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When you hit the share button on social media apps such as Instagram, Facebook, or Threads, these sites tack on a tracker to the link you're sharing. This tracker means that Instagram can tell who you've shared the link with, and it likely uses this information to further optimize its algorithm for ads. While the tech here is sneaky, it is easy to remove tracking information from these links.

How do social media tracking links work?

It's actually pretty easy to spot a link that has trackers. To check it out, copy the link to any Instagram post and paste it somewhere safe, like your notes app. A normal Instagram link looks like this:

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DVrMKVVAaBi/

The same link with tracking has a bunch of additional characters at the end:

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DVrMKVVAaBi/?igsh=cGd5cGx4enJmcThu

Every character after that ? is used to identify that your profile shared the link. While this example highlights Instagram, the same thing happens on many other apps and websites. Facebook, Threads, Reddit, YouTube, Amazon, and many others use some kind of tracking parameters in links to see how people arrived at a certain post or a page. These trackers have some legitimate use cases, such as tracking affiliate links to pay commissions or keeping tabs on social media traffic.

In some cases, however, these tracking links serve no purpose other than to identify who shared the link with you, and who you're sharing links with. That can be used to identify people you're close to, which in turn, helps social media giants deliver targeted ads to you and your friends or loved ones. It can also compromise your privacy, since someone opening your link will see your account was the one to originally share it—even if you don't share that link directly with them.

How to remove tracking links

The easiest way to remove tracking links is to manually delete the tracker from the URLs. This is quite easy to do on desktop browsers, where you have larger screens that let you see and delete tracking parameters from long URLs. In the case of Instagram, you can safely delete the part after the ? in most URLs. The same often applies to links from other social media sites too.

To automate this process on desktop, you can use the built-in Copy Clean Link feature in Firefox, as well as similar features in browsers like Brave. Just right-click any link and select Copy Clean Link to remove its tracking parameters. You can also use uBlock Origin to remove tracking from URLs. In the extension's settings, go to Filter lists and enable URL Tracking Protection. The ClearURLs extension for Firefox or Microsoft Edge used to be a good option here, but it hasn't been updated in a while, and it may break some links, so I'd recommend avoiding it.

If you have an iPhone, you can install the Anonymize Meta Sharing shortcut, which removes tracking parameters from Facebook, Instagram, and Threads links. Just copy the link, run the shortcut, and it'll give you a tracking-free version of the same URL. If you're on Android, or want an alternative on iOS, there's also a simple website called URL Clean that removes tracking from links. You can use it to remove some kinds of tracking, but you should note that it breaks some URLs.


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The MacBook Neo seems to be anything anyone in the tech world can talk about this week. Apple somehow made a MacBook that does just about everything you want a MacBook to do, all for $599 ($499 with an education discount). That price point makes Apple's next-cheapest computer, the MacBook Air, seem borderline unreasonable for $1,099.

Part of what's fueling the hype here is how much the MacBook Neo could disrupt the budget and midrange laptop markets. Why spend $200 or $300 on a Chromebook when for a bit more, you could have a near-complete macOS experience? In the same vein, if you're turned off by Windows' insistence on unnecessary AI features and aggressive ads, but avoided Macs because of their high price tags, the Neo could turn you away from PC. In fact, much of the discussion around the Neo is how this might finally be the midrange Windows laptop replacement the market has been looking for.

But a $499 MacBook isn't without compromises. The Neo has certain limitations you might not be used to from Apple's usual Macs, or from your Windows PC: There's only 8GB of RAM, even if you pay for the model with 512GB of storage; the keyboard doesn't have a backlight; and the USB-C ports are older, which means you can't charge as fast as other devices, or transfer data as quickly.

But if you're coming from a Windows machine, and you're used to a certain way of doing things, you might be thinking: Can the MacBook Neo run Windows? The answer, it seems, is yes—but you probably shouldn't buy it for that.

The MacBook Neo isn't the perfect Windows replacement

First things first: the MacBook Neo can't run Windows natively. Those days are long behind us, once Apple switched from Intel chips to its own ARM-based Apple silicon. Intel Macs have "Boot Camp," which can install Windows directly onto a partition of the machine. With Apple silicon Macs, you need to use a third-party program to run Windows in a virtual machine.

