Over the last nine months Microsoft has been drip-feeding us new PowerToys for Windows 10. So far we've seen FancyZones, Shortcut Guide and PowerRename, and now the company is preparing to add another one.

PowerLauncher is -- or will be -- a quick launch tool for launching apps, and it's aimed at power users. Not only is it open source like the rest of the PowerToy collection, there is the promise that it will be extendible through the use of plugins.

Anyone who has decided to stick with Windows 7 now that the operating system has reached end of support has probably seen the full-screen warning advising them that it's time to upgrade to Windows 10. But while this warning was known about in advance, some Windows 7 hold-outs are now reporting something peculiar post January 14 -- a black desktop.

On the last day of support for Windows 7 Microsoft issued one final update, and it seems that this update has been causing problems with desktop wallpapers.

When it comes to running Windows applications and games on Linux and macOS, Wine is the go-to tool for many people. Now Wine 5.0 has been released and it includes significant changes that make it even more useful.

After a series of betas and release candidates, the stable version of Wine 5.0 is here. It features multi-monitor support, numerous fixes for problematic games and applications, Vulkan 1.1 support, and more.

Proton Technologies has announced that it is open sourcing its VPN tool, ProtonVPN.

The Swiss firm says that not only is it releasing the source code for its VPN tool on all platforms, but also that it has conducted an independent security audit. Created by CERN scientists, ProtonVPN has amassed millions of users since it launched in 2017 and the decision to open source the tool gives users and security exports the opportunity to analyze the tool very closely.

Over the years Microsoft has taken numerous controversial decisions with Windows 10, including installing sponsored apps, using the Start menu to advertise apps it thinks you might be interested in, and -- of course -- the various forms of data-collecting telemetry.

Now it has been discovered that more ads could be on their way. A Windows researcher has uncovered ads in WordPad encouraging people to try out Word, Excel and PowerPoint online.

When you need to take a screenshot, you can just hit Print Screen, or use Windows 10's Snipping Tool. But what about if you want to record a video of your desktop?

It might surprise you to learn that Window 10 has a screen recording tool built in. For some reason, Microsoft has chosen not to make much of a fuss about it, but for people in the know, it is an amazingly useful tool. Read on to learn the secret!

Microsoft says it is working on a fix for a serious security vulnerability in Internet Explorer. The bug affects versions 9, 10 and 11 of the browser in Windows 7, 8.x, 10, Windows Server 2008 and 2012.

The memory handling bug can be exploited by an attacker to run malicious code on a target computer, but despite its severity, Microsoft is unlikely to release the fix before next month's Patch Tuesday. News of the vulnerability comes just days after Microsoft ended support for Windows 7.

The end of support for Chrome apps has been a long time coming -- Google announced more than two years ago that it was going to start winding things down.

The Chrome Web Store has already been stripped of the App section on Windows, macOS and Linux, and now Google has announced that it is to be pulled from Chrome OS too. The company has also revealed the dates on which support will be dropped completely for all platforms.

It can hardly have escaped your attention that yesterday was the day Microsoft stopped supporting Windows 7.

To make sure anyone who was unaware is alerted to the fact that no more security updates will be available, full-screen warnings are now being displayed. Microsoft had previously advised Windows 7 users that this message would appear, and as of today the company is making good on its promise.

Microsoft-related news over the last few days has been all about Windows 7 reaching end-of-life, but today marks the day that the company starts to push the Chromium-based version of Edge to Windows 10 users after beta testing. For businesses and organizations that do not feel ready to make the transition just yet, there is no need to panic.

Microsoft says there are no plans to push the browser to commercial or enterprise devices, and there's a Blocker Toolkit available to disable automatic delivery of Chromium-based Microsoft Edge, anyway. But for Home and Pro users, there is likely to be disappointment for anyone hoping that the rollout of the stable version of the browser would mean it was feature complete. There are in fact several things missing.

Two-factor authentication is a handy means of securing accounts, and now iPhone users are able to use their handsets as a security key for their Google accounts.

An update to the Google Smart Lock app brings the functionality to Apple fans, several months after the feature was made available to Android users. It's a security method that has been welcomed by many as it does not require the use of any additional hardware, just something you always tend to have with you -- your phone.

Visions of the future have long featured robots and cyborgs. We've seen robots, and even rudimentary human augmentation already, but now scientists have created the world's first living robots.

American researchers used cells from African clawed frogs to build biological machines from the ground up. Built from different biological tissues, scientists have brought into being "living, programmable organisms" and potentially opened up an ethical can of worms.

US officials have warned British ministers that using Huawei technology in the UK's 5G network would be "nothing short of madness".

Prime Minister Boris Johnson reacted to the warning saying that he had no intention of putting the UK infrastructure or national security at risk. He also called on critics of Huawei to suggest alternatives.

Apple has launched a new replacement program to help out people who have problematic Smart Battery Cases.

The company -- and users -- found that a number of Smart Battery Cases for iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max and iPhone XR suffered from intermittent charging issues. The company says that affected units were produced between January 2019 and October 2019 and is offering free replacements to owners.

Visa has announced that it has agreed to purchase Plaid as part of a deal worth $5.3 billion. The acquisition values the fintech company at around double its valuation following a 2018 Series C funding round.

Plaid is behind financial services APIs used by the likes of Coinbase, Gemini, Venmo and Transferwise. Its software allows for easier sharing of financial details, making it simpler to connect services to bank accounts. Plaid says the acquisition will help it continue to "accelerate the success of the fintech ecosystem".