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. Amazon just marked down the Nothing Phone 3 to $678.99, its lowest price yet, according to price trackers. That’s about $120 off the usual $799 tag for the 12GB RAM and 256GB storage base model. Nothing Phone 3 Cell Phone $678.99 at Amazon $799.00 Sa…

In the middle of the Las Vegas Convention Center, amidst the world's largest tech trade show, an awards show was taking place. The audience included nominees ranging from large companies like Nvidia to scrappy startups introducing themselves to the world, alongside journalists, tech insiders, and enthusiasts gathering to watch the Best of CES 2026 awards. After days of scouring showroom floors, speaking with innovators about their new technologies, and deliberating for six hours, finalists and winners were chosen by experts from CNET, PCMag, Mashable, ZDNET, and Lifehacker. I had the privilege of helping to judge and present several awards, and aside from my gratitude for…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. The OnePlus 13 isn’t just competing with flagship phones. It’s quietly undercutting them. At $699 for the unlocked 512GB Arctic Dawn model, down from $849, it’s currently at its lowest price according to price trackers, making a strong case for itself if you’ve been eyeing an Android phone with top-tier specs without crossing the $1,000 threshold. OnePlus 13,16GB RAM + 512GB Storage …

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. There hasn't been a better opportunity for Android users to get a Google Pixel Watch, provided they don't mind being a bit behind the times: Woot is currently selling the first generation GPS + Cellular Google Pixel Watch for $79.99, 76% off the original $329.99selling price. This is the cheapest the wearable has ever been, according to price tracking tools. (Note that Woot only ships to the 48 contiguous states in the U.S. If you have Amazon Prime, you get free shipping; otherwise, it’ll be $6 to ship.) Goog…

When I reviewed the Nintendo Switch 2 launched earlier this June, my assessment was that it would be worth buying eventually, but probably not right away. The console then went on to have the biggest gaming launch of all-time, so there's egg on my face, but I stand by what I said: Until now, the Switch 2 has been a great way to play enhanced Switch 1 games, but hasn't had many exclusives, so you could generally still play Nintendo's newest titles without upgrading your device (unless you're an impatient Mario Kart or Donkey Kong fan). But now, it seems that's about to change, and if you haven't gotten the Switch 2 yet, it might finally be time to take the plunge. In a f…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. Black Friday sales officially start Friday, November 28, and run through Cyber Monday, December 1, and Lifehacker is sharing the best sales based on product reviews, comparisons, and price-tracking tools before it's over. Follow our live blog to stay up-to-date on the best sales we find. Browse our editors’ picks for a curated list of our favorite sales on laptops, fitness tech, appliances, and more. Subscribe to our shopping newsletter, Add to Cart, for the best sales sent to your inbox. Sales are accurate at the time of publication, but prices an…

Welcome to our trip inside the culture of young people. This week, we've got the usual slang definitions of phrases like "you the birthday," and "catch a fade," and we're also talking about AI. You might be about to lose your job to artificial intelligence, but younger generations are in danger of losing their reality to it. From viral "AI or animals" memes to the rise of AI detectives, the youth are engaged in a high-stakes game of "Spot the Bot" just to feel like they still have a grip on the truth. The meaning of "you the birthday"A new slang metaphor is blowing up TikTok this week. People are saying "you the birthday," a phrase that means "you're awesome" or "you're …

Popular culture for kids has fragmented so much lately that what's familiar to one 14-year-old might be utterly foreign to another. But the progress toward everyone having their own personal culture isn't complete. So I'm taking a look at some of things all (well, most) kids relate to and love, including A Minecraft Movie, Labubus, and the literary techniques developed by Spanish author Jorge Luis Borges in the 1940s (for real). Will A Minecraft Movie become a generational touchstone? I'm writing this on the day A Minecraft Movie comes out, and signs point to the release being one of those vanishingly rare events that capture the collective imaginations (and dispo…

