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Cooking can be a creative outlet, a way of showing affection, and a way to take control of your health. But cooking can also be stressful and time-consuming, especially on a weeknight when you’re already exhausted from a long day at work and you’ve got a hungry family (or just yourself) to feed. Ordering in is always tempting, but that gets expensive and can have an adverse impact on your waistline.

You might already have some of the more obvious and established time-saving appliances in your kitchen, but you can always shave a few more minutes and adrenaline spikes off your nightly cook. These kitchen gadgets will make cooking weeknight dinners easier no matter what the menu looks like.

Snap-on strainers prevent you from dumping pasta in the sink

If you have ever had a weeknight dinner go off the rails due to a pot of pasta accidentally dumped in the sink during a straining misadventure, know that snap-on strainers exist. Just pop one onto your pot, and you can easily strain without worrying about the dreaded dump out (or a fourth-degree burn from pasta water). These strainers are flexible and will fit just about any pot or pan you need to strain out of.

An automatic pot stirrer will stir while you finish other tasks

Cooking is often a series of dull, repetitive tasks, and sometimes those tasks need to be performed simultaneously—so why not at least outsource all that pot stirring? This battery-operated device does just what it says: You place it in your pot or pan, press the button, and it stirs anything that needs it while you go and live your life (or chop vegetables).

Uutensil Stirr – The Unique Automatic Pan Stirrer – With LED Speed Indicator, Red

$38.95
at Amazon

$38.95
at Amazon

“Souper Cubes” help you better portion food to freeze for later

Here’s a mistake I make over and over again when prepping sauces, stock, or soup for future dinners: I forget to divide it up before I pop it in the freezer. When it’s time to make that weekday dinner, I have plenty of pre-made sauce—or, rather, I have too much of it, and I either defrost the whole bit and waste some or try hacking off a piece. Enter: Souper Cubes. These are like ice cube trays for food, and make it easy to freeze precise amounts of prepped or leftover food.

Oven guards protect your hands from hot racks

Anyone who cooks regularly has the minor wounds and scars to show for it—including the tell-tale burns from hurriedly grabbing stuff from a hot oven. Oven rack guards allow you to throw caution to the wind when pulling trays out of a crowded oven, even when reaching into a lower rack or grabbing something that’s migrated to the rear of the oven.

A self-stirring cooker lets you outsource most of the meal’s work

If an automated pot stirrer is cool, a cooker that also stirs itself is even cooler. If your life goals include being able to make dinner every night while somehow doing other things, this is the kitchen appliance you need. It can cook a wide range of meals more or less on its own, and will stir meals automatically. Just load up your ingredients, set your parameters, and walk away.

An automatic can opener saves time and effort

Cooking using canned ingredients is nothing to be ashamed of, but opening all those cans can be a chore that keeps you away from other cooking tasks. Enter the automatic can opener—just pop it on a can, press the button, and let it do its thing while you do literally anything more useful with your time.

A warming mat will keep everything hot for you

If your dinner plans involve more than one dish, you know the stress of being on the clock when something is ready long before the rest of the meal. Serving up cold sides or sauces is no fun, so a warming mat like this is the answer. Just place dishes on it as they’re ready and keep working on the balance of the meal, and everything will still be piping hot by the time you’re ready to sit down.

A divided skillet lets you cook multiple things at once

We’ve all been there: You need to fry up several different things, but you only have one skillet. Your choice is to desperately cook and put aside each portion of the meal, or get yourself a divided non-stick skillet that makes it easy to cook several things simultaneously, speeding up your dinner process and ensuring that everything hits the table hot and ready.

Master Pan Non-Stick Divided Grill/Fry/Oven Meal Skillet, 15″, Black

$65.59
at Amazon

$65.59
at Amazon

A “Thaw Claw” can speed up your defrosting process

If you’re like me and you consistently forget to plan ahead when it comes to thawing out frozen ingredients ahead of time, you also know the struggle of trying to speed up the process. Submerging frozen meat in cold water is a proven way of speeding up the thawing process—unless your frozen goods just float to the surface. Enter the Thaw Claw, a simple device that clamps your frozen food to the bottom of your sink or bowl so it can defrost more quickly and effectively.

