Hunter Boyce | The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (TNS)

Around half of the global population could need corrective lenses by 2050 — a health care burden that already costs Americans an estimated $7.2 billion annually. It’s because myopia, also known as nearsightedness, is at epidemic levels, according to Rochester Institute of Technology professor Andrew Herbert.

With May being Healthy Vision Month, now is a good time to explore why your eyesight might be changing. Although increased screen time plays a role, people are developing the condition for reasons other than their phones.

“Two recent studies featuring extensive surveys of children and their parents provide strong support for the idea that an important driver of the uptick in myopia is that people are spending more time focusing on objects immediately in front of our eyes, whether a screen, a book or a drawing pad,” Herbert told the Conversation.

“The more time we spend focusing on something within arm’s length of our faces, dubbed ‘near work,’ the greater the odds of having myopia,” he continued.

A 2022 study out of Germany, and published on BMC Better Health, discovered sunlight plays an important role, as well. Children who didn’t spend significant time outdoors were more than four times more likely to develop myopia.

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For example, East Asia has seen booming levels of industrialization over the past 50 years, leading to more young people spending time in classrooms and less time outdoors. It’s that significant change in behavior that has led to increased troubles with nearsightedness.

“Countries in Western Europe, North America and Australia have shown increased rates of myopia in recent years but nothing approaching what has been observed recently in China, Japan, Singapore and a few other East Asian countries,” Herbert said.

“The two main factors identified as leading to increased myopia are increased reading and other activities that require focusing on an object close to one’s eyes and a reduction in time spent outdoors,” he continued.

The severity of these cases won’t be fully known for the next four to five decades, the 2022 study concluded. “It takes time for the young people being diagnosed with nearsightedness now to experience the most severe vision problems,” the researchers wrote.

©2024 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Visit at ajc.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

By Jim Rossman, Tribune News Service

It is high school (and college) graduation time and that usually means some gift-giving.

I’ve got a few gift ideas for your graduates that will be welcomed whether they’re headed off to college or still trying to figure out what’s next.

Here are three gadgets, and oddly, two of them are named Flow.

Tribit Stormbox Flow

I think Bluetooth speakers are an underrated gift.

Everyone loves listening to music or podcasts, and if you’re not wearing earbuds, you’ll want to be listening through a nice wireless speaker like the Tribit StormBox Flow ($79.99 at Amazon, but it’s been on sale for a bit less).

The Tribit StormBox Flow. (Tribit/TNS)

The Flow measures 3.5 inches by 7.9 inches by 2.1 inches and it weighs 1.5 pounds. It is made of smooth plastic with rubber feet on the bottom and the back, so you can have the sound pointing toward you or straight up.

Once you pair the Flow to your phone, it’ll stream all the sound, including phone calls. The Flow has a microphone so it acts as a speakerphone. There are buttons on the top of the Flow to turn it on and to raise and lower the volume and to pickup and hang up phone calls.

There are also buttons to cycle through some equalizer presets and to pair two Flows together to form a stereo pair.

The Flow has one 25-watt speaker driver, and I think it sounds good, especially if you tweak the EQ settings in the free Tribit app.

The Flow has a battery that can keep the music going for up to 30 hours and it has a USB port to charge your phone. Note, it’ll only provide USB charging until its own battery drops to 50%.

The Flow is large enough to sound good but small enough to carry around in your bag. I wish it was a bit lighter, but I imagine you’d be sacrificing sound quality and battery life.

Lofree Flow 100

I type a lot for my work.

It takes me about 30 seconds to know if a keyboard is worth keeping, and I like a keyboard that isn’t too loud and doesn’t make my fingers tired after typing a few hundred words.

I’ve been using a new keyboard from Lofree called the Flow, and it’s kept its spot on my desk for about two months now.

The Flow comes in two models, with 84 keys ($159) or 100 keys ($169). The 100 key model I tested includes a number keypad on the right side. Lofree calls the Flow the Smoothest Mechanical Keyboard, and the action on mine is very nice. Typing is almost effortless and as fast as my fingers can go.

