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Paid services like Acrobat and Google Drive look amateurish next to these free self-hostable apps
You probably have a Google Drive account, an Adobe Acrobat subscription, and a growing collection of files scattered across different cloud services. It's convenient until you're paying monthly fees for storage, PDF editing, and features you only occasionally use. But what if you could take control of your files instead?
Gemini can now audit your Google Wallet spending to find hidden subscriptions
Gemini has evolved from a general-purpose chatbot to a more personal AI assistant by integrating with services like Gmail, Google Photos, YouTube, and Search to give it more context about users’ lives. Now, Google is adding personal finance to the picture.
5 new shows to watch this week across Netflix, Prime Video, and more (November 13-15)
Streaming services are beginning to ramp up their libraries ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday. New movies hitting streaming this week include Heartland on Netflix and Being Heumann on Apple TV. Both services also have new shows premiering this week. Netflix's offering is a Y2K-inspired psychological thriller, while Apple TV's is a heist series.
Save $70 on the GTPLAYER Gaming Chair and work in comfort
The GTPlayer Gaming Chair is amazing for players who want ultimate comfort during marathon sessions. It's also ideal for office workers or anyone who sits at a desk all day, who'll appreciate the ample support and plush padding that keep them feeling refreshed. Get this gaming chair at 41% off on Amazon and enjoy better posture and all-day comfort.
The trophy icon in your Pixel's notification shade is hiding a shortcut
Google Pixel, like many other brands, focuses on customization, personalization, and uniqueness. Each company wants to stand out in its own way, hoping to grab new customers with the latest and greatest features.
4 annoying Google Maps features you can turn off
Google Maps could be the perfect navigation app if only Google would leave things alone. Whether it's surprise changes, disruptive questions, or default settings that don't apply to you, some of the design choices are a genuine pain. Fortunately, to do away with those frustrations, you just need to know where to look.
Amazon's early Black Friday sale brings the SHOKZ OpenFit 2+ Open-Ear Earbuds down to their lowest price yet
Earbuds that seal off your ears or have active noise cancellation get risky when you need to hear traffic on a run or someone walking up to you in a gym. Open-ear earbuds, like the SHOKZ OpenFit 2+, are built to keep your surroundings audible while you listen. Right now, you can get them for half off at Amazon as part of an early Black Friday deal.
4 Ryobi 40V accessories that turn your battery into so much more
Ryobi is one of the most popular power tool brands, and while that's mostly due to a large selection of affordable tools, a big part of its success is its hundreds of products and accessories that all run off the same battery. If you own a few Ryobi 40V tools, there are many other ways to put those big battery packs to use.
I finally stopped micromanaging my Android phone, and you should too
I've been using Android phones for a very long time. While phones have become increasingly capable and Android has gotten much better at managing system resources, I haven't exactly evolved with it. I just can't seem to break one particular habit I picked up in the early days: swiping away apps when I'm done with them.
How to watch Argentina vs. Uruguay online for free
TL;DR: Watch Argentina vs. Uruguay in an International Friendly for free on Telefe. Access this free livestream from anywhere in the world with ExpressVPN.
The Messi era is over for Argentina. What a wild ride it has been, but the world keeps turning.
It's now time for the next generation of Argentinian players to rise to the top, and that starts with a tricky contest against Uruguay. Yes, this is officially an International Friendly, but there's nothing particularly friendly between these sides. It's going to be a real battle, as always.
If you're interested in watching Argentina vs. Uruguay in an International Friendly from anywhere in the world, we've got all the information you need.
When is Argentina vs. Uruguay?Argentina vs. Uruguay in an International Friendly kicks off at 6 p.m. ET on Nov. 13. This fixture takes place at the Estadio Alberto José Armando.
How to watch Argentina vs. Uruguay for freeArgentina vs. Uruguay in an International Friendly is available to live stream for free on Telefe.
