Last Week’s 10 Biggest Posts

You wanted productivity tips from Alan Turing, happiness tips from science, and hash brown tips from McDonald’s. Kick off your Monday by checking out the ten most popular posts from Lifehacker Australia last week:

1. Alan Turing’s Best Productivity Tricks
   Alan Turing is one of history’s first computer scientists. Not only was he a mathematician, logician, and cryptanalyst, he was also one of the most influential figures in the modelling of the first computer. You don’t accomplish all that without some clever productivity tricks.
2. 10 Simple Things You Can Do To Be Happier, Backed By Science
   Happiness is so interesting, because we all have different ideas about what it is and how to get it. I would love to be happier — as I’m sure most people would — so I thought it would be interesting to find some ways to become a happier person that are actually backed up by science. Here are 10 of the best ones I found.
3. Is Porn Actually Bad For You?
   What does science have to say about the impact of pornography? As University of Sydney academics Spring Chenoa Cooper and Gregory Zimet explain, the answer is: probably not what you think.
4. Ask LH: I’ve Been Busted For My Housemate’s Torrents, What Can I Do?
   Hi LH. I recently received an email from my ISP on behalf of ip-echelon.com with the subject: ‘Unauthorized Distribution of the Copyrighted Motion Picture’, claiming I’d been responsible for an illicit download. I live in a share house of four, with the internet in my name. The date of this alleged incident happened on a week when I was away interstate.
5. The Biggest Mistakes Runners Of All Levels Make (And How To Fix Them)
   Over the last three years of coaching runners, I’ve reviewed hundreds of runner questionnaires. This is the exhaustive list of questions that allow me to dig deep into a runner’s background, injury profile, fitness level, schedule, racing history and more so I can tailor their training to their personal needs. After hundreds of hours of reading through this information, a lot of common themes have emerged. In fact, I can boil them down to five popular mistakes that minimise the results of your hard work.
6. Seven Great Underrated Desktop Wallpaper Sites
   When it comes to decorating your desktop with new wallpaper, you probably have some favourite sources already, and we hope our Weekly Wallpaper series is one of them. Even so, there’s always room for more great photos and images to download and use to personalise your workstation. Here are a few great wallpaper repositories you may never have heard of that are worth exploring.
7. Does Google Chromecast Deserve A Place In Your Living Room?
   Last month, Google unveiled the Chromecast: a $US35 HDMI stick that can stream content directly to your TV, and it sold out nearly immediately due to the low price. We haven’t been given a release date for the Chromecast in Australia yet, but in its current form it seems clear that despite its promise it will need some tweaking to beat rivals such as Apple TV or Roku.
8. The Hash Brown Speed Test: Free Maccas And Free Wi-Fi
   Today’s offer of free breakfast at McDonald’s was a free hash brown. To see just how much you can get from the deal, I visited six Melbourne CBD McDonald’s over the course of an hour, tried to score a free hash brown at each one, and tested the speed of the free Wi-Fi as well. How did I fare? How was the free Wi-Fi? And will my waistline ever recover?
9. Four Common Statistical Misinterpretations You Should Avoid
   Statistics have become a fixture of modern society. We read them in news stories and they’re used to determine policies that will affect every aspect of our lives. Unfortunately, many people wildly misinterpret them. Here are four common errors to look out for.
10. Why Australian IT Pro Salaries Are Rising
    Having trouble convincing your boss to give you a pay rise? That might well be because IT pro salaries are the fastest-growing area when it comes to technology expenditure.