http://cache.io9.com/assets/base/img/thumbs140x140/io9.com.png http://io9.com/tag/lifehacker http://io9.com/tag/lifehacker If we were entirely logical, we'd be able to abandon our bad habits, curb temporary moments of insanity, and practice self-control. Our logic is paired with emotion, however, and sometimes our emotions motivate us to make poor decisions. That's where self-control comes in. Here's a deeper look into how self-control works, followed by several ways to more effectively exert your supply of self-control in order to make smarter decisions. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5802905&view=rss&microfeed=true In a world of computer viruses and spyware, a mere human doesn't stand a chance. That's why this week we're providing your desktop with some superpowers-or at least the illusion of them, thanks to these wallpapers. Check them out on [Lifehacker] More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5798664&view=rss&microfeed=true Nasa's Astronomy Picture of the Day archive is a packed with awe-inspiring, high-resolution images of space that, incidentally, work great as desktop wallpapers. But NASA doesn't offer an easy way to grab everything. Command-line tool wget to the rescue! More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5775097&view=rss&microfeed=true Unless you had your home theater set up by a professional, chances are you aren't getting the best possible video and sound out of your existing setup. These simple tweaks will take just a little bit of time but will make a world of difference. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5774613&view=rss&microfeed=true

Ever wonder why you can go over a book again and again and still be completely lost when tested on what you read? It may be because you haven't practiced remembering. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5743441&view=rss&microfeed=true

In late December I attended Berlin's Chaos Communication Congress, an annual hacker conference where speakers reveal the latest in high-tech deviousness. Straight from CCC, here are ten ways hackers will subvert your computer, phone, bank card, and life in 2011. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5731328&view=rss&microfeed=true

New Year's resolutions are made to be broken: why even bother making resolutions when you know you're not going to keep them? Although maybe we shouldn't give up on resolutions just yet, as one study suggests they really can work. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5722158&view=rss&microfeed=true

What exactly is the half-life of celebrity? A new field called culturomics has the answer. Using the largest linguistic database ever created - Google Books - culturomics experts track things like "lexical dark matter," and how long fame really lasts. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5714378&view=rss&microfeed=true

Why can't you tell when an hour has passed without looking at a watch? Why are you able to do three things at once? Does coffee make time go faster? Neuroscientsts explain how our brains tell time - or don't. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5646561&view=rss&microfeed=true

We can't prevent environmental disasters without preparing for them. That's why io9 is going to pay $2000 each to two people who write the best stories about environmental disaster. It's io9's Environmental Writing Contest - for science fiction and non-fiction. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5681230&view=rss&microfeed=true

One piece of writing advice gets held up as more sacred than any other: Show, don't tell. But this maxim can ruin your story-telling, if you treat it like a law. Here are five situations where telling is actually better. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5655794&view=rss&microfeed=true

Can a piece of software help people who are suffering from political repression or struggling to survive after a natural disaster? Yes, and not always in the ways you'd expect. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5644189&view=rss&microfeed=true

Chances are, your rare toys, comics and other collectibles aren't just awesome — they're worth serious cash. But how can you get what they're worth in such a lousy economy? Don't panic: We've collected surefire shwag-selling tips from top sellers. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5612427&view=rss&microfeed=true

Earlier this week Google and Verizon pledged to uphold a set of network principles that could transform the internet into a husk of its former self. Let's look down the barrel of the Googlezon* future. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5610328&view=rss&microfeed=true

Last week the high tech world got just a bit more dangerous - or a bit safer, depending on your perspective. And it was all because of research presented at computer security conferences Black Hat and Defcon. Here's the lowdown. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5604772&view=rss&microfeed=true

The future is a beautiful place - and you can help make it that way, while picking up a paycheck at the same time. Here are 20 jobs that will help the human race avoid dystopia! More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5562433&view=rss&microfeed=true

You want to start doing art and design work on your computer, but what are the tools you need? We got professional Hollywood concept artists to tell us - and their answers won't drain your wallet too much. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5567512&view=rss&microfeed=true

