Setting Up Your Home Office

We may earn a commission from links on this page. I’ve never managed to get on board with any hydration trackers. I’ll log the foods I eat, the exercise I do, but drinks just happen. Did I have one glass of water or two with lunch? Hell if I know. Not to mention that your hydration depends on all the H2O you take in, not just the glasses of plain water. You can hydrate with soup, with Diet Coke, or with slices of watermelon. Most hydration apps forget this, but even if they don’t, that just makes logging even more complicated. That’s why I was intrigued by the P Water app for iPhone and Apple Watch. It tracks exactly what you’d expect from the name. I’ve been using it for…

Earlier this month Strava unveiled its new Instant Workouts feature, a subscriber-exclusive tool that seems like a natural way to leverage its acquisition of Runna. In a Reddit post, Strava said this feature builds upon Runna's already successful Instant Workouts feature. Instant Workouts uses your activity history to generate personalized workouts across four intents ("Maintain," "Build," "Explore," or "Recover"). The idea is that the more you upload, the more personalized your recommendations become. Another major selling point is the automatic route generation feature, which draws on Strava's massive database of billions of historical activities to suggest optimal pat…

A week after OpenAI admitted it will soon start testing ads in ChatGPT, Google has promised that it's not planning to inject ads into Gemini anytime soon. The statement was given to journalist Alex Heath during the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis said the company doesn't have "any plans" for ads in Gemini. While the statement was fairly brief, it also jibes with a similar quote Hassabis gave to Axios, where he said he was "a little bit surprised" that OpenAI was already introducing ads to ChatGPT. That surprise is understandable, especially because OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in 2024 that he considered ads a "last resort for …

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. This winter is looking rough, with one of the biggest winter storms hitting nearly half the U.S. this weekend. It's safe to assume many people will be without power, especially those in cities without the proper infrastructure to take on record-breaking winter storms. A power station is a great device to keep the lights running in a pinch—and the standalone Anker SOLIX C1000 is 41% off, with the options with Solar Panels going for up to 56% off right now. Mashable voted the Anker SOLIX C1000 the best one for most people. …

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. The Samsung Galaxy S25 FE is the least expensive member of the Galaxy S25 lineup—more affordable but still filled with enough features and Galaxy AI tools that PCMag named it an excellent choice for those who want to be in the Galaxy ecosystem without paying top dollar. Right now, it’s available at an all-time low price on Amazon: $509.99, 28% off the original $709.99 asking price. Samsung Galaxy S25 FE Cell Phone (2025) …

A malicious ad-blocking extension on Chrome and Edge is using the ClickFix attack to infect devices with a remote access payload capable of spying on and taking over a system. NexShield pitched itself as a privacy-focused ad blocker from the developer of well-established and highly trusted uBlock Origin. However, as security firm Huntress found, the extension initiates a variation of the ClickFix attack that has been dubbed "CrashFix"—a reference to the browser crash that precedes the fake security warning and malicious command prompt. How NexShield's 'CrashFix' attacks your deviceAs BleepingComputer describes, the NexShield extension creates a denial-of-service (DoS) l…

A workout habit has a way of building momentum: Once you’re doing something, anything, it’s easy to build on that. Video workouts are a simple way to get started, but if you're having trouble following along, I'm here to help. Below are some ways to make common exercises more accessible, and what to do if you can't get through a whole video yet. If you can’t squatLots of “easy” bodyweight programs ask you to perform a squatting motion without any added weight. But if that’s already more than you can do, try one of these instead: Sit in a chair, and stand back up. Lean your back against a wall and slide down until you’re in a sitting position (this is called a wall squat…

The funny thing about smartphone addiction is that it makes low-effort tasks feel totally productive. When I finally quit doomscrolling through Instagram and TikTok and watch an actual movie or TV show, I feel like I've just spent the afternoon studying physics. Platforms like Netflix, which could once be seen as time-wasting entertainment, now seem like antidotes to endless, useless scrolling. But Netflix doesn't seem to appreciate its new role. Instead, the company apparently sees short-form video apps—and smartphones themselves—as a direct threat to its business, and is jumping on the bandwagon. It's not only that Netflix is reportedly now making content with phone s…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. We're going back to Westeros, baby! Not that we ever really left, given that we're merely between seasons of that other Game of Thrones spin-off, and with several more allegedly in development. It seems the only place the Game of Thrones universe is completely stalled is on the page—but I digress. Where the original series saw a kingdom in decline and House of the Dragon takes us back to the Targaryen Dynasty at its height, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms occurs roughly in-between, shifting the focus from the realm's power players to more tangential (at least for now) smallfolk: Ser Duncan the Tall (Peter Claffey), a lowbo…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. 2026 kicked off with great deals on gaming monitors from Samsung, like the Odyssey OLED G8 and the more budget-friendly Odyssey G50D. But if you were looking for a bigger, curved monitor, Samsung just added the 49-inch Samsung Odyssey OLED G93SC to the mix, which is currently $899.99 (originally $1,599.99 at its release). Samsung 49" Odyssey OLED (G93SC) QD-OLED, 240Hz, 0.03ms, DQHD, G-Sync Compatible, AMD FreeSync Premium Pro,Height Adjustab…

