Raspberry Pi has supersized its Touch Display 2 with a new 10.1-inch model aimed at dashboards, entertainment systems, and other projects that need more room for prodding. The panel is designed for use cases such as touch-enabled information displays. This is the big brother to the 5-inch and 7-inch variants, with a resolution to match – 1,200 x 1,920 pixels are available on the native portrait display. The 10.1-inch panel supports 24-bit RGB color and ten simultaneous touch points, up from five on the smaller models. The in-plane switching, thin-film transistor, liquid crystal display also touts a black surface that acts as a magnet for greasy fingerprints. According to Raspberry Pi, the touch response time is a maximum of 35 ms, and its backlight brightness is 400 cd/m2 – not class-leading, but more than adequate at a list price of $80. The viewing angle is 85 degrees and, as with the other Touch Display 2 variants, there is a hefty bezel. The unit is 161.8 x 247.3 mm, while the actual active area is 135.4 mm x 216.6 mm. We'd expect integrators to use that bezel when mounting the screen in enclosures. Speaking of which, while there is a handy mounting point on the back for a Raspberry Pi, the device is only compatible with the Raspberry Pi 5 and Compute Modules (not included). Since the screen draws power from a pair of GPIO pins, you'll need an IO Board or similar to use it with a Compute Module. The need for the Pi 5 could cause some cooling issues – we've noted before how much heat the unit can generate when under load. According to Raspberry Pi, the justification for the requirement is all those extra pixels. A spokesperson told The Register: "The higher resolution of the new display requires four DSI lanes of data to communicate with the host Raspberry Pi, rather than the two used by previous Touch Displays. The newer display connector on Raspberry Pi 5 and our Compute Module IO Boards support this!" Otherwise, attaching a Pi 5 to the back of the unit and connecting it is ludicrously simple. There's just a ribbon cable and something for power (both provided in the box) before screwing the Pi to the risers with the included screws and firing up the unit… Which didn't work initially. Does this screen come pre-borked? No. It transpired that we needed to update the EEPROM on our Pi 5 – the firmware needs to be from February 2026 or later. After a swift sudo rpi-eeprom-update -a and a restart, we were in business. In use, the screen is bright and relatively responsive. It also needs to be kept well away from moisture, so consider the enclosure carefully in environments where that might be an issue. According to Raspberry Pi, "Raspberry Pi OS provides touchscreen drivers with support for ten-finger touch and an on-screen keyboard, giving you full functionality without the need to connect a keyboard or mouse," which is true. It would, however, be a stretch to call Raspberry Pi OS optimized for touch (even with the pop-up on-screen keyboard). If you're expecting to build yourself an iPad out of the box, you'll be disappointed. However, that would miss the point of the 10.1-inch Touch Display 2. It's designed for entertainment systems and information dashboards. The image is crisp, and the additional pixels will make for better clarity. Considering the cost of Pi computers nowadays, the requirement for a Pi 5 could be irritating. It not only runs hot, depending on workload, but adding a 2 GB variant to the system will almost double the price of the screen. The technical reason is understandable, but the requirement could still hit customers in the pocket. Still, as with the earlier models, the Touch Display 2 represents an easy way to get a touchscreen up and running with the diminutive computer. For use cases that require users to jab fingers at a multitouch screen, we'd recommend it. Just don't forget the EEPROM update – documented with the release, if not in the press kit – and spend hours as we did repeatedly reconnecting cables in search of life. ®

LG has come under fire over its Monitor App Installer, which is automatically and silently installed when plugging in some of the company's monitors. In this case, the monitor in question is a new LG UltraGear. Upon first connection to a Windows 11 device, the OS can check the associated device metadata and automatically install the manufacturer's UWP device app. For that to happen, Microsoft says the user must have opted into Recommended Settings during Windows setup, be signed in to the Microsoft Store, and be online. It can be a useful way of getting management applications onto a user's device without that user having to go hunting in the Microsoft Store or the manufacturer's website. Automatic installation through this mechanism only applies to external devices and is open to abuse. YouTube channel Gamers Nexus published a video documenting the process following a "sudden influx of user reports online." "Adware was our thanks for spending $1,200 with LG," the presenter claimed. He added that once installed, LG "technically possess permission to use all system resources," as well as