Each summer, Europe’s Nordic countries—which consistently rank among the world’s happiest—reap the benefits of their geographic position, with daylight stretching into the night. Then, come winter, the opposite is true, and darkness creeps into daytime.
Though people who live in this part of the world aren’t immune to seasonal affective disorder (SAD), they do have a few cultural coping strategies to help them get through the winter. One of these, called “koselig,” comes from Norway, and may be useful in the coming months. Here’s what to know
The similaries between koselig vs. hygge
At this point, you’re probably familiar with the Danish concept of “hygge” (pronounced “hoo-gah”). It took off stateside in 2016 and 2017, but rather than fading away, it became even more mainstream (and arguably, useful) in 2020 and 2021, thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, when many people were spending more time at home than usual.
Like hygge, the Norwegian concept of “koselig” (pronounced “koosh-lee”) is often roughly translated as “coziness,” but is also more nuanced than that. Both hygge and koselig center on accepting and embracing winter for what it is (i.e. cold, dark, etc), rather than fixating on or being frustrated about what it isn’t (i.e. warm, sunny, etc). And they’re both rooted in experiencing the present: Even if you’d prefer to skip ahead to the weather a few months in the future.
The differences between koselig and hygge
Although koselig and hygge share several similarities, there are two key differences between the Nordic approaches to winter:
Who: Hygge tends to be about seeking coziness and inner warmth by yourself, while koselig aims to achieve the same outcome through socializing with friends and family.
Where: Hygge typically involves getting cozy indoors, while koselig embraces the cold, with warmly dressed people (in several layers of soft, cozy clothing) gathering outdoors.
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Of course, getting up from the nest you’ve made for yourself on the couch and leaving the warmth of your home may not necessarily sound appealing in the winter, but putting in even a little effort may help boost your mood during this dark time of year.
Broadly speaking, there are two ways to deal with messes in the kitchen: Everyday tidying up—like after cooking, eating, or spills—and then, the type of deep cleaning typically reserved for when people you want to impress are coming over, or you’re trying to get a security deposit back before moving.
Sure, some people find deep cleaning satisfying, but even for them, removing cooking grease can be a challenge—especially in kitchens without an exhaust fan. Even with exhaust fans, those droplets of grease that coat your stove while frying something, eventually turn into a sticky film that can build up over time, hardening on countertops, appliances, and walls.
If you’ve ever attempted to remove cooking grease from kitchen surfaces, you know it’s not easy. Here are some techniques and strategies that’ll help.
How to clean cooking grease
Cooking grease may look like any other grime on your cabinets, countertops, or walls, but when you try to tackle it using your normal kitchen cleaning method—like your usual cleanser and a sponge, cloth, or paper towel—you’ll notice that, for the most part, it doesn’t budge. Here’s what to do:
Clean the surfaces with your usual method
To get a better idea of the extent of the mess you’re dealing with, start by giving your kitchen surfaces a quick wipe-down, the way you normally would. The idea is to get rid of all the easy-to-remove stains and gunk, so that only the most stubborn splatters are left, and you know where to focus your attention and elbow grease.
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Assess the mess and its location
Now that you know where the grease stains are the worst, pick an area to work on first, and gather the necessary supplies. For instance, if you have wood cabinets, marble countertops, painted walls, and a stainless steel stove, you can’t (safely) clean them all the same way, so take the time to switch up your supplies accordingly, based on the surface.
Get to work
Depending on the surface you’re cleaning and its location in your kitchen, it’ll help to have a variety of cleaning tools and supplies. We’re talking about things like clean rags/cloths, sponges, scrub brushes, clean toothbrushes, cotton swabs, disposable chopsticks (they’re great for getting into corners and crevices)—get creative.
You’ll also need some cleaning solutions in your arsenal (we’ll get to those in a minute). Once you have everything you need, get to work. Rinsing or wiping the surfaces with warm or hot water as you’re cleaning may help soften the grease. Go in knowing that it will probably taking some time and patience to cut through all those layers of grease.
Cleaning solutions and products for removing cooking grease
We’ve come to expect cleaning products to do the work for us and make messes magically disappear. Unfortunately, that’s usually not the case when dealing with cooking grease, but these DIY solutions and store-bought products are some of the best options:
DIY degreasers
Given that the room where we cook, prepare, and eat food is involved, some may want to skip commercial products with harsh chemicals, and make their own degreasers. Just keep in mind that these DIY versions also contain strong ingredients that can damage various surfaces (including your skin). Here are a few recipes:
Degreaser spray made with white vinegar, baking soda, and Castile soap.
Citric acid spray: Combine 2 tablespoons of citric acid powder with 1 cup of hot water in an empty (clean) spray bottle. Shake until powder is dissolved.
Stain scrub: Mix salt and white vinegar until it forms a paste, then gently scrub the stain with a soft cloth or toothbrush.
Store-bought products
A lot of commercial cleaning products promise to remove grease, but here are a few favorites:
Bar Keepers Friend: It works wonders on certain types of stains, and now comes in a variety of forms (gels, sprays, soft cleansers) in addition to the original powder.
Dirtex: Soilax—which came in a shiny red box and may have been a staple in your household growing up—was discontinued, and Dirtex has filled that grease-fighting hole in the market. Be sure to read the instructions carefully before using.
Dishwashing liquid: It was made to cut grease on dishes, but works on other surfaces too.
During the last two holiday seasons, many national retailers extended the window of time customers had to return or exchange their unwanted gifts. This move, some experts suggest, was a way to encourage spending during an economic downturn—especially at a time when COVID-19 restrictions and illnesses likely changed people’s shopping (and returning) habits.
But now, in the third holiday season of the pandemic, retailers aren’t feeling as generous. In fact, are not only are some cutting their post-holiday period for returns and exchanges short, others are now charging shipping or restocking fees. Here’s what to know.
Return unwanted holiday gifts sooner rather than later
While some retailers continue to have generous return policies, others have gone back to their pre-COVID timelines. This means that the deadlines for returning gifts purchased in October, November, and December 2022 begin as early as January 8, 2023 (we’re looking at you, Apple), though most tend be at the end of the month.
Unsure of a store’s holiday return policy? The information should be printed on your receipt (or emailed to you). And for ease of reference, here are twolists of return deadlines for a handful of major retailers.
Return items in person, if possible
As convenient as it is to ship unwanted gifts back to the retailer for a refund or store credit, you may want to rethink doing that this year.
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While some retailers do still offer free shipping for returns, others charge a fee to ship the item back to them, which is typically deducted from your refund or store credit. Also, if you paid to have the item shipped to you in the first place, you probably won’t get that money back.
To avoid having to pay for your return, bring the item back to the store in person, if possible.
The Speranza Marie, carrying 16,000 pounds of squid and some 1,000 gallons of diesel fuel, hit the shoreline near Chinese Harbor at about 2 a.m. on Dec. 15.