Digital measuring spoons save you time on measuring

Saving time when cooking dinner is all about accumulating small wins. The time spent weighing and measuring all the ingredients for your meal adds up, so having a digital measuring spoon can make the process faster and more efficient, since you won’t have to place anything on a scale, adjust, and then use a separate implement to transfer it to your pots and skillets. Just measure as you scoop and keep moving.

“Fry Away” disposes of oil or grease more easily

Cleanup is part of the time and effort of any mid-week meal, and if you were tired before you started making dinner, you’re not going to be less tired after eating. So make cleanup a little easier with Fry Away, which makes disposing of all that grease and oil a very simple process: Add some to hot oil or grease, let it cool, and then peel off the somewhat gross results and toss into the trash. Not having a jar of old oil sitting on the kitchen counter (or not calling a plumber to clean your drains if you’re too lazy to have a jar of old oil on your kitchen counter) or needing to scrub away at a greasy pan? This is the way.

HP has quietly launched a gaming laptop subscription service called the OMEN Gaming Subscription that lets customers pay a monthly fee to use one of several gaming laptops but never actually own the hardware, even after paying well past the machine’s retail price.

The service ranges from $50 a month for an HP Victus 15-inch laptop with an RTX 4050 to $130 a month for an Omen Max 16 with an RTX 5080. At current sale prices, subscribers would exceed the cost of buying the laptop outright within 16 to 19 months; at MSRP, that window stretches to roughly 25 months. In exchange for giving up ownership, subscribers get yearly hardware upgrades, next-day replacements, 24/7 support, and an ongoing warranty. There is a 30-day trial period, but cancelling in the second month triggers steep early termination fees — $550 for the Victus 15 and $1,430 for the Omen Max 16. Cancellation becomes free only after the 13th month. HP also offers accessories like the HyperX Cloud Alpha Wireless headset as add-on rentals for $8 a month.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication.

Wireless open-ear earbuds are a popular choice for runners, commuters, dog owners, and anyone else who wants premium audio quality while still allowing enough ambient noise through to stay safe and aware of their surroundings. The Shokz OpenFit Air open-ear earbuds are one of the best budget open earbuds on the market; they check all those boxes. They’re a reliable, lightweight option for everyday music and podcast listening, and right now, they’re 33% off at an all-time low price of $79.95 (originally $119.95).

Shokz OpenFit Air Open-Ear Earbuds

$79.85
at Amazon

$119.95
Save $40.10

$79.85
at Amazon

$119.95
Save $40.10

These earbuds sit over your ear canals, stay in place during high-impact workouts, and are comfortable enough for all-day wear. For those who have been eyeing the Shokz OpenFit earbuds but still can’t justify spending around $200, the OpenFit Air model is a more budget-friendly alternative. They still offer the same comfort, stable ear design, and safety benefits as pricier open-earbuds; however, the lower price comes with slightly weaker bass and a shorter battery life (six hours vs. seven—still long enough for most marathon training sessions). With the charging case, total battery life reaches up to 28 hours.

If you don’t mind those trade-offs, an unexpected perk is that compared to the pricier version, their lightweight, stripped-down design makes them even more comfortable and secure for workouts. They also have an IP54 rating, making them sweat and water-resistant, though they can’t be submerged like the Shokz OpenSwim Pro headphones. Four built-in microphones provide clear audio on calls, but because there’s no noise cancellation, background noise can still come through. 

While they don’t offer the most immersive sound and may be underwhelming for listeners of bass-heavy music, you can customize the listening experience and different EQ modes via the Shokz app, which also enables multipoint pairing. Some reviews also note that the touch controls can be inconsistent and prone to accidental activation. If you’re looking for an alternative to in-ear buds and your priority is excellent comfort for extended wear, the Shokz OpenFit Air open-ear earbuds are a great value buy at around $80—just expect slightly less battery life and bass compared to pricier models.

