The first rule of online journalism is: "Don't read the comments!" (Well, it is at other outlets - we love reading yours.) Sometimes however, a forum will transcend the usual bickering and meme sharing to become something truly special - perhaps even legendary. Here are ten of those threads.

There are plenty of resources that let you download stuff for free - but most of them aren't legal. To save your eternal soul, we've compiled a list of the best (mostly) copyright-free freebies that the internet has to offer - from books and artwork to music and video games.

Where do you go to waste time on the internet? Facebook and Twitter, the usual default answers, are exhausting. Scrolling through them feels like work. "I don't know how to waste time on the internet anymore," says Dan Nosowitz in the internet-culture blog Select All. We agree with him that it's way too easy to get trapped on boring and negative social feeds. But we don't agree that the internet doesn't have any fun, crazy places left. If you've forgotten how to waste time online, try these sites and happily while away the hours.

If you're looking for an Android smartphone you could do a lot worse than a Google Pixel. The company's handsets promise cutting-edge hardware and instant updates to all the latest software - but that doesn't mean they're perfect.

The subreddit /r/trippinthroughtime is for memes about historical figures, where someone in art or an old photo looks confused or silly. Each picture has a caption, usually treating the weird art as some modern relatable situation. But in the comment threads, you'll often find someone explaining cool facts about the original artwork.

Reddit's gotten plenty of deserved criticism over the years for hosting some of the most toxic communities on the internet. But a new study published this month in the Journal of Medical Internet Research suggests that at least some subreddits are helping people dealing with depression and other mental health issues come out of their shells.

Most major cities around the world have an active forum on Reddit. And if you plan to visit any of these cities, you can learn a lot of tourism advice without even asking by digging through the archives.

You open what looks like a bill, but it's just junk mail. You click through a donation process too fast, and they turn your one-time donation into a monthly contribution. A snack's packaging makes it look bigger; an opinion poll is obviously one-sided; when you copy-paste a line from an article, the site adds a "read more" link for your "convenience." Don't express your impotent rage alone. Take it to Reddit's /r/assholedesign, a place to expose and discuss evil design tricks.

Many parents spend the winter furiously checking Forecast Bar, awaiting that moment in the future when their kids can finally go outside instead of watching that same episode of Peppa Pig for the 18th time or asking you: "Do we have any more glitter? I spilled all of mine on the carpet." Not Reddit user aggregate_jeff. To help beat cabin fever, this dad built an indoor play structure in his house.

Away from the Trump supporter spam and creepy fake celebrity porn, Reddit is still home to uplifting conversations, useful information and weird-arse videos. The key is, and always has been, subscribing to the right subreddits. The Lifehacker team shares our favourites below.

You may have heard that Reddit, the front page of the Internet, is updating their website with a sweeping redesign that aligns the desktop experience with what users have been getting on mobile devices for some time. The changes have started to roll out for desktop users and ... not everyone is happy with them. Some people already want to revert Reddit to its old style.

Here's what you need to know about the Reddit redesign - and the simple way to keep the classic Reddit style.

Reddit's endless stream of memes, comments, and self-referential jokes can be intimidating to newcomers. Even if you've been reading the site for years there's still plenty of new subreddits to discover. But no matter how well you know Reddit, you could be having an even better experience by installing a few extra Chrome extensions.

On the latest episode of The Upgrade, we're talking about the self-proclaimed "front page of the internet", the massive online community known as Reddit. For some, Reddit is a second home, a place to hang out, post links, chat and trash talk with like-minded friends and foes. For others, it's a confusing rabbit warren with its own weird rules and etiquette, a teeming hive of enthusiasts and trolls, an overwhelming curiosity that they might visit every now and then, but who has time to learn to navigate what's essentially a complex system of message boards?

I watched Westworld months after it aired, and I felt lonely; no one still wanted to talk about it. Half the fun of a good work of entertainment - a TV show, a movie, a book, even a podcast or video game - is talking about it, studying it, learning more about it. Any good work of art benefits from study, and a bad work of art benefits from laughing at it with someone.

As much as people make fun of the internet for being a place to put your most boring thoughts, there's actually such tough competition for attention that if you want any reaction, you have to be super interesting. Even the famous subreddit /r/mildlyinteresting is full of fascinating stuff such as a panicked vending machine, surprise twinsies and a nine-fingered pianist. Your boring-arse story doesn't register. Unless you go to /r/benignexistence.

When it comes to technology, jumping between different products and platforms is a fact of life for most people. Unless you're a diehard Apple fan or you're obsessed with Samsung, you've probably tested the waters with a competing device at least once before.

Parents today are stressed. They have lost old friends. They miss their old hobbies. They're too tired for sex. They feel judged. A few years ago, one study reported that the drop in happiness after having a first kid was larger than when experiencing unemployment, divorce or the death of a partner. Yes, unemployment, divorce or the death of a partner. A lot of factors play into the struggle - economics, social media, the dissolution of the parenting village - but a big one has got to be this: We care a whole lot about fulfilling the wishes of our kids.

Languages are so interesting and the etymology of 'giraffe' legitimately did blow my mind this morning. The English word for giraffe, until about the 1600s, was not actually 'giraffe'.

Nope. They used to be known as 'Camelopards'.

Reddit has been slowly rolling out two-factor authentication for beta testers, moderators and third-party app developers for a while now before making it available to everyone over the past few days.