Telegram Has a New Verification Strategy to Cut Down on Scams

Misinformation and scams are an unfortunate reality of the internet in 2024. That "news" account might really be pushing falsehoods and lies, while that outreach from "Google" likely isn't from the company at all. You really need to be on guard at all times when processing the information that passes through your social feeds, which is why it helps when apps and platforms take action to protect users from untrustworthy sources.

Telegram has a new verification system

That seems to be the motivation behind recent updates from Telegram. The messaging platform has an existing verification system built into the service, where companies and public figures can register themselves with Telegram and receive a blue badge of honor. That way, when you see content from a notable person or an organization, you can rest assured those words being share are actually from that source. Many platforms (but not all) offer this type of service, of course. Even Google is thinking about rolling out badges for search.

But Telegram has a new addition to how it conducts verification: Once an organization is verified, it can then apply to become a "third-party verifier," which lets them verify other accounts and chats it deems official, too. These verification badges will differ from the blue checkmarks, and will instead look like blue emojis or icons. Any account or chat verified in this way will have a banner in its profile that explains which third party verified it and why.

I'm all for this type of verification process, and hope it catches on. It puts trust in accounts that already have proven their authority to Telegram, and, over time, will help users quickly parse which accounts and chats are legit, and which might be best to avoid. In the future, you might see a post from an account or chat, and since it doesn't have that badge, think twice about the message it's trying to get out.

Other new Telegram features

Credit: Telegram

In addition to third-party verification, Telegram announced a series of other features and changes coming to the platform:

• Message search filters: When searching, you'll now see an option in the "Chats" tab to sort your messages by "All Chats," "Private Chats," "Group Chats," or "Channels," to help you find the messages you're looking for.

• Folder names gets custom emojis: If you subscribe to Premium, you can add custom emoji to the names of your chat folders. You can even replace the text that would normally appear here with whatever emoji you want.

• In-app QR code scanner: When using the in-app camera on either iOS or Android, you'll also be able to scan QR codes.

• Collectible gifts: Telegram "gifts" are small tokens of artwork you can share with friends and display on your profile. Now, you can upgrade a gift to make it a "collectible." This will add a new look made by a Telegram artist, as well as a unique background, icon, and number. You can share collectibles with other users, or, if you're so inclined, auction it as an NFT. Right now, 20 gifts can be upgraded to collectibles, with over 1,400 unique appearances.

• Service message reactions: Service messages are those alerts you get whenever someone joins a group, begins a video call, or sends you a gift. Telegram now lets you react to these alerts, which adds a fun layer to these previously informative-only messages.

I Made This Anime Convention Scavenger Hunt for My Family (and You Can Use It for Free)

When I bought tickets for Anime NYC, I worried that the chaos would be overwhelming for my daughters' first convention. I started my own con-going tradition a decade ago with New York Comic Con, and I've attended countless conventions since, but Anime NYC was my twin 15-year-old daughters' first time going to an event so massive. To help, I planned to download a scavenger hunt to help guide them through the convention hall, but I couldn't find one anywhere online. So I stayed up late the night before Anime NYC, and I made an anime convention scavenger hunt myself.

Credit: Jordan Calhoun / Anime NYC

Like New York Comic Con, Anime NYC is held at the Javits Center, a 3.3 million square foot convention hall. Anime NYC was filled with over 100,000 people in 2024, the largest crowd yet in its seven-year history, and if you've been to a con before, you know how overwhelming and exhausting they can be: Countless events, panels, booths, and advertisements compete for your attention as you walk for miles through crowds. They're not beginner-friendly experiences, and Anime NYC was no exception.

My goal for the scavenger hunt was to give our exploration more focus and to distract from the fatigue, and it worked. It made the experience much less overwhelming for my family—and a lot more fun. I might never do another convention without one.

Customize this comic convention scavenger hunt

You can download this comic and anime convention scavenger hunt for free to use at your next convention, or use it as inspiration to make your own. The scavenger hunt is broken down into three sections:

• The first section has easier searches worth one point each. With a few bonuses involved, there are a maximum of 15 points possible in the first section of the scavenger hunt.

• The second section has challenges that are more involved or need more social interaction with strangers, and are worth two points each. With bonuses, there are a possible 20 points in the second section.

• And the last section involves taking videos of group members more actively engaging with the community, each worth 5 points. With bonuses, this section is worth up to 25 points.

The scavenger hunt format is malleable to most comic, anime, and gaming conventions, so you should customize it for your group and interests. For example, you may want to swap in other comic or video game characters, or raise or lower the difficulty levels based on age (or nerdiness). My family is Black and likes to notice such characters in anime, so one of our options included asking strangers if they can name five Black anime characters.