Telefe is geo-restricted to Argentina, but anyone can secure access with a VPN. These tools can hide your real IP address (digital location) and connect you to a secure server in Argentina, meaning you can live stream Argentina vs. Uruguay for free from anywhere in the world.
Live stream Argentina vs. Uruguay for free by following these simple steps:
Sign up for a streaming-friendly VPN (we recommend ExpressVPN)
Download the app to your device of choice
Open up the app and connect to a server in Argentina
Visit Telefe
Watch Argentina vs. Uruguay for free from anywhere in the world
The best VPNs for streaming are not free, but they do tend to offer generous money-back guarantees. By leveraging these offers, you can watch Argentina vs. Uruguay without committing your cash. This is obviously not a long-term strategy, but it gives you enough time to stream this fixture before recovering your investment.
What is the best VPN for Telefe?ExpressVPN is the best choice for bypassing geo-restrictions to stream live sport on Telefe, for a number of reasons:
Servers in 105 countries, including Argentina
Easy-to-use app available on all major devices, including iPhone, Android, Windows, Mac, and more
Strict no-logging policy so your data is secure
Fast connection speeds free from throttling
Up to 10 simultaneous connections
30-day money-back guarantee
A two-year subscription to ExpressVPN is on sale for $68.40 and includes an extra four months for free — 81% off for a limited time. This plan includes a year of free unlimited cloud backup and usually offers a generous 30-day money-back guarantee. Alternatively, you can get a one-month plan for just $12.99.
Live stream Argentina vs. Uruguay for free from anywhere in the world with ExpressVPN.
Uber confirms thousands of driver IDs compromised in data breach
Uber is notifying thousands of drivers that their personal information and driver's licenses were stolen in a recent data breach.
The rideshare giant confirmed the breach in filings submitted to nationwide attorneys general this month. One of the company's third-party service providers, confirmed by TechCrunch to be Fireworks AI, notified Uber of the hack, which compromised several of its clients' databases.
SEE ALSO: Microsoft outage: Does Microsoft owe you money? What to know.The hackers accessed billing data and some private AI datasets from a small percentage of Fireworks AI's thousands of clients, according to initial breach notices involving the productivity software Notion. Fireworks AI explained that unnamed cybercriminals, allegedly motivated by a desire to steal and then sell LLM tokens, breached its cloud provider to access its development system. They then used internal credentials to access client data.
Notion confirmed the actors obtained anonymized chat transcripts of Notion AI customers.
Uber requires all drivers to upload proof of a valid driver's license, insurance, and residency, as well as bank statements and payment information. In June, Uber announced additional background checks and expanded policies for reviewing and banning drivers based on public records.
Uber has not confirmed the total number of drivers directly impacted by the breach, but has said it will notify all affected workers. Uber currently operates a fleet of more than 10 million drivers and couriers, according to third-party estimates. As of now, the company has alerted almost 8,000 compromised driver accounts spanning three states: Massachusetts, South Carolina, and Rhode Island.
6 PC-building hot takes you're going to hate me for
I've been building PCs for 20 years, and I've dealt with a lot of PCs in that time. I stand by the opinion (to me, it's almost a fact) that a PC you build yourself is always better than a prebuilt. (I still bought a prebuilt this year, though, but that's a reflection on the state of the market.)
Microsoft Outlook outage cause seemingly revealed
Updated on Friday, Nov. 13 at 2:11 p.m. ET — Microsoft has reported "broad recovery and stability" across its services and published an apology on X. We've updated this story to reflect the latest updates from the company.
Updated on Friday, Nov. 13 at 1:08 a.m. ET — Microsoft is still looking into the cause of the outage, but states that at present it is "not aware of any malicious activity that is causing this incident."
Updated on Thursday, Nov. 12 at 10:58 p.m. ET — Unfortunately, Microsoft's efforts to bring servers back online aren't going as planned. "We've monitored the status of the changes applied to improve serviceability and confirmed they're not taking as expected," Microsoft wrote in an update on X.
