Microsoft's Office suite is popular for its widely-used applications in the business world. Even if your workplace doesn't mandate using it, you can use programs like Excel to create workout plans or diet charts for yourself. Moreover, Microsoft has supercharged Office with Copilot, which means there are several projects that AI can handle for you. Beyond these cool tricks, Microsoft Office offers numerous ways to enhance your productivity. One of them is using some lesser-known, hidden features to improve your productivity.

On Wednesday morning, someone shot and killed UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson outside the Hilton hotel in midtown Manhattan before walking away and then getting on a Citi Bike that they rode to Central Park, said NYPD Chief of Detectives Joe Kenney during a press conference. Thompson was scheduled to appear at the company’s investor meeting today, which was canceled after the shooting.Now Lyft, which owns the bikeshare service, says it’s prepared to help investigators if the shooter left a digital trail while renting or using one of its bikes. Lyft spokesperson Eric Smith said in an email to The Verge that the company is “ready to assist law enforcement.” However, as of the time the company responded to our inquiry, investigators hadn’t yet made contact.“As far as where he got the Citi Bike, we’re still working that through,” Kenney told reporters, adding that the department was gathering video from “numerous sources” but that it doesn’t “have video or witness confirmation on how he obtained that bike.”Kenney said it looked like the killer “specifically targeted” Thompson and that “at this point, we do not know why.” The CEO’s wife, Paulette Thompson, told NBC News that “there had been some threats.” Earlier this year, UnitedHealthcare suffered a massive ransomware attack, which leaked info on over 100 million people and snarled healthcare for weeks despite a $22 million payment to the attackers.Police officials were spotted asking around for video footage of a Citi Bike kiosk on Madison Avenue and 82nd Street in Manhattan early Wednesday afternoon, reports The New York Times. NYPD shared images of the shooter, including one of them on the bike, and asked that anyone with “information as to the identity or location of this individual” contact police at 1-800-577-TIPS.These are images of the individual sought in connection to this investigation. If anyone has information as to the identity or location of this individual please contact @NYPDTips at 1(800)577-TIPS. pic.twitter.com/sm2GuEOYk1— NYPD NEWS (@NYPDnews) December 4, 2024

Jeff Bezos. | Laura Normand / The Verge Jeff Bezos and President-elect Donald Trump famously didn’t get along the last time Trump was in the White House. This time, Bezos says he’s “very optimistic” and even wants to help out.“I’m actually very optimistic this time around,” Bezos said of Trump during a rare public appearance at The New York Times DealBook Summit on Wednesday. “He seems to have a lot of energy around reducing regulation. If I can help him do that, I’m going to help him.”Trump railed against Bezos and his companies — Amazon, Blue Origin, and The Washington Post — during his 2016 term. Bezos defended himself but it did little to help his reputation with Trump. Now, his companies have a lot at stake in the coming administration, from the FTC’s antitrust lawsuit against Amazon to Blue Origin’s efforts to compete with SpaceX for government contracts. Onstage at the DealBook Summit on Wednesday, Bezos called Trump “calmer this time” and “more settled.” He said he will try to “talk him out of” the idea that the press, which includes The Washington Post, is an enemy of the people. “You’ve probably grown in the last eight years,” he said to DealBook’s Andrew Ross Sorkin. “He has, too.”Bezos also echoed Sam... Read the full story at The Verge.

Most gamers' current endgame monitor is a 32-inch, 4K, 240Hz OLED or QD-OLED, like the Alienware AW322QF. The combination of the best panel type with a high resolution and high refresh rate suits most gaming needs. But some types of games need a different set of specifications. When you're playing competitive multiplayer, every fractional advantage from lower latency peripherals and higher refresh rates adds up and can be the difference between winning or losing.

Mobile gaming has come a long way over the last decade. Modern-day games are a far cry from the classics of Candy Crush and Fruit Ninja; now, they're full-blown 3D experiences that wouldn't look amiss on a console. Because of this, our phones now need the same type of TLC that we give our laptops and devices. If you're looking for something to suit your gaming needs, the GameSir X3 Pro mobile gaming controller is the way to go.

Hey, remember when Microsoft revealed that huge batch of Copilot features in early October? If you don't, one of the nuggets within the big list of planned tools was something called "Copilot Vision," which could scan a webpage and allow people to ask questions about it. At the time, Microsoft hadn't given an exact release date for Copilot Vision; however, the Redmond giant has now announced that a "limited number of Copilot Pro subscribers in the US" can now give it a shot.