You can get the keyboard in white with ghost switches, or black with phantom switches (mine).

The keys have Kailh Full POM switches. POM, or Polyoxymethylene is a type of plastic known for extreme resilience and low friction.

The ghost switches are described as “linear” with quiet sound and featherlight touch. The phantom switches are “tactile” with gentle sound and responsive touch. There are all kinds of specs and diagrams on Lofree’s website showing the tactile point, operating point and return point of each key type. I don’t quite understand all the specs, such as “actuation force” levels, but I believe the phantom switches take a bit more pressure to activate and they spring back a bit quicker.

The keys are hot swappable, so you can easily remove and change them.

The keyboard body is made of aluminum and it connects to your computer via USB or Bluetooth. There are white LED lights under the backlit keys and there are LED lights on either side of the keyboard at the bottom, which looks really cool (you can customize the color).

Baseus Blade 2 Smart Power Bank

I’m a big fan of external batteries. I love being prepared and I hate running out of power, especially on my mobile gadgets.

The Baseus Blade 2 ($99.99) is a 12,000-milliamp-hour external battery in a unique form factor. Instead of a bulky brick of a battery, the Blade 2 is shaped flat (7.3mm), more like a drink coaster.

The Baseus Blade 2 external battery. (Baseus/TNS)

The Blade 2 has some features that I haven’t seen on too many external batteries, like an app to monitor the battery activity and a color screen to show you the charge level and in/out power levels.

The battery can provide 65-watt fast charging from its two USB-C ports, which can also be used to charge the battery (60W max input). You can charge two devices at once and the screen will show you the current charge status of each device.

The battery is good for more than 20,000 charge cycles.

The combination of the battery’s capacity, charging speed and form factor make this a very easy battery to carry. I carry a small laptop bag, and the Blade 2 slips in with almost no added bulk.

Jim Rossman is a tech columnist for Tribune News Service. He may be reached at jrossmantechadviser@gmail.com.

©2024 Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

By Holden Lewis | NerdWallet

If you’re in the market for a home, you might wonder how you’ll be affected by a class-action lawsuit involving real estate agents and commissions. On April 23, a judge granted preliminary approval to the settlement proposed in March by the National Association of Realtors, which means new rules are on track to go into effect in July or August.

None of which means you have to suspend your home search. Here’s what to know about working with a buyer’s agent this season.

What are the new rules?

In the lawsuit Burnett v. National Association of Realtors et al., a group of home sellers argued that NAR and some major real estate brokerages had enforced rules that effectively limited the sellers’ ability to negotiate on commissions. Sellers have traditionally set the commissions for the agents on both sides of the deal.

As part of the settlement, NAR promised to alter some business practices. The three main changes are:

Buyers, not sellers, will decide how much the buyer’s agent will be paid for a completed sale.
Commissions for buyer’s agents will no longer be listed on the multiple listing service, a database of properties for sale in a geographic area. Previously, MLS fields visible only to agents, but not consumers, specified what percentage commission sellers were offering for each property.
Your agent will be required to “enter into a written agreement” with you before giving you a tour of a home. While such contracts — often called buyer’s agency or buyer-broker agreements — are not new, there’s variation in how they’re implemented. Some states require them already. Some agents sign up buyers before showing properties, while others may explain the arrangement but not ask the buyer to sign anything until there’s a house to make an offer on.

These contracts will likely be mandatory by mid-July, and you can expect your agent to ask you to sign one sometime between now and then.

How much will a buyer’s agent cost me?

Your contract will specify how much your agent will be paid. For now, buyers and sellers are likely to travel the path of least resistance and pay the area’s customary commission. That’s 2.5% to 3% to each agent in most places.

But you probably won’t have to pay your agent out of pocket. In most cases, you should be able to add your agent’s compensation to your offer.

