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July 2024
Why Your Kitchen Needs Its Own Vacuum
I hate cleaning, which presents a real predicament for someone (me) who makes a mess in the kitchen every day. Often my boyfriend cleans up after me—he is kind and I feed him—but the time has come where I feel like I have to try to make more of an effort. I bought a kitchen vacuum, and I’m happy to report that it’s made us both happier.
There’s the obvious kitchen messes—spilled coffee, oil splatters on the stove, or never-ending dishes—and those need relatively immediate individual treatment. The other kind of kitchen mess is more sinister, lurking, growing silently until you open the silverware drawer and realize how embarrassed you would be if a friend came over and went to get a fork. It’s miscellaneous crumbs. It sounds like no big deal, but that’s exactly the kind of attitude they prey on.
“Crumb” is the word I’m using for bits of dry material that collect in the drawers, cabinet edges, corners of the counter, and in the weird ledges of your oven door. “Crumbs” includes more than bits of dry food—it’s fuzz, dust, seeds, arm hairs, pet hairs, coffee grinds, and random particulate crap that is mostly unidentifiable. This is the stuff that slowly builds up in weirdest, most annoying-to-clean crevices. That’s where the kitchen vacuum comes in.
What to look for when buying your kitchen vac
A kitchen vacuum is not unlike a car vacuum in that it’s designed to be handheld, but they’re usually even smaller and very lightweight. There’s no plugging in to bother with, and they’re easy to click on. Within seconds, you can banish a cluster of crumbs, turn it off, stow it, and get back to your life. This spells success for me. No fussing, no sponges or paper towels needed, and so fast that it barely interrupts my task.
I recommend keeping yours in an area of the kitchen that’s easy to access, and try to resist using it all around your house. The whole point is that it doesn’t end up living in your car or your son’s room. Maybe those spaces need a vacuum too, but this one stays in the kitchen. It will inevitably collect food particles, and it’s best if those stay close to (and in) the trash, not in other parts of your home. Here are design features and accessories to consider as you shop for your own.
Slim design. Make sure the entire vacuum has a narrow body, and isn’t too long. This makes it easy to maneuver it around edges and get into cabinets easily. The whole reason kitchen vacuums make life easy is because you don’t really have to move anything out of the way in order to clean around it.
Wireless is the way. All corded vacuums are annoying, but a cord in the kitchen can really ruin your day. Most outlets are situated above the countertop so that appliances can easily reach them, but a vacuum cord plugged into the countertop outlet can easily knock things over. Trust me, I’ve broken a couple glasses this way. Look for a vacuum that has a rechargeable power station and long battery life.
The nozzle attachment is key. Most small handheld vacs have a tapered suck point. This is good for countertop messes where you have access to a wide area, or big, chunky crumbs. However, a slim, long nozzle attachment with an angled opening is the most effective tool for getting into corners and cleaning up along raised edges. Personally, that’s where all my kitchen crumbs end up.
I keep my Shark cordless hand vac on an easily accessible shelf in the kitchen, so as soon as I see a congregation of crumbs, I’m ready to attack. I do this a couple times a week, and it’s made all the difference between “tidy” and “spotless” in my kitchen. If any of the below strike your fancy, give one a try and join me in a life of simplified kitchen maintenance.
Kitchen vacuums to consider:
This slim wireless vacuum comes with a charging dock and two attachments.
Shark Cordless Hand Vac
$99.99
at Amazon
$99.99
at Amazon
It’s lightweight, compact frame makes this vacuum good for tight spaces.
BISSELL – AeroSlim Hand Vacuum – Titanium
$41.19
at Best Buy
$41.19
at Best Buy
This handheld vacuum can clean both wet spills and dry messes. Includes multiple attachments.
Sharper Image Cordless WET/DRY Vacuum
$119.99
at Sharper Image
$119.99
at Sharper Image
Schwarber on track to return to Phillies’ lineup Tuesday, Harper close behind
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M3 MacBook Pros Are up to $500 Off
Several of the MacBook Pros with M3 and M3 Pro chips are discounted up to $500 off right now. The M3 MacBook Pro is practically the perfect laptop, and Apple made an 8GB RAM version with a more affordable starting price than previous generations ($400 lower, to be exact). Here’s the full rundown.
The 14.2-inch M3 MacBook Pro
The cheapest entry-level M3 MacBook Pro has a 14.2-inch screen. The base model has an M3 chip with an 8‑core CPU, 10‑core GPU, 8GB of RAM, and 512GB of storage for $1,399 (originally $1,599) after the on-page $99.01 coupon. The display is a mini LED with a 3,024 by 1,964 resolution and 120Hz screen refresh, which should help it run most games smoothly—this is something the M3 MacBook Air and previous MacBook Pros were not as capable of doing. You can read the “excellent” PCMag review here.