collect geo-location, device data, online activity, contacts, user credentials, transactions "and more." The problem has been rumbling for a while, and there are many complaints on social media about software being installed when devices are connected, with the LG Monitor App Installer topping the tables thanks to the advertisements it serves users. The complaints are understandable. The LG Monitor App Installer has limited utility and displays ads for other services, including McAfee. The app can be found in the Microsoft Store, but installing it from there requires a deliberate action from the user, who can also see the permissions the app requests, including internet access. However, when installed upon first connection of the device, there is no such notification. It all happens automatically, and the first a user might be aware that something has happened could be a new Start menu entry, something in the system tray, or, in the case of the LG Monitor App Installer, pop-up ads appearing without warning. Microsoft has documented the automatic process, which LG appears to be using. It also states that "the automatic installation feature does not provide a notification to the user when the app is installed," before warning "some users may find this experience confusing and frustrating, and give your app a bad rating." At the time of writing, LG's Monitor App Installer had a rating of 1.3 stars in the Microsoft Store. However, we doubt many users would choose to install it from there, considering the Store listing says the app can access "all system resources" and the user's internet connection. "LG Electronics reiterates that McAfee is not installed automatically and is never installed without the user’s explicit consent," the company told us in a statement after this article was initially published. "The LG Monitor App Installer is distributed through Microsoft’s official Windows distribution process, which included McAfee as an option. McAfee will be installed only if a user actively chooses to proceed with the installation and provides consent. Under no circumstances is McAfee installed automatically or without user authorization." The Register asked Microsoft whether it might tighten up the automatic installation process to better inform users about what is slithering onto their devices. We will update this piece if we hear back ® Updated on July 22 with a statement from LG Electronics.

ON CALL Welcome to another installment of On Call, The Register's Friday column in which readers kindly share their stories of untangling tech support situations. This week, meet a reader we'll Regomize as "Steve" who started his IT career doing tech support for a supermarket's own-brand mobile service. "I started in 2006, when many phones still had removable batteries," Steve told On Call. "One day, a customer rang in ranting and raving about how she'd just bought her very first mobile, had used it for two weeks, and now wanted to return it because it was faulty." Steve naturally inquired about the nature of the fault. "This phone is supposed to last for years," the customer replied. "But I've just bought a third battery to keep it running." He soon realized that whenever the customer's phone ran out of juice, she discarded its battery and bought a new one – because she assumed the battery was disposable, like those in many other devices. Steve asked the customer if she was using the charger that came with the phone. The customer was unaware it existed, and was therefore not using it. "I asked her to get the box the phone came in and check, and she quickly climbed down once she found the charger under a layer of cardboard," Steve told On Call. Have you had to support a user who ignored vital equipment? If so, click here to send On Call an email to share your story. No battery required! ®

UPDATED The European Commission has watered down its rules around battery replaceability with exemptions for some wearable devices, potentially including the Apple Watch and Meta's AI Glasses. A delegated act was adopted by the European Commission on July 14 that exempted the products from EU requirements on the removability and replaceability of portable batteries. The batteries must still be replaceable, but by independent professionals rather than end users. Wet appliances already have an exemption from user-replaceability rules, and qualifying wearables are now on the list. By wearables, the Commission means smartwatches, fitness trackers, smart glasses, or anything integrated into clothing. In its document [PDF], the Commission said small batteries should be removable and replaceable only by professionals, where "the miniaturization of wearable devices and the portable batteries powering them may result in situations where the battery is so tightly encapsulated in its receptacle that its removal may create a non-negligible risk of damage or piercing of the battery." "Where the nature of the product hinders its redesign (anatomic or ergonomic considerations), it is justified that such small batteries be removable and replaceable only by independent