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    I’ve tested the Apple Watch, Oura Ring, and other sleep trackers – 5 tips to get the best results

    Elyse Betters Picaro / ZDNETThere are thousands of songs about staying up all night to have fun, yet fewer about how nice it is to go to bed early. After a long day of work, nerve-inducing headlines, and strenuous exercise, all I want is sleep. That’s when the lyrics of Hall and Oates’ song, “When the Morning Comes,” a tune mainly about rejection that can be interpreted as an ode to a good night’s rest, come to mind: “It’ll be all right when the morning comes,” the duo sing. As a sleep enthusiast, I can’t help but agree.Also: New FDA-cleared blood pressure monitor delivers medical grade results at homeAs a health and wearables editor, I wear smartwatches and smart rings around the clock. By testing these products, my interest in optimizing my sleep and health has grown. Not to brag, but I’m amazing at sleeping — my roommates jokingly refer to me as the Sleepytime Tea Bear. I treat my sleep the same way a professional athlete treats their workout routine, and it’s paying dividends. My sleep scores reach the high eighties and low nineties consistently, and I get around eight hours — the expert-recommended daily sleep dose — every night. My focus is clear and my energy is long-lasting. If you want to level up your sleep scores, I’ve consulted experts from wearables specialists, such as Oura and Whoop, and drawn on my own experience using these products and witnessing my sleep results to compile a list of tips I swear by for better slumber. More

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    Your Oura Ring just got a major update for free – especially for women’s health tracking

    Nina Raemont/ZDNETZDNET’s key takeaways Oura launched features for pregnant and perimenopausal users on Tuesday. The science-backed features provide further context during periods of drastic biological change. The features are personalized, and the brand stresses data protection and privacy. Pregnant and perimenopausal women are getting more ways to track and understand their health, thanks to several new features Oura announced on Tuesday. The smart ring brand launched a redesigned Pregnancy Insights experience on the app alongside Perimenopause Check-In, available within the Cycle Insights tab. Also: 5 expert-backed tips to get better sleep – especially if you own a health-tracking wearableThe new features provide clarity and further context during two periods of drastic biological change in a person’s body and illuminate the normalities and abnormalities of each.  More

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    Linus Torvalds blasts kernel dev for ‘making the world worse’ with ‘garbage’ patches

    The Washington Post/Getty Images You can’t say Linux creator Linus Torvalds didn’t give the kernel developers fair warning.  He’d told them: “The upcoming merge window for 6.17 is going to be slightly chaotic for me. I have multiple family events this August (a wedding and a big birthday), and with said family being spread not […] More

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    I tested this new AI podcast tool to see if it can beat NotebookLM – here’s how it did

    Speechify The Speechify text-to-speech app enables its over 50 million users worldwide to convert any text, including documents, articles, PDFs, and images into audio, with over 200 voices to choose from. Now, the company is delving into a new type of audio: AI-generated podcasts.  Also: I finally gave NotebookLM my full attention – and it […] More