Lifehacker

You know you need sunscreen and layers to protect you from the sun, lest you get a bad sunburn. It stands to reason that if UV rays can be bad for you, they can be bad for other things—even things not covered in skin. Your vehicles, for instance, can suffer sun damage, but just as you can intervene on behalf of your…Read more...

Google Lens is one of the company’s most useful and impressive tools: With it, you can scan objects in the world around you to learn more about anything from plants to pets, as well as lift text right out of an image. However, as it turns out, there’s a quick and convenient method to scanning with Google Lens that…Read more...

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there have been more than 2,000 confirmed cases of monkeypox across 37 different countries in 2022. While it’s true we might not be ready for monkeypox, the CDC is prepping anyone who will listen on how to lower your risk of getting monkeypox while having…Read more...

Most of the products that Apple is selling today are worth considering—but there are a few stragglers the company continues to sell that aren’t worth their tempting prices. Some of these products aren’t going to get software updates for much longer, and others have a better alternative for a slightly higher price. If…Read more...

Cars are terrible investments. New cars depreciate by about 20-30 percent in their first year, and just keep on losing value after that. Eventually, your car hits a bottom in terms of resale potential, and coasts there for a bit before descending into its final form: The beater. Of course, a car’s value isn’t measured…Read more...

A smartphone is only as good as its battery, and since the release of the first iPhone, Apple has done its part to make sure you’ll remember to charge it, hitting you with a pop-up alert when your charge drops below 20%. While that system is effective, the warning might not come soon enough: If you’re nowhere near a…Read more...

Google Assistant is a useful part of the Android ecosystem. It helps you set reminders, make calls, and even look up that odd song. But at the same time, it’s one more thing vying for your attention. If you end up accidentally triggering Google Assistant every now and then, or you just don’t feel the use for it…Read more...

While we might love to watch birds, sometimes they build their nests in dangerous or inconvenient places near our homes. It can be difficult to deal with a recurring bird nest and the mess they can make, not to mention the danger to them when they nest near vents or fans. There are some humane ways you can discourage…Read more...

In Great Britain, they used to call the summer months “the silly season” because of the frivolous news stories that would populate the media due to the lack of “real” news. It seems to work the same way with young people on the internet: Summer is the silly season, so all of these stories are ridiculous.

Caviar has been in the zeitgeist lately, thanks to a recent NYT article about “caviar bumps,” or “tasting caviar off the back of your hand,” a weird rich person trick I wrote about over a year ago. (I did not, however, call them “bumps,” because I am not a dweeb who has never been offered real drugs.)Read more...

When you’re removing hair from your face or legs, all you really need is a razor and something to cut down on friction between your sweet baby skin and the blade. But if the goal is so simple, why are there so many products clamoring to help you make it happen? (The answer is capitalism.) But it’s true that each of…Read more...

Unless you’ve sworn off Google for good, at least some part of your digital life is likely entwined with the company. Maybe you only have a Gmail account, or maybe you rely on Google for everything from personal photo storage to sharing files at work. Chances are excellent you have some important data connected to…Read more...

The latest bit of fitness misinformation is making the rounds on TikTok, but I’ve seen it cropping up other places, too. Young women are singing the praises of Pilates (sometimes alongside barre, yoga, and walking), saying it helped them lose weight and tone their muscles where lifting weights did not. Something about…Read more...

What to get my husband for Father’s Day always fills me with a small amount of agita. He’s not picky, so he won’t be upset if he doesn’t get a certain special something. (In fact, there’s nothing he really wants, except things he “can use,” which doesn’t help.) He’s already received all the framed sports…Read more...

Air travel is simultaneously a triumph of human engineering skill and a prime example of the frustrations of modern life. On the one hand, an enormous metal tube lifts into the air and transports you at incredible speed. On the other hand, you have to resort to various hacks to make the experience more tolerable.

This TikTok video from Kylo Sten begins with a bold claim: “I work in TV post production, and almost all of you guys are setting your TVs up wrong.” Below are Sten’s top three TV-set-up mistakes, plus a few of our own to add to the list.