professionals." The EU's portable battery rule is set to come into force in 2027, and requires gizmo makers to ensure their designs allow for battery replacement by users. Phone creators, for example, will generally have to ensure customers can open their devices and switch out the battery themselves, although batteries in phones meeting specified longevity and IP67 requirements may remain replaceable only by professionals. The environmental cost of ditching a device when the battery fails is less than ideal, and the European Commission has sustainability rules around the sourcing, collection, recycling, and repurposing of batteries. Allowing users to replace batteries means the units can easily be recycled and the life of devices extended, although an expiration of software support will be the next challenge faced by the users. The US PIRG action group reckons that expiring software or server support is responsible for 1.7 billion pounds of e-waste over the last decade. Campaigners have urged the EU to mandate 15 years of OS updates. The Register asked the Commission if the change was at least partially a result of pressure from industry. Dropping the requirement for user replaceability is good news for manufacturers considering how gadgets such as smart glasses or watches could be made to comply. The next step is to send the delegated act to the European Parliament and the Council of the EU for scrutiny. According to the Commission, "it will enter into force 20 days after its publication in the Official Journal of the EU, if the European Parliament or the Council fail to object to it." ® Updated to add at 1230 UTC: A spokesperson from the Commish told The Reg: "The Commission has not given in to anyone’s pressure. Our proposals follow a broad public consultation with consumer associations, industry stakeholders and the Member States. The issue was raised by several representatives. "The delegated act is not about regulating one specific product. Its purpose is to ensure safer consumer and industrial products in cases where opening a device could create safety risks or where technical limits make consumer access unrealistic. Certain exemptions already exist, such as for medical devices."

Corporate PC buyers haven’t rushed to buy AI PCs but analyst firm Gartner thinks the machines can now do an important new job: Running AI workloads on the desktop to provide a hedge against tearaway token bills. The firm on Monday published a Strategic Roadmap for Agentic AI PCs in which Research Vice President Steve Kleynhans argues that enterprise AI tools that run on the desktop “have been slow to materialize.” “On -device AI has yet to achieve mainstream adoption and remains largely confined to developer and enthusiast use cases,” he added. He thinks that’s about to change as businesses are paying more attention to the cost of cloud-based AI, and especially “Tokenomics,” the frustratingly imprecise science of trying to figure out how each AI service provider defines a “token” and charges for them at different times. “As enterprises gain a better understanding of AI cloud cost dynamics, many are looking to AI PCs as a potential offset,” Kleynhans wrote. “Enterprises are becoming increasingly concerned about the economic sustainability of cloud-centric AI strategies as token consumption and associated usage costs continue to rise, driving greater interest in a hybrid strategy, by identifying workloads that can be processed more efficiently at the edge or on the device itself.” The analyst admits “there is no consensus yet on the level of cost benefit” but feels the potential for savings is “clear.” The main reason for his optimism is advances in development of small language models (SLMs), small reasoning models (SRMs), and targeted domain-specific language models. He’s not alone in that opinion: The Register recently covered the likes of Microsoft and Google using smaller models for some tasks. Kleynhans thinks some of these smaller models will happily run on today’s AI PCs, which pack neural processing units capable of at least 50 TOPS performance. Again, he notes that polished tools for enterprise users are yet to materialize. But he thinks that the likes of OpenClaw, plus on-device AI tools such as Claude Cowork, Microsoft Scout, and OpenAI Codex, will show enterprise buyers what’s possible – and spark greater interest in AI PCs. “Local AI models will support speech, chat, image, audio, and text generation, as well as application and model orchestration,” he predicts. “SLMs and SRMs will power always-on personal assistants and agents, fundamentally changing how users interact with their devices.” The analyst thinks “Many routine tasks will be executed locally, with personal agents coordinating work across applications, models, and services operating both on the device and in the cloud.” The analyst therefore offered two numerical predictions: By 2029, 30 percent of enterprises will be using AI PCs to reduce their cloud AI token costs; By 2030, 70 percent of the corporate PC installed base will be capable of running some local GenAI workloads. All those