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If you’ve spent any amount of time using ChatGPT, you already know that it often requires lengthy explanations, prompt tweaks, and/or extra context to get it doing what you actually meant. Often, but not always. ChatGPT is capable of performing useful tasks with single, one-line prompts. When worded correctly, ChatGPT will perform the following tasks without hesitation, without extra context, and without issue. Further reading: 9 mundane chores ChatGPT can handle in seconds, saving you hours Get meal ideas from available ingredients Dave Parrack / Foundry Most of us endure busy working lives these days, which leaves little time for doing much of anything else—and that can include grocery shopping for the ingredients needed for home-cooked meals. Thankfully, if you ever find yourself with a small set of ingredients and no idea what to make with them, ChatGPT can help. Just list the staple (and otherwise) ingredients you have available and ask ChatGPT for some meal ideas using them. As an example, I asked, “What meals can I make with rice, eggs, and frozen mixed vegetables?” ChatGPT suggested egg fried rice, a vegetable rice omelet, and baked egg fried rice muffins, among others. Pretty nifty in a pinch. Troubleshoot your problems Dave Parrack / Foundry When something goes wrong, your first instinct might be to panic or shut down—but maybe it should be to ask ChatGPT for help instead. ChatGPT can provide troubleshooting help whenever you’re stuck dealing with an unknown or unexpected issue. Just ask ChatGPT to provide a list of troubleshooting steps for whatever has gone wrong. In my case, I’ve asked what I can do about a Windows laptop that has stopped working—my short prompt of “Please list some troubleshooting steps for a Windows laptop that has stopped working” resulted in a solid list of 10 things I could try. This is equally useful for all kinds of other problems, like if your toilet randomly flushes on its own every so often, if your car starts making a weird noise, or if your wireless router is on the fritz. Just make sure you never share sensitive personal data with ChatGPT! Create tailor-made workout routines Dave Parrack / Foundry While YouTube remains an option when looking for a workout routine, ChatGPT can provide you with ones that are as general or as specific as you need them to be. Want exercises for people your age? Or stretches for an aching lower back? Or simple workouts you can do at home without any equiment? Ones you can do at your desk? No worries! I personally asked ChatGPT, “Please create a short workout routine a 40-year-old can do in their lounge.” (I’m a bit older than 40, but what better way to stay young than to work out as a younger person would?) ChatGPT came through for me with a 20-minute low-impact workout routine that I found challenging but doable. It’s one of the many ways you can use ChatGPT to actually improve your life. Generate comprehensive checklists Dave Parrack / Foundry Checklists are so useful for when you absolutely don’t want to forget an important step, like when you’re packing for vacation, hosting a party, or spring cleaning your home. ChatGPT can help by creating checklists for lots of different scenarios—and for best results, you’ll want to include specific details to clue ChatGPT into your specific needs. I asked ChatGPT to “Please provide me with a checklist for packing for a vacation to Italy in September.” Note that I mentioned both the location and time of year I was visiting! The more context you can provide in your prompt, the more accurate and helpful the checklist will be. Explain concepts (like I’m 5) Dave Parrack / Foundry With a single, one-line prompt, ChatGPT can explain even the most complex concepts in a way that you can grasp. Want to understand nuclear fission? Or how EV batteries work? Or what kind of engineering goes into modern data centers? Just ask! But make sure to tack on the “like I’m 5” to your prompt—taken from the ELI5 trope on Reddit—so that ChatGPT dumbs down the subject enough to be digestible no matter your background. As an example, I asked ChatGPT to explain the concept of time travel like I’m 5. (Feel free to change the age or add any other qualifiers you want.) Summarize online articles Dave Parrack / Foundry Do you feel like you’re inundated with so much information that you just can’t keep up or absorb it all? You aren’t alone. There are billions of web pages out there—no one has the time or energy to read every single thing that catches their eye. Thankfully, ChatGPT can help by analyzing any online article and spitting out the most important bits. In the example above, I asked ChatGPT to summarize my own article about mundane tasks ChatGPT can handle for you—and it accurately broke it down, correctly citing PCWorld as the source throughout. In testing, I found that ChatGPT sometimes even pulls info from other sources to fill in details and provide more context. See what happened on a day in history Dave Parrack / Foundry It’s important to not only know what has happened in the past, but to understand why those things happened. You could work your way through encyclopedias and history books, spending