Lifehacker

For the past four years, my job has required spending the days and weeks leading up to Black Friday reading through every advertisement and circular. This year, I’m nearly free of that task. Instead of monitoring sales and lightning deals and doorbusters in the early hours on Friday, I get to sleep in. And then, I get…Read more...

Dungeons & Dragons used to be a weird little hobby, seen as hopelessly nerdy, childish, and even Satanic. Now it’s a bigger cultural deal than Monopoly, even chess. It’s featured in Stranger Things and the podcast The Adventure Zone. In the real world, it’s trendy among artsy parents and their kids. And I hear it all…Read more...

Twitter just announced that it is planning to free up usernames for inactive accounts. While that means that the coveted Twitter handle you’ve been eyeing might finally be yours, if you happen to grab it before anyone else, Twitter’s move comes with an unfortunate side effect: If someone you love is no longer around…Read more...

Did you know that “flossing” is more than just a popular dance all the kids are doing?

This year might be the year for the kids’ first Disney On Ice show, or the local production of “A Christmas Carol” or “The Nutcracker.” There are so many enticing ways to break up all our screen time with some classic live family entertainment during the holidays, but it also happens to be the most spendiest time of…Read more...

A state-funded Russian propaganda agency is sowing discord in America through schmaltzy feel-good social media accounts, say researchers at Clemson University. These accounts, they claim, share clichéd “heartwarming” and “makes you think” content that sometimes goes viral. Then they slip in news that might be designed…Read more...

Regularly uninstalling unused apps from your smartphone (and disabling unnecessary app permissions) does more than just free up extra storage space—it helps keep your personal data safe. Case in point: Several third-party Android apps were recently implicated in a data breach that affected millions of Facebook and…Read more...

From the proliferation of CBD stores and CBD-infused products, you’d think CBD is legal, either approved by the FDA or having found a happy little loophole in which the agency can’t touch it. But that’s not true, and the FDA sent a bunch of warning letters today to companies selling CBD products.Read more...

Medium, the blog platform/publisher that once wanted to revolutionize online media, has put its content behind a $5/month paywall. After a couple of free articles per month, you can’t read anything else without paying up. Unless you use Twitter.

Turkey is my least favorite bird (to eat), yet I can never commit to a turkey-less Thanksgiving, nor can I let someone else cook the thing. I simply cannot relinquish this bland, stupid bird. My ambivalence towards the meat itself drives me to cook a bird that is delicious, but my irreverence spurs me to fuck with it…Read more...

Here’s a nice bonus for those who buy or receive a new Chromebook this holiday season: Google and Disney are giving away three months of free Disney+ to customers who activate a new Chromebook between November 25 and January 31st, 2020.

One of the first things listeners will notice about your podcast is the quality of the audio. Bad audio is a surefire way to sound unprofessional and lose listeners, so make it a priority to produce the highest quality audio you can.

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Whatever your relationship with food is like, it probably intensifies around Thanksgiving. If you’re sticking to a special diet, you have to decide whether to keep it up or to say fuck it and take a day off to indulge. If your family’s eating habits annoy you, how fun! You’ll be watching them cook and eat all day. I’m…Read more...

Is your friend suspiciously interested in your 2000 Honda Civic? Well watch out—that’s the most commonly stolen car in America last year. Are you still sure you can call this person a friend now?

Family movie nights are wonderful in theory and usually in practice—unless it’s a case of too many cooks in the kitchen (or people in the family room). Does this convo sound familiar?Read more...

The problem: You want a Mac that doesn’t have a crappy keyboard, but you can’t afford (or don’t need) the brand-new 16-inch MacBook Pro. You can either go scrounging for a 2015 MacBook Pro—a Mac I grew quite fond of—or deal with a cheaper, less-powerful alternative: the 2017 MacBook Air, now on sale for $300 off.Read more...