desktop AI workloads will complement clouds, which will continue to handle the most demanding workloads. But Kleynhans thinks mature AI models “will increasingly migrate to the endpoint as they become optimized for smaller systems, transforming the PC from a simple endpoint into a critical component of the broader AI infrastructure.” Another stimulus will be the increasing power of AI PCs, which Kleynhans thinks will become ten times more powerful by 2031. The analyst therefore thinks PC buyers need to think about AI PCs as part of an organization’s IT infrastructure and develop an ROI model based on token cost displacement. “Initially this will be most appropriate for developers but make the discussion part of any new AI deployment for all employees,” he suggests. Another of his recommendations is to start this effort in earnest once third-gen AI PCs appear in 2027. Starting to experiment with SLMs and SRMs is another activity Kleynhans thinks is worthwhile. ®

Whitehall has spent time and taxpayer money confirming that teenagers who spend less time on social media tend to be happier, better rested, and more willing to interact with the people sitting in the same house. Ministers say the government-backed trial strengthens the case for their planned ban on social media access for under-16s after providing real-world evidence that cutting back on apps does exactly what parents have been saying for years. The study followed more than 300 families across the UK as they tried one of three restrictions at home: removing social media apps entirely, blocking access between 9 pm. and 7 am, or limiting each app to 15 minutes a day. Across the trial, teenagers reported going to bed earlier, sleeping better, feeling calmer, and concentrating more effectively at school. Parents also described quieter evenings and more time spent talking together instead of staring at separate screens. The strongest effects came when social media apps disappeared altogether. Those families reported the biggest increases in face-to-face time with friends and evenings spent together, alongside less screen time and better focus. Families trying the overnight curfew also saw benefits, particularly around sleep, with some parents saying the 9 pm cutoff became routine within a couple of weeks. The 15-minute limit, by contrast, flopped. Teenagers found it too restrictive to use apps in any meaningful way, leading many to ration their allotted minutes, switch to other devices, or simply migrate to platforms that weren't subject to the same restrictions. Secretary of State Liz Kendall said the findings reflected what many parents already believed: "These findings show what parents have been telling us all along: when children spend less time on social media, the benefits are real.” "It's why we're taking the strongest action in the world to support a generation that is healthier, happier and more connected to the people and experiences that matter most - not just to their screens,” she added. The announcement also attempts to head off one of the biggest criticisms of the government's forthcoming age restrictions: that teenagers will simply install a VPN and carry on regardless. New figures released alongside the study suggest that while roughly a quarter of children aged 11 to 17 have used a VPN, only between 7 percent and 10 percent say they do so specifically to bypass age checks. Instead, the government says the far more common workaround is simply entering a fake date of birth, a trick it argues will become less effective once platforms are required to use stronger age-verification systems. None of this proves the government's under-16 social media ban will be painless to enforce, or universally popular. But if ministers were looking for evidence that fewer hours of doomscrolling might leave teenagers a little better rested and families a little less distracted, they now have a government-funded study telling them exactly that. ®

ASIA IN BRIEF Lenovo has denied it sells laptops that include banned Chinese storage devices where they're not allowed. An outlet called Notebookcheck recently reported that it a ThinkBook 14 G9 IPL and found a solid-state disk made by Chinese company YMTC inside. Some observers joined the dots and decided the laptop could be a problem for Lenovo because a Biden administration decision saw the US ban the company on national security grounds. Lenovo dug into the matter and found the laptop in question was not sold into the US market, but was a model destined for Germany. As Notebookcheck’s headquarters is Romania, and the team responsible for the review are in Austria, a made-for-Germany laptop crossing one of the European Union’s internal borders is a long way short of a scandal. Lenovo’s use of a Chinese SSD is, however, notable for two reasons. One is that Beijing encourages Chinese companies to buy from their local peers. The other is that the AI boom has sent prices for memory and storage devices soaring, and YMTC is one of few alternatives to leading suppliers Samsung, Micron, and SK Hynix. Apple reportedly wants the Trump administration