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Synology is just the most successful of the SOHO NAS boxes. QNAP, Netgear, DLink fall behind (in popularity), but the DIY crowd is the largest, slightly bigger than Synology. This is according to a lifehacker poll (take with grain of salt).

http://lifehacker.com/5968677/five-best-nas-enclosures

This is a good starting point http://lifehacker.com/5920290/how-to-fix-movies-that-are-really-quiet-then-really-loud

Ask, and it shall be added unto you:
http://lifehacker.com/5953155/use-a-raspberry-pi-as-a-tor-relay-and-help-others-browser-anonymously

Generally for third party software (WinAmp, CopyTransmanager) to be able to sync to iPhone and iPod Touch (and I assume iPad), it requires Apple drivers, which are installed when you install iTunes (along with a bLoat load of background services). Supposedly you can separate the installer into components, and just install the drivers, but I haven't had luck with that. Copytrans Drivers installer will automate the process http://download.cnet.com/CopyTrans-Drivers-Installer/3000-18546_4-75300288.html

CopyTransManager http://www.copytrans.net/copytransmanager.php is simple drag and drop for music and videos

i-funbox will let you drag and drop files for apps that support it (Downlite, FileApp, etc) http://i-funbox.en.softonic.com/
Here's a lifehacker article that mentions a couple alternatives: http://lifehacker.com/5914638/the-best-desktop-file-explorer-for-iphone

I can't believe how terrible iTunes for Windows has always been. When I bought my iPod Touch 4g, I finally reached the cold day in hell where I intentionally installed iTunes on my computer (only to activate, and upgrade the iOS version)

What, pray tell, is the purpose of education if each person has to find out everything by themselves, and no one can take advantage of the collective wisdom of society, and the accumulated learning built up over history?

They don't have to find out everything by themselves. Chances are people have done what this guy is trying to do and have written about their experiences. If only there was some way to find this information, perhaps someone has asked the question before?

& Lifehacker have got you more than covered: http://lifehacker.com/364054/top-10-ways-to-get-cables-under-control

You could get the cable modem and router (and their cables and AC adapters) off your desk by attaching them to pegboard mounted to a wall or under your desk. Be sure to mount a power strip, too.

If you want something a little more professional looking, you could go all rackmount.

At about $75,000/year.

The Gawker sites have backup blogs that are now up. Gawker is at http://live.gawker.com/ Lifehacker is at http://live.lifehacker.com/ and so on. They seem to have already thought of a backup plan, albeit not a complete one.

The good news is that this is the best their sites have looked in months! I wholeheartedly approve of the new layout.

The Gawker sites have backup blogs that are now up. Gawker is at http://live.gawker.com/ Lifehacker is at http://live.lifehacker.com/ and so on. They seem to have already thought of a backup plan, albeit not a complete one.

Questions about site backup should be sent to Gizmodo, anyhow.

Reminds me of this article I read a while back: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/frontal-cortex/2012/06/daniel-kahneman-bias-studies.html Oh and this one too: http://lifehacker.com/5944221/you-cant-be-effective-when-youre-too-smart-for-your-own-good?utm_source=io9.com&utm_medium=recirculation&utm_campaign=recirculation

yes.

http://lifehacker.com/5946895/superior-replacements-to-the-boring-stock-iphone-apps

Next question?

There is so much disinformation here. Just get yourself any standard $5/month VPN service. Set it up, and test it at home before you leave. Problem solved! Here's a great list:
http://lifehacker.com/5940565/why-you-should-start-using-a-vpn-and-how-to-choose-the-best-one-for-your-needs

Now about the other suggestions. Yes, the ALPHA tor correctly configured with bridges works today. But by the time you get there, China may have figured out how to block it again. As mentioned before, it's a cat and mouse game. Not to mention the fact that pages load about 10-20x slower over tor than they do over a regular VPN. This is only something I like to play with and your are nuts and a cheap bastard if you want to use it for your work.

The third option suggested here is to setup your own personal VPN. This is what I have done. I have one to my home computer and one running on Amazon EC2. They both work fine, but you have to know what your doing. If you haven't setup a dozen VPNs before and can't tell me what MTU is stay away.

