The start of the new year is as great a time as any to take a quick tour through your iPhone’s settings and make sure you’ve customised its Emergency SOS feature to your liking. Heck, you should really take a few minutes and memorise—really memorise—how this feature works. I hope you don’t ever need it in 2020, but you’ll be glad you took some time to learn how it works if you ever do.

The computer ate my term paper! We’ve all been there. You delete an important file — maybe even shift-delete it by accident (on Windows) — or you forget about it until that split-second after you clear out your Recycle Bin or Trash. It’s gone forever, right?

In case you hadn't noticed already, we have passed another tax year, which is great if you have a nice pot of tax return money patiently waiting for to collect. Unfortunately, it also means a bunch of unexpected changes that may hit your hip pocket.

One of these reforms is every graduate's worst nightmare: the overhaul of the HELP loan repayment system (previously known as HECS).

Admitting you need help can be really hard, especially when you’re being paid for your competency. But the reality is, we all need help sometimes, and learning to ask for it at work will make things better for everyone.

In this week’s tech-support column, I’m taking on an uncomfortable issue: How to regain control of your accounts from a not-so-kind ex. I’m hoping your former loved one isn’t a complete psychopath — or, at least, isn’t a psychopath that has access to your accounts — but it’s an all-too-familiar story. You live with someone, you share your hopes and your dreams, and they find a way to get into your accounts. (That, or you share login credentials, which is a pretty bad idea, too.)

We're turning the lens around for this week's Ask Lifehacker. Our Managing Editor Virginia Smith posed a question in our internal Slack channel that cuts wide and deep: "It's safe to delete photos from my iPhone, right?"

We've all been there — your day is going poorly and it feels like it will never end. Worst of all, it feels like you can't do anything to make it better. But that's not entirely true. This strategy won't solve all of your problems, but it's a creative way to turn a rough day into a fulfilling one.

Reddit, crazy as it can be at times, is a great time-waster - no argument there. And while it's fun to browse /r/videos and /r/aww during occasional bits of downtime (that turn into extended cute-animal breaks), I find the site even more captivating when I can entertain myself and feel like I'm learning something.

Dear Lifehacker, We know using cheap, third-party cables to charge a smartphone is bad, but what about the little bricks that plug into the wall or nubs that plug into a car lighter? Are these safe to use or will they turn my iPhone into a ticking time bomb?

Every year on June 14, people around the world will donate blood in honour of World Blood Donor Day, a celebration to raise awareness of the need for blood and to thank all voluntary donors.

Dear Lifehacker, I have a question that has been an issue for the last 3 years. So, I'll be honest, my boyfriend and I watch porn each separately on our phones. We each have gone through each others' phone activity through Google, and when he looks at mine, there are items in there that I never Googled, like live cams chat room stuff. I have never in my life entered this into my Google search but I have a suspicion that they are pop ups from the porn sites. I want to know how and why they come up as my searches. And there are other things that show up that I supposedly googled but I know for a fact I didn't. Can you help me, please?

We've all been there. You plug something into your computer, wait for the ba-donk sound (on Windows, at least), and start navigating your flash drive / listening to your headphones / using whatever else it is you plugged in to your computer.

Sometimes, that doesn't quite happen. What gives?

This week alone, people in Syria have been gassed and then bombed. After years of horror, the pictures of suffering children even got through to the American president's cold heart. If you feel the same way, here are some things you can do to help.

Awareness events such as World Mental Health Day and RUOK Day are important for initiating conversations about mental health in the community. Anything to promote discussion in the media about what "mental health" means and how to seek help if you need it is certainly a positive thing.

However, reducing stigma is only one component of tackling this issue. With new research showing that Australia’s suicide rate is the highest it’s been for over ten years, it is clear that action must follow awareness. Clearly, a little more conversation and a little more action is needed. Here are some tips that might help.

It sounds like something that should go without saying, but if you're trying to offer praise and support to someone, an honest compliment will almost always work better than a feigned one.

Hi Lifehacker, I've just discovered that I cannot claim HECS-HELP repayments as a tax deduction. This makes no sense to me. If I pay my course fees up front I can claim them as a self-education expense, but if I repay them to the government I can't? What gives?

The government's plan to charge up to 6% interest on HELP loans has been widely attacked as unfair. Many critics, including Shadow Education Minister Kim Carr, the Group of Eight universities, Universities Australia and HECS architect Bruce Chapman, have come out against pegging HELP loans to the bond rate, rather than CPI as it is now.