Landscaping is powerful stuff. Not only does a nicely designed yard become a haven for your family, but good landscaping choices can increase your home’s value by as much as 30%. That’s because well-designed and maintained outdoor spaces allow people to imagine themselves enjoying the property, and signal that the whole place has been cared for.

Unfortunately, poor landscaping decisions—even if they’re expensive and maintained—can actually hurt your home’s value by a similar amount. If you ever plan to sell your home or access its equity, you might want to reconsider any of these choices in order to avoid taking a bite out of the property’s valuation.

Too many trees

Trees usually add value to a property. Aside from their natural beauty, they also provide shade and a sense of stability to a yard. But too many trees can negatively impact the aesthetics of your outdoor space as well as the value of the property:

• Blocked sunlight. Too many closely planted trees can turn your yard dark and gloomy.

• Dead lawn. That lack of sunlight can also inhibit everything else in your yard, resulting in bare ground.

• Expense. Every tree represents a cost in terms of upkeep and (eventual) removal, so seeing a forest growing in the outdoor space around the house will cause buyers to quietly lower the amount they’re willing to pay for it as they imagine the future arborist bills.

Additionally, if the trees are planted close to the house, the potential for damage to the roof and siding will also lower the perceived value of the property.

Overwhelming hardscape

Hardscaping serves a purpose in a well-designed outdoor space: It provides walkways for bare feet, clearly defines distinct areas of the yard, and offers design opportunities.

But turning your entire outdoor space into a concrete or paver jungle will lower property values because prospective buyers often find hardscaping to be impersonal. It’s also much more difficult to change and personalize than a more natural approach, and the lack of ground cover or natural canopy can turn that stone into a griddle during the hotter months.

Lack of light

Too many trees can make your space gloomy during the daytime, but not having enough lighting can make the space unwelcoming at night. While you don’t want your outdoor space to be lit up like a football stadium, soft, well-positioned lighting that’s brighter around a patio, deck, or pool area and dimmer further out makes the space feel homey, comfortable, and safe.

Skimpy lighting also means no one can enjoy your landscaping at night because they won’t be able to see it. Using light to highlight features, mark out pathways, and define spaces will make your landscaping more useful, preserving the property’s value.

Aggressive plants

When people appraise your home, they’re looking at a range of factors. One of those is how much trouble something will be in the future. An old roof covered in moss might not be leaking at the moment, but people will quietly deduct a large sum of money from the home’s value to cover the anticipated expense of replacing it.

Similarly, everything in your landscaping is a potential cost waiting to happen—and nothing is more alarming than aggressive, invasive plants like creeping ivy or bamboo. These plants spread quickly, which can give an outdoor space a quick sense of lush fullness. But they’re also difficult to control or stop, and can quickly transform a carefully designed garden into an overgrown mess.

And a house being slowly enveloped by vines is also probably being slowly destroyed by those vines. You might like the look, but all that ivy is going to make your house less valuable.

Water features

Water features like ponds, bird baths, and fountains can attract wildlife, mask road noise, and add a peaceful vibe to your outdoor space. They can also be a breeding ground for mosquitoes and other pests, algae, and bacteria, transforming into stinky messes over time. Additionally, fountains and other motorized features can break down—and there’s nothing less attractive than a broken, rusted water feature that no longer pumps any water.

As with other outdoor features (or pools, for that matter), water features might as well have flags on them announcing their maintenance costs, and all those costs make prospective buyers think twice about the value of your property. If the trouble of maintaining those water features exceeds the joy and beauty they bring to the space, your home value will go down as a result.

Statues

A whimsical gnome or other figurine can be a fun addition to a well-designed outdoor space. An army of them, or a rag-tag collection of disparate (and heavily weathered) statues makes your yard look like a hoarder is using it. Too many of any outdoor ornament (gazing balls, birdbaths, dreamcatchers, wind chimes, etc.) will make your outdoor space look cluttered and unmaintained—even if it’s otherwise tastefully done and in great shape.