Even in the major cities, Internet access in China is much slower than most places in America. The fastest Internet you get at home or high end hotels is 5Mbps/1Mbps with 1Mbps/128 the standard. Go into the rural countryside and even the 2 major Cell carriers may not offer Internet. Locals use dialup or deal without. Small towns are somewhere in the middle. Also note that you'll need a L2TP VPN for your smartphone since PPTP VPNs are blocked by cell carrier.

This is the only way I'm going to get through the next couple of months without strangling some of my FB friends and acquaintances:

http://lifehacker.com/5940319/how-to-block-annoying-political-posts-on-facebook

Short version: browser add on that lets you (among other things) filter FB to not show you posts containing words like Romney and Obama.

Life Hacker has a variety of articles covering standing desks. You can find a good collection of their concepts here: Standing Desks on the Cheap

This solar-powered drink cooler could probably be modified to fit personal electronics better. I would test it for condensation first, though..

Does iOS or Android even have the native ability to add website shortcuts to the home screens or application menu? If they did, I think people might be more willing to use them.

Not sure about Android, but iOS definitely has web apps - it was there even before the App Store was around. It's effectively a bookmark, but I believe it runs a separate instance so do it right and it can feel all "native".

In fact, you can pin any web site to the home screen.

Apple has always suggested that apps that don't want to be approved be done this way. I'm not sure how far Apple has gone with their proposals to have sensor capabilities (accellerometer, gyros, location, etc) available via HTML5 so they can be used by webapps...

I would assume Android has similar functionality.

I'm sure it's quite a few:

MAC OSX
Windows
Android
iOS
BB OS

Something like this, perhaps?

http://lifehacker.com/5931021/clmapper-maps-out-craigslist-apartments-for-your-hunting-convenience

Windows 7 added a few simple keyboard shortcuts to quickly move windows around and dock them to the left or right half of a monitor. It does the same if you drag a window to the edges of a monitor. I can't speak for the GP, but personally I have not needed a 3rd party window manager since this addition. I can't even remember the software I was using back in the XP days, but it basically did the same thing.

Since most well-behaved Windows apps remember their position on exit, this is just peachy. If they don't, proper alignment is just a few keystrokes away. Combined with the Win+(digit) shortcuts for the first 9 items on the start bar (docked or running apps), I don't even touch the mouse for most of my work.

Here's a list of those shortcuts at Lifehacker

How about folding like this?
http://lifehacker.com/5888022/the-miura-fold-is-how-youd-fold-a-map-if-you-were-awesome

Either you're going to eventually launch it, or not. It will never be 'consumer friendly' since it's a blatantly anti-consumer move intended to whore out to an unrepentantly anti-consumer organization.

Just wait until they've done this to about two dozen decent programmers... they'll invent some new crypto protocol that makes bittorrent look like the redheaded stepchild of piracy... "You can't stop the signal, Mel." -- Mr. Universe

Already been done. It is called BTGuard and you can get it plugged into most torrent trackers for a small monthly fee. Lifehacker ran an article about it not long ago.

http://lifehacker.com/5863380/how-to-completely-anonymize-your-bittorrent-traffic-with-btguard

http://btguard.com/

Also, as outlined in the lifehacker article there are other solutions to mask the traffic from an ISP and there is no way in hell they can block some of them because they have much broader uses than just hiding your torrent tracking traffic. VPNs are way too widely used by so many businesses for telecommutes and other such, so it will ALWAYS be an option. And since (at least I think) it would be illegal wiretapping for them to capture your packets and decrypt them, there is not a damn thing they can do about it.

um... no. cloud vendors can disappear without notice in which case you're out of luck. lastpass was hacked last year so that isn't the safest choice either. see http://lifehacker.com/5799036/the-best-password-utilities-that-dont-store-your-data-in-the-cloud so this is a real problem. the fact that you;re thinking about this means you're planning which is like better than probably 80% of people out there. so what i would do is come up with something that works for you and have your spouse/next of kin actually try to follow the agreed procedure without you around and have them report back on problem areas. a lot of businesses have disaster recovery plans which they try to play out once or twice a year. trying it definitely finds some problem areas.