This week, young people are longing for a past they were barely alive for, roasting people who dare to read books in public, and sharing videos of the last moments their lives made sense. So, not exactly an uplifting collection of cultural observations, but I threw in some truly banger Christmas carol mashups to lighten the mood. Everything is nostalgic, melancholic, or festive—sometimes all at once. What is "millennial optimism"?Nostalgia for Y2K is dying out, replaced by romanticization of the years around 2010, which some younger people are imagining as a more innocent, hopeful time that they missed out on. At the same time, many millennials who were setting those tren…

This week, the Out-of-Touch Guide grapples with an eternal question of man vs. beast, sees Gen Z throw a hilarious right cross at millennial decorating trends, contemplates whether refusing to wash your face is a skincare routine or a cry for help, and explains why serving booze at weddings has become a generational flashpoint. What is "100 men vs. 1 Gorilla?"In a video posted three years ago, TikToker yuri5kpt2 was the first online to ask a seemingly simple question: who would win in a fight between 100 men and a single gorilla? It took some time for the general population to catch on to this intriguing hypothetical, but critical mass was achieved this week, and the deba…

This week, young people are looking at the recent past through rose-colored glasses, living their best lives by filming harmless classroom pranks, and, hopefully, protecting their futures by not swallowing too many chia seeds or roasting themselves with heating pads. What does 2016 nostalgia mean?A few weeks ago, I posted about the online trend of millennial optimism which was focused on the years around 2010, but things have gone further: Young people are nostalgic specifically for 2016. This probably sounds bizarre to you. 2016 saw the deaths of Muhammad Ali, David Bowie, and Prince, and levels of political and social upheaval many of us had never experienced, leading m…

This week, we're taking a look at goonbait and RegencyCore If you don't know what any of that even is, you're definitely in the right place, so let me break down for ya. Alysa Liu and goonbaitIn Gen Z and Gen A slang, "gooning" refers to extended masturbation without orgasm, sometimes done for the purpose of entering an altered state of consciousness. "Goonbait" is, essentially, media that exists to inspiring gooning. Speaking of goonbait, a couple weeks ago, I talked about Olympic gold medal figure skater Alysa Liu as the hero athlete of Generations Z and A. It didn't take much time for some of the weirder members of the younger generations to make it creepy. This is a…

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…

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…

This week, I explain why generations A and Z are eating rotten meat, making fun of cave explorers, showing off their emergency contacts, and becoming very emotionally invested in an angler fish. Everyone is having a very normal week. What do all the cave diving memes mean?If your various social media feeds are full of videos of upside down shoes and boots in different locations, you're witnessing "cave diving" memes. While "cave diving" actually refers to underwater cave exploration, the memes are not about that: Younger people are making jokes about the way cave explorers will wedge themselves into tiny crevices until all anyone can see are the bottoms of their boots. H…

This weekly trip through the youth pop culture landscape takes us from turmoil in Stranger Things fandom, where many fans refuse to let the show end, to the kids' Wild West of Roblox, where age-verification is changing the landscape in a massive way, and all the way to Africa, where online mega-celebrity IShowSpeed is livestreaming a fascinating travelogue that people are watching all over the world. What is "Conformity Gate?"The final episode of Netflix sci-fi series Stranger Things aired on Dec. 31 and it seems that many fans are not happy (shocking, right?). Some feel that the finale left too many loose ends, some that it all happened too easily, or that it was rushed…

Your social media feed is probably showing you something totally different, but this week, young people are fleeing TikTok (or at least posting about fleeing TikTok), AI and humanity are locked in a high-stakes dance battle, AI food is yelling at everyone, and we're learning a lot about "young hos." TikTok refugees head to UpscrolledSince it was released in 2017, social media platform TikTok has been the way young people communicate, but that could be changing. Alarm over recent changes in the app's privacy policy and accusations that its new, American owners are messing up the algorithm have some users deleting their accounts and leaving. Or at least saying they're leav…

The real 80/20 rule, also known as the Pareto Principle, is a saying that asserts 80% of outcomes come from 20% of all causes. You can use it to organize your to-do list, among other things. But to many young men, 80/20 means something very different. Young men are not alright. Masculinity is growing more toxic by the day. Online incel communities are growing, and the most receptive audience to poisonous ideas about gender seems to be children. This week's column isn't going to be fun: I'm explaining one of the guiding principles of the incel movement, and discussing a TikToker devoted to changing her red pill son's mind. And I can't talk about toxic masculinity without …

