Technologies

Want More AI With Your Microsoft Office? It’s Arriving in a 365 Premium Version

Microsoft 365 Premium will cost $20 a month and adds Copilot AI features and apps to Office.

Microsoft on Wednesday announced a new version of Microsoft 365 that’s embedded from top to bottom with AI features — for twice the monthly price of its Personal plan.

Unlike the $10 Personal and $13 Family plans, however, Microsoft 365 Premium includes higher limits on AI features like image creation. It also adds access to some of the company’s Copilot tools including Researcher, Analyst, Photos Agent and Actions for up to six people at $20. Microsoft has been working features such as Agent Mode into its popular Office apps, but has not previously offered a full bundle of AI-driven software for people outside business settings. It also recently added the option to use Anthropic’s Claude AI models with Copilot.

ChatGPT’s 4o image generation has also been part of Copilot since earlier this year.

In an interesting wrinkle, Microsoft said in a blog post that the AI features will only be available to the subscription owner and can’t be shared. The Copilot features for Excel will also not work unless a file set to AutoSave and shared to OneDrive.

Microsoft has even updated its icons for apps such as Word, Excel and PowerPoint to «reflect the new era of AI.» The new app icons look more three-dimensional than previous iterations — a bit like gummi candies.

Those app icon changes will roll out to all 365 users over the next few weeks across desktop and mobile versions of the software.

What’s included in 365 Premium

So what’s new in the 365 Premium version? According to Microsoft the subscription includes:

Word, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook and other 365 apps with Copilot built in.
Access to Researcher and Analyst, which was previously only available to commercial customers with Microsoft 365 Copilot. Those AI agent features will be incorporated into Word, PowerPoint and Excel sometime soon.
Higher usage limits for image generation and a new Voice feature that is also coming soon.
Access to other Copilot features including Podcasts, Deep Research, Vision and Actions.
A Photos Agent app.
1 TB of cloud storage.
An advanced version of Microsoft Defender.

What’s changing for everyone else

If you aren’t upgrading to 365 Premium, you’ll still get some new features and changes beyond the refreshed icons.

Those changes include:

Higher usage limits for Copilot features for Personal and Family plans.
Copilot Chat will be available in 365 apps.
Access to experimental AI features through the new Frontier program.
College students will still get access to 365 Personal for free for a year. The company is expanding that offer, which is good until Oct. 31, to most markets around the world.

Microsoft said it’s also adding ways for people to access their home documents from work, and vice-versa, securely with an account switcher option that will also work with the new Copilot apps including Researcher and Analyst.

According to Microsoft, its data suggests that 82% of AI users are bringing their own AI tools to work.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Connections Hints, Answers and Help for Dec. 24, #927

Here are some hints and the answers for the NYT Connections puzzle for Dec. 24 #927

Looking for the most recent Connections answers? Click here for today’s Connections hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands puzzles.

Today’s NYT Connections puzzle is kind of tough. Ooh, that purple category! Once again, you’ll need to look inside words for hidden words. Read on for clues and today’s Connections answers.

The Times has a Connections Bot, like the one for Wordle. Go there after you play to receive a numeric score and to have the program analyze your answers. Players who are registered with the Times Games section can now nerd out by following their progress, including the number of puzzles completed, win rate, number of times they nabbed a perfect score and their win streak.

Read more: Hints, Tips and Strategies to Help You Win at NYT Connections Every Time

Hints for today’s Connections groups

Here are four hints for the groupings in today’s Connections puzzle, ranked from the easiest yellow group to the tough (and sometimes bizarre) purple group.

Yellow group hint: Cash out.

Green group hint: Chomp

Blue group hint: Walleye and salmon.

Purple group hint: Make a musical sound, with a twist.

Answers for today’s Connections groups

Yellow group: Slang for money.

Green group: Masticate.

Blue group: Fish.

Purple group: Ways to vocalize musically plus a letter.

Read more: Wordle Cheat Sheet: Here Are the Most Popular Letters Used in English Words

What are today’s Connections answers?

The yellow words in today’s Connections

The theme is slang for money. The four answers are bacon, bread, cheese and paper.

The green words in today’s Connections

The theme is masticate. The four answers are bite, champ, chew and munch.

The blue words in today’s Connections

The theme is fish. The four answers are char, pollock, sole and tang.

The purple words in today’s Connections

The theme is ways to vocalize musically plus a letter. The four answers are hump (hum), rapt (rap), singe (sing) and whistler (whistle).

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Toughest Connections puzzles

We’ve made a note of some of the toughest Connections puzzles so far. Maybe they’ll help you see patterns in future puzzles.

#5: Included «things you can set,» such as mood, record, table and volleyball.

#4: Included «one in a dozen,» such as egg, juror, month and rose.

