cheap items from China. The same $12 necklace from Target was only $1 online, she pointed out to me while we were in the store. Once, she came to me at 2 a.m. to ask if she could use my PayPal password for a $20 shipping charge. Another time, she didn’t go to sleep until 9 a.m. the next day. Short of taking her phone away, I wish I’d had a Gryphon. The Gryphon is a router that lets you strictly monitor how […]

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JUST CHICKEN FEED

Your garbage isn’t chicken feed. But it could be. All it takes is the right composter. The “Mill Kitchen Bin” converts discarded scraps and leftovers into food for chickens. When the bin is full, the user empties it into a prepaid shipping box and sends it back to the company. Unlike typical composting, the Bin can handle any food, including dairy, meat, grains– even Twinkies. It de-stinks as it turns into soil-ish. Food waste makes up 24 percent of the stuff in landfills, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, and its production wastes water, land, fertilizer and energy. Even worse, it makes methane gas. So instead of throwing out your food, why not mail it in? Here’s the catch: Though […]

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PHONES CATCHING UP WITH CAMERAS

Most people rely on their phones to take pictures. But professional cameras, such as DSLRs, do a much better job.  Professional cameras have sensors about the size of 12 Lego bricks. Your phone’s sensor is probably about half of one, according to CNET.  But phones are catching up. Some have sensors the size of two Lego bricks. Meanwhile,  Xiaomi, the world’s third largest phone maker after Apple and Samsung, is developing one that lets you mount a Leica M lens. It’s been dubbed the “12S Ultra Concept Phone.” In other news, LG Innotek is introducing a new telephoto zoom camera module at this month’s Consumer Electronic Show in Las Vegas. The module’s moving lenses will be similar to professional camera […]

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THE FUTURE OF CRYPTOCURRENCY

After the FTX bankruptcy debacle, people lost faith in cryptocurrency. Even I did, though I bought a sweater with bitcoin in 2017. It might be different if I lived in another country. Take Lebanon, for example. According to a report last month, people who try to get their cash out of a bank have to give up 85 percent of it.  CNBC quoted an architect who said he now gets 90 percent of his payments in bitcoin there, which he swaps for a “stablecoin” called tether, which he exchanges for US dollars. “One of the big attractions of cryptocurrency is its independence from governments and traditional financial institutions,” said Joel Ewing, the president of the Bella Vista computer club in […]

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