Lifehacker

If your Labor Day plans included a trip to the southeastern United States or the Caribbean, then Hurricane Dorian has likely caught your attention.

Working in an office can often be a distracting experience, so distracting that the mindless chatter around you ends up making your productivity take a hit.

A Simplehuman Gold Box, savings on your first month of BarkBox, and Bonobos’ End of Summer Sale lead off Sunday’s best deals from around the web.

A recent study by Northwestern University and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst found that every major carrier in the United States has artificially slowed down videos from places like Netflix, Hulu, and YouTube.

I’m a sucker for those “On This Day” reminders from social media sites. Without fail, I’m delighted when Facebook resurfaces a picture I posted a decade ago of friends, and I like it when Instagram reminds me of a picture I posted a few years prior.

Late last night news broke that Twitter co-founder and CEO Jack Dorsey’s Twitter account had been compromised. Friday evening his account tweeted roughly a dozen racist and offensive tweets over a 20-minute span. The reason? Hackers were able to gain access to his account through SIM hacking.

A properly made Irish coffee is a beautiful thing, but it’s also a hot thing, making it a poor choice for these last few weeks of summer. To make a boozy coffee you can enjoy all year round, you just need cold coffee and a little bit of sweetened condensed milk.Read more...

Mornings with kids are brutal. No matter how prepared you think you are or how early you manage to drag yourself (and everyone else) out of bed, there’s still so much scrambling happening. There are so many teeth to brush, clothes to put on, stuff to pack up and whining to ignore.Read more...

September will bring a ton of new movies and TV shows to HBO, including The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part, as well as Love Actually, and the director’s cut of the 1987 classic, Robocop.Read more...

Woe to you, your friends, or loved ones who have been saving up their pennies for a big ol’ iPhone upgrade and are itching to make that purchase sometime in the next week and a half. Now that Apple has officially announced a date for its next big product reveal—September 10—it would be a very unwise decision to buy a…Read more...

The next time you’re on a retail site that offers discounts in exchange for becoming a member, double-check your cart before you check out. Some retailers are automatically adding memberships—and monthly membership fees—to new purchases.

Strength training for women is spoken about in code words. We’re supposed to fear getting “bulky” and instead want to build “long, lean muscles.” Guys are told in no uncertain terms that lifting will make them big, muscular, jacked; women, somehow, will only get “toned.” This is patriarchal bullshit that obscures how…Read more...

The BLT is a simple sandwich, but simplicity demands excellence. Each component plays an important role, and maximizing the crisp saltiness of the bacon, the crunch of the lettuce, and the juicy sweetness of the tomatoes is what makes the sandwich truly magnificent.

Whether they’re navigating the high school hallways for the first time or decorating their first dorm room, back-to-school time can be stressful for teens taking on ever-harder coursework and new responsibilities. Even they must realize they could benefit from the advice from those of us who have been there, done…Read more...

Did you swim a lot this August? My own summer was chaotic enough that I’ll admit I mostly stuck to my familiar gym routine, but I hope a bunch of you took advantage of the opportunity to swim some laps and get a few pool workouts in.Read more...

September brings with it a number of new shows to Amazon Prime video, including five Amazon Original series exclusive to the platform—such as Season 1 of the half-hour animated series Undone and Chris Tall Presents, the first unscripted German Amazon Original featuring the popular German comedian.

The difference between an argument and a fight is that in a fight, you say things you’ll regret. Things that will hurt the other person, that will stick in both of your minds until they come up again in later fights. Reddit user Valuable_Armadillo has a trick to avoid this: Whenever you’re in the heat of an argument,…Read more...

If you live anywhere near Florida, don’t forget to prepare a go-bag and have an evacuation plan prepared as Tropical Storm Dorian makes its approach (and likely strengthens into a Category 3 or 4 hurricane).

Having a little bit of cash on you at all times can help you avoid minor inconveniences. But if you think about using that cash you see peeking out of your wallet every time you reach for debit or credit, you may want to think about stashing some cash in another spot: your car.

On Wednesday night, New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand officially dropped out of the Presidential race, joining Jay Inslee and John Hickenlooper in calling it quits ahead of the debates. After Wednesday’s deadline, just 10 candidates have qualified for the debates in Houston, meaning we’ll see a much smaller pool of…Read more...

Meguiar’s G18220 Ultimate Liquid Wax, 20 oz | $15 | AmazonRead more...

HBO is releasing the next episode of its three Sunday night shows early, at the start of the Labor Day weekend. Each show will be available to stream on HBO Go and HBO Now at its usual airtime, but on Friday night instead of Sunday. (The shows will air on the cable network on Sunday as usual.)

If the past few years have taught us all something it’s that “fake news” has found its home on social media.Read more...

Alexa is great for helping with digital tasks like online shopping and telling terrible jokes, but Amazon’s assistant can also help you solve your biggest real-world problems, too, like, “Where did I put my keys?”Read more...

If you’ve ever had to pause to ask yourself, “Hmm, which word is correct here... verbiage or verbage,” I’ve got the perfect mnemonic device for you: Verbage is garbage.Read more...

