Microsoft is basically the biggest name in the business world, whether we’re talking about Microsoft Office apps or Windows running on our computers. One thing they have nailed down is recognizing that their products are well-loved for their simple and familiar interface, but still offering regular updates.

Windows 11 Pro was specifically designed for business professionals. You’ll find new tools for productivity and balancing hybrid or remote work with life. With this deal, you can upgrade three devices to Windows 11 Pro — rated 4.5/5 stars by verified purchasers — for just $19.97 at TechRepublic Academy.

New look, new features

The first thing you’ll notice is a redesigned user interface. Rounded app corners, a centered bottom taskbar, snap layouts and widgets all give your computer a refreshed, yet familiar, appearance while offering the latest tools.

Then, there’s layers of security features like Microsoft Information Protection that protects your personal data from leaks and BitLocker device encryption that encrypts your hard drive with a key. Both of these are excellent for shielding your personal and work information from harm.

Designed for the workforce

If you’re a remote or hybrid worker, or a business owner or manager with employees around the globe, you’ll appreciate things like:

• Windows Information Protection allows you to separate work and personal data on the same device.
• Remote desktop access is included from anywhere. Connect to your Windows 11 Pro computer from another computer, a tablet or a smartphone.
• Group Policy Management tools allow enforcement of policies and compliance. Administrators can create settings or access for different devices, users and groups.

Upgrade your operating system to Windows 11 Pro on three devices for only $19.97 (reg. $199), now at TechRepublic Academy, so be sure to take advantage of it before it’s gone.

Prices and availability are subject to change.

Good morning! Let’s play Connections, the NYT’s clever word game that challenges you to group answers in various categories. It can be tough, so read on if you need clues.

What should you do once you’ve finished? Why, play some more word games of course. I’ve also got daily Strands hints and answers and Quordle hints and answers articles if you need help for those too, while Marc’s Wordle today page covers the original viral word game.

Meta may be releasing new Oakley-branded smart glasses later this year, according to a new Bloomberg report.

The Oakley-branded glasses, internally referred to as “Supernova 2”, would be based on the brand’s Sphaera glasses. Instead of housing the cameras on the side, the Supernova 2 would shift the camera to the center of the frame. The idea is to appeal to cyclists and other outdoor athletes. The report didn’t detail any other potential features, though the Oakley glasses would ostensibly have similar features to the current Ray-Ban Meta glasses.

Oakley, like Ray-Bans, are a subsidiary of eyewear giant EssilorLuxottica. The move to expand Meta’s tech to other brands under EssilorLuxottica’s umbrella is a savvy one. While the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses are good for discreet, everyday wear, they’re a bit heavy for endurance sports and lack certain features like polarized lenses for better visibility. Oakleys are also considered stylish and popular among professional athletes. Conceptually, they’re similar to the now discontinued Bose Frames Tempo, which allowed athletes to have open-ear audio with polarized lenses in a relatively light form factor. That said, if the goal is to appeal to athletes, Meta and Oakley will likely have to address factors like weight, sweat resistance, and battery life.

The report also notes that Meta plans on launching a higher-end version of its current Ray-Ban glasses that include a display capable of delivering notifications, running simple apps, and previewing photos.

On Monday, while tech billionaires like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg sat onstage for President Donald Trump’s inauguration, dozens of founders were at parties all across Washington, D.C., trying to get an audience with the new president’s inner circle. 

To hear them tell it, it wasn’t all that hard. Valar Atomics founder Isaiah Taylor spent the weekend party hopping, rubbing shoulders with Sean Spicer or conservative podcaster Jordan Peterson. Taylor’s company wants to use nuclear power to generate synthetic hydrocarbon fuel. He even scored three separate invites to Mar-a-Lago in the last month by sending a two-page document on changes he’d like to see to nuclear regulations to anyone he knew with Washington connections. “People are like, ‘please tell me, how do we fix this? We need to build things again,’” he said of the administration. 

His story was surprisingly common. All throughout America’s capital, founders enjoyed the fruits of their industry’s political jockeying. They watched Snoop Dogg at David Sacks’ Crypto Ball, attended a wee-hours crypto rave sponsored by the Milady NFT group, and dressed up for a “Coronation Ball” hosted by a publishing company associated with Curtis Yarvin, the controversial thought leader cited by both Marc Andreessen and Peter Thiel. 