Heads up, workers of the world: Microsoft 365 is currently down. Microsoft's flagship work suite, which includes tools like Microsoft Teams and Microsoft Outlook, is currently experiencing issues impacting users. It's not yet clear exactly why these problems are occurring, but according to Downdetector (owned by Lifehacker parent company Ziff Davis) thousands of users are reporting issues. There are any number of causes that could trigger a widespread outage like this, and in all likelihood, Microsoft will have the issue isolated and fixed soon—especially considering how many companies and users rely on Microsoft 365 to function. But it does follow a number of high-profil…

Netflix's February slate is heavy on returning original series, not least of which is the second half of Bridgerton season four. The last four episodes of the period romance drop on Feb. 26. In the third installment of thriller The Night Agent (Feb. 19), FBI agent Peter Sutherland, played by Gabriel Basso, investigates a dark money network alongside a journalist while trying not to get killed by assassins. The Lincoln Lawyer (Feb. 5) and Love Is Blind (Feb. 11) are back as well. For Olympics fans, there's docuseries Glitter & Gold: Ice Dancing (Feb. 1), which goes behind the scenes with the couples competing in ice dancing in the 2026 Winter Games. Also on the sports…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. It took me a while to get comfortable with wearing earbuds. I grew up in the era of headphones, and never quite liked the idea of sticking something into my ears on the regular. If that sounds like you, Sony's got your back. Its newest earbuds, the Linkbuds Clip, are clip-ons. Sony's not the first brand to take this idea to market—Anker's Soundcore brand has a number of more affordable options. But for premium clip-on earbuds, it's pretty much this, the slightly more expensive Bose, and the slightly sportier Shokz. Compared to that competition, Sony's new model is looking like a solid choice. These earbuds fit snugly aroun…

My number one hack to consistently exercise is my ability to lose myself in the moment. When the music fades, your doubts quiet, and you're simply there—fully immersed in the rhythm of your workout—is what psychologists call a "flow state." And it's not reserved for marathon runners, or professional dancers, musical geniuses or chess masters, or what have you. Whether you're lifting weights in your garage, following a YouTube yoga video, or taking a morning jog, tapping into flow can transform your workout from a chore into something genuinely energizing. What is a flow state?Flow state, a concept popularized by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, describes a mental sta…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. We’ve covered portable power stations like the Anker SOLIX line, but if you’re looking for a heavy-duty, large-capacity model that can handle sump pumps, large AC units, multiple appliances, and even whole-home backup with extra batteries, brands like EcoFlow will better suit your needs. One of their award-winning models is the EcoFlow Delta Pro 3 power station, which is currently available at a 46% discount, bringing it down to an all-time low of $1,999 (originally $3,699). EcoFlow Delta Pro 3…

Your eyes don't deceive you: You did just read a headline in the year of our lord 2026 about Yahoo! Despite losing out to other search engine and email companies like Google, Yahoo! is very much still a thing. In fact, one statistic claims Yahoo! Mail still has 225 million daily active users to this day. That's a ways off from Gmail's 1.8 billion daily active users, but way better than AOL's eight million users. (Yes, AOL is still a thing, and is actually a part of Yahoo!—at least until its sale to Bending Spoons goes through). But I'm not here to talk about Yahoo! and AOL's marketshare. Instead, I'm here to sound the alarms to the millions of people that use Yahoo!, and,…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. Mobile gaming stopped being a casual distraction a while ago. Big-budget titles, console-quality ports, and cloud streaming have turned phones into credible gaming machines. The problem is still input. Touch controls work until they don’t, especially once games demand precise movement, aiming, or long sessions. The Razer Kishi Ultra is built to fix that gap. And it’s currently $79.99 on Amazon, which online price trackers confirm is its lowest price to date. It fits most phones, even with cases, and can expand wide enough to hold an iPad mini, which…