Six crew members were on board, and all were rescued without injury by another fishing boat.
[…]
However, large swells caused by the recent storm caused the Speranza Marie to pull loose from it anchored position and drift about 100 yards from from its original grounded location in Chinese Harbor, according to the Coast Guard.
As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven’t covered.
Well, 2022 was another one for the books. After making it through the third year of the COVID-19 pandemic, along with countless other challenges, treat yourself to some free or cheap food on New Year’s Day. Here are a few of the available offers.
7-Eleven Inc.
On New Year’s Day, 7Rewards members can get a whole cheese or pepperoni pizza for $6 when they order via 7-Eleven’s delivery app. Limit one pizza per order.
Dunkin’ Donuts
Get a classic donut for $1 when you buy a medium hot or iced coffee or larger. While that offer is valid for any customers, you have to be a Dunkin’ Rewards member to get a $1 medium Dunkin’ Midnight (their new dark roast coffee) every day in the month of January when ordering ahead on the app.
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Hardee’s
Get two breakfast biscuits for $5 from now through Feb. 7, 2023. You can pick from the Sausage & Egg Biscuit, Bacon, Egg & Cheese Biscuit, Biscuit ‘N’ Gravy, and Country Fried Steak Biscuit.
Popeyes
New Year’s Day is the final day of the fast food chain’s BOGO offer: Purchase one Popeyes chicken sandwich combo, and get one Popeyes chicken sandwich for free. You can pick from the classic, spicy, or blackened chicken sandwiches for both the combo, and free sandwich.
Taco Bell
From January 1 through February 1, get $3 off your breakfast order of $15 or more when ordering through any third-party app. Or, during the same time period, place an order through the Taco Bell app, and receive a free Mexican Pizza with any in-app order of $15 or more. Limited to one per customer.
TGIFriday’s
Get 25% off party trays, platters, and family meal bundles with the promo code NYE25OFF on online or call-in takeout orders from now through January 1.
Abstract: Eavesdropping from the user’s smartphone is a well-known threat to the user’s safety and privacy. Existing studies show that loudspeaker reverberation can inject speech into motion sensor readings, leading to speech eavesdropping. While more devastating attacks on ear speakers, which produce much smaller scale vibrations, were believed impossible to eavesdrop with zero-permission motion sensors. In this work, we revisit this important line of reach. We explore recent trends in smartphone manufacturers that include extra/powerful speakers in place of small ear speakers, and demonstrate the feasibility of using motion sensors to capture such tiny speech vibrations. We investigate the impacts of these new ear speakers on built-in motion sensors and examine the potential to elicit private speech information from the minute vibrations. Our designed system EarSpy can successfully detect word regions, time, and frequency domain features and generate a spectrogram for each word region. We train and test the extracted data using classical machine learning algorithms and convolutional neural networks. We found up to 98.66% accuracy in gender detection, 92.6% detection in speaker detection, and 56.42% detection in digit detection (which is 5X more significant than the random selection (10%)). Our result unveils the potential threat of eavesdropping on phone conversations from ear speakers using motion sensors.
The number of DDoS attacks we see around the globe is on the rise, and that trend is likely to continue throughout 2023, according to Corero. We expect to see attackers deploy ever higher rate request-based or packets-per-second attacks.
“DDoS attacks have historically focused around sending packets of large sizes with the aim to paralyze and disrupt the internet pipeline by exceeding the available bandwidth. Recent request-based attacks, however, are sending smaller size packets, to target higher transaction processing to overwhelm a target. Those with responsibility for network health and internet service uptime should be taking note of this trend,” explained Corero CTO, Ashley Stephenson.
Legal responsibility
Corero also predicts that 2023 will see more breaches being reported, because of the increasing trend for transparency in data protection regulations. Regulations such as the UK Government’s Telecoms Security Bill will compel organizations to disclose more cyber-incidents publicly.
We are also likely to see the legal responsibility for bad corporate behaviour when dealing with breaches being linked to individual executives. Examples such as Joe Sullivan, the former head of security at Uber, who was recently found guilty of hiding a 2016 breach, could set a precedent for linking data protection decisions to the personal legal accountability of senior executives.
Evading DDoS defenses
Attackers will continue to make their mark in 2023 by trying to develop new ways to evade legacy DDoS defenses. We saw Carpet Bomb attacks rearing their head in 2022 by leveraging the aggregate power of multiple small attacks, designed specifically to circumvent legacy detect-and-redirect DDoS protections or neutralize ‘black hole’ sacrifice-the-victim mitigation tactics. This kind of cunning will be on display as DDoS attackers look for new ways of wreaking havoc across the internet and attempt to outsmart existing thinking around DDoS protection.
In 2023, the cyberwarfare that we have witnessed with the conflict in Ukraine will undoubtedly continue. DDoS will continue to be a key weapon in the Ukrainian and other conflicts both to paralyse key services and to drive political propaganda objectives. DDoS attack numbers rose significantly after the Russian invasion in February and DDoS continues to be used as an asymmetric weapon in the ongoing struggle.
Earlier this year, in other incidents related to the conflict, DDoS attackers attempted to disrupt the Eurovision song contest in an attempt to frustrate the victory of the Ukrainian contestants. Similarly, when Elon Musk showed support for Ukraine by providing Starlink satellite broadband services, DDoS attackers tried to take the satellite systems offline and deny Ukraine much needed internet services.
“Throughout 2022 we observed DDoS attacks becoming increasingly sophisticated while at the same time the DDoS attack surface is expanding. With the number of recorded attacks on the rise and significant shifts in attackers’ motives and goals, 2023 will require organizations to ensure they have robust DDoS defense in place,” said Lionel Chmilewsky, CEO at Corero Network Security.
The whole concept of feeling pressured to come up with a signifiant goal or project to take on when the calendar year changes has some major flaws—many of which we’ve covered at Lifehacker over the years (including earlier this month).
Unless you’re in the right frame of mind, setting new year’s resolutions are typically empty words: Things you tell other people (or yourself) because you feel obligated to do so. Or, perhaps you’ve made a new year’s resolution in earnest, but vowed to do something so big or difficult to accomplish, that you basically set yourself up to fail.
That’s why you’re better off making an “old year’s resolution” if you’d like to do some self-improvement in the new year. Here’s why.
How to set (and stick to) an old year’s resolution
Basically, an old year’s resolution is a way to acknowledge and accept that failure is a natural part of the self-improvement process—as opposed to taking an all-or-nothing approach that officially begins on or after January 1.
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According to Christina Downey, a professor of psychology at Indiana University, and Mark Canada, the executive vice chancellor for academic affairs at Indiana University Kokomo—who cowrote an article on old year’s resolutions for The Conversation in 2021—here’s what to do:
First, identify some type of positive change you’d like to make in your life, but nothing so drastic that it becomes too daunting to start.
