Lifehacker

When it’s time to install a new version of macOS or download a new update, nearly everyone turns to the Mac App Store to start the process. While the App Store makes OS installations easy and relatively painless, it doesn’t always work—and it might be time to turn to Terminal (and a little creativity) instead.

When I was trying to learn Spanish, everybody told me to listen to Radio Ambulante. It’s a Spanish-language NPR show that aims to bring the depth of longform journalism to the world of podcasts. And it’s great—but I could never quite catch what everyone was saying.Read more...

If you’re flying on Alaska Airlines this week you may want to swing by a Starbucks on your way to the airport. Starbucks Red Cups launch tomorrow, November 7th, and to celebrate the coffee chain is partnering with another Seattle-based company, Alaska Airlines, to offer customers free priority boarding.

Fire is fun. Pie is fun. Setting your pumpkin pie (lightly) on fire is just a great time all around. Actually, I think all custard pies beg to be brûléed, but pumpkin is the seasonal darling, so we’ll focus on that.Read more...

With sound quality that can stand up to high-end offerings from Bose and Sony, excellent noise cancelation, and Apple’s customary ease of use, the brand new AirPods Pro are one of the best new tech products of the year.

Microsoft’s new Office app for iOS and Android, currently in beta, is supposed to be a “one-stop shop” alternative the mobile Word suite. It combines Office’s three most popular programs—Word, Excel, and Powerpoint—and throws in a bevy of mobile-minded features, like the ability to scan text and tables off paper…Read more...

There’s this incredibly stupid phenomenon in Hollywood studios. When a new studio exec replaces an old one, they throw out all the old film projects in development, and they start new ones. You’ve seen this happen in your own industry (and so have I), because this is what new bosses do. They change things. That’s…Read more...

The IRS released the federal tax rates and income brackets for 2020 today. The seven tax rates themselves remain the same as they were in 2019; however, the income limits for each have been adjusted to account for inflation over the course of the year.

Starting on December 1, 2019, a bunch of older Samsung and Roku devices will no longer be able to access Netflix. Netflix is citing “technical limitations” as the reason for this sudden loss of support but it’s unclear what those technical limitations are in the first place—though the ability to auto-play episodes (or…Read more...

In case you need a break from your Twitter timeline or Facebook news feed—or constant updates on the state of our country’s changing political landscape—here’s something that might make you and your problems feel instantly insignificant: The Size of Space. Designed by Neal Agarwal, it’s a website that compares your…Read more...

Ever since police tracked down the alleged Golden State Killer with a public DNA database, those sites have been privacy minefields for people who just want to learn more about their genetics. Now, a Florida judge has signed a warrant that allows authorities to search even the DNA of people who opted out of being part…Read more...

If your iPhone’s burst mode automatically selects a blurry or overexposed image, don’t assume the rest of the photos in the burst must be worse. Instead, check the burst to see if you can find something better.

There are few components of the Thanksgiving meal that cannot be improved by a clove or five of roasted garlic. Though it’s not a part of the usual sage/rosemary/thyme flavor profile, there’s no way you can tell me it wouldn’t be welcome (unless you are a liar). You can mash roasted garlic into your potatoes, spread…Read more...

Poop is funny when you’re five. Okay, I know, people of all ages might enjoy a good fart joke. But occasionally, it is possible to grow tired of your kid’s potty jokes—particularly at the dinner table—and if you react strongly against it, you’re probably only egging them on. They are trying to get a rise out of you;…Read more...

What’s the longest amount of time you’ve gone recently without looking at a screen? I’d wager, for most people, the answer is just a few minutes or even seconds.Read more...

If you’ve wanted to try out Beyond Meat’s sausage, now’s your chance to take it for a test-drive.

With student loan debt in the United States adding up to more than $1.5 trillion, it’s no wonder plenty of people want to make paying for college easier—and maybe a little cheaper, too. But as the tech scene has produced a few startups with big ambitions for revolutionizing the way we pay for college, the average…Read more...

We recently wrote about the dangers of recycling certain products that may not be recyclable, but a new (and mostly bleak) report by Quartz this week takes it further, indicating that the entire system of recycling itself is deeply flawed—particularly when it comes to plastics.Read more...

You wouldn’t think a guy who named his whole company after himself would be this nice. But when Brian Kelly started his travel and deals site The Points Guy, he didn’t know he’d be leading a large team writing a multi-section site for over 10 million readers a month. We talked to him about running the company, the…Read more...

