Setting Up Your Home Office

I'm sure there was a point in time when it was cool to receive a text from a business or service, but it's not today. Our phones are sounding off way too often these days, in part because of the rise in spam messages. Many of these messages arrive because your number happened to end up on an organization's subscriber list for one reason or another. Perhaps you donated blood one time, and now you are contacted every other day about setting up your next appointment; maybe you gave money to a political candidate, and now that candidate's party is blowing up your phone for more money. In many cases, you can send a STOP text to end the madness. But if the organization doesn't…

When the Nintendo Switch 2 was officially announced, it was hard to feel like it wasn’t just more of the same. With no weird 3D gimmicks and no absurd naming scheme, did it even really feel like a new Nintendo device? But eagle-eyed viewers picked up on something else—Nintendo, it turns out, might be the first console maker to build a mouse right into its default controller. At about 1:01 into the announcement trailer, you can see what looks like an optical sensor pop up on the side of one of the Switch 2’s Joy-Con controllers (or whatever they end up being called), and just a few seconds later, those same two controllers glide along a desk on their side, as if t…

Nintendo Switch 2 is officially coming to stores on June 5. In just over two months, you might have the opportunity to own Nintendo's newest (and most expensive) console and play the latest Switch 2 exclusives (Mario Kart World looks ridiculously fun), assuming you can snag one of them. Because if you want to boot up a Switch 2 on launch day, you'll almost certainly need to preorder it. Unless you're lucky enough to find a store that has extra consoles in stock, or there turns out to be exceptionally low demand (unlikely given eight years of building anticipation among the Nintendo faithful), these things are going to be a rare commodity. One option, of course, is to pre…

It should be as easy to cancel a service as it is to subscribe to it, and at long last, it's about to be. For anyone who's ever found themselves trapped in an endless maze of customer service calls trying to cancel a subscription—especially when the company doesn't want you to—relief is finally on the way. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has introduced a new rule that will require companies to make canceling subscriptions as simple as signing up for them. Here's what you need to know. The "Click to Cancel" ruleUnder the new FTC regulation, if you can sign up for a service online with a single click, companies must provide an equally straightforward cancellation process…

If you wanted to play some tunes on your iPhone this afternoon, but found nothing would play, it's not just you: As of Tuesday afternoon ET, Apple Music is down. Apple's System Status website currently confirms Apple Music's downtime. As of this piece, the site shows the following status for Apple Music: Apple Music - Outage Today, 2:26 PM - ongoing Some users are affected Users may be experiencing intermittent issues with this service. All other Apple services, including the App Store, FaceTime, iMessage, and all iCloud services, are currently online. I first saw the news thanks to 9to5Mac's Chance Miller. Both Miller and I are personally not experiencing any issues w…

Usually you can blame a low-quality video stream on a bandwidth slowdown or a poor internet connection—sites like YouTube will adjust a video's resolution accordingly, so instead of a crisp HD or 4K stream, you end up with a blurry, pixelated mess. You can manually adjust the resolution to make it look better, but you'll probably run into buffering issues, since your internet can't keep up. Recently, however, something else is happening to cause YouTube video quality to tank. Users are reporting that when they start a video—whether it be a YouTube Short or a standard clip—the stream will load in very poor quality, anything from 360p all the way down to 144p. While some a…

Typing with a keyboard is second-nature to most of us at this point. Typing on a game controller, however, is not. For as long as I've played games, I've loathed having to slowly hover my on-screen cursor over each key with a joystick. It just isn't fun. It seems Microsoft agrees with the challenges of game controller to keyboard inputs—especially when using a typical on-screen keyboard design for PC. As a result, the company is planning to roll out an on-screen keyboard designed for use with an Xbox controller with an upcoming version of Windows. This should, in theory, make interacting with Windows much easier when you're locked into your controller, and away from your…

Every folder on macOS looks the same—a boring blue representation of a paper file. That makes browsing a folder full of folders harder than it needs to be because everything looks identical. Unless, that is, you use custom icons for your most-used folders. You can do that pretty easily, but the feature is a little bit hidden. And yes, this means you can use something silly for your folder icon. But it can also be practical. Having an important folder a different color than the rest, or all of your folders different colors depending on functionality, makes it easier to find and click on what you're looking for. And the process isn't difficult. First things first: you need …