to reconsider the USA’s ban on YMTC, to help it find the parts it needs to keep cranking out iThings. China recovers a rocket for the first time China’s National Space Agency (CNSA) last Friday recovered the first stage of a rocket for the first time. The Agency announced it used a ship-borne net to catch the first stage of a Long March-10B carrier rocket that launched a satellite, then guided itself to safety. SpaceX has been doing this for years, because re-using the first stage of a rocket saves a lot of money. China naturally wants the same capability as it will advance its commercial and national security interests. Japan has the same ambition and on Saturday conducted a successful test of a rocket that took off, reached an altitude of 11 meters and hovered there briefly before settling back to Earth without incident. In other China space news, CNSA announced its Tianwen-2 probe arrived at asteroid 2016HO3, pulling to within 20 kilometers of the space rock on a mission that aims to retrieve a sample of the object and return it to Earth. Australia signals strong AI regulation – including copyright protection Australia’s prime minister Anthony Albanese will this week deliver a speech outlining a revised AI policy. The PM’s speech will come a week after Andrew Charlton, assistant minister for science, tech, and the digital economy, observed “AI’s social licence is precarious” and added “The point of AI safety is not to slow the future down. It is to make sure the future remains human, aligned with our values, and advancing our interests.” Albanese has also mentioned social license ahead of his speech. One issue the PM is expected to address is amendments to Australian copyright laws that would allow AI companies free access to content to train their models. Musician Holly Rankin today told Australian radio she has had assurances such amendments are not part of the government’s AI plan – setting a stage for a showdown with Big Tech. A datacenter for Bhutan, serving India, via Canada The AI datacenter boom has reached the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan. The tiny landlocked nation, population 750,000, is blessed with impressive hydro-electric power resources. The developer of this project, Canadian company Sato, plans to use renewable energy generated by those resources to power a datacenter in the Gelephu Mindfulness City (GMC), a district located just over the border from India. The local authority that runs GMC will reserve 100MW of firm power for the project, and could in future allocate 500MW. Sato will use the juice to power a datacenter that serves clients in India, a nation the Canadian company says has huge appetite for AI, but struggles to develop datacenters due to electricity supply constraints. “The Project is anticipated to deliver low-latency AI compute to India's major demand centres,” Sato says. APNIC to Malaysia: Your own NIR would change nothing The Asia Pacific Network Information Center (APNIC), the regional internet registry for the region, has published [PDF] its submission to the Malaysian government’s consultation on forming a new national internet registry (NIR) and argued that doing so would essentially be futile. “Cybersecurity, IPv6 acceleration, cost, and local support are not dependent on, and in several respects would not be advanced by, the establishment of a Malaysian NIR,” the submission argues. APNIC also argues that if Malaysia were to establish a NIR it would not increase the availability of IPv4 addresses in Malaysia, or change the criteria for allocation of IPv6 addresses or autonomous system numbers. Nor would it confer any preferential access to resources for Malaysian-based parties. “APNIC makes these observations not to oppose the establishment of a Malaysian NIR, but to assist MCMC and Malaysian stakeholders in calibrating the expected outcomes of such a step,” the submission states. Crims targeting Chinese VPN users Infosec outfit Threatlocker last week identified malware disguised as an installer for Kuailian VPN (aka LetsVPN), a package often used by Chinese netizens who want to subvert the nation’s Great Firewall. Threatlocker says the malware “drops and executes an encrypted RAT that provides attackers with complete control over a victim’s machine and its data.” China’s National Computer Virus Emergency Center (CVERC) has also spotted malware targeting local users in the form of a fake Android education app. CVERC says the malware is a new variant of a financial theft-related mobile Trojan virus, and can intercept users' text messages, steal contacts and phone passwords, use a device’s cameras, record the screen, and even use a phone’s microphone to record ambient audio. Links to the malware spread through text messages and social media software. ®

