Life Hacks – Spoken Edition

This morning I got two friendly alerts from HaveIBeenPwned, a free service that tracks website hacks and tells you if your info was exposed. It told me that my old passwords for Kickstarter and Bitly, hacked in 2014, were now publicly available online. Bitly (the URL shortener) and Kickstarter (the slim-wallet store) had announced these hacks back when they discovered them. That hacked account info, which includes usernames and passwords, has finally worked its way onto the public internet.

Apple just released iOS 11 last month, but for emoji fans, the really important update is still on the way. iOS 11.1 will add hundreds of new emoji, and the public beta is coming next week. Here’s what you need to know about the update and how to get it as soon as possible. There’s Finally a Dumpling Emoji Apple’s adding a ton of new emoji with iOS 11.1, from new facial expressions to mythical creatures. You can send your friends a cursing emoji or a monocle face emoji.

The citizens of the internet woke up to some shocking news this morning: AIM, a pioneer in the world of online messaging, is shutting down after 20 years. The service will officially shutter on December 15, with no plans for an official replacement from Oath, the Verizon-owned company that includes both America Online and Yahoo. AIM’s Influence Is Still Relevant Today AIM was an instant hit when it launched in 1997, even if AOL never fully embraced the idea of free online messaging.

Google’s high-priced new Pixelbook is loaded with impressive features, from 10-hour battery life to its sleek aluminum frame, but its biggest perk may be quick and easy access to Google Assistant. The artificial intelligence software is baked right into the new device, with three different ways to launch it depending on how you’re using the convertible laptop-tablet hybrid.

A little over an hour into Google’s Pixel 2 event on Oct. 4, Senior Director of Product Management Sabrina Ellis did something unusual:she squeezed the new smartphone. Then, without tapping a single button, she said the words “take a selfie,” held the phone up in the air and snapped a group shot with the packed conference room. The Pixel 2, which the company unveiled yesterday alongside a lineup of new gadgets, isn’t the first device designed to be squeezed.

iOS/Android: Choosing how to use spare moments on your phone can feel like dieting. You might find yourself choosing Twitter or Facebook every time, mad at yourself for never cracking open Kindle or Instapaper. Fighting this habit takes a whole arsenal, so here’s one more weapon: Turn off all your “bad” notification badges and turn on some good ones. First, disable the notification badges for any apps that feel like “bad habits.

Here’s disappointing news for all of us who believed we could hang on to some of our whole paychecks while shopping at Whole Foods, thanks to the Amazon takeover that seemed to bring immediate (and pretty substantial) price cuts. A research firm has been tracking numbers and found that prices have been creeping back up since day one of the deal, and some are even higher than they were pre-Bezos.

Welcome back to Mid-Week Meditations, Lifehacker’s weekly dip into the pool of stoic wisdom, and how you can use its waters to reflect on and improve your life. This week’s selection comes from Epictetus. He suggests we only hang around people who are positive influences in our lives: What It Means Epictetus believed you could only be your best if you surrounded yourself with people who drew it out.

Let it go, they say when you screw up. Move on, forget about it, what’s done is done. No, says a recent study, you need to feel bad in order to learn. The study, published in the Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, suggests emotions should be involved during your self reflection post-failure. Why? We tend to justify what happened when we only look at things rationally. Basically, we make excuses instead of taking the necessary steps to adapt and avoid the same mistake in the future.

If you’re one of the few using Microsoft’s Groove Music app and Groove Music Pass streaming service, bad news: The company’s discontinuing both Groove Music Pass subscriptions as well as the ability to stream, purchase, or download music with the Groove Music app at year’s end. Instead, Microsoft is partnering with Spotify, and letting users move select Groove Music content to the streaming service.

You’re in bed, cozy and comfortable and ready to sleep—then you hear it. A high-pitched buzzing. You swat it away and turn on your lamp, but it’s too late. You’ve been bitten by a smooth mosquito. Here’s how you find the bastard. After scouring methods posted by users on StackExchange, Reddit, and Quora, I found two methods that seem to be the most common and effective.

Microsoft has been testing out its concept for mixed reality ever since early 2015 when it first revealed the HoloLens. Over two years later (and with an assist from Samsung) the company may finally be ready to offer a product that people actually want at a price they can actually afford. Meet the Samsung HMD Odyssey On October 3, Microsoft revealed the Samsung HMD Odyssey at an event focused on its Windows Mixed Reality platform.

Well, looks like the jig is up for cheapskate news junkies. Search giant Google has decided to discontinue its trick that granted freeloading site visitors access to articles that are meant to be behind paywalls. Here’s how Google’s “First Click Free” policy used to work: Since 2009, users were able to read a set number of articles (as of 2015, it was three) per day behind a publisher’s paywall if they visited the article through a Google search.

If you get breaking-news notifications on your phone, you’ll often find you disagree with CNN, the New York Times, or Apple about what constitutes news. Instead, you can turn use news aggregation app Nuzzel, which can notify you when a certain number of your Twitter friends link to the same URL, no matter the source. With Nuzzel for Android and iOS, you can set how many friends (from three to 25) need to tweet a link before you’re notified.

Word travels fast when a news event is breaking. Even across the country from Las Vegas, people who hadn’t gone to bed yet found it hard to sleep as they watched the body count rise and saw information drip out about what happened and who the shooter might be. But mixed in with the truth were half-truths, hoaxes, and lies. This includes major news outlets: some will get the facts wrong in the early hours.