Sofia Elizabella Wyciślik-Wilson

Back in September, US software firm Red Hat suffered a security breach. The incident was not acknowledged until October, but even now the full impact of the breach is unfolding.

Japanese car maker Nissan has just confirmed that it was indirectly affected by the Red Hat security breach. As a result of this, detailed contact information for thousands of customers were accessed by hackers.

Ever mindful of security, the US has announced a ban on new foreign-made drones and components key to their manufacture. The Federal Communication Commission’s public notice says that uncrewed aircraft systems (UAS) “pose an unacceptable risk to the national security of the United States or the security and safety of United States persons”.

The ban only applies to new devices and components, so anything which has already made its way into the US is unaffected. In implementing a blanket ban on all foreign-produced drones, there has been no need to publish a list of affected models.

There can be few people who have not interacted with ChatGPT over the last year, and you may be wondering how you have used the artificial intelligence tool.

In line with so many other online tools and services, as we approach the end of the year, ChatGPT is giving users the chance to look back over the previous 12 months in a review of the year. The predictably named “Your Year with ChatGPT” is available now.

Microsoft has released Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.7523 (KB5072043) to the Dev and Beta Channels, bringing with it a number of important changes and additions. As is the case with so many updates to Windows 11 at the moment, this is heavy on the AI.

The difference this time is that Microsoft is starting to focus more on business users – starting by introducing Ask Copilot on the taskbar with Microsoft 365 Copilot. The taskbar is also now adorned with Agents, but not everything is related to artificial intelligence.

The end of the year means endless round ups of the best products, services and more. It also means that lookbacks such as Spotify Unwrapped are made available, and now X has decided to get in on the action by taking a look back at what the past year was like on Elon Musk’s social platform.

What does this look like? Number. Numbers and statistics. So, if stats are not your thing, look away not. Otherwise, let’s delve in and see what has been happening on X throughout 2025.

As we approach the end of 2025, you may be one of the many Android users expecting Google Assistant to be completely replaced by Gemini. Indeed, this was very much the plan that Google announced earlier in the year.

But as year end creeps up on us, the company has had a change of heart and is slowing down the pace of things. The precise new timescale is not really very clear at the moment, but Google has shared an update about how things will proceed.

Netflix has acquired Ready Player Me, a platform for creating avatars. It comes as the company moves deeper and deeper into the gaming arena.

The acquisition will give Netflix subscribers the chance to create customized avatars that can be used across gaming titles. It is a similar system to that found on other gaming networks.

There are some sites which are famous and others which are notorious; Anna’s Archive falls into the latter category. Ostensibly a pirate site from which ebooks can be downloaded, the site has billed itself as an archivist, preserving data and documents for the future.

The latest move by “the largest truly open library in human history” see the site “back[ing] up Spotify”. More than this, Spotify’s entire library of content is being released in a series of colossal torrents – and we mean huge.

All social media platforms are about connections, and Bluesky is no different. The problem that a social platform with a focus on privacy and security has is that it can be hard to track down people you know that you would like to connect to.

It is with this in mind that Bluesky is launching a new contact import feature called – somewhat uninspiringly – Find Friends. One of the aims, apart from connecting people, is to help cut down on spammy methods of tracking people down.

The seemingly never-ending story of TikTok and its place in the US could be coming to an end. A new deal between TikTok’s parent company ByteDance and US investors allows the social platform to continue operating in the country.

Reports from CNBC say that TikTok has signed an agreement to create a new US joint venture. The arrangement involves a number of big investors, and the resulting entity is known as TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC.

In a bid to help clamp down on spam on the platform, Instagram has announced new limitations on the use of hashtags. While there is certainly some value in hashtags for the tracking and categorization possibilities they offer, they are also open to abuse.

If you have been confused, frustrated, angered or otherwise responded negatively to an Instagram post which has dozens and dozens of hashtags, the new policy will come as good news. Details were shared about the changes not in a news release or even an Instagram post, but in a post to Threads.

The situation for updates for Windows 10 remains quite confusing for many people. Now mainstream support has ended, those who are sticking with the older operating system need are reliant on the Extended Security Updates program to keep their computers safe.

But, breaking with the way things were meant to work out, Microsoft has now released an out-of-band update for Windows 10 to address an issue introduced by an earlier security patch. The KB5074976 update is a little unusual in that it needs to be manually installed. Here is what you need to know.

For anyone who uses X as a platform for chat more than anything else, the social media site’s latest move will be of interest. A new site specifically and solely for chat is now available, so you can deal with messaging without having to worry about the rest of the platform.

Separating chat and messaging away from the main site sees X competing more directly with the likes of WhatsApp. At the moment, the site has been designed with desktop users in mind, but X is also thought to be working on a mobile version.

Fintech giant Revolut has started to roll out its own mobile network across the UK. Revolut Mobile is designed – like Revolut’s banking products – with travel in mind, including a generous roaming package as standard.

The network will use Vodafone’s infrastructure and a special introductory price is available for anyone who jumps on board early on. There is a waitlist in place, with the full launch due in January 2026.

Mozilla now has a new CEO in Anthony Enzor-DeMeo, and this should be news enough. But the appointment has been accompanied by the announcement that the organization plans to transform Firefox into an AI Browser over the course of the next three years.

More than this, Firefox is set to evolve into something more than just a web browser. Details are scant at the moment, but the new CEO says that “Firefox will grow from a browser into a broader ecosystem of trusted software”.