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Always Download and Use Your Airline's App When Your Travel

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Always Download and Use Your Airline's App When Your Travel

Last week I traveled on a flight which, like many others, was significantly delayed. It was something I knew when I arrived at the airport, so I went ahead and took some extra time to grab breakfast. It was also a detail shared with me courtesy of the airline’s app.

I fly a ton, so I have the apps for all major airlines installed on my phone and they’re beyond helpful.

Find Out About Delays

The biggest win for having the app installed is you’ll get a push notification when your flight is delayed. There are obviously tons of other apps that do this too (I love TripIt), but for your average traveler, your airline’s app will do.

Find Out When You’re Boarding

That same delayed flight actually left 45 minutes before we were scheduled to under the original delay. Had I not had the airline’s app on my phone I’m fairly confident I would have missed it. Not only did I get a push notification about the updated departure, but I also got one letting me know boarding had begun (my indication that the bathroom line wasn’t worth it).

There have been times in the past when I’ve been sitting at a gate and missed the boarding announcement but caught the push notification on my phone as well. It seems like a feature you don’t need, but when you do it’s amazing.

Change Your Seats

A surprising amount of people I’ve encountered don’t seem to realize you can swap your seats directly in the airline’s app. I personally love to fly in aisle seats close to the front of the plane. I’ll check the app once I get to the gate to see if one closer to the front has opened up, presuming I’m not in one already.

Seats at the front of the plane are typically reserved for frequent fliers during the booking process, but open up closer to departure. Also, some of those frequent fliers might get bumped to a premium class, freeing up their snazzy regular seat. If you don’t like the seat you’re assigned, swapping in the app is easier than talking to a gate agent.

Rebook Yourself

Flight delays happen. Flight cancellations happen. Most airline’s apps allow you to rebook yourself (for free!) when those issues arise so you don’t have to wait in that insane line at customer service.

I’ve had connecting flights delayed and canceled dozens of times and been able to find myself a suitable replacement before I even land at the next airport. That means I can walk off my plane and go directly to my new flight without talking to anyone. Even better, I might nab the last seat on a later flight before other passengers realize our original has an issue.

Find Your Bag

Most airlines also track your bags in-app now as well, so you can see your bag is safely on the plane. My personal favorite part of this feature: you can also often get a push notification when your bag is about to come around the carousel.

If you aren’t already using your airline’s app, download it and give it a try. I promise you won’t be disappointed.

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How to Make a Hotel Room Feel More Like Home

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How to Make a Hotel Room Feel More Like Home

If you travel for work, then there’s a good chance you’re going to treat at least a few hotel rooms like “home.”

Hotel rooms can be great, but if you’re using one for an extended period of time, then there are a few things you can do to make living in that hotel room feel a little more like home. Travel + Leisure detailed a few this week that are great, and as someone that travels a ton personally, I also have a few of my own that are worth giving a try.

Obviously, what makes you feel at home will vary from person to person, but here are some ideas to get you started:

Unpack

This was a suggestion from T+L, but is something I do regularly already. Once you get into a hotel room you plan on staying in for a bit, unpack your bag and use the supplied dresser. You don’t live out of a suitcase at home, do you? Putting things in drawers can make the space feel a bit more home-like right out of the gate.

Buy Some Snacks

Inevitably you’re going to come back to this room tired and probably hungry. Do yourself a solid and swing buy a local grocery store or convenience store to buy some familiar snacks to have on hand when you do. If your hotel room happens to have a fridge or microwave then you obviously have more options here than others.

I’m personally a fan of grabbing a pound of grapes or other fruit when I arrive somewhere and a chip-like item to have on hand, also some bottled water and a Diet Coke or two. There’s nothing worse than coming back exhausted and hungry and not having what you want to snack on. This is an easy (and cheap compared to room service) way to set yourself up for success.

Ditch the Literature

Hotel rooms are cluttered now with tons of papers. Rather than look at brochures for the spa and room service all week, take those and the hotel magazines and shove them in a drawer for the week. You’ll feel a lot less like you’re in a hotel if you’re not looking at advertisements and travel magazines all week.

Bring Alexa

If you’re used to using something like Google Assistant or Amazon’s Alexa, throw a Dot or Home mini in your bag for your travels. Getting that morning news brief or being able to ask questions on the fly can make the hotel seem a lot more normal.

Pack the Chromecast

If you’re in the middle of binge-watching something at home, don’t let a hotel stay slow you down. Bring along your Chromecast or Fire TV stick so you can stream that movie or show on your hotel television while you’re out of town.

