Step into a world where the focus is keenly set on Dress Your Space. Within the confines of this article, a tapestry of references to Dress Your Space awaits your exploration. If your pursuit involves unraveling the depths of Dress Your Space, you've arrived at the perfect destination.
Our narrative unfolds with a wealth of insights surrounding Dress Your Space. This is not just a standard article; it's a curated journey into the facets and intricacies of Dress Your Space. Whether you're thirsting for comprehensive knowledge or just a glimpse into the universe of Dress Your Space, this promises to be an enriching experience.
The spotlight is firmly on Dress Your Space, and as you navigate through the text on these digital pages, you'll discover an extensive array of information centered around Dress Your Space. This is more than mere information; it's an invitation to immerse yourself in the enthralling world of Dress Your Space.
So, if you're eager to satisfy your curiosity about Dress Your Space, your journey commences here. Let's embark together on a captivating odyssey through the myriad dimensions of Dress Your Space.
Dress your dog in a Halloween bandana that matches your face mask for $10
Dress your dog in a Halloween bandana that matches your face mask for $10
I no longer have a dog in my life -- Topher was the ultimate good boy, but passed earlier this year. That doesn't mean I'm not still a sucker for awesome doggie stuff, though, and I just ran across a fun little matching costume for you and your pooch. My favorite part is that it's a way to include your face mask in your Halloween costume: Milk-Bone is selling a trio of matching mask-and-dog-bandana sets for $10 each.
In each set you get an adult-sized face mask with ear loops and a bandana (your choice of large or small). The mask is for you, and the bandana is for your pup. There are three designs to choose from. In one, the mask is a mouse's face, complete with whiskers, while the bandana turns your your dog into cheese. If you prefer, there's a skeleton set; your face gets the skull treatment, while pup's bandana exposes their skeleton. Or become pumpkin and candy. You're the jack-o-lantern while the bandana is adorned with pieces of candy. And dog treats.
If I have a regret about these costumes -- other than the fact that Topher can't be with me to share them -- is that they all prominently bear the Milk-Bone logo somewhere on the bandana, which I find a little tacky. If you can live with that, though, these little Halloween sets are just too cute for words.
CNET's deal team scours the web for great deals on tech products and much more. Find more great buys on the CNET Deals page and check out our CNET Coupons page for the latest promo codes from Best Buy, Walmart, Amazon and more. Questions about the Cheapskate blog? Find the answers on our FAQ page.
This story is part of a series on life one year into the pandemic. Make sure to read part two: Zoom anxiety is real. Here's how to combat it . We've also got stories onwhy COVID may have changed our habits forever, andhow the pandemic gives health care workers a chance to shine on social media.
When coronavirus lockdowns began a year ago and much of the world turned to Zoom and other video chat services for work and socializing, Amanda Stevens, a project manager for New York state, found herself with a couple of very specific anxieties about her work-from-home video meetings. One was fighting the urge to fix her hair all the time, now that she was spending hours on end staring at her own reflection. The other? "My very old dog is prone to loud, unpredictable flatulence and I live in fear of it being picked up by my mic... and it not being attributed to my dog," she said.
One year into the pandemic, video chat platforms have afforded many people the ability to work from home and stay connected with family and friends. We've heard a lot about "Zoom fatigue" -- the sense of utter exhaustion you feel after a day of staring at your screen for on-camera meetings, worsened when most of your after-work socializing is happening through video, too. But the related concept of "Zoom anxiety" has gotten less attention, though it can be more debilitating for many -- and have potential career implications.
Few studies on Zoom anxiety exist, but a November survey of 2,000 home workers found that it stems from several sources: having tech and audio problems that you can't fix; being unable to read people's body language; feeling like you aren't being heard; having to take a call without time to prepare your appearance; worrying about an unprofessional background; and being talked over. (To be clear, in this story I'm using Zoom as a stand-in for all video chat platforms, since it essentially became a verb for video calls in 2020.)
"When you're face-to-face, you can pick up on a lot of things unconsciously in people's body language -- you notice if someone isn't reacting well, or if someone looks a bit uncomfortable," said Libby Sander, assistant professor of organizational behavior at Bond University in Queensland, Australia, who is studying the psychological effects of working from home. "You can get cues about when to interject into a conversation, and whether or not to pursue a particular line of discussion based on reading the room. It's pretty difficult or even impossible to do that on Zoom."