How long does the scavenger hunt take?

For adults, you can expect the convention scavenger hunt to take around 4-6 hours to finish. With kids, you can expect the search to be slower depending on how much walking they can handle. My family spent around six hours at Anime NYC, and out of a total possible 60 points, the winning team scored 48 points against the losing team's 47.

Credit: Jordan Calhoun / Lifehacker

How to make your own convention scavenger hunt

Of course, you can make your own scavenger hunt to be as unique as you want. The simplest scavenger hunts just need a list of items to find or tasks to accomplish, along with some basic rules around teams, time limits, and prizes. If your group is competitive, a few common questions to consider include:

• Whether teams can make alliances

• Whether teams can sabotage each other

• Whether teams can spend money for clues (This was a particular point of contention during my family's scavenger hunt, as my team paid for an autograph from an anime voice actor for a bonus point.)

• And a pre-agreed tie breaker

Scavenger hunts are a great way to organize conventions

One of my favorite productivity quotes is, “There is only one way to eat an elephant: one bite at a time." It reminds me that any large accomplishment can be made less daunting and more manageable by breaking into smaller tasks. I try to keep "one bite at a time" in mind whether training for a marathon, writing a book, or convincing my daughters to love conventions as much as I do: If I organize your tasks and focus on the one in front of me, the goal will happen along the way. Ultimately, a scavenger hunt can function as a great task management tool—essentially a checklist, but disguised for fun—and I plan to use them more often for events like vacations, museums, and trips. And when I can't find a good one online, I hope to find time to keep building them on my own.

11 Hidden Features in Apple Music Every User Should Know About

Apple Music (previously iTunes) is a behemoth of a music manager app for macOS and Windows—and it has changed and developed so much since its launch in 2001 that you may well have not come across everything this piece of software has to offer. It has evolved almost as rapidly as the digital music industry.

Whether you turn to Apple Music as your default audio player or you're wondering if it's worth switching to, these lesser-known features should give you a better idea of what the application is capable of—beyond the basics of streaming music from the web and playing local files.

(The guide below describes the features as they're found in Apple Music for macOS. The same features are all available in the Windows version, but might not be in exactly the same place or on the same menu.)

Build a radio station based on your favorite song

If you've got a track you're particularly taken with in Apple Music, you can build an entire radio station mix around it—as long as you're a subscriber to the Apple Music streaming service. With a particular song selected in the app, open the Song menu and choose Create Station. It's a really good way of discovering new artists similar to your favorites.

Switch to the mini player

Apple Music comes with a useful mini player. To access it, open the Window menu and choose Mini Player to see it (click and drag on it to move it around). Via Music > Settings > Advanced you can find a checkbox to keep it on top of other program windows on macOS, so you always have access to key playback controls.

You can specify when songs start and stop. Credit: Lifehacker

Cut out intros and outros

You can set timestamps for individual songs in Apple Music that tell the app where to start and stop playback whenever the song is played on any device—so you can cut out a lengthy intro or outro, for example. Right-click on a track, then choose Get Info and switch to the Options tab, where you'll find Start and Stop fields. Click OK to confirm.

Tweak your recommendations

Not every track in your library will be a five-star anthem, and you don't necessarily want the tracks that you like less to influence the recommendations you see across Apple Music—even if you keep the tracks themselves around. To make a song have less of an influence over recommended music, right-click on it and choose Suggest Less.

Use Suggest Less to tweak your recommendations. Credit: Lifehacker

Clear out the duplicates

You don't want your playlists and your Mac storage getting unnecessarily cluttered with duplicate files, which can be a problem for both local and streamed music. Open the File menu, then choose Library and Show Duplicate Items. You can then see all the tracks that are in your library more than once, and remove the extra copies you don't need.

Switch to lossless audio

The Apple Music streaming service supports lossless audio now—that's up to 24-bit/192 kHz in quality across the entire catalog—and you can switch to the higher resolution sound if you don't mind the extra demands on your bandwidth and file download sizes. To enable or disable the lossless audio feature in the app, head to Music > Settings > Playback.

Add comments to tracks

You can add comments to any of the tracks in your library. Just right-click on a song, then choose Get Info and head to the Details tab. You can use the comments field to label songs in any way you like—as instrumentals, or favorite songs, or upbeat songs, or golden oldies—and then set up smart playlists to pick out tracks using the comments data.

Sound Check will level out the volume levels. Credit: Lifehacker

Normalize the volume

It can be jarring when different songs have been recorded at different volume levels, which leaves you continually searching for the volume slider when a new track starts. To stop this from happening, open the Music menu, choose Settings, then head to the Playback tab and enable the Sound Check feature. Apple Music then makes adjustments automatically.

