Notes on AI, tools, and tech.
Every smart home device has a hidden second question. Not whether it works with Alexa. Whether it still works when your internet drops. This is the smart home offline test, and it has a checkable answer. The answer is different for almost every product, and the marketing does not help. A device that advertises “works … Read more
A two-bay NAS with two 4TB drives costs about $450. Google One charges $120 a year for 2TB. Run both for five years and the NAS wins. Run them for two and it loses. Almost every NAS vs cloud storage comparison stops at that sentence and picks a side, which is why the advice online … Read more
The most-reviewed pair of smart glasses on Amazon’s US store last month was not made by Meta. It was a Chinese model that sells for under $50 and has no camera at all. Meta owns close to 84% of the global market for display-less smart glasses. That figure comes from Counterpoint Research, and it has … Read more
Most Wi-Fi 7 advice online ends with “it depends.” That is useless when you are standing in a store looking at price tags. The honest answer is narrower than the marketing suggests, and you can work out whether a Wi-Fi 7 router is worth buying for your household in about five minutes. No speed test … Read more
The $800 rule everyone quotes about shipping from China is gone. CBP suspended duty-free de minimis treatment for China on May 2, 2025. Every guide built around that number is answering a question that no longer exists. That isn’t why parcels get stopped, though. Most boxes that never arrive are stopped for what’s inside them, … Read more
Travel eSIMs are the default way to get mobile data abroad now. Most phones bought in mainland China refuse them. The failure shows up at the worst possible moment, when you are scanning a QR code in an airport. Run the ten-second check before you fly. What an eSIM Actually Is An eSIM is a … Read more
A Chinese charger plugged into a US outlet does one of two things, and the label on the brick tells you which. If it reads 100-240V and 50/60Hz, you need a small plug adapter and nothing else. If it reads 220V only, that adapter will do nothing useful. The distinction matters because adapters get sold … Read more
Chinese phones work in the US, but not all of them, and not on every carrier. The band list, the IMEI database, and one voice standard called VoLTE decide whether your phone is a phone or a paperweight. Here is the short version first. Bands are the easy part now. Most Chinese flagships sold since … Read more
In February, Brazil’s telecom regulator authorized a Chinese constellation to sell satellite internet to Brazilians. Up to 324 satellites, licensed through July 2031. It was the first time a Chinese low-orbit system was cleared to operate in Latin America. The company is SpaceSail, known at home as Qianfan. It had roughly 200 satellites in orbit … Read more
One in six American households is behind on its electric bill. That is a Consumer Reports figure from late 2025, and it predates the current round of rate cases. In the first half of 2026 alone, utilities asked regulators for $18.6 billion in increases. The whole of 2025 was $29 billion. Almost all the attention … Read more