February 8th, 2013Top Story This Week's Most Popular Posts: February 1st to 8th This week we fixed our sucky smartphones, sold our stuff for money, jailbroke iOS 6, and celebrated Lifehacker's 8th birthday. Here's a look back. Top 10 Things Your Smartphone Sucks At (and How to Fix Them) Sometimes, smartphones can be a boon for your personal productivity, but other times it's amazing how much trouble they have performing simple tasks. Here are ten things your phone probably sucks at, and how to make it work better. More » The Complete Guide to Selling Your Unwanted Crap for Money We've shown you how to kick your clutter habit, but why trash all of those things you don't need when you could make some money off of them? In this guide, we'll walk you through how you can appraise your items, where to sell them to make the most cash, and how to avoid geting screwed in the... More » Five Most Popular Lifehacker Tips and Guides This week marks Lifehacker's 8th birthday, and to celebrate we put the call out to you to help us determine what some of our best tips, tricks, and guides from the past eight years have been. More » The Correct Way to Clean Eyeglasses We've all done it. When our glasses are smudged up we reach for the corner of our shirt and clean them off. You probably even know that's the wrong way to clean glasses, but you do it anyway. More » I'm Phil Libin, CEO of Evernote, and This Is How I Work Since kicking off the How I Work series last summer, nothing has been praised by our interviewees as many times as Evernote. (Seriously, we counted.) The free, cross-platform app does just about anything you could want to stay productive: More » How to Jailbreak Your iPhone: The Always Up-to-Date Guide [iOS 6.1] Jailbreaking is a process that changes little by little with each iOS upgrade. Rather than always publishing new guides, we're simply going to keep this one up to date. More » The Best Jailbreak Apps and Tweaks for iOS 6 With the new jailbreak for iOS 6, it's time to start playing around with all the great apps and tweaks on your newly freed device. Here's a look at some of our favorites available in Cydia for iOS 6. More » MIT's Free Creative Learning Class Teaches You How to Learn Almost Anything Whether you need to learn a new skill or language to advance your career, or you just want to learn something new and broaden your horizons, lifelong learning is important. More » The Best Things to Buy in February January is the biggest discount month of the year, but a lot of the winter sales carry over into February-not to mention a few new sales thanks to annual trade shows. More » Build a Computer This Weekend Let's be honest: there's no weekend project that's both as fun and practical as building a computer, especially when you have so many options. Whether it's a home theater PC, a workstation, or something else, it's a great way to spend a day (or two) off. More » How to Track the Emails You Send (and Avoid Being Tracked Yourself) Ever wish you could find out whether someone actually opened that email you sent, or whether they just ignored and trashed it? A service called Bananatag can tell you-but if you find that a little creepy, we've got the lowdown on how to protect yourself too. More » How to Watch and Record Live TV on Your XBMC Media Center Building a media center is a killer way to watch or stream your favorite movies and TV shows, but if you miss being able to watch live TV-and record it so you can watch it later-you can turn your XBMC box into a personal video recorder (PVR) with just a bit of setup. More » Do I Really Need to Learn a Productivity Method? I've heard of productivity systems like Getting Things Done or the Pomodoro Technique, and everyone seems to swear by them. Do I really need to learn one of these complicated systems to be productive? More »

This Week's Most Popular Posts: February 1st to 8th Delete Your Google Voice Account Without Losing Your Number When Should I Replace Old Cookware? Use the "But You Are Free" Technique to Persuade Anyone The IRS Just Sent Me $160,000. Can I Keep It? Force Yourself to Take Breaks By Locking Yourself Out of Your Computer and Changing the Keyboard Layout Train Your Eye to Take Better Photos by Analyzing Your Reaction to Others More Stories on Lifehacker »