Or, applying the term "scientist" more liberally, on the Mythbusters - Kari Byron - though technically, she's an artist. (Women, take your pick from the other hosts, I'm sticking with Kari.)

horrible example. She's a film student they hired because she's pretty and they needed a pretty face on the show. BA in Film and Sculpture. Complete opposite of science. No science jobs, no science training, no interest in science, she's just a model.

Jeri Ellsworth is a MUCH better example of a sexy female scientist. She invented the Commodore 64 emulator within a joystick, a popular toy that sold well on QVC and at Walmart. And check out these sexy photos of her soldering a circuit board.

Computer Manufacturers do that because it pays them. They get money that drives the cost down of the computer so you get a better price I mean they get more money. If it bothers you that much it's called format it and do it yourself.

PS: just build the computer yourself you lazy ass, it isn't that hard. PPS: if you don't want to do that all you need is a license key, you can format it yourself and download the iso from something like this: http://lifehacker.com/5832896/download-windows7-isos-to-reinstall-without-restoring-your-system

In my mind, parents need to handle everything related to computer and internet safety. There are a few things that can be done, but most parents canâ(TM)t or wonâ(TM)t do them.

* Kid's computers are in the family room where Mom or Dad are always when they go online.
* Kid's do not have a laptop or PC in their rooms unless it is not connected to the internet. A USB WiFi adapter is a great way to police this connection. Just take the USB wifi adapter away when you donâ(TM)t want them on the network.
* Kid's accounts on PCs need to not have administrative or power user access to the system.
* Technically challenged parents should at least use a DNS protection service like opendns.org to filter bad websites.
* More advanced parents will deploy a proxy server to log and filter all objectionable content. Dans Guardian is a good choice. I'd block external internet access to every PC, except the proxy server too. This way, the kids can't by-pass the proxy to see questionable content.
* For children under age 9, a white-list of websites is probably best. Disable DNS completely and manually set Disney.com and 10 other websites in the /etc/hosts file on the kids PC. Here's an article about managing hosts tables. http://lifehacker.com/5817447/how-to-block-unwanted-ads-in-all-applications-and-speed-up-web-browsing-with-the-hosts-file
* Recognize that access will happen at their friend's homes, but that it isnâ(TM)t ok in your house. Talk to them about internet browsing.
* Sites that are appropriate for teens are different then sites for a 7-8 yr old. Filter appropriately for the age.
* Twitter and facebook will always be blocked. Always.
* At a certain age, unlimited internet needs to happen ⦠that age begins exactly when the kids pay for the internet connection, not before. Until that time, my network, my rules.

I use ebuddy which works, I can't remember the other one I tried but uninstalled (I don't tend to chat much on the phone)

you could try googling.... http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2010/09/android-im-apps-which-one-should-you-use/

http://lifehacker.com/5803525/the-best-instant-messaging-application-for-android

On the other hand, if you search "what is the best web browser" (without the quotes!) like the person you're replying to did, you get slightly different results. I see, in order a comparison from some site I've never heard of with Google Chrome as #1, a LifeHacker page (Chrome again), a random Yahoo! Answers link ("Google Chrome is, for Windows users, the fastest web browser."), a review with 4 equal "best browsers" including Chrome, a PC Mag review (spoiler: Chrome wins!), a really annoying YouTube video where Firefox comes first, "Review: Best Web browser? Google's Chrome outshines pack", a review where Firefox wins, and finally one that doesn't answer the question at all.

I've moved user directories after installation using these basic instructions, without having to resort to installation foo. I've actually done this 3-4 times over the past year, due to stupidity on my part trashing my system drive (and not having any backups, which I now do have). I've never seen any junction issues, but that's probably because I have c:\users\spoo pointing to d:\users\spoo (c:\users still exists and is valid).