One such program is Parallels, long an option for Mac users looking to run Windows while still having ready access to macOS. As it happens, Parallels confirmed the MacBook Neo is compatible with its application, which means the computer's A18 Pro chip can handle running Windows in a virtual machine. Problem solved, right?

Unfortunately, no. While Windows will run in Parallels on MacBook Neo, it might not be an ideal experience for many PC users. That's directly from Parallels itself, which commented: "For light, occasional Windows use, like a legacy business tool, or a Windows-only utility, MacBook Neo may provide an acceptable experience. For CPU- or GPU-intensive Windows applications, this computer is not the right choice."

Part of the issue is that the virtual machine running Windows 11 requires at least 4GB of RAM. The MacBook Neo is locked at 8GB, which doesn't leave much room for macOS. Parallels runs concurrently with macOS, since it runs Windows 11 in its own window. It's like if Windows 11 was an app on your Mac, alongside Safari, Messages, or Mail. Once you start running too much at once, you could easily choke your machine.

If you need to run Windows, consider these cheap laptops

If you don't really care about Windows support, and you're just looking for a capable laptop at that $500 or $600 price point, then the MacBook Neo could definitely replace a comparable Windows machine. It'll also runs Microsoft apps that have Mac support, like Word, PowerPoint, and Teams. But I wouldn't recommend it for users looking for something that also runs Windows, and the Windows-only programs they're used to. If that sounds like you, you might want to look at budget and midrange Windows laptops, like the Acer Aspire 3 or Acer Aspire 16.

If you still want both Windows and macOS access, consider a different MacBook. At that Neo price point, you could find an M1 MacBook Air with 16GB of RAM. The Neo actually outperforms the M1 in some ways, but that extra RAM will help you run Windows better in Parallels.


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This might be the whitest thing I've ever written, but I'm getting into sailing. A friend recently took me on a sail around Santa Barbara, and I finally really understand what Christopher Cross meant when he sang, "The canvas can do miracles. Just you wait and see."

Except I don't know how to do it. So I was just sitting there, not actually sailing. It's personally frustrating to feel useless on the poop deck (It's called a "poop deck," right?), so I downloaded MarineVerse Sailing Club for the Meta Quest 3, and it became my "Upgrade of the Week."

How I learned to sail the (virtual) seas with MarineVerse Sailing Club

The next time I go sailing (which I hope is going to be soon, eh, Doug?), I'm going to be armed with whatever salty seamanship skills one can gain in virtual reality. MarineVerse Sailing Club lets you pilot and race five different crafts, from dinghies to yachts, in exotic VR locations all over the world like fake-Sydney and ersatz-Rio. But more importantly to me, it's a way to learn the basics of sailing: things like the names of parts of the boat, and more advanced boat-biz like tacking, jibing, and right-of-way rules. It features a series of easy-to-follow lessons that are way more interesting and fun than just reading about sailing, and you can take what you learn and face off with others in multiplayer races, or just sail around the virtual seas.

I haven't really gotten into the community aspect of it yet, but Sailing Club has an active userbase of thousands of scalawags, many of whom are real-life sailors, who compete in organized racing leagues and jaw about the sea on Discord, just like a real sailing club. It's the kind of niche community that flourishes in virtual spaces.

The focus is on realism instead of thrills and the graphics are very last-generation, so I don't know if I would recommend Sailing Club strictly as a game, but as a learning tool or cheap fix when you're far from the marina, it's worth $29.99. Even if you throw in the cost of a Meta Quest 3, that's a small fraction of the $10,000 you'd pay for a cheap sailboat.

Obviously, you're only scratching the surface of sailing knowledge with a VR simulation, and the best VR sailing experience is about a two on the awesomeness scale compared to actually floating around in the ocean, but if you're like me, and you don't want to be a total sailing noob, it's a very fun first step. Ahoy!


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Cleaning your home can be exhausting and time-consuming at the best of times—but then there are all of those areas that are also just downright annoying to clean, often because they are difficult to reach or uncomfortable to work on.

