Last Week’s 10 Biggest Posts

You wanted all the iOS 8 details, fast passport renewals and topless travel pics. Kick off your Monday by checking out the ten most popular posts from Lifehacker Australia last week:

1. Reader Alert: Game Of Thrones/A Song Of Ice And Fire Might Blow Out To Eight Books
   Game Of Thrones author George R R Martin is a notoriously slow writer; both in terms of physical output and getting to the point in a story. Now, his editor has hinted that three more books might be on the cards. If anyone could do with some Lifehacker productivity tips, it’s George.
2. How To Take Topless Travel Photos
   ‘Topless travel’ is the latest photographic trend to take Instagram and Facebook by storm. No really. As you can probably guess, the craze involves taking topless photos in front of panoramic vistas while travelling abroad. Here are a few tips if you’re thinking of ditching your tee and getting involved. You know you want to.
3. How To Renew An Australian Passport In 4 Hours
   It is feasible — with a little luck and some manners — to get a very rapid Australian passport renewal. Here’s how I did it, and the larger lesson it taught me about customer service and planning.
4. Top 10 Incredibly Useful Windows Programs To Have On Hand
   Some apps are essential, and you use them every day. Everyone knows their names: Firefox, VLC, 7-Zip and so on. However, there’s another class of app that gets less attention: the apps that are insanely useful to have in your back pocket on the rare occasions you need them. Here are 10 of our favourites.
5. The Best Military Tricks To Make Your Daily Life Easier
   Soldiers often come up with shortcuts to lead the disciplined life required in the military. The good news is that a lot of these tricks can be applied to make civilian life easier too.
6. How Bill Gates’ Ex-Bodyguard Transformed Microsoft’s Security
   Microsoft manages physical security for all its facilities from three global security operations centres (GSOCs): one in Redmond, one in London, and one in Hyderabad. But reaching the stage where that was possible required some complex tactics to transform the traditional vision of of security as “guns, guards and gates” to something that actually helped Gates’ business.
7. Optus’ New Data Sharing Mobile Plans: Everything You Need To Know
   Optus has updated its mobile plans today, including a new option to share data from your main plan with other devices without paying an ongoing extra fee. Does that make sense? Planhacker investigates.
8. NBN Rollout Maps Go Interactive: Are You On There Yet?
   NBN Co has updated its rollout maps with a new level of detail showing where preparation work for FTTP rollouts is occurring.
9. Ask LH: Can I Score A Refund For Watch Dogs?
   Dear Lifehacker, Recently I bought Watch Dogs for my PC via Steam. I checked the requirements prior to purchase and knew my machine was capable of running it on at least ‘low’ settings. When I tried to play the game, it crashed four times.
10. Why TrueCrypt Is No Longer A Choice
    There is really no getting around the fact that staying secure on the Internet is hard, if not impossible, to achieve. Yes, users can do more to keep themselves safe by adopting good security practices. They can choose strong passwords that they don’t reuse for different sites. They can avoid disclosing personal details online and for users that are particularly security conscious, can encrypt the contents of their hard disks. Ultimately however, users have to rely on the software they are using to be secure, especially security software.