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February 8th, 2013Top Story What People Used To Say About The Sega Dreamcast By András Neltz Today, we've got Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony vying for control of the console market. But there was a time when Sega was also a contender. Their last home console, the Dreamcast, is still getting games (sort of) despite being fourteen years old. But what was it about the Dreamcast that inspired such devotion? Let's take a look. The hottest computer at my house isn't the homemade box I usually work on, or the old Pentium 90 Linux server, or even the blazing Athlon tower I borrowed from Advanced Micro Devices Inc. Instead it's this little beige box, roughly the size of a package of software, that sits on the floor next to my TV set. It's the new Sega Dreamcast—a limited and in some ways rather crude machine, which nevertheless could teach any PC a thing or two about serving up realistic, razor-sharp electronic entertainment. Hiawatha Bray: Being good at games: UPGRADE; The Boston Globe, September 30, 1999. The Dreamcast, converting hardcore PC enthusiasts everywhere. "'Dreamcast is the hot new system,' said Anne Scott, store director at Toys R Us, 131 N. Milwaukee St. 'It's $199.99, but if you are a gamer or have a son or daughter that's into that stuff and are looking for the hot system, that's the way to go.'" Michael Deeds: VIDEO GAME BLITZ: Buyers need to think carefully before picking home gaming machine; The Idaho Statesman, November 26, 1999. Might as well grab two if you're a gamer with kids. "Pop quiz: which did more business during its first 24 hours in the marketplace, Sega's new Dreamcast console or the movie 'Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace'? Surprise answer: Dreamcast, by a score of $ 97.9 million to $ 28.5 million." Nathan Cobb: Game Boys Grow Into Game Men; News & Record, November 28, 1999. Honestly, I'm not all that surprised. "Sega of America Inc. knows that the gaming audience wants entertainment that is hip and fun, not practical or mind-expanding. So the company isn't touting the Internet features built into Dreamcast." Mike Langberg: Dreamcast's Hidden Internet Feature A Boon To Buyers; The Augusta Chronicle, September 22, 1999. Mind-expanding? Are we talking about the same Internet? "'I think it's great,' said Matt Hill, an employee at Electronics Boutique and a regular video gamer. 'It's got 128-bit processing compared to PlayStation's 32-bit. It's more real. You can really see and tell the difference on NFL2K and Soul Calibur, but mostly on the NFL game. It's like broadcast quality." Barry Courter: Sega Dreamcasts Long Shadow; Chatanooga Times Free Press, September 26, 1999. That's a bit of a stretch. Real football players have way better models and textures. "'It's like trading in a Ford Taurus for a Lamborghini Diablo,' said Ed Christensen, 17, who traded up from a Nintendo 64 system. (...) And he's been hearing a lot from friends ever since. 'I go to his house every day to play,' said Christensen's friend Rory White, 17, of River Forest. 'If you have the game, your status rises.'" Jim Frost: Teenagers atwitter over latest, greatest video game system; Chicago Sun-Times, September 20, 1999. A legit status symbol. Just like a Lamborghini Diablo. Sony says its Playstation 2, due next year, will make Dreamcast look like a pocket calculator. But for now, Sega holds the lead. Hiawatha Bray: Being good at games: UPGRADE; The Boston Globe, September 30, 1999. "For now" is right. A pity. So, what about you? Has the Dreamcast managed to ensnare you, too? Share your experiences below.

A List Of Characters I Accidentally Killed In Fire Emblem: Awakening What People Used To Say About The Sega Dreamcast If We're Lucky, Crysis 3 Will Have The Heart of Halo 4 And The Innards Of Far Cry 3 How to Make a Japanese PSN Account on the New PSN (and How to Navigate the Store) This Pokémon X/Y Fake Amuses Japan, At Least The (Fake) Mass Effect Characters Of The Future Are An Amazing Sight The Most Amazing Snow Levels And Zones In Video Games More Stories on Kotaku »