Following three of the warmest years on record, as scientists reckon with climate tipping points and states and cities grapple with the escalating cost of extreme weather and more intense wildfires, the Trump administration this week is expected to formally eliminate the U.S. government’s role in controlling greenhouse gas pollution.

By revoking its 17-year-old scientific finding that greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare, the Environmental Protection Agency will demolish the legal underpinning of its authority to act on climate change under the Clean Air Act.

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin will be alongside President Donald Trump for an event Wednesday focused on boosting U.S. use of coal, as mercury and air toxics standards are repealed. That is expected to be a prelude to Zeldin finalizing the endangerment finding repeal, an assignment the president handed him in an executive order signed on the first day of his second term in office.

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The dark web is a virtual neighborhood beyond the borders of the normal, everyday internet (which includes the website you’re looking at right now). It’s somewhere Google and Bing don’t index, and you need special tools to get to it.

It’s a place where you’ll find data leaks and illegal trades, but also legitimate, legal online activities users want to carry out without attracting the attention of law enforcement agencies or governments. It’s a part of the internet that’s less regulated and more shadowy, for better and for worse.

Piqued your interest? I’m going to explain how to get on the dark web and what you can find there—though Lifehacker doesn’t endorse doing anything that breaks the law, so I’m not going to tell you how to do something you shouldn’t.

The deep web versus the dark web: What’s the difference?

Much of the web isn’t freely accessible.
Credit: Lifehacker

You’ll often see these terms used in your travels across the internet, and there’s some confusion about what they mean. I’ll start with the deep web: That’s everything online that isn’t indexed by regular search engines, which includes pages locked behind paywalls, private databases, email archives, company intranets, and so on.

Think about all the parts of the web you can’t see without logging in, from academic journals to your Netflix account page: That’s the deep web. It accounts for around 90 percent of websites, by some estimates, so we’re talking about a substantial chunk of everything that’s online.

The dark web, which is what I’m discussing here, is a small subset of the deep web, and refers to websites that are specifically trying to stay out of sight. These pages come with extra protections for user anonymity and data security, and you need special software to access them. You can’t get at them through your normal web browser, like you can with much of the rest of the deep web.

Dark web tools and services

The dark web comes with its own set of tools and services, including web browsers and search engines (which I’ll get on to in a moment). Part of what makes the dark web the dark web is that you can’t access it through your normal web browser, nor can you look something up on it via a Google search.

Having a place on the internet that’s private and anonymous will naturally encourage certain kinds of illicit activities: Hacking tools, drugs, fake passports, porn, firearms, and more are all traded on the dark web. It’s a bit like wandering into the sketchiest part of a city, with all the associated goings-on.

However, there are plenty of legal and legitimate online activities that require privacy and anonymity. The dark web is used by journalists, whistleblowers, and political activists who need the protections that it offers. Anything you need to do that has to be off the books to some extent, for noble or ignoble reasons, can be done on the dark web.

To browse the dark web, you need a dark web browser

Tor is your way into the dark web.
Credit: Lifehacker

To get on the dark web, you need a browser built for the job, and the best in the business is Tor. Tor is a browser engineered for extra security and privacy, and can be used to navigate the normal, surface web as well as the dark web. It blocks trackers, prevents user fingerprinting, encrypts data, and reroutes your browsing so no one can see where in the world you are.

Tor is like the public-facing door to the dark web, and there are also mobile apps for Android and iOS. While there are other browsers you can use to get on the dark web, Tor is usually recommended as the best for most people in terms of the features it offers and the ease with which anyone can make use of it.

Key to the way Tor works is what’s known as onion routing technology. It gets its name from the way it puts several layers of obfuscation between you and the web, like the layers of an onion: Your traffic is bounced between multiple nodes, which means it’s not as quick as regular browsing, but also that it’s very difficult for anyone else to tell who you are or where you are.

Configuring dark web access through Tor.
Credit: Lifehacker

When you open up the browser for the first time on the desktop, you’ll see the option to Configure Connection or just Connect—choose the former, and you get more control over the nodes (or “bridges”) used to get online. For most people, it’s fine to let Tor handle this automatically (and you can set this to be the default in your browser too, if you like).

