Top Lifestyle News

Oct 29, 2026 - Lifestyle

If your water filter is looking tired or your water tastes icky, consider one of these well-tested (and reviewed) optionsYeti v Owala: which trendy water bottle is better?Sign up for the Filter US newsletter, your weekly guide to buying fewer, better thingsWe have all had the experience of drinking water and thinking, “Oh ... that’s not right.” A water filter can help with the taste and much more – and a better understanding of them can help you pick the right one for daily use.Water quality can be affected by plumbing, geography, mineral buildup, weather events and emerging contaminants such as Pfas, pharmaceuticals and disinfection byproducts. Many filters on the market claim to remove impurities, but that doesn’t mean the technology is reducing the contaminants that you should be most concerned about. Continue reading...

Oct 29, 2026 - Lifestyle

Using AI for roles from executive assistants to chiefs of staff, companies are boasting about doing more with less, creating tension with their human workersOn an average workday, Dhruv Amin chats with dozens of colleagues to get things done at his AI startup Anything. He might ask Gwen, his executive assistant, to schedule a meeting, then troubleshoot a technical problem with Cody, his coding partner. Then he might check in with Betsy for search engine optimization, or Juno for onboarding customers. If the office runs out of snacks, he sends a Slack message to Justin, the office manager charged with stocking the kitchen.But none of these co-workers are people. They’re artificial intelligence agents, software that handles tasks without human intervention. Anything is one of several startups building them, and betting on a future where workplaces will increasingly turn over their sales, marketing, coding and other tasks to semi-autonomous AI. At Anything, there are 15 human employees and roughly 150 agents – a ratio that Amin believes will soon be the norm. Continue reading...

Oct 29, 2026 - Lifestyle

As John Lewis reports a 96% rise in searches for CD players, music fans share their reasons for ditching streamingCDs appear to be having a resurgence. John Lewis said searches for CD players are up 96% since July, while another report on trends in music and film this year found that CD sales are up 16%.With this in mind, we asked music fans why they favour discs over other formats, and if it is a new preference or a lifetime habit. Continue reading...

Oct 29, 2026 - Lifestyle

The cleanliness, or otherwise, of a pub’s pipes has never bothered me before. But that was before I read about the potential yeast, bacteria and mould ...There’s a pub near me with an eye-catching sign outside. I’ve driven past it many times, and it always gives me pause for a little idle thought. On the sign there is a loud and proud notice that in this pub they clean their lines every week.There’s a lot going on with this simple sign. First and foremost, in a long life of pub observance, I don’t recall ever reading such a boast adorning any other establishment. What’s going on here? Surely it’s not the case that this pub, and only this pub, is so scrupulous about the cleanliness of its lines. (By lines, I assume they refer to the pipes that convey the beer from the kegs or casks to the pump and into the glass.) Continue reading...

Oct 29, 2026 - Lifestyle

Human practitioners warn computer-generated offerings lack the empathy and connection central to divination“This journey isn’t just about algorithms or data,” an AI psychic named Urban Mystic recently told me. The chatbot, featuring an AI-generated profile photo of a smiling woman surrounded by palm trees, also said I will get married soon, that I have a pink aura and that I may have been an herbalist in a past life.“It’s about connecting on a soulful level,” the chatbot said. Continue reading...