Then, get to work on it right away: Don’t wait for January 1.
Yes, 2023 is only a few days away, but Downey and Canada say that the point of an old year’s resolution is to give yourself time to practice enacting this change.
“Track your progress,” they write. “You might stumble now and then, but here’s the thing: You’re just practicing.”
Downey and Canada recommend thinking of an old year’s resolution like a rehearsal for a play, or a scrimmage in sports: Sure, you want to do well, but the whole point of it is to get some low-stakes experience preparing for the real thing, where failures are expected and accepted.
Then, treat January 1 like any other day of your practice period. In fact, when it comes to your old year’s resolution, feel free to ignore the calendar completely. The idea is to ease your way into making a lifestyle change, and giving yourself grace if/when you fail—regardless of the date.
Now that Christmas is over and 2023 is nearly here, many people are taking their holiday decorations down, and putting them away for the year. But for those who opted to bring a live Christmas tree into their home, it’s not only a matter of removing it and figuring out how to repurpose, recycle, or dispose of it: They also have to deal with the mess it leaves behind.
Typically, the two biggest and most annoying parts of Christmas tree clean-up are the sap and the needles (assuming there are no bugs involved). Here are the easiest ways to handle those post-holiday messes.
How to remove Christmas tree sap from various surfaces
The sticky sap that oozes out of evergreens can be tough to get out of carpet and upholstery, and off hardwood and other types of flooring. This is one of those tasks you should tackle right away—or better yet, as soon as you notice sap anywhere other than directly on the tree—because the longer it sits, the harder it’ll be to remove. Here’s what to do:
Hardwood floors
Use a clean sponge or cloth to apply non-diluted oil soap (like Murphys) directly to the sap stain. Let it sit for about 15 minutes, then use a soft-bristled brush to scrub it off. Finally, rinse the area with clean water. If you don’t have oil-based soap, you can try a bit of vegetable shortening instead.
Carpet and upholstery
For larger sap stains, it may help to use an ice cube to freeze the area first, then use a plastic knife to gently remove as much of the sap as possible before attempting to clean it.
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Otherwise, dab, then softly rub some rubbing alcohol or hand sanitizer on sap stuck on carpet or upholstery using a clean cloth or sponge. If that didn’t get it all off, apply some mild liquid dish soap to the stain, then use a clean cloth or sponge dampened with warm water to dab and rinse it.
How to clean up Christmas tree needles
When you’re ready to say goodbye to your Christmas tree, start by putting some type of floor covering—like a tarp, old bedsheets, or multiple garbage bags—not just around the base of the tree, but also in a path to the doorway that leads outside. Do this before you begin removing ornaments or lights to help contain some of the needles that fall off in this process.
Even if you do this, there will still be needles that end up on the ground. Here’s how to get rid of those:
Baking soda
Start by sprinkling some baking soda on the needles, and letting it sit for 10-15 minutes. This will help absorb the sticky sap, and make it easier to clean up.
Broom and dustpan
Grabbing your vacuum may seem easier (we’ll get to that in a minute), but simply sweeping the baking-soda-covered needles up with a broom and dustpan gets the job done efficiently. If your floors are carpeted, you’ll need a broom with rubber bristles.
Vacuum attachment
Even covered in baking soda, pine needles can do some serious damage to vacuum cleaners, especially when they get stuck in the roller brushes, or jammed in other parts of the machine. That’s why, in this case, using a broom may actually be easier than vacuuming.
But if you really want to use a vacuum, start by emptying the container (the needles take up a lot of space). Don’t use the sweeper or upholstery attachment (i.e. the ones with brushes): Opt for the hose or crevice attachment instead.
The PlayStation Store is flush with hundreds of awesome indie games featuring unique gameplay styles, imaginative art, and genre-pushing experimentation that provide a refreshing change from mainstream AAA releases. The problem is, with so many to choose from, finding one to play can be daunting. To help, we curated this list of 15 awesome indie games available on PlayStation 5 (and PS4) we think everyone should play, whether you recently received a new PS5, or you’ve had one for a while and are looking for something new to play.
We could’ve easily listed double or triple the number of games, but we whittled the picks down to just 15 for the sake of simplicity. Each game on our list is available through the PlayStation Store app or website, though you can also download each at no extra charge if you’re subscribed to PS Plus Extra ($15 per month) or PS Plus Premium ($18 per month). If you have additional suggestions we didn’t cover, be sure to drop them in a comment below.
Big celebrations call for small bites! If you’re hosting or contributing to a party anytime soon, you’ll need a menu of shareable, holdable, two-bite-friendly morsels to provide adequate sustenance to your guests. One can’t shmooze properly (or hold their liquor) without something in their belly. Ring in the new year…
As parents, we’re all a work in progress. It’s not that we aren’t learning and adapting at a breakneck pace; it’s just that these kids keep changing and moving the goalposts on us. We have to meet their basic physical, mental, and emotional needs and prepare them for a life outside of our home. We have less than two decades to turn a tiny screaming baby into a competent, empathetic, honest adult—all while being terribly human ourselves. Who could do such a thing without a little help along the way?
During this most reflective time of the year, let’s look back on all our best parenting advice from the past 12 months. We’ll tackle everything from getting a crying baby to sleep to getting kids to stop lying to you to improving your relationship with your teenager. Here, let’s start with an easy one.
Among the many barbells in a well-appointed gym, you might find one that’s known as a “women’s bar.” Or, if you’re a woman and your gym doesn’t have one of these, you might wonder what you’re missing. Well, wonder no more: A women’s bar is specific to the sport of Olympic weightlifting (and CrossFit). If you don’t do those sports, you’re not missing out. But if you want to give one a try, we have a complete rundown on how it differs from other types of barbells.
Running While Black is the newest book on this list—I just picked it up from my local bookstore after pre-ordering it earlier this year. (Highly recommend doing this when you can. It’s like giving surprise gifts to yourself.) I’m halfway through and it’s an engrossing read on several levels: it’s a memoir, a history, and a call to action.
The book grapples with a question—why is distance running so white?—that many of us have probably asked in passing, but Désir digs in. She finds historical ironies, like that the running boom caught on during the same era as legal fights over integration. “We couldn’t use a state park while white people were starting to jog in them,” she writes. In reality, Black athletes had been running all along, but the image of a runner as a skinny white dude is something that was constructed over time and needs to be challenged.
Just as you’d service your car to keep it running smoothly, an annual review of your iPhone can prevent a lot of issues in the long run. Phones accumulate a ton of digital cruft, and since a more organized device works better for longer, take the start of a new year as your opportunity to clear it all out. Your iPhone may feel brand new again by the time you’re done.
Delete the apps you don’t use anymore
We all download a host of apps that are almost never used. If you have a bunch, consider uninstalling them to save space and bandwidth. Unused apps can make your phone slow sometimes, and they keep downloading updates automatically, which can eat into your internet plan’s limited bandwidth.