HANDS HEAD ON Have you ever felt so lazy that reaching up to scroll on your MacBook’s trackpad was too much work? Yeah, me too – especially with the summer heat blanketing much of the Northern Hemisphere, even reaching my remote corner of the US. Thankfully, there’s an app for that. ScrollPods is a simple macOS app that’s been out since last November but which just came to my attention thanks to a blog post this week from its creator, Ahmed Mohamed, who hails from Austria. It lets anyone with a compatible Mac and supported headphones scroll through webpages, documents, and other scrollable content using nothing but a head tilt. Look down, and the page scrolls down; look up, and your content will scroll back that way. You can continue typing as you scroll. The idea, Mohamed wrote, was to allow himself to move up and down a document without taking his hands off the keyboard – not as a complete replacement for conventional navigation methods, but as a supplement. “ScrollPods is not trying to replace the mouse but when it comes to intuitive scrolling, I think it gives traditional scrolling methods like the mouse, scroll wheel, trackpad and touchscreen a good run for their money,” Mohamed wrote. “I enjoy ScrollPods when I’m reading long documents, when my hands are occupied, when I’m drinking an iced coffee or when I simply want to rest my hands.” With the ScrollPods website stating that the app is free, and its Mac App Store page reporting that it doesn’t collect any data, I decided to give it a shot. Installation was easy. It detected my second-gen AirPods Pro without issue, and we were off to the hands-free races. ScrollPods is responsive, easy to use, and isn’t too sensitive, either. It does tend to jump a bit if you slightly move your head, so if you’re fidgety you might want to turn the sensitivity down or enable the feature that automatically pauses the app with a quick tilt of the head. Speaking of settings, there are a lot of options to get ScrollPods working to your liking. Sensitivity, the threshold at which the app starts to scroll, acceleration speed, and even how fast the scrolling stops can all be tweaked, as can how you actually scroll – if you’d prefer to move content up and down by turning left and right, you can do that, too. You can also reverse the order so that looking up scrolls down and looking down scrolls up, if you’re a crazy person. It’s also a great accessibility feature, but Mohamed told us that wasn’t his original goal. “This was initially designed for comfort, I initially came up with ScrollPods because I needed a hands-free way to scroll documents as I was soothing my baby, often stuck in the same position for an hour,” Mohamed told The Register via email, adding that he didn’t want to make an assumption that it would be a significant accessibility product since he’s an able-bodied person. That said, he has heard from a number of people using ScrollPods for accessibility, and the feedback has been positive. “Feedback from the accessibility community … has been phenomenal and is also my current main focus,” Mohamed added. “Updates with a bigger emphasis on accessibility will follow.” As for whether Apple, famous for baking accessibility features into its products, could snipe his idea, he said he’s not entirely surprised it hasn’t happened yet. “Based on the simplicity, it seems so straightforward,” Mohamed said. “With an original concept, this is part of the game and I can’t influence what another company does.” If you want to try ScrollPods out, the link is included above. You’ll need a Mac running macOS 14 or newer and a pair of AirPods 3rd gen or newer, or any version of AirPods Pro, AirPods Max, and Beats Fit Pro. ScrollPods is free right now, but it might not stay that way – Mohamed said he hasn’t settled on final pricing. “Due to the accessibility element of ScrollPods, I do foresee a free tier,” he told us. ®

Apple Lisas are rare now. Here's a rather cheaper way to build your own – and in theory, it can even use original floppy drives. LisaFPGA does what it says on the GitHub repo: "The Apple Lisa computer implemented inside an FPGA!" It's an open source project that recreates a complete Apple Lisa on an FPGA board. It's not entirely complete yet, but hardware went on sale in May and you might still be able to buy one – or download the bitstream of the model and build your own. The Apple Lisa was a very strange computer, in part because it was pioneering new design territory. Apple started the project before the famous visits to Xerox PARC to see what became the Alto – also a radical machine, as The Reg FOSS desk tried to describe in 2023 for the machine's 50th anniversary. After those visits (for which Apple paid Xerox in shares, which the photocopier giant promptly sold), Apple changed course. Now the Lisa would be the first mass-market computer with a GUI. (The "mass market" bit didn't work out, and 2,700 unsold Lisas ended up as landfill in 1989.) Even so, it was a very important and influential machine: The Register celebrated its 30th birthday and indeed took another look back in 2019. So it's quite hard to find an Apple Lisa today, and if you manage to do so, it will probably (a) cost you quite a lot of money and (b) not be in working condition. That's a shame because Apple released the source to Lisa OS for the machine's 40th birthday in 2023. The enterprising developer behind LisaFPGA is Alex