ARRIS SURFboard (32x8) Docsis 3.0 Cable Modem | $68 | AmazonRead more...

I love a good scientific mystery—stuff like quantum weirdness, dark matter and dark energy, strange gravitational behavior, or even why smart speakers respond to light waves as if they were sound. That last one was the topic of a recently published paper from researchers at the University of Electro-Communications…Read more...

You’ve worked hard for this, and the day is finally here: You’re getting your first paycheck reflecting the raise you successfully negotiated. But as anyone who’s ever received a windfall can tell you, money has this tendency to disappear on you. One day, you’re looking at your newly flush bank account, the next,…Read more...

Have you heard that female watermelons are sweeter than male ones? That male eggplants are less bitter than female ones? That male peppers have fewer seeds? Well, you heard wrong.Read more...

The phrase “add it to everything” gets thrown around a lot in food writing, but there really are a lot of ingredients that immediately transform and elevate a dish into a better version of itself. The ingredients usually bring umami, acid, or some sort of combination of the two. Often they “round out” the flavor…Read more...

Up to 20% Cash Back On Select Products With Amazon Prime Credit Card | AmazonRead more...

If your kid has a wide range of interests—and a short attention span—they’ll probably be into Triviatopia, a series of educational animated videos on YouTube about everything from science, history and art to technology and the environment.Read more...

Google has dropped its November Android 10 update for the Pixel 2, Pixel 3, Pixel 3a, and Pixel 4, which is funny given that Samsung apparently beat Google to the punch on this one—an unexpected move.Read more...

Jumping to an entirely new line of work can be extremely daunting. That’s why this week we’re diving right into the how-tos of making the big career switch. First we chat with consultant, speaker, and podcaster Joseph Liu, who has helped numerous people make big mid-career transitions over the years. Then we hear a…Read more...

Despite being a year old, the 2018 iPad Pro is still a solid pick in Apple’s tablet line. Because of that, it’s been rare to see the iPad Pro drop much lower than its regular $800 price, but you can snag a quick deal on an 11-inch, wifi-only iPad Pro with 64GB of memory for just $674 through Amazon right now. (Other…Read more...

Back in August, we wrote about the risks of so-called “hidden-city ticketing” —when a traveler intentionally misses a leg of a connection because it’s cheaper than to fly direct. Airlines don’t look upon it so fondly, which is why it comes with the very real risk of having your entire itinerary canceled (which is…Read more...

If your Twitter feed keeps scrolling and jumping around for no reason, here’s how to fix it. Comms professional Evan Sutton points to the answer in Twitter’s settings menu. This works on both mobile and desktop.Read more...

Right now, my oven looks clean—but when I turn off the overhead lights, it looks like it’s covered in tiny filaments of dust. My kitchen counters, which also looked clean two seconds ago, reveal a spattering of crumbs that I must have missed during the last wipe-down. Every surface in my home, from my desk to my…Read more...

AmazonBasics Home Improvement Essentials Sale | AmazonRead more...

Each year, while developing new and exciting Thanksgiving content, I try to walk the line between “wow, this uniquely delicious” and “she is a mad woman who must be stopped.” This results in praise (from people who are already onboard with my bullshit), but it also brings a lot of festive shouting.Read more...

If you’ve ever purchased a domain name from Network Solutions, Register.com, or Web.com, you’ll want to change your password ASAP. The domain registrars have announced that they experienced a data breach in August 2019.

If you haven’t yet seen Saturday Night Live’s “Duolingo for Talking to Children” sketch, we highly recommend it. It’s funny because it’s true: Talking to kids can be surprisingly intimidating. Should I ask them about school? Doesn’t everyone ask them about school? Wait, are they even old enough to be in school?

$50 iTunes Gift Card | $42.50 | Amazon | Promo code ITUNESRead more...

We’re especially blessed with meteors this month: the Orionids are still putting on their light show, and tonight another, smaller meteor shower peaks: the Taurids.Read more...

Just last month, we wrote about a couple that was swindled out of nearly $12,000 on Airbnb because of a phony listing. But according to a report by senior staff writer Allie Conti for Vice—who fell victim to a scam played on Airbnb users in several major cities—scammers on the platform are becoming a hell of a lot…Read more...

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...