Apple's stance is the same reason we don't want non-Microsoft browsers ruining the security of our Windows RT tablets and draining battery. IE9 (and IE10 more so) are currently the most secure browsers on the market.

Firefox lacks completely security features like sandboxing, just-in-time (JIT) hardening and plug-in security. Internet Explorer can withstand against attacks to Flash and PDF Reader (most attacks now are against third party software), while Firefox just lets them infect the system. On top of that Firefox is extremely resource needing which would just drain the battery on tablets. No thanks, give me IE any day over that. (Yes, I know old IE's suck.. but try the new ones, they're actually good. Much like Chrome)

Old users get the 25gb upgrade permanently, not as a trial. And yes, "years." Skydrive has been 25GB since 2008.

Just so. Google "is working behind the scenes" to get CISPA enacted. I wonder if that isn't because they maybe think they can exempt themselves from something by getting involved, or perhaps they were threatened elsewhere for their embarrassing (to its proponents) public opposition to SOPA. Another reason -- as explained in this Lifehacker story -- is that CISPA pushes the role of censor onto the state expressly, where SOPA would have required Google et al. to take on that task themselves, and at the behest of any copyright holder. CISPA is much broader and gives the government all sorts of powers it really shouldn't have under any rational reading of the Bill of Rights (the first and fourth amendments, particularly).

This. It was great when Gina was around, but I believe the quality can, IMO, "vary wildly". My favorite was last year's article on "Thawing Frozen Food in the Washing Machine". I kid you not.

"Plus I always get headaches after a couple hours of watching 3D content, so I avoid it in the theater whenever I can."

That's because you are trying to focus on parts of the image you're not supposed to. In reality, whatever you focus on gets sharp, but cameras can't do that, so if you try to sharpen the blurry background with your eyes, you'll get a headache.

http://www.shroffeye.org/3d_headache.htm
http://lifehacker.com/5430492/focus-on-the-action-to-avoid-headaches-during-3d-movies

Anyone that has played Scrabble (especially against a computer) know that there's tons of words out there that no one has ever heard of, most of which you can't even find a definition for. What the hell is a Qi? I don't know, but I can get 66 points for it.

Qi is a simple one, it's a two letter word and there are roughly a hundred two letter words accepted by TWL which are hackable. Qi is also something I've seen reading Chinese philosophy so that doesn't really upset me. The ones that really get me when I play against computers or people who cheat are actually the longer ones. Recently I have seen outgnawn, aliquot, mahoes, votive, the list goes on when your friends are using websites to look up permutations.

You can study this stuff and memorize things like I-dumps: ziti, ilia, ixia, inion, etc. But in the end what really got my scores higher was studying the short 2 and 3 letter words and building thick crossword-like packs of words especially over TL tiles.

I think I might go for it though.

Note this isn't the 'private mode', it's a separate feature that blocks content that shows up in multiple places, which is usually ads and sundry crap. You'll have to allow jquery and such.

http://lifehacker.com/5213300/internet-explorer-8s-inprivate-feature-is-a-competent-ad-blocker

You obviously didn't understand what I was talking about *at all*. You mentioned VirtualBox, Fusion 4, and Parallels. Try running OS X in VirtualBox or Parallels without using a hacked up OSx86 version. Oh wait you can't.

You did not say "run OS X virtually" or any such wording, you said How about virtualization? Let's now look at virtualizing OSX, Google is your friend...

• How to Virtualize OS X Lion on Windows
• How to Run Mac OS X in VirtualBox on Windows
• How To Run Leopard (Retail) in VMware Fusion - Virtualize OSX on your Mac
• [Updated] Virtualize OS X Lion 10.7 Windows 7
• OS X Lion Allows Running Multiple Copies on the Same Machine (Virtualization)

That's 5 of Google's more than 150,00 results. Are you again going to say I didn't understand what you meant?

You apparently didn't bother to *read* any of the links you gave, otherwise you'd find out that all of them are illegal methods as they are violations of the EULA, and your last link even explains why they are illegal. Again, you can't virtualize OS X client prior to Lion at all, you can virtualize OS X Server and OS X Lion client, but only if you are running on OS X as a host OS, ie not VMWare ESX or Citrix XenServer, or Microsoft Hyper-V, or any other bare-metal hypervisor, in other words, a useless non-feature.