Large lawns

A huge ocean of sun-dappled grass swaying in the breeze might seem like an ideal way to enjoy your property. Until you have to mow it. And water it. And weed it. And hunt critters in it. In other words, a huge swath of unbroken lawn is a lot of work to maintain, and fewer people will be willing to take it on, lowering the value of the property.

Huge lawns also inspire questions like: What is this for? Outdoor space without defined areas can be a blank canvas, which is great if potential buyers are looking for a blank canvas. Otherwise, it might look like a huge yard they’ll only spend time in when they’re mowing and weeding, which is not exactly a value-add for your home.

Lack of paths

A beautiful outdoor space also has to be usable, and a key facet of using it is being able to easily walk around and access different areas. Having to strap on hiking boots and socks just to amble over to the majestic tree for a nap, or to tend to the wildflower beds, isn’t fun. Having some simple but well-defined walking paths that make getting to and from the different areas of your yard is a key aspect of its perceived value—people only assign value to things they can actually (and easily) use.

Pathways also serve to define space in your outdoor areas and offer up dry walkways after a rainstorm so you don’t have to slog through the mud—both things that make the landscaping look thoughtful and refined instead of haphazard.

As it turns out, most companies aren’t cool with piracy. That’s pretty understandable: The company exists to make money from its products, and if you use their products without paying for them, that’s a rather unsustainable business model. How a company chooses to push back against piracy, however, varies wildly.

Nintendo, for their part, is quite hawkish when it comes to piracy. The company will ban your console from online play if it detects you playing an unauthorized (pirated) game. And last month, the company updated its terms of service for Nintendo Account Services, just in time for the Switch 2 launch. Essentially, the company says that if you do anything to modify your console or software in any way to bypass Nintendo’s policies and restrictions, Nintendo will not only ban you from online play, but reserves the right to render your console unusable.

That’s pretty intense, and is the first time the company has threatened to brick consoles that are modified or run pirated software. But that’s no sweat for you, so long as you don’t steal games, right? Well, if you happen to back those games up in a way that Nintendo doesn’t approve of, and run those copies on your Switch, that’ll count as a brickable offense. In fact, Nintendo has already taken action with some Switch 2 owners.

Don’t use an MIG flash cart with your Switch 2

As reported by Android Authority, Nintendo has started bricking Switch 2 consoles that use MIG flash carts for any reason. For the uninitiated, MIG flash carts are like blank Switch cartridges that allow you to load games from a built-in SD cart slot. That means you can use these carts to play pirated games directly on your Switch as if it were a real game, but you can also use it to back up your purchased games.

While piracy is alive and well across tech, the latter is actually something people use these carts for, and it seems to have worked out fine for the original Switch. The idea is, Switch 1 games each have a unique ID—if you pirate a game, that means more than one of these IDs is active, so Nintendo knows someone stole the game. However, if you backup your legitimate game to a MIG cart, the ID is the same, and since only one ID is active, Nintendo lets it pass—at least, that’s how things seemed to work with the original Switch.

But that’s not the case with the Switch 2. Take a look at this user’s post on the subreddit Switch2hacks. They claim their MIG flash cart contained only backups of their purchased games, but after taking their Switch 2 online with the cart present, Nintendo bricked the console. You can see their now-defunct Switch 2, a console that isn’t even two weeks old yet, in the photo below:

Other users in that Reddit thread shared the same experience—using an MIG flash cart got their Switch 2 banned. Curiously, it seems Nintendo isn’t banning the accounts, only the consoles. One user said their Switch OLED can still run online services, which means Nintendo really is targeting the Switch 2 consoles themselves, rather then both the console and the account it’s attached to. I suppose the company is happy to let you buy another $450 console and try again to play by the rules.

Nintendo has moved pretty quickly against this practice, even when you consider how new the Switch 2 is. It was only last week that the company behind MIG flash cart got the tech working on the console, as the carts previously appeared to not function at all. My advice? Stay away from these. It’s tempting to to reduce your risk of losing your expensive Switch games, but getting your Switch 2 banned just isn’t worth it.