Tyler Sweatt, CEO of defense tech startup Second Front Systems, said a huge frustration he’s had with the federal government has been bureaucratic opacity. Founders often can’t even figure out who to contact in the government, much less secure a huge contract. 

But Sweatt left events like the vice presidential dinner and Trump’s pre-inauguration candlelight dinner feeling like the country might be entering a rare moment when the federal government, Big Tech, and the startup ecosystem are aligned — and where the shroud surrounding the government’s inner workings might be lifted. “Apolitically, that’s pretty freaking interesting for what could we do as a country,” he said. 

At a watch party hosted by conservative organization American Moment, the congressional staffers wore suits with red ties and tech workers wore sneakers. Jacob Martin, general partner of crypto fund 2 Punks Capital and co-founder of gaming guild Ready Player DAO, kept watching for news that Trump had immediately pardoned Silk Road’s infamous founder Ross Ulbricht, currently serving life in prison. He did not, despite having promised to do so at a Libertarian convention in May.

Martin also lamented missing his chance to buy the Trump meme coin when it launched at Sacks’ Crypto Ball, a time when top crypto donors were away from their computers. Trading on the coin soon soared. “I could have bought. But I didn’t, because it was clearly a scam, right?” Martin laughed. “There were people who made hundreds of millions on it.”  

He hopes the Trump administration can make it so “people are able to utilize blockchain technology to make better things, launch tokens when necessary, and not have to worry about jail time.” 

DOGE as their big chance

Several founders felt Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency will open the floodgates for startups to pitch the government on their products in order to fulfill its promise of making the government more efficient. James Layfield, chief sales officer of Samplify.ai, which helps companies identify redundant software, created a website called “DogeProof.com.” The concept, he said, is to offer up Samplify.ai’s products to government agencies for free so they can rid themselves of extraneous subscriptions before Musk comes along to slash their costs. 

Layfield pitched it to Florida representative Byron Donalds at an inauguration ball and said he seemed intrigued. “The whole experience has been incredibly rewarding to just see how open people are to this possibility,” Layfield said. 

Meanwhile, Rabi Alam, founder of Counter Health, hopes that DOGE might support his company’s mission to streamline the healthcare system while keeping the quality of care high. First, though, like everyone in the country, he’s got to figure out what exactly DOGE is. Luckily, Alam scored an invite to the Inauguration Ball, where he intended to scout some DOGE employees. “I’d like to get some of what I’ll call finer granularity and more color on what the approach is,” he said. 

If this weekend shows anything, it’s that the hardest challenge founders will face, between balls and Mar-a-Lago trips, might just be staying focused on their day job. “There’s people who are trying to be in the right room,” Taylor said. “And there are people trying to get the work done.” 

Since MS Office is so ubiquitous throughout the business world, it’s almost impossible to get along without some version of it. The problem is that many of the versions can be quite pricey. Fortunately, you can now get an affordable package of the seven most iconic MS Office programs, while Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2019 for Windows is available for the low one-time purchase price of $34.97 through Feb. 2, 2025.

What’s included

MS Office 2019 offers a multitude of features for greater functionality. Users will have the ability to create, edit and organize spreadsheets, documents, presentations, databases, email and more. This bundle includes lifetime access to the 2019 versions of Excel, Word, Outlook, PowerPoint, Access, Publisher, and One Note.

Some of the newer additions to Office 2019 include new capabilities for analysis in Excel and new tools for presentations in PowerPoint, plus updated features for managing contacts and emails in Outlook. You also get free customer service.

As soon as you’ve completed your purchase, your license keys and download links will be emailed to you instantly. So you will be able to install the programs and begin using them immediately.

This is a one-time purchase that allows you to install the programs on one Windows computer to use at home, work or on the road. That means you must be sure to save the license key because you will have to uninstall it before you can install it on a different computer.

Get Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2019 for Windows for the low one-time purchase price of $34.97 (reg. $229) during this limited time price drop.

Prices and availability are subject to change.

• Apple Intelligence has been opt in since it debuted in Oct. 2024, but the next iOS will automatically turn it on.
• The change is set to rollout with iOS 18.3, iPadOS 18.3, and macOS Sequoia 15.3
• Anyone can still turn it off in Settings, if you like.

Whether you’ve been waiting for Genmoji, Image Playground, or Notification Summaries – and the ability to turn these on or off on a per-app basis – the next version of iOS and macOS for your Apple Intelligence capable iPhone or Mac will toss you right into the deep end.