In response to my asking about terminal services, you respond "OSX has terminal". Clearly you have no idea what I'm talking about and didn't even bother to do the five seconds of googling to find out.

Just like you didn't spend the fives seconds to Google virtualize OSX. You didn't bother doing what you accuse me of not doing, Google terminal services osx. When I just did Google suggested "terminal services osx" and "terminal services osx client". I'm sure you're competent enough to look at some of the results yourself, if not I see no reason to continue.

Falcon

Again, you clearly didn't bother to give even a cursory glance at the results. Half of them are forum posts asking if OS X will ever have the ability to host terminal services (because it doesn't at the moment), and the other half are TS *clients* for accessing *Windows* terminal servers. The one relevent link, iRAPP, explicitly says that in order to conform to Apple's EULAs, they only allow multiple connections to OS X Server, not Client, which misses the entire point of having terminal services in the first place, and again makes it nothing more than VNC with a few more bells and

You obviously didn't understand what I was talking about *at all*. You mentioned VirtualBox, Fusion 4, and Parallels. Try running OS X in VirtualBox or Parallels without using a hacked up OSx86 version. Oh wait you can't.

You did not say "run OS X virtually" or any such wording, you said How about virtualization? Let's now look at virtualizing OSX, Google is your friend...

• How to Virtualize OS X Lion on Windows
• How to Run Mac OS X in VirtualBox on Windows
• How To Run Leopard (Retail) in VMware Fusion - Virtualize OSX on your Mac
• [Updated] Virtualize OS X Lion 10.7 Windows 7
• OS X Lion Allows Running Multiple Copies on the Same Machine (Virtualization)

That's 5 of Google's more than 150,00 results. Are you again going to say I didn't understand what you meant?

In response to my asking about terminal services, you respond "OSX has terminal". Clearly you have no idea what I'm talking about and didn't even bother to do the five seconds of googling to find out.

Just like you didn't spend the fives seconds to Google virtualize OSX. You didn't bother doing what you accuse me of not doing, Google terminal services osx. When I just did Google suggested "terminal services osx" and "terminal services osx client". I'm sure you're competent enough to look at some of the results yourself, if not I see no reason to continue.

Falcon

Let's see: Office 2012 is supposed to be something like "the biggest innovative complete re-implementation" of the Office framework to allow it to use the new Windows Phone/8 style UI elements. They may be doing away with the Ribbon UI (which, once I understood it as being modal, made decent sense and was implemented fairly well in 2010.) Over the minimalist cubism of WP7/W8, pretty much everything is desirable.

That Ribbon is not going away any time soon, is evidenced by the fact that Win8 has more Ribbon, not less - e.g. Explorer is now ribbonized.

And of course no-one is going to redo Office entirely in Metro stile. What you'll likely get is a separate version of Office for Metro, just as IE10 comes in both desktop (same UI as today) and Metro ("cubism") versions in Win8.

http://lifehacker.com/5542041/block-sites-from-using-your-facebook-login-with-adblock-plus

Setting up Arch Linux is not hard. The article at http://lifehacker.com/5680453/build-a-killer-customized-arch-linux-installation-and-learn-all-about-linux-in-the-process is particularly useful. I did not even need to refer to the guide. Just followed the instructions at LifeHacker and then used the Arch Wiki to configure and fine tune things from there. So yeah, I can do it. But I found a better way.

Interesting choice of terms, "better". I think most Arch users would disagree, especially since most of them don't share your preference for OpenBox, and would find it undesirable cruft.

Of course, it goes without saying that "better" is subjective, and it's ok if ArchBang's better for you (i.e. you have a fundamental philosophical disagreement with the whole Arch project). But simply representing a project with a complete reversal of The Arch Way as "Arch, but better", with no clarification of the profound philosophical difference that causes you to favor ArchBang is bound to fundamentally misrepresent one or both projects to newbs. So please stop it.