Even as vaccines are rolling out nationwide, the pandemic and moving to working from home are spurring many companies to create a hybrid workforce, where people split their time between home and the office -- which means video conferencing is likely here to stay. But if you suffer from anxiety using these on-camera tools, know that you're far from alone.
Read more:How to use Zoom Escaper, a sneaky tool for sabotaging your video calls
'The nightmares followed'
Zoom anxiety can come from having strangers see your space.
vgajic/Getty Images
Vivek Wadhwa, a distinguished fellow at the Harvard Law School Labor and Worklife Program, does a lot of TV appearances through Zoom. Once, he had to quickly change a shirt before an interview, and did so without realizing the camera was on. Luckily he wasn't on air, but it was a close enough call that "the nightmares followed," he said.
"Remember the 'college dream' or 'examination dream' in which you're late for class and miss the exam, or you can't find the classroom, or studied the wrong subject?" Wadhwa said. "The new 'college dream' is when you forget to change out of your pajamas before going on Zoom."
At the start of the pandemic, Caroline Jo, a brand marketer in Orange County, California, would dress up for video meetings, wear makeup and play around with Zoom filters. But as time went on, the energy that went into these meetings became draining, and she found herself riddled with stress and unable to sleep the night before days packed with video calls.
"I'm a marketer, and marketers are stereotypically known to be the vivacious, outspoken bunch, but I am keenly introverted and introspective, which I do believe are still very valuable to work," Jo said. "However, when it comes to Zoom meetings specifically, the anxiety comes from even the most basic things -- awkward silences, the game of 'who should speak next?', the constant attention, the forced small talk, and technological snafus like audio issues or being bold and speaking up yet realizing I was on mute the whole time."
These stressors can arise outside of the workplace, too. Kristen Taylor Hunt, an artist from Louisville, Kentucky, started avoiding her therapy sessions when they moved to a video chat format. "I often can't concentrate on what's actually happening or being said because I'm worried about if my reactions look genuine, or do people think I don't care about what's being said because I look bored or angry," she said. As a person with multiple autoimmune diseases, "COVID has really taken a toll on my mental health ... I really need to be in therapy."
Social video chats can also trigger stress. When you see friends in person, you don't feel the same pressure to "perform socially" that you do on video chat, Suzanne Degges-White, a professor and chair of the counseling and higher education department at Northern Illinois University, pointed out in a Psychology Today column. Just being present in the same space is enough. But on video, you're more likely to feel like you have to be constantly talking or entertaining in some way -- otherwise, you're just sitting there smiling at the camera.
Career opportunities and the gender gap
Women typically have more trouble being heard during meetings than men, and video conferencing can make this worse.
FilippoBacci/Getty Images
Some aspects of Zoom anxiety appear to be gendered. A number of studies have shown the gender inequities present in in-person meetings and group settings. Generally, men are viewed as more competent for speaking longer, while women are viewed as less competent for doing the same. Women are also far more likely to be interrupted or spoken over. These issues are exacerbated over video chat, Sander said, and women may struggle to get chances to get across their point of view.
One small 2017 study examined women's gaze during Skype video calls and found that those who were socially anxious spent more time looking at their own image -- particularly if the person they were speaking to was being critical of them.
Video chat platforms also tend to reward those who are the loudest, since that's whose voice will get picked up. And when you have that awkward moment where two people are talking, the lag can make it difficult to circle back to the other person, Sander added.
Outside of the talking elements, many women have also reported feeling stressed and being apologetic over their appearance on camera, while men tend to worry less about how they look or what they're wearing. Jason Sudeikis wearing a hoodie to accept his Golden Globe award via Zoom, compared to the full makeup and evening gowns of most female nominees, is a pretty solid example of this.
For people across the gender spectrum, working from home can offer fewer opportunities for building professional relationships, especially if you were new to a job when the pandemic hit. Your work may be less visible to your manager, and you have fewer opportunities for casual discussions that arise in an office environment about the work you're doing or any problems you're having, Sander said.
