This week on the podcast, we're talking about Chrome extensions becoming malware, free alternatives to LogMeIn, and Life lessons from World of Warcraft. We're also answering your questions about organizing your iTunes library, streaming from a Chromecast, and buying a used MacBook Air.

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News and Top Stories

Many Browser Extensions Have Become Adware or Malware. Check Yours Now This week, Ars Technica and How-To Geek released some pretty startling news: a lot of browser extensions are either injecting ads into the sites you visit, or are tracking your entire browsing history—possibly without you knowing. You can track which extensions are doing this with ExtShield.

Remote Desktop Tool LogMeIn Is No Longer Free LogMeIn, one of ourfavorite remote desktop tools, has suddenly pulled the plug on the free version. If you want to continue using it, you'll need to pay up or switch to one of these great alternatives.

Introducing Lifehacker: After Hours Here at Lifehacker, we think of ourselves as a home base for the helpful, practical, and productive...and we've never been what you would call "edgy." We've never strayed too far from our more conservative nature. Now, we're changing that.

Six Real Life Lessons I Learned from World of Warcraft Massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs, mercifully) get a bad rap for being life-sucking parallel universes. However, games like World of Warcraft are a microcosm of many real-life experiences. No, really.

The Most (and Least) Reliable Hard Drive Brands Backblaze uses 25,000 hard drives for its online backup service. This has provided some interesting information, such ashow long hard drives are likely to last and thedifference in reliability between enterprise and consumer drives. Today, Backblaze has spilled the beans on which drive manufacturers are the most reliable.


Kristen asks, "I recently migrated my iTunes library from my SSD to a 1TB SATA drive on my mac. I'm not sure how, but in the process, all of my music has become mixed up. The album art seems to be the only thing that is still correct - all of my songs have the wrong titles, albums, and artists names attached to them. Is there some way that I can clean up the files without having to go through them one by one? I have a fairly large library."

We'd recommend checking out MusicBrainz Picard or Jaikoz. We've also written a guide on this, but your situation sounds like it needs a more automated system.

Jonathan asks, "I'm thinking about getting a Chromecast, but there seem to be a lot of other streaming devices out there. Is there a better alternative to the Chromecast, one that might offer more features (like screen-mirroring)? Or is the Chromecast the way to go because of it's potential and because it bears the name "Google?" I'd be looking to use it for an Android smartphone, Android tablet, and a PC."

The Chromecast is great because it's so cheap—only $35. Its "tab" mirroring isn't very good, but for $35, its the best bang for your buck you'll get as a streaming device. Other devices might be better, but cost more—we recommend checking out the Roku as well.

Cameron writes, "I'm trying to plan a purchase of a Macbook Air. I've been saving a bit of money here and there and have about 600-700$ ready and waiting to pickup a used Air. However, I know very little about the inner workings of the Air laptop line. Are there models I should avoid? How old is too old to purchase? There are a few version of the laptop (2010ish) that are selling for 500$ or so. Are they worth it? Basically, what should I do to get myself a Mac that'll last a bit, but won't break the bank?"

We recommend looking for the MacBook Airs that have the Core i processors—the ones released in 2011. That's when they really started becoming great. Older models (with the Core 2 Duo processors) won't be quite as snappy.

"What's the best way to clean a DVD?" and "Can we see Dachis play something on his keyboard?"

For answers to both of these questions, I highly recommend you watch our home theater episode of the old Lifehacker show. Dachis sings a song and it has a good demonstration of how to clean a DVD with toothpaste. For a demonstration of how you definitely shouldn't do it, watch this horrible video I filmed with my brother.

Tips of the Week


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