Bluetooth devices are more common than ever. It seems the wireless technology is baked into almost every product we buy: It connects our iPhones to our Apple Watches and Fitbits, our wireless headphones to audio sources, and our game controllers to our consoles. Of course, the more tech goes wireless, the easier it is…Read more...

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We’ve all experienced a panicked, uncomfortable moment (or many) when that dreaded, all-consuming “Oh shit, I’m about to throw up” sensation seizes our body and sends us sprinting to the nearest receptacle, or sink, or patch of grass, or anyplace that is not our own shirt and pants. While we can’t promise to keep the…Read more...

The U.S. National Park Service reports nearly 300 million recreational visits to their parks in 2021. In an effort to plan for similarly robust attendance numbers this summer, many of national parks have instituted a reservation system to prevent overcrowding and traffic issues and ensure adequate staffing—so if…Read more...

People are always trying to make bananas be ice cream, and who can blame them. Ice cream really is that bitch. She’s sweet and rich, cold yet comforting, and one of the first things to go when the diet starts. These approximations aren’t bad—the frozen banana “soft serve” that nearly crashed Pinterest is admittedly…Read more...

It’s a typical day: You boot up your search engine of choice, enter a query you’re curious about, then click on a link that looks promising. Actually, it’s not that useful, so you click the back button to check out more search results. Except, the back button does nothing. You try again: nothing. This website has you…Read more...

After a wait that seemed endless, two COVID vaccines are finally authorized for children under 5 years old. The FDA’s advisory panel voted Wednesday to grant emergency use authorization to both Pfizer’s and Moderna’s vaccines for children aged 6 months and up.Read more...

The lawn occupies a fascinating niche of American culture. The most-grown crop in the country, that patch of grass in your front yard offers nothing of practical value. We remain obsessed with a pretty lawn despite the fact that it’s thirsty, difficult to maintain, and expensive.

Inflation is rampant, interest rates are raising faster than at any time in the last 28 years, gas prices are skyrocketing, and the ongoing stresses of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the lingering pandemic, supply chain issues, and other factors aren’t helping matters. All of which means we’re in unquestionably murky…Read more...

As of this week, we are officially in a bear market. The S&P 500 has lost more than 20% of its value, with some tech stocks taking a much more severe beating than that—Netflix is tanking and Amazon’s stock has dropped nearly 40%.

The best cake topping is whipped cream. It’s light, delicate, mildly sweet, and works with everything from angel food cake to double chocolate mousse. Glazes, frostings, and cream cheese icings are all great, but whipped cream is the greatest. It highlights the star components while adding richness and moisture,…Read more...

When you become a parent, you quickly realize the importance of sleep, mostly because your kids (and by extension, you) just aren’t getting enough of it. Between the struggle to get your kids to fall asleep at bedtime and the regular nighttime wakings, sleep quickly becomes the one thing you crave more than anything…Read more...

Tabletop RPGs are a great way to socialize, play, and imagine with your friends, but it’s hard to find the time to play regularly. Whether the D&D group you started during the pandemic isn’t meeting as often, or you’re simply looking for a new way to get your dice-rolling fix, I have a possible solution for you: solo…Read more...

If your sneakers are extremely dirty but you don’t want to replace them, there are ways to get them back into good shape, if maybe not to their just-out-of-the-shoebox glory days. But with the right tools and materials, you can get pretty close. These are the best ways to restore and revitalize a pair of truly gross…Read more...

There are a variety of apps and sites available these days that can help you fill your prescriptions—and even get you prescriptions for things like birth control or some antibiotics. They’re convenient, cost- and time-effective, and easy to use—but are they totally on the up-and-up?

Back in the day—which for our purposes, we’ll define as the 1980s and ‘90s—parents operated differently. The opposite of “helicopter parents,” they were peak free range, letting their kids ride bikes for hours around the neighborhood, flit from house to house and yard to yard, drink from garden hoses, and only come…Read more...

