Setting Up Your Home Office

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. Right now, black JBL Live 460NC on-ear headphones are down to $39.99 (originally $129.95), offering a nearly 70% discount on this long-lasting, noise-cancelling alternative to in-ear buds from a reliable brand with free shipping. JBL Live 460NC Noise Cancelling On-Ear Headphones $39.99 at Walmart …

We may earn a commission from links on this page. The Kindle Colorsoft is Amazon's most expensive e-reader (technically, the Kindle Scribe is more of an e-note), but that doesn't automatically make it the best Kindle. In fact, if you mostly use your Kindle for novels or even black-and-white manga rather than color comics or picture books, the Colorsoft will actively make that content look worse. While I've been banging this drum about color e-readers for a while, you don't have to take my word for it: Amazon actually used to warn buyers about this too, but has since taken that warning down. As far back as February, according to a page saved by The Internet Archive, Amazon…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. If you’ve ever wanted to bring festival energy to your living room or backyard, the JBL PartyBox 110 comes pretty close. Right now, a restored, like-new unit is available at Walmart for $299.96. This professionally refurbished version still comes backed by Walmart’s 90-day free return policy. It has been inspected, tested, and cleaned by a certified Walmart seller to meet strict performance standards. You might see tiny cosmetic marks, but functionally, it works just like new and delivers the same punchy sound JBL’s known for. …

YouTube may have been the official partner at MIPCOM this year, but AI was the unofficial winner. I attended MIPCOM in Cannes, France this year for the first time, and as someone who doesn't use generative AI in my daily life, let alone my writing or storytelling, the message to me was clear: Get on board or be left behind. AI is coming for television whether I like it or not. MIPCOM, the long-running annual global trade show for television and digital media, celebrated its 40th year last week in partnership with YouTube, furthering the bridge between the creator economy and traditional TV shows. Many influencers have already made the jump to our living room TVs—MrBeast,…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Whether it's the start of a new semester, midway through one you don't feel you're doing great in, finals season, or just an era of your life where you want to learn something new, studying is the only way to truly retain information. There are all kinds of ways to study, but cramming won't cut it if you're genuinely trying to add something to your long-term memory. Here are the best methods and techniques to help you learn. A heads up, though: Most of these work best when you're writing things down. Don't try to do these in your head or even digitally on your computer if you can help it; writing with a pen and paper give…

If you used the internet at all on Monday, you probably noticed a lot of things weren't working all that well. Sites and services around the world experienced interruptions, including the likes of Facebook, McDonald's, and even Fortnite. You might have heard by now that the issues were caused by an AWS outage. If you don't know what AWS is, however, that explanation might not be all that clear. "Amazon Web Services" runs the internetAWS is an Amazon subsidiary, short for Amazon Web Services. The company offers over 200 cloud-based products to customers, including applications for all of the following: Accessing AWS services Analytics Application integration Blockchain Bu…

If you don’t like Halloween, we can’t be friends. I don’t care whether you celebrate with a drunken costume party, pumpkin carving, door-to-door candy begging, or a more personal observance like watching horror movies alone, but respect must be paid to the awesomest of all holidays. But where did Halloween come from, and how did it end up like the modern holiday we now celebrate? The origins of Halloween are surprisingly slippery. Oct. 31 is next door to a Christian religious holiday, and it's around "harvest time," which might generally explain the date, but no one really knows why we put on costumes and beg for candy. There are a ton of theories describing how modern H…

For better or worse, nothing defines iOS 26 quite so much as Liquid Glass. Apple's distinct new design language has been met with praise and criticism, with some users enjoying the refreshed look, and others bemoaning the UI's issues with visibility and consistency. It seems Apple was similarly of two minds on the update, having toyed around with the exact look of Liquid Glass throughout the iOS 26 beta testing period. The company seemed to be having trouble settling on a specific balance between the design's glassy effect, which can look really cool, and its overall readability. If buttons are too clear, for example, they'll let in more of the background elements, whic…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. The holiday season sales are around the corner, and Best Buy is the first of the major retailers to formally announce their plans. Much like their other big sales, Best Buy is having multiple events. This year, Best Buy is having six sales that you can take advantage of starting on Halloween and leading up to Christmas. Here are the details. What are Best Buy's holiday sale events?You can think of the holiday Sale Events as multiple sales spanning Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and Christmas. All six events take place in store, in app, and online. Eac…