Members of the media recently received invites for an Amazon devices event in New York City on Feb. 26, which means one thing: Don’t buy any Amazon devices until after the event. While Amazon hasn’t explicitly said what will be shown on the big day, it’s always good practice to wait until after these sort of announcements to buy—assuming the products are not too far away. Even if you don’t see anything that interests you in the reveals, older, now outdated products are likely to get a discount in the weeks following news of their successors. You'll either get something brand new, or save on something you would have paid full price for. As for what we can expect Amazon to…

If you like the Kanban method but have grown tired of using bloated, online-only tools, Kanri is a free open-source alternative you can install on Linux, macOS, and Windows that works entirely offline. It even supports importing from Trello. We've recommended the Kanban method, and related tools, for tracking your work and visualizing projects. And there's nothing about Kanban that needs to be digital—it works well with sticky notes on a wall or even a notepad. Most people, however, depend on apps like Trello for the job—but Trello has a few limitations. There's no offline mode on the computer, for one thing, and the app has a habit of asking you to upgrade. If you'd pref…

Journalists love a good tech prototype. These exciting experiments break up the monotony of covering the same incremental refreshes day-in and day-out.They also come with a downside: As attention grabbing as they are, there’s no guarantee that they’ll ever actually come to market. That’s why covering them can be a bit tricky, as it can be difficult to decide how much attention to give a product consumers might never actually see. Luckily, Lenovo actually made good on one of its earlier promises at CES this year, showing off a rollable laptop that’s set to launch sometime in 2025. Now, the company has three additional concepts it's showing off for Mobile World Congress, al…

The winter sky has some brightly lit star patterns visible this month, including a triangle featuring Mars at one of its points, making it worthwhile to brave the winter temperatures for stargazing. These shapes aren't constellations, but asterisms: groups of stars that form recognizable patterns but that don't have official locations from the International Astronomical Union. The Big and Little Dippers are asterisms, for example, though their stars are part of the constellations Ursa Major and Ursa Minor. The Winter Triangle, which is especially visible now, is made up of the stars Sirius, Procyon, and Betelgeuse, which are found within the constellations Canis Major, …

Mac users take note: A well-known (and relatively sophisticated) phishing scheme previously targeting Windows is now being redirected at macOS and Safari in an attempt to obtain login credentials (your Apple ID). On Windows, this scam worked by displaying fake security alerts on compromised websites claiming that the user's device had been "compromised" or locked" at the same time that malicious code caused the website itself to freeze (making the scam more convincing). The notification prompted users to enter their Windows credentials to regain access—obviously handing them directly to the attackers to take over their accounts. Users were also advised to call a fake hot…

Tax Day is here. Many of us high achievers have already received our tax refunds—and are perhaps enjoying slightly larger checks than expected this year. While it might be tempting to spend that entire sum on a vacation or shopping spree, I recommend a more balanced approach. Enter the "1/3 rule": a simple and effective strategy to maximize the benefits of your tax refund. The 1/3 rule is straightforward: Divide your tax refund into three equal portions and allocate them to three different financial priorities. Allocate 1/3 for savingSet aside the first third of your refund for your financial future. I've recommended before that dividing your money into multiple accounts …

Social media can be a fantastic way to connect with friends and family, but it can also be dangerous—especially for kids and young adults. While modern social media platforms like Facebook have been around for over 20 years, figuring out how to make these apps and sites safe for minors is still an ongoing challenge. For all its faults, Meta is making some efforts in this space. Last year, the company announced Teen Accounts for Instagram. All accounts for users under the age of 18 automatically shifted to this new format, which included a number of protections not found on typical Instagram accounts. For example, Teen Accounts are private by default, so new followers ne…

It's no surprise that companies continue to experiment with new AI features. Artificial intelligence has been the center of emerging tech for nearly three years now, and it's not going anywhere anytime soon. But whether you love generative AI or you find it useless, I think we can all agree that using AI to write Instagram comments is pretty stupid. And yet, Meta appears to be testing exactly that. As reported by SocialMediaToday, some Instagram accounts are now seeing a new icon to the left of the text field after choosing to leave a comment on a post. When you tap this icon (a pencil with a star), you pull up a new Meta AI menu, which presents a series of comment choic…

More social platforms are increasingly axing third-party fact checking as a control against misinformation in favor of user-generated notes on existing content. Last month, Mark Zuckerberg announced plans to cut fact-checking programs on Meta platforms—Facebook, Instagram, and Threads—and replace them with Community Notes, which add corrections and context to posts that are "confusing or potentially misleading." A similar feature launched on Twitter in January 2021 as the Birdwatch program, which was rebranded as Community Notes and expanded after Elon Musk acquired the platform in 2022. Community Notes exist in lieu of the ability to report misleading content on X. Musk…