If you feel like you don’t know what to say to your older relatives, maybe you’re not asking the right questions. This Thanksgiving, think about bringing not only a dish to share, but also a few questions to inspire your grandparents, great-grandparents, and other relatives to share their stories.Read more...

Browned butter makes everything tase better—except, of course, when you can’t taste it at all. Its rich, toasty flavor has a way of getting lost in all but the most butter-forward dishes. The solution is simple: Just add milk.

Every business you can think of is having a Black Friday sale, including car dealerships. Sure, maybe you weren’t thinking of putting a vehicle on your holiday shopping list, but the end of the year is often rumored to be a good time to buy a car. If you’ve been thinking of getting a new set of wheels, you might be…Read more...

Over the past few years, we’ve heard a lot about the differences between introverts and extroverts, including on this site. Whether or not you believe the distinctions are significant, there are definitely people out there who read the descriptions of introverts and identify deeply with them—making them feel less…Read more...

Apps like Google Maps, Apple Maps and Waze have taken almost all of the guesswork out of driving (at least until self-driving cars become more mainstream). Plug in your destination and follow the turn-by-turn directions until you arrive—simple as that.Read more...

In response to Ambassador Gordon Sondland’s public testimony last week—and growing evidence for a quid pro quo—Trump addressed White House reporters on Wednesday, using a handwritten note on Air Force One letterhead that read like a song written by a heartbroken lover. “I WANT NOTHING I WANT NOTHING,” one page read.…Read more...

My son was born with a festive spirit. The kid never met a celebration he didn’t like. So obviously this time of year is his jam. We spent many hours (and I do mean many) executing our Halloween decorations this year. And he’s been begging me for the past week or two to start setting up our little winter village,…Read more...

It must be the future, because I’m taking writing advice from a computer. I’ve always been a fan of Janelle Shane’s AI experiments, because they’re adorably goofy, like the computer is just starting to learn the ways of human language, or concepts like recipes or colors. But her latest creation writes beginning…Read more...

Impeaching a U.S. president involves a lot more than a single trial or vote. As we’ve written before, it’s a long process that involves the following steps: a decision by the House on articles of impeachment, a debate over those articles by the House Judiciary Committee, a vote by the House for impeachment which must…Read more...

Apple has announced partial details for its 2019 Black Friday sale: At least some Apple products will net you an Apple gift card of up to $200 when you buy online from Apple, at an Apple store location, or from Amazon and other third-party sellers. The offer will last from November 29th through December 2nd. But is…Read more...

Fried turkey tastes great, or so I’ve heard, but frying a whole turkey yourself poses a serious danger of burning your house down. The Consumer Product Safety Commission, which regularly sets things on fire for the holidays, has a new video showing us how not to fry a turkey.

Is mind-reading actually possible? How can we interpret body language to better understand what others are really thinking? In this week’s episode, Alice and Melissa are exploring these questions and more with the help of Swedish mentalist Henrik Fexeus (aka “Sweden’s Derren Brown”). Henrik is the author of the…Read more...

Thanksgiving leftovers are not exactly a burden, but they do require a small amount of strategy. Half-full casserole dishes covered with plastic wrap may seem like the path of least resistance, but they stack poorly and often take up a large amount of space. For a truly pleasant leftover storage experience, get thee…Read more...

If you need a little help figuring out how to lock down your smart home devices (or those you’re considering purchasing), Mozilla is here to help. I recommend spending some time scanning through its “Privacy Not Included” list and bookmarking the pages for any devices you own. Not only does the site round up all the…Read more...

If you’re traveling for the Thanksgiving holiday, here’s a tip: Give yourself plenty of time at the airport. As is the case every year, this Thanksgiving holiday will be one of the busiest traveling days in 2019—AAA estimates that 4.45 million Americans will be flying this Thursday, alone. According to USA Today,…Read more...

’Tis the season for pie, eggnog, resisting the urge to “OK boomer” your parents, and package theft. What a mixed bag. But having your packages stolen is now a reliable part of the modern holiday season. Package theft spikes in November and December, which is not surprising when you think about the rise of online…Read more...