Once you are online, everything works in a similar way to a regular browser. You can access all of the normal web through Tor, and take advantage of the extra privacy its rerouting provides, as well as diving into the dark web. There are a few neat extra touches though, like the New identity button (the broomstick icon, top right) that clears everything from your current session and restarts Tor.

The mobile apps are straightforward to use as well. Tor for Android is the official app for Google’s mobile platform, and while there’s no exact equivalent on iOS, the open-source Onion Browser is a recommended alternative: The buttons for “onionizing” sites are on the top left (Android) and top right (iOS) corners. In both cases you can choose to install the Orbot VPN service, also part of the Tor project, to further secure your connection to the web.

The Onion Browser on iOS, with rerouting details.
Credit: Lifehacker

Even with Tor and onion routing in place, though, you’re not suddenly completely invisible and free to do whatever you want, without repercussions. Certain details of your traffic can be intercepted at the entry and exit points of the node, by the people running those nodes, if they know what they’re doing and what they’re looking for. You’re also open to threats like end-to-end correlation attacks, so while Tor is a lot more secure and private, it’s by no means completely safe.

Bear in mind, too, that your internet provider will be able to see you connecting to Tor nodes, even if it doesn’t know exactly what you’re doing. Many people install a VPN as well, but then you’re putting your trust in an additional third party to not track your activities or report them to anyone else.

Cybersecurity has to also cover everything physically on your computer too—which law enforcement or government authorities might have the right to seize if they come calling. If you want to be untraceable and undetectable, connecting to the dark web via the Tor browser is a major step towards that, but not the only step you’ll need.

A dark web search engine

Open up Tor, and you won’t suddenly see the dark web staring back at you. Not only do you need a dark web browser, you need a dark web search engine too. This search engine will get you to the sites you need, though you can also go directly to dark web addresses if you know what they are, as with standard URLs.

DuckDuckGo is the default search engine inside the Tor browser, and once you turn on the Onionize toggle switch in the search box, you’re able to use it to find dark web links. These typically come with “.onion” after them, rather than something like “.com” as on the standard web. On the dark web, you have to do become more of a search engine yourself: You’ll often get web links from other users or forums online, and you’ll need to keep these bookmarked to get back to them later.

Other dark web search engines worth investigating are Ahmia, Torch, NotEvil, and the Onion URL Directory—just type out some keywords for what you’re looking for. Some of these sites can be found through regular web browsers, but you’ll then need to switch over to Tor once you’ve got the onion links you want to follow.

Dark web websites

The BBC has a dark web site.
Credit: Lifehacker

Individual sites on the dark web look much like they do on the regular web, though a lot of them are a bit more rough around the edges. (Presentation and polish isn’t quite so important on this part of the internet.) Click on any website link, and it’ll appear on screen, with its address at the top.

Some of the websites to look out for on the dark web include mirrors of both the BBC and the Mediapart journalism platforms, built to help inform people who are living in countries where the internet is heavily censored. If you’re after secure email, look for the Proton Mail service. If you visit a regular website that also has a dark web (.onion) equivalent, you should see see a message to this effect in the top right corner of Tor: Click on the Visit the .onion button to view it.

Given the associations that the dark web has and some of the illegal activities that take place on it, you won’t find a huge number of well-known websites on there—a lot of the dark web is made up of sites, wikis, and forums maintained by volunteers. However, there’s still plenty worth exploring.

What’s for sale on the dark web

I’ve already touched on some of the stuff that you’ll find for sale on the dark web: It’s a long way from eBay, let me put it like that. Anything you can think of that you shouldn’t be downloading or buying, you can usually find it somewhere on the dark web.

For obvious reasons—I don’t want to get you or me into trouble, after all—I’m not going to get too specific when it comes to what you can find for sale on the dark web. A lot of transactions are handled via cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, which is relatively (but not completely) private and anonymous. Another private cryptocurrency you’ll find being used is Monero, which prides itself on being untraceable.