#3: Included «streets on screen,» such as Elm, Fear, Jump and Sesame.

#2: Included «power ___» such as nap, plant, Ranger and trip.

#1: Included «things that can run,» such as candidate, faucet, mascara and nose.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Mini Crossword Answers for Wednesday, Dec. 24

Here are the answers for The New York Times Mini Crossword for Dec. 24.

Looking for the most recent Mini Crossword answer? Click here for today’s Mini Crossword hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Wordle, Strands, Connections and Connections: Sports Edition puzzles.

Need some help with today’s Mini Crossword? I’m Irish-American, but yet 6-Down, which involves Ireland, stumped me at first. Read on for all the answers.. And if you could use some hints and guidance for daily solving, check out our Mini Crossword tips.

If you’re looking for today’s Wordle, Connections, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands answers, you can visit CNET’s NYT puzzle hints page.

Read more: Tips and Tricks for Solving The New York Times Mini Crossword

Let’s get to those Mini Crossword clues and answers.

Mini across clues and answers

1A clue: Wordle or Boggle
Answer: GAME

5A clue: Big Newton
Answer: ISAAC

7A clue: Specialized vocabulary
Answer: LINGO

8A clue: «See you in a bit!»
Answer: LATER

9A clue: Tone of many internet comments
Answer: SNARK

Mini down clues and answers

1D clue: Sharks use them to breathe
Answer: GILLS

2D clue: From Singapore or South Korea, say
Answer: ASIAN

3D clue: Large ocean ray
Answer: MANTA

4D clue: ___ beaver
Answer: EAGER

6D clue: Second-largest city in the Republic of Ireland, after Dublin
Answer: CORK

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Technologies

Quadrantids Is a Short but Sweet Meteor Shower Just After New Year’s. How to See It

This meteor shower has one of the most active peaks, but it doesn’t last for very long.

The Quadrantids has the potential to be one of the most active meteor showers of the year, and skygazers won’t have long to wait to see it. The annual shower is predicted to reach maximum intensity on Jan. 3. And with a display that can rival Perseids, Quadrantids could be worth braving the cold to see it.

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The show officially begins on Dec. 28 and lasts until Jan. 12, according to the American Meteor Society. Quadrantids is scheduled to peak on Jan. 2-3, when it may produce upwards of 125 meteors per hour. This matches Perseids and other larger meteor showers on a per-hour rate, but Quadrantids also has one of the shortest peaks at just 6 hours, so it rarely produces as many meteors overall as the other big ones.

The meteor shower comes to Earth courtesy of the 2003 EH1 asteroid, which is notable because most meteor showers are fed from comets, not asteroids. Per NASA, 2003 EH1 is a near-Earth asteroid that orbits the sun once every five and a half years. Science posits that 2003 EH1 was a comet in a past life, but too many trips around the sun stripped it of its ice, leaving only its rocky core. The Earth runs through EH1’s orbital debris every January, which results in the Quadrantids meteor shower.

How and where to see Quadrantids

Quadrantids is named for the constellation where its meteors appear to originate, a point known as the radiant. This presents another oddity, as the shower originates from the constellation Quadrans Muralis. This constellation ceased to be recognized as an official constellation in the 1920s and isn’t available on most publicly accessible sky maps.

For the modern skygazer, you’ll instead need to find the Bootes and Draco constellations, both of which contain stars that were once a part of the Quadrans Muralis. Draco will be easier to find after sunset on the evening of Jan. 2, and will be just above the horizon in the northern sky. Bootes orbits around Draco, but will remain under the horizon until just after 1 a.m. local time in the northeastern sky. From that point forward, both will sit in the northeastern part of the sky until sunrise. You’ll want to point your chair in that direction and stay there to see meteors.

As the American Meteor Society notes, Quadrantids has a short but active peak, lasting around 6 hours. The peak is expected to start around 4 p.m. ET and last well into the evening. NASA predicts the meteor shower to start one day later on Jan. 3-4, so if you don’t see any on the evening of Jan. 2, try again on Jan. 3.

To get the best results, the standard space viewing tips apply. You’ll want to get as far away from the city and suburbs as possible to reduce light pollution. Since it’ll be so cold outside, dress warmly and abstain from alcoholic beverages, as they can affect your body temperature. You won’t need any binoculars or telescopes, and the reduced field of view may actually impact your ability to see meteors.

The bad news is that either way, the Quadrantids meteor shower coincides almost perfectly with January’s Wolf Moon, which also happens to be a supermoon. This will introduce quite a lot of light pollution, which will likely drown out all but the brightest meteors. So, while it may have a peak of over 100 meteors per hour, both NASA and the AMS agree that the more realistic expectation is 10 or so bright meteors per hour.