As spotted by 9to5Mac in the latest developers’ betas of iOS 18.3 and macOS Sequoia 15.3, the latest version of the operating system will automatically enable Apple Intelligence.

On Tuesday night, President Donald Trump issued a pardon to Ross Ulbricht, who ran the dark web marketplace Silk Road under the pseudonym “Dread Pirate Roberts.” Ulbricht has been serving a life sentence without parole since 2015, when he was convicted of multiple charges, including the distribution of narcotics.

The Silk Road marketplace, which was only accessible through the Tor network, became one of the most prevalent early commercial uses of Bitcoin. Buyers and sellers traded in illicit drugs, forged passports, and more.

In the intervening years, Ulbricht became a cause celebrè for a certain segment of the right-wing, particularly in the crypto crowd that embraced Trump last year. To his supporters, Ulbricht’s life sentence is unusually punitive. Similar offenses have garnered much more lenient sentences — for instance, Blake Benthall, who operated Silk Road 2.0, was sentenced to time served and three years of probation. Ulbricht’s lieutenant, Thomas Clark, also known as “Variety Jones,” was sentenced to 20 years in prison last year.

Although the criminal offenses were nonviolent in nature, the judge who sentenced Ulbricht took into account multiple deaths attributable to drugs bought through the Silk Road.

Throughout his trial, Ulbricht denied that he had committed the crimes at issue. Because law enforcement had arrested him with his laptop open, they had access to all his files, which included the code of the website, private messages between him and employees of the Silk Road, and a diary whose entries corresponded to OKCupid messages tied to Ross Ulbricht’s real identity.

OpenAI says that it will team up with Japanese conglomerate SoftBank and with Oracle, along with others, to build multiple data centers for AI in the U.S.

The joint venture, called The Stargate Project, will begin with a large data center project in Texas and eventually expand to other states. The companies expect to commit $100 billion to Stargate initially and pour up to $500 billion into the venture over the next four years.

They promise it will create “hundreds of thousands” of jobs and “secure American leadership in AI.”

“The Stargate Project is a new company which intends to [build] new AI infrastructure for OpenAI in the United States,” OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank said in a joint statement. “This project will not only support the re-industrialization of the United States but also provide a strategic capability to protect the national security of America and its allies.”

The companies made the announcement during a press conference at the White House on Tuesday, where President Donald Trump spoke about plans for investment in U.S. infrastructure. SoftBank chief Masayoshi Son, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, and Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison were in attendance.

Microsoft is also involved in Stargate as a tech partner. So are Arm and Nvidia. Middle East AI fund MGX will join SoftBank in its investment; MGX’s first public deal was an investment in OpenAI.

SoftBank, OpenAI, and Oracle are also listed as “initial equity investors” in Stargate.

“SoftBank and OpenAI are the lead partners for Stargate, with SoftBank having financial responsibility and OpenAI having operational responsibility,” the statement continued. “Masayoshi Son will be the chairman [of Stargate] […] As part of Stargate, Oracle, Nvidia, and OpenAI will closely collaborate to build and operate this computing system.”

The data centers could house chips designed by OpenAI someday. The company is said to be aggressively building out a team of chip designers and engineers, and working with semiconductor firms Broadcom and TSMC to create an AI chip for running models that could arrive as soon as 2026.

SoftBank is already an investor in OpenAI, having reportedly committed $500 million toward the AI startup’s last funding round and an additional $1.5 billion to allow OpenAI staff to sell shares in a tender offer. Oracle, meanwhile, has an ongoing deal with OpenAI to supply AI computing resources.

Softbank also earlier pledged to invest $100 billion in the U.S. over the next four years. Son and Trump have had a close working relationship since 2016, during Trump’s first term, when Son announced that SoftBank would invest $50 billion in U.S. startups and create 50,000 jobs.

The Information previously reported that OpenAI was negotiating with Oracle to lease an entire data center in Abilene, Texas — a data center that could could reach nearly a gigawatt of electricity by mid-2026. (A gigawatt is enough to power roughly 750,000 small homes.) Data center startup Crusoe Energy was said to be involved in the project, which was estimated to cost around $3.4 billion.

That Abilene site will be Stargate’s first site, and OpenAI says that Stargate is “evaluating potential sites across the country for more campuses as [it finalizes] definitive agreements.”

