John Cox

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Tagged tips · everything

Claude Code Docs

Best practices for Claude Code - Claude Code Docs

This is Anthropic's best-practices guide for Claude Code, and its central argument is that nearly every recommendation follows from one constraint: the context window fills quickly and performance degrades as it does. From that premise it lays out how to work with an agent that acts autonomously, including giving Claude a verification check so it can close its own loop, exploring and planning before coding, configuring CLAUDE.md, permissions, hooks, and skills, and managing context through /clear, compaction, and subagents. It is worth keeping as a practical reference for anyone moving from prompting a chatbot to delegating multi-step coding work to an agent.

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Gamintraveler

Airlines and Hotels Hope You Never Learn These 15 Travel Tricks

This piece argues that travel costs are inflated by fees, convenience premiums, and opaque pricing, so savings come from understanding how the system works rather than hunting for one cheap fare. It frames its fifteen tips (regional airline sites, multi-city routing, offline maps, eSIMs, screenshots and similar) as ways to decline paying for convenience you don't need, while cautioning readers not to over-optimize. The mix of genuinely useful advice with dubious "hacks" such as fake hotel bookings for upgrades or lounge access is what makes it worth noting.

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The Points Guy

Redeem American Airlines AAdvantage miles for maximum value - The Points Guy

American Airlines' AAdvantage program offers several high-value redemption opportunities, particularly with Oneworld partner airlines where fixed award charts still apply—such as European business class seats for 57,500 miles on carriers like Iberia or Finnair, and first-class flights to Japan on Japan Airlines for 80,000 miles. The program uses dynamic pricing for American-operated flights, making off-peak travel and short-haul economy redemptions (starting at 5,000 miles) better values, while partner redemptions like Royal Air Maroc business class to Morocco at 57,500 miles provide consistent availability and pricing.

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www.homedit.com

I Left Baking Soda on Tile Grout Overnight and Didn’t Expect This

Baking soda works on grout not through scrubbing force but through overnight chemical action that neutralizes trapped oils, soaps, and acids causing discoloration and odor. Applied as a paste and left untouched until morning, it draws residue from pores so it releases with a single wipe, and the grout then resists moisture absorption and dirt accumulation in ways that previous scrubbing methods never achieved. The key insight is that time, not friction, allows baking soda to alter the grout's surface environment permanently rather than just masking stains temporarily.

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www.homedit.com

I Left Vinegar to Work on These 11 Cleaning Tasks Around My Home

A hands-on test log of white vinegar as an all-purpose cleaner, going through a dozen specific household applications—coffee makers, windows, dishwashers, drains, shower heads, washing machines—and reporting which ones actually produced visible results rather than just repeating the usual folk claims. The one caveat worth remembering is to skip natural stone surfaces since the acidity degrades sealant, and the citrus-infused vinegar variant is a nice fix for the smell issue. Worth keeping as a practical checklist rather than a general endorsement piece.

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frequentmiler.com

Maximizing American Express credit card rebates & credits

A comprehensive field guide to Amex's growing pile of "coupon book" statement credits (Dell, lululemon, airline fees, Uber Cash, dining, Hilton resort credits, Fine Hotels + Resorts, and more), aimed at cardholders who don't naturally spend on these specific merchants but still want to extract full value from their annual fees. It goes credit-by-credit with concrete workarounds—buying gift cards in-store versus online, splitting purchases, using shopping portals, exploiting cancellable Southwest fares, stacking Amex Offers—to show how to convert each rebate into cash-equivalent value even when the underlying purchase category is irrelevant to your life. Worth keeping as a reference to revisit before each credit's expiration window rather than a one-time read.

Permalink travelcredit cardspersonal financetips

ZDNET

A stranger can learn a lot about you in 5 minutes online - how to check and delete it ASAP - ZDNET

The article demonstrates how easily strangers can compile detailed personal profiles in minutes using freely available tools—including basic Google searches, people-finder websites like Whitepages, reverse image searches, social media scanning, and AI platforms like ChatGPT. It then provides practical steps for reducing your digital footprint, such as privatizing social media accounts, using Google's Results About You tool, removing data through broker removal services, and checking Have I Been Pwned to identify exposed passwords from data breaches.