Updated on Thursday, Nov. 12 at 8:07 p.m. ET — Microsoft has revised its list of features and services impacted by this outage to include Microsoft Outlook, SharePoint Online, Teams, Copilot AI, and Microsoft 365, though Azure appears to be operational.
Updated on Thursday, Nov. 12 at 7:53 p.m. ET — Microsoft has issued a new update stating that the servers they've brought back online may become unresponsive again when they receive traffic. The company is currently investigating the issue and limiting the types of traffic going to these servers in some locations.
Updated on Thursday, Nov. 12 at 6:23 p.m. ET — Microsoft states that it is bringing some servers back online, and "they remain stable so far." Users should expect a "gradual recovery."
Updated on Thursday, Nov. 12 at 5:26 p.m. ET — Microsoft services remained down on Thursday evening, as Microsoft acknowledged ongoing problems in an update posted to X.
If Outlook wouldn't load for you on Thursday (or on Friday morning), Microsoft now has a theory about what went wrong.
In its initial update about the outage, Microsoft stated that Microsoft Exchange Online was at the root of the problem. Many users were unable to access Microsoft 365 services related to Exchange Online, including Outlook, Teams, SharePoint Online, Copilot, Defender XDR, and more. Exchange Online is the back-end, cloud-based tool that provides data updates for front-end, user-facing tools like Microsoft Outlook.
In updates posted to X and on its Service Health Status Page, Microsoft stated that some of its servers became "unexpectedly unavailable" on Thursday. With parts of its infrastructure under a heavier-than-usual load across multiple regions, the company said the extra strain was likely contributing to connection problems.
The company also stated in an X post that the failures may have been caused by a "specific component that's responsible for processing server health," and that servers were going offline after failing automated health checks.
When Microsoft found that the initial fixes weren't having the desired effects, the company also tried rolling back recent changes to its servers, while continuing to balance traffic across its network. The company is also investigating why the health checks failed in the first place.
SEE ALSO: Microsoft outage: Microsoft 365, Teams, Outlook, Copilot all impactedAt first, Microsoft stated that it hadn't found a recent change that coincided with the start of the outage.
This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.However, in a Friday morning statement posted to X, the company attributed the outage to a recent network update. "The incident was introduced by an issue during an earlier network capacity upgrade that surfaced following a recent network change. We have addressed the underlying issue and continue to restore service to remaining customers and regions."
While Microsoft has now provided a partial explanation of what caused the global Microsoft outage, the picture remains incomplete.
Microsoft pledged to provide a "full post-incident report" detailing what went wrong. The company also issued a formal apology to its customers.
"We are deeply sorry for the disruption this incident has caused our customers and partners," the company wrote on X. "We know the trust they place in our services and take that responsibility extremely seriously. We are seeing broad recovery and stability across our services."
This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed. Microsoft rules out a cyberattack or rogue AI agents as cause of Outlook outageAs the widespread Microsoft outage continued into a second day, Microsoft issued several updates addressing rumors that a cyberattack or AI agents were responsible for the outage.
In an update posted on its Service Health Status page, the company wrote, "This was a technical issue not related to cyber or AI / agents."
In an earlier statement, the company wrote that it was "not aware of any malicious activity that is causing this incident."
A brief timeline of the Microsoft outageOn Thursday, a Microsoft outage affected Outlook, Teams, and other Microsoft 365 services, starting around 12:30 p.m. ET.
By 1 p.m. ET, nearly 130,000 user error reports were submitted to Downdetector, and users reported trouble loading their inboxes and sending or receiving emails. Copilot users also reported problems.
Microsoft initially flagged trouble accessing Exchange Online mailboxes in the Americas. Exchange Online is the service that stores and delivers email for many Outlook users.
This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.The company later warned that the issue "may affect Microsoft 365 service connectivity for users in any region."
