Notifications can be useful, but all too often they are used by websites to spam people. To help protect users against such irritations, Microsoft has announced new notification blocking for its Edge browser.

The company says it is aware that website notifications may not only be annoying, but can be misleading or even dangerous. The aim in block spammy notifications is to not only offer protection to users of Microsoft Edge, but also to help them to get the most out of notifications.

It can hardly have escaped your notice that Meta officially launched what it is hoping will be its Twitter killer, Threads, this week. The new social platform has already proved astonishingly popular, with millions upon millions of users signing up in a matter of hours.

But while there is a great deal of excitement about what Threads has to offers and how it could disrupt social media, there has also been disappointment at the limitations of the mobile apps. If you're one of the many users who wishes that Threads had more in the way of features, options and settings, Meta has just launched a beta program which anyone is free to join.

Social platform Threads may only be a couple of days old, but it has already amassed millions of users. While Meta might be celebrating the popularity of its new Twitter rival, the company is also facing criticism from various quarters.

Huge privacy concerns mean that Threads not available in the European Union -- not officially, at least. But there are also complaints that the app has been rushed and feels unfinished. Released in Disability Pride month, one of the biggest complaints leveled at Threads is that it lacks basic accessibility options and features.

For many people the release of Threads, Instagram's text-based conversation app, represents an alternative to Twitter -- a platform which is widely considered to have become more toxic and problematic under Elon Musk. But for an even larger number of people, Threads will be their first step into this type of social media.

Switching from Twitter, Mastodon or Bluesky to Threads -- or using them in conjunction with each other -- is painless, but for anyone who has never used such a platform, the language surrounding it can be slightly mystifying. And this is why Meta has released a Threads Dictionary to bring users up to speed.

It feels as though it has been a while since the last update for PowerToys, but Microsoft has now rectified this. The company has released PowerToys v0.71.0 which sees not only a large number of bug fixes, but also numerous tweaks, improvements and additions.

This is a hugely significant update that adds support for the previewing of archives in the Peek utility, as well as making it possible to use Registry Preview as the default tool for opening .reg files. PowerToys developers have really gone to town with this release; just about every module has been updated and there is an improved look that is more in line with the Windows 11 aesthetic.

Microsoft is testing a change to the Start menu in Windows 11 that will make it clearer which shortcuts relate to system apps. Built-in apps and tools are highlighted with a new "System" badge.

The update came in recent build of the operating system, but is not currently enabled by default. With a little tweaking, however, it is possible to switch on the new Start menu labeling system.

The rocky journey for Twitter continues under Elon Musk, with this weekend seeing bizarre constraints introduced in an attempt to reduce unspecified "data scraping". Users of the service found themselves hit with rate limit warnings as Twitter placed restrictions on the number of tweets that can be viewed each day.

Rival Mastodon has already seen a steady influx of Twitter escapees, and this continued over the weekend with a 300,000 jump in the number of active users; Bluesky is also faring well, to the point that sign-ups have been paused to allow for tweaks and fixes to be implemented to accommodate the levels of interest. But now eyes are turning towards Meta, as the Facebook owner prepares for the launch this Thursday of its own Twitter alternative, Threads by Instagram.

Windows is no stranger to problems, and some issues linger rather longer than others. A good example is a longstanding bug that has blighted both Windows 10 and Windows 11 since the beginning of the year.

The issue means that the Start menu, Windows search and Universal Windows Platform (UWP) apps behave strangely or fail to open. Or at least this was the case; Microsoft has now addressed the problems with a new update.

With the release of Windows 11 build 2349 Microsoft has introduced numerous changes and additions, not least of which is the arrival of the eagerly awaited AI-powered Copilot tool. But the latest update to Windows 11 also includes a new look for the Settings app.

Microsoft has given the homepage of Settings a revamp that sees the interface split into clear, easy-to-read sections, which the company is referring to as cards. The new look is clean and uncluttered, but there has been the controversial decision to use at least one of the cards to display ads.

Users of Microsoft Teams have a series of updates to explore. Microsoft has launched a selection of new features to enhance the online meeting experience.

The new options and settings relate to Live Caption and Live Transcription, with users being given far greater control over the look and positioning of captions. But what Microsoft talks about first are the new controls for the profanity filter which censors what the company has deemed to be bad language. Enabled by default, there have been complaints that the filter is far too sensitive -- so Microsoft has come up with a solution.

The support forums of password management tool LastPass are filling up with complaints from confused and disgruntled users who found themselves locked out of their accounts. The problems stem from a forced authenticator app reset implanted by the company following a series of security incidents last year.

Starting last month, LastPass forcibly logged out users and required them to reset their multifactor authentication (MFA) apps such as Google Authenticator and Microsoft Authenticator. But having followed the instructions given by the company, large numbers of users report that they are unable to access their LastPass vaults after being locked out their accounts.

PDFs are astonishingly useful documents, but some are lazily created. You've almost certainly encountered a PDF file that comprises images of text rather than selected text. This is a serious annoyance if you were hoping to copy text into another document, but it's also a major problem for anyone who is reliant on text-to-speech tools to have document read aloud to them.

Google has some good news for users of Chrome; the browser is gaining the ability to convert images to text in PDFs, OCR-style. There is some bad news, however. This incredibly useful feature is -- at least initially -- not going to be made available to everyone.

The Dev builds of Windows 11 are often where signs of Microsoft's experimentation with the operating system can be seen. It is something of a playground for the company to try out new ideas, tinker with settings and determine how changes are received by beta testers.

While it may often be accused of ignoring user opinion, the latest Dev build of Windows 11 illustrates how Microsoft not only listens to feedback, but also acts on it. Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 23486 sees the return of options that were controversially removed recently.

The love of gloomier hues -- whether for the sake of being gentler on one's eyes, or for purely aesthetic reasons -- means that just about every piece of software now has the option of switching from light to dark mode.

Microsoft Edge is no different, and the latest preview builds show that things could be about to get even darker. Select users who are signed up for the Canary channel report seeing much darker screen elements, with the likes of the favorites bar and tabs having fully black backgrounds.

The Federal Trade Commission is suing Amazon for fooling customers into "unknowingly" subscribing to Amazon Prime. The company is accused of using manipulation and "dark patterns" to dupe people into what the FTC describes as "Nonconsensual Enrollments".

As well as the accusation of tricking customers into Prime Subscriptions, the FTC's complaints say that the company makes the cancellation process "labyrinthine". The Commission points out that while signing up for an auto-renewing Prime account takes just two clicks, bringing the subscription to an end requires navigating "four-page, six-click, fifteen-option cancellation process".