years of your life absorbing facts and putting them together… or you could put ChatGPT to work and get it to do all the heavy lifting for you. With a simple prompt, ChatGPT can list all the major historical events that have happened on a particular day. You can ask about a specific day in a specific year, or the same particular day throughout the years. If the response stokes your interest, you can follow up with probing queries and learn more. But for many, the initial one-line prompt should suffice. Answer simple trivia questions Dave Parrack / Foundry If you’re anything like me, you frequently come across questions to which you don’t know their answers. Not to worry! You can just ask ChatGPT to answer those questions for you, pronto. I’m talking about questions with definitive answers, such as trivia. Who won a certain sports tournament in a given year? What year was a certain music album released? Which mountain is the tallest in the world? That sort of thing. Any question with an open-ended answer, or one with multiple potential answers, could complicate matters. Learn a new word every day Dave Parrack / Foundry I love learning something new every day, whether it’s practical and purposeful or gimmicky and trivial. One thing that blends both ends of the spectrum is the concept of a “word of the day”—and ChatGPT can provide you with a new word every day via a one-line prompt. Just input, “Please provide a word of the day for today.” ChatGPT will then provide a word along with its meaning, origin, and an example of it used in a sentence. It will then ask if you’d like a different word each day from then on, saving you from ever having to ask again. Combine tasks like this with ChatGPT’s nifty “scheduled tasks” feature to boost your productivity and save lots of time! Translate words or simple phrases Dave Parrack / Foundry If you’re traveling abroad, you should try to learn some of the local language. Sure, most people around the world speak enough English to get by, but that’s no excuse for being lazy! Pick a few choice words or phrases and learn how to say them in the language of the country you’re visiting—and that’s something ChatGPT can help you with. To be clear, ChatGPT is more than capable of translating longer phrases and even whole articles, documents, and publications. However, once you enter that kind of territory, you’re leaving the “one-line prompt” zone and will need to write prompts that are more complex. Convert units of measurement Dave Parrack / Foundry As a kid, I never imagined how often I would need to convert one type of unit into another—but as an adult, I’m doing it far too often. While Google and other tools do a decent job of converting all types of units, I’ve actually found ChatGPT more capable. In this example, I asked ChatGPT to “convert 100 centimeters into feet and inches.” It converted 100 centimeters into both feet and inches along with its reasoning. You’ll be pleased to know that the math checks out! Further reading: 9 mundane chores ChatGPT can handle in seconds, saving you hours Read...

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Time for another price hike, this time from Peacock, and it’s a big one.  Starting July 23 for new subscribers, Peacock will raise the price of its ad-supported Premium tier to $10.99 a month, according to Variety, a $3-a-month increase that will make Peacock’s with-ads tier the priciest of the biggest streaming services.  Meanwhile, Peacock Premium Plus will go up to $16.99 a month, also a $3/month increase.  Annual rates for both Peacock plans will both go up as well, to $109.99 a year for Peacock Premium and $169.99 for Peacock Premium Plus.  Current Peacock subscribers will see the rate increase on their next bill after August 22.  Because Peacock’s price hike for new subscribers hasn’t kicked in yet, there’s still time to pony up for a year of Peacock at the current annual rate of $79.99 for Peacock Premium or $139.99 for Peacock Premium Plus, but you’ll need to do so before July 23. With the price hike on its Premium tier, Peacock’s with-ads plan will be more expensive than those of Disney+ ($9.99 a month), HBO Max (ditto), Hulu (also $9.99/month), Amazon Prime Video ($8.99/month), Netflix ($7.99/month), and Paramount+ ($7.99 a month).  In an interesting wrinkle, Peacock is planning to roll out another new tier that’s cheaper than its ad-supported Premium plan.  Peacock Select will be a $7.99-a-month plan that will offer select (natch) “next-day” content from NBC and Bravo, Vulture reports. Expect such shows as Law & Order, Saturday Night Live, the Housewives series, and Days of our Lives, including a “broad assortment” of other shows.  Missing from Peacock Select will be Peacock Originals including Poker Face, Love Island, and The Traitors. Even worse—no Sunday Night Football, nor any NBC Sports programming at all, Vulture adds.  The last time Peacock raised prices was in April 2024, just a few months before the 2024 Summer Olympics would kick off. That price hike brought Peacock Premium up to $7.99 a month, up from $5.99/month (ah, those were the days). The ad-free Premium Plus tier went up to $13.99 a month, a $2-a-month price increase at the time. Read...

