Sofia Elizabella Wyciślik-Wilson

Meta has announced that it is launching a subscription service in the UK that will let users of Facebook and Instagram pay to avoid ads.

The plan has already been rejected by the European Union, but this does not affect post-Brexit UK. Separate subscription tiers are available for the social platforms’  mobile apps and the web. For anyone unwilling or unable to pay, the Facebook and Instagram experience will remain riddled with ads.

With just a month to go until the official end of support for Windows 10, Microsoft has been forced to cede ground. The company will now offer a year of ESU (Extended Support Updates) available completely free of charge, no strings attached, for people living in the European Economic Area (EEA).

While free access to the ESU program is available in other parts of the world, it is only available with conditions. In Europe, these conditions no longer apply.

There is a lot to feel frustrated about in relation to YouTube, but Google has announced a change that helps to squash one of its annoyances.

While in-video ads are becoming increasingly difficult to avoid – short of paying for the privilege – there is now a way to hide “end screens”. These short snippets at the end of the video you have just watched are a form of advertising used by creators to promote their other content.

Logitech has announced an interesting new addition to its range of peripherals – a wireless keyboard that is powered by light. Despite the name, the Logitech Signature Slim Solar+ K980 Keyboard does not require sunlight, with the company’s proprietary Logi LightCharge technology allowing it to charge up using any source of light.

With the launch of the Signature Slim Solar+ K980 (and the Logitech Signature Slim Solar+ K980 for Business), Logitech is helping to address one of the issues that arises when using a wireless keyboard – battery life. There is no need to manually charge this keyboard, and the changes of running of juice are incredibly small.

Subscribers to Disney+ are being asked to dig deeper into their pockets as the cost of the streaming service goes up again. In what is becoming an annual occurrence, subscription charges are increasing across the board.

If you were hoping that opting for an ad-supported tier would help with avoiding price increases, think again – even this subscription package is going up. With Disney having irritated many of its customers after the (since reversed) decision to suspend Jimmy Kimmel, the company should expect an even frostier reception than normal to asking people for more money each month.

Microsoft has been forced to release an unscheduled update for Windows 11. The newly unleashed KB5068221 update addresses issues with Microsoft Office running in virtualized environments.

For those who have been experiencing the issue, the fact that this update fixes things is reason enough to install it. But Microsoft has also used this update release to share details of a workaround for a SMBv1 share problem.

WhatsApp has announced the launch of message translations after years of requests from users. Gone are the days of copying and pasting foreign language text into a translation too – everything is now taken care of in the app.

The aim is to allow for easy communication, wiping out language barriers. This is something that can benefit users having one-to-one chats, but it is also helpful in group chats where two or more languages may be in use. For now, it is something that is rolling out to Android and iOS users, and users with Android devices have access to a unique extra feature.

Facebook is primarily about staying in touch with people, but Facebook Dating is about starting relationships. It seems unlikely that Facebook is the first place people think of when it comes to finding partners, and Meta has just decided to add new features to Facebook Dating and use it as a reason to remind the world of its existence.

Despite the rather older demographic that Facebook generally attracts, Meta says that “hundreds of thousands of young adults in the US and Canada create Facebook Dating profiles every month”. It is for these people that a dating assistant and Meet Cute feature are being added.

Having announced plans earlier this year to become an “AI native” company, Grindr has caused ire by introducing new gAI (its own artificial intelligence tech, pronounced “gay-I”) on an opt out basis.

Grindr users have been expressing anger in recent days as they encounter an in-app pop-up informing them that AI is now being used for a personalized experience. While it is possible to opt out of this – as many people want to do so – the company has been heavily criticized for not making this optional more accessible, and for opting everyone into using AI by default int the first place.

Microsoft is taking a step back in time with Windows 11, introducing a feature not seen since the days of Vista. If you are sick of a static desktop background, you will be pleased to learn that you will soon be able to use a video as your backdrop instead.

This is something Microsoft was first playing with nearly two decades ago, before scrapping it as a bad idea. Now – for reasons unknown – the company feels the time is right to revive the DreamScene feature of Windows Vista in Windows 11.

Details have emerged about a now-patched flaw in Microsoft Entra ID which could have been exploited to gain access to any tenant of any company in the world.

Tracked as CVE-2025-55241, the Azure Entra Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability has a CVSS 3.1 severity rating of 10.0. The security researcher who discovered the flaw said that he had “found the most impactful Entra ID vulnerability that I will probably ever find. This vulnerability could have allowed me to compromise every Entra ID tenant in the world”.

Microsoft has announced that the price of Xbox Series S and Series X consoles is due to increase next month. This is the second time this year that the company has raised prices and the jump from the initial launch prices are quite extreme.

A 512GB Xbox Series S console is now a massive 25 percent more expensive than when it first went on sale – up from $300 in 2020, through $380 earlier this year, up to $400. For now, the price changes on impact the US.

So much communication takes place on WhatsApp – both personal and business – that it is all too easy to lose track of things that have been said. Just about everyone will recognize the scenario in which someone they have been chatting with asks if they’ve followed up on that thing from last week, only to have the crashing realization that you’d completely forgotten.

To help combat this, WhatsApp is experimenting with a simple idea – message reminders. This feature is currently undergoing testing with some users of the iOS version of the app. Here is how it can help you.

For a long time the alternative social media platform Mastodon has relied heavily on donations to keep running. The non-profit organization also makes use of grants, but now it has announced plans to branch out into new areas of making money.

The plan is important to achieve financial sustainability, and as part of this Mastodon says that it is “now ready to expand on the success of providing these services to organisations”.

The move from passwords to passkeys is making gradual progress, and Google is among the companies pushing to encourage people to make the switch.  Now there are signs that things are being taken up a notch.

Hidden away in the most recent Canary build of Chrome, Google is testing a flag which, when enabled, will automatically convert saved passwords into passkeys when logging into a site or service.