Lifehacker Excerpts

#weekendhacker The human body and its brain are pretty incredible. They're also fragile and dumb. Realizing this can make your life miserable, or you can look at it as an opportunity and take control. This weekend, learn a few built-in superpowers you may not have known you had. All they take is a little practice. More »

#forwhatitsworth Verizon relents a little on unlimited data, Congress considers fighting for some "hearts and minds" at home, and Mac folks can relax about lost hotkeys. More »

#cleveruses As we inch closer to summer, you're more likely to run into poison ivy, bug bites, and the other itchy ailments that come with being outside. Redditor xume points out that banana peels are a great homemade remedy for itchy skin. More »

#customization Windows: AniExplorer enables hidden animations in the Windows Explorer interface, letting you customize your file manager and give it a little pizazz. More »

#appdeals The Daily App Deals post is a round-up of the best app discounts of the day, as well as some notable mentions for ones that are on sale. More »

#mindhacks By nature, we're optimistic. We think we're better than most people at virtually everything we do. We believe we'll beat the odds of getting cancer even when we smoke a pack of cigarettes a week. This is the result of our optimism bias, and it both helps us succeed and make some of the dumbest decisions of our lives. Here's how it works, and how you can make it work for you. More »

#highlights This week we squeezed our workout routine into 20 minutes, ordered tailor-made clothing on the cheap, cured our router's constant need for a reset, and more. Here's a look back. More »

#stuffwelike Bandits are very simple to understand: they're a rubber band with a hook. This may not seem extremely compelling at first glance, but there's actually a lot you can do with them. They can be used to hang a water bottle on your bike, your sunglasses from your car's rearview mirror, tools on a ladder when you need to set them somewhere, and virtually anything you can think of. More »

#facebook Getting new Facebook notifications is always fun, but that red number gets a lot more annoying when your notifications are just filled with apps you don't want and comment threads you no longer care about. Today, Facebook added new controls to the notification dropdown so you can unsubscribe from certain threads and apps right away. More »

#crowdhacker Ever found a beautiful bird dead outside your home? Chances are it smashed into your window and never recovered. For every dead bird you find, just imagine how many were snatched up by a cat or pulled into the brush by some other critter. Worldwide, window collisions kill close to a billion(!) birds every year. With spring migration currently underway in the northern hemisphere, now is as good as ever to make your home bird safe. The DIY experts at Stack Exchange tell you how. More »

#jobs Many more people than ever before are getting the pink slip, thanks to massive layoffs happening everywhere. If there's a chance you could be the next layoff, find out what you can get from your company before you're rushed out the door. More »

#linuxappdirectory Linux users have more text editors, IDEs, and command-line tools than a programmer can shake a stick at. If you're looking for a good programming text editor, we recommend Kate. It's super easy to get started with, but is quite powerful and has lots of great plugins to beef it up. More »

#asklifehacker I recently jailbroke my iPhone and now that it's done I'm very overwhelmed by Cydia. I've downloaded a couple apps, but I don't understand most of what I'm looking at. The descriptions and explanation in Cydia don't help much, so I'm wondering: can you help me wrap my head all this stuff? More »

#cleveruses Here's an easy fix for those gadget cords and plug-in tips that never seem to stay connected: Slide the plugs through a cheap pencil gripper for a tighter connection. You can also use these pencil grippers to color-code other cords around the house. More »

#google Chrome: Prefer Google's search but wish you had Bing's beautiful daily images? With the "Bing wallpaper for Google homepage" Chrome extension, you can set Bing's wallpaper to automatically load on your Google homepage. The extension offers different themes and loading settings. More »

#openthread Long week? Take a quick breather in this week's open thread. More »

#googlesearch Earlier this week, Google introduced Knowledge Graph, the company's new search technology that understands "things not strings" and adds rich and relevant details about your query in the sidebar of your search results. Here are five great things you can now do with a quick Google search. More »

#diy Everyone loves the iPhone's headset with volume and music controls on the inline remote, but if you have an Android phone, you can actually get iPhone-designed buds working with your device. All it takes is a little DIY magic. More »

#macdownloads Mac: Sparrow, our pick for the best email client on Mac has been updated to support POP accounts. This means anyone who doesn't have IMAP support in their email (email services like Hotmail fall under this) can now use Sparrow properly. More »

#moving Whether you're getting ready for a big move or your just stuffing away your season clothes, packing up clothes is never a fun process. To make the process a little smoother, Reddit user LutzExpertTera simply throws the clothes on a makeshift hanger attached to a box. More »