Paying more and getting less seems to be standard operating procedure these days. Certainly that’s what Microsoft 365 (the fancy new name for Microsoft Office) users are about to experience, as the service's included VPN is being dropped as of February 28. According to a support note on the Microsoft site, the company “routinely evaluate[s] the usage and effectiveness of our features” and has decided that the VPN is no longer a necessary part of Microsoft 365. As VPNs go, it was only OKIn truth, it’s not a major loss. Microsoft’s VPN came with a 50GB monthly data limit and didn’t allow you to trick your browser into thinking you were elsewhere in the world, making it arg…

Have you ever been scrolling along, minding your own business, when an ad suddenly hijacks your page with a full-screen warning about a computer virus or account insecurity? These are invariably scams, but to the untrained eye, they could look like a genuine pop-up from a firewall. That’s why Microsoft Edge is using AI to help users spot when someone’s trying to frighten them into downloading malware or giving up sensitive information. Available now to all users via a preview, the browser’s new “Scareware blocker” is an AI-based tool for dismissing and navigating away from these troublesome interruptions. While Edge’s built-in Defender SmartScreen tool already blocks know…

For many, Microsoft Edge's only purpose is to download another browser entirely, like Chrome or Firefox. But this isn't Internet Explorer: Edge is a competent browser in its own right, whether you have a Mac or a PC. If you do use the browser, you might be pleasantly surprised by how snappy it feels after you update it—at least, according to Microsoft. Edge 134 and newer's performance gains In a Thursday post on Windows Blogs, Microsoft confirmed that, starting with version 134, Microsoft Edge is a tad faster than previous iterations. In fact, Edge 134 is up to 9% faster, when you run it through Speedometer 3.0, a benchmarking tool for web browsers. Microsoft says that wh…

If your Windows computer is crashing unexpectedly and showing you a blue screen error, there's now a fix for that. As BleepingComputer reports, Windows updates pushed in March and April are triggering a secure kernel fatal error, causing devices running Windows 11 version 24H2 to crash and display a blue screen exception with error code 0x18B, indicating a SECURE_KERNEL_ERROR. To address this issue, Microsoft has released a Known Issue Rollback (KIR), which is a quick, targeted fix for non-security bugs. It's a temporary solution since it rolls back earlier updates, while the company works on a new update to patch the problem. Here's how to apply it to your device. Wha…

Windows 11's minimum system requirements have been controversial from the day Microsoft unveiled the new version of its desktop operating system. The controversy boils down to one single line item: TPM 2.0 support. TPM stands for Trusted Platform Module, which is a chip that protects against malware and ransomware attacks. If your PC doesn't have TPM version 2.0, then you can't officially upgrade to Windows 11, unless you used a bypass that Microsoft had published. It appears that Microsoft doesn't want you to use the bypass any longer. Neowin spotted an update to a Microsoft support page with wording about the bypass removed. You can even check the page on The Wayback M…

The Start menu is the gateway to everything on a Windows PC, from files to apps to settings, and it looks as though Microsoft is planning a substantial refresh for the menu's interface. Changes have been spotted in the early testing versions of the operating system by tipster @phantomofearth, and should eventually appear for everyone. As it stands today, the Start menu shows a search bar up at the top, then you've got two other sections: Your pinned apps, and your recommended links (usually to files you've recently opened or apps you've recently used). Both those sections can be expanded with a click to show more programs and files. …

Microsoft's latest Patch Tuesday update is an important one, patching 57 security vulnerabilities (including seven zero-day flaws). It's an update I'd encourage all Windows users to install as soon as possible, especially as those zero-day vulnerabilities pose a serious security risk to anyone using a PC. As it happens, this update comes with an extra patch that Microsoft didn't initially disclose, or, for that matter, intend: removing Copilot from Windows. Copilot disappears in the latest Windows updateSome users, after installing KB5053598 (Windows 11) or KB5053606 (Windows 10) on their PCs, will notice the update not only unpinned Copilot from the taskbar, but uninsta…

Microsoft has released its April 2025 Patch Tuesday update, which fixes 134 malicious bugs across its systems—including one zero-day exploit. Windows and Microsoft users should ensure their devices are up to date with the latest patches. Patch Tuesday updates for April 2025One of the vulnerabilities fixed this month was a zero-day, which is a flaw that is exploited or publicly disclosed before an official patch is released by developers. The active exploit—labeled CVE-2025-29824—is an elevation of privilege vulnerability in the Windows Common Log File System (CLFS) Driver. The flaw, which was identified by the Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center, allowed attackers to g…