If you use the X app on iPhone, there’s a good chance any links you open today will look different than they did yesterday. That’s because the platform is trying to up engagement on posts with links in them, by keeping the like, comment, repost, favorite, and share buttons active in a new footer even when you click through to an outside article. When you click on a link in X, it doesn’t actually navigate away from the app, but instead uses a special version of either Chrome (on Android) or Safari (on iPhone) to open the article within X. That hasn’t changed. But what has is that, on iPhone, you’ll now continue to see interactable elements at the bottom of the page, with b…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. The Apple Watch’s hypertension notifications may soon have a competitor. Oura, maker of smart rings, is planning to pursue FDA clearance for their own warning feature for high blood pressure. Oura members can sign up for a study soon in the Oura app. Hypertension, or high blood pressure, can lead to problems with your heart and blood vessels over time. That’s why medical professionals measure it at office visits and why people who have high blood pressure may take medications or use diet and exercise to try to control it. What Oura is planning for its blood pressure featureOura said in a press release that the feature wi…

If you haven’t logged into X for a while but still want to keep your X username, you might want to log back in soon. According to a recent post on the website formerly known as Twitter, the company will soon start selling “handles that are no longer in use” to paying subscribers. The feature, called the X Handle Marketplace, is currently only being teased, but a waitlist for it is live. Once active, it’ll allow X Premium+ subscribers (at the $40/month level) and Premium Business accounts to both request free (with their subscription, at least) handles, and directly purchase especially rare ones. Rare usernames could cost $2,500 or moreAccording to an FAQ page, pricing for…

In the resale game, you have to be prepared to negotiate with buyers, and even accept less money than you think your items are worth. That's just how it goes—you can either hold strong to your conviction that the sweater you're selling is worth $100, or you can accept $80 for it and move on. Most non-professional sellers, myself included, end up taking that $80, because you get money and you get rid of the item taking up too much space in your home. Accepting a lower offer is just part of the process, even if it stings. But a lowball offer? You shouldn't need to waste your time with that—and many platforms, like eBay and Mercari, have automatic tools in place that save y…

When your PC is acting up, one diagnostic tool at your disposal is the Windows Recovery Environment (or Windows RE). Windows RE offers a series of functions to help you root out whatever is ailing your machine. Using it, you can choose to reset your computer, run an automated diagnosis and repair tool, adjust settings to see if any are causing the issue, uninstall previous updates that might be tripping up Windows, and restore to a previous back Windows backup, among other potentially helpful options. It's a necessary feature of the operating system, meant for times when a simple shut down and restart doesn't help your PC get back to normal operations. So it's not ideal …

If you found it difficult to access sites and services early Monday morning, you are not alone. In fact, the rest of the world was having trouble, too. For a short period of time, a global outage prevented people from accessing a wide variety of sites and services, from Facebook to Fortnite. The trouble stemmed from Amazon Web Services (AWS), an Amazon product that offers cloud hosting for a massive number of websites and companies. If you use internet-connected products, chances are a good number of them rely on AWS. As such, when AWS goes down, so do those sites and services. That includes social media platforms like Facebook and Snapchat; retailers and restaurants li…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. Did you know you can customize Google to filter out garbage? Take these steps for better search results, including adding Lifehacker as a preferred source for tech news. If you’ve been meaning to add a smart doorbell to your home setup, this might be the time to do it: The Arlo Video Doorbell 2K (2nd Gen) and Chime 2 bundle has dropped to $88.26 on Amazon. Arlo Video Doorbell 2K 2nd Generation & Chime 2 Bundle …

Did you know you can customize Google to filter out garbage? Take these steps for better search results, including adding my work at Lifehacker as a preferred source. Welcome to The Out of Touch Adults’ Guide to Kid Culture, where I make sense of youth nonsense. This week, kids are bringing hollowed-out pumpkins into Starbucks and demanding they be filled with pumpkin spice lattes; TikTok is obsessed with a fake video game called Bird Game 3; everyone’s growing the universe's AI slop-pile with videos about a fictional video game, and teens are fighting about Lorax costumes. Plus the world's police departments are issuing a warning about a prank that is not funny and you s…