Can you back up your Switch 2 games without getting banned?

You can’t back up the games themselves, but you can back up your save data—as long as you pay for Nintendo Switch Online. Assuming you do, you can highlight the game in question on your console’s home screen, press the – or + button on your controller, choose “Save Data Cloud,” choose the relevant user, then choose “Back Up Save Data.”

Pokémon trainers, take heed: You need to be careful when transferring your save data from the Switch 1 to the Switch 2. While it’s a pretty simple process, some Pokémon fans are reporting losing their saves after making the switch, including pocket monsters they’ve had since the days of the Game Boy Advance. In a now-deleted Reddit post (as reported by Lifehacker sister publication IGN), one user said they’d lost over 1,000 hours of gameplay and two decades worth of Pokémon when moving their Pokémon Scarlet save file to the new system. Judging by a few other posts, it wasn’t an isolated incident.

While this definitely sounds like a bug, it’s a bad one. Not only is it easy to form an emotional attachment to your little digital friends, but Pokémon Scarlet and Pokémon Violet are two of a small handful of Switch titles that will delete save data from your original console while moving to the new one. So while you might be able to find your Super Mario Odyssey data on your original Switch if it gets lost or corrupted during a transfer, that’s not an option here.

How to protect your Pokémon before you move to the Switch 2

I’ve reached out to Nintendo for comment and will update this post with an official solution if I hear back. In the meantime, before transferring your save to a new console, there is one precaution you can take to make sure you don’t lose your monsters. Unfortunately, it might cost you: You can back up your Pokémon using Pokémon Home, Nintendo’s successor to the once-paid Pokémon Bank service for 3DS. Pokémon Home can store up to 30 of your ‘mons for free, and up to 6,000 if you pay. It’s not ideal, no—in addition to the price tag for larger backups, you’ll still lose access to any progress or items tied to your lost save. But at least keep your digital buddies will be safe.

If you’ve already lost your save, though, that suggestion is just a “shoulda, coulda, woulda.” I get it—all serious gamers have been there at some point. Unfortunately, Pokémon games aren’t compatible with Nintendo Switch Online’s cloud save feature, so no amount of going through your backups will help you here.

Maybe Nintendo can help?

However, you might not be totally screwed: A few Reddit users are reporting that reaching out to Nintendo support has helped them reclaim their lost saves, even if an official statement on the situation is still forthcoming.

Regardless, that there’s so much stress attached to moving your saves to Nintendo’s new console is a major bummer, especially because Pokémon Scarlet and Pokémon Violet are two of a small selection of titles that have received free (and sorely needed) performance upgrades on the Switch 2. Here’s hoping Nintendo has an answer for distraught trainers soon.

(Washington, D.C., June 16, 2025) – Today, U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Brooke L. Rollins announced the U.S. Forest Service has posted the final environmental impact statement and draft record of decision for the proposed Resolution Copper Mining Project. These documents, now available on the Tonto National Forest website, represent an important step in advancing President Trump’s goal of emergency and mineral independence by boosting domestic mineral production.

(Washington, D.C., June 16, 2025) – U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke L. Rollins announced American agricultural producers will have greater market access to Thailand and Vietnam and maintained access to Brazil. The Trump Administration continues to break down non-tariff barriers and defend current market access, and these latest actions are some of many wins ahead for American producers. U.S.

We may earn a commission from links on this page.

After spending about a week with the Nintendo Switch 2, I have to admit that it’s a good console. It’s priced fairly for its sleek form factor and the performance it offers, and it sets Nintendo up to stay relevant while gaming graphics only continue to get more complex. And yet, for my own personal tastes, it’s still not my handheld of choice. Instead, I’ll be sticking to Valve’s Steam Deck, the first and still overall best handheld gaming PC, at least going by value for money. And if you don’t necessarily care about Nintendo’s exclusive games, there’s a good chance it might be the better option for you, too.

