Lifehacker

Our habits as consumers have changed pretty significantly over the past few decades, especially when it comes to electronics. Given how quickly the technology improves, it’s not surprising that some people want to constantly upgrade their electronic devices and items like TVs—even if that means getting rid of a …Read more...

Thanks to its durability and rich color, brass—an alloy of copper and zinc—has been used for centuries to make everything from kitchenware and hardware, to household objects and decor. But brass also has a downside: It tarnishes easily. And, like everything else, brass can accumulate dirt and dust over time, leaving…Read more...

Whether you’re gardening indoors or outdoors, it’s important to find a spot for your plants with the right combination of sun, shade, and moisture where they can flourish—or at least not immediately die. And so if parts of your yard have issues with soil drainage, you may think that you won’t be able to grow any type…Read more...

Visiting a (genuine) ghost town is one of the closest things we have to time travel. This is especially the case when you come across a building or home that looks as though its occupants suddenly disappeared during the course of a day, without packing up any belongings before they left.Read more...

As long-time Lifehacker readers may recall, we’re not always the biggest fans of sponges. The most obvious example of this sentiment is a 2019 post by former Lifehacker staffer Nick Douglas entitled “Every Sponge Is Bad,” but there are more.Read more...

Watching the war in Ukraine unfold over the past few weeks, it has been hard not to feel helpless. And while we are limited in what we can do, financial contributions to the relief efforts have been encouraged.

Vibrators owe two things to Sex and the City: Mainstream normalization and, unfortunately, the proliferation of some scary sounding myths. In a now-infamous 1998 episode the HBO hit, high-strung Charlotte confides to deep-thinking Carrie, “I think I broke my vagina…with the rabbit [vibrator]. I’m scared if I keep…Read more...

When you think about creativity, who do you imagine? A tortured artist, perhaps? A child without preconceived notions of the world? A group of people brainstorming, or someone who comes up with a mind-blowing idea while stoned? All of these represent myths we tell ourselves about creativity. If you’re not one of those…Read more...

So you want to take a vacation in space. Unless you are Elon Musk, extremely rich, or both, your only option is to settle for the next best thing: a trip onboard Disney World’s Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser, a two-day immersive hotel/theme park experience that transports you into the middle of the sci-fi action in…Read more...

We all—well most of us—live by certain unspoken rules of etiquette that make life a bit more civilized and thoughtful. We offer to bring food or drink when invited to a party, we hold doors open for strangers trailing close behind us, we say “nice to meet you” after being introduced to someone new. These standard,…Read more...

Though intended as a celebration if Irish heritage and culture, many tend to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day with a trip to the pub and a plate of corned beef—occasionally forgetting, perhaps, that there’s more to Ireland than depictions of leprechauns. It’s all in good fun, I suppose.

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Has this ever happened to you? You’re out and about, minding your own business, when suddenly your iPhone hits you with an “AirPods Left Behind” message. You panic, wondering where you could’ve dropped your expensive earbuds—until you realize they never left your pocket. What gives, iPhone?

We know that if we want to maintain our health, prevention and early detection of diseases or disorders is key. Still, seeing a physician regularly can be expensive and logistically challenging—and a lot of people simply don’t do it. While the home test kit universe is exploding (you can test everything from your…Read more...

Apple updated the iPhone SE for the third time at the Peek Performance event. From the outside, it looks the same, but like many things in life, what’s inside that matters.

It’s tax season, folks. While it’s tempting to put off doing your return until the last minute, it’s probably better to go ahead and do it right now. The main reason to file your taxes early—i.e., before the April 18 filing deadline—is to get in line to receive your refund. The IRS says it expects to process returns…Read more...

I’ve never played Dark Souls. I’ve never played Demon Souls. I played the first hour of Bloodborne, and it nearly broke me. You can imagine, then, just how overwhelming I’m finding Elden Ring. But, the things is, I’m having a blast—who knew you could have this much fun while failing?

