David Murphy

Coronavirus is a pain in the ass—to put it mildly. We’ve seen big cancelations of large group events and conferences, and your employer might be encouraging you to work from home until everything blows over. To help ease this process, Google and…

Donnnnnng. The classic Mac chime is a glorious way to let yourself know that your Mac is booting back up after a shutdown or reboot. But if I’m right, this friendly noise has been missing most new Macs for years. (I only…

There’s a fun little bonus feature buried away on your Wear OS smartwatch. And while it probably won’t make you the next Deadmau5, it’s a fun way to drop some beats for your friends or entertain yourself during those moments of supreme…

Tech 911Tech 911Do you have a tech question keeping you up at night? We’d love to answer it! Email david.murphy@lifehacker.com with “Tech 911” in the subject line. Great broadband internet costs a small fortune unless you’re blessed to live in a location…

You shouldn’t be afraid of using public wifi anymore. Or, at least, you have much less to fear nowadays. While that doesn’t mean that you should blindly connect to “free internet,” “xfinity,” or other random, open hotspots without a little common sense—and…

Tech 911Tech 911Do you have a tech question keeping you up at night? We’d love to answer it! Email david.murphy@lifehacker.com with “Tech 911” in the subject line. Spam is annoying, but you shouldn’t see much of it in your actual inbox if…

Searching through your Gmail for specific messages is about to get a lot easier—if your organization uses G Suite, at least. You’re still free to be a keyboard warrior and fill Gmail’s search bar with parameters, like from:soandso@gmail.com before:2020/2/20, or use its…

Another day, another batch of crappy Chrome extensions that you shouldn’t be using. Once again, Google has identified a number of bad actors its Chrome Web Store and given them the boot—but that doesn’t automatically remove these malware extensions from your browser,…

Tech 911Tech 911Do you have a tech question keeping you up at night? We’d love to answer it! Email david.murphy@lifehacker.com with “Tech 911” in the subject line. Sharing folders between two computers on your network always feels like it’s more trouble than…

Yes, Macs are susceptible to malware and virus as much as a Windows PC, and it’s probably in your best interest to have at least an app or two that can give you some extra protection and peace of mind. In a…

Loner WeekLoner WeekCalling all loners! Dining alone, gaming alone, traveling the world alone… there’s a lot to be said for enjoying the finer things in life solo. It’s Loner Week at Lifehacker, and we’ve got hacks for every possible way to make…

Loner WeekLoner WeekCalling all loners! Dining alone, gaming alone, traveling the world alone… there’s a lot to be said for enjoying the finer things in life solo. It’s Loner Week at Lifehacker, and we’ve got hacks for every possible way to make…

Loner WeekLoner WeekCalling all loners! Dining alone, gaming alone, traveling the world alone… there’s a lot to be said for enjoying the finer things in life solo. It’s Loner Week at Lifehacker, and we’ve got hacks for every possible way to make…

A number of LastPass users are taking to the company’s forums to complain about a pretty unfortunate bug that affects its extension’s automatic log-off features—something you’ll always want to enable as a backup security measure. According to reports, the bug doesn’t appear…

Tech 911Tech 911Do you have a tech question keeping you up at night? We’d love to answer it! Email david.murphy@lifehacker.com with “Tech 911” in the subject line. Wireless networking is complicated, no question there. And it’s easy for some people to find…

Hacked by a Hue lightbulb? It sounds silly, but security researchers at Check Point Software recently demonstrated that unpatched Philips Hue smart lights be used as an attack vector into your network if someone takes advantage of an exploit in the ZigBee…

Tech 911Tech 911Do you have a tech question keeping you up at night? We’d love to answer it! Email david.murphy@lifehacker.com with “Tech 911” in the subject line. Your laptop computer is a delicate beast. It can take a pounding, perhaps even a…

Jeff Bezos might be (much) wealthier than you, but he’s not smarter than you—at least, not when it comes to basic smartphone security. As you probably read and laughed at (and then sighed at, after you looked up how much Bezos makes…

Tech 911Tech 911Do you have a tech question keeping you up at night? We’d love to answer it! Email david.murphy@lifehacker.com with “Tech 911” in the subject line. I normally use this weekly column to answer people’s technology-themed questions. This week, I’m taking…

When is Half-Life 3 coming out? Perhaps never; who knows. But in the meantime, Valve is giving you a rare opportunity to play both the full versions of Half-Life and Half-Life 2 completely free, with one critical, time-limiting catch. Read more……

I had a feeling something was off the other day when I was doing some Googling. As it turns out, Google has redesigned its search results page a bit, adding in favicons, a big “AD” icon for sponsored results, and shuffling around…

Tech 911Tech 911Do you have a tech question keeping you up at night? We’d love to answer it! Email david.murphy@lifehacker.com with “Tech 911” in the subject line. Everyone’s talking about Windows 7 this week. And even if you have absolutely no interest…