computers

23 Jul 2026

Slashdot

Microsoft Responds to LG Monitors Installing McAfee Ads On Windows

LG is removing a McAfee pop-up ad from its LG Monitor App Installer after criticism that some LG monitors were silently installing the app through Windows Update and showing ads on every boot. Microsoft says LG agreed to disable the McAfee pop-up, but the broader issue remains: Windows allows certain peripheral companion apps to install automatically without notifying users. Ars Technica reports: Following Gamers Nexus' video, a Microsoft representative stated that the LG Monitor App Installer will no longer show pop-up ads for McAfee. In response to a social media post about the app, Pavan Davuluri, EVP of Windows and devices at Microsoft, said this week: "We've connected with the team at LG and as an immediate next step, they have agreed to disable the McAfee pop-up from their app. We appreciate LG working with us toward a shared goal of a better experience for our mutual customers. We will keep improving here with our ecosystem partners." As mentioned, some LG monitors appear to have been installing LG Monitor App Installer onto Windows computers for months. Publication Windows Latest noted that the app recently got an update, "and its changelog mentions McAfee as an additional app," which could be what prompted more people to see the ads... and then complain about them. However, the removal of McAfee doesn't address the problem of a peripheral installing ad-pushing software onto people's computers. Users have been finding LG Monitor App Installer and its ads on their systems without LG ever showing a prompt or asking for permission. LG has some of the most expensive computer monitors available. Paying, in some cases, over $1,000 for a monitor that ends up forcing ads onto Windows is disruptive and a privacy concern. Once the app is installed, "LG technically possesses permission to use 'all system resources,'" as well as to "collect geolocation, device data, online activity, contacts, user credentials, transactions, and more," [editor-in-chief of Gamers Nexus, Steve Burke] said.

EU Fines Google $1 Billion For Breaking Digital Antitrust Regulations

The European Union fined Google more than $1 billion for allegedly using Google Play and Search to steer users toward its own services and apps at the expense of competitors. The Associated Press reports: Google had recently lost its appeal of a $4.5 billion antitrust fine imposed by the EU for throttling competition and reducing consumer choice through the dominance of its mobile Android operating system. The European Commission, the bloc's executive branch and highest antitrust enforcer, said it was acting in the interest of consumers after an investigation of Google. "The best products should succeed because they're better, not because they're owned by the company running the search engine. And European consumers have a right to be told by app developers where to sign up to the best offers, even when the app store owner does not get a cut," said Teresa Ribera, the commission's Executive Vice President for Clean, Just and Competitive Transition. Google's President of Global Affairs Kent Walker blasted the fine as "product degradation driven by a small group of self-serving complainants" that will have a negative impact on European businesses and consumers. He said that the EU's Digital Markets Act forces Google "to strip away real-time search features Europeans love -- like instant pricing and direct availability for hotels, flights, and restaurants -- and dismantle safety protections on Google Play."

Ars Technica

Microsoft responds to LG monitors installing McAfee ads on Windows

App is installed through Windows Update when certain LG monitors connect to a PC.

23 Jul 2026 8:47pm GMT

OSnews

FreeBSD ports frozen after someone commits the entire 150MB Linux Copilot binary

A rather unusual announcement was made late last night: the FreeBSD project has frozen their ports repository. For more than 48 hours now, no changes have been accepted or made to the tree, and here's why. A 150MB binary file was recently committed to the ports tree and, as a result, core@ made the decision to implement a temporary freeze of the ports tree in order to implement some clean up efforts. The commit in question severed our ports tree mirroring to github.com due to their filesize hard limit of 100MB, and introduced a blob of questionable licensing into the repository history. ↫ Kyle Evans in freebsd-announce While FreeBSD's ports tree is not hosted by GitHub - it's merely mirrored there - the FreeBSD team believes the community values the GitHub mirror too much, and as such, steps had to be taken to fix this. Ports has not been compromised and users' systems do not appear to be at risk in any way due to this occurrence, which is good news. Curiously, the official announcement makes no mention of which 150MB file, exactly, was committed to ports, but it didn't take for people long to pinpoint the offending commit (screenshot). It turns out someone committed the entire github-copilot-cli Linux binary to ports, as part of the github-copilot-cli port. This FreeBSD port is effectively a way to easily install and run this tool on FreeBSD using Linuxulator, FreeBSD's Linux compatibility layer that allows you to run unmodified Linux binaries on FreeBSD. It's important to note this FreeBSD port is not actually a port of the Linux version of github-copilot-cli to FreeBSD; the FreeBSD "port" merely acts as a setup script to run the unmodified Linux binary using Linuxulator. It's not a "real" port because the tool isn't open source and its license doesn't allow for modifications. That's why the announcement specifically mentions "questionable licensing" - github-copilot-cli is licensed under some custom license specifically made for this tool, and is not open source. Anyway, for whatever reason, the maintainer of this FreeBSD port accidentally made a commit that added the actual, full 150MB Linux binary to FreeBSD ports. I'm assuming that under normal circumstances, building and installing the github-copilot-cli FreeBSD port would merely download the binary off GitHub and set Linuxulator up so that it could run it. Mistakes happen, and since there's clearly nothing malicious going on, there's not much to worry about. In fact, this may lead to new checks and balances to prevent this from happening in the future, which would be good news. The FreeBSD team is working on rolling back, fixing the issue, and investigating how this could have happened. Ports is still frozen at the time of writing, but I'm sure we'll have a more detailed account soon.

