Lifehacker

If you have a grill that runs on propane, there will come a time when you need to deal with the empty tank. Depending on how old the tank is, there are a number of options available to you, from refilling or recycling to disposing of it entirely.Read more...

For many years, I had a Keurig. I loved my Keurig and its compact pods with their promise of just enough coffee to make the perfect cup without ever needing to measure. But every time I casually tossed one of those plastic pods in the trash can: guilt. They’re neither recyclable nor biodegradable, and tossing the…Read more...

The iPhone’s Voice Memos app is easy to use to record anything from a college lecture to a podcast—but not all recordings turn out to have the quality you’d like. You might end up with wind noise in the background, or a speaker’s voice that is barely audible. With patience (and some audio editing skills), you might…Read more...

This week, all the kids are breathlessly following corporate acquisition news and making one another sign non-disclosure agreements. It’s all very adult.

Some governments in other parts of the world have been providing free tests and masks for a while. The U. S. just got on board with the trend last week, promising to send four rapid tests to each household (you just need to request them at covidtests.gov). Now, we’re getting free N95 masks—but only three per adult.

Most needs are actually deep wants. I don’t need Maldon salt, but my scrambled eggs aren’t the same without the crunchy flakes. I don’t need to remove every germ from every garlic clove, but doing so can reduce bitterness. I don’t need an inflatable hot tub, but I bought one anyway. Do I need to devein every shrimp I…Read more...

If you were to ask someone at Nintendo about the Wii U, they’d likely say “Wii U? What Wii U? We make the Switch; that’ll be $350.” If it were up to the company, the world would entirely forget about this flop of a console. After all, the Switch prints money, and the Wii U was a dud, right? Commercially, sure. But in…Read more...

Facebook has introduced a new Privacy Center that gives users more control over how the platform collects and uses their data. Meta’s former namesake has long been the subject of complaints and concerns about its privacy and data policies. Now, users have a little more say over what data Facebook has access to.

There is something quite homey and family-oriented about the site of a whole roasted chicken. It makes a warm and welcoming centerpiece, can feed multiple people, and tells the guests at your table “I can cook” in no uncertain terms. If you eat meat, it’s a good staple to have in your arsenal of homemade meals.

We recently covered how cold is too cold to take your dog outside for a walk. But what is the best indoor temperature for our furry friends? The short answer is: Generally what is comfortable for us will be comfortable for them (unless you’re one of those people who sleeps with the windows open during a New Jersey…Read more...

Even the simplest visit to the doctor has a lot of moving parts: You have to make the appointment, wait for the appointment, and answer the same questions three times in a row because it seems like nobody actually reads your chart. Fortunately, the subreddit r/medicine has tips for navigating this whole situation.

The thought of someone breaking into your house and stealing your stuff is terrifying, and a lot of the “conventional wisdom” about how prevent it seems to prey on that fear. It’s not necessarily wrong advice, but it often seems based on our fear instead of reality, and often proposes a lot of (usually expensive)…Read more...

When you’re a kid, blackouts are exciting—they instantly transform your boring old house into a dark world of infinite adventure. When you’re an adult, blackouts are anxiety nightmares, forcing you to consider how long your food will stay fresh and ask yourself why you let your phone battery drop to 23 percent before…Read more...

When you feel a sneeze coming, you build up all this anticipation: you stop talking, the crook of your elbow is raised and at the ready, you have a tissue on hand, and then...nothing. The sneeze is stuck up there.Read more...

Traditionally, the honeymoon has been reserved for newlyweds as a time to celebrate, decompress, and, well, get it on. That’s at least partially because, once upon a time, many couples didn’t live together or have sex until marriage. Needless to say, times have changed—as relationship coach and counselor Jonathan…Read more...

Joel Coen’s expressionistic new take on The Tragedy of Macbeth has been (at least) a modest hit, and certainly a buzzy critical success. It’s very hard to quantify success for a movie with a dual streaming and theatrical release strategy during a Covid uptick, but it seems that few people have complaints about its…Read more...

Some built-in iPhone apps do such a good job there’s no need to look for third-party alternatives. While you might not give it much attention, Voice Memos is one of those apps, and it gets even better every few years. If you’re looking for a voice recorder that backs up your content and syncs between your devices,…Read more...