The 14.2-inch M3 Pro MacBook Pro
The $400 listing price difference between the M3 and M3 Pro MacBook Pro laptops is deceiving. The M3 Pro chip is leaps and bounds better in terms of value than the M3 for those looking for the best performance—and for those who can afford it. It comes with 18GB of RAM (10 more GB than the entry level M3 MacBook Pro), an 11‑core CPU, and 14‑core GPU M3 Pro chip. You also get about eight hours more battery life than the 14.2-inch M3 MacBook Pro. The M3 Pro is just a more powerful engine, although there are no upgrades in the display—so if the RAM and chip processing power is not what you’re after, the standard M3 MacBook Pro is the better choice. You can find this one for $1,699 (originally $1,999) after a $300 discount on Amazon. Read more about the M3 Pro 14.2-inch MacBook Pro in PCMag’s “outstanding” review here.
The 16.2-inch M3 Pro MacBook Pro
The M3 Pro 16.2-inch MacBook Pro is very similar to the 14.2-inch M3 MacBook Pro. The obvious main difference is the bigger screen, but it also has a stronger M3 Pro chip with a 12‑core CPU and 18‑core GPU, about four more hours of battery life, and a mini-LED backlit Liquid Retina XDR display with 3,456 by 2,234 pixels of resolution. Those upgrades result in a significantly higher price (it starts at $2,499) but you can usually find this one up to $300 off on Amazon. This is a good option if you want more screen real estate and more power than the 14.2-inch model offers but don’t want to spend about $3,000 for the M3 Max chip.
The 16.2-inch MacBook Pro laptop M3 Max chip
If you want to go all out, the MacBook Pro 16-inch M3 Max chip is the best MacBook Pro Apple offers. To be honest, it’s overkill for most people. It has 128GB of RAM, 8TB of memory, a 3,456 by 2,234 resolution, a Mini LED screen with a 120Hz refresh rate, a 40-core GPU Apple M3 Max graphics processor, and about 28 hours of battery life according to PCMag’s review. Again, hardly anyone needs that much power. You can get the M3 Max Chip MacBook Pro for $2,999 (originally $3,499) for $500 off, the lowest price it has been since its release.
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YouTube Can Now Use AI to Remove Copyrighted Music From Videos
YouTube quietly celebrated Independence Day this week by previewing a new feature that uses AI to help creators declare independence from copyright strikes.
One of the most annoying parts of streaming or making YouTube videos for a living is when copyrighted music accidentally makes its way into your videos. If you don’t catch it early, you could be out on all of the money that video earns, and could get in trouble with YouTube itself.
Sometimes, this catches piracy. Often, it catches people who stumble across a licensed song in a video game or in the background of their vlog. For live video, not muting quickly enough could demonetize the stream’s archive, while creators making edited video might have to spend hours painstakingly isolating a song from the rest of their work.
YouTube’s had an “Erase Song” tool in beta for a while now, but the company wasn’t proud of its efficacy. Now, it’s updating the feature with a new AI algorithm that will scan a video for copyrighted music and give creators two options.
Erase Song will use AI to attempt to intelligently mute just the offending music while leaving the rest of your audio intact, while Mute all sound will work as a fallback to mute a video for the duration of a copyright protected song.
While YouTube is promising better performance with the updated tool, a company support page says it “might not work if the song is too hard to remove,” hence the need for a fallback.
Unfortunately, Erase Song is only available once a video has been copyright claimed, which means it can’t be used proactively. To access it, go to your copyright claim summary page and click on Select Action in the lower right corner of the screen. Click on Erase Song, then choose Erase Song (yes, again) to use AI to intelligently remove just the claimed audio. Alternatively, click on Mute all sound in the claimed segments if you’re not confident in what the AI can do. You can preview your edited video before finalizing your claim, and if you’re muting all sound in a claimed segment, you can either use suggested timestamps or customize your own.
The YouTube support page says that “if all claimed audio can be muted, the Content ID claim will be removed from your video,” meaning creators can use this system to avoid having to argue with a representative.
Erase Song joins other similar tools like Replace Song, which allows creators to replace a copyright claimed song with royalty free music, and Trim Out Segment, which just removes the copyright claimed part of a video in its entirety.
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Mets manager Carlos Mendoza ‘happy’ to be getting Edwin Diaz back on Saturday
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