23 Jul 2026 8:33pm GMT

Slashdot

Amazon Is Bringing Games to Prime Video

Amazon is integrating its Luna cloud gaming service into Prime Video, adding a new "Games" tab where Prime members can play titles like "Hogwarts Legacy," "EA Sports FC 26," "Indiana Jones and the Great Circle," "Clue," and "Taboo." The games will be available starting today on Fire TVs in the U.S. and U.K., with additional supported devices and countries in the coming months. TechCrunch reports: With this move, Amazon is hoping games can turn Prime Video into a one-stop entertainment destination, borrowing a strategy from Netflix, which has increasingly embraced party games over the past several years. Since Amazon already operates a gaming service, it makes sense for the tech giant to integrate it into its streaming platform. [...] Amazon says its vision is to remove the barriers to gaming and make it accessible to anyone regardless of their experience or budget. The tech giant says Luna is designed to bring gaming to a much broader audience by removing the need for expensive consoles or gaming PCs and making games as easy to access as movies or TV shows.

Ars Technica

FDA reports new outbreak of explosive diarrhea with 72 cases identified

The FDA hasn't said where the cases are or how they're linked.

23 Jul 2026 7:22pm GMT

Forgot your Google password? Now you can log in with a selfie.

Google's selfie videos can be used for account access, AI Avatars, and age verification.

23 Jul 2026 7:14pm GMT

OSnews

Amiga 1000: ten years ahead of its time

We all know the original Amiga was far ahead of its time, and the Amiga really doesn't need more retrospectives and glazing. However, that doesn't mean we don't want more Amiga retrospectives and glazing. I'm not sure I even saw an Amiga in person until 1987, but I knew just from reading about it that I wanted one. I wasn't able to make it happen until 1991, so I was pretty late to the game. But even in 1991, an Amiga felt like living in the future. I could load several programs and switch between them effortlessly, with the only limit being the amount of memory I had. I could connect to a BBS with a terminal program, start a download, then switch it to the background, fire up a word processor, and do my homework while the download was happening. In some cases, I could even fire up a game and play a game while a download happened in the background. I could download stuff while I played Civilization, which was pretty great. ↫ David L. Farquhar It's 2026, I have an incredibly powerful Linux gaming computer, but since I grew up on DOS and Windows, to this day, I still feel the need the close every other application before launching a game. I don't need to - modern operating systems handle such things just fine, mostly - but it's so ingrained in me it's hard to drop this habit. I wonder if people who grew up with more capable computers than whatever DOS nonsense I grew up with are less inclined to do things like this? Or did memory constraints act as an equaliser? Anyway, the linked article doesn't mention it, but the Amiga is still, somehow, going relatively strong for a platform that's supposed to be dead. Modern(-ish) hardware is getting a bit harder to come by, but AmigaOS 4 and especially MorphOS are still actively being developed, and even running them in virtual machines on x86 has become about as easy as it could be.

23 Jul 2026 11:33am GMT

Rewriting the Futhark type checker

This post is about the evolution of Futhark's type checker, motivated by a large refactoring I am about to merge. It is probably mostly of interest to other language designers, and contains some lessons I wish I had known when we first got started - although I am not particularly well-read in the type checking literature, so it's possible all of this is old hat. ↫ The Futhark Programming Language blog That's a clear introduction - you know what to expect.

23 Jul 2026 8:42am GMT