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LG monitors silently install software through Windows Update without consent

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Re: LG monitors silently install software through Windows Update without consent

#591

This is so much worse that the title makes it out to be: 1. Your OS installs malware (technically manufacturers software) from a 3rd party vendor in background, zero user interaction 2. Happens as soon as you or anyone with physical access plug in a device into the HDMI port 3. That malware has internet and full system access, no sandboxing 4. It starts with every system boot 5. This software gets installed when you…

>This situation has.. no precedent as far as I can tell.. Printer, mouse, tablet and display tablet makers use this to insert their crapware since at least Windows Vista or Windows 7, I think. The last one I remember is plugging a Razer mouse just to watch it instantly pulling 1.5GB of bloated junk with "telemetry" exfiltrating the data from my gaming PC in realtime. At least it doesn't leave my mouse in a non-workin…

The Razer one is spot-on. I had a Razer mouse during the Windows 7 days and it kept running the installation setup despite declining it all the time, and it's so bad at times I recall seeing the setup trigger while on an ongoing Windows update when the screen was already locked up.

Logitech did something similar if I recall right.

Re: LG monitors silently install software through Windows Update without consent

#592
post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This situation has.. no precedent as far as I can tell.. Printer, mouse, tablet and display tablet makers use this to insert their crapware since at least Windows Vista or Windows 7, I think. The last one I remember is plugging a Razer mouse just to watch it instantly pulling 1.5GB of bloated junk with "telemetry" exfiltrating the data from my gaming PC in realtime. At least it doesn't leave my mouse in a non-workin…

The last one I remember is plugging a Razer mouse Oh, yeah. Bought this overpriced but heavily hyped Razer mouse and it wouldn't even work right until it had an internet connection. A MOUSE. I'd never encountered something so blatantly customer hostile in my life. Never even looked at another Razer product, never will, and will tell anyone who will listen that Razer is a terrible company full of objectively terrible…

I had a razer mouse and headphones, which from time to time crashed their driver server or whatever and nothing could help until the cold restart of the PC and a laptop. Razer. Never again.

Re: LG monitors silently install software through Windows Update without consent

#593
post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Razer was always low quality garbage at premium prices. Gamer marketing for you.

What do you recommend instead? In my opinion the Razer mice are always superior for FPS.

I got an ASUS Rog Gladius III Wireless with my Asus ROG laptop. Thought it was a 'free' crap but damned. It is so good and lightweight. Has 3 modes: wifi, BT, cord. Now at my house we all have Asus Gladius mouses! There are also cheaper versions with just a cable connection. And they work without installing Asus Crap Software Center.

Re: LG monitors silently install software through Windows Update without consent

#594

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Gaming as a whole is dead for me There are millions of indies out there. Some are worth the time. It's a bit of a problem to figure out which though. > Haven't played online multiplayer games since ~2013 I don't think there are any non predatory online multiplayer games since 2013 :) And there are many online multiplayer games that would have been really good as single player.

Most of the best games I have ever played are either indies or Nintendo games. Feels like independent developers and sometimes Nintendo are the only ones still trying to make fun games with original ideas while the rest of the industry has shifted its focus entirely towards cookie cutter slop and lazy remasters.

I wholeheartedly agree. Very few AAA games even seem remotely interesting to me these days. Indie games are often good, as are Nintendo games, but that's about it.

Re: LG monitors silently install software through Windows Update without consent

#595

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair Microsoft was always shitware. I don’t remember a time when using a Windows machine just worked, didn’t take up gigabytes of space, didn’t crash, and didn’t get messed up by simply using it requiring a yearly or semi-yearly reinstall.

Windows 3.1? It was only 6 3.5” disks. To be fair, I had stretches of 2K, XP, 7 and 10 working acceptably.

> Windows 3.1? It was only 6 3.5” disks.

Well ackchyually... Windows 3.1 was just a window manager, you needed another 3 disks for DOS, and if you wanted that sweet networking support, you'd need Windows for Workgroups 3.11 which was 8 disks!

Re: LG monitors silently install software through Windows Update without consent

#596

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This situation has.. no precedent as far as I can tell.. Printer, mouse, tablet and display tablet makers use this to insert their crapware since at least Windows Vista or Windows 7, I think. The last one I remember is plugging a Razer mouse just to watch it instantly pulling 1.5GB of bloated junk with "telemetry" exfiltrating the data from my gaming PC in realtime. At least it doesn't leave my mouse in a non-workin…

Back in my Window days. I would start the driver installation and let it sit. Open the temp folder and copy content the install extracted to a new directory. Cancel the installation. Open Device Manager and install the drivers from there so non of the excessive bloat was installed. This worked greater with being an IT consultant. The client's machine to run smoother and drivers installed fast since they would buy mul…

"The Halloween documents comprise a series of confidential Microsoft memoranda on potential strategies relating to free software, open-source software, and to Linux in particular, and a series of media responses to these memoranda. "

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween_documents

https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft-accused-being-conne...

Re: LG monitors silently install software through Windows Update without consent

#597

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why do we even have that lever For plug-and-play devices with multiple configuration knobs. It is nice to be able to click through a printer wizard to configure how one wants to print their documents. Likewise with an audio interface: loopback settings, codec, sampling rate, gain and volume of channels, etc. Or consider a USB CNC mill; configuring things like milling revolution rate, setting which bit is installed,…

For audio interfaces, HDAudio lets you do most of this. What the extra software gives you instead is often some crappy DSP that increases latency and messes with sound quality. For years, Dell's / Realtek's software had an unpaged memory leak somewhere. If you were using a screen reader (I guess they must interact with audio devices in some very specific way that Realtek hasn't accounted for), your system would event…

I should've specified USB audio interfaces, which do have gain and stuff like loopback. I'm very glad the Realtek tray program has fallen by the wayside, what an annoying bit of crap.

Re: LG monitors silently install software through Windows Update without consent

#598
post #561
post #559

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows 7 was also incredibly good. And yeah, there was some pretty neat stuff. Of Linux, macOS and Windows, Windows was the first to get GPU crash recovery, just chugging onward after a stall instead of bringing the entire system down. The biggest sign for me that Microsoft just doesn't care about Windows (aside from the ads stuffed everywhere after a fresh install) is they stopped caring about its bones. Where is W…

> Where is Windows' equivalent of APFS / BTRFS (or even EXT4)..? NTFS is more than 20 years old by now. There's ReFS, but a lot of NTFS features are basically baked into the filesystem API, so replacing it is hard. That being said, NTFS works extremely well and reliable. I don't really see a compelling need to replace it (which is always a messy transition unless you're completely backwards-compatible -- but in that…

Our culture is to replace working things purely because they're old. Solved problem? Never heard of her.

Re: LG monitors silently install software through Windows Update without consent

#599

This is so much worse that the title makes it out to be: 1. Your OS installs malware (technically manufacturers software) from a 3rd party vendor in background, zero user interaction 2. Happens as soon as you or anyone with physical access plug in a device into the HDMI port 3. That malware has internet and full system access, no sandboxing 4. It starts with every system boot 5. This software gets installed when you…

I'm tired of everything being classified as "malware". The word has no meaning anymore. Malware can mean "zero-day state-sponsored ransomware attack" or it can mean "software was automatically installed by a trusted consumer-beloved company because they forgot to make an opt-out window" (which is what I'm guessing happened here).

LG hardware laying dormant for sometimes 3 years, then installing software through backchannels silently to record your voice continuously (if the monitor has a microphone, which some models do) and taking screenshots of your monitor content every 500ms, uploaded to their servers and likely shared with data brokers and the government qualifies as malware in my book.
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