Lifehacker

iOS/Android: Junk mail is a human misery, a failure of capitalism, a way to lose an important bill in a stack of trash. To stop getting so much junk mail, use the PaperKarma app. Take a picture of the offending mail, and PaperKarma will tell the sender to remove you from their mailing list.

I’m going to go ahead and pat myself on the back for setting up a Google Alert for the words “Qnap” and “malware.” I use one of the company’s NAS boxes, as do many others, and now I have a chance to inoculate my device against a nasty new strain of malware that’s making the rounds.

Google collects lots of data, which is used to curate content recommendations on services like Google Play and YouTube, as well as market ads to you based on your activity.Read more...

Just last week, I bought a refurbished 256GB iPad Pro 12.9” from Apple for $950, so it stands to reason that Amazon would match that price today for a brand new version of the same tablet. That’s $200 off list, and an all-time low price. I want to die a little.

I’ll hand it to malware creators; they’re certainly creative. Unfortunately, if you were one of the 10+ million downloads or 40+ million users of the Android app ai.type (which is also available on Apple’s App Store), you just dropped some pretty unpleasant malware on your device—malware that wants to go on an…Read more...

It is officially time to start preparing for Thanksgiving, and besides picking your turkey recipe, one thing you can work on immediately (and then freeze) is your stock. This may seem boring, but stock is the backbone of many Thanksgiving dishes, most notably stuffing and gravy.Read more...

Open enrollment season is here, the time of year when just about everyone can make changes to their health care coverage without the restrictions you’d face the rest of the year. And while you may feel confident about the process for making changes to your own healthcare, do you know who is particularly at risk to get…Read more...

Hackers are using BlueKeep to break into Windows computers and install a cryptocurrency miner. The vulnerability only impacts systems that are running Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2, and Windows Server 2008.Read more...

Some escape rooms are Disney-World slick; others are basically a dirty studio apartment with everything glued down. And some are a lot more fun to solve than others. What are the best escape rooms in your area—and what are the worst?

AT&T dropped a huge deal this weekend: an Apple TV 4K for just $90. That’s nearly 50 percent off its regular $179 price tag and also the lowest price we’ve yet seen for the Apple TV 4K. Now, it’s no longer available online, but that doesn’t mean all hope is lost.Read more...

Today in “it’s always a good idea to update your devices,” a recently discovered loophole in Android’s NFC-based file-sharing feature, Android Beam, makes it possible for someone to install an app on your device. The loophole has already been identified and fixed by Google in an Android update that went out last…Read more...

For the second year in a row, January 1 brings thousands of classic copyrighted works into the public domain. Under U.S. law, works published any time in 1924 will enter the public domain on January 1, 2020. This includes books, films, artworks, sheet music, and other concrete creative works—but unfortunately not…Read more...

BlizzCon 2019 has come and gone, and it was quite an event: the final (official) debut of Diablo IV, the first female champion of Hearthstone’s Grandmasters Global Finals, and a big Overwatch World Cup victory for Team USA—their first as well.Read more...

This week’s Parental Advisory question is one that I suspect many parents have struggled with: What do you do when your kindergartener or first-grader is struggling with impulse control, has been physically aggressive toward other students, and the school is fed up?

Yesterday marked the return of the much-hyped Popeyes chicken sandwich, and people promptly lost their marbles. Though I understand what it’s like to be excited about a once-scarce food item (hello, Taco Bell fries), I am urging—nay, pleading—with everyone to please chill out.Read more...

Hey, remember January? It was a long time ago, but you probably set some goals for what you’d like to achieve this year. (Memory failing you? Maybe you contributed to our fitness goals discussion here.)Read more...

If you’re the kind of person that struggles with small talk, then you probably also struggle with how to end a conversation; after all, when a conversation reaches an awkward silence, there’s no single right way to tell someone “Let’s stop talking, now that we’ve run out of things to actually talk about.”

It’s pretty inevitable that the toy you hate the most will also be your toddler’s favorite toy. All the reasons why you hate it—it’s plastic and plays some kind of music repetitively and only at volume level OW—are also the reasons why they love it. You can’t take it away because they love it too much, but you can use…Read more...

In an ideal world, every chickadee leaves the nest at age 18 with a checking account, savings account, and enough knowledge to pass a pop quiz about credit scores. But we all know that sometimes doesn’t happen.

Google Chrome’s next big update, Chrome 79, has officially entered the beta phase, meaning the official public release will be here within the coming weeks—even though most of us have barely settled in with Chrome 78's recent launch. Users can expect some cool new features once the update rolls out, including sharing…Read more...

Depending on your appetite for holiday fare of recent vintage and your general enthusiasm for “the most wonderful time of the year,” this is either a great week of Netflix offerings or an undistinguished load of crap. It won’t surprise you that I’m in the latter camp—if it’s not the 1964 stop-motion Rudolph*, I’ll…Read more...

If you’re an HBO Now customer that’s been eyeing HBO Max, you might want to make sure you’re paying HBO directly for the service now, and if you’re not, consider transitioning your account over now to a directly HBO-billed service rather.

Tequila is a spirit that a lot of people equate with shots, and consequently morning hangovers. In actuality, aged tequilas can be delicious to sip on straight or on the rocks, just like you might enjoy a nice, aged whisky.