Microsoft is preventing certain PCs running older versions of AVG and Avast antivirus software and outdated Qualcomm WiFi drivers from installing Windows 10 versions 1809, 1903, and 1909. Here’s why: Microsoft no longer allows Windows 10 to automatically update on any and all systems due to potential bugs and…Read more...

If you drive a car, you should probably know how to jump-start it in case the battery dies. But it’s one of those things where everyone has a different way of doing it, so how do you know which way is right? You’re dealing with batteries and engines, after all—you want to make sure you’re everything everything…Read more...

“I can’t fucking stand people who don’t know the difference between a ‘reason’ and an ‘excuse,’” says redditor raspberrykoolaid, talking about those repugnant people who can’t sympathize with any problem they haven’t faced themselves, and think that everyone else is just offering excuses. You don’t want to be one of…Read more...

It’s not enough that we have to do all the holiday shopping, go to all the school concerts and pick up Starbucks gift cards for all the overworked teachers in our lives—we have to turn the house into a red and green winter wonderland, too?Read more...

This Thanksgiving, give yourself one more thing to be grateful for: a day without smartphones.

It is both easy and apparently cool to hate green bean casserole. Admittedly, “canned green beans mixed with canned condensed cream of mushroom soup topped with canned fried onions” doesn’t sound great, but hating on something because it comes from a can reveals more about the hater than the dish itself.Read more...

T-Mobile has confirmed a data breach has affected a subset of its customers, with additional reporting from TechCrunch putting that figure at an estimated 1M+ accounts (or so). In other words, this is a big breach, but you shouldn’t freak out. Don’t ignore it, but don’t get nervous.

We all miss one or two life lessons. Some people, like Lifehacker reader izzysanime, never learned how to blow up a balloon. It’s actually kind of tricky until you learn it! So we’ll teach you.Read more...

Thanksgiving is coming up, which means it’s our once-a-year opportunity to stuff ourselves to a ridiculous degree, all while saying how much we’re going to regret this later as we simultaneously insist that little Billy tries some of Grandma’s green bean casserole.Read more...

It’s that time of year again: Open enrollment season for your employer benefits, which, if you’re lucky, includes the Flexible Spending Account (FSA). If you’ve always told yourself around this time “I should really take advantage of my FSA” but never do, now’s the time to correct that financial mistake. Having an FSA…Read more...

Let’s think all the way back to the end of the last decade. 2009: well before streaming services dominated entertainment, when you had to either a) purchase these items from an online store (like iTunes), b) purchase them from a physical store (remember those?) or c) mine your roommate’s music library hoping they had K…Read more...

It’s inevitable after every holiday meal: Once the dishes are cleared, the plates are stacked, and the dishwasher is loaded, out come the Ziploc bags, the Tupperware, and the plastic wrap for the solemn division of the leftovers. Everyone must take part in this postprandial rite, even if it’s just a symbolic scoop of…Read more...

The YouTube Haiku subreddit collects good videos up to 30 seconds long. The best are sometimes funny, sometimes touching, sometimes bewildering. I’ve been a connoisseur of the genre for seven years. I’ve collected my favorites below. They’re absolute snack food—you think you can have just one or two ten-second hits,…Read more...

You turkeys probably think Netflix has you covered with a bunch of fun new content to hoover up while you’re squirreled away in your room, avoiding your cousin’s incoherent impeachment rant. And you wouldn’t be totally wrong to assume as much! Assume away, make an ass out of u and me, your cousin is doing just fine on…Read more...

Book clubs are one of the things that are notoriously hard to manage.

The American Music Awards are tonight. The action officially kicks off at 8pm ET and will be broadcast on ABC.

Remember all those romaine lettuce recalls from last year? It’s happening again. The Centers for Disease Control is advising consumers to not eat any romaine lettuce again, specifically lettuce grown in Salinas, California.