Life Style

Telegram is among the most popular WhatsApp alternatives around. Telegram supports messaging individuals and groups, but it also has social media-like channels where you can post to thousands of subscribers at once. In this piece, I'll be focusing more on Telegram as a messenger, since that's how I use it the most. In my decade of using the app, I've learned quite a bit about it, and I'm here to share the best Telegram hacks that you should know.You need to manually enable end-to-end encryptionUnlike Signal or WhatsApp, Telegram is not end-to-end encrypted by default. End-to-end encryption ensures that your messages cannot be read by anyone without accessing either your device or the recipient's device, and at this point, it's become an industry standard security protocol for messaging app...

Since it was announced a little over a week ago, Discord's global age verification rollout has been a bit of a mess. First, the chatroom and voice chat company had to clarify that it won't require all adults to upload an ID or facial scan to prove how old they are, as the initial post left many users with that impression. Second, the announcement came shortly after one if its existing customer service partners was breached, which lead to hackers getting a hold of user information, including government IDs provided for age verification. Third, users discovered that Discord had partnered with Peter Thiel-backed company Persona for an experiment in the UK, which raised flags about surveillance and security, and saw some personal identifying information being uploaded to the cloud when users t...

As Lifehacker has previously argued, YouTube Premium is probably the best streaming service for most people. Ads can eat into your free time faster than you might realize, and because YouTube's user-generated videos can be quite short, they're especially annoying there—and blocking them without a paid subscription is tough. YouTube Premium is also a bit pricey as streaming services go, at $14/month. Fortunately, the company also offers a "Premium Lite" plan that's much cheaper—and thanks to the recent addition of a few key features, it no longer pales in comparison to a full subscription. In fact, the $8/month YouTube Premium Lite may now be the best paid YouTube tier for most people.YouTube Premium Lite is getting two of the more expensive tier's best featuresStarting today, YouTube Premi...

Whether you're a Samsung fan, an Android user, or just a tech enthusiast in general, you may want to clear your calendar: Samsung Unpacked 2026 is nearly here. Like Google I/O or Apple's fall event, Unpacked is Samsung's keynote, where the company shows off what it's been working on since, well, the last Unpacked. Like previous keynotes, this year's should be full of big Samsung news, all of which you can watch live as it happens.When is Galaxy Unpacked 2026?Samsung's big presentation will kick off in San Francisco on Wednesday, Feb. 25. Like many tech events, Galaxy Unpacked starts at 10 a.m. PT (1 p.m. ET). How to watch Galaxy Unpacked 2026While Samsung is hosting a live presentation for a limited number of media and guests, anybody can tune into Galaxy Unpacked 2026 as it happens. The c...

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Sony’s PlayStation 5 is a powerful machine, but if you just plugged it right into your TV and never bothered to go into the settings, there’s a chance you’re not seeing its full potential. From enabling 120 fps gameplay to customizing your Welcome hub, there’s a lot you can do with the PS5, if you’re willing to tinker a little bit. Here are the 10 best tips and tricks to getting the most out of Sony’s current gaming console.Enable 120Hz and 4K on your PS5Just because you bought a fancy new PS5 doesn’t automatically mean you’re getting the best performance out of it possible. If you have a 4K TV or a monitor that can support a 120Hz refresh rate or above, you’ll want to double check your video output settings to ensure ...

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. This is one of those rare opportunities that don't come very often in the consumer tech space: You can get a 2025, 65-inch OLED TV from Samsung for $899.99 (originally $1,999.99) from Best Buy. The catch? It's the entry-level OLED version, but it's still an incredible value for the money and the lowest price it has been, according to price-tracking tools. Oh, and the deal expires tonight, Feb. 20, at midnight. The last time this deal happened was during the Christmas shopping sales, and before that, during Black Friday. So if you're reading this after the sale ended, you'll likely see the deal again at some major future sale. If you'...

While I generally consider Chrome to be a mature, feature complete browser, it's great to see that Google is still making meaningful additions to it. With its latest update, Google Chrome for desktop now has three new productivity features: Split View, PDF annotations, and the ability to save downloads directly to Google Drive. These features are targeted at both regular and enterprise users, the company says, so you don't need to worry about Workspace exclusivity. Let's take a look at each new feature and how you can best use it.Split View lets you boost your productivity Credit: Google Over the years, the internet browser has become a super ap...

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. Gamers and multi-taskers shouldn’t sleep on the 27-inch LG 27UP650K-W Ultrafine 4K monitor—like most options from LG, it’s a versatile and visually striking display with appeal for multimedia, gaming, and office usage. Right now, it’s cheaper than it's ever been at 30% off, bringing its price down from $279.99 to $196.99. The monitor offers top-tier 4K clarity for a sub-$200 price tag, with Native 3840×2160 resolution on a 27-inch IPS panel. Its strong color accuracy with HDR400 makes it equally suitable for creative or media consumption. Additionally, it has wide viewing angles and reliable brightness (around 400 nits, which isn’t c...

We may earn a commission from links on this page. The scarcity of RAM brought on by the artificial intelligence boom, dubbed RAMageddon, is affecting more than just the price of PCs. AI could make new televisions more expensive too—as well as—game consoles, cell phones, high-tech coffee makers, and anything else with memory and a processor. But if you're in the market for a new TV, you might be better off buying sooner rather than later.As Axios reports, televisions generally require 1GB to 8GB of RAM to run "smart TV" features and to process video and data, and the memory units widely found in 4K TVs have more than quadrupled in price over the last year. That extra cost could be passed on to consumers: Analyst TrendForce said last month that a price hike on TVs was "...

I'm a bit of a broken record when it comes to personal security on the internet: Make strong passwords for each account; never reuse any passwords; and sign up for two-factor authentication whenever possible. With these three steps combined, your general security is pretty much set. But how you make those passwords matters just as much as making each strong and unique. As such, please don't use an AI program to generate your passwords.If you're a fan of chatbots like ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini, it might seem like a no-brainer to ask the AI to generate passwords for you. You might like how they handle other tasks for you, so it might make sense that something seemingly so high-tech yet accessible could produce secure passwords for your accounts. But LLMs (large language models) are not nece...