Lifehacker

We’ve covered many file-transfer services previously, but we recently stumbled upon Black Hole, a relatively new service uses the blockchain-based Blockstack network for user logins, file storage, and delivery. (Best of all: It’s free.)Read more...

An early draft of a G/O Media employee handbook incorrectly described our policy regarding encrypted communications, which has caused some confusion. To be clear: G/O Media remains committed to the use of trusted reporting tools that enable our reporters to securely and confidentially communicate with sources.

Having a garden seems nice, but the thought of having to deal with the sudden appearance of 74 tomatoes activates my anxiety in a real way. This is why being friends with gardeners, and taking a modest eight tomatoes, a single pound of blackberries, or four pears from their gardens works well for me. (And even then,…Read more...

Beginning at 5pm EDT today, CNN will interview 10 Democratic presidential candidates regarding their plans to address climate change. Unlike the debates, each candidate will be allotted 40 minutes to answer questions from CNN moderators and a studio audience; together, the forum is expected to last seven hours.

Android 10 is here—for Pixel devices, at least. We typically recommend everyone update to the latest and greatest version of an operating system to enjoy its features, security patches, and bug fixes, but that doesn’t mean you’re guaranteed to have a perfect experience on your new OS.

School’s starting, and for many kindergarteners, one of the major changes they face is lunch time. The lunch routine in kindergarten is nothing like at home, at daycare or in preschool: they have a smaller window of time in which to get their meals unpacked and eaten, and at the beginning of school, many kids get…Read more...

Google is slowly closing the feature gap between Google Maps’ mobile and desktop versions, and a recent update finally made it as easy to play around with Street View on the Android app as it is on a computer.Read more...

“I’ve never seen any life transformation that didn’t begin with the person in question finally getting tired of their own bullshit,” says Eat Pray Love memoirist Elizabeth Gilbert. If you need a motto to put up on a Post-it note and keep you off your own bullshit, go to the Quotes subreddit. That’s where we got…Read more...

Nature’s Miracle Stain and Odor Remover Pour, 16 Oz. | $1 | AmazonRead more...

Professional communication includes a lot of thanks. It’s a go-to closing for emails, even those that don’t require action from the recipient. But when’s the last time you sat down outside of that 37-message-long email thread and wrote a thank you note to a colleague?Read more...

My son logged a lot of reading hours over the summer, partly because it is his third favorite way to pass time (the first would be playing with a friend; the second would be any and all screen time) and partly because he was trying to earn a restaurant coupon.Read more...

If you’re stuck in a job you don’t like, don’t quit right away. Instead, ask yourself how you can use your current position to help you build the next stage of your career.

When you first begin cooking, you are told that burnt food is bad. If sitcom writers wish to communicate to their audience that a housewife is bad at her duties, they will often have her burn dinner, and possibly set off a smoke alarm so hilarity can ensue. But some things are really good burnt. Onions are one of…Read more...

Back pain isn’t caused by sitting or standing wrong, a group of physical therapists recently clarified in a journal article. We often talk about posture as if it were a thing we need to perform correctly, but that’s not what the evidence on back pain actually tells us.Read more...

If you’re looking to brush up on a skill, learn a new thing, or add a little spice to your intellectual life, there are a whole bunch of free MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) starting this month that you might want to check out.Read more...

Each week, we publish a tech-advice column (Tech 911), where the goal is to take one of your pressing tech questions and provide as many helpful answers as possible. The column depends on your contributions, and our mailbag is running a little low, so it’s time for you to chime in!Read more...

A teenager lost his vision after eating an extremely limited diet for years. The story is being sensationalized in headlines about junk food making you go blind, and the boy is sure to be a punchline to parents’ cautionary tales for years to come. But this is really a story about a very specific eating disorder.Read more...

At the end of August, Republican commissioner Matthew Petersen stepped down from the Federal Election Commission, leaving the watchdog group in a near-shutdown. According to one former commissioner, without a quorum (or the number of necessary commissioners on the board), Petersen’s resignation should absolutely…Read more...

Toni Ko sold $2 million of makeup in her first year of business, before hiring a single employee. She grew her company NYX Cosmetics into a half-billion-dollar business before selling it to L’Oréal. We talked to the multimillionaire entrepreneur about her early start, her biggest mistake, and her venture fund for…Read more...

2-Camera EufyCam Starter Kit | $246 | AmazonRead more...

We recently polled readers with suggestions for the best note-taking apps. Most of you said you still do things the old-fashioned way with pen and paper—a technique I heartily endorse.

Android 10 is here for some people, but possibly not you. If you’re the owner of a Google Pixel (ranging from the OG Pixel to the latest Pixel 3a or Pixel 3a XL variants), you can download and install the new version of the Android OS right now. For everyone else, you’re in for a bit of a wait.Read more...

Apple users with out-of-warranty iPhones or iPads in need of repairs now have a lot more options available to them via the company’s recently expanded independent repairs program.

Most sous-vide meat recipes follow a pretty standard format: Put your meat in a plastic bag, place the bag in a water bath set to your desired temperature, cook the meat for about an hour, then finish the meat on the grill or super hot pan. This is a fine, seemingly unflawed sequence of events, but a little rest in…Read more...

We know that food goes bad, but what about stuff like lotion, conditioner and mascara? Even though they may seem to last a long time—and often end up sitting on shelves for years — toiletries do actually come with expiration dates. Here’s what you need to know.Read more...