To help you out, here is a range of gadgets, tools, and products that can make cleaning those problem areas a little faster, easier, and less likely to raise your blood pressure. If you’re tired of climbing ladders, kneeling until your back aches, and wasting time doing cleaning tasks that don’t actually seem to leave your house feeling cleaner, consider these 10 products that can make cleaning less annoying.

This picking tool will keep your vacuum brush clean

Your vacuum has a roller brush that gathers up hair and dust from the floor—and that brush can get completely wrapped up in hair and other debris, reducing its effectiveness. That results in more time spent running the vacuum, a shorter lifespan for the appliance, and a lot of frustration. This picker tool is a thread-ripper designed specifically to clean your vacuum’s brush. Just rake it through that tangled mess and pull all that hair and string out of there.

This flexible drain cleaning tool is more effective than traditional snakes

If you’ve lately been standing in a half-inch of lukewarm shower water or waiting patiently for the water to go down in your sinks, it’s likely that your drains are clogged with hair and other...stuff. Cleaning out a drain requires either disassembling the drain or using harsh chemical cleaners that don’t always work (and can damage your pipes over time). Instead, pick up a drain weasel. It’s essentially a miniature drain snake—you push it into the drain, turn the crank, and pull out a wad of the grossest stuff you have ever seen.

This tool makes cleaning blinds less time-consuming

Cleaning window blinds is a tedious task without the right tool. Blinds are flexible and easily damaged, so you have to be careful wiping them down with a rag or paper towel, which means you often leave a lot of damp dirt behind. This window blind duster brush makes things easier—just insert it between two of the blinds and wipe away all that dirt. The microfiber sleeves can be washed and re-used, and the tool works on two blinds at once.

A cleaning powder to take care of the part of your toilet you never think about

One spot most people completely ignore in their house is the toilet tank. It’s just a reservoir of water, so why bother cleaning it? There are some good reasons, actually. Uncleaned tanks can lead to the growth of mold and bacteria that can stink up your bathroom and, in rare cases, cause health issues. Cleaning the toilet tank can be a thankless job, unless you use a cleaning product like this cleaning powder, which does it for you. Just dump it in and stir—preferably before you go to bed or leave the house, as the longer you let it work the better your results.

Use this extension tool to clean your baseboards without straining your back

Oh, man, baseboards. They’re so easy to overlook, because they’re way down at floor level. But when you do happen to get an up-close look at them, you realize that they’ve collected months of dust, dirt, and stains, and that means getting down on your knees and cleaning them. But this baseboard cleaning tool makes it a lot easier. You can use it from a standing position, and the contoured pad makes it easy to clean all of the baseboard without resorting to the invention of new yoga positions.

A silicone broom is a great way to deal with pet hair on your carpets and couches

If you have pets, you know that they are essentially fur-generating machines, and it’s the fur that gets embedded into your carpets and upholstery that’s the real problem. Even the most powerful vacuums can struggle to pull it out. Save yourself the trouble and pick up a silicone broom like this one. After vacuuming, use the broom on your rugs and other areas—it will pull out a shocking amount of fur that’s been trapped in the pile.

A gel that can clean mold and mildew from grout and other surfaces

few cleaning tasks are more frustrating than cleaning moldy grout or caulk. It takes a long time, and that time is generally spent sweating and kneeling as you scrub away with a cleaner that seems like it could melt steel, but which doesn’t seem to have any effect on the dark stains at all. Make this annoying chore a little easier with this grout stain whitening gel. Just apply it to your stained grout and caulk, leave it on for as long as needed (it’s clear, so you can literally see its progress), then wipe it off and enjoy your sparkling shower, sinks, and windows.

This tool that cleans your ceiling fans, no ladder required

Ceiling fans make your house more comfortable and energy-efficient, but no one cleans them often enough. If you’ve ever had to climb up there and caught a glimpse of a weirdly sticky, dust-encrusted fan blade, you know how disgusting they can get. And they’re challenging to clean. Not only do you have to climb to their level, they often move around too much for easy scrubbing, and dust and dirt falls off of them onto your floors and furniture. The Blade Maid is a great solution—this tool allows you to clean your fan’s blades safely from the floor, using a clever dual-pad design that gets the top and bottom of the blades clean and traps debris.