Setting up Arch Linux is not hard. The article at http://lifehacker.com/5680453/build-a-killer-customized-arch-linux-installation-and-learn-all-about-linux-in-the-process is particularly useful. I did not even need to refer to the guide. Just followed the instructions at LifeHacker and then used the Arch Wiki to configure and fine tune things from there. So yeah, I can do it. But I found a better way.

I now do my Arch setups by installing ArchBang. ArchBang is a riff on CrunchBang. As a live CD, it is Arch Linux with an OpenBox GUI, a Tint2 panel, system info shown in conky and some slick CrunchBang style GUI configuration tools for OpenBox. Now setting up an Arch Linux system takes about 15 minutes. That is all the time it takes run the installer. As part of the install you need to edit two files. In rc.conf you set your hostname. In pacman.d/mirrorlist, you need to move the mirrors in your country to the top of the file. That is it.

After 15 minutes of work, you have a completely working Arch Linux system with sound, X and a Window Manager with font smoothing all set up for you.

In addition to pacman they also include packer. Which is able to install all the standard packages that pacman does but is also able to perform installs from AUR using the same syntax as pacman.

Arch + Openbox + Packer = ArchBang

SOPA is also planned to block ip addresses so good luck with that.

"What the bill can't do is block numeric IP addresses" http://lifehacker.com/5860205/all-about-sopa-the-bill-thats-going-to-cripple-your-internet

I completely adopted the strategy described in this article: The Only Secure Password is the One You Can't Remember. Essentially, I have a different password for every single website, service, etc. and all of them are behind a strong master password in a software called 1Password. The encrypted file is saved to DropBox, so it's both online and on several computers (including my smartphone). For more detailed description and reasoning for why that's good, see the article.

The upsides: It's extremely unlikely that my passwords ever get into the wrong hands (I guess it would require someone finding out my master password and stealing the encrypted file. That would be a realistic threat if CIA was after my passwords but now for my needs that's essentially as safe as it gets). Even if one site I use is hacked, I don't use the same password anywhere else. 1Passwords costs a bit (something like 35 bucks, I think) but it's pretty good password vault: There is good dropbox integration, smartphone apps (which also work well with smartphone DropBox apps), browser extensions, automatic backups of the encrypted file, etc.

The downside: If I were to ever lose all instances of the encrypted file (I don't know how that could happen. I currently have it on three computers in two different locations, on my smartphone and in DropBox service) I would lose all my passwords, which would be very bad. I just assume that this risk is unlikely enough to be non-existent.

It's no use. This technique can't be explained without a picture.

Still, for as open as you seem to think Mac OS X is, why can't I download Darwin and run Mac software on it?

Because the top layer is not open.

But what layer at all of Windows can you download openly and run at all?

Where are all of the applications for OS X?

Well that was a stupid question.

Why doesn't OS X work on just any commodity PC hardware?

It does. Apple just doesn't sell it that way.

Why does Apple go sue crazy when someone puts together a Hackintosh or when someone even posts a video showing one?

Wait, you are already contradicting yourself? What an ass. I'll stop resounding here since it's clear you are just another Apple Hater Troll.

P.S. as for selling now - well, you've made (by your own admission!) some pretty stupid statements, but that probably is the stupidest.

I've already lived this with iTunes. I bought iFitness (more here. During an iOS upgrade there was some sort of issue and PC backup turned out to be corrupt and couldn't restore the apps. "No problem," I thought, "I downloaded all of these apps from the store, I can just re-download everything."

Nope, despite being one of the five best fitness apps it was pulled from the market for unknown reasons. Some claim it was banned for posting fake positive reviews, but that seems completely unnecessary considering how much praise iFitness received.

Because of that I no longer trust my phone or the "cloud" to keep my data safe.

There's even a small downloadable program called Steammover for simplifying the process, there's an article about it here.

It seems probable that most users underestimate what information Facebook is collecting about them.

http://lifehacker.com/5843969/facebook-is-tracking-your-every-move-on-the-web-heres-how-to-stop-it