Check out Travel + Leisure’s post for more ideas and be sure to share your own hacks for making a hotel feel like home in the comment

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Let's Unravel the Time Travel Paradox of *Terminator: Dark Fate*

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Let's Unravel the Time Travel Paradox of *Terminator: Dark Fate*

Terminator has been retconned within an inch of its own life. The long-lived franchise, which began in 1984 with The Terminator, has been sequelized (twice) and rebooted (three times) and adapted for TV (once). And because all of them involve some element of time travel—generally a sentient AI system sending back a Terminator to kill the human that would eventually overthrow the machines—the canonical timeline looks something like an ouroboros Möbius strip.

Terminator: Dark Fate is the latest loop. This time around, a new hero, Grace (an enhanced human hybrid played with raw energy by Mackenzie Davis), goes back in time to protect Dani (Natalia Reyes) from a Terminator that’s even more advanced than the ones fans are used to. That’s because, thanks to some time-travel tap-dancing, it’s been sent by a different entity—not Skynet!—to ward off a war that happened after the other wars were won by the humans. Or something. Sarah Connor (played by Linda Hamilton, reprising her role) is still around because she never came from the future. But her son, John Connor, who happened to be the guy who stopped the machines before, is dead, killed by a Terminator who, she says, was sent from “a future that never happened.”

Confused yet? Yeah, everyone is. That’s OK. The Terminator franchise never really set out to, like, make sense. The whole point is robots, and guns, and explosions, and computers, and more explosions. There’s no need to complicate things with actual physics. They’re not meant to hold up to actual time-travel paradigms. But if you know the Novikov self-consistency principle, they’re a hell of a lot more fun to watch.

A primer: The Novikov self-consistency principle holds that, well, time paradoxes are not entirely possible. What physicist Igor Dmitriyevich Novikov stipulated in the 1980s was: If you went back in time, the probability that you could change the past in any significant way is zero. Novikov and his contemporaries held that while the theory of general relativity maintained that “closed timelike curves” were possible, and thus so were trips back in time, people could only perform actions that wouldn’t change the past; they had to be consistent with what had already happened (hence the name). Unlike the grandfather paradox, which frets over what happens if you go back and kill your father or mother’s dad and eliminate your own existence, Novikov’s principle states that you simply would not, could not do that. What’s already happened has already happened.

The Terminator movies can adhere to Novikov principle, mostly, if you generally accept the timeline that John Connor sent back Kyle Reese to protect his mother, Sarah Connor, knowing that Reese would then become his father. It falls apart, though, in Dark Fate, where the events of Judgement Day mean Skynet was never created and thus a new AI, called Legion, pops up in its place. These events, theoretically, couldn’t have happened because the time travel would’ve changed the larger outcome. There is also an implication, which we won’t entirely spoil here, where the leader of the new resistance, Dani, implies that she won’t allow something that the audience just saw happen to occur again. This is a huge no-no.

(Also, if you ever try to apply this principle to Donnie Darko—you know, for fun—think of it this way: The movie can hold up if you believe that the plane engine that falls through Donnie’s ceiling was always meant to kill him. When he got out of bed and survived the crash, he created a tangent universe that he then corrects through his actions in the movie. None if this explains Frank, the dude in the freaky bunny costume. If you try to apply it to Avengers: Endgame … actually, don’t.)

What’s more interesting, though, is applying the Novikov principle to the actions of Skynet and/or Legion. For as long as there have been Terminator films there has been this idea that an all-powerful artificial intelligence decided the best way to stop their own demise is to send a Terminator back in time to kill the person who is trying to overthrow them. (It’s never made sense that they could figure out time travel but not better security against human infiltration, but I digress.) If you want proof that AIs aren’t really that smart, look no further than the fact that they learned everything about time travel, but never read Kip Thorne or his contemporaries. If they had, they’d know all these shape-shifting, time-traveling machines are futile.

But again, the actions taken by Skynet, Legion, and the humans seeking to stop them aren’t futile. They’ve generated hours upon hours of entertainment and millions of dollars in box office totals. The point isn’t to be consistent, it’s to be entertaining, big ol’ Timey-Wimey Ball and all. Terminator: Dark Fate erased quite a bit of what came before it, keeping the good parts (Hamilton, Schwarzenegger) and shedding the rest. As retcons go, it’s a mighty good one. Now if only someone could go back in time and undo Terminator: Genisys.