"We'll have to wait and see how it plays out in terms of career progression, but right now people are most concerned about health and safety, and the continuity of business and having a job," she added. "But I do think there are big issues we have to be aware of."
NFTs explained: Why people spend millions of dollars on JPEGs
NFTs explained: Why people spend millions of dollars on JPEGs
Take a quick look at the image to the right. What, if anything, could convince you that image is worth $9 million?
Richerd/OpenSea
What you're looking at is an NFT, one of the first ever created. It's part of the CryptoPunks collection, a set of 10,000 NFTs released in 2017, a time when much of the world was still finding out what bitcoin is.
Most likely you've already rolled your eyes, either at the $9 million figure or at the very idea of NFTs themselves. The response to nonfungible tokens hasn't changed much since March when they first started exploding. The public at large has reflexively dismissed them as environmentally harmful scams. The bigger the sale, the more brazen the injustice.
Which brings us back to the above pixelated chap. Its owner is Richerd, an affable Canadian software developer. He started building cryptocurrency software around 2013, but eventually tired of it. After discovering NFTs earlier this year, Richerd bought CryptoPunk #6046 on March 31 for $86,000 in what he said was the biggest purchase he'd ever made in his life.
Richerd, who has over 80,000 followers on Twitter, last month claimed that his CryptoPunk was priceless to him and wasn't for sale no matter the price. The very next day his determination was tested when an offer came through for 2,500 ether, or $9.5 million. It was made not because Richerd's CryptoPunk is worth that amount -- similar NFTs now go for about $400,000 -- but rather because his bluff was very publicly being called. It was a challenge, but it was still a legitimate offer. If Richerd clicked "accept", 2,500 ether would have flowed into his wallet.
Richerd rejected the offer.
"Well, obviously, the day before I said 'I'm not selling it for any price,' so if I sell it for that price, I'd be going against my integrity," Richerd told me over a Zoom call. "On top of that, I've used this CryptoPunk as my profile pic, as my brand. Everyone knows that's me."
Not too long ago, Richerd's explanation would have sounded insane to me. How divorced from reality would someone need to be to offer eight figures on a picture that looks like a Fiverr job? How scandalously misguided would a person need to be to rebuff that offer? After I spent a few months researching and following NFTs, however, it doesn't surprise me in the slightest. In fact, it makes a whole lot of sense.
There are 10,000 NFTs in the Bored Ape Yacht Club collection. Here are three examples. The middle one is owned by Jimmy Fallon.
Yuga Labs
Bitcoin millionaires
Here is one quick fact that explains why NFTs are bought for the equivalent of a CEO's salary: Bitcoin is estimated to have made over 100,000 millionaires. It's no surprise that NFTs became a phenomenon in March. That's when bitcoin hit $60,000, up over 500% from just six months prior.
When you see a headline or a tweet about some preposterous sum being spent on an NFT, it's easy to become bewildered over how absurd that purchase would be for you. What's easy to forget is that very expensive things are almost exclusively bought by very rich people -- and very rich people spend a lot on status symbols.
Take Bored Ape Yacht Club, for example. It's a collection of 10,000 ape NFTs, all with different traits that make some rarer than others. Rare ones have sold over for over a million bucks, but common variants go for around $200,000. (At the time of launch back in April, BAYC developers sold the NFTs for $190 each.) BAYC, owned by the likes of Steph Curry and Jimmy Fallon, is what you'd call a "profile pic collection." The main purpose of the images is to be used as your display photo on Discord, where most NFT business goes down, or on Twitter, Instagram or wherever else.
To recap: $200,000 minimum for a profile picture.
In isolation, that's insane. But place it on a spectrum of how wealthy people spend money, and it becomes less staggering. You can right click and save a JPEG, so why spend money on it? Well, you can buy a nice house in a safe neighborhood almost anywhere in the world for $1 million, yet celebrities regularly snap up $20 million mansions. You can find a fashionable dress for under $500, yet brands like Chanel build their business on selling ones for 20 times that amount.
Up to 100,000 people became millionaires when that green line shot skyward.
coinmarketcap.com
We accept that rich folks buy extravagant items offline. Is it so inconceivable they would buy extravagant things online, too?