Permalink privacysecuritypersonal financetips

GitHub

GitHub - onmyway133/claude-code-tips-tricks: My favorite Claude Code tips & tricks · GitHub

A collection of tips for using Claude Code effectively, organized into eight categories covering sessions, command mode, agents, skills, MCP servers, prompting, hooks, and workflow management. Topics range from practical efficiency gains like naming sessions after git branches and using subagents for exploration to architectural choices like running parallel worktrees for isolation and using hooks as deterministic gates for unattended runs. The guide emphasizes that context is the real constraint in long sessions, so managing what stays in the conversation window through deliberate pruning, subagent delegation, and rewinding failed attempts matters more than piling on additional rules.

Permalink productivitydevelopmenttipsclaude

Wirecutter: Reviews for the Real World

6 Tips to Make Your Phone Last Longer | Reviews by Wirecutter

Modern phones last longer when you manage battery health by keeping them between 62-72°F, avoiding regular full charges, and using built-in features like iPhone's 80% charge limit or Google Pixel's adaptive charging. Beyond batteries, extending phone lifespan requires software updates for security, preventing storage from reaching capacity to avoid performance slowdowns, regular cleaning of charging ports, physical protection with cases and screen protectors, and repairing damage rather than immediately replacing the device. These practices can keep a phone functional well beyond the typical two-year replacement cycle.

Permalink maintenancemobiletipsgadgets

How-To Geek

I've used countless browser shortcuts over the years, but Ctrl+Shift+D is still my favorite

This How-To Geek piece by Tony Phillips is a personal case for Ctrl+Shift+D, the shortcut that saves every tab in the current browser window into a named bookmark folder so the window can be closed and later restored with "Open all." It is careful about limits that matter in practice: the shortcut stores URLs rather than page state (scroll position and unsaved form data are lost), it applies only to the window in focus, and some web apps or Chrome DevTools claim the key combination. The article is useful for anyone looking for a quick way to clear a cluttered browser without losing their research.

Permalink productivitytipsbrowser

Better Homes & Gardens

Better Homes & Gardens

Food & Wine

www.thegreatoutdoorsmag.com

www.chowhound.com

The Cornstarch Alternative That's Perfect For Thickening Simmered Sauces

Arrowroot powder gets a case made for it as a superior gluten-free thickener over cornstarch or flour: it works faster, keeps acidic sauces like marinara or cranberry sauce clear and glossy instead of cloudy, and holds up remarkably well through freezing and thawing, making it especially useful for meal prep and pie fillings. Its one real weakness is dairy-based dishes—mixed with milk or cream it turns slimy, so chowders, alfredo, and milk gravies are better off using flour, cornstarch, potato starch, or pureed white beans instead.

Permalink recipescookingbakingtips

www.howtogeek.com

5 free fixes that make every smart TV perform like a premium model

This How-To Geek piece runs through five quick fixes for new smart TVs whose factory defaults prioritize showroom appeal and data collection over actual viewing quality: disabling motion smoothing (the "soap opera effect") by switching to Filmmaker/Cinema Mode, swapping Wi-Fi for a wired Ethernet connection to cut buffering, recalibrating oversaturated Vivid/Dynamic picture presets, and turning off Automatic Content Recognition (ACR) — the tracking feature that fingerprints what's on-screen up to twice a second and sells viewing profiles to data brokers, hidden under brand-specific names like Samsung's Viewing Information Services or LG's Live Plus. It closes with a tip on setting up manufacturer remote apps (SmartThings, LG ThinQ, etc.) as a faster, Wi-Fi-based backup to physical remotes. Worth keeping as a practical, brand-agnostic checklist for de-junking a new TV in a few minutes.

Permalink technologytelevisionprivacystreaming

www.wired.com

This Is Why You Should Try Ultralight Backpacking (2025)

A personal, practical case for ultralight backpacking that traces the movement's roots to Mark Jenkins' 1994 "Less is More," then lays out a working definition (10-pound base weight or less), the "Big Three" gear priorities (pack, sleep system, shelter), and a needs-versus-wants framework for cutting stuff. It argues ultralight is less about gear obsession than a mindset shift—eating separately from camp, cowboy camping, trying quilts—that ultimately makes the whole backcountry experience less burdensome and more enjoyable.

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