You can go to Settings > General > iPhone Storage and select Enable next to Offload Unused Apps. This will free up a lot of space. Next, you can scroll down on the storage settings page, swipe towards the left on apps that you don’t use, and select Delete to remove them.
Alternatively, you can go to your iPhone’s home screen, then tap and hold an empty part of the screen until the icons start jiggling. Swipe left until you’re at the App Library. You can now tap “X” next to apps you don’t use to delete them quickly.
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Change your wallpaper
When was the last time you changed your iPhone’s wallpaper? Go to Settings > Wallpaper to get started—and if that’s not enough, try downloading an app like Dynamic Notch, which allows you to create stylized designs around your iPhone’s notch. While you’re at it, get yourself a customized lock screen too.
Delete old, unwanted photos and screenshots
Most people don’t bother to delete photos from their iPhone, but you probably don’t need to keep thousands of screenshots, memes, and other random photos. Go through your photo library and delete your unwanted photos and videos.
Clear shared calendars, reminders, and notes
You might have created shared notes or added people to calendar entries and reminders. After a point, you should remove them from unused shared data to protect your privacy. Go to Settings > Privacy & Security > Safety Check > Manage Sharing & Access. Follow the on-screen steps and you’re done.
Adjust your screen time
If you want to doom scroll less, go to Settings > Screen Time on your iPhone. Tap See All Activity to check which apps you’ve been using the most. Then you can tap each of these and set a daily usage limit. You can also select the Downtime option to remind yourself to put the phone away after a certain time.
Free up your iMessage space
iCloud is amazing if you want to back up your phone, but backing up your messages is a double-edged sword: It backs up all kinds of spam texts and media files that you’ll probably never need. We’ve got a full guide on how to remove the iMessage clutter from iCloud, which will help you free up space quickly. This will also make sure that when you move to a new iPhone, your iCloud restore won’t carry years of junk to your new device.
Delete your unused subscriptions
We’re all guilty of starting subscriptions that we don’t use, and you might save a lot of money by reversing that habit. Go to Settings > [YOUR NAME] > Subscriptions and get rid of the ones you don’t need.
Take a look at your phone’s battery
Before you think of replacing your iPhone’s battery or buying a new iPhone, go to Settings > Battery to see which apps are draining your battery. Maybe that page will help inspire a New Year resolutions like using Instagram less. You could also delete some of your most addicting apps and switch to mobile websites instead. Instagram is a lot less addictive on Safari.
Clear your app permissions
It’s never a bad time to review how much of your data apps are using. Go to Settings > Privacy & Security on your iPhone and check each option to see which apps are using various sensors on your device. Google Maps probably won’t work very well without location access, but TikTok probably doesn’t need location access at all.
Hey! It’s almost time for 2022 to be over! We’ll all be sad to say “so long” to the year that brought us runaway inflation, a land-war in Europe, and yet more COVID (with a chaser of RSV and the flu). But it’s time to welcome in 2023, and its inevitable volcanic eruptions, giant bot-fly invasions, and TikTok resurgence of “Who Let the Dogs Out?”
But let’s try to do it right, OK? If you follow my advice and don’t commit any of the deadly sins listed below, I promise you’ll have a safe, sane, and responsible New Year’s Eve. And isn’t being safe, sane, and responsible how you want to kick off another probably terrible year?
If you’ve ever experienced one of those “can’t live with you, can’t live without you”-type of relationships, where your connection feels hot and heavy but is also rife with challenges and intensity, chances are you were in a karmic relationship.
“Despite what many believe, a karmic relationship is actually a type of soulmate relationship, but not one that necessarily has a happy ending,” says Charlotte Kirsten, a trauma psychotherapist. “It’s filled with all-engulfing chemistry, passion, turbulence, and many, many obstacles. By definition, they’re easy to enter into yet very difficult to maintain due to their intensity and challenge-ridden nature.”
But the challenges aren’t all bad. Kirsten says these relationships often hold up a giant mirror for the partners involved, surfacing each other’s deepest fears, desires, and even wishes so they can be healed. Taylor Carr, a clinical hypnotherapist, says a karmic relationship is “a relationship that continues to write the narrative from your upbringing. These relationships are meant to tighten the feedback loop of how often you are walking through the same storyline again and again. They bring many lessons. A non-karmic relationship will not be familiar at all, whereas a karmic relationship will feel familiar simply because you’ve been in that same loop your whole life.”
So are you in a karmic relationship? To give you a better idea, Carr and Kirsten provide some key signs to spot and what they’re ultimately trying to teach you.
You have deep chemistry
The butterflies and chemistry in a karmic relationship will be off the charts because they “have a tendency to start extremely quickly out of lust and obsession with one another,” Kirsten says. “Many will wonder how they previously ‘lived’ without this person in their life.”
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There are red flags galore
Despite the immediate attraction you feel for one another, according to Kirsten, things start to feel off very early on in the relationship, perhaps even within a week or two of starting to date. ‘[Karmic relationships] have a very ‘feels too good to be true’ vibe to them,” she says. “Love starts to become all-consuming and borderline obsessive. Love-bombing, gaslighting, co-dependency, all of it can appear within days or weeks of meeting. It’s not unheard of for a karmic partner to say ‘I love you’ the first time they meet.”
An addictive love with lots of highs and lows
Maybe not surprisingly, Kirsten says a karmic connection is often used as an external validation as a means of a quick dopamine hit for both parties. “If that wasn’t a recipe for disaster, there are usually lots of communication issues, heated arguments, and a general sense of frustration,” she says. “If you feel deeply misunderstood every time you try to get your point across or feel as though you are having to explain why you feel a certain way every time you enter into a conversation, you’re likely facing a karmic relationship.”
Another sign, according to Carr, is “consistent on and off times in the relationship that create chaos and addiction that feel like intense love.”
Repetitive behavior and cycles
“I call this the ‘groundhog loop.’ Even though you call each other out on the behavior you don’t like, it still continues to pervade the relationship,” Kirsten says. “The high and low cycles continue no matter how much you try to ‘fix’ it. But it’s not all doom and gloom. This is actually a good hint at what your karmic lesson is with this partner.”
Examples of this, Carr says, is growing up with an addict father and continuing to attract addicts in your life. Or having a narcissistic mother and consistently finding yourself with a narcissist romantically or in your friend group that has major influence over you and your self esteem.
They bring out the worst in you
If you feel as though you’ve become an entirely different person through this relationship, but not in a good way, Kirsten says it’s likely a karmic contract playing out. “Many report a lost sense of self whilst being in a karmic relationship, and when they stare at themselves in the mirror, they see an empty, hollow version of their being looking back,” she says. “You feel exhausted and as though you’ve aged quickly.”
Adds Carr: “It will feel like being with someone who seems to amplify your flaws and insecurities constantly instead of making you feel at ease.”