Skip songs when shuffling

Many of us turn to the shuffle feature to save having to queue up albums and songs manually, but not all songs lend themselves to a shuffled selection—you might want to cut out those lengthy post-rock tracks or spoken word skits, for example. To do this, right-click on a song, then choose Get Info: On the Options tab, check the Skip when shuffling box, then click OK.

Playlists can be made collaborative. Credit: Lifehacker

Create collaborative playlists

This is a newer feature that may have slipped under your radar: You can now work on playlists with other people in Apple Music, which is perfect for parties or road trips for example. With a playlist on screen, click the invite people button on the right (it's an icon of a head and shoulders), then choose Start Collaborating to pick your collaborators.

Customize the layout

Apple Music offers more flexibility in terms of its layout than you might have realized. If you've got a playlist on screen, you can open the View menu to choose between different groupings for your tracks (including Songs and Albums). You can also select how the tracks on screen are sorted and filtered (by artist name or number of plays, for example).

What Garmin's 'Recovery Time' Estimate Actually Means

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As I sit here typing, my Garmin watch tells me that I have 21 hours until I’ve fully recovered from the workout I did earlier today. It wasn’t even a hard workout, but I’ve come to expect long recovery estimates from Garmin—and I won't let this number stop me from going on an easy run in the morning. The recovery time doesn’t mean what you might think it mean. 

What is the recovery time feature, and where can you see it? 

Most Garmin sport watches calculate a recovery time after each workout. You’ll see this number in the end-of-workout summary that you get right after you finish. It’s also available from the Training Status glance if you have that, or the Training Readiness tile in the Garmin Connect app if you have that. On my Forerunner 265S, I can even set it as one of the little complications on my main watch face. 

Garmin Forerunner 265S Running Smartwatch (Black/Yellow)

$422.00 at Amazon

$449.99 Save $27.99

$422.00 at Amazon

$449.99 Save $27.99

Garmin defines recovery time as “an estimate on how long it will take for you to fully recover and be ready for your next workout of the same intensity.” Note that phrase, fully recover. No athlete is fully recovered at the start of every training session; sometimes you carry a little fatigue from one session to the next. This number is just giving you a sense of how long you’ll be feeling the effects of this workout. 

The recovery time feature is available on most Enduro, Epix, Fenix, Forerunner, Instinct, Venu, and Vivoactive watches, among others (Garmin has a full list here). 

Do you have to wait until the recovery time hits zero before working out again? 

No! This is probably the biggest misconception about the feature (and it explains why the recovery times can be so long—up to four days). The idea isn’t that you have to rot in bed until the timer is up. It’s just that, between now and when the timer hits zero, you’ll be operating with at least a little more fatigue than usual. 

You can read Garmin’s explanation here. They say: “When your timer hits zero, it means you are ready to gain the maximum benefit from your next hard fitness-improving (i.e., training effect: 3.0+) type workout.”

So if I get a 38-hour recovery time after a hard workout, that’s just a signal that I won’t be in tip-top shape tomorrow. If I were planning the hardest workout of my week for tomorrow, I might want to consider delaying that workout so I can do it later on fresh legs. But if I’m planning on going for a recovery run instead, there’s no need to change my plans. 

Should you ignore Garmin’s recovery time? 

I mean, there’s an argument for ignoring any metric a watch gives you, at least some of the time. You don’t need to let Garmin’s recovery time run your life. If you still want to get your workout in, and you feel up to it, feel free to ignore the recovery numbers.

That said, I do find the recovery time useful as a gut check. If I get a long recovery time, that’s a reminder that I did actually work pretty hard, and I should make sure my efforts are balanced over time with easy and hard days. Any good training program will keep that in mind, anyway—with or without a watch putting a number on it.

Why does my recovery time keep changing?

Garmin is constantly updating its estimate of how far away you are from full recovery. If you do another workout before the timer hits zero, the number will go up again because you’ve given yourself more work to recover from. 

On the flip side, if you got a good night’s sleep, you may find that the number shrank more than expected during the night. Again, you don’t want to read too much into this number; it’s just an estimate, after all. But it’s a good sign if you find you’re recovering quickly from your hard workouts. 

You Can Get the Ring Video Doorbell Pro for $70 Right Now

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This refurbished Ring Video Doorbell Pro is now $69.99, a significant drop from its original $139.99. Since it’s certified, you can expect it to look and work like new, having been thoroughly tested to meet quality standards.