If you care about the future of books, you need to understand the Google Book Settlement. It's a complicated legal document, but we've talked to some of its architects, detractors, and defenders - and break it all down for you. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5501426&view=rss&microfeed=true

The busier you get, the more stuff you forget, and navigating that mental clutter can be worse than steering through an asteroid field. Luckily, lots of intrepid galactic heroes have faced faulty memories, and created some handy techniques for remembering. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5419396&view=rss&microfeed=true

In a study conducted at Stanford, psychologists discovered that people who hold extreme opinions are more likely to voice them loudly than those who hold moderate opinions. At last, science has explained most of what you read on the internet. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5387029&view=rss&microfeed=true

Using a new augmented reality (AR) service called Pachube, you can use your smart phone to "see" invisible environmental data about air quality and energy consumption. And we've got another amazing AR application too. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5305769&view=rss&microfeed=true

If you'd like to donate to a geek cause this holiday, we've got a big list of fifteen organizations you might consider helping out with a charity gift. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5101094&view=rss&microfeed=true

Want to know where you're most likely to have your ship hijacked by pirates this year? Now you can, with the help of the International Maritime Bureau's "live piracy map," a Google map mashup that gives you quick, real-time details on all the acts of piracy taking place on the Earth's high seas. Just drill down by using the zoom slider, and click on a flag to see what kind of crime took place. All are labeled with the type of ship, as well as whether the pirates successfully hijacked it or merely boarded. Certain areas, like this one off the coast of East Africa, are pirate paradises. The seas around Singapore and Malaysia are also packed with pirates. Clearly the future bodes well for sea-going pirates, and for pirate-lovers who want to track their dastardly deeds. Live Piracy Map [via BLDG BLOG] Images via Live Piracy Map. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5094734&view=rss&microfeed=true

This chair was designed specifically to prevent cubicle-induced spine agony. Its back a mass of constantly-shifting, quiet springs and special "pliable" textile mesh, the Embody chair (pictured) is the latest thing from ergonomics wonder company Herman "Aeron Chair" Miller. The designer, Stumpf, is known for chairs specifically designed for people who work at computers all day, and the Embody is supposed to be the greatest of all his inventions. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5068433&view=rss&microfeed=true

What if you could dial a phone, write an email, or check your voicemail just by thinking it? A new grant from the Army to further research synthetic telepathy intends to make all of the above do-able, plus provide an impermeable headspace for covert operations. How? By translating electrical brain activity via an electroencephalograph, or an EEG, into tangible action. The principle behind this tech is similar to the videogame headset you may have read about, as well as that voiceless phone-call experiment. "It will take a lot of research, and a lot of time," says Mike D'Zmura, the lead scientist on the project at University of California at Irvine, "but there are also a lot of commercial applications, not just military applications." Ah, but it's the latter that provides the most fascinating, if alarming, potential. Allow us to take a look back at a few previous pipedreams and developments spearheaded by the government in the field of, um, ESP science. LSD The infamous Project MKULTRA, run by the CIA in the '50s and '60s, tapped into an array of drugs-heroin, weed, speed, shrooms-to illegally test its unwitting subjects. But it was the use of its most famous hallucinogen, LSD, that's most captured the public's mind. THE GAY BOMB According to the BBC, the Department of Defense had a brief flirtation with a six-year, $7.5 million project to craft aphrodisiacs that would embarrass enemy troops into submission. Although it sounds like some ignorant, paranoid, ridiculous McCarthy-era thinking, this was proposed circa 1994. THE VOICE OF GOD The mythic sonic projector directly aims its sound at just one person, who can receive a secret message or just go bananas from hearing voices. And it's indeed becoming a reality, if that Paranormal State billboard stunt in Manhattan last year is any indication. HANDS-OFF HYPNOSIS The Army posted a "Voice-to-Skull" mockup on its site in May…then surreptitiously took it down. However, a sharp-shooting U.K. web page managed to capture the image, which appears to be plans for a "neuro-electromagnetic devise" that could, like the Voice of God, beam focused sounds through thin air to hypnotize its target. Curious. TELEPATHIC RAY GUN A report earlier this year revealed that the Army hoped (hopes?) to develop non-lethal weapons that discharge electromagnetic pulses that cause seizures as well as microwaves that transmit words into your ear and/or induce fevers. Honorary, Tangential Mentions... RAY GUNS OF PAIN Taser, you got served. This device would shoot a non-lethal, invisible beam at an unsupecting victim, which is bound to fuck with the mind. But why take our word for it? Check the footage. SLEEP-NO-MORE DRUGS The use of non-addictive drugs like Modafinil/Provigil in undisclosed doses allows soldiers to supersize their ability to go without sleep for 40 hours at a time. LSD image courtesy of romanedirisinghe More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5065304&view=rss&microfeed=true