The Steam Deck is cheaper than the Switch 2

Out of the gate, the most obvious reason to get a Steam Deck over a Nintendo Switch 2 is price. Starting at $400 for a new model, it’s only modestly cheaper than the Switch 2’s $450, but that’s only part of the story. Valve also runs a certified refurbished program that offers used Decks with only cosmetic blemishes for as low as $279. Restocks are infrequent, since Valve is only able to sell as much as gets sent back to it, but when they do happen, it’s a heck of a great deal.

That said, there is one catch. The Steam Deck OLED, which offers a bigger, more colorful screen and a larger battery, is more expensive than the Switch 2, starting at $549. However, it’s maybe a bit unfair to compare the two, since the Switch 2 does not use an OLED screen and comes with less storage. If all you care about is the basics (I’m perfectly happy with my LCD model), the base Steam Deck is good enough—it’s got the same performance as the more recent one. And that performance, by the way, ended up being about on par with the Switch 2 in my testing, at least in Cyberpunk 2077 (one of my go-to benchmark games).

The Steam Deck is more comfortable to hold than the Switch 2

This one is a bit of a toss-up, depending on your preferences, although I think the Steam Deck takes a slight lead here. While the Nintendo Switch 2 aims for a completely flat and somewhat compact profile, the Steam Deck instead allows itself to stretch out, and even though it’s a little bigger and a little heavier for it, I ultimately think that makes it more comfortable.

At 11.73 x 4.60 x 1.93 inches against the Switch 2’s 10.7 x 4.5 x 0.55 inches, and at 1.41 pounds against the Switch 2’s 1.18 pounds, I won’t deny that this will be a non-starter for some. But personally, I still feel like the Steam Deck comes out on top, and that’s thanks to its ergonomics.

I’ve never been a big fan of Nintendo’s joy-con controllers, and while the Switch 2’s joy-con 2 controllers improve on the Switch 1’s with bigger buttons and sticks, as well as more room to hold onto them, they still pale in comparison next to the Steam Deck’s controls.

On the Switch 2, there are no grips to wrap your fingers around. On the Steam Deck, there are. The triggers also flare out more, and because the console is wider, your hands can stretch out a bit, rather than choking up on the device. It can get a bit heavy to hold a Steam Deck after a while, but I still prefer this approach overall, and if you have a surface to rest the Steam Deck against (like an airplane tray table), weight is a non-issue.

Plus, there are some extra bonuses that come with the additional space. The Steam Deck has large touchpads on either side of the device, plus four grip buttons on the back of it, giving you some extra inputs to play around with. Nice.

It’s a bit less portable and a bit heavier, but for my adult hands, the Steam Deck is just better shaped to them.

The Steam Deck has a bigger, cheaper library than the Switch 2

This is the kicker. While there are cheap games that can run on the Switch 2 courtesy of backwards compatibility and third-party eShop titles, the big system draws (Nintendo-developed titles like Mario Kart World, for example) can get as pricey as $80. Not to say the Steam Deck doesn’t have expensive games as well, but on the whole, I think it’s easier to get cheap and free games on the Steam Deck than on the eShop.

That’s because, being a handheld gaming PC, the Steam Deck can take advantage of the many sales and freebies PC gaming stores love to give out. These happen a bit more frequently on PC than on console, and that’s because there’s more competition on PC. Someone on PC could download games either from Steam or Epic, for instance, while someone on the Switch 2 can only download games from the Nintendo eShop.

So, even sticking to just Steam, you’ll get access to regular weekend and mid-week sales, quarterly event sales, and developer or publisher highlight sales. That’s more sales events than you’ll usually find on the Nintendo eShop, and if you’re looking for cheaper first-party games, forget about it. Nintendo’s own games hardly ever go on sale, even years after release.

But that’s just the beginning. Despite being named the Steam Deck, the device can actually run games from other stores, too. That’s thanks to an easily installed Linux program called Heroic Launcher, which is free and lets you download and play games from your Epic, GOG, and Amazon Prime Games accounts with just a few clicks.