Anderson-McLeod, and he built his knowledge of the Lisa and its implementation from an earlier project. Last year, he managed to work out how to compile and build Lisa OS from Apple's source code. This was a particularly difficult effort, and he documents the process of Lisa OS Source Code Compilation at length. We've read the account closely and we think it's fair to say the build process is deeply arcane. (Sadly, the repo does not contain the source code itself, as the very strange "Apple Academic License Agreement" allows recompilation and study, but it forbids redistribution. To get the code, you'll have to agree to the license on the Computer History Museum.) Anderson-McLeod learned a great deal about how the Lisa works while rebuilding the OS, and he's applied that knowledge to designing and building LisaFPGA. It is not completely finished – under "Features," the Introduction section of the README states: "Onboard ESP32-based floppy drive emulation (NOTE: THIS DOESN'T WORK YET)." And a few lines down: "Supports Twiggy drives with an optional breakout board. Note that this is CURRENTLY UNTESTED as I don't have a set of Twiggy drives." Even so, we are impressed by the effort, and it sounds like a very entertaining bit of kit. The first batch has already sold out, but finished boards were on sale from two official outlets: MacEffects for £264.89, and from Joe's Computer Museum for $350. Both will take your info and contact you when the next batch is ready. If you can't wait, there is Ray Arachelian's Lisa Emulator Project. The history section is particularly interesting, starting with So, Ray, how come you care about ancient, obsolete machines? The LisaEm source code is on GitHub, but sadly, Arachelian died of cancer in 2023, which is why version 1.2.7 never got past Release Candidate 4. We feel it would be a good tribute for someone to pick it up and produce a finished release. In the meantime, we wrote about the remarkable LisaGUI website last year, which recreates the machine's user interface inside your browser. ®

Meta may have breached the European Union's Digital Services Act by designing Facebook and Instagram to keep users glued to their screens, with Brussels saying that features such as infinite scroll and autoplay should be switched off by default. The European Commission on Friday published preliminary findings accusing the social media giant of failing to properly assess or mitigate the risks posed by what it describes as the addictive design of its platforms. The investigation centers on infinite scroll, autoplay, push notifications, and the highly personalized recommendation systems that determine what users see next. The Commission argues that Meta underestimated the effect those features can have on users, particularly children and vulnerable adults. Its preliminary findings say recommendation algorithms, autoplay, and infinite scrolling encourage people to keep consuming content, nudging them into what the Commission calls "autopilot mode" and fostering unhealthy habits and compulsive use. The Commission also says Meta ignored evidence showing how long minors spend on Facebook and Instagram at night, and failed to account for how products such as Reels and Stories could encourage excessive use. Brussels was equally unimpressed with Meta's attempts to fix the problem. It found the company's time management tools, including those enabled by default for teenagers, "can be easily dismissed and do not lead to a meaningful reduction and control of the usage of the service." It also questioned the effectiveness of Meta's parental controls, arguing they require too much technical knowledge and effort from parents to work as intended. The Commission ultimately wants Meta to redesign both platforms, including disabling autoplay and infinite scroll by default, introducing effective screen-time breaks, and making its recommendation systems less focused on maximizing engagement. "Protecting the physical and mental health of Europeans must be a priority for social media platforms," said Henna Virkkunen, executive vice president for Tech Sovereignty, Security and Democracy at the Commission. "The Digital Services Act provides a clear framework to hold platforms accountable for the addictive design and effects of their services." The findings are preliminary, and Meta will now have the opportunity to respond before the Commission reaches a final decision. If Brussels ultimately concludes that the company breached the DSA, it can impose fines of up to 6 percent of Meta's worldwide annual turnover, which comes in at approximately $12 billion. The case adds to a growing push to rein in social media's impact on younger users. Earlier this year, outgoing prime minister Kier Starmer said the UK government was considering new measures “that will give us the ability to crack down on the addictive elements of social media, stop the auto-play, the never-ending scrolling, that keeps are [sic] children hooked on their screens for hours, and stop kids getting around age limits.” Meta did not immediately respond to The Register's request for comment. ®