"In the real world, how do people flex their wealth?" said Alex Gedevani, an analyst at cryptocurrency research firm Delphi Digital. "It can be buying cars or watches. How scalable is that versus if I buy a CryptoPunk and use it as my profile picture?"
Obviously, status symbols aren't specific to the rich. All of us indulge in some way or another, be it buying a $20,000 new car when a $7,000 used vehicle will do, or buying a $30 T-shirt when Walmart sells basics for under $5. What most status symbols have in common is that they have a specific audience in mind. The banker sporting his Rolex and the chief executive stepping into her Bentley don't care that I think either of those purchases is excessive. They have a small but powerful group of people they're trying to influence. So, too, with NFTs.
In the case of Richerd, he runs his own business, Manifold, where he helps show digital artists like Beeple how they can use blockchain technology to make art that could only exist as NFTs. Being a part of the most sought-after NFT collection helps in those circles. And when he says his brand is built on his Punk, he's not exaggerating -- a group of investors even named their organization after him.
"Anybody who owns a CryptoPunk believes certain things," Richerd explained. "Either you've been in the community for a long time so you believe in what these are, or you've paid a lot of money to get in, which shows conviction.
"I want to show my conviction. This is one of those projects that makes you put your money where your mouth is."
A bit of trouble
NFTs are polarizing. There's a small group of people who believe in the underlying technology (tokens that prove ownership of a digital good), but there are many more who regard it as a hoax. Just as the second group struggles to see any value in NFTs, the first group can sometimes be defensive about the technology's imperfections.
And make no doubt about it, there are a lot of issues with NFTs.
First is the confounding inaccessibility. There's a reason software developers tend to do well in crypto and NFT trading: Setting up blockchain wallets and other required digital apparatus is difficult. Even just buying and selling can be perilous. Send money to the wrong wallet address by accident, and it's gone forever.
Then there are the fees. Imagine you're interested in dipping your toes into nonfungible waters and you have $1,000 you're willing to lose. If you're minting a new NFT during a public sale you'll usually spend between $120 and $400. Not too bad -- until you factor in the transaction fees. Most NFTs are built on the ethereum blockchain, which is notoriously inefficient. The more people using ethereum, be it through trading altcoins or buying NFTs, the higher the fees. At a good time you'll spend about $100 per transaction, though double or triple that amount is common. Suddenly that $1,000 doesn't go very far.
This is especially troublesome for NFTs, which are infamous for causing "gas wars." It's possible for 100,000 people to buy shiba inu coins at once, since there are a quadrillion in circulation. But when 10,000 people try to buy an NFT, it results in a massive spike in transaction costs as some users outbid each other to speed up their purchase. It may only last a minute or two, but a lot of damage can be done in that time. People spending over $10,000 on a transaction fee isn't rare. People losing $1,000 on a failed transaction isn't, either.
This is what it looks like when someone spends $4,000 on a failed transaction. It's rare, but not rare enough.
Etherscan screenshot by Daniel Van Boom
Ethereum's inefficiency also contributes to the other major criticism of NFTs, the massive amount of energy they consume. Note that this is something of a semantic issue: NFTs aren't bad for the environment as much as ethereum is. Other networks, like Solana, use a fraction of the power. Ethereum developers are expected to implement an upgrade next year that will make mining it consume 1% the energy it currently does. At this moment though, while no one can say precisely how much energy ethereum consumes, we know it's a lot. (Bitcoin, despite getting all the headlines, is even less efficient than ethereum, which is why almost nothing is built on its blockchain.)
And finally, there's the fact that most people trading NFTs are doing so to make a profit. Scams are everywhere, and prices are volatile. Most of the people who create, buy and sell NFTs are ignorant or uninterested in the technology. If there is a technological leap taking place, it's likely to be obscured by the dizzying price movements.
"I'd call it a bubble," Gedvani said, "because the amount of speculators that are entering the market is outpacing genuine creators."
