Sofia Elizabella Wyciślik-Wilson

The UK government has announced that -- despite being considered a "high-risk vendor" -- Huawei will be permitted to contribute to the 5G network infrastructure in Britain.

The US recently warned that allowing the Chinese firm to be involved in the rollout of 5G would be "madness", but the UK has chosen to ignore this. Huawei will have limits placed on its contributions, meaning that it will only be able to supply "non-core" elements of the network.

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Google is in the mood for a cull at the moment. Having announced the end of support for Chrome Apps, the company has now announced that Google App Maker will be closing down in less than a year.

While the ultimate shutdown date isn't until January 2021, App Maker is now no longer being actively developed. Additionally, Google says that as of mid-April it will no longer be possible to create new apps.

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Today is Data Privacy Day, and Facebook is using the occasion to try to convince its users that it cares about their privacy.

The social network says that it recognizes there is a lot of work to do to improve privacy protections, but that's not going to stop the company from trying to make it seem as though it doesn't represent a massive invasion of privacy. As part of its latest PR campaign, Facebook will encourage users to review their privacy settings as well as launching the Off-Facebook Activity tool globally.

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Google has announced that it will now be offering customer support via Twitter.

Anyone with a problem with their smartphone is invited to tweet using the hashtag #AndroidHelp, and the company will do its best to help. The official Android Twitter account will be used to respond, and the team says it will be able to help with a range of issues.

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It's not very often you get to communicate directly with large technology companies to gives feedback about their products, but later today you will be able to speak with Microsoft engineers to share your thoughts about Windows and Office.

For 90 minutes today, Microsoft is conducting an online research event providing one-on-one sessions, giving people the chance to help guide future development. It is an expansion of the Windows Insider and Office Insider programs, and Microsoft says it's keen to hear users' thoughts.

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A self-described "reverser/pwner [and] Windows kernel hacker" has demoed a working exploit for two recently discovered vulnerabilities in Windows Remote Desktop Gateway (RD Gateway).

The exploit takes advantage of the CVE-2020-0609 and CVE-2020-0610 vulnerabilities which have already been shown to make a denial of service attack possible. Now Luca Marcelli has shown how the same vulnerabilities can be exploited in a Remote Code Execution attack.

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We're still waiting for Microsoft to release a patch for the actively exploited security vulnerability in Internet Explorer -- at least for those who will receive it. In the meantime, the company suggested a workaround which involved restricting access to JScript.dll, acknowledging that this might lead to certain problems.

But it seems that the company underestimated the negative impact the workaround could have. In addition to problems with services that rely on JScript.dll or PAC scripts, users are also experiencing problems with printing.

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Some Windows 7 users who installed the KB4534310 update found that their desktops turned black. With the operating system having now reached end of life, the company said that it would only make a fix available to organizations paying for Windows 7 Extended Security Updates (ESU).

But Microsoft has changed its mind. It now says that it will make a patch available for all Windows 7 users, addressing the bug introduced by the last ever freely available Windows 7 update.

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Windows 10 has been with us for a number of years now, so you might think that you know about all of its features by now -- but there could well still be things for you to discover.

As you're probably well-aware, there's a lot that can be achieved by editing the registry; it's a common way to change inaccessible settings, for instance. We've discovered an exciting free tool that save you from having to delve into the registry, but gives you the opportunity to access hidden options, features and settings. We present the freeware tool Hidden Windows 10 Features – it's like a modern day TweakUI for Windows 10.

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Windows 7 is dead: you know this. There are no more Windows 7 updates for most people: you know this. And some believe Windows 7 should be made open source: yeah, right

Whatever the status of Windows 7, the fact of the matter is that there are plenty of people still using it, and the last update (KB4534310) caused a strange problem for some users, turning their desktops black. Microsoft has now acknowledged the issue, but says that it will only fix the bug for those who are willing to pay.

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Windows 7 is dead to Microsoft -- unless, of course, you're willing to pay. It's now ten days since the operating system reached end of life, but many people, for various reasons, are choosing to stick with it rather than upgrading to Windows 10.

This means missing out on security updates, but the Free Software Foundation (FSF) thinks it has a solution. It suggests that Microsoft 'upcycles' Windows 7 and makes the operating system open source so that the community can "study and improve" it.

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Internet Explorer may be a relic from the past, but it's still out there and used by surprising numbers of people. Not all versions of it are supported by Microsoft anymore, so when a critical bug was discovered in the Windows 7, 8.x, 10, Windows Server 2008 and 2012 versions of the browser, there were questions about who was going to be protected.

The bug was revealed just days after support ended for Windows 7, and it wasn't clear whether Microsoft would stick to its guns and leave those people still using this operating system out in the cold and unprotected. The company has now confirmed what's going to happen.

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Owners of Sonos devices were disappointed when they were told by the company that as of May 2020, there would be no more software updates released for older equipment. Sonos offered customers two options for "legacy products": keep using them without updates, or brick them by putting them in Recycle Mode in return for a 30 percent discount on a future purchase.

There was an understandable backlash from Sonos' userbase, and now the company's CEO has been forced to pen a letter in which he assures customers that devices will work for "as long as possible". Patrick Spence concedes that "we did not get this right from the start". He continues: "My apologies for that and I wanted to personally assure you of the path forward".

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Taking a leaf out of Facebook's book, Twitter has added a new emoji reactions feature.

Unlike Facebook, Twitter reactions are only available for direct messages, not individual posts, but it still adds a new way to respond to messages. In all, there are seven emoji reactions: crying, surprised, sad, heart, flame, thumbs up and thumbs down.

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Apple's Safari web browser was found to have multiple security flaws that allowed for user's online activity to be tracked, say Google researchers.

In a yet-to-be-published paper, the researchers reveal issues in a Safari feature which is actually supposed to increase user privacy. The Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP) feature found in the iOS, iPadOS and macOS version of the browser is meant to block tracking, but vulnerabilities mean that third parties could have accessed sensitive information about users' browsing habits.

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