Sofia Elizabella Wyciślik-Wilson

Having released a silent update last week to protect Zoom users from webcam hijacking, Apple has now pushed out a second security patch that is silently installed in the background.

This second patch addresses issues with the RingCentral and Zhumu videoconferencing tools. These apps suffered from a very similar vulnerability, putting users at risk, so Apple has stepped in once again to neutralize the problem.

Google has decided to close down its controversial Project Dragonfly which would have seen the company launching a censored version of its search engine in China.

The company's vice president of public policy, Karan Bhatia, made the revelation speaking at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing yesterday. She said simply: "We have terminated Project Dragonfly".

When Apple announced the 2019 refresh of its MacBook Pro and MacBook Air, attention was focused on the reduction in price and a boost to hardware.

But while much was made of the addition of True Tone to the Retina Display and the lower starting figure, it seems that the price cut comes at the price of performance. Tests show that the 2019 MacBook Air's SSD is actually slower, significantly slower, than last year's model.

If the word MouseJack seems familiar, it's because it as been around for a while. It is a remote access hack that emerged a few years back that took advantage of a vulnerability in some Logitech wireless dongles, as well as hardware from other manufacturers.

Being at least three years old, you would expect that patches would have been addressed -- and they were. But a large number of devices are still at risk because Logitech failed to recall the affect units that were on sale so there's a chance that if you bought a Logitech wireless keyboard, mouse or standalone dongle in the last few years, you could be at risk.

Twitter is rolling out a faster, redesigned version of its website, bringing not only a new look to the desktop, but also a range of new features.

It's now possible to bookmark tweets -- something users have been asking for for a very long time -- there is a darker dark mode, and the Explore feature from Twitter's mobile apps makes its way to the web. There's certainly a lot to like, but the fact that the new look is not optional is likely to grate with some users.

The German state of Hesse has banned schools from using Microsoft Office 365 because it fears the software opens up student and teachers' private information to the risk of "potential access by US authorities".

The Hesse Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information (HBDI) believes that Office 365 is in contravention of GDPR legislation, and also expressed concerns about the collection of telemetry data by Windows 10.

Europe's Galileo satellite network -- used by satnavs, financial institutions and more -- is in the throes of a huge outage. The system has been down since Friday meaning that travelers (and others) in Europe have instead had to fall back on the American Global Positioning System (GPS) -- or even Russia or Chinese systems.

Galileo has been struck by what is being described as a "technical incident related to its ground infrastructure", and it's not clear when the situation will be remedied.

Having just removed some of the blocks that were preventing people from installing Windows 10 May 2019 Update (Windows 10 version 1903), the company has now introduced a couple more obstacles -- including for its own devices.

One of the new blocks prevents Surface Book 2 owners from installing the update, while another affects systems with Intel 4 series chipset integrated GPUs.

Just last week AMD launched its latest Ryzen 3000 series of CPUs. The third-generation Ryzen chips are the first to be based on 7nm technology, but there is a problem for users of some Linux-based systems.

For distributions based on newer versions of the Linux kernel, an issue renders systems unable to boot. Some users have managed to patch the systemd component with an older version to allow successful booting, but a BIOS update from AMD is what's needed.

When Microsoft announced that it was going to start charging its partners for software licenses that had previously been free, there was an understandable backlash.

Now the company has announced that it is putting these plans on hold, and free software licenses will still be available to Microsoft Partners. On the eve of its Inspire conference, Microsoft's Gavriella Schuster revealed that the decision to revoke internal use rights (IURs) has now been reversed.

The Federal Trade Commission has voted to hit Facebook with a $5 billion fine for privacy violations relating to the Cambridge Analytica scandal. While this is the largest fine ever handed out by the FTC, the impact on Facebook's coffers is going to be minimal; this is how much revenue the company generates in a month.

Although the fine has not been officially confirmed -- and neither the FTC nor Facebook are commenting on the matter -- a Friday vote on the fine is said to have gone 3-2 in favor of approving it. The size of the penalty has been described variously as a "parking ticket" and "barely a tap on the wrist". Democrat Senator Ron Wyden reacted by saying: "No level of corporate fine can replace the necessity to hold Mark Zuckerberg personally responsible for the flagrant, repeated violations of Americans' privacy".

Installation rates for Windows 10 May 2019 Update (version 1903) remain low, and this is at least in part because Microsoft has blocked updates for many people because of a series of problems with hardware and software compatibility.

Now installation numbers may start to increase as Microsoft has removed some of these blocks -- although the company warns that it could take a little while for the update to  appear to those who were previously unable to install it.

Microsoft has shared usage numbers for its group chat tool, Teams. The company has revealed the number of daily and weekly users for the first time, and they reveal that Microsoft Teams has overtaken Slack in popularity.

The number of daily users of Microsoft Teams stands at 13 million, while the weekly figure is 19 million. Considering the service is just two years old, to have surpassed the behemoth that is Slack is an impressive achievement.

You may well have suspected it, but now Google has confirmed it -- contractors for the company are able to listen to what you say to Google Assistant.

The revelation came after recordings of people using the AI-powered digital assistant were leaked. Belgian broadcaster VRT News obtained a large number of Dutch language recordings and was able to hear highly personal information about users -- even if they had not used the "OK Google" trigger words.

Microsoft appears to be at it again, adding telemetry components into its operating system. This time around it is Windows 7 that gets the telemetry treatment, and Microsoft seems to have gone about things in a rather sneaky fashion.

The latest "security-only" update for Windows 7 includes a Compatibility Appraiser element (KB2952664) which performs checks to see whether a system can be updated to Windows 10. Hardly what most people would consider a security-only update. So what's going on?