It’s unclear what connection, if any, Stargate has to a rumored partnership between Microsoft and OpenAI to spin up a $100 billion supercomputer. TechCrunch has reached out to OpenAI for additional information.

Last year, The Information reported that Microsoft and OpenAI would build a series of data centers for AI beginning in five stages over the next several years, culminating in Stargate: a 5-gigawatt facility spanning several hundred acres of land. Stargate was expected to take between five and six years to complete, according to The Information. In the lead-up to its completion, Microsoft had reportedly planned to launch a smaller-scope data center for OpenAI around 2026.

A number of tech leaders have called for the U.S. to up its investment in data centers, particularly as the AI industry continues to grow at an explosive pace. AI systems require enormous server banks to develop and run at scale.

Goldman Sachs estimates that AI will represent about 19% of data center power demand by 2028. OpenAI has blamed a lack of available compute for delaying its products, and compute capacity has reportedly become a source of tension between the AI company and Microsoft, its close collaborator and major investor.

Microsoft, which recently announced it is on track to spend $80 billion on AI data centers, said in a recent blog post that the company’s success depends on “new partnerships founded on large-scale infrastructure investments.” In an interview with Bloomberg, Altman said that he believes it is urgent that what he perceives as barriers to building additional data center infrastructure in the U.S. be cleared.

“The thing I really deeply agree with [President Trump] on is, it is wild how difficult it has become to build things in the United States,” Altman said in that interview. “Power plants, data centers, any of that kind of stuff. I understand how bureaucratic cruft builds up, but it’s not helpful to the country in general.”

Massive data center projects have vocal critics who say that data centers often create fewer jobs than promised and tend to have severe environmental impacts. Data centers are typically water hungry, placing a strain on regions with insufficient water resources, and their high power requirements have forced some utilities to lean heavily on fossil fuels.

Those concerns don’t appear to be slowing investments any. Per a McKinsey report, capital spending on procurement and installation of mechanical and electrical systems for data centers could eclipse $250 billion in the next five years.

In January, Trump announced that Hussain Sajwani, an Emirati billionaire businessman who founded the property development giant DAMAC Properties, will invest $20 billion in new data centers across the U.S. Industry insiders have expressed skepticism of the deal’s concreteness, however.

TL;DR: Microsoft Visio Professional 2021 for Windows is a professional diagramming tool that helps you visualize data and structures, and it’s now $19.97 (reg. $250) through Feb. 2, 2025.

As your business grows, so does the complexity of your processes and structures. Sometimes, the best way to figure out a particular task, issue or concept is by building a diagram. And that is exactly what Microsoft Visio Professional 2021 was made for.

This powerful software helps you visualize data and workflows faster, with user-friendly controls and a vast library of templates. Through November 21, you can get a lifetime license on Windows for only $19.97 (reg. $250).

Research tells us that the human brain can process images in just 13 milliseconds. That’s way faster than you could ever explain the same information in text. Considering the time you could save communicating with diagrams, you might see the potential to increase efficiency in your business.

The only tricky part is compiling the visual content in the first place. If you’re not a designer, it can feel like a painstaking process.

Rated 4.9/5 stars by verified purchasers, Visio Professional 2021 is the ultimate shortcut. This diagramming tool makes it super easy to show rather than tell. You don’t even need design chops to use it efficiently.

Features

The software offers a content library containing over 250,000 premade shapes, stencils, and templates, helping you build a wide variety of diagrams. Visio Pro supports flowcharts, mind maps, org charts, reporting structures, floor plans, fishbone diagrams, SWOT analysis, network diagrams, and more. Its dynamic design makes it applicable to a wide range of businesses and industries.

You can also upload Excel data sets to automatically generate org charts and use your finger or a pen to arrange diagrams on touchscreen devices.

With this deal, you get access to a digital download complete with a lifetime license on one device.

Order Microsoft Visio Professional 2021 for Windows today for $19.97, which is 92% off the full price — only until Feb. 2, 2025.

Prices and availability are subject to change.

Strands is the NYT’s latest word game after the likes of Wordle, Spelling Bee and Connections – and it’s great fun. It can be difficult, though, so read on for my Strands hints.

Want more word-based fun? Then check out my NYT Connections today and Quordle today pages for hints and answers for those games, and Marc’s Wordle today page for the original viral word game.