A magnetic double-sided window cleaner to clean both sides of your windows at once

Cleaning windows is essential if you want your house to actually feel clean. No matter how tidy everything is on the inside, if you’re squinting through grime when you look out the window it won’t be enough, and you have to clean both the inside and the outside. This magnetic window cleaner makes doing both easier—and safe. Add detergent and water, secure the cord around your wrist so you don’t lose the tool, and clap each half on either side of the window to clean them both at once.

A Damp Duster mop that works better than a dusting cloth

The Damp Duster is essentially a grooved sponge, and it works by what feels like magic: You dampen it with water, then dust with it. It molds itself to surfaces and pulls dust and other dirt away easily, no sprays or solvents required—you just get it wet, dust a surface, rinse it, and repeat. It’s doesn’t leave streaks, and can be reused more or less forever.


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For the residents of the place known only as "the Town," that feeling of being trapped in your small hometown is literal: Once you set foot in the place, you can never leave it. That's more than just a metaphor in the sci-fi series From: the Town is surrounded by woods inhabited by bloodthirsty creatures, a fact hapless new residents the Matthews family discover only after it is too late to leave.

While statistically, there must be plenty of people out there who are perfectly content to stick around the place where they grew up, this queer boy ain't one of them. And I can't be alone, because there are lots of other shows about the nightmarish potential of seemingly pleasant little communities, most of them featuring characters who are in some way trapped there, including these 10 standout examples. From is streaming on MGM+.

Midnight Mass (2021)

It might not be the best of Mike Flanagan's Netflix work, but it's certainly the most emotionally devastating. Riley Flynn (Zach Gilford) returns to the tiny, isolated community of Crockett Island, his arrival coinciding with that of Catholic priest Father Paul Hill (Hamish Linklater). Riley is wrestling with his justifiable guilt over a drunk-driving death for which he was responsible, while the charismatic priest is reviving the town's once-flagging religious fervor while exacerbating local tensions. The brewing conflict, involving the limits of both faith and guilt, is fascinating, while the inseparably horrific elements are rather terrifying. Stream Midnight Mass on Netflix.

Wayward Pines (2015 – 2016)

Based on a trilogy of Blake Crouch novels, this show initially, stars Matt Dillon as a Secret Service agent investigating the disappearances of two fellow agents in the Idaho town of Wayward Pines. Things go awry pretty much immediately, and he wakes up from a car accident to find one of the agents (Carla Gugino), who's also his ex, having settled down in the seemingly idyllic community—and 12 years older than when he last saw her only a few weeks earlier. Even more dramatically, the local sheriff (Terrence Howard) enforces a strict "no one ever leaves" policy, on pain of having one's neck slit—fear of being stuck in a small town being both a common theme and, apparently, an American nightmare. The mysteries pile up from there. Stream Wayward Pines on Hulu.

Dark (2017 – 2020)

Dark began as a mystery involving a missing child and evolved, over its three seasons, into a wildly complex time travel narrative exploring dark family secrets over the course of several generations. The German import has a striking look and incredibly atmospheric feel, with an ensemble cast of teens and adults whose narratives are deftly intertwined. It turns out that small towns in Germany might hold as many horrors as those of the United States. Stream Dark on Netflix.

The 'Burbs (2026 – )

By no means a tonal match for From, this fun and very loose adaptation of the 1989 Tom Hanks film finds Keke Palmer's Samira and Jack Whitehall's Rob moving back to his impossibly safe and tidy hometown. Their house happens to be across the street from a dilapidated Victorian eyesore that may or may not have been the location of a murder a couple of decades before—a murder of a girl who made the mistake of trying to get away. As Samira adjusts to new motherhood as well as life on the cul-de-sac, she learns that even the nicest of her neighbors (played by Julia Duffy, Paula Pell, Mark Proksch, and Kapil Talwalkar) have secrets, and comes to suspect that her husband knows more about the missing girl than he's letting on. Stream The 'Burbs on Peacock.

