MacBook Neo Deep Dive: Benchmarks, Wafer Economics, and the 8GB Gamble

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Preface: I’m not really a Mac guy. But I have deep respect for what Apple has done with their silicon, and I’ve been following their CPU journey since the Motorola 68k days through PowerPC, the Intel transition, and now their in-house Apple Silicon. What they’ve accomplished in the last five years is genuinely remarkable. Apple is one of the few original tech companies that has survived and thrived over the decades while still staying in the consumer tech space. As

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How to Drag Files into Claude Code in VS Code (Paste with Context)

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TL;DR: In the Claude Code VS Code extension, hold Shift while dragging a file from the Explorer panel into the Claude Code prompt box. This attaches the file as context so Claude can read and reference it directly. Without Shift, VS Code just opens the file in a new tab. Hold Shift and drag a file into the prompt. The “Hold Shift while dragging to drop files into Claude Code” tooltip confirms you’re doing it right. What Is Paste with

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How to Change Claude Code Effort Levels in VS Code (/effort)

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TL;DR: In the Claude Code VS Code extension, type /effort in the prompt box and press Enter to cycle through four reasoning levels: Low, Medium, High, and Max. Each level controls how deeply Claude thinks, how many tool calls it makes, and how many tokens it burns. On Windows, it’s just /effort, Enter, done. The effort level picker in Claude Code for VS Code. This shows Max with all four dots lit up. What Are Effort Levels? Effort levels control

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Gmail to Claude: Line Breaks Disappear on Paste (Fix)

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TL;DR: When you copy text from Gmail and paste it into Claude (or Claude Code), all your line breaks disappear and the text runs together into one giant wall of text. The fix: right-click and choose “Paste as plain text” (or press Ctrl+Shift+V on Windows/Linux, Cmd+Shift+V on Mac). Your line breaks will be preserved. The Problem You’re working in Claude and need to paste an email from Gmail. You copy the text, hit Ctrl+V, and… all your carefully formatted paragraphs

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TurboTax Adding Rental Property Depreciation to the WRONG State Return

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TL;DR: If you file in multiple states and have rental property in TurboTax Desktop, check your Asset Entry Worksheets. TurboTax may silently add state depreciation entries for every state on your return, not just the state where the property actually exists. The fix: go to the Asset Entry Worksheet, scroll to the State Depreciation section, and set “Include asset in state return” to No for any state where the property is not located. The Problem I have a commercial rental

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Corsair Galleon 100 SD: Left Shift Key Triggers Caps Lock (Known Defect)

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I recently picked up the Corsair Galleon 100 SD, Corsair’s new mechanical gaming keyboard with integrated Stream Deck LCD keys. I covered the full setup and first impressions in my earlier review. On paper, it’s a compelling product: Cherry MX-style switches, per-key RGB, and Stream Deck functionality built right into the keyboard. In practice, mine shipped with a defect that made it nearly unusable for serious work. The Problem Most every time I pressed the left Shift key, Caps Lock

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How Do You Set Up the Corsair Galleon 100 SD Keyboard?

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The Galleon 100 SD is Corsair’s mechanical keyboard with a built-in Elgato Stream Deck where the numpad would normally be. It’s a slick piece of hardware, but the setup involves a few steps that aren’t immediately obvious out of the box. Here’s what the process looked like for me. Step 1: Connect Both USB-C Cables This is the first thing that caught me off guard. The Galleon 100 SD requires two USB-C to USB-A cables, not one. Both plug into

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Google Drive file won’t sync? (SOLUTION)

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Recently a client had a compressed .7z file that just would not sync in Google Drive desktop edition. It was a pretty normal backup file and was not huge (just a couple hundred MB and their internet connection was fast enough to back that up without issue). It just refused to sync. I retried, restarted and everything else to no avail. Eventually, I renamed the file and that FINALLY caused it to sync successfully for the client. ✅👍 Just posting this

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MacBook Neo Tap to Click (how to turn on)

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The MacBook Neo launched recently and at $599, Apple’s cheapest laptop ever is a legitimately impressive machine. I’ll have more to say about the Neo overall soon, but I wanted to quickly share something that tripped me up right out of the box: the trackpad. TL;DR: The MacBook Neo’s trackpad uses a mechanical click instead of the haptic feedback found on other MacBooks. If that bugs you, go to System Settings > Trackpad > Point & Click and toggle on

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