Like movie theaters or in-person shopping, hotel room service was already declining in popularity before the pandemic all but killed the practice completely. For years now, hotels have been steadily cutting back or all-out eliminating their room service options. In 2016, for instance, the American Hotel and Lodging…Read more...

Crypto mania has pushed decentralization into the mainstream, but Bitcoin is only one example of how blockchain can create new structures not controlled by corporations or centralized entities. (Though it’s ubiquitous, plenty of people still don’t even know what blockchain is. If you’re one of them, stop and read an…Read more...

Whether you’re more of a houseplant person or an outdoor gardener, you probably know how quickly the costs of pots, soil, fertilizer, and tools can add up. And that’s without the plants themselves. Fortunately, there are (legal) ways of getting plants without having to shell out a lot of money. Here are a few to…Read more...

Oliver Stone’s Wall Street gave us the iconic, and chronically misused, aphorism “greed is good,” but the movies generally love to show us the opposite.

This week, I’m answering important questions, like “which is cooler, Star Wars or Star Trek,” “What the hell is Elden Ring,” and “Can you just, like, move into your cubicle?” But most importantly: “Are there more doors or wheels?”

With COVID numbers falling and travel restrictions lifting, many people who’ve been road-tripping closer to home for the past two years are ready to take to the skies again. But do we still remember how?

Unlike most holidays, St. Patrick’s Day is less about the food, and more about the beverages. On top of that, what are largely considered the traditional dish and drink of the day—corned beef and cabbage, and green beer, respectively—are American inventions.

With more workers getting the green light to continue working remotely, those paying high rent prices in larger cities may be considering moving to a place with a lower cost of living. Unfortunately for them, a lot of other people have had the same idea, sending housing costs through the roof.Read more...

OneDrive is among the best cloud storage services around, but it has a problem—its tendency to bombard you with notifications and email spam. Upload photos to OneDrive, and the service starts hitting you up with “On this day memories” notifications on the regular. You’ll get a daily email from OneDrive asking you to…Read more...

Strikes are on the rise. Earlier today, Major League Baseball and the players’ union reached a (tentative) agreement for the 2022 season—it only took 99 days of a tense lockout to get there. Meanwhile, over in Minneapolis, teachers are entering their third day on strike in an attempt to secure smaller class sizes and…Read more...

On March 14, the nerdier side of humanity celebrates Pi Day, a holiday that “commemorates the irrational, transcendent, and never-ending ratio that helps describe circles of all sizes.” Pi is the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. It comes out to a figure that starts with 3.14, no matter the size…Read more...

If there’s anything I’ve learned from competing in multiple sports over the years, it’s that there is no single “best” way to train. Moves that are absolutely foundational in one area of fitness are optional or unheard of in another—and yet people can still get strong in one or the other.

Tile is a wonderful and versatile floor and wall covering. Water-resistant, cool to the touch, relatively easy to clean and maintain, and, if properly installed, long-lasting. That doesn’t mean it can’t be damaged, though, and there is nothing—nothing!—more infuriating than a single cracked tile in a field of perfect…Read more...

Maybe it comes from battling death itself as a job, but people who work in medicine can be some dark mf’ers, and you can see it in their slang. Not only have doctors and nurses perfected gallows humor, but they can use most of their “secret words” right in front of patients and their families and they’ll never even…Read more...

We’re cruising toward a world where cords and cables are obsolete, even to power our homes, but we’re not quite there yet. No matter how hard you try, there are probably some pesky cables marring the neat, minimalist perfection of your interior design (or obscuring the mass of dust bunnies and lost Doritos under your…Read more...

Windows isn’t the same without Microsoft PowerToys—a suite of utilities full of helpful features, including a Spotlight-like search bar to quickly open apps or run calculations, a shortcut that immediately mutes your microphone and turns off the webcam, and a tool that lets you keep any app’s window pinned to the…Read more...