Certified Refurbished Ring Video Doorbell Pro

$69.99 at Amazon

$139.99 Save $70.00

$69.99 at Amazon

$139.99 Save $70.00

As for the performance, the daytime footage of the Doorbell Pro comes through crisp and clean in HD (giving you a wide 160-degree view of your doorstep), while night vision holds up well—providing sharp, well-lit video up to about 20 feet. There is some barrel distortion at the edges of the frame, but according to this PCMag review, people and objects in the center look normal.

The Ring Pro also integrates with Amazon Alexa for voice commands and packs a built-in motion sensor, speaker, microphone, and chime, so you’re fully covered for any doorstep activity. It connects to your home wifi on either 2.4GHz or 5GHz bands using 802.11n circuitry, ensuring a stable connection. That said, this is a wired device that requires a 16 to 24 volt power source—the same wiring used for traditional doorbells. This constant power supply means no batteries to charge, which is great for reliability, but the catch is installation. If your home already has doorbell wiring, you’re good to go. If not, setting it up could involve some extra work and cost.

The camera starts recording when someone presses the doorbell or if motion is detected, and a push alert is sent to your phone. However, accessing recorded footage and unlocking the device's full functionality requires a Ring Home subscription, with the Basic Plan costing $4.99 per month for a single camera. The Ring Pro works with the Ring app, where you can manage all its features including adjusting motion sensitivity, setting up customized motion zones, toggling motion alerts on or off, and viewing live video with options for two-way audio, speaker mute, and more (though this requires a Standard ($10 per month) or Premium ($20 per month) subscription).

This App Makes It Impossible to Miss Virtual Meetings

When you're focusing on a task, it's easy to lose track of time and forget to attend important meetings (or unimportant ones that your boss thinks are important), especially when you're working from home and those meeting take place online. Calendar notifications can help, but they're too easy to miss, or even ignore.

In Your Face is an indie Mac app that seeks to ensure you'll never miss another meeting. It fills up your entire screen with notifications for any calendar appointments you set it to highlight. The application, which uses the macOS Calendar app for appointments, lives in the menu bar. You can click the icon to see all upcoming meetings.

One minute before any calendar appointment begins, your entire screen will be overlaid with a reminder its about to take place. The idea is to make your meeting reminders impossible to miss.

Credit: Justin Pot

If you want, you can configure the warning to show up sooner. Maybe you, like me, like to go get a glass of water before a meeting begins—five minutes should be perfect for that. You can also set the application up to allow for travel time, if your meetings aren't virtual.

Credit: Justin Pot

For me, though, virtual meetings are the real use case, mostly because those are the appointments I find myself most likely to miss. You can set the application to only pop up on screen for appointments that have a video conferencing link, be it in the event's description or the location. You can also filter out events you've rejected, which I recommend, or set the application to not show reminders outside of your working hours. Finally, if you dig through the settings, you'll find that you can customize the look and color scheme for the pop-up (arguably not important, but a nice touch).

In Your Face offers a free trial, which you can use to decide whether the application will be useful for you. After that, it costs $1.99 a month, $19.99 a year, or $64 as a one-time purchase. The application is also available with a Setapp subscription, meaning you can pay $9.99 per month for access to In Your Face and around 250 other Mac applications.

All the Smart Tech I Use to Get Better Sleep

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I was a bad sleeper. I often had trouble falling asleep, I was easily woken up because I wasn’t sleeping deeply, I tossed and turned, and I woke up tired, sometimes with headaches, even after a long night’s sleep. Over the past year, I have slowly adjusted every aspect of how I slept, from the bed itself to the climate, sound, and lights in my room, and ultimately solved most of my sleep problems. Here's everything I recommend, based on a variety of sleep-related challenges.

If you have trouble falling asleep during the day

It’s critical to your sleep for your body to think it's nighttime. Luckily, there are a number of brands that offer smart blackout shades, so you can block out all the light from your windows with one command. I installed Rolli shades, a colleague enjoyed Smartwingz, but I’m also excited about Switchbot’s Roller Shade, coming in February, which will be inexpensive and adjustable for any window's width. 

An alternative is a mask, and I believe I found the holy grail of smart sleep masks: The Aura is pillow soft, even if you sleep on your side. You can place scented lavender layers inside, and then use the Aura app to set up meditation or white noise programs to listen to, or you can simply use the mask as a Bluetooth speaker for any music you like. There are lights inside the mask, so you can set an alarm and it will gently bring up the lights like a sunrise to wake you up. It controls all your senses, and while I’ve never been a sleeping mask kind of person and found the idea of a scented smart mask absurd, it is legitimately relaxing and effective for me. 