Did you know you can customize Google to filter out garbage? Take these steps for better search results, including adding Lifehacker as a preferred source for tech news. It seems like common sense that the longer you go without retrieving a memory, the harder it is to retrieve—but it wasn’t always one of those things we simply knew to be true. In the 1880s, German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus studied the phenomenon and published his findings, giving the world the Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve. The curve is a simple graphic demonstrating how information is lost over time, but it proved that time-related forgetting is real (and has been reaffirmed by further study since). …

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Did you know you can customize Google to filter out garbage? Take these steps for better search results, including adding Lifehacker as a preferred source for tech news. Whether you’re a fan of listening to music while you read or you simply live in a household of noisy people, silence may not be something you’re used to finding before hitting the books—but it should be and it can be. Despite the boom in popularity of study-based playlists on YouTube and Spotify, quiet is the way to go when you’re trying to retain information you’re taking in. Don’t take my word for; take science’s. What the research says First, research p…

Did you know you can customize Google to filter out garbage? Take these steps for better search results, including adding my work at Lifehacker as a preferred source. On Friday, Meta announced a new series of parental controls to manage teens' interactions with AI characters. On the surface, it seems like a good idea. In reality, however, it's too little, too late. Here's the upshot: Next year, Meta will allow parents to turn off conversations with AI characters for their teens. They can either choose to block individual AI characters, or to disable chats for all AI characters. If they choose to allow teens to chat with any AI characters, parents can receive a report deta…

Did you know you can customize Google to filter out garbage? Take these steps for better search results, including adding my work at Lifehacker as a preferred source. OpenAI's new Sora app has been the main focus concerning hyper-realistic AI slop over the past few weeks. Sora makes it all too easy for users to generate short-form videos that seem real enough to most people, including videos that showcase real people's likenesses. But before Sora dropped, it was Google that was stirring fears about these realistic AI videos. With Veo 3, Google launched an AI model that not only produced lifelike videos, it also generated realistic audio synced to the action. Sound effects…

Did you know you can customize Google to filter out garbage? Take these steps for better search results, including adding my work at Lifehacker as a preferred source. If you've been anywhere near TikTok lately, you've likely seen the proliferation of posts of people posing with celebrities in elevators, like this one. They are, of course, fake—products of AI image generation tools—but it's a fun kind of fakery that's super easy to be part of. There are a wealth of free AI tools out there you can use to make any kind of photo or video, but if you want your celebrity-meeting-in-an-elevator post to fit in with the current trend, the easiest way is to use CapCut. How to ma…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. Did you know you can customize Google to filter out garbage? Take these steps for better search results, including adding my work at Lifehacker as a preferred source. When the latest iPad Air with the M3 chip came out in March, Lifehacker Senior Tech Editor Jake Peterson warned you not to buy it, as its advantages didn't justify the premium price compared to an older model. But things have changed in the time since: The new iPad Air has dropped $300 in price, reaching its lowest levels since its release, according to price-tracking tools. You can no…

Did you know you can customize Google to filter out garbage? Take these steps for better search results, including adding my work at Lifehacker as a preferred source. Apple officially entered its M5 era on Wednesday. The company not only announced the new M5 chip, placing a major emphasis on its AI processing power, but also the first batch of new devices that will ship alongside it. If you're interested in buying an Apple device with the company's latest and greatest hardware, it's all just around the corner. That said, the list of product announcements was limited. While Apple revealed M5 versions of the iPad Pro and Vision Pro will be available starting on Oct. 22, it…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Did you know you can customize Google to filter out garbage? Take these steps for better search results, including adding my work at Lifehacker as a preferred source. After crossing six marathon finish lines—and with NYC coming up in just two weeks—I've learned that the right training plan can make or break your 26.2-mile journey. The difference between hitting the wall at mile 20 and finishing strong often comes down to matching your plan to your current fitness level (and all the brutal honesty that entails). I've tried several of the most popular programs out there, and here's what actually works, based on my experience…