When I was in elementary school I was briefly obsessed with mechanical music boxes. You know, the kind you have to wind up to get them to play. They’re simple and nice to have, and now you can make a digital version of one for yourself.

Procrastination is one of those things we all experience. Sometimes you may be procrastinating on calling a friend to deliver bad news, other times on finishing a work project. In all cases, what you’re procrastinating on likely needs to get done, more often sooner rather than later.

If you’ve been wanting to give your iPhone or iPad a little refresh, a new font can potentially be a way to do it. This week, Adobe’s Creative Cloud made 1,300 fonts available for free to anyone that downloads its Creative Cloud app from the App Store.

We see a lot of deals around the web over on Kinja Deals, but these were our ten favorites today.

When Tiffany Brosius was 26 weeks pregnant, her feet began to swell. But the 37-year-old Atlanta mother says she didn’t think too much about it. After all, swelling in pregnancy is common. But then it started to travel up her body, so Brosius went to her provider where she discovered that she was experiencing…Read more...

A big topic on our many Democratic presidential debate stages this summer has been health care reform. Several candidates, including Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, have been pushing for Medicare for All, through which the government would provide our health coverage.

One of my favorite things about running Skillet is the relationships I’ve formed with the readers. Beyond the comments sections—which is a surprisingly chill corner of the internet—lovely people will often DM or email me with suggestions, requests, and recipes.Read more...

Google recently announced a few new features that give users more control over their data, including three new privacy options for Google Maps, YouTube, and Google Assistant, as well as a new tool for monitoring password security. Here’s a quick rundown of each of the new features, how to find them, and why you may…Read more...

A good insult is a demonstration of power. A bad insult is a demonstration of powerlessness. This is true whether you’re punching up or down. (I recommend you punch up.) If you want your insults to damage your enemy and not yourself, you need to insult strategically.

8-Pack AmazonBasics AA Rechargeable Batteries | $15 | Amazon

Sunday, November 3 is National Sandwich Day. We cover a lot of “free food days” here, because we love you and we want you to be fed. So I need to admit to you up front that there are no free sandwiches on Sunday, at least without purchase of an equal or greater sandwich.

As the winter slowly descends upon us, it’s time for the annual tradition of hand-wringing, self-loathing, and maybe—just maybe—writing a novel in 30 days. National Novel Writing Month has become a beacon of hope each November for the many high achievers who desire to not only start, but also finish a draft of a novel…Read more...

I’ve been using the Exist app to track my activities and rate my moods for over half a year now, and one of my biggest unexpected takeaways was that the way I feel about my day often depends on how I spent the last hour of it.Read more...

Many people would say their biggest weakness is that they care too much.Read more...

We made it through October, which means the month of cardio intervals is over and we now get to lie on the floor, sweating and panting, and vowing to never do this again.Read more...

Petnet SmartFeeder Automatic Wi-Fi Pet Feeder | $85 | WootRead more...

Being strategic about what you say to your partner in front of your kids is pretty crucial. And most of that strategy involves what you don’t say. Around the time we realize that our kids are actually starting to understand our words, we’ve got to (mostly) rein in the cursing, we have to really consider how our word…Read more...

It’s November 1! And you know what that means—if you purchased an Apple product anytime on or after September 10, you earned yourself a free year-long trial to Apple’s streaming service. It t won’t just appear magically for you to access, however; you’ll have to activate it first.

There’s no better adrenaline rush than the kind that happens after you cancel plans last-minute. What once felt like a weight on your shoulders, bearing down on you with every passing hour, has disappeared. Suddenly, your time is yours again. We get it—you made plans with someone and something suddenly just came up.…Read more...

On a recent trip to Portugal, Porto stole my heart. I spent my nights traversing its narrow alleys, tall bridges, and challenging staircases. It’s a beautiful city with approachable, down-to-earth culinary roots. Seemingly every restaurant in the city does a version of Francesinha, making it the city’s loosely…Read more...

The recent iOS 13.2 update introduced some new HomePod features to the iPhone, but many users report that installing the patch left their HomePod speakers bricked. Apple pulled the update in response and promised to release a new build without the HomePod-ruining bug.Read more...

Twitter will ban all political topics from its paid ads, Jack Dorsey announced this week. But that means “issue” ads too, which that anything can be banned if the folks in charge (or, more likely, an algorithm that they train) considers the topic too political.Read more...

If you’ve been considering relocating, you might want to consider Tulsa.

If you parent a toddler, you probably say the word “no” a lot. It comes with the territory of caring for a being that is constantly doing things that are unsafe while also making frequent and repeated unreasonable requests. I am not advocating that we never tell our children “no.” Toddler-parenting very often calls…Read more...

Mayuck is helping his younger brother who just started college with a car purchase. Naturally, he thinks his sibling isn’t all that smart when it comes to cars and he wants to find him something simple, cheap, and reliable that is, as he calls it, “idiot-proof.” What car should he buy?

Hey there. Having a bad day?

The advertising industry is a cesspool of manipulation and misinformation. And now you can use it to convince your partner to let you get a dog. Or convince them to settle your divorce out of court, because they caught you using hyper-targeted internet ads to convince them to let you get a dog.