If you have trouble falling asleep at night

On nights that I know I need to go to sleep but am not quite ready for it yet, I get into bed with my Kindle, turn off my overhead lights and turn on a calming program on my Nanoleaf lights. They project calming waves of light and motion across the room, and I find they truly affect your mood. 

If anxiety or a busy mind is keeping you from sleeping, your voice assistant might help. Whether you use Siri, Alexa, or Google, let your assistant remind you of all your calendar items for the next day, so you don’t feel like you’re forgetting something.  If thoughts often pop into your head as you’re about to go to sleep, you can ask your voice assistant to remind you of them tomorrow rather than staying awake ruminating on them. (You can also use them to check to make sure smart appliances are off so you don’t have to get back up.) 

If you toss and turn at night

An inability to stay asleep can be attributed to a number of factors like climate and distractions, but ultimately, the solution lies in how comfortable your body is in bed, and how well supported your body is, which is decidedly un-technological. While there are a number of websites and even apps to help you choose beds, I found there is no substitute for going to a store and laying on each bed to try them out, and choosing the one right for you. Particularly if you are larger or suffer from body aches, you may want to choose a bed that is made more traditionally with coils, rather than foam. Where foam may be helpful is pillows. Moving away from the traditional pillow shapes full of down, choose foam shapes that work for your body, not just under your head but between your knees or behind your back. I really liked Bearaby pillow shapes, particularly the Cuddler, which is a long body pillow you can wrap around you.

If you are easily woken up at night

You can use your smart speaker to drown out random noise in the background that might startle you. First, use your voice assistant to turn your devices to “do not disturb” while you sleep. Your smart speaker offers white noise options: You can ask your assistant to play a standard white noise, but there are also a plethora of natural options like whale song and rainforest. You can adjust the sound level as needed using your voice. Of course, if you prefer, you can listen to music, too. 

If you sleep too hot or cold

I have found that having multiple forms of climate control works best. I have smart air conditioner units and heaters. For the A/C, I rely on my Midea U-Shaped Smart A/C, which I’ve had for a few years; it works with my voice assistants and powers on and off on a smart routine in Google Home. For heat, I use a Smart Envi wall heater, which works the same way. 

Adding climate control to my bed was the chef’s kiss. The BedJet 3 shoots hot or cold air into your bed, either into a pillowy top sheet or directly on you, under your top sheet or blanket. You can tune it to cold or hot air from the phone app or a remote, but it will also allow you to create custom programs for the whole night. My favorite feature turns out to be a ten minute blast of 110 degree air which is perfect for slipping into bed on cold nights or for frosty toes first thing in the morning. 

The solutions aren’t all technical, either. Some sheets (brushed cotton) are made for hot sleepers, and some for cool sleepers (linen), and choosing the right sheets can make a big difference for you. 

If you get headaches or sinus problems at night

I often woke up with headaches or sinus issues, which I thought were due to having air blowing directly at me. A fan that I can actually stand is any Dreo model—they have a “natural” setting that mimics a breeze. Also, you can really clean a Dreo fan—they come completely apart—which means less dust blowing around, which can aggravate sinuses. I added in a smart air purifier that adjusts on the fly as needed to the conditions in my room. I use a Mila in my room to remove dust, pollen and dander, and my headaches and congestion went away. 

It also helped to adjust the angle at which I sleep. Many brands offer electric base layers that will turn any bed into an adjustable one, where you can lift your head, knees, or feet. I chose one from BedJet, called the Power Layer. Subtle adjustments can keep your head upright enough to stop you from snoring, or alleviate a stuffed up nose. You use a remote or an app to connect to make adjustments. 

If snoring keeps you awake

If you’re wondering if you’re a snorer, an app like SnoreLab will provide very humbling evidence by listening to you overnight. This can be the push you need to get a sleep apnea test, which you can now do at home using, you got it, smart monitoring devices. 

If you wake up tired

How well you’re sleeping isn’t only how long you slept. I started measuring the quality of my sleep using my Oura ring. This wearable device uses heart rate, respiration, skin and body temperature, movement, and heart rate variability to create a sleep efficiency score. Using the metrics above, Oura determines when you enter REM and deep sleep, and for how long. 

The night before and after the Saatva HD arrived Credit: Amanda Blum

While seeing how long I was in bed for versus sleeping was often disheartening, if eye opening, the efficiency score created by those metrics was more usable for determining how effective various changes I made to my sleeping ritual were. Oura provides an overall sleeping score daily as well, which is a mix of the efficiency, how much activity you had while you slept tossing and turning, how much time you spent in REM or deep sleep, and how quickly you fell asleep. If you don’t like the idea of a wearable, you can try non-wearables like a Chilipad Sleep Tracker or Withins Sleep Tracking Pad.