This is a game changer. Epic and Amazon Prime are both underdogs in the PC gaming space, and so to bolster their numbers, they both regularly give away free games. Epic in particular offers one free PC game every week, whereas if you’re a Twitch user, you might notice a decent but more infrequent amount of notifications allowing you to claim free Amazon Prime games. Some of these are big titles, too—it’s how I got Batman: Arkham Knight and Star Wars Battlefront II. With a simple install and a few months of waiting, you could have a Steam Deck filled to the brim with games that you didn’t even pay for. You just can’t do that on Nintendo.

And then there’s the elephant in the room: your backlog. If you’re anything like me, you probably already have a Steam library that’s hundreds of games large. It was maybe even like this before the Switch 1 came out—regular sales have a tendency to build up the amount of games you own. By choosing the Steam Deck as your handheld, you’ll be able to play those games on the go, instantly giving you what might as well be a full library with no added cost to you. If you migrate over to the Nintendo Switch 2, you’re going to have to start with a fresh library, or at least a library that’s only as old as the Nintendo Switch 1.

Basically, while the Switch 2’s hardware is only $50 more expensive than the Steam Deck, it’ll be easier to fill your Steam Deck up with high quality, inexpensive games than it would be on the Switch 2. If you don’t care about having access to Nintendo exclusive games, that’s a huge draw.

TV Play is a mixed bag

Finally, I want to acknowledge that the Steam Deck still isn’t necessarily a better option than the Switch 2 for everyone. That’s why I’m writing from a personal perspective here. Like all gaming PCs, it’ll take some fiddling to get some games to run, so the Switch 2 is definitely a smoother experience out of the box. It’s also got less battery life, from my testing. But the big point of departure is TV play.

Playing your portable games on a TV on the Switch 2 is as simple as plugging it into its dock. With the Steam Deck, you have to buy a dock separately (the official one is $79), and even then, you have to connect your own controller to it and manually find suitable TV graphics settings for each game on its own. It’s not nearly as easy or flexible.

And yet, for folks like me, I’m willing to say that even TV play is better. Or, depending on what type of PC gamer you are, monitor play.

That’s because you’re not limited to playing your Steam Deck games on the Deck itself, dock or not. Instead, you can play on the Deck when you’re away from your home, and then swap over to your regular gaming PC when you’re back. Your Deck will upload your saves to the cloud automatically, and your PC will seamlessly download them. While not as intuitive as plugging your Switch 2 into its dock, the benefit here is that your non-portable play isn’t limited by the power of your portable device, whereas docked Switch 2 play is still held back by running on portable hardware.

The tradeoff is that maintaining a dedicated gaming PC in addition to a Steam Deck is more expensive, but maybe more importantly, requires more tinkering (there are ways to build a cheap gaming PC, after all). And I think that’s the key point here. If you want a simple-to-use, pick-up-and-play handheld, the Switch 2 is a great choice for you. But if you’re like me, and you’re not afraid to download some launchers and occasionally dive into compatibility settings or swap between two devices, the Steam Deck might still be the best handheld gaming device for you, even three years later.

In addition to the flood of spam texts you receive on a daily basis, your email inbox is likely filled with newsletters, promotions, and other messages that you don’t care to read and perhaps don’t know why you receive. But you shouldn’t just start clicking unsubscribe links, which may open you up to certain cybersecurity risks.

Email unsubscribe links may be malicious

While email unsubscribe links may seem innocuous, especially if you generally trust the sender, security experts say there are a number of ways in which threat actors can leverage these links for malicious purposes. Like responding to a spam text or answering a spam call, clicking “unsubscribe” confirms that your email address is active, giving cyber criminals an incentive to keep targeting you.

In some cases, unsubscribe links can be hijacked to send users to phishing websites, where you are asked to enter your login credentials to complete the process. According to the folks at DNSFilter, one in every 644 clicks of email unsubscribe links can land you on a malicious website. While you do have to confirm your email address in some legitimate cases, you shouldn’t enter a password, which is likely a scam.