Inspired by the fantasies of SF writers, we've made a shortlist of applications that developers need to build for the iPhone right now — and all of them will make your phone more powerful than a light saber. In fact, the whole iPhone-light saber conversion process is completely retro. In the brave new iPhone future, iPhone apps allow you to control everything. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5059256&view=rss&microfeed=true

Click to viewTwenty-five years from now, your lust for office supplies will not have diminished. By then you'll be jonesing for the Macbook File Folder (pictured) and DNA-sequencing fountain pens. We've cranked up our brain implants to eleven and looked deep into the future to figure out which items will be must-haves in offices all over the world in the year 2033. We begin with the Macbook File Folder, above, which comes in a variety of colors and can be stored by the dozens in your ultra-light titanium foam filing cabinets. And we've got five more futuristic office supplies that will make your future selves start panting with an unrequited desire for organizational tools. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5043160&view=rss&microfeed=true

Every day somebody releases a new spam solution, but just as often you hear dire predictions about how spam loads are growing exponentially. How will future generations deal with spam floods in 2030? Though some pundits claim email is becoming obsolete, it's unlikely that most people are going to give up on what is still one of the easiest ways to move data around the net. Plus, spam transcended email a long time ago: ads for viagra and scammy mortgages lurk in pretty much any web service you can name. With spam bots getting smarter and smarter, you'll have to turn to science fiction for solutions. Here are five strategies for dealing with spam of the future. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5011967&view=rss&microfeed=true

They yell at you and fire you twice a day. They insist that a five-day job should only take five hours. They flip-flop and then blame you for their mistakes. Star Trek's captains model all kinds of bad boss behavior, but luckily they also show us what to do with a boss who's out of touch with reality. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=392142&view=rss&microfeed=true

My new book Urawaza is a collection of over 100 tips and tricks from Japan for honing your survival skills, fine-tuning your appreciation of Japanese culture, and eventually making you superhuman. The book is full of quirky Japanese solutions to common problems, along with scientific explanations of why they work. Imagine, for example, that you need to outrun a flock of zombies, like Will Smith in I Am Legend. With the help of a little old-school Japanese wisdom, you can actually run faster. Find out how! More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=381920&view=rss&microfeed=true

Social software sites like Flickr and Digg aren't just distracting you from your job — they could actually make your job disappear in the next high tech economic revolution. Get ready to retrain yourself right now. A new book by NYU interactive telecommunications professor Clay Shirky, Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing without Organizations, is a good place to start. Although Shirky predicts the demise or extreme downscaling of a lot of familiar jobs right now — everything from design to procedural legal work — he's also got a lot of telling observations about the future of work, social relationships, and even politics, based on years of researching how people communicate online. We cornered Shirky on IM and asked him about the future of our jobs in a world where everyone can publish and collaborate online for free. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=378961&view=rss&microfeed=true

To-do lists are a great way to plan your week, and it turns out they're also not a bad tool for futurists either. We've put together 20 to-do list items that anyone can use to stop environmental disaster, speed the invention of artificial intelligence, jumpstart a moon colony, and help everyone become posthuman. Usually it seems like ordinary people can't contribute to massive projects that require scientific minds as well as philosophers and other specialists. But there are actually a lot of things you can do. Over the past week we've posted four separate to-do lists for futurists, and now we bring them all together so you can print them out, tuck them in your pocket, and start checking items off to change the world. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=370950&view=rss&microfeed=true