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✨ Optimize your home life with our Gear team’s best picks, from robot vacuums to affordable mattresses to smart spe

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There are now travel-sized Gravity Blankets, because travel is stressful

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There are now travel-sized Gravity Blankets, because travel is stressful

Just to let you know, if you buy something featured here, Mashable might earn an affiliate commission.

Take the comfort of a weighted blanket wherever you go.

Image: gravity blanket

By StackCommerceMashable Shopping2019-11-01 09:01:00 UTC

TL;DR: Get the convenient Gravity Travel Blanket: Gravity On-the-Go for $125, a 32% savings. 

Getting quality sleep while traveling is a skill most of us just can’t seem to grasp. Between the long journeys in cars, planes, or buses, uncomfortable hotel beds, unfamiliar surroundings, and unforgiving jet lag, it’s easy to feel restless, anxious, or stressed to the point where you just can’t get sufficient sleep. But before you start having nightmares about the holiday travel season, check out the Gravity Travel Blanket.

We’ve spoken before about how much we love the original Gravity Blanket, but that $249 price tag was hard to swallow. Well, now you can have your cake and eat it too because it’s available in a more affordable, on-the-go version.

Perfect for a quick weekend trip or an extended holiday vacation, this Gravity Travel Blanket is a 66-inch by 42-inch version of the original. It features gridded stitching that keeps the internal fine-grade glass beads in place and a breathable duvet cover that’s suitable for all climates. Plus, you can easily tote it around with you wherever with the premium carrying case.

Of course, this travel blanket still mimics the embrace of a warm hug to help relieve the stress and anxiety keeping you up at night. It’s just easier to bring with you wherever you go. 

Usually priced at $185, you can pick up the Gravity Travel Blanket for just $125 and take the soothing comfort of a weighted blanket on the go.

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How overtourism killed spontaneous travel

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How overtourism killed spontaneous travel

(CNN) Picture the scene. You’re on vacation. You’ve had a slow morning wandering round, a long lunch and a stroll around the city. You realize you’re near that gallery you’ve been meaning to visit — so you walk over. Even five years ago, you could probably…

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Delta SkyMiles Cards Are Offering Better 2020 Benefits—If You Sign Up Now

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Delta SkyMiles Cards Are Offering Better 2020 Benefits—If You Sign Up Now

If you’ve been itching to get another travel rewards credit card for the sweet, sweet signup bonus, there’s a brand new—but very familiar—option to consider.

Delta and American Express are relaunching all their co-branded SkyMiles rewards cards. The new card benefits won’t launch until January 30, 2020, but in the meantime, there are some huge signup offers available.

All the cards offer will offer least two miles per dollar spent on Delta purchases and two miles per dollar spent at restaurants (currently, cardholders earn one mile per dollar spent). The Platinum and Reserve cards include a $100 credit towards Global Entry or TSA PreCheck, and the Reserve card offers access to American Express Centurion Lounges. The two top cards also give you three miles for each dollar spent on Delta purchases.

But the real draw is the bonuses. Take a look:

New Delta SkyMiles American Express Signup Bonuses

Here are the signup bonuses for the four redesigned personal cards:

Blue Delta SkyMiles card: Earn 10,000 bonus miles after you spend $500 in your first three months. The card has no annual fee.

Gold Delta SkyMiles card: Earn 60,000 bonus miles after you spend $2,000 on your card in your first three months. The card has a $95 annual fee after the first year.

Platinum Delta SkyMiles card: Earn 75,000 bonus miles and 5,000 Medallion Qualification Miles (you normally earn MQM based on the distance you’ve flown to get airline status) after you spend $3,000 in your first three months. The card has an annual fee of $195, which will increase to $250 per year if you apply after January 30, 2020.

Delta Reserve card: Earn 75,000 bonus miles and 10,000 Medallion Qualification Miles after you spend $5,000 in your first three months. The card has an annual fee of $450, which will increase to $550 per year if you apply after January 30, 2020.

You have to apply in October to be eligible for the signup bonuses, which you can start spending toward immediately. Once January 30 rolls around, you’ll get the enhanced card benefits.

If you already have a SkyMiles card, you can keep using it. The new benefits will automatically kick in on January 30. At that time, you’ll be able to use your Global Entry credit, get into lounges, or earn flight credits, depending on the card you already have. Delta offers a cheat sheet of the new benefits, if you want to take a peek.

These are the best signup bonuses around right now

The signup offers for the Delta/American Express lineup is only available for a limited time, but the rewards are substantially higher over comparable cards.