For example, let’s say you are paying your agent a 2.5% commission, and you make an offer on a $400,000 house. A 2.5% commission on $400,000 is $10,000. So you could offer the seller $410,000 on the condition that the seller pays your agent $10,000 at closing.

Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Housing Administration have indicated that they’re OK with offers that include compensation for the buyer’s agent.

That leaves out VA loans, which are mortgages guaranteed by the Department of Veterans Affairs. Buyers using VA loans aren’t permitted to pay real estate agents directly.

“Veterans are encouraged to negotiate with the seller, through the purchase offer, for the seller to pay for the buyer’s real estate agent or broker,” VA press secretary Terrence Hayes said via email.

That sounds like the VA is OK with offers that include the buyer’s agent’s commission, but that might not be the end of the story. The VA “is actively engaged with industry partners to establish flexible solutions that will ensure veterans maintain equal footing in the homebuying process,” Hayes said.

Can I save money by skipping the buyer’s agent?

Technically, you can buy a house without an agent representing you. But it’s not necessarily a money-saving hack, particularly for first-time home buyers.

Keep in mind that you’ll bargain with a listing agent who works in the interests of the seller. As you negotiate, you likely would benefit from the experience and support of an agent who represents your interests. Working with a buyer’s agent can save time and money.

Claudia Cobreiro, principal of Cobreiro Law in Coral Gables, Florida, advises: Don’t buy a house without being represented by a real estate agent or a lawyer. “I make so much money getting people out of crappy situations on contracts,” she says.

Hiring a buyer’s agent

What if you sign with a buyer’s agent, only to find that you don’t get along? The good news is that there’s leeway in the requirement for a written agreement.

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Danielle Rownin, a real estate agent with Keller Williams Realty in Connecticut, says she gives prospective clients options. “Option one is we could just sign the agreement just for today,” she says. If there’s a mismatch, the contract expires at midnight “and we’re free to move on.”

Chuck Vander Stelt, a real estate agent in Valparaiso, Indiana, advised starting out with a 30-day contract, which can be extended. “Home buyers should have an easy route to terminate the agreement while still in the looking-for-the-home stage,” he said via email.

You should treat the initial discussion with a prospective buyer’s agent as a job interview.

A seasoned agent is likely to deliver a prepared presentation. Rownin says her pitch to buyers lasts about an hour. “I take them through every single step of the transaction, what’s to be expected and what the next steps are — before we even step foot in the house,” she says.

Victoria Ray Henderson, owner and broker of HomeBuyer Brokerage in Bethesda, Maryland, said it’s important to ask if the agent works for sellers, too. Is it possible that the agent will want to represent both you and one of their seller clients? What if your agent and the seller’s agent work for the same brokerage? Both situations could entail conflicts of interest.

Henderson is an exclusive buyer’s agent, which means she and her brokerage represent only buyers. She said this guarantees “100% loyalty” because she and her company don’t have split allegiances.

Does it matter whether the agent is a Realtor?

You can choose the best real estate agent for you, regardless of which professional organizations they’re affiliated with.

Most, but not all, real estate agents are designated Realtors, which means they belong to the National Association of Realtors, the largest real estate trade association, and are expected to abide by NAR’s standards and code of ethics. Even non-Realtor agents will be affected by the settlement, because the agreement sets rules for any agent with access to the MLS, whether or not they belong to NAR.

Hurry up, or wait, or what?

Don’t let the proposed rule changes dictate the timing of your home purchase. Buyers who are ready should move ahead with the steps toward buying a home.

“The settlement isn’t necessarily what should be driving a home buyer’s decision,” says Ryan McLaughlin, CEO of the Northern Virginia Association of Realtors. “It’s really their life circumstances that should be driving their decision.”

McLaughlin’s advice reflects the consensus among real estate agents: Take care of your needs on your own timetable. After all, no one knows if a last-minute hitch will delay implementation of the new rules. “It’s business as usual until it’s not,” Rownin says.

 

The article Advice for Working With a Home Buyer’s Agent This Spring originally appeared on NerdWallet.