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February 8th, 2013Top Story Blade Runner In the Senate: All These Truths Lost in Time, Like Tiered Threats in Rain By Mobutu Sese Seko If you're looking for a takeaway from White House Counterterrorism Advisor John Brennan's testimony before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, all you need is a line from Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), who wanted to assure Brennan that he would keep questions short. "I noticed you're on your fourth glass of water," Burr said, "and I don't want to be accused of waterboarding you." Plenty of people on the august panel of senators laughed at that one, because war crimes are funny. Going into the hearings, one could hope things would be different. On Monday and Tuesday, voices on both sides reacted with disgust at a 16-page memo on White House drone policy and targeting Americans for strikes. Attitudes were shaken up and responses fresh. Rather than gin up culture war nonsense, the right-wing site Newsbusters raked MSNBC host Touré over the coals for being insufficiently committed to protecting civil liberties from a zealous executive branch. The Obama administration reacted to the outcry by agreeing to provide the committee with copies of their full legal justification for the drone program, from which the 16-page précis was drawn. By yesterday, though, those full papers still hadn't arrived. Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Carl Levin (D-Mich.) both seemed upset. Other senators mentioned it, but it wasn't pressing. This is Need-To-Know-Eventually stuff; after a couple years, why rush it? The centerpiece of the afternoon's pitiable exercise was a kangaroo court held between Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Brennan. Her questions weren't just slow-pitch softball; it was as if someone tweaked the settings on the pitching machine to "Half-Blind One-Armed Opponent Taking Their First Cuts Minutes After Learning of the Existence of Softball as a Game." Feinstein was downright plummy. Was it not true that Anwar al-Awlaki was a very bad man, Mr. Brennan? And Mr. Brennan said yes. Was it not true that you had proof of al-Awlaki's involvement with many very bad things? And Mr. Brennan said yes. They both saw the necessity of what was done, and it was good. Feinstein's exercise omitted a central conceit of the rule of law: If convicting al-Awlaki was so easy, it presumably would have been just as easy before his assassination. The U.S. had roughly a year to conduct a show trial between the time they defined al-Awlaki as an existential threat and the time they killed him. The facile ease with which Feinstein promulgated this legalistic sleight-of-hand only highlighted the craven reasons for doing so. These guys expected you not to give a shit. Drones are bad news, and they shock people, but after a while, if ugliness becomes the background hum of the everyday, eventually you'll tune it out. Like The Onion gag, they expect "outrage fatigue" to grind you down. They expected you to tune it out. Then they whacked an American, and you got mad! Hence the mock trial: See, they totally could have done this all along, which makes everything seem legal all along. Then again, Brennan also made a point that these targeted killings were legal only because they prevent imminent threats to the United States, as opposed to being retributive sentences carried out for existing crimes. This made the Awlaki klatsch with Feinstein even more of a Kafkaesque absurdity. After calmly engaging in the post facto conviction of a man they'd already killed, Brennan proudly stated that drone assassinations target what you might as well call Futurecrime—the proof of which he theoretically could show the committee, maybe. Brennan spends his off hours floating naked in water, in a bald cap, waiting for Tom Cruise to show up to hear him predict the transgressions of tomorrow. Unless his agent at 1600 Penn authorizes it, he's only talking to Cruise. Things didn't stop being weird there. Levin repeatedly tried to get Brennan to acknowledge that waterboarding is torture, to which Brennan stubbornly and conveniently repeatedly replied, "I am not a lawyer." I don't know about you, but I'm pretty sure you don't need Learned Hand sitting around to figure out it hurts like hell to tear someone's fingernails out. It's a wonder Brennan didn't object to classifying torture as such because he's not also a doctor, lexicographer, or philosopher. How can we ever know anything, man? What if what you think is torture is what I call the color blue? The Republicans had almost nowhere to go. They like Obama's expanded drone theater of war because he gives bipartisan cover for the Bush administration. Obama lets them say they were right all along. Let Democrats like Levin keep talking about torture; it seems almost trite when the president says he can kill Americans via pen stroke. As the tough-on-terror party, they could only try to paint Brennan as a loose-lipped security threat, who may have known about dangerous administration statements about the raid on Bin Laden's compound or who might have illegally leaked facts to the press himself. Here was a huge target—the water carrier for a policy of killing over 4,700 people globally, in areas where America is not at war, including some people who are Americans—and the right didn't even try to touch him. If you expected better from the "liberal" media, you didn't get it. On Hardball, guest host Michael Smerconish said, "The jury's still out with harsh interrogation methods, but drone strikes work." It's an apples-and-oranges statement so reliant on begged questions that it could be a midterm exam on logical fallacy. Drone strikes do work at the opposite of what interrogation seeks to provide, but whatever. Later, Rachel Maddow painted the hearings as an all-out critique from all the Democrats, when Feinstein alone undermines the assertion. MSNBC even aired clips of Jay Rockefeller's endless dilation, supposedly as an example of hard questioning, in which he prefaced his questions with two or three minutes of dependent clauses before getting lost. At one point he—the great-grandson of John D. Rockefeller—went on pityingly about the sacrifices of life in public service. (Blast the public's hide to Hades. Now he'll never be able to enjoy that ivory back scratcher!) If this was a big attack, it sounded a lot like a few pages of Bismarck sentences with the verbs lopped off the ends. Pity the heavy heads of the wealthy and unaccountably powerful. Project justifications for your actions forward and backward in time, while denying either end as your intended destination. Hear a joke about torture, pause for laughter. After three hours it was hard not to get the sense that this was a giant Voight-Kampff Test that everyone but Wyden and Levin failed. Image by Jim Cooke

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