Bottom line: If you don’t trust the sender, you certainly shouldn’t trust any links contained within the email.

How to safely unsubscribe from emails

Even if unsubscribe links are safe, it’s a pain to go through the multi-step process of clicking through individual emails and opening new browser windows to confirm. To minimize hassle and avoid the risk of malicious links in individual emails, you can use unsubscribe features built into your email client, which are less likely to be compromised by threat actors because they aren’t tied to the email itself.

In Gmail, tap More > Manage subscriptions in your left-hand navigation bar (Menu > Manage subscriptions on mobile) and scroll to the sender. Click Unsubscribe to the right of the number of emails sent recently. You can also unsubscribe from individual emails by opening the message and clicking Unsubscribe next to the sender’s name. In some cases, you may be directed to the sender’s website to complete the process. (Note that Gmail may not consider all email campaigns eligible for one-click unsubscribe.) You can also mark the message as spam or block the sender.

In Outlook, go to Settings > Mail > Subscriptions > Your current subscriptions and select Unsubscribe, then tap OK. Alternatively, you can block the sender by clicking the three dots and selecting Block > OK.

Alternatively, you can filter unwanted emails to a different folder (including spam), so while you’ll still receive them, they won’t clog up your main inbox. In Gmail, open the message then click More > Filter messages like these to set up filter criteria, whether that’s sending to another folder, deleting it, or marking it as spam. You can create similar rules in Outlook by right-clicking the message in your message list and going to Rules > Create rule.

A final option is to use a disposable email alias to subscribe to newsletters and promotional emails or when signing up for accounts, which makes it easy to filter messages or delete the address entirely without affecting your main inbox.

Investment scams aren’t anything new: Bad actors have long used pump-and-dump tactics to hype stocks or cryptocurrencies, preying on emotions like fear and greed. And who wouldn’t want big—or even steady—returns on their money, especially amidst tariffs and other economic turmoil?

Scammers are currently capitalizing on this with fraudulent Facebook ads to lure users into handing over large sums of money. Here’s how to spot these schemes and avoid falling victim.

Investment scams on Meta platforms

According to a group of 42 state attorneys general, the current fraudulent investment campaigns also happen to have elements of impersonation scams.

The scheme begins with ads on Facebook that feature prominent investors, including ARK Investment Management’s Cathie Wood, CNBC’s Joe Kernan, and Fundstrat’s Tom Lee, along with other wealthy individuals like Warren Buffet and Elon Musk (none of whom have any actual affiliation with the ad). If you click the ad, you’ll be prompted to download or open WhatsApp to join an investment group.

This is where the pump-and-dump kicks off. “Experts” in the group advise members to purchase specific stocks, inflating the price, which they in turn sell and profit from. The AG letter to Meta detailing the scam includes reports of individuals losing anywhere from $40,000 to $100,000 or more after clicking on a fraudulent ad on Facebook.

Other investment scams originating on Facebook involve cyber criminals harvesting sensitive personal information via fraudulent investing platforms (also by spoofing celebrity endorsements).

Investment scam red flags to watch for

For many people, it seems obvious that you shouldn’t get your investment advice from a Facebook ad or WhatsApp group. But fear and greed are powerful emotions, and scammers are counting on these social engineering tactics working at least some of the time.

That’s why you should be wary of any advice that promises an unrealistic rate of return in a short period of time with no risk of loss as well as endorsements from celebrities, political figures, and well-known investors (who are almost certainly not endorsing anything). It’s also just good practice not to click ads on Facebook, which are easy vectors for spreading scams and malware.

Another sign of a scam is content or communication that appears to be generated by AI. After joining a WhatsApp group, an investigator from the New York Office of the Attorney General was called by a scammer who used AI to translate her speech into English. Unfortunately, emotions can cloud our ability to identify AI-generated content if we want to believe what we’re seeing.