Summer may be “over” now that the long Labor Day weekend has passed, but that doesn’t mean you have to hold off on fun weekend excursions until the spring. If you’re looking for something to do this weekend, you may be able to visit a nearby museum for free. Bank of America cardholders can get into museums and…Read more...

If you watched Coco Gauff’s third round loss in the US Open on Saturday, chances are you won’t remember the score or many details about the match itself; you’ll mostly remember how Naomi Osaka consoled the 15-year-old after her defeat.Read more...

Rewarding yourself can backfire. If you tell yourself “I’ll only listen to my favorite podcast while I’m at the gym,” it takes just one moment of weakness to realize you can cheat and listen to it any time you want. Instead, try this: Reward yourself with something that has no enjoyment value whatsoever. Like a…Read more...

Kraft Easy Microwavable Macaroni & Cheese | $5 | Amazon | Clip 15% off couponRead more...

I learned the NATO phonetic alphabet. Now I’m learning how to point to every country on a map. I’ll never need this information, but it feels cool to know. I’m learning on the free flashcard app Tinycards, which feels remarkably like playing a mobile game, but one you can feel good about. Here’s the best pointless…Read more...

When markets get volatile, people start wondering whether they should sell their stocks or move more of their money into bonds. Before you make your next investment decision, it’s worth looking at how different ratios of stocks to bonds have performed over time—understanding, of course, that oft-repeated investing…Read more...

A functioning kitchen is a kitchen that is well stocked, and a well-stocked kitchen has two types of butter—cooking butter, and snacking butter.Read more...

Over the weekend, Hurricane Dorian wreaked havoc over the Bahamas, damaging 13,000 homes and killing at least five people. As of Tuesday morning, Dorian—which was recently downgraded to a Category 2 storm—is inching its way toward the coast of Florida; from there it’s expected to crawl up the coast and alongside…Read more...

It’s (mostly) not that teenagers are careless with their things—their cell phone, their water bottle, that expensive new jacket you just bought them that has disappeared without a trace. It’s that the area of their brain related to executive functioning isn’t fully mature yet, so they end up leaving things at school…Read more...

Myfitnesspal seems to be the fitness world’s default calorie counter, and I can’t figure out any good reason why. It tries to show you ads and articles while you’re trying to log your food, puts your exercise calories into an equation at the top of the screen (not a great way to track, honestly), and its food database…Read more...

As hard as some of us try, we’re always going to be messy eaters. Somehow, a dribble of coffee or dollop of sauce always seems to make it onto our shirts. This is especially annoying when the drip is made of grease and it’s really hard to get out. If this happens to you, your best bet may be to head to the kitchen and…Read more...

“In the beginning was the Word. And the Word was God, and the Word was God.” This is a great opening if you’re writing a biography of the Messiah. Not so great for a college admissions essay, or a Medium post about the joys of having three children, or an opinion column in the company newsletter. When you’re writing…Read more...

Back in May, a lawsuit claimed that old Pam cooking sprays were exploding, causing injuries to at least eight people through burns (and even blinding someone in one eye).

For ages, it seemed like you had two options for sending money internationally: Wait in line at a Western Union counter, or wait in line at a MoneyGram counter. But the rise of peer-to-peer payment apps means there are more options for sending money across the world right from your mobile phone.Read more...

For many viewers, watching Chernobyl crystallized parallels between widespread cultural panic around the nuclear threat and what we’re feeling now in the face of climate change. For veteran activists and therapists, the link has been clear for some time.Read more...

Netflix! Do not screw this one up! The Spy (Friday) is a limited series starring Sacha Baron Cohen (yes, you read that right) as a Mossad agent who goes undercover in Syria in the 1960s. Does SBC have the chops to play it straight as a legendary spy in a series from Gideon Raff, the guy who wrote the series on which …Read more...

Gmail is great, in that you can check your messages from pretty much any web connected device. But what if that web-connected device happens to be your friend’s computer and you forget to log out after you’re done?Read more...

If you’re located in an area of Florida that has been impacted by Hurricane Dorian, both Lyft and Uber are offering free rides both to and from local shelters.

If you don’t have air conditioning, your first instinct when the heat hits is probably to turn on a fan. But fans don’t always cool you off—it depends whether you’re in a humid or a dry place.Read more...

Cheese is best stored in a cheese cave or the refrigerator (if you’re a peasant), but eating cold cheese—straight from the fridge—is, I am sad to day, a dumb move.Read more...

I love OneTab, and you should, too. It’s an incredibly easy way to take the nightmare of tabs you’ve been saving in your browser window and condense them all into a single, easy-to-scan web page. I use this extension constantly, and it has helped me turn my overflowing tab problem into a more manageable mess.

With the recent talk of a potential recession, it can be tough to know if you should buy, sell, or hold your investments–or pull the covers up over your head and hide from the stock market’s twists and turns. Don’t despair, and instead think about the following analogy before looking at your investment accounts next.Read more...

We may still technically have a month left of summer, but that doesn’t mean we can’t start planning our favorite fall activities now.Read more...

It’s autumn now, at least on PSLT (Pumpkin Spice Latte Time). The temperature might still be hitting the 80s every day, but Labor Day is here, and so is nutmeg flavor. The Spoopy Memes Insta has started posting again. So! What’s the best way to enjoy autumn in your town?

Earlier this month we learned that Amazon was talking to law enforcement agencies about potentially giving them access to the video stream from the doorbells both as a way to help make decisions about how to deploy emergency personnel as well as to potentially create “crime news” posts for Amazon’s neighborhood watch…Read more...