Back before Reddit became the unofficial "front page of the internet," you would dig up your next long read or binge watch on Digg. Starting in 2004, the original version of the site worked much like Reddit does today, with community members submitting content they found interesting to premade category pages and others voting on it until an algorithm eventually decided what should make its way to the front page. Aside from the lack of user-made pages like subreddits, it was generally pretty familiar to what modern users might expect—and, speaking from experience, it was a big deal to be featured on Digg. Unfortunately, starting in 2010, the site went through a few drasti…

This week's out-of-touch guide is a mélange of internet nonsense that reflect real world anxieties. A gritty part of London is going viral for a taxpayer-funded water park that only exists thanks to AI videos made to enrage racists. Inside the kid-centric videogame Roblox, users are protesting both ICE and age verification without ever leaving their avatars. And in the darker corners of the online world, looksmaxxers are determining who is a HTN, while everyone on TikTok is saying, "Screw it. We're going to pretend to be birds." What is a Croydon Water Park?It might sound like the name of an outré sex act or a cocktail from the 1980s, but a Croydon Water Park is something…

Verizon had a massive outage last week, leaving roughly two million customers unable to use their phones off of wifi or SOS mode for nearly a day. As an apology for the inconvenience, the company promised to refund those affected a meager $20 to their accounts—so naturally, scammers quickly got a phishing scheme up and running targeting people eligible for the credit. As reported by Android Authority, the Jones County Sheriff's Office in Georgia has issued an alert about fake Verizon "credit" messages floating around. Verizon credit phishing scamAccording to the sheriff's office, scammers may contact you via text or email—claiming to be from Verizon—with information about…

When OpenAI first announced GPT-5.2 last month, it quietly disclosed a new safety feature it called "age prediction." Considering ChatGPT proper isn't exactly an "all ages" kind of tool, it makes sense that users under the age of 18 should have protections in place to shield them from harmful content. The company says that users who indicate they're under 18 already receive an altered experience to "reduce exposure to sensitive or potentially harmful content," but if the user doesn't voluntarily share how old they are with OpenAI, how does the company enforce these protections? Here's where age prediction comes in. How age prediction for ChatGPT worksOn Tuesday, OpenAI of…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. Today's Bluetooth speakers have features that make them better than they were just a few years ago, from USB-C for universal fast charging, to hi-res audio playback, to serving as battery backup for other devices. The Beats Pill speaker has all these features and more, making it a great choice, and it has dropped in price to $99.95 (down from $149.95), matching the lowest price it has reached since its recent release, according to price-tracking tools. For less than a hundred dollars, this speaker is a steal. …

When Netflix isn't spending its time trying to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery, it seems the company is actually adding new features to its subscription service. Netflix is always adding new shows and movies, which is what most users are looking for in the platform, but that's not all you can expect from your account. In fact, Netflix is now rolling out an interactive experience for its live competition shows, allowing subscribers to cast votes in real-time. Live voting comes to Star SearchNetflix announced the change in a press release on Tuesday, and also revealed the first show to officially run with real-time voting: Star Search. Netflix is bringing back the American …

I'm a devout Pixel user. I love stock Android, and I'm always running the latest Android beta, making Pixel basically my only choice. But there are times when I get jealous looking at all the extra tools that Samsung provides on its Galaxy phones, Edge Panel being the big one. With Edge Panel, you can swipe in from the edge of your phone and a hidden drawer reveals itself, filled with apps, system actions, and shortcuts. Given how barebones Pixel Launcher is, I've always wanted something like this. Then I found the Panels app by Fossor Coding (not to be confused with the ill-fated wallpaper app by MKBHD). In some ways, Panels is even better than Edge Panels on Samsung. It…

I've been in a particularly "back everything up for the sake of it" mood lately, and the latest target of my fixation is messages. It's been several generations of Android flagships since I archived anything, though, so now I'm scrambling to back up everything from 2019 and beyond. Android was supposed to fix the way it backs up data and messages as far back as Android 8.0 Oreo in 2017. Google recently refined the mechanism when it switched to Google One, its all-in-one subscription and cloud data offering. While data backup has improved, it's also a veritable "black box." It's hard to verify what's been saved and even harder to view the data. I'm taking backups back into…