The best camera is the one you have on you. That’s what makes smartphone shooters so essential. DSLRs might be able to take better-looking shots, but your Pixel can fit in your pocket, and can go anywhere you can. Not only is it convenient, but you can turn standard photos you’ve already taken into striking shots…Read more...

In the beginning, there was Wordle. The Wordle was online, and the Wordle was good. All things sprang from it, were fruitful, and multiplied: Four Wordles at once. Eight Wordles at once. Math Wordle. Subway Wordle. Gay Wordle. And just as my faith faltered and I began to wonder if Wordles would overrun the Earth,…Read more...

Substack is a newsletter service that lets you follow specific writers and receive their articles directly to your inbox. Its business model centers around a subscription that allows writers to get paid directly from their audience, (while Substack also gets a cut). It’s a great way to collect all your favorite…Read more...

Gutters do an important job—they protect the foundation and structure of your home from water falling off the roof. But anyone who has ever owned a home also knows that traditional gutters have their drawbacks: They can become clogged with leaves, and in colder weather, they can cause ice dams. They can also crack and…Read more...

By now we all know VPNs can be used to watch region-locked content on international streaming services like Netflix and Hulu, but what about region-specific services like the BBC? Anyone in the U.K. with a TV license can stream BBC content like Killing Eve or Peaky Blinders for free on a variety of devices through the…Read more...

Money is a completely made-up, invented resource. In the modern era, we literally create money out of thin air—and increasingly, it doesn’t even require any sort of physical presence. Vast fortunes are represented by ones and zeroes on humming servers, and even the values of currencies bob and weave according to…Read more...

Mozilla Firefox remains the best browser for most people looking to find a balance between features and privacy. Even so, there are several key settings you should change to protect your privacy on Firefox even more. From limiting data collection and cleaning up the home screen to blocking all those “requests for…Read more...

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Unless you don’t own a car, haven’t driven recently or have a powerful aversion to paying attention to economic news (fair), you’ve probably noticed gas prices are soaring across the United States, reaching a record-high national average of $4.252 on March 9 compared to $3.656 a week earlier, according to AAA.

If you only remember one thing from your high school geometry class, there’s a good chance that it’s the first three digits of Pi (“π”): 3.14. Sure, you may not have retained anything else about Pi, like what it means or does, but thanks to the popularity of Pi Day—aka, March 14th (3/14)—those numbers are likely…Read more...

The day before Superstorm Sandy slammed into my neck of the woods a decade ago, my wife asked if we should move our car off the street. I said, confidently and incorrectly, that our street didn’t typically flood, so we had nothing to worry about. A mere 24 hours and four feet of water in my living room later, our car…Read more...

We’ve written a handful of times in this real-estate boom about the collective obsession with Zillow doom-scrolling—looking at and dreaming about buying homes you definitely cannot afford. Zillow has now made it easier to compare the details of said homes with its new side-by-side tool, which gives you a snapshot of…Read more...

If you have children, and no nearby family members clamoring to take them off your hands once in a while, you’ve probably been—or will be—in the market for childcare. There are a handful of different people who can offer in-home care to your little ones. But what’s the difference between the various providers—and how…Read more...

As long as there are computers, there will be bugs crawling around inside them. You know, metaphorically. Lucky for us Windows users, Microsoft has just squashed another batch of them. If you use a PC and you haven’t installed this update yet, you’re going to want to do so immediately.

We probably all consider our dogs essential to our day-to-day lives and wish we could take them everywhere. Many dogs actually do have real jobs and go to work with their humans every day, whether they’re herding livestock, aiding search-and-rescue teams, or providing comfort to hospital patients. But not all working…Read more...

Nothing will make your heart sink faster than realizing you just sent a text to the wrong person. It happens to the best of us, and it’s a mistake you can’t undo—the recipient is going to read it. Those are the facts and you can’t change them.Read more...