An alliance of Mozilla, Consumers International, the Internet Society and eight other organizations have asked the four large American retailers Amazon, Best Buy, Target and Walmart to stop selling insecure Internet of Things (IoT) and “smart” devices.

European negotiators have reached a political agreement on the new Copyright Directive which includes the controversial article 11 and 13. Article 11 is also known as the link tax and article 13 requires tech giants like Google and Facebook to purchase licenses for the content their users share. 

Samsung has confirmed it will no longer make any new 4K / Ultra HD Blu-ray players. There were already rumors that the Korean electronics giant would pull out of the Ultra HD Blu-ray player market after it didn't show any new models at IFA last year and CES this year.

Microsoft once again has issues with updates for Windows. Where previously mainly Windows 10 was affected, this time it affects all Windows versions from Windows 7. The issues affect Access databases, Internet Explorer and an issue specifically hits Japanese users.

Microsoft will, earlier than expected, release an update that brings support for the more secure SHA-2 algorithm to Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008. The update was scheduled for April this year, but Microsoft has decided to release it a month earlier.