The 1990s encompassed my teen years, so of course I know all about Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee and the 1995 leak of their infamous sex tape. A viral sensation in those heady, early days of the internet, for a time it gained a level of fame that eclipsed that of its featured players, a Playboy model and Baywatch…Read more...

I am typically not good at caring for house plants. I currently have three indoor plants, all of which are “alive,” but they are not exactly thriving. Perhaps it’s the low light levels in the Pacific Northwest (I hear there are lamps for this), or my sporadic watering schedule. Or perhaps my plants are not getting the…Read more...

This week, the Better Business Bureau issued a warning about the proliferation of COVID testing scams. According to the BBB, fake websites and janky in-person testing centers are using COVID testing as an excuse to steal people’s personal and insurance information and/or make a few bucks. Here are some tips to avoid…Read more...

OLED screens are known for two things. First is their excellent image quality and high contrast levels, which you can now experience on all manner of OLED-equipped TVs, PC monitors, smartphones, tablets, and handheld gaming consoles. The second is “OLED burn-in.”Read more...

Trimming audio on an iPhone is surprisingly hard—but doing so on a Mac is surprisingly easy. While there’s a dedicated audio trimming tool in the QuickTime app, the iPhone and iPad have no such option. Sure, there’s the built-in Voice Memos app, but it doesn’t support editing external audio files. Even so, you can…Read more...

As someone who has done little more than wash with Target-brand face cleanser and use $4 Suave lotion on my face for the better part of four decades, when it comes to skincare, I’m a newbie. Through a mix of cluelessness, willful ignorance, and a little luck, I didn’t need to understand proper skincare or devote…Read more...

For all the rise of streaming has done to kill movie theaters and disrupt the entertainment world, I have to admit that I continue to be impressed by the weird stuff Netflix and its ilk spend their billions on. As audiences segment themselves ever further, content grows ever more niche, to the point that one of the…Read more...

Despite some recent negative press about AirTags revolutionizing the stalking industry, Apple has developed a good reputation compared to other big tech companies when it comes to privacy and security. Knowing this, you might be surprised to learn that Apple’s own web browser, Safari, isn’t safe to use right now on any…Read more...

After finishing a hard workout, one of your first priorities is probably to refuel your body. If you are pressed for the time, the impulse may be to reach for a bar or shake, but as convenient as they can be, they are often highly processed—and they can get pretty boring after awhile.Read more...

Photos and screenshots take up a lot of space on hard drives and cloud storage—in their unedited form, 5-6MB for an image file isn’t uncommon. If you’re trying to save space or just need to send smaller image files, you’ll want to compress them first. There are multiple ways to do shrink image files, and some will get…Read more...

Two days ago, Disney dropped the trailer for Moon Knight, the next in a line of streaming series set on the ever-expanding fringes of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Starring Oscar Isaac and Ethan Hawke, the show looks intriguing, suggesting a darker edge than much of the post-Netflix era of MCU TV. Unfortunately, it…Read more...

For something that’s such a big part of our lives, we rarely think twice about how we spend time with technology. We’ll work towards building good real-world habits, but what about the hours we waste doomscrolling in bed?

Styrofoam remains a ubiquitous material for takeout containers, disposable coffee cups, and protective cushioning for fragile items during shipping. The material—called expanded polystyrene or EPS—keeps your food and beverages hot and your packages safe, but unfortunately, it’s pretty bad for the environment. It takes…Read more...

I eat a lot of corn and corn products. I love cornbread, corn casserole, cornmeal-crusted catfish, grits, and polenta, and consider those last two to be distinct dishes. Much like pornography and erotica, it can be hard to delineate the differences between polenta and grits, but I can identify either on sight (or…Read more...

No one likes to stay in a hospital. Aside from the inevitable association between hospitals and illness (not to mention death), they tend to be everything we hate: chaotic, expensive, and uncomfortable. The whole experience can be maddening—you’re woken up at all hours for questions, tests, and medications; orderlies…Read more...