Twin Peaks (1990 – 1991, 2017)

With all due respect to every other "small towns are weird" show, I'm not sure that there's any finer example of the form than than this groundbreaking bit of weirdness from David Lynch and Mark Frost, in which teens and adults in the deceptively quiet Twin Peaks face tragedy accompanied by supernatural threats from outside of our normal space and time. I think? The mysteries here aren't really meant to be solved as much as pondered with an eye toward nebulous existential dread (and if that's not your idea of fun, I'm not sure what you're doing here). Kyle MacLachlan plays FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper, who arrives in the title town to investigate the murder of teenager homecoming queen Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee), precipitating a (very) long night of the soul as Cooper uncovers secrets and mysteries among the town's delightfully, and often disturbingly, weird residents. Stream Twin Peaks on Paramount+.

Castle Rock (2018 – 2019)

Canceled after two (rather excellent) seasons, Castle Rock was a victim of its marketing. The show was promoted as a dive into some kind of Stephen King connected universe, promising Easter eggs without suggesting much by way of storytelling. And yet! There are actual stories here, with real dramatic heft—the first season’s “The Queen,” told from the unstable perspective of a character (played by Sissy Spacek) with worsening dementia, was one of the best, and most existentially horrifying, things on television that year. The second season introduces young Annie Wilkes, (Lizzy Caplan), the Kathy Bates character we know from Misery. The cast across the two seasons is stellar, and includes Bill Skarsgård, a creepy character not named Pennywise. There’s plenty of stuff for King fans to sink their teeth into as we dive into the backstory of a different Stephen King town, but it all works rather well on its own. Stream Castle Rock on Hulu.

Haven (2010 – 2015)

A couple of Stephen King situations here, which feels entirely fair given the writer's ease in situating the most horrific events imaginable in the most seemingly innocuous locales. Based on the King novella "The Colorado Kid," this X-Files-esque procedural has got the "weird stuff in a small town" vibe down pat. Emily Rose stars as Audrey Parker, an FBI Special Agent sent to the title town of Haven, Maine on a routine case. Soon, she gets drawn into “the Troubles," a series of harmful supernatural events that have recurred throughout the town’s history—and, by no coincidence, they are happening again. A supernatural-case-of-the-week format gives way to a bigger mystery when Audrey comes to learn that this isn’t her first time in Haven. Stream Haven on Peacock and Prime Video.

It: Welcome to Derry (2025 – )

One more from King, who's not just great at situating horror in small towns, but in conveying the unique trauma of being a kid trapped in a small town. Set in the 1960s, this It prequel dives into the backstory of Derry and Pennywise the clown through the eyes of children who met him during his previous visit to the town. By the end of the first episode, it's clear that even the most adorable children aren't safe, and this is a show that will, if nothing else, go hard—and that's before Bill Skarsgård's memorably creepy Pennywise even shows up, and before we dig deeper into the secrets and lies of the adults of Derry. Stream It: Welcome to Derry on HBO Max.

The Returned (2012 – 2015)

A slow-burn French mystery, The Returned finds the dead returning to life in a tiny French town: a teenage bus-crash victim; a child killed by burglars; a groom who died by suicide on his wedding day; a serial killer. The arrival of these people—they're literally zombies, but the show veers from the usual tropes—wildly complicates life for their families, even as strange phenomena accompany them, including the reveal of a town lost beneath the local lake. Audiences were split on the ambitious second season, but the first is a masterpiece. Stream The Returned on Prime Video and Tubi.

Hemlock Grove (2013 – 2015)

One of the first of Netflix's original series, this supernatural thriller takes us to the title Pennsylvania town, where economic realities have shut down the steel mill and left residents with few options other than the two remaining employers, the Godfrey Institute for Biomedical Technologies and the Hemlock Acres Hospital. Take your pick, but do so knowing that Olivia Godfrey (Famke Janssen), head of the Godfrey Institute, is rumored to be conducting all sorts of weird experiments. When two teenage girls are murdered, a 17-year-old Romani kid, rumored to be a werewolf, is the prime suspect. And while he actually is a werewolf, that doesn't make him a murderer. Rent Hemlock Grove from Prime Video.

Teacup (2024)

Given his place in the horror-novel pantheon, it's a bit surprising that Robert McCammon's novels haven't been adapted more than just this once (though there's at least one more in development). Teacup takes the limited locale of From and shrinks it even further: here, the characters are not bounded by a town from which they can't escape, but by the borders of their rural Georgia ranch. Leaving will get you killed, and even just trying to leave is likely to leave you injured. Yvonne Strahovski and Scott Speedman lead the cast of mysteriously trapped characters, and while the show was cancelled after just one season, it builds to an effective, and ruthlessly brutal, conclusion. Stream Teacup on Peacock.