Human sleep patterns were once controlled by circadian rhythms governed by day and night. But now, according to a new study, almost everyone in the United States has a sleep pattern that's controlled by when they watch TV. A massive survey on time management conducted by the U.S. Department of Labor Statistics shows that most people watch TV between 11 - 11:15, dropping off to sleep when they switch the tube off. The hour when nighttime falls affects this pattern very little. Human sleep patterns are therefore more malleable than believed, and it's possible people could change them as easily as changing channels. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=364999&view=rss&microfeed=true

In a few years, your weekend hacking project will involve bits of DNA and a PCR machine instead of a soldering iron or glue. With the help of the Open Wetware Project, and the Registry of Standard Biological Parts Wiki, you too can become an amateur synthetic biologist. But this isn't about evil mad scientist stuff. People using these new open-source biohacking tools are trying create helpful life forms, like insulin-producing bacteria or drought-tolerant crops. Here's a quick introduction to the biohacking tools everybody will be using tomorrow. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=362616&view=rss&microfeed=true

In John Varley's upcoming scifi novel Rolling Thunder, everyone has a brain implant that lets them google information constantly. And many futurists are saying this technology will become a reality long before we colonize Mars. The question isn't whether we'll have google brain implants (or the futuristic search engine equivalent), but how we'll handle them. What exactly would be the plusses and minuses of being able to google information instantaneously in your head, without anybody knowing you're doing it? More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=359932&view=rss&microfeed=true

Harvard cognitive scientist Stephen M. Kosslyn, who studies how brains process images, wants to improve the world with his cutting-edge research. And he's starting with four ways to make your PowerPoint presentations more human brain-compliant. This morning at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting in Boston, Kosslyn spoke in a symposium devoted the visualization of data, explaining how breakthroughs in cognitive science have revealed the best way to present information in the PowerPoint format. It was one of the most interesting examples of applied science I've ever seen. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=357063&view=rss&microfeed=true

If you want to learn good organization skills, look no further than some of the best leaders in the universe: the captains of spaceships. They may be fictional, but they have skills that translate into the real world. After all, you'd follow Admiral Adama into battle, and trust Malcolm Reynolds to have your back. Now you can learn the seven greatest leadership lessons we gleaned from watching shows like Futurama and Firefly. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=353543&view=rss&microfeed=true

If you're distracted by lolcats at work all day, new evidence from evolutionary biology suggests it's not your fault. Human visual attention evolved thousands of years ago to track the movements of animals, and even today people are far more distracted by images involving changes in animals than they are by images of inert Mac laptops or moving cars. This research, conducted by psychologists at Yale, goes a long way towards explaining the bizarrely mesmerizing effect of lolcats, despite the fact that there are plenty of other funny, cute things out there on the Web. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=347041&view=rss&microfeed=true

Why do our brains need sleep? And can we switch off the genes that make sleep necessary? Medical researchers at the University of Pennsylvania say that they've located a gene that regulates sleep, and if they can switch it on and off it's possible that you'll be able to take a pill to eliminate your desire to snooze. Unfortunately, the researchers' work also shows that doing this might drive you insane or reduce your mental abilities dramatically. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=343957&view=rss&microfeed=true

If you've ever lived in a dorm or a small apartment, you know how hard it can be to cram in all your computers, books, and general stuff while still staying organized. This problem has reached epic engineering proportions in the International Space Station's "living quarters" on the the Zvezda Module. Three people use the 43-foot cylinder for sleeping, eating, relaxing, cleaning up, going to the bathroom, exercising, doing science experiments, and using their computers. What can you learn about space saving from people in space? Turns out there are three basic rules of organization on Zvezda that are useful on Earth, too. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=341364&view=rss&microfeed=true