Have you ever tried getting rid of an old tree stump only to be left, well, stumped? (Sorry, sorry.) There’s no shortage of reasons to get rid of that pesky stump, whether you’re making way for new trees to grow, or you want to avoid trip hazards in your yard. Luckily, there’s also no shortage of solutions for you to…Read more...

Kids and their devices, am I right? Parents are constantly worrying about whether and how to limit screen time. But maybe we need to accept the inevitable—it’s really hard to keep them off of their phones, especially when we are always glued to own own, whether through necessity (for work) or due to our own bad habits…Read more...

So you survived your first day at the gym and you’re ready for the next step—or maybe you’ve mastered the dumbbells and machines but never quite figured out what to do with barbells. Either way, here are all the basic things you’ll need to know on your first day working with barbells.

It is not tomato season. Unless you are in the southern hemisphere, you have absolutely no business buying beefsteak tomatoes, heirloom tomatoes, or really any tomato other than the little bitty ones. I know you can acquire Vine Ripe and Roma tomatoes with ease during the winter months, but let’s be real: They suck.

If you installed the latest Windows Server update last week, you might have noticed something frustrating—your VPN wouldn’t connect to Windows. The issue mainly targets the Windows VPN client, but that affects multiple VPN devices, like SonicWall, WatchGuard Firewalls, and Cisco Meraki. If you uninstalled these…Read more...

In a world that seems increasingly determined to keep us apart, we’re all bound together by at least one universal experience: the frustration of talking to a real person on the phone at a customer service call center. Whether we want to complain, resolve a problem, or simply get information, call center interactions…Read more...

Your Mac’s standard screenshot tool includes the basic features most people need to capture images displayed on their screens, but it could be better. It doesn’t allow you to take scrolling screenshots (where you capture a long screenshot of an entire webpage), and other tools—including the two discussed below—are…Read more...

Considering that we spend up to 36 years of our lives in our beds (either sleeping, watching TV, or trying to get to sleep), our mattresses are important. But since they’re also large, expensive, and obscured by so many linens, it’s not always obvious when we should replace them (and given the investment, it’s not…Read more...

Back in the spring and summer of 2020, travel came with unprecedented flexibility. Flights, car rental reservations, and hotel bookings could be cancelled at the last minute, change fees were mostly eliminated, and airlines blocked middle seats.Read more...

If your Apple Watch is on its way out, there’s one last thing you need to do before selling or exchanging it: Completely wipe it clean so all your personal data is removed.

If you don’t live in a traditional growing region, access to fresh weed flowers is yet another modern luxury. Like any other agricultural output, cannabis flower has a shelf life, which explains why, throughout its long, long history, the drug has often been often consumed in its super potent (and super shelf stable)…Read more...

We’ve all been there: You head out to a nice restaurant with some friends, settle into your chairs in anticipation...and then the wine list drops in front of you, and suddenly you’re living that dream where you show up for your algebra test naked and everyone laughs at you.

Windows has a dedicated section for uninstalling apps, but Mac doesn’t. It’s supposed to be simpler on the Mac—you delete an app just like a file by dragging it to the Trash, then emptying the Trash. That works fine for many apps, but some are more difficult to uninstall because they leave their mark across multiple…Read more...

When the plan to provide free at-home COVID tests was announced in December, it looked pretty underwhelming—tests would be reimbursable by insurance, and free tests would be available at some community centers. Fortunately, the plan is now being rolled out, with an important addition: You can request free tests from a…Read more...

This evening, a huge asteroid known as 7482 (1994 PC1) will make its closest approach to us Earthlings for the next 200 years. It’ll pass us by at a cool 47,344 miles per hour, so you don’t want to miss your chance to catch a glimpse. Here’s how you can get a once-in-a-lifetime viewing of this space event, plus all…Read more...

Although the recommended amount of sleep is seven to nine hours a night, more than one-third of Americans get less than seven hours a night, according to a study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.Read more...

Remember that love affair we had with sourdough bread? It was an unusual moment in the sun for yeast. Some folks had extended, public bread-romances on social media, while others had short trysts that wielded little more than a dead starter, graying in the fridge. If you actually got to the baking stage, you probably…Read more...