That’s not to say you should assume any transactions you make on the dark web won’t ever be linked back to you—law enforcement has gotten pretty good at tracking down people who think they’ve been acting in the shadows. Even if you’re using a private, anonymized crypto wallet, there are other ways your identity can be revealed—even if it’s something as simple as letting a personal detail slip in an instant message.

Taken as a whole, there aren’t many good reasons to move your legitimate shopping activities to the dark web. Because of the way it works, and the kinds of items and goods that are typically on sale, it attracts a lot of scammers and hackers, and there are very few protections for you if you find yourself duped.

Is the dark web illegal?

Many dark web sites come and go.
Credit: Lifehacker

The dark web itself isn’t illegal, and you’re not going to get into any trouble just by visiting it—but it’s a place where a lot of illegal activities are carried out, because it’s much harder for law enforcement agencies to see what’s going on there.

You might often see news stories about criminal activity involving the dark web, and because of what’s happening in some corners of the dark web, it tends to put off law-abiding companies and users alike. Sections of the dark web are often closed down, too, as part of police operations.

With all of that in mind, you need to tread carefully when browsing, in terms of the sites you visit and the other users you interact with. Bear in mind too that laws about freedom of speech and censorship vary from country to country, which is part of the reason the dark web exists in the first place.

Staying on top of the hacker underground

Hackers spend a lot of time on the dark web, and it’s not too difficult to get access to hacking tools and data leaks in this part of the internet. However, it’s much harder to get at the people who are doing the uploading and downloading.

If you make use of a password manager, then it may come with a feature that monitors the dark web for mentions of your email address and password, or any other personal details. If dark web monitoring isn’t offered by the security packages you already have, there are other ways to do it, and there are steps you can take if your information does get leaked.

As I’ve previously said, it’s a good idea to keep your interactions with the dark web to a minimum, unless you can absolutely trust the people you’re dealing with. You’ll often see a sign in stores that says “look, don’t touch,” and it’s not a bad adage to bear in mind as you navigate around the dark web.

Sony will ship its last batch of Blu-ray recorders this month, according to Kyodo News, ending the company’s decades-long run in a product category it helped create. The recorders targeted exclusively the Japanese domestic market, where households used them to record broadcast television. Sony had already stopped manufacturing the devices and recordable discs about a year ago, and the final shipments are clearing out remaining inventory.

Kyodo attributes the segment’s death to the rise of streaming services. Sony will continue selling Blu-ray players “for the time being.” The broader Blu-ray ecosystem remains intact. Asus, LG, and Pioneer still produce PC drives in internal and external USB form factors. Panasonic and Verbatim continue manufacturing Blu-ray media. The format turned 20 last year, having debuted at CES 2006 — one year before Netflix launched its streaming platform.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

If there’s any area of your life that you might be willing to introduce more AI into, it’s likely something as mundane as grocery shopping. That’s what Uber is betting on with its new AI-powered feature in the Uber Eats app.

Cart Assistant lets you “build grocery baskets faster and with less effort” by using AI to automatically fill your basket with items included on your shopping list. To use it, you search for a supported grocery store on the home screen of the app and tap the new Cart Assistant icon that appears at the top of the screen.

From there, you can either manually type out a shopping list or upload a photo of a handwritten one, and Cart Assistant will fetch your requested items and add them to your basket. A screenshot of ingredients needed for a recipe will also suffice.

Uber says its AI assistant will factor in availability before selecting an item and will also display prices and any available promotions. If you don’t want something it recommends, you can delete or swap it for something else. Anything you forgot to add in the original list can be added later, and if you’ve purchased something in the past, these familiar items will be prioritized so you’re less likely to need to make changes. Uber advises users that the new shopping feature is in beta right now, so might not perform perfectly. 

Cart Assistant is the latest development in the gradual AI-ification of Uber Eats. Last summer, Uber added a suite of new features to the app, including AI-enhanced food images, AI menu descriptions and AI summaries or restaurant reviews.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/uber-eats-new-cart-assistant-feature-is-an-ai-hack-for-your-grocery-shopping-145733478.html?src=rss