But a bubble can pop and leave something better in its wake. Think of Pets.com. It had a peak valuation of $290 million in February 2000 but by November of that year, as the infamous dot-com bubble began to burst, it had already closed shop. It's used as a cautionary tale for speculative trading in bubbles. But the impulse to invest in Pets.com evidently ended up being justifiable. That particular venture was misguided, but the e-commerce trend it was flicking at was legitimate. Seven-figure pixel art may not be forever, but proof of digital ownership, which is what NFTs are really about, may be.
A big 2022
Where NFTs will end up is anyone's guess -- and anyone who claims to know is probably trying to sell you something. What we do know is that the amount of people buying NFTs is almost definitely about to grow.
It's estimated that around 250,000 people trade NFTs each month on OpenSea, the biggest NFT marketplace. In the short term, CoinBase will soon open its own NFT marketplace, for which 2 million users are on the waiting list. Robinhood has similar plans.
More importantly, giant companies that already make money outside of the crypto space want in. Niantic, the company behind Pokemon Go, has just announced a game in which players can earn bitcoin. Twitter and the company formerly known as Facebook plan to integrate NFTs into their platforms, and Epic Games says it's open to doing so too. Envision a world where instead of buying skins in Fortnite, you buy an NFT for those skins that you own -- meaning you can trade it for outfits and weapons in other games, or sell it once you're done with it. (Epic said it won't integrate such a mechanic into Fortnite, but that may not stop competitors.)
Richerd reckons the flood of people soon to enter the NFT marketplace will create a broader diversity of digital products sold for different audiences. Your neighbor might not want to spend $200 -- much less $200,000 -- on a profile picture, but maybe they'll be willing to spend $10 on a one-of-a-kind skin, or on a product in Facebook's Metaverse. But though the space may change, he remains confident that CryptoPunk #6046 is safe for a while yet.
"Even if every NFT falls," he said, "CryptoPunks will be the last one."
How much to save by 50 gadgets to save electricity gaming gadgets under 50 50 gadgets under 50 50 gauge thickness gaming gadgets under 50 how a 501 c3 invests in a startup how a 50 year old should dress how are babies made
How a $50 gadget is saving $840 a year on my electricity bill
How a $50 gadget is saving $840 a year on my electricity bill
Each month for the past six months, my electric company has sent me a letter in the mail to let me know my household uses more energy than my neighbors. (Shocking, I know.)
Out of the closest 100 homes, I paid more than anyone else. In other words, my home ranked dead last, at 100.
Soon after the first letter, I turned into my parents and hounded my kids each time I caught them leaving a light on. I installed LED bulbs and we switched our Xbox One's energy-saving mode on. The next month, our bill was no better, and my wife and I once again nabbed the 100th spot.
Putting our pride aside, we decided it was time to get serious and see just where our electricity (and cash) was being drained throughout our home.
How the WeMo Insight saved me $70 a month
The WeMo Insight Switch IFTTT channel has plenty of free, useful recipes like this one.
Screenshot by Rich Brown
Using Belkin's $50 WeMo Insight -- a small device you can plug anything into to find out its energy costs -- I methodically went around the house, plugging various appliances into the gadget. I would leave each appliance plugged in for three to four days to get a generalized estimate of usage. Of course, the longer you leave something plugged in to Insight, the more accurate the cost estimate will be.
$2.50 a month to run this 10-gallon fish tank? I'll take it.
Jason Cipriani/CNET
I started with our fish tank and discovered it sets us back about $2.50 a month to run. Then I moved to an old refrigerator in our basement used for keeping boxes of Popsicles and random drinks cool for us. To my surprise, that old pile of scrap metal was costing us over $40 per month in electricity. We replaced it the next day with a deep freezer-turned-refrigerator that now costs us less than $1 per month.
Our main refrigerator was sucking $27 worth of electricity, and has since been replaced (I haven't had a chance to figure its monthly cost yet). Lastly, I discovered the small space heater I was using to make my office livable during the cold Colorado winters was averaging $98 per month to run -- an insane amount. I'll be replacing it when the weather starts to cool down again.
Belkin's product isn't the only device that can help you save money. iDevice's Switch does the same thing, and is priced around $40. Neurio takes a broader approach, attaching to your home's breaker panel to monitor the devices plugged into your grid for energy use.
Read more about what the WeMo Insight can do in our full review.