What are the lessons of a karmic relationship?
Karmic relationships are no doubt both addictive and potentially destructive. So what can people learn from these intense connections?
“Oftentimes the lessons from a karmic relationship are to help free you from patterns you keep repeating so that you can level up,” Carr says, “whether that’s ending the pattern of addiction, not being treated well in a relationship, lack of self love, or any other loop you find yourself repeating. It’s to help you evolve past your current self and closer to self actualization or high consciousness.”
They can also help you realize what you do and don’t want in a relationship. “[Karmic relationships] push our boundaries and test our definition of love,” Kirsten says. “From the karmic couples I’ve witnessed…they have a tendency to become toxic, overly co-dependent, and fizzle out just as quickly as they started. It’s why many who entered into a karmic relationship who were previously seeking that fast-paced, exhilarating love now seek a stable, slow, and steady connection.”
I got a pandemic puppy to complete my pandemic bingo, I joke, after my pandemic divorce and making that whipped-up coffee. I had never had a puppy, so I had to learn how to train her, an 8-month-old rescue with some attachment issues. Meanwhile, I was pandemic parenting two kids post-divorce, so I was navigating those attachment issues, too. What I began noticing was that some of the dog parenting tips sounded a lot like the human parenting tips I was getting from psychologists, parenting books, and podcasts—and that maybe I could use tricks I was getting from dog training to also get better at people training (so to speak).
Dog training
Similar to parenting humans, you can have a style with which you parent your pet. Experts explain that the most effective way to parent your pet is “authoritative,” which means you have high expectations and high responsiveness. If your pet has something they shouldn’t have, you tell them to “drop it.” They don’t. You don’t let it go. You tell them to drop it until they drop it. Then you praise them. The next time you tell them to drop it and they do it on the first try, you give them a big, happy praise response. You expect them to do what you say, and you respond to them doing it.
On the other side, “A dog parent needs to assess the situation when a dog crosses a boundary to find out why the dog behaved the way they did. Dog parents need to make sure that the dog’s needs are being met or if their behavior is the result of something else,” says veterinarian Chryle Bonk. So when my dog asks to go out, she noses at me. I used to ignore her if I was busy, but then she would go pee on the carpet. Instead, I began to take her outside immediately. She no longer pees on my carpet. She expects me to take her out, and she responds by behaving appropriately. I respond to her expectations, and vice versa.
Human parenting
I began to make some small changes in my parenting to align more with this simple strategy. When I say I “train” them, I don’t mean I have a clicker or I use a silly voice and say, “Good boy!” My kids have bigger brains and vocabularies than my dog. I speak to them with respect and hold them to appropriate standards. Here’s what I do:
Every time they clear the table, I say thank you. Every time they choose not to hit their sibling on a car ride, I notice how kind they were, even though I should be able to take that one for granted, maybe. When they go out of their way to be kind or helpful, I go out of my way to give them specific, personal praise, not just, “Good job.”
Never let it go
I know I just said I was going to be more positive, but it’s important to have boundaries, too, and to stick with them, pretty much no matter what. So, if I said we can’t watch a movie until the chores are done but kids are refusing to do the chores, I have to be consistent.
This is the same concept as, “Drop it, drop it, drop it,” with the dog. If it doesn’t get done after a certain amount of time, then there does need to be an appropriate, connected consequence, so they know I will follow through on holding my boundary.
OK, but then let it go
Dogs have very short memories: two minutes, according to National Geographic. Holding a grudge all day against a dog for pooping in the house is pointless because they do not remember what they did wrong. If you catch them pooping, tell them, “no,” clean it up, and move on.
Same with kids. They may be able to remember what they did, but holding a grudge doesn’t do anyone any good, as described by VeryWell Mind. Make amends about whatever it is that went wrong, and then move on. Sometimes, as Ted Lasso says, it’s better to have the memory of a goldfish for the sake of your mental health and your kids’ emotional well-being.
Don’t get in a barking dog’s face
You’d never do that, right? So why do we get in kids’ faces when they’re highly elevated? That’s a good way to get hit by a kid in my house. And, while we never condone violence, honestly, I can’t blame the hitting kid, to an extent. When some kids are very explosive and elevated in their tantrums, anxiety, or meltdowns, they do not need you right in their face, literally or more generally.
We all have a nice time visiting the actual dog park at my house, but also, sometimes getting outside, exercising, or changing our state of being can reset the whole day for my family. Getting a chance to play together after a moment of stress is often all we need to take some space, breathe, and regulate.
To fully understand this viral video, you first have to burrow into one of the internet’s strangest rabbit holes. TikTok user yeetme084 posted this video of a discovery they supposedly made on Google Maps. Over de-tuned music, with the caption, “nah wtf they hiding in Japan?” the video zooms in on a strange circular building, then switches to Streetview to reveal its interior—a bland but vast collection of cubicles, and a pit that goes down to...somewhere. Over 20 million people have viewed it so far, and judging from the comments and discussions, many think this TikToker had found the legendary “Backrooms.”
“The Backrooms” is an internet urban legend—a dreamlike, endless maze of empty, randomly generated, office rooms you can supposedly enter only by “no-clipping” through reality. The idea of this and other “liminal spaces” has captured the imagination of people across the internet who are drawn to the locations that are disquieting for reasons that can’t quite be explained. They make games, short films, and postuncannyphotos of places that evoke inexplicable dread.
Internet detectives zeroed in on the coordinates on yeetme084’s video and found they point to Nara Dreamland, a Japanese amusement park that has been closed and left to decay since 2006. A popular spot for urban explorers of abandoned places, Nara Dreamland is the perfect location for a space between the real world and whatever there is that we can’t see. Soon videos of other backroom locations all over the world were discovered on Google maps and Streetview.
It’s such a good, creepy story that I almost hate to spoil it, but the videos are of this world. That is to say, they’re fakes, part of an alternative reality game too tedious to care about. This YouTuber explains the whole thing, if you’re one of those “reality” kind of people.
Albanian prosecutors on Wednesday asked for the house arrest of five public employees they blame for not protecting the country from a cyberattack by alleged Iranian hackers.
Prosecutors said the five IT officials of the public administration department had failed to check the security of the system and update it with the most recent antivirus software.
The next step would be to arrest managers at software companies for not releasing patches fast enough. And maybe programmers for writing buggy code. I don’t know where this line of thinking ends...
As technology continues to evolve for business and personal use, cybercriminals are also leveraging innovation in the next generation of attacks, according to Experian.
Additional frontiers are a focus for 2023
In addition to the metaverse, hackers will increasingly explore more frontiers, including space and innovative technology like artificial intelligence, come 2023. A new Experian report outlines several predictions to help companies understand where cybercriminals will lurk and how they will attack. These predictions include the following:
Wild, wild west of the metaverse
While embarking on a virtual life journey is appealing to many, it has vulnerabilities. As the metaverse continues to gain momentum, phishing attempts, NFT-related scams and malware attacks have already begun, with potentially more looming in the year ahead. AR and VR devices increase the impact of data breaches as these devices collect large amounts of personal information and user data. This may increase their potential to be hacked and lead to more sophisticated attacks.