This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.The outage dragged out into the evening, and eventually Friday morning, before Microsoft's mitigations began to take effect. By 7:09 a.m. ET, the company announced on X that it was finally seeing gradual recovery.
"We’re seeing encouraging recovery progress, with service availability and email delivery performance improving across a growing portion of affected Microsoft 365 infrastructure. Some users may still experience intermittent issues as recovery actions continue."
This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.In response to Mashable's questions about the outage, Charles Lamanna, EVP, Copilot, Agents and Platform at Microsoft, provided the following statement:
"We’re seeing encouraging recovery progress, with service availability and email delivery performance improving across a growing portion of affected infrastructure. We know our customers rely on our services to get important work done every day, and regret the impact these outages had on those who depend on us. Our teams are reviewing what happened and how we can prevent similar issues going forward."
This is a developing story...
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3 award-winning movies to watch on Netflix this weekend (November 13-15)
Netflix has a lot to offer on your watch list this month, including a collection of acclaimed movies with performances and storytelling that prove why they made the cut. This week's roster of winners includes a light comedy-drama, a supernatural romance, and a drama with a twist.
This is Claude’s most useful feature, and 99 percent of you are using it wrong, if at all
Vibe coding is all the rage right now. Everyone seems to be using Claude (or ChatGPT) to build alternatives to their expensive software subscriptions. And while that’s a legitimate and powerful way to get value out of your Claude subscription, I feel it’s overshadowing another feature that’s equally useful, if not more so: Computer Use.
Boost your productivity with $890 off Lenovo's ThinkPad E16 Gen 3
The Lenovo ThinkPad's legendary all-black design and red TrackPoint cursor controller symbolize quality and durability for business users worldwide. Get the latest ThinkPad E16 Gen 3 for 41% off with a limited-time Amazon deal and boost your productivity and efficiency.
How to set up Windows 11 without a Microsoft account
Windows 11 normally requires a Microsoft account when you set it up, but you can bypass Microsoft account creation and use a local account instead. Here's how to set up Windows 11 without a Microsoft account or convert an existing Microsoft account to a local account.
Microsoft outage: Does Microsoft owe you money? What to know.
Microsoft's massive, productivity-destroying software outage appears to be receding as of Friday morning, but that's only the start of the process for businesses looking to get some of their Office 365 money back.
Several important enterprise software products, such as Outlook and Teams, were functionally offline for many users on Thursday and into Friday. Since Office 365 is a service businesses have to pay for, it raises the question: Can those businesses receive some form of compensation from Microsoft for the time lost?
The answer to that question is nuanced. Let's get into it.
SEE ALSO: Microsoft: We 'regret the impact' of global outage, can rule out cyberattack Does Microsoft owe me money?According to helpful resources like these explainers from Quartz and Office Watch, the short answer is no; Microsoft does not owe anyone money as a result of this outage. But that doesn't mean the company doesn't owe any compensation, as it offers credits (essentially a reduction on the next bill) in the event of an outage.
One important thing to note: You have to request a credit. Microsoft doesn't offer them automatically.
Purchasing Microsoft's software suite involves a service-level agreement (SLA). This SLA includes provisions related to outages and compensation. In this case, Microsoft's SLA promises 99.9 percent uptime each month for each piece of software in the suite, such as OneDrive and Outlook. If any of those services fall below the 99.9 percent threshold, it's possible to claim a credit.
"Possible" is the key word here, though, as both Quartz and Office Watch make it very clear that Microsoft is extremely strict about how it calculates downtime in these instances. The actual math is too complicated to fully get into here, but Microsoft counts downtime in terms of "user minutes," or the amount of time the services were down multiplied by the number of users demonstrably affected.
Credits are also prorated depending on how much uptime was lost, so a small amount of downtime might only be worth a 25 or 50 percent credit. Where this gets even more complicated is that Microsoft calculates credits according to each individual service, not the entire software bundle. If you only lost service time in Outlook, but other parts of the Office 365 suite worked, you'd only get a small credit for Outlook.
