Apple Music (previously iTunes) is a behemoth of a music manager app for macOS and Windowsand 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 ofbeyond 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 songIf you've got a track you're particularly taken with in Apple Music, you can build an entire radio station mix around itas 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 playerApple 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 outrosYou 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 deviceso 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 recommendationsNot 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 Musiceven 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 duplicatesYou 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 audioThe Apple Music streaming service supports lossless audio nowthat's up to 24-bit/192 kHz in quality across the entire catalogand 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 tracksYou 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 likeas instrumentals, or favorite songs, or upbeat songs, or golden oldiesand 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 volumeIt 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 shufflingMany 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 selectionyou 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 playlistsThis 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 layoutApple 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).

We may earn a commission from links on this page.As I sit here typing, my Garmin watch tells me that I have 21 hours until Ive fully recovered from the workout I did earlier today. It wasnt even a hard workout, but Ive come to expect long recovery estimates from Garminand I won't let this number stop me from going on an easy run in the morning. The recovery time doesnt 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. Youll see this number in the end-of-workout summary that you get right after you finish. Its 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 Get Deal Get Deal $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 youll 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 longup to four days). The idea isnt that you have to rot in bed until the timer is up. Its just that, between now and when the timer hits zero, youll be operating with at least a little more fatigue than usual.You can read Garmins 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, thats just a signal that I wont 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 Im planning on going for a recovery run instead, theres no need to change my plans.Should you ignore Garmins recovery time?I mean, theres an argument for ignoring any metric a watch gives you, at least some of the time. You dont need to let Garmins 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, thats 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, anywaywith 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 youve given yourself more work to recover from.On the flip side, if you got a good nights sleep, you may find that the number shrank more than expected during the night. Again, you dont want to read too much into this number; its just an estimate, after all. But its a good sign if you find youre recovering quickly from your hard workouts.

Ahead of the official start of CES, Samsung has announced a trio of new Odyssey gaming monitors. Of the bunch, the G81SF is the most interesting. Samsung says its the first 4K, 27-inch OLED gaming monitor. The panel features a 240Hz refresh rate and 0.03ms gray-to-gray pixel response time.At 4K and 27 inches, pixel density clocks in at 165 pixels per inch, meaning the G81SF should produce an incredibly sharp image. As Samsung is the main supplier of QD-OLEDs, the G81SFs panel will almost certainly make its way to other gaming monitors released this year. With CES 2025 about to kick off, some of those could be announced as early as sometime in the next few days.If you dont want to sacrifice motion clarity for sharpness, Samsung has you covered there too. The second new Odyssey gaming monitor the company announced, the G60SF, features a 500Hz refresh rate. Resolution is limited to 2,560 x 1,440 on this model, but both the G6 and the G8 detailed above will offer VESA True Black 400-certified HDR performance, so the G60SF will still be great for single player games and exceptional for competitive titles like Overwatch 2 and Valorant, thanks to that 500Hz refresh rate.SamsungRounding out the new Odyssey monitors Samsung announced today is something of a curio and a CES throwback. The 27-inch G90XF has a lenticular lens attached to the front of its panel and stereo camera, meaning you can use it to watch 3D content without wearing 3D glasses. The G90XF includes AI software Samsung says can convert 2D video to 3D, but if we had to guess, the resulting footage wont look great.If you primarily use your computer for productivity, Samsung hasnt forgotten you and the companys new offerings here arent any less interesting. First, theres the Smart Monitor M9 (M90SF). It features a 32-inch 4K OLED panel that offers True Black 400 HDR performance. It also comes with Samsungs space-saving Easy Setup Stand, but what separates the M90SF from all the other monitors Samsung announced today are the couple of AI features that come included with it. The first, dubbed AI Picture Optimizer, analyzes the input signal from your PC to automatically adjust the M9s display settings to produce the best image possible for the content youre consuming, be that a game, movie or productivity app. The other feature can upscale lower-resolution content to 4K.Lastly, theres the ViewFinity S8. Its not an OLED, but at 37 inches, its the largest 16:9 4K monitor Samsung has ever offered. It offers 99 percent sRGB color gamut coverage, a built-in KVM switch and 90W USB-C power delivery. Its not the most exciting monitor in Samsungs new lineup, but it should appeal to design professionals who want the biggest possible screen but would rather not deal with the line distortion produced by an ultrawide.Samsung did not share pricing and availability information for any of the monitors it announced today. Expect those details to come sometime after CES.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/computing/the-first-27-inch-4k-gaming-oled-monitor-is-here-courtesy-of-samsung-155118244.html?src=rss

The US Treasury Department told lawmakers in a letter back in December that its documents and workstations were accessed by an external party in a security breach. It described the attack as "a major cybersecurity incident" and attributed it to a "China state-sponsored Advanced Persistent Threat actor." Now, The Washington Post has reported that the bad actors infiltrated a "highly sensitive office" within the Treasury in charge of deliberating and administering US government sanctions.As The Post explains, the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) is in possession of some important information that could be very useful to another country's government. While the hackers were only able to steal unclassified data, they could still have gotten their hands on the identities of potential sanction targets. They could also have stolen pieces of evidence that the agency had collected as part of its investigation on entities that the government is thinking of sanctioning. Overall, the attackers could have gotten enough information to give them the knowledge of how the US develops sanctions against foreign entities.In addition to OFAC, the Office of the Treasury Secretary and the Office of Financial Research were also affected by the breach. The attackers infiltrated the Treasury's systems by gaining access to a key used by BeyondTrust, a cloud-based service that provides the department with technical support.The US government has attributed numerous cyberattacks on its agencies and American companies to China state-sponsored actors over the years. Just last year, the FBI blamed "PRC-affiliated actors" for a massive hack on US telecom companies. The actors, a group known as Salt Typhoon, reportedly targeted the mobile devices of diplomats, government officials and other people linked to both presidential campaigns. According to The Post, Chinese officials called claims that their country was involved in the attack on the Treasury Department "groundless" and insisted that their government "has always opposed all forms of hacker attacks."This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/cybersecurity/china-linked-attack-on-us-treasury-department-reportedly-targeted-its-sanctions-office-150033082.html?src=rss

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