Houston, we have a problem
Thinking about the scale of damage that could result from space satellites being hacked is disconcerting, but it’s also a reality we must prepare for in 2023. The combination of a disjointed regulatory environment and more satellites in orbit than ever opens the door for bad actors to exploit the satellites in orbit, or with a big enough satellite, even launch cyberattacks from space.
Imitation that’s not a form of flattery
While influencers of all types may chase exposure, this isn’t the kind they want. Use of deepfake technology by bad actors could be leveraged for more than just funny videos and elevated to create a new level of strategic mischief. Global leaders, business titans and influential industry experts around the world will need to stay vigilant of the misuse of their image and likeness as deepfake technology may be an increasingly popular tool in warfare and in cybercrime.
Resiliency is the key to winning long-term
Among Experian’s predictions is a long-term outlook that the amount of time to detect and defend against a security intrusion will probably not improve significantly over the next 10 years. Organizations still grapple to prevent data breaches with more than 1,200 breaches this year so fari. Unfortunately, according to IBM, it still takes organizations a lengthy 212 days to identify a cyber intrusion and another 75 days to contain it. Strategies to improve detection and containment need to be shored up.
“In assessing the cyber landscape, we pinpointed a preparedness weakness that needs attention,” said Michael Bruemmer, VP, Global Data Breach Resolution at Experian. “The reality is that cyberattacks can’t be prevented 100 percent of the time, but organizations that can discover and thwart cyberattacks quickly will suffer less damage financially and reputationally. We believe there is a shift in mindset needed to focus on resiliency to complement the pursuit for absolute prevention.”
For something that most of us have to do on a daily basis, navigating workplace communication can be tricky: There’s often a fine line between being assertive and aggressive, helpful and pushy, and arrogant and credible.
Ideally, you want to come across in a way that convinces your colleagues that you know what you’re talking about, but without sounding like an obnoxious know-it-all who thinks they’re always right. Here are a handful phrases that will help you strike that balance, and sound credible at work.
What does it mean to have ‘credibility’ at work?
Essentially, credibility is your ability to be believable, and worthy of others’ trust, according to Selena Rezvani, a workplace leadership trainer and author of the book, “Pushback: How Smart Women Ask—And Stand Up—For What They Want.” In fact, she says that credibility is a crucial aspect of any professional relationship.
“Part of communicating credibly means owning your voice and claiming credit for the value, skills and experience you bring the table,” Rezvani wrote in a recent article for MSNBC. “At the same time, credible leaders show that they’re intellectually humble.” This means owning up to your mistakes, and giving credit where credit is due, highlighting your colleagues’ accomplishments and contributions.
Once you’ve established your credibility at work, Rezvani says that there will be more of a chance that your colleagues will approach you for advice and assistance. Not only could this potentially lead to other opportunities at the company now or in the future, but it may also give you more influence over your colleagues’ decisions and opinions, given that they trust you, she explains.
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Phrases to make you sound credible at work
So how, exactly, do you sound more credible at work? Rezvani suggests incorporating these phrases into your workplace communication:
“I’d like to acknowledge the work of/give credit to…”
“Here’s what we know today…Here’s how we’ll build on that in the future...”
“I’d like to get your feedback…”
“Here’s a summary of the results…”
“I appreciate you sharing that. This is new/scary/challenging…”
“I wanted to let you know X is on track/on-pace/on-budget.”
“I miscalculated....”
“Thanks for the compliment. I’m thrilled with how it turned out, too!”
With the busiest part of the holiday season behind us, many people are now looking towards the future—including tackling their constantly growing to-do list. But why is it that the more you have to get done, the harder it is to actually start?
It’s something known as “overwhelm freeze,” and as much as it can impact your productivity (and mental health), it’s also something you can overcome. Here’s what to know.
What is overwhelm freeze?
Also known as “task paralysis,” overwhelm freeze is when you know that you have a lot to do, but feel helpless when it comes to getting started. It’s not necessarily that you don’t know where to start—though that can certainly factor in—but how to start. That’s because your brain perceives your mounting list of tasks as a threat, and responds by freezing (as opposed to fighting or flight).
“With a big overwhelming task list, that threat could be the threat of failure, or it could be the threat of letting others down,” Ellen Hendriksen, a clinical assistant professor at Boston University’s Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders recently told the New York Times. “It could be the threat of feeling stupid or incompetent because we don’t know where to start or how to do things.”
How to overcome overwhelm freeze
Fortunately, there are strategies for overpowering overwhelm freeze, including:
Write it out
There’s nothing groundbreaking about making a to-do list, but it can make such a big difference that it’s worth mentioning. And we’re not talking about a mental list: We mean actually writing down a list of tasks you need to complete.
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As you’re doing that, break down any of your bigger jobs into smaller, easier-to-complete steps, and check them off your list as you complete them. For example, instead of writing down “clean the kitchen,” break it down into things like doing the dishes, cleaning off the counters, vacuuming the floors, etc.
Seeing a long written-out list of things you need to accomplish may feel even more overwhelming at first, but because you’ve broken down bigger jobs into smaller steps, there are more to check off as you go—which provides you with a mental boost, and an incentive to keep going.
On the other hand, it may feel less overwhelming to be able to clearly see what you need to do, instead of facing whatever you’ve built it up to be in your head.
Don’t try to be perfect
If you’re a perfectionist, this may be a challenge, but make an effort not to linger on projects making “final touches” as a way to put off moving on to other tasks. Nothing will ever be perfect (at least in your eyes), so do each job on your list thoroughly and well, but once it has reached the point of being good enough, move on.
Build it into your schedule
Schedule an hour (or half-hour, or even 15 minutes) on your calendar each day to chip away at your to-do list. If possible, make it the same time every day, so it becomes more of a habit.
Sometimes you need to get a car from one part of the country to another, and driving it yourself isn’t an option. In situations like that, it often makes the most sense to ship your car.
As you can imagine, like any other type of shipping or moving services, transporting a vehicle can be costly. That said, here’s what to know about the cheapest way to ship a car.
Why would you ship a car?
Before jumping into the cost, let’s talk about why you might want to ship a car or other vehicle (a service also known as “auto transport”) in the first place. According to CarTalk’s John Goreham, there are three main reasons why people opt for auto transport over driving cars to their destination themselves:
Moving a long distance and bringing vehicles along.
Buying a car far from home and getting it to you.
Accessing a car while in a seasonal second home.
How much does it cost to ship a car?
The cost of shipping a car tends to be between $550 and $2,060, averaging out to around $1,080, according to Move.org. The wide range in price comes down to a variety of factors like the size of the vehicle, the type of transport, gas prices, and the distance.