Shrimp is a food that doesn’t need a lot of fussing, but sometimes it’s fun to get saucy with it, especially if that sauce is of the sticky, sweet and sour variety. Surprisingly, kombucha works very well here, both as a marinade and as the base for your sauce.Read more...

Here’s an exciting development that most folks (myself included) probably never thought would happen: You can now stream Apple Music directly to Google Chromecast from an Android device.

Contigo has recalled 5.7 million of its popular kids’ silicone-spout water bottles because in some cases, the spout may detach and become a choking hazard.

You’re boarding up the windows. You’re stocking up on water. You’re scooping sandbags. But wait: Do you have cash? If you’re preparing for a hurricane, tropical storm, or other weather event that provides plenty of notice, you should add visiting the bank or ATM to your to-do list.

At some point in the history of salads, everyone agreed that the correct dressing ratio is one part vinegar to three parts oil. They’re all wrong. If you’re perpetually disappointed by vinaigrette recipes, do what I do: use half as much oil as the recipe calls for and go from there. That’s it, that’s the hack.Read more...

If you’ve been on an airplane enough times, you probably have the safety information memorized: “In the event of an evacuation, please proceed calmly to the nearest emergency exit,” and so on.Read more...

When my editor tweeted a pitch for casseroles, I lapsed into snark mode. “I was raised on soul food,” I muttered. “Casseroles are not soul food.” I was wrong. My favorite dessert—banana pudding—is a quintessential soul food dessert. It is also a casserole both in method and receptacle.Read more...

Eufy Smart Scale P1 | $31 | Amazon | Promo code EUFYSCALE

Any time you’re making long-term plans based on more than your own behavior, you need to remember just how unpredictable the world is. It can be hard not to get carried away, especially if you have lots of “good” data to base your plans on. The Collaborative Fund blog lists 12 things to keep in mind when making plans…Read more...

The current version of Chrome Canary (version 78 of the browser) has a number of fun features worth exploring—or knowing about, at the very least, if you’d rather play with them when they arrive in a more stable version of the browser.Read more...

Every secondhand enthusiast has that one bargain that could have gone horribly wrong. For me, it was the couch by the dumpster outside my on-campus apartment during college. I had been out entirely too late on a week night, and my friend and I were overcome with strength and the determination to save this perfectly…Read more...

On Wednesday, the Queen agreed to the UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s request to suspend the current Parliament session, just ahead of the Brexit deadline. According to Johnson, it has nothing to do with the UK’s exit from the European Union, but critics are pointing out that the timing will certainly work out in…Read more...

We know what we’re supposed to do at preschool drop-off. Leave them at the door (don’t enter the classroom!), give a swift and cheery goodbye (“Have a great time! I’ll be back to pick you up in a few hours!”), and leave. Even if they’re crying, every preschool teacher will tell you, you will only make it worse if you…Read more...

This month, the Trump Administration opposed protections for LGBTQ workers in the U.S., arguing that existing laws should not cover discrimination on the basis of gender identity and sexual orientation. Their reasoning? That an act passed in 1964 did not explicitly include either criteria and if Congress wanted to…Read more...

If you hate sending those annoying “just checking in!” emails, where you check whether the person who promised to do something for you will actually do it, then here’s a slightly cooler way to check in, without making anyone feel bad.

Until recently, Pinterest blocked results from searches about vaccines on its platform. But today, the company announced that it will provide “authoritative vaccine results,” and no others, to those searches.

According to a slew of Reddit posts and Twitter threads, the most recent Pokemon Go update (version 0.151.0) has reportedly introduced a bug that affects phones with higher refresh rates. Depending on your preferences, this could cause a noticeable drop in quality for your Pokemon-hunting experience.Read more...

YouTube Kids is breaking its content filters apart again as part of on-going efforts to allow parents to more appropriately manage what their little kids are watching on the app.Read more...

I’m on a mission to civilize.Read more...

All fruits and vegetables are good for you, but when people start talking about how to eat healthy, the word “organic” tends to pop up a little too often.Read more...

Kids have been grazing their way through summer, and maybe “lunch” was a series of snacks spread out across the afternoon. But now that it’s time for school, we have to make lunch more defined—pack it into little sectioned containers and stow it in an insulated bag covered with unicorns.

What could you do with a sky-high credit limit? I mean, what couldn’t you do? If you’ve seen prompts from your credit card issuer to update your income to find out if you’re eligible for a higher credit limit, you may wonder if it’s worth supplying that bit of personal info. I promise you it’s not a trap.

After endless complaints from customers, service providers are making moves to reduce—and hopefully eliminate—the modern-day nuisance of robocalls. Verizon customers have been able to download a free spam filter that blocks robocalls on iOS and Android, but some Android users are now automatically enrolled in the…Read more...

A good wifi router is crucial for a fast and reliable internet connection—but trying to choose the best one can be complicated and overwhelming. In the video above, I break down the three things to look for in a good router.Read more...

Before you ask your landlord whether it’s okay to repaint your walls, list your spare bedroom on Airbnb, or invite your friends and their dogs over for dinner, you’re going to want to check your lease—and you might also want to check the Bigger Pockets landlord forum.Read more...