The Chase Sapphire Preferred card gives you 60,000 bonus points after you spend $4,000 in three months, and Capital One’s Venture card offers a 50,000 bonus points when you spend $3,000. Even signing up for the Gold SkyMiles card, which seems so tame compared to the Platinum and Reserve options, could get you a top-notch bonus without having to spend quite as much.

As far as other specific airline cards go, the United Explorer Visa card offers 40,000 miles when you spend $2,000 on purchases in your first three months. The American Airlines Advantage Citi card offers 50,000 when you spend $2,500 in your first three months.

But SkyMiles don’t expire, a major advantage among travel reward critics. Wallethub has ranked SkyMiles the best airline loyalty programs for four years running

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The Pakt Coffee Kit is a nearly perfect pour-over solution for travel

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The Pakt Coffee Kit is a nearly perfect pour-over solution for travel

I typically brew coffee with a Chemex at home, and even if I’m making a single cup, pour-over is my preferred method. I use the Aeropress from time to time, but it’s not what I reach for every morning. If I really want a taste of home, I needed a compact pour-over solution that doesn’t take up much space and houses everything in a single container.

With its Coffee Kit, Pakt has leveraged a Russian Doll-like nesting design to make most of the brewing gear fit inside the water kettle. Yes, you read that correctly: This setup comes with its own way to heat water. No more messing with pots or having to buy something cheap from a nearby store for the week. The only things that don’t fit inside for storage are the kettle’s heating base, the collapsable dripper and the filters, but they all nestle together nicely to save space inside the zippered case. The whole thing weighs just under three pounds and takes up about as much room in a carry-on or suitcase as a pair of shoes. And it survived a flight in my checked bag just fine.

Nested inside the brew kettle you’ll find an insulated cup and lid that doubles as your brewing vessel. There’s also a smaller container for your pre-ground coffee. I typically grind my beans right before brewing, and I could easily pack a travel grinder separately, but having my preferred brew method is more important than having just-ground coffee. The only issue here is the lid doesn’t stay tight when your bag gets jostled around, a few stray grounds will escape. Not a huge mess, but it did require some cleanup. Pakt says it fixed this on the final version — the kit I tested was a prototype. There’s an included scoop too, but no scale, and Pakt gives you some guidance on how much to use. I like my coffee a little stronger, so I adjusted for the second brew and was set for the rest of the trip.

Marks inside the water kettle show you how much water to put in. Again, it’s another aspect of the process where you’re not left guessing how far to fill it up. And because you don’t have a scale to know when you’ve run enough through the grounds, pre-measuring ensures you don’t use too much. Once the water is inside, just set the kettle on the heating base and turn it on. A light on the base will turn off and the unit will beep when the water is at 205 degrees — an ideal temperature for pour-over brewing. The kettle itself also turns off once the water is heated, so you’ll want to respond to those beeps promptly.

The spout on the kettle might seem like a small detail, but it’s important. When it comes to pour-over, you need complete control over the water you’re pouring. That’s why heating water in a cup or the coffee pot in your hotel room doesn’t work. You simply can’t our slowly with those things without making a mess. Pakt knew this, and it designed the kettle for slow pours — much like I get on my goose-neck kettle at home.

You can carry this on a plane, but the TSA wasn’t a huge fan of it when I took it to Berlin earlier this month. It was mostly because they couldn’t see what it was, so I had to open up my bag and do some explaining. I get it: it’s round, metal and has a bunch of wires. I put it in a checked back on the way home, but the security at Tegel also gave it a close look after going through the x-ray machine. All of that’s to say you’re fine to fly with this thing, but be prepared to answer some questions.

Pakt crowdfunded its first product, the Pakt One bag, and it’s doing the same for the Coffee Kit. In fact, this product has already amassed $290,592 on Kickstarter and an additional $36,250 on Indiegogo, where it’s currently available for pre-order. The Coffee Kit will ship in December for $189 if you wait and pay full retail price. If you want to snag one now, though, you can get it starting at $149.

Update 10/14/19 8:42AM ET: This post has been updated to clarify the coffee grounds container will have better seal on the final version of the Coffee Kit. The unit I tested was a functional prototype.

In this article: coffee, food and drink, food-and-drink, foodanddrink, gear, hands-on, pakt, pakt coffee kit, pour over, pour-over, travel

All products recommended by Engadget are selected by our editorial team, independent of our parent company. Some of our stories include affiliate links. If you buy something through one of these links, we may earn an affiliate commission.

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Deadline for REAL ID for U.S. travel is a year away

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Deadline for REAL ID for U.S. travel is a year away

Mashable is a global, multi-platform media and entertainment company. Powered by its own proprietary technology, Mashable is the go-to source for tech, digital culture and entertainment content for its dedicated and influential audience around the globe.