Always shop around when looking into auto transport. Getting in touch with between three and five companies should give you a decent idea of what you should be paying.
What’s the cheapest way to ship a car?
Open transport—when a car is strapped to the back of a huge truck also carrying other vehicles—is the cheapest way to ship a car, typically costing hundreds of dollars less than enclosed transport. This, of course, means that your car will be exposed to the elements and any debris on the road during the trip, so if you’re shipping a vehicle of great monetary or sentimental value, this may not be the best option.
Last August, LastPass reported a security breach, saying that no customer information—or passwords—were compromised. Turns out the full story is worse:
While no customer data was accessed during the August 2022 incident, some source code and technical information were stolen from our development environment and used to target another employee, obtaining credentials and keys which were used to access and decrypt some storage volumes within the cloud-based storage service.
[…]
To date, we have determined that once the cloud storage access key and dual storage container decryption keys were obtained, the threat actor copied information from backup that contained basic customer account information and related metadata including company names, end-user names, billing addresses, email addresses, telephone numbers, and the IP addresses from which customers were accessing the LastPass service.
The threat actor was also able to copy a backup of customer vault data from the encrypted storage container which is stored in a proprietary binary format that contains both unencrypted data, such as website URLs, as well as fully-encrypted sensitive fields such as website usernames and passwords, secure notes, and form-filled data.
That’s bad. It’s not an epic disaster, though.
These encrypted fields remain secured with 256-bit AES encryption and can only be decrypted with a unique encryption key derived from each user’s master password using our Zero Knowledge architecture. As a reminder, the master password is never known to LastPass and is not stored or maintained by LastPass.
So, according to the company, if you chose a strong master password—here’s my advice on how to do it—your passwords are safe. That is, you are secure as long as your password is resilient to a brute-force attack. (That they lost customer data is another story….)
Fair enough, as far as it goes. My guess is that many LastPass users do not have strong master passwords, even though the compromise of your encrypted password file should be part of your threat model. But, even so, note this unverified tweet:
I think the situation at @LastPass may be worse than they are letting on. On Sunday the 18th, four of my wallets were compromised. The losses are not significant. Their seeds were kept, encrypted, in my lastpass vault, behind a 16 character password using all character types.
If that’s true, it means that LastPass has some backdoor—possibly unintentional—into the password databases that the hackers are accessing. (Or that @Cryptopathic’s “16 character password using all character types” is something like “P@ssw0rdP@ssw0rd.”)
My guess is that we’ll learn more during the coming days. But this should serve as a cautionary tale for anyone who is using the cloud: the cloud is another name for “someone else’s computer,” and you need to understand how much or how little you trust that computer.
If you’re changing password managers, look at my own Password Safe. Its main downside is that you can’t synch between devices, but that’s because I don’t use the cloud for anything.
After a few years of limited international travel, people are more eager than ever to take their bucket-list trips to far-flung destinations—and we’re not getting any younger.
If you’ve been longing to see the Northern Lights and are thinking of making the trek in 2023, it would help to know where you have the best shot of experiencing the aurora borealis in person. Fortunately, the travel experts at Kiwi.com have put together a list of destinations to consider. Here’s what to know.
How to increase your chances of seeing the Northern Lights
Before we get into the destinations, we wanted to mention a few general strategies to maximize your chances of catching the Northern Lights:
September through April are the best months to plan a trip.
Though you can’t control the weather, you can schedule your trip around the moon: The Northern Lights will be most visible during the new or crescent moon.
Get as far away from cities and light pollution as possible.
The best places to see the Northern Lights in 2023
According to the experts at Kiwi.com, you have your best shot at seeing the Northern Lights in 2023 from one of these destinations:
Finland
Revontuli: Roughly 15 minutes from the Hankasalmi Observatory; also a classic Finnish sauna and spa town
Nellim: Another spa town, where Northern Lights can be seen from the frozen shores of Lake Inari
Norway
Tromsø: Port city; take a boat excursion for the best views
Alta: Surrounded by tundra, mountains, and forests; Northern Lights are visible most nights
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Sweden
Abisko: Home to Abisko National Park and the Aurora Sky Observatory
Kiruna: Sweden’s northernmost city with a high-end “camp” (resort) designed for those seeking the Northern Lights
Iceland
Kleifarvatn Lake: 30 minutes outside Reykjavík, but potentially less crowded than Thingvellir National Park (also located near the capital)
Sandgerði: Fishing village on a peninsula in the southwestern part of the island with sweeping views of the horizon
Canada
Northwest Territory: Barren, remote landscape of forests, mountains, lakes, islands, and tundra
Yukon: Home to Dawson City’s Midnight Dome and other amenities for tourists hoping to see the Northern Lights
Back in July, T-Mobile agreed to pay out $350 million to settle a class-action lawsuit brought by a number of the company’s customers over a 2021 data breach. At this point, it’s still possible to claim a piece of the payout, but time is running out. Here’s what to know.
Why was a class-action lawsuit filed against T-Mobile?
In an August 2021 statement, T-Mobile confirmed that there had been a “highly sophisticated cyberattack” against the company’s systems, which had compromised data files with personal information from roughly 7.8 million current customers, as well as 40 million former or prospective customers. This information included first and last names, dates of birth, Social Security numbers, and driver’s license/ID information.
In May 2022, a group of T-Mobile customers affected by the data breach filed a class-action lawsuit against the company, in which the plaintiffs allege that the number of current, former, and prospective customers impacted was actually around 76 million.
Two months later, the T-Mobile filed a settlement proposal with a federal court in Kansas City, Missouri, agreeing to pay $350 million to settle the customers’ claims, plus an additional $150 million to upgrade its data protection. The wireless carrier specified that this was not an acknowledgment of any wrongdoing.
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Who can claim money from the settlement?
At this point, most people eligible to be part of the class-action lawsuit have already been contacted, but if you think you’ve been overlooked, you can find out by emailing the settlement administrator, or calling 833-512-2314.
How much money could you get from the settlement?
The amount you could potentially receive from the T-Mobile settlement varies depending on the type of claim you make:
Reimbursement
The first option is to claim money for unreimbursed out-of-pocket financial losses you incurred from the data breach, plus $25/hour to cover the time you spent dealing with its aftermath.
If you go this route, you can receive a maximum reimbursement of $25,000 (between the financial losses and lost time). Yes, that’s a lot of money, but it will also require a lot of (additional) time and paperwork to get it.
Cash payment
Those who don’t want the hassle of going through the reimbursement process can receive a single cash payment of $25 from T-Mobile. The one exception to that is people who resided in California on August 1, 2021, who can receive a $100 cash payment.
How to file a claim in the T-Mobile data breach settlement
Whether you’re a seasoned real estate pro, or someone who casually scans the listings from time to time, you’ve probably noticed that the 2022 housing market has been a little hard to follow at times. Like 2021, most experts have indicated that this year has largely been a seller’s market, but what’s in store for 2023?
