LibreOffice 26.8 replaces Word, Excel, and PowerPoint for free, and no part of it needs a network

A token, not the digits MakeUseOf's Bertel King, writing on September 8, splits the job in two. In a store, paying from Apple Pay, Google Wallet, or Samsung Wallet hands the terminal a virtual token instead of your actual card number, using cards you already own and costing nothing extra. Online, where he notes many websites still will not take a wallet, he reaches for a virtual card service such as Privacy.com and generates a single-use or merchant-locked number, so a breach at one store cannot travel. PayPal is his fallback for the degree of separation it provides, with the honest limit that it is not accepted everywhere and specifically not at Amazon. He cites Visa figures putting tokenized payments at a 30 percent reduction in online fraud and as much as 90 percent against some point-of-sale fraud.

Three commands, one dashboard How-To Geek's Tony Phillips, writing on September 8, stays inside a single Excel menu. PivotTable Analyze and then Insert Slicer turns a field such as Salesperson into a row of clickable buttons that replace the filter dropdown, and Report Connections wires one slicer to several PivotTables at once. PivotTable Analyze and then Insert Timeline does the same for a date field, so, as he puts it, instead of opening a filter menu and selecting individual dates, I can simply click a month or drag across several months. PivotTable Analyze and then PivotChart adds the picture, and because all three stay connected, moving one control updates the table and the chart together.

Setup night, once Android Police's Jade Bryan Jardinico, writing on September 6, works down a setup checklist. Under Security and privacy, then Lost device protection and Theft protection, he turns on Theft Detection Lock, considers Offline Device Lock, and confirms Remote Lock so a lost phone can be locked from android.com/lock. More security and privacy holds Unknown tracker alerts for stray Bluetooth trackers, and Mobile network security, where he enables network security notifications and checks that Block 2G is on. Settings, System, Keyboard, Keyboard apps, Gboard, then Privacy is where he switches off the data sharing toggles, Privacy controls is where he stops passwords appearing on screen as they are typed, and System, Software updates is the last stop for both system and Google Play updates. One caveat a reader raised in the comments is fair: most of these are phone security settings rather than Wi-Fi settings, whatever the headline says.

Three buried toggles Android Police's Akshay Bhalla, writing on September 6, digs out the settings Google does not surface. Your profile icon, then Your Timeline, then Location and privacy settings, then Timeline is where background location history lives, and he notes that switching it off does not cost you personalized recommendations, with a three month auto-delete offered as the middle path. Profile, then Offline maps, then the gear icon is where he turns off auto-update offline maps and auto-download recommended maps or restricts them to Wi-Fi only, because he says they can drain battery, fill storage, and burn through data. The third lives outside Maps entirely, in your Google Account under Data and privacy, then Web and App Activity, where unchecking Include Visual Search History stops those images feeding personalized ads.