©2019 Mashable, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Mashable, MashBash and Mashable House are among the federally registered trademarks of Ziff Davis, LLC and may not be used by third parties without explicit permission.

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Get 50% Off Amtrak Tickets Right Now

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Get 50% Off Amtrak Tickets Right Now

Photo: Shutterstock

In case you haven’t yet made traveling arrangements for Thanksgiving, now’s your chance to book a train back home (or wherever you go to avoid family during the holidays)—for two days only, Amtrak is having a 50% off sale on travel this November.

For just $33, you can travel one-way from San Francisco to Los Angeles. Or for $39, you can venture from New York to Washington D.C. and without the hassle of airports, security lines or delays.

To find sale fares, you’ll just have to book around blackout dates on November 26 and 27; otherwise, you’ll find 50% deals for nationwide travel between November 11-29.

Curious where you can travel? Below are several good deals from the sale:

San Francisco to Portland: $46

Chicago to Memphis: $55

Washington D.C. to Boston: $58

New York to Atlanta: $80

If you want to see deals near you, head to Amtrak’s website. And if you’re not sure where to travel yet, we can help with that, t

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How to Save on Credit Cards If You're in the Military

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How to Save on Credit Cards If You're in the Military

$250. $450. $550. The annual fees for top travel rewards cards keep creeping up. But active duty military service members don’t have to pay those fees at all. That hefty discount is thanks to the Military Lending Act (MLA) and the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act (SCRA), the laws designed to protect military service members from unfair credit and lending practices.

The most recent iteration of the MLA provides these rights to active-duty servicemembers, including those on active Guard and active Reserve duty:

A 36% interest cap, which includes finance charges, credit insurance premiums or fees, or “participation fees” (this is called the Military Annual Percentage Rate, or MAPR)

Exemption from mandatory arbitration rules from creditors

No mandatory allotments taken from paychecks to pay back a loan

No penalty for prepayment of all or part of a loan.

Spouses and other dependents are included in these benefits, too.

“That military APR can make a big difference on servicemembers’ bottom line,” Spencer Reese, an active duty Air Force officer who writes the blog Military Money Manual, said.

Interest rates on traditional loans and credit cards typically aren’t as high as the specified 36%, but keep in mind that the military APR extends to all the fees you might encounter beyond interest, Reese explained. That 36% includes late fees, annual fees, and other extras that lenders tack on. “There’s this complicated formula you can find online,” he said, but some credit card issuers have decided it’s easier to simply eliminate fees altogether for military personnel.

Reese broke down a few of the major rewards players for us.

American Express waives all fees on personal and business credit cards for active duty military servicemembers and their spouses.

Chase waives all annual fees on personal credit cards for active duty military and their spouses. When you apply, select “military” as your source of income and Chase will confirm your status for you.

Capital One waives annual fees only if you opened your account before starting active duty service. If you start active duty service, you can apply for SCRA benefits for that time period to have your fee waived. Barclays and Citi have similar rules.

How MLA benefits change the rewards math for servicemembers

“Because [military members] can get the fees waived on these cards, it really changes the calculation of benefits,” Reese explained. Without the annual fee, then benefits like free hotel stays, incidental airfare costs, ride share credits, or upgrades are better than free. The dollar value of these rewards can quickly climb to more than $1,000, he wrote in one blog post.

Those benefits can make traveling more comfortable, whether your travel is personal or for business. “When we fly commercial, we’re typically on the cheapest flight with the worst connections, at the worst times. So it’s nice to be able to go to the lounge, get some free food, get a free drink, and kind of get away from the crowd while we’re waiting for our next flight.”

Combine the fringe perks with the ability to earn points to redeem for free or discounted travel, and you make out like a bandit—but, you know, legally.

How to check your status before you apply for a new card

Credit card issuers run applications through two federal databases to confirm your active duty status. But you can run the same check yourself before applying for a new credit card.

To use the MLA database to perform a single record request, you’ll need to create a login. You can also create an account to check the SCRA database for your own records.

But this move isn’t required on your part. If you don’t check your status before applying, you might find that you get charged an annual fee in your first month. You can log into your account for your new credit card to request military SCRA benefits, and in most cases, the fee gets wiped away and you never see it again.

“You don’t have to get crazy with it,” Reese said. “You don’t need to open up 40 cards like I have.” But your unique status as a service member is something you can take advantage of, he said. “You’re only going to be on active duty for a certain number of years. While you are, this is a real tangible benefit that you can e