The economic research team at Realtor.com has made a few predictions, including what they expect to real estate markets experiencing the most growth in 2023. Here’s what to know.
Predictions for the housing markets positioned for the most growth in 2023
With mortgage interest rates skyrocketing over the past few months, many prospective buyers have decided to hold off on purchasing homes—even if the price of the property itself dropped.
But according to the experts at Realtor.com, there are some metropolitan areas that still have a decent amount of (relatively) affordable housing, and that have seen rising sales and prices in 2022, which are anticipated to continue rising throughout 2023. They are:
1. Hartford, Connecticut
Median home list price in November 2022: $372,400 Price change in 2023: 8.5% Sales change in 2023: 6.5%
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2. El Paso, Texas
Median home list price in November 2022: $290,500 Price change in 2023: 5.4% Sales change in 2023: 8.9%
3. Louisville, Kentucky
Median home list price in November 2022: $290,000 Price change in 2023: 8.4% Sales change in 2023: 5.2%
4. Worcester, Massachusetts
Median home list price in November 2022: $447,500 Price change in 2023: 10.6% Sales change in 2023: 2.5%
5. Buffalo, New York
Median home list price in November 2022: $239,000 Price change in 2023: 6% Sales change in 2023: 6.3%
6. Augusta, Georgia
Median home list price in November 2022: $318,900 Price change in 2023: 5.7% Sales change in 2023: 6.2%
7. Grand Rapids, Michigan
Median home list price in November 2022: $358,300 Price change in 2023: 10% Sales change in 2023: 1.6%
8. Columbia, South Carolina
Median home list price in November 2022: $300,400 Price change in 2023: 3.6% Sales change in 2023: 7.7%
9. Chattanooga, Tennessee
Median home list price in November 2022: $396,500 Price change in 2023: 8.2% Sales change in 2023: 2.9%
10. Toledo, Ohio
Median home list price in November 2022: $161,100 Price change in 2023: 6.7% Sales change in 2023: 4.2%
For more information on these rankings, housing markets, and Realtor.com’s methodology, see the full report.
Here’s an overview of some of last week’s most interesting news, articles, interviews and videos:
LastPass says attackers got users’ info and password vault data
The information couldn’t come at a worst time, as businesses are winding down their activities and employees and users are thick in the midst of last-minute preparations for end-of-year holidays.
Make sure your company is prepared for the holiday hacking season
We’re coming to that time of the year when employees are excited about the holidays and taking time off to be with their loved ones. But while employees are preparing for some rest and relaxation, hackers are gearing up for their busy season.
What happens once scammers receive funds from their victims
In this Help Net Security video, Ronnie Tokazowski, Principal Threat Advisor at Cofense, offers insight into the world’s most lucrative cybercrime – business email compromise (BEC).
APIs are placing your enterprise at risk
The recent push to focus on API security comes at a critical time where more enterprises are relying on enterprise mobility, meaning increasing a reliance on mobile app connectivity.
UID smuggling: A new technique for tracking users online
Advertisers and web trackers have been able to aggregate users’ information across all of the websites they visit for decades, primarily by placing third-party cookies in users’ browsers.
Ransomware predictions for 2023
In this Help Net Security video, Dave Trader, Field CISO at Presidio, talks about the evolution of ransomware attacks and outlines what we can expect in 2023.
Amplified security trends to watch out for in 2023
In 2023 and beyond, organizations can expect to continue dealing with many of the same threats they face today but with one key difference: expect criminals to leverage technological advancements to optimize the effectiveness of their attacks.
85% of attacks now use encrypted channels
Malware continues to pose the greatest threat to individuals and businesses across nine key industries, with manufacturing, education and healthcare being the most commonly targeted, according to Zscaler.
Open source vulnerabilities add to security debt
The number of open source vulnerabilities that Mend identified and added to its vulnerability database in the first nine months of 2022 was 33 percent greater than the first nine months of 2021, reflecting both the growth in the number of published open-source packages and the acceleration of vulnerabilities.
Adversarial risk in the age of ransomware
Éireann Leverett, Technology and Risk Entrepreneur, makes audience think about ransomware risks from more that one perspective, and that includes the perspective of the threat actors. This video was recorded at IRISSCON 2022, an annual conference organized by IRISSCERT.
Connected homes are expanding, so is attack volume
78% Americans report unsafe online behaviors that open them up to cyber threats, such as reusing or sharing passwords, skipping software updates and more – a 14% increase from just two years ago, according to Comcast.
Companies overwhelmed by available tech solutions
92% of executives reported challenges in acquiring new tech solutions, highlighting the complexities that go into the decision-making process, according to GlobalDots.
More than almost anything else in your kitchen, the cabinets can make the room feel outdated—especially if you painted them a color that was trendy one year, but not as much after that. Fortunately, giving your kitchen an updated look doesn’t necessarily mean you have to replace your cabinets completely. Instead, many people opt to give them a facelift using paint and some new hardware, including knobs and pulls.
But how do you know when to use knobs, and when pulls would be the better option? Whether you’re giving your kitchen cabinet a refresh, or starting from scratch, here’s what to know about the difference between knobs and pulls.
The difference between knobs and pulls
Both knobs and pulls are types of hardware that can be used on cabinets in kitchens, bathrooms, closets, other built-ins, and on furniture like dressers, vanities, and chests of drawers.
The biggest difference between knobs and pulls comes down to how they’re attached to a cabinet, drawer, or piece of furniture:
Knobs are mounted with a single screw
Pulls are more like handles, and are mounted with two screws
When to use knobs vs. pulls on cabinets
Generally speaking, most people tend to prefer to use knobs for cabinets, and pulls on drawers, but really, it’s up to your personal preferences. And you can certainly opt to mix that up, or use only knobs or only pulls in your kitchen, bathroom, or anywhere else in the house.
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If you’re undecided on which to use, here are a few things to consider:
Ease of use: Pulls give you more leverage when opening and closing a cabinet or drawer. You may want to opt for pulls over knobs if your cabinet doors are particularly heavy, or you have limited strength or flexibility in your hands and arms.
Pre-drilled holes: Check your cabinets and drawers for pre-drilled holes meant for hardware. While there are ways around it, it’ll save time, money, and effort to use the holes that are already there. This may determine whether you use knobs or pulls.
Interior design: Do you want your room to have a particular look or style? Sometimes, the design style—and the availability of knobs and pulls that fit in—dictate the type of hardware you choose.
The vintage look: Many older homes have knobs, rather than pulls, on drawers in kitchens, bathrooms, and on furniture—usually one on each end of the drawer. Depending on other factors (like the condition and material of the drawers’ tracks), knobs can make it harder to open drawers. But if you’re restoring a room or piece of furniture, or want to add a vintage touch, knobs can do that.
