Lifehacker's got some tips on avoiding car dealer shenanigans, avoiding traffic ticket myths, avoiding crappy looking offices and avoiding being frustrated by the OS X finder being lousy.

• Tweak your OS X finder to not be quite so horrible
• Get more from Boxee
• Avoid these car dealer tricks

• DIY magnetic keyboard and mouse
• Here's a tip: don't give your email address and password to websites that they don't belong to. It's an obvious tip, maybe, but lots of people have been doing it lately
• Five best clipboard managers

• Top 10 Firefox 3.5 features
• How to set up a temporary office that looks nice
• Debunking traffic ticket myths

The iPhone 3.0 version of the Remote app now supports Apple TV controls with gesturing, which should give you a lot more flexibility than the standard little Apple Remote you already have.

Techcrunch says it's incredibly improved, as you can now just slide around on the phone to move around the screen and use the keyboard to do type searches. Grab it here for free. [iTunes via Tech Crunch]

No, that's no moon.

It's the Sea-Based X-Band Radar, which is part of the U.S. Defense Department Ballistic Missile Defense System. It's a weird view, because usually—as you can see in the second image—it propels itself.

The platform—built by the Russians using a Norwegian twin-hulled oil platform design—is 380 feet long and 280 feet tall to the top of the main radar dome. Designed to work under any kind of weather, the 50,000-ton behemoth only moves a maximum of 10 degrees of its horizontal base using passive stabilization.

According to Wikipedia, the SBX "has been moved to offshore Hawaii from its Aleutian Islands base in Alaska as of June 23, 2009. The reason: A potential North Korean missile launch that may hit the sea only 310 miles from US territory.

Yes, fun times ahead for Hawaiians. Maybe we should use one of these on Kim Jong Il's bunker before we get to some kind of point of no return. Although given their lousy track record, maybe we should just ignore that dumbass. [Wikipedia]

If you've got a Panasonic digital camera and you're using a third party battery pack, DON'T UPDATE YOUR CAMERA FIRMWARE. Your battery will get locked out by the authentication scheme Panasonic just implemented.

Panasonic claims that they did this for safety reasons, and from the horror stories of batteries exploding in phones that have really cheap third-party batteries, we're apt to believe them. But you have to ask yourself, do you want to save $30 or do you want shards of plastic in your eye? The choice is yours. (And if you choose $30, don't update your firmware.) [Panasonic via Slashdot]

Portable mice for laptops are usually only good for one thing: giving you an eagle claw hand. Belkin's Comfort series of mice supposedly helps that—because it has comfort right in the name.

There are three flavors, one wireless, one Bluetooth and one with a retractable cable. The wireless is $30, Bluetooth is $50 and Retractable is $20. We're big fans of mice, but would rather go with a trackpad than give ourselves permanent damage with usual travel mice. Hopefully Belkin's bridges the gap between usability and portability. [Belkin]

Ivan Seidenberg, Chairman and CEO of Verizon, just lays this captain obvious quote on Charlie Rose on the possibility of a Verizon iPhone.

...the decision to put an iPhone on our network is Apple's...

Reeeeeeeaaaaaaallly? You don't say. Apple's decision to make a phone that would work on a different technology than their current phone is...Apple's? Amazing!

What's also interesting is their talk slightly later in the interview, of an "exclusive" Android device on Verizon. Charlie Rose asks Ivan about a possible exclusive Android device (he compares it to the Pre on Sprint and the iPhone on AT&T). Ivan then dodges the question with the standard not commenting on future deals move, but does it in such a way that it's a wink-wink acknowledgement that yeah, Verizon really is working on something with Android.

We'll see what that turns out to be. [Charlie Rose via Electronista]

Reader Alex points us to this video where you can get that fancy iPhone 3GS battery indicator on any iPhone. Spoiler: your phone needs to be jailbroken.

We haven't tested it ourselves, but it looks like he's just using SSH to transfer some files over and create a new item to enable the battery gauge. Why this wasn't already included in all 3.0 firmware for all iPhones is beyond me. [Thanks Alex!]

The Windows Blog just started to show off Windows 7's reduced-waste easy-open disc packaging. At a distance, it looks like it couldn't be more plain-Jane, but when you look closely, you can see it's got some wacky touches.

OK, remember that crazy Windows 7 desktop art? If you look around the white rippling window, you can see wisps of cartoony icons dancing in and around the borders. And is that a full-on JJ Abrams Star Trek lens flare we see flashing through the middle? Microsoft didn't have anything more hi-res for us to examine, and I could be totally off base, but it's fun to see that the playfulness of Windows 7 come through on the box.

Its main purpose is to preserve and deliver a shiny silver disc, and Microsoft embarks on the task with admirable single-mindedness:

We've reduced the number of elements in the package down to three: the plastic case, the paper sleeve, and a simple Getting Started Guide. The plastic case opens easily like a standard DVD case and it will have a single easy-to-remove seal at the top—and that's it!

Did you hear, America??? That's it. [The Windows Blog]

O.M.G.I.G.P or "Oh My God I'm Gonna Puke" is a serious problem for those living with the sick and perverted. Fortunately Dean Cain and IE8's InPrivate mode can help. Warning: video is NSFL and reading Cain's lips is very NSFW.

If you are the kind of person that used a calculator to spell out "BOOBIES", you will love rearranging the icons on your OS X dock in creative an immature ways.

Hit Mike Giepert's website for more examples—then ask yourself, what other words are possible? [Mike Giepert via Neatorama via Coolbuzz]