Sofia Elizabella Wyciślik-Wilson

Not content with giving users new control over sponsored results in its search engine, Google has also started the rollout of its AI visual model – known as Nano Banana – into Search.

Accessible from Google Lens and AI Mode, Nano Banana provides easy access to artificial intelligence powered image editing and transformation. We are not talking about boring “remove the background from this photo” type stuff (although this is possible), but rather more creative ideas.

The impact of Internet Explorer is still being felt years after the world moved on from the web browser. Microsoft has announced that it is “Restraining IE Mode Access” in Microsoft Edge, citing concerns about exploitation of 0day vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer’s JavaScript engine.

That Internet Explorer continues to live on in Edge remains astonishing to many, but it has been retained for compatibility issues. Nonetheless, Microsoft is now taking steps to plug holes that have enabled threat actors to gain access to devices.

Anyone who has used Google Search will have at some point been frustrated by the appearance of “sponsored results” which are rarely of help. Google has apparently come to the sudden realization that tainting search results in this way is irritating, and is providing a way to quickly hide them.

The problem with “sponsored results” is that they are, essentially, advertisements. While much of Google’s money comes from advertising, inserting paid-for entries in search results has long felt disingenuous and misleading for users. Here is how things are changing.

Five years after it was launched, Apple has announced major changes to its bug bounty program. The Apple Security Bounty program is entering what the company describes as a “new chapter”, and the headline change is a massive boost to the payments made for the discovery of the most serious types of security issues.

In addition to this and other changes, Apple also reveals that it has paid out over $35 million to more than 800 security researchers since the scheme launched in 2020. The company points out that many of these payouts were for $500,000. But the focus here is what is happening in the future.

The day on which Windows 10 is no longer supported is finally upon us, and there is no shortage of advice about what the best course of action is. Microsoft wants Windows 10 users to upgrade to Windows 11, Windows 10 users want Microsoft to provide updates for longer.

Fans of Linux are using the death of Windows 10 to push for more people to adopt their favorite distros, but we’ve not heard a great deal from Apple. When asked, though, the company is happy to suggest that Windows 10 users being abandoned by Microsoft should consider switching allegiances and embracing macOS. And Apple has reasons.

Tomorrow, October 14, is the day on which Microsoft ends mainstream support for Windows 10. As such, there is a lot of interest – perhaps not quite as much as Microsoft might like – in switching to Windows 11 and potentially using the Windows 11 media creation tool.

So, the news from the company that the “Windows 11 media creation tool might not work as expected on Windows 10” could not really have come at a worse time. Microsoft has some advice and help for anyone affected by the malfunction, however.

Following a previously acknowledged security breach last month, SonicWall has published an updated bulletin to customers having investigated the incident. The company says that it is now aware that an “unauthorized party accessed firewall configuration backup files for all customers who have used SonicWall’s cloud backup service”.

SonicWall has also published an extensive document to help customers with “containment, remediation and monitoring”. This includes advising everyone to reset various passwords.

Having already given Windows Insiders signed up to the Dev and Beta channels a new Windows 11 Start menu experience, Microsoft is doing the same for those on Canary builds.

The new look sees the Start menu being made scrollable for easier access to shortcuts, but there are various other changes too. With the new Start menu landing in the Canary channel, it could be that we are due to see even more changes being introduced as Microsoft experiments. But the new Start menu is not all that the company has added here.

Microsoft’s development of Copilot on Windows 11 continues, and the company has just released significant updates to Insiders which are likely to win it more fans. New connection cap abilities mean that it is possible to use Copilot in conjunction with various online services including Google Calendar and Outlook.

More than this, however, Microsoft has also added new document creation capabilities. Users are now able to quickly create a variety of documents from within their Copilot sessions, including Word, Excel, and PDF.

Chipmaker Qualcomm has announced that it is acquiring Arduino. Best known for its Arduino boards, the Italian firm is getting a new owner for an undisclosed sum of money.

Qualcomm says that its own products will be combined with Arduino’s ecosystem, and has announced the launch of the new Arduino UNO Q, powered by the Qualcomm Dragonwing platform. This is being promoted as a joining of forces, as well as a way of speeding up developers’ access to key technologies.

Navigation tools such as Waze and Google Maps not only help you find a route from A to B, but also provide information about road closure, vehicle breakdowns, police in the area, and hazards on the road. With this last item being reliant on reports from road users, Waze has been investigating ways to make do so easier.

When you spot a hazard on the road and want to warn others, you have had to wait until you are able to stop to do so (safely, at least). Now Waze is rolling out a feature called Conversational Reporting which lets you use your voice – and a dash of AI – to let other road users know about what you have spotted.

Thanks to what will seem like a somewhat unlikely pairing to many, it is now possible to access Spotify in ChatGPT. With the two services having partnered, you can now use tracks and podcasts to achieve things with the AI chat bot.

There are various possibilities here – from asking ChatGPT to create new playlists based on the tracks you like to receive recommendations about podcasts you may enjoy. While the ability to use Spotify in conjunction with ChatGPT is free, there are more options available to Spotify Premium subscribers.

Meta has announced an update to Facebook algorithms which may achieve something quite rare – actually surfacing content that people genuinely want to see. The change affects Reels specifically, and users are being given far greater control over what they see in their feeds.

As well as making it easier to indicate a preference for a particular type of video – or, indeed, express a dislike for others – the update makes it possible to prioritize displaying new content. This is not the end of the story; there are also new “friend bubbles” which Meta hopes will encourage users to engage in conversations about content on the platform.

Both Microsoft and Valve have issued warnings about flaws in the Unity engine that could expose gamers to attack. A new version of Steam has been released to plug the security hole as well.

Tracked as CVE-2025-59489, the Unity Gaming Engine Editor vulnerability has a severity rating of 8.4. The nature of Unity is such that the flaw affects multiple platforms – Windows, Linux, macOS and Android. There is good news for some, however; Xbox consoles, Xbox Cloud Gaming, iOS and HoloLens all remain unaffected.

Advertising is how Meta makes money, hence Facebook users being bombarded with ads and “recommended content”. Starting today you may receive a notification that things are about to change. Unsurprisingly, they are not changing for the better.

Meta says that it is going to “start personalizing content and ad recommendations on our platforms based on people’s interactions with our generative AI features”. What does this mean? Targeted ads, essentially.