A couple weeks ago, a reader in Advisorator’s Tech Buds forum asked me about the best streaming TV setup for a 90-year-old neighbor who is not tech-savvy. My mind immediately jumped to Roku, whose smart TVs and streaming players have always emphasized simplicity. But I also know that Roku’s streaming platform has become more complicated in recent years, and its once-basic menu system is not what it used to be. While I’d still recommend Roku to someone who’s on the lower end of the tech learning curve, our neighbor in this scenario would benefit from some out-of-the-box settings tweaks. Whether you’re setting up a Roku for yourself of someone else, here’s how to make the streamer as easy to use as possible: Remove any payment methods on file with Roku Jared Newman / Foundry Roku is now requiring new users to put a payment method on file during setup. Many streaming services will use this payment method to speed up the subscription process, and the checkout flow is so frictionless that one could easily end up with unexpected charges. My advice: Once you’re finished with setup, immediately head to my.roku.com/payment/account in a web browser, hit the “…” button next to the payment method, then hit “Remove.” The device will still work just fine, but without the possibility of unwanted subscriptions through Roku. If you do want to keep a payment method on file, consider setting up a limited-use virtual card with spending limits to avoid any billing surprises. Skip all the app promos and trial offers Jared Newman / Foundry While completing the setup on your phone or computer, Roku also tries to load up your device with extra apps and free trials (which will auto-bill the aforementioned payment method at the end). If you’re setting this Roku up for someone else, just skip all these offers and add the specific apps you want outside of the setup process. There are usually better ways to get free trials and discounts anyway. Get off Roku’s mailing list After creating an account, Roku will immediately start pelting you with promotional emails. There’s no way to opt out as part of the setup process, so take the opportunity to unsubscribe while it’s fresh in your mind. Locate the welcome email Roku sends at sign-up, scroll to the bottom, and click the unsubscribe button. While you’re at it, head to my.roku.com/account/email in a web browser and uncheck the “Emails with product tips, the latest releases, hot new channels, and customer exclusive discounts” box as well. Remove unnecessary apps Jared Newman / Foundry Even if you select nothing during the setup process, your Roku will still include some pre-installed apps, such as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Hulu, Disney+, and Apple TV. Roku also promotes its own services on the home page, including the Roku Channel, a Kids and Family hub, the live TV guide, and the recently acquired Frndly TV. We’re keeping things simple here, so get rid of any home screen tiles that the user isn’t likely to need. To delete an app on Roku, hit the remote’s * button, then hit “Remove app.” (Personally, I’d suggest keeping the free Roku Channel and live TV guide, which are solid sources of free content.) Be careful with Prime Video Amazon’s Prime Video app comes pre-installed on Roku, and it is a valuable source of content for Prime subscribers. The app has its own subscription and rental marketplace built in, however, which are tied to the user’s Prime payment method. Like Roku’s own billing system, it’s an unfortunately frictionless way to wind up with a bunch of unwanted subscription charges. That doesn’t mean you need to delete the Prime Video app, but talk it over with the person for whom you’re setting the device up, and make sure they understand about how it can bill them without their needing to enter any new payment details. Hide as many side menus as possible Jared Newman / Foundry Roku’s once-simple navigation menu now has nine submenus as of this writing, some of which can be redundant. You don’t need a “Live TV” side menu, for instance, when there’s also a “Live TV Guide” button on the main home screen. Head to Settings > Home Screen > Menu Items, and you’ll have the option to hide the Live TV, What to Watch, Featured Free, Daily Trivia, and Sports menus. I suggest hiding most of them, except Featured Free and maybe Daily Trivia, if the person you’re setting it up for is into quiz games. Hide the home page recommendations Jared Newman / Foundry Roku also now adds a row of content tiles to what used to be just an app grid. These are promotional in nature and not all that helpful, so hide them by heading to Settings > Home Screen > Recommendation rows. Note that this setting will also hide the genre-based menus that Roku recently added to its home screen. These are a bit more helpful than Roku’s “Top Picks for You” tiles, but you can’t get rid of one without the other, and they do lead to a more cluttered menu overall. Keep the app icons large Roku now supports smaller app icons on the home screen, letting you fit four of them in each row instead of three. This can be helpful if you’re using a lot of apps, but sticking with larger icons makes more sense for our simplified setup. A newly installed Roku should use large icons by default, but if that ever changes, or you’re repurposing an old Roku that’s been set up with small tiles already, you can head to Settings > Home Screen > Tile Size and set them to “Larger.” Set up voice control apps Jared Newman / Foundry Roku devices can be great for playing music and podcasts, especially on models with voice control built into the remote. Instead of needing to navigate through the app, you can just say things like “play classical guitar.” To make this work as smoothly as possible, head to my.roku.com/account/voice and choose the music, radio, and podcast apps to play by default. (You can also choose a news app to use with a “play the news” voice command.) Note that for these apps to work, they’ll need to be installed and set up on the Roku first. Turn off autoplay Jared Newman / Foundry Roku’s default settings allow it to auto-play videos on parts of the home screen. This can be jarring, so turn it off by heading to Settings > Accessibility > Auto-play video and selecting “Off.” In my experience so far, this also appears to disable video ads on the Roku home screen, reverting to static banner ads instead. I’m not sure if this change will stick, but it’s worth trying at any age. This story is part of TechHive’s in-depth coverage of the best media-streaming devices. For more practical streaming TV advice, sign up for Jared’s Cord Cutter Weekly newsletter. Read...

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