Life Style

I often tell people to think of VPNs like kitchen funnels. Instead of pouring your network traffic directly into the web and spilling your metadata everywhere, you push it down a narrow tube of encryption. You point your connection exactly where it needs to go without leaking all over the place. Of course, the assumption in such an arrangement is that you trust your VPN, which controls the flow of traffic from your device to the web. But if the VPN itself is a honeypot for attackers to pry away your data, you’ve just traded several possible security risks for one guaranteed security breach. According to the team at Socket, that’s what’s been happening with over seven hundred fake VPN apps listed on the Chrome Web Store. Many of these extensions are free, some are paid, and some even preten...

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Finder is one of the Mac's most underappreciated apps. At first glance, it appears to be a simple app that displays your files, but there's a lot more to Finder than that. This is an app that Apple has refined over decades, with hidden features to explore and third-party apps to install. With these 10 Finder hacks, you'll be able to add many of its most powerful features to your daily workflow. The left pane in the Finder app has quite a few shortcuts. You can think of these as bookmarks that let you access various files and folders. However, you can personalize this list to fit your workflow. To start, drag any item in Finder's sidebar to reorder the list, which includes sections such as "Favorites" or "Locations." Yo...

There's a wave of nostalgia washing over youth culture this week, but it's not the nostalgia you are probably familiar with: Kids aren't pining for goldfish swallowing contests, raccoon coats, and saying "Flibberty-Gibbet." They're nostalgic for terrible Starbucks drinks from 2017, weird Tumbler subcultures from 2010, and forgotten Saturday Night Live sketches from 2018. You know, the good old days. Here's what's up. What is a Unicorn Frappuccino?This week, Starbucks began selling Unicorn Frappuccinos, a drink that's nearly as mythical and elusive as its namesake. The color-changing, crème-based concoction was introduced for a brief period in 2017 and was mainly notable for its absurdity: It's made of cream, mango syrup, sour blue flavoring, and pink powder, so it looks like you put a My ...

Recently, the Amazon-owned Twitch made headlines for announcing that it would allow users to opt out of having their streams, VODs, and chats fed into an AI training machine. This, understandably, made a lot of people upset. But, it turns out, Twitch might be one of the more moderate social media sites on this front. Most social media apps are training some kind of AI on your data, and few make it as easy as a single toggle to opt out at all. Almost every social media site out there makes it extremely hard to know exactly how your data is used these days. Training generative AI models like Google’s Gemini are often lumped in with more mundane (but still machine learning-powered) features like, say, YouTube’s algorithm. Sifting through privacy policies to even find out whether a social app ...

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. The appeal of a 360-degree camera is that you don't have to think as much about framing while you are recording, and the Insta360 X3 is one of the better-known options in the category, earning an “excellent” rating from PCMag. It is currently $229.99, down from $299.99, which price trackers show is its lowest price so far. Its two lenses capture everything around the camera in up to 5.7K resolution, so you can decide later whether you want the final clip to follow a skier, show the road behind a cyclist, or keep the camera pointed at yourself as you walk through a city. That flexibility is especially useful when you are filming alone...

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. If you’re looking to upgrade your smart TV, this LG 65-inch OLED AI 4K Smart TV is now $1,799.99 (originally $2,699.99), marking its lowest price ever, according to price-tracking tools. It has 4K resolution, 120 Hz refresh rate, and is compatible with Alexa. Amazon will deliver the TV to your preferred room and unpack it for you for free—however, if you need to have your old TV hauled away, it will cost you $69.99. With over 8.3 million self-lit smart pixels and OLED technology, colors and black in every picture will be rich in contrast no matter how much light is in your room. If you use the display for gaming, its NVIDIA G-Sync te...

Threat actors are always finding ways to make their attacks seem more believable—often by using urgent security matters that push victims to act quickly—so you should always be skeptical of messages and notifications warning you that your device or account has been compromised. That said, if you receive a spyware warning from Apple via push notification, it's likely real, and you shouldn't ignore it. Apple's threat notification system is designed to alert individuals who have been targeted by mercenary spyware, such as Pegasus, which can silently infect devices and track everything a user does. Since 2021, the company has sent these alerts multiple times a year. In the vast majority of cases, those affected are in high-profile positions—such as politicians, journalists, and activists—that ...

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Credit: Images courtesy of Amazon. In theory, you can use your FSA or HSA funds to get yourself a shiny new fitness tracker or smartwatch (even the latest Fitbit Air)—but is the process really as straightforward as the marketing suggests? Right off the bat, your HSA/FSA dollars won't be able to cover the entire purchase; instead, you'll save an average of 30% on eligible health purchases. There is some more fine print, although it’s not as tricky as you might think. For the most part, if a device is necessary for treating or monitoring a specific medical condition—and not just “general wellness”—it could be eligible to purchase with those ...

We may earn a commission from links on this page. While the Mac has the best screenshot tools of any Apple device, it's not quite the same story on iPhone. Your iOS device is mostly restricted to built-in tools for taking screenshots and screen recordings, which makes it hard to bypass apps that block those features. Having said that, your iPhone's screenshot tool is anything but basic, supporting editing, annotations, and even extracting text from images. If you want to take better screenshots on iOS, these 10 hacks can help. Use AssistiveTouch to take screenshots without pressing any buttonsI've always found it unintuitive to take screenshots using hardware buttons on a device with a touchscreen. There are two easy ways to avoid pressing those buttons to take scree...

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Gboard is the default keyboard option for a staggering number of Android smartphones across the globe, and it's not just limited to Pixels. If you have an Android device, you've probably used Gboard for years without giving it a second look. The default setup is good, the predictive text suggestions work, and in a pinch, you can swipe to type. But like other seemingly basic Android apps and features, a lot more is hiding behind Gboard's surface simplicity. Explore the menus, tweak the settings, and learn some gestures, and you'll uncover a ton of useful features that can make it faster and easier to use—without switching to an entirely new keyboard. Here are my favorite tips, tricks, and hacks for Gboard.Pin frequently...