Image: Getty Vodafone and Three have been cleared to create the UK’s biggest mobile operator after committing to address concerns around network upgrades and price hikes. The proposed £16.5 billion merger (about $20.9 billion) was approved by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) on Thursday following months of regulatory scrutiny, and is expected to be completed in the first half of 2025.“Having carefully considered the evidence, as well as the extensive feedback we have received, we believe the merger is likely to boost competition in the UK mobile sector and should be allowed to proceed – but only if Vodafone and Three agree to implement our proposed measures,” Stuart McIntosh, chair of the inquiry group leading the antitrust investigation, said in a statement.The approval was subject to both companies signing binding commitments to invest billions into expanding their combined 5G network over the next eight years. The agreement also requires the new entity to cap some mobile tariffs and offer preset contractual terms to mobile virtual network operators for three years, addressing previous CMA concerns that the merger could harm competition and lead to higher prices for customers.“Today’s approval releases the handbrake on the UK’s telecoms industry, and the increased investment will power the UK to the forefront of European telecommunications,” Vodafone CEO Margherita Della Valle said in a statement. The plan to combine two of the country’s top four mobile operators was first announced in 2023, and will create a network with 27 million customers once complete. Vodafone will own 51 percent of the merged entity, and is expected to buy out the remaining 49 percent after three years. The deal follows similar large-scale mergers between companies like Orange and T-Mobile in 2010, and Virgin Mobile and O2 in 2021.

Average customers don't really care about advanced customization options and want simplified access to settings. This is true for pretty much every type of product, including Wi-Fi routers. While most of the best-quality Wi-Fi routers are designed to make home networking simple and easy, the new OpenWrt One Wi-Fi router is purpose-built for those who want advanced features and a more open experience at an affordable price.

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge; Getty Images US officials are urging Americans to make calls and send text messages over encrypted apps to minimize the risk of private information falling into the hands of foreign adversaries who might still be lurking in America’s telecommunications networks, NBC News reports. Two officials from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) spoke with news outlets, including NBC News, Tuesday on the lasting effects of a recent attack on US telecommunications systems. The attack, which was tied to Chinese hacking group Salt Typhoon, impacted companies including AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile and Lumen Technologies, The Wall Street Journal first reported in October. The Journal later reported that targets of the hack included phone numbers for people in the Donald Trump and Kamala Harris campaigns.Two months after the initial report of the hack, malicious actors may still be able to gain access to sensitive information about Americans’ communications from the telecom networks. An FBI official on the call, who was not identified in press reports, reportedly said hackers accessed information including call records showing phone numbers called and the times of the call, and in some cases actual live phone calls of certain targets. The Journal reported last month that hackers could have gained access to unencrypted texts as well.Jeff Greene, executive assistant director for cybersecurity at CISA, told reporters on the call that the scale of the hack was so great that agencies could not possibly predict when there would be a “full eviction” of malicious material, NBC News writes. “Encryption is your friend, whether it’s on text messaging or if you have the capacity to use encrypted voice communication,” Greene said, according to NBC News. “Even if the adversary is able to intercept the data, if it is encrypted, it will make it impossible.” Services like Signal and WhatsApp offer end-to-end encrypted messaging that can obscure communications outside of the users involved in the call or text. Law enforcement’s embrace of encrypted apps is particularly notable given that the FBI has previously railed against tech companies’ protectiveness over the technology. Though the FBI publicly says it does not oppose encryption, it has strict parameters on its support. The agency’s website states that it “does not want encryption to be weakened or compromised so that it can be defeated by malicious actors,” but wants companies that “manage encrypted data to be able to decrypt that data and provide it to law enforcement only in response to U.S. legal process.” That’s something tech companies say could undermine the whole system.The bureau engaged in a long standoff with Apple following a shooting in San Bernadino, California in 2015, because the company refused to break the encryption on the shooter’s iPhone to give investigators access, warning that to do so would endanger users’ privacy across its products. The FBI eventually found a way to get into the phone without Apple.

When you’re attempting to build a virtualization server, there are a myriad of operating systems to choose from, ranging from Proxmox to Hyper-V. But if you’re fond of traversing through the expansive recesses of the Internet, you may come across some truly unique platforms. Harvester is one such operating system that's typically designed for home servers and large-scale operations rather than consumer-tier experimentation rigs.

The cloud has been a buzzword in tech for a good 15 years now, with the rise of AWS, GCP, and Azure, in particular, leading a revolution in business as companies abandon their old-school on-premise installations and embrace the cloud. But while the cloud can feel like it's only designed for businesses, its power can be used by everyone else to enjoy some of the benefits. If you've got your own home lab running in a cupboard somewhere, I am here to suggest that you should embrace the power and flexibility of the cloud (and even, perhaps, some of the cost savings available there).

Computers and electronics have been getting increasingly harder to repair and upgrade over the past decade or so, and that's especially true of tablets. But Microsoft has been bucking that trend for a while now, with every Surface Pro since the Surface Pro 7+ in early 2021 giving you the ability to easily remove the SSD so you can install a new one. This has held up all the way through the latest Surface Pro 11, and if you have any of these devices, replacing the SSD is a breeze. We're here to guide you through the process if you're unsure.