Medication can be notoriously and prohibitively expensive in the U.S. Lack of price regulation, exclusivity rights, and general capitalistic forces contribute to this, but there are ways you might not be aware of that can save money on your prescriptions without forfeiting your health and financial stability.

It’s becoming rarer and rarer to see masks when you go out. If you live in a place where people were once good about masking up, chances are only a handful still do it. If your area is one where masks were rare to start with, I’d bet you haven’t seen a masked face in a while. But the pandemic isn’t over, and more than…Read more...

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In an ideal world, software would have no security vulnerabilities. Code would be perfectly written, omitting any bugs or glitches in the system that could be taken advantage of for hacking or other malicious purposes. As hard as developers might try to make that a reality, the truth is we will always have imperfect…Read more...

The sheer variety of cake that exists in the world is thrilling, if a little overwhelming. Deciding between a butterfly-shaped cake with motors in it or a tower of bougie three-dollar cupcakes the size of a thumbnail can leave you questioning your life choices.Read more...

If you live in an area with slugs, you know they can be a major garden nuisance. Nothing can ruin your elaborate gardening plans like seeing the remains of your tender seedlings eaten through down to the nibs. Unfortunately, slugs are notoriously hard to control without using pesticides that are damaging to other …Read more...

When learning to drive, one of the first things we’re taught is how to shift the vehicle into different gears (especially if it’s manual transmission): “D” to drive, “R” to reverse, “P” to park, and so on. There’s also usually a warning that if the car is in neutral and you’re on any type of hill, it can roll away. …Read more...

This week, you might have noticed a curious—albeit frustrating—issue affecting Instagram on iPhone: When you went to view someone’s new stories, the app would replay all their old stories, as well. This happened anytime they’d upload a new story, meaning you’d possibly have to skip through the same stories multiple…Read more...

Game publisher Bethesda announced Starfield back in 2018, but this week they opened the info-taps and dropped a ton of new details—and a 15 minute video of the open-world sci-fi RPG in action. It’s impressive: There will be 1,000 planets spread over 100 solar systems, building and customizing your own spaceship, a huge…Read more...

Severe sunburns come with a variety of symptoms and issues, from nausea to bright red skin—they can even require medical intervention. They can also come with blisters, which require their own care and treatment. Caring for sunburn blisters is tricky, though. They can be numerous, painful, and fragile. Here’s how to…Read more...

Finding what you’re looking for on a Google Search page is always a journey. You either end up repeatedly returning to the results page when you can’t find what you want, or you over-compensate by opening six different tabs at once, hoping one of them has what you’re looking for.Read more...

I was at a college party the first time I heard it: “If you break the seal,” my friend said darkly, “you’ll break the deal.” I was on my way to the bathroom, a standard and reasonable journey we all undertake multiple times per day—but, according to party legend, one that should put off as long as possible when…Read more...

I am a decidedly mediocre baker and an even worst decorator. As someone with a near-constant tremor that gets worse whenever I try to do fine, precise work, it’s just not something I’m going to be good at. But my biggest issue with baking and decorating cakes has little to do with my skills of an artist, and more to…Read more...

Every piece of tech carries the risk of bugs and security flaws, but Macs running Apple’s M1 chips are apparently vulnerable to an all-new category of threat. Security researchers at MIT’s Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) have discovered a hardware-based exploit—dubbed “PACMAN”—that could…Read more...

Whether you just graduated or are looking to break into a new field, landing an entry-level job can be key. LinkedIn just released a list of the fastest growing ones, so if you are looking for the areas with some expansion going on, consider these.

If you’re an entrepreneur who can work remotely, or one of the lucky ones whose employer isn’t requiring you to return to the office full-time, you may be interested in becoming a “digital nomad”—someone who’s able to legally live and work in a foreign country longer than a tourist visa would allow—for a period of one…Read more...

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According to a recent survey from Preply.com, 94% of Americans surveyed use euphemisms, mostly to politely describe bodily functions or sex. We don’t say “I just farted,” we say “I just broke wind.” (I don’t, but some people do. Maybe your grandma?)