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Running gives you a lot of things: Stress relief, personal records, chafing—the list goes on. In fact, you can add "butter" to that list right now.

Running content creator Libby Cope has gone viral not for her pace or mileage, but for what she makes along the way. Her video showing how she churns butter on a train run has racked over one million likes across Instagram and TikTok. Let's dig into the science of how this works, and why this is my favorite kind of running influencer content right now. 

How to churn butter while you run

In her viral videos, Cope pours heavy cream and salt into double-bagged Ziplocs, tucks the squishy dairy parcels into her running vest alongside her boyfriend, and heads out onto the trails. By the time they're done, so is the butter. They spread it on sandwich bread and eat it right there. So, how crazy is this feat exactly?

As the Center for Dairy Research explains it, this sort of makes perfect sense. Milk is an emulsion—a mixture of fat and water molecules that don't naturally want to coexist. Left alone long enough, milk will begin to separate, with the fattier molecules floating to the top. That fatty layer skimmed from the surface is cream. And cream, it turns out, is one aggressive trail run away from becoming butter.

When cream is agitated—like with all the shaking that comes with a trail run—the fat molecules suspended within it start bumping into each other. Eventually, they begin to stick together, clustering into larger and larger clumps and pushing the remaining liquid (buttermilk) to the outside. What's left in the center of that shake-up should be butter.

The key variables are time and intensity of agitation. A casual stroll probably won't cut it, since the movement needs to be sustained and vigorous enough to keep the fat molecules colliding. A trail run, with its constant up-and-down impact, its jostling vest pockets, and its 30-plus minutes of continuous movement, is more likely to get the job done. Essentially, your body is doing the work a wooden churn or a stand mixer would otherwise do.

There are plenty of other variables to consider, of course. Cold temperatures can slow the process, while too much heat will melt the whole production. Quality and amount of ingredients, the intensity of the run, and the weather outside all play a role in refining this run-churn process.

Cope’s videos aren’t the only examples of runners using their workout to make food. Running influencer TrailswithZach posted a tutorial last fall of how he makes chocolate ice cream while running, garnering over 137 thousand likes. Here’s another example from runner Irene Choi, who took things in a more creative direction with a corn juice honey butter recipe.

Why this social media trend matters (beyond the butter)

At a time when the online running community feels plagued by unrealistic expectations, this micro-movement is a breath of fresh air. It could be easy to write all of this off as a quirky internet moment, but there’s a deeper takeaway here. Cope told Runner's World that the experience has been a grounding reminder of why she runs in the first place, and all the joy it brings her. 

That's the part that sticks, much like butter on bread. Online running culture gets daunting and discouraging, with all the pressure to buy the right shoes, post the fastest times, sign up for all the trendiest races, and so on. Churning butter while you run is a joyful reminder that running can also be playful and weird. Even if you don’t get down and dirty with buttercream yourself (something I have zero plans to do), these videos are a great way to reflect on why you run in the first place.


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A criminal group suspected of running an online fraud scheme in Germany, which defrauded victims of around €1 million, has been dismantled through judicial cooperation coordinated by Eurojust.

Germany online fraud scheme

On 10 March, German and French authorities arrested three suspects in a joint operation. The main suspect, located in France, appeared before a judge after an arrest warrant was issued and remains in custody while a French court decides whether he will be transferred to Germany.

During searches in both countries, authorities seized assets including cryptocurrencies and jewellery.

According to the investigation, the criminal group allegedly used phishing emails to obtain victims’ online banking and mobile phone login credentials. They were then able to bypass additional verification steps required to transfer and withdraw funds from the victims’ accounts. The stolen money was subsequently moved to fake cryptocurrency accounts to further conceal its origin.

“Extensive evidence that was collected during the action day will now be further analysed as investigations into the online fraud scheme continue,” Eurojust said in the announcment.

This operation is the latest in a series of actions Eurojust has carried out with other countries to combat online fraud.


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