For the owner of a small business, bookkeeping is the work that never quite gets done. It is rarely the reason anyone starts a company — few people open a bakery or a landscaping business because they love categorizing expenses — and yet it sits underneath everything, quietly determining whether the business can pay its…
Read MoreBuying a first home has always meant absorbing a flood of unfamiliar information in a short window of time. A buyer has to judge whether a listing price is realistic, whether a fourteen-page inspection report hides a costly problem, and whether a neighborhood that looks appealing today will still feel that way in five years.…
Read MoreAnyone who has shared their life with a dog or cat knows the particular helplessness of caring for a creature who cannot say what is wrong, who cannot describe the ache in a joint, the nausea before a meal is refused, or the slow loss of energy that precedes a serious illness, and who relies…
Read MoreFew experiences of modern life are as universally dreaded as the customer service ordeal, the long wait on hold listening to a loop of tinny music interrupted by reminders that the call is important, the navigation through a maze of automated menus that never quite offer the option needed, the explanation of a problem to…
Read MoreFor most of the short time that artificial intelligence has been a part of everyday life, the intelligence itself has lived somewhere else, on banks of powerful computers in distant data centers, and the phone in a person’s hand has served only as a window onto that remote machinery, sending each question away to be…
Read MoreThe telephone, once a simple instrument of connection, has become one of the most dangerous channels through which criminals reach into people’s lives, and the danger has grown more acute as artificial intelligence has handed scammers tools of unprecedented power. The familiar phone scam, in which a stranger spins a story to frighten or entice…
Read MorePlanning a trip has long been one of the more paradoxical activities in modern life, exciting in prospect yet often exhausting in practice, since the dream of a holiday or the necessity of a business journey quickly dissolves into a tangle of open browser tabs, comparison sites, conflicting reviews, and the slow accumulation of decisions…
Read MoreMost families today are sitting on an enormous and growing collection of photographs, scattered across phones, laptops, old hard drives, memory cards, and cloud accounts, representing years or even decades of birthdays, holidays, vacations, ordinary afternoons, and milestones large and small, and yet for all the effort that went into capturing these moments, the great…
Read MoreFor most of the history of commerce, buying something well has demanded time, attention, and a certain amount of skill, as a shopper who wanted the best price had to compare sellers, watch for sales, read reviews, and, in some settings, summon the nerve to haggle, all of which rewarded those with the patience and…
Read More