Saturday, March 8, was International Women's Day. March is a whole women's month, even if Google erased it from its calendar. So I'm taking a look at young women—and not in a creepy way. I want to know: what's up with young women? What are they about? What are their dreams? How are they feeling deep in their hearts? So I'm checking out Reddit's woman-centric corners, listening to Doechii and "Call her Daddy," and consulting some "coochie doctors." The state of young women in two subredditsTo try to get some insight on young women between the ages of 18 and 25 or so, I took a look at some Reddit communities ostensibly made for, by, and about women. I started at Reddit's…

In this week's trip into the cultural zeitgeist of people too young to rent cars, I explain why everyone is arguing over robot abuse, take a look at a niche TikTok subculture dedicated to sticks, and explain why you should never say "sigh name cuff" on video. All that, plus warnings of dangerous TikTok trends and a look at gleeking. Viral video of the week: Kai Cenat buys a $70,000 robot Massively popular YouTube and Twitch streamer Kai Cenat may have doomed humanity in this week's viral video. On a recent live stream, Cenat and his pals unbox and assemble a human-like robot that set Cenat back $70,000. The video begins as a hilarious demonstration of impressive …

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Things seemed very quiet this week in the world of youth culture, so I asked my always-connected son what kids were talking about. "Dad, the Epstein files," he said. "That's all anyone is talking about." I like to keep things light here, but it's not possible at the moment; The Epstein files are the culture right now, no matter what age you are. Younger people are trying to figure out how to fit this massive thing into their idea of the world, just like you probably are. Smaller kids are contextualizing the files by visiting/making Roblox Epstein Islands and joking about it in school (then asking their folks what it reall…

This week's biggest event was the Super Bowl. While the game was a snore-fest reminiscent of the lopsided Super Bowl blowouts of the past, the halftime show was nothing like the performances of 1980s Super Bowl favorites "Up with People." If you compare the two performances (and you should), you'll see how far we have come as a society. Kendrick's jeans win the Super Bowl Super Bowl 2025 may have been more of beatdown than an exciting football game, but luckily Kendrick Lamar was around at halftime to provide some much needed drama. From "Uncle" Samuel L. Jackson providing a preemptive critique of the show from "mainstream" America, to Serena Williams crip walki…

Welcome back to The Out of Touch Adult’s Guide to Kid Culture, your weekly reminder that the internet is raising children in ways no one understands. This week, we've got kids setting their laptops on fire for clicks, a clueless millennial stepping into a cultural and linguistic minefield, and chicken Alfredo (but make it R&B). "Low GPA Activity" trend sees kids burning their laptopsIn last week's column, I explained the "low GPA activity" trend that was taking off on TikTok. To quote me: "It's the kind of trend that went from funny to a little harmful quickly, so check out these videos now, before TikTok bans the entire genre." I must be psychic, because the trend t…

For members of the always-online generations, reality is hanging by a very thin thread. Core youth values like authenticity and "keeping it real" are confusing concepts to people raised in an environment where almost nothing can be counted on and anything can be faked. Every viral video could be a stealth advertising campaign. Every breakout band, an industry plant. Whether it's meat mountains at Arby's, or vérité video of cheater's antics, this week we're looking into all-encompassing scams. But at least you can bank on Scientology speed-runs as legit, and take comfort in the realness of a ball of red hot metal. What is Rod Wave's Arby's Takeover?Arby's is a fast food ch…

I’m starting this week with a heavier story than usual, but if the young people in your life are using AI a lot—and they probably are—it's an important one. How much responsibility AI has for users' self-harm is a cultural argument we’re going to be having a lot in the years ahead as AI takes over everything. But the rest of the column is lighthearted, so sorry in advance for the mood-swing What is TikTok's "Devil Couldn't Reach Me" trend?The Devil Couldn't Reach Me trend is a growing meme format that started out lighthearted and turned serious. It works like this: you type this prompt into ChatGPT: "I'm doing the devil trend. I will say 'The devil couldn't reach me,' and…