All of this is to say that, depending on the size of the affected business and the amount of downtime it experienced, one of these credits could be worth only a few measly dollars.
Who can make a claim?To be very clear, individual workers who lost service time due to the big outage cannot file a claim or receive compensation. Businesses who license this software from Microsoft can do it, but even that is more complicated than you'd think.
Businesses only have until the end of December to file these claims, for starters. If a business purchased Microsoft software directly from Microsoft, it can go to the Office admin center to file a claim. They will need to provide a lot of information, such as incident IDs and specific descriptions of how long service was unavailable to users. From there, Microsoft will perform its own calculations to determine whether the business receives a credit.
Many businesses do not purchase these Microsoft products directly from the company, instead obtaining them through Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) partners or other indirect resellers. In that case, the business will have to bug the provider to submit a claim on their behalf. Depending on the provider, that may or may not happen in a timely or productive manner.
Given the number of hoops that businesses have to jump through to get one of these credits, one could argue it's not worth the hassle, depending on the size of a business and how much time it lost.
Android's new 'Create My Widget' tool is shockingly awesome
One of the main features announced alongside the rollout of Android 17 this Summer was a tool called “Create My Widget.” Five months later, it’s finally arriving on Pixel phones. I was fully expecting it to be yet another AI gimmick, but I’ve been pleasantly proven wrong.
Microsoft apologizes for global outage: We regret the impact, can rule out cyberattack
Updated on Friday, Nov. 13 at 12:35 p.m. ET — Microsoft has now issued a public apology; our original story has been updated with the latest statement from the company.
On Friday morning, as Microsoft worked to bring an end to a global Outlook and Microsoft 365 outage, the company issued a public apology to its customers.
In a statement posted to its X account, the company wrote, "We are deeply sorry for the disruption this incident has caused our customers and partners. We know the trust they place in our services and take that responsibility extremely seriously."
The company also ruled out a cyberattack or problems related to AI agents, and pledged to "provide a full post-incident report once our review is complete."
The Microsoft outage started on Thursday, Nov. 13 and continued into Friday morning, disrupting work for people around the globe. As Microsoft 365 services such as Outlook, Teams, and Copilot started to come back online Friday, the company initially issued a statement expressing its "regret" to customers.
"We’re seeing encouraging recovery progress, with service availability and email delivery performance improving across a growing portion of affected infrastructure," said Charles Lamanna, EVP, Copilot, Agents and Platform at Microsoft, in a statement to Mashable. "We know our customers rely on our services to get important work done every day, and regret the impact these outages had on those who depend on us. Our teams are reviewing what happened and how we can prevent similar issues going forward."
SEE ALSO: Microsoft outage: Outlook still down Friday morningAn update posted by the Microsoft 365 Status account on X at 10:39 a.m. ET also addressed the rumors that a cyberattack was the cause of the outage.
"We will continue to share more information as we have it, and for now we can confirm that there is no indication this is the result of malicious or cyber activity," the post reads. "Our teams are reviewing what happened and how we can prevent similar issues going forward."
This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.Despite making progress toward recovery, the company's Service Health Status page still listed both Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Consumer Products as suffering from ongoing "service degradation," as of this writing.
The company's full public apology stated:
We are deeply sorry for the disruption this incident has caused our customers and partners. We know the trust they place in our services and take that responsibility extremely seriously. We are seeing broad recovery and stability across our services.
This was a technical issue not related to cyber or AI / agents. The incident was introduced by an issue during an earlier network capacity upgrade that surfaced following a recent network change. We have addressed the underlying issue and continue to restore service to remaining customers and regions.
Given the scale of demand, we restored services gradually, validating stability at each stage. While this took longer, it helped ensure a stable restoration.
We will provide a full post-incident report once our review is complete.
This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.This is a developing story...
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