LastPass, the firm behind the eponymous password management software, has revealed that it fell victim to a security breach two weeks ago. Although the company is quick to point out that passwords stored by users have not been exposed, the incident remains hugely significant.

The hackers were able to breach the security of a developer account and took advantage of this to steal "source code and some proprietary LastPass technical information". While LastPass is at pains to stress that it has seen "no evidence that this incident involved any access to customer data or encrypted password vaults" it is an incident that will nonetheless dent user confidence.

Every -- well, almost every -- new build of Windows 11 has new features, options or settings to explore. Some are obvious, some less so. With the latest release of Windows 11, Microsoft has hidden some seriously impressive new animations.

These animations appear in the Settings app; when you roll your mouse cursor over the icons to the left of the app, they now come to life. But the animations do not appear by default, Even if you have Windows 11 build 25188 installed, there are still steps you need to take to unlock the special animation effects.

Some months after launching a self-repair program that gave iPhone owners the opportunity to fix their own devices, Apple expanded it to include MacBook air and MacBook Pro notebooks. On the face of things this is a great move, but the program has been criticized for not only managing to make MacBooks seem less repairable, but also for "presenting DIY repairers with an excruciating gauntlet of hurdles".

The criticism comes from none other than iFixit, a site well known for its device teardowns and the repairability ratings it assigns them. Singled out for particular attention is the process of replacing a MacBook Pro battery, the instructions for which stretch to an incredible 162 pages.

Plex has emailed its users to warn about a security indecent it has become aware of. While the subject line of the email refers to a "potential data breach", the body goes on to talk about suspicious activity and a third-party gaining access to part of a database.

The company says that the exposed data included emails, usernames and encrypted passwords. Although all passwords were secured and hashed, all Plex users are required to change their security credentials out of an "abundance of caution".

Users of Windows 11 have been eagerly awaiting the first major update to the operating system. Windows 11 22H2 has been in the works for quite a while now, and it's due for release in the coming weeks; except it's not.

Microsoft will not be releasing Windows 11 22H2, having changed its mind about what the update will be called. Instead, it is Windows 11 2022 Update that will be pushed out to users as soon as next month.

One of the most recent updates released by Microsoft that has had something of an unwanted payload is the KB5015878 update for Windows 10. Many people installing the update found that it broke audio on their systems.

Microsoft has not only acknowledged the problem, it has also issued a fix. The company is using a once-rare-but-becoming-increasingly-common Known Issue Rollback (KIR) to recall the update. Sadly, it will be of no use to people who are experiencing audio problems!

There's no such thing as a free lunch, and there's no such thing as free software (well... very, very rarely). If you don't pay a monetary price for software, you're almost certainly going to pay for it with your privacy, or by seeing ads.

This is something that users of Microsoft's software have had little choice but to become increasingly familiar with -- even in the case of paid-for software. The latest of the company's apps to fall victim to the advertising plague is Outlook Mobile. Users are particularly annoyed because the ads are difficult to distinguish from emails.

Earlier in the year, Apple launched its self repair program, giving iPhone users the option of fixing their own phones. As well as providing instruction manuals and selling the parts, tool rental is also part of the program.

Now Apple has announced that it is expanding the Self Service Repair to include MacBook Air and MacBook Pro notebooks -- provided they are fitted with the M1 family of chips, that is. The company says that the program will expand to include additional Mac models soon, and that the iPhone self-repair service will expand out of the US to Europe and beyond.

Google Reader was killed off quite some time ago, but there are still plenty of people mourning the passing of this iconic RSS reader. There have been plenty of replacements developed, but few -- if any -- manage to match the simplicity of the original.

Now Google is having a second crack of the whip. Sadly, we can't report that Google Reader is coming back, but the desktop version of Chrome is getting an RSS reader to match its mobile counterpart.

Twitter, possibly more than other social platforms, seems to bring out the very worst in many people. Apparently magnifying the emboldening effect the relative anonymity of posting online brings, users often find that responses to their tweets stray a long way from what most would consider reasonable. Now Twitter is working on a solution.

Spotted in the code of the Twitter app, an upcoming "Reply filter" feature will give users the ability to control the type of response they see. Importantly, the feature does not introduce any new restrictions on what others are able to post as a reply; it just gives users the opportunity to avoid exposing themselves to upsetting responses by filtering them. Think of it like a spam folder for tweet replies. It is something that will be welcome by many different types of user -- those with verified accounts, those with a degree of celebrity, those from certain societal groups, those unwilling to deal with online abuse, and others.

Apple has issued a warning about a security flaw that could be used to take full control of iPhones, iPads and Macs. The company says that the vulnerability "may have been actively exploited" and has issued a slew of updates to patch the problem.

Going some way to prove that it is not just Windows that suffers serious security issues, this vulnerability is tracked as CVE-2022-32893. The potential impact of the flaw is so wide because it stems from a bug in Safari’s WebKit rendering engine.

When Microsoft introduced widgets to Windows 11, there was broad agreement that the company had not fully realized the potential of the feature. This is something that is somewhat addressed by a new update to the Windows Experience Pack.

The update means that widgets, including the weather widget, will now be able to get your attention by throwing up announcements and notifications. It's an update that could make widgets genuinely useful, but you may not see the new functionality immediately.

If you have been put off getting a Netflix subscription because you think it's too expensive, the upcoming introduction of a reduced-cost, ad-supported tier may sound appealing. But there are numerous downsides, some of which are only just coming to light.

First of all, there is -- of course -- the fact that there are ads. But if you're happy to put up with this, you may be disappointed to learn that you won't be able to access all content either. But it gets worse. Sign up for the ad-supported tier and you could be missing out on some of the most useful functionality Netflix offers.

It is something pretty much all of us have needed to do at one time or another -- copy text from an image so it can be used in another document. Search online for how to extract text from an image, and you will be pointed in the direction of various OCR tools, but Microsoft is working on a solution of its own.

The ability to copy text from an image is coming to PowerToys. The developers are working on a new utility that will make the process very simple. Called PowerOCR, the unreleased PowerToys utility is undergoing testing right now.

When it comes to the release dates for big updates to Windows, Microsoft is notoriously cagey. The company gives itself a big window of opportunity to release feature updates by giving them names such as Windows 11 22H2. This tell us nothing more than the release can be expected in the second half of 2022.

But now we may be able to narrow down the release date to something rather less vague than a six-month period. Sources familiar with Microsoft's plans say that the release of Windows 11 22H2 is scheduled for September 20 -- so just a month from now.