Windows 11 has a new bug (that’s also in Windows 10) whereby the operating system keeps telling users that their time zone has changed, when it hasn’t – and repeatedly doing this, driving some users to the point of distraction by all accounts.
Windows Latest flagged up multiple complaints about this bug, which has been acknowledged by Microsoft, and the company is now working on a fix.
Indeed, the tech site notes that it has experienced the glitch itself, whereby a dialog box pops up, warning that “due to a location change a new time zone has been detected.”
Then the user has the choice of clicking ‘Ignore’ to dismiss the prompt, or ‘Accept’ to be taken to the Date & Time settings where there’s actually nothing amiss (the time zone and location aren’t changed, just to clarify).
Essentially, the prompt is appearing by accident, but the real problem is that affected users don’t just see this once. It’s occurring repeatedly and in some cases multiple times per day, or even hour, which is going to get seriously tiresome.
A user hit by the problem complained in Microsoft’s Feedback Hub: “This is the 2nd system where this pop-up about me changing time zones has occurred. After I set the date and time (Central time zone), why does Windows think that I have moved 455 miles to the East? Fix your darn OS Microsoft.”
Analysis: A rare bug apparently – but a seriously annoying glitch
This is a bit of an odd one, to say the least, and while it’s a relatively benign bug – an errant pop-up that doesn’t actually throw anything of a spanner in the works (unlike some of the showstoppers we’ve seen in the past) – if it’s happening regularly, then it’s going to be a headache.
The good news is that Microsoft says the bug is rare, and so presumably the set of Windows 11 and 10 users who are subject to it happening particularly regularly is even rarer. That said, it needs to be fixed, and the problem has been around for a few weeks now.
According to Windows Latest, the fix is already in the pipeline and should (most likely) be applied as a server-side solution, meaning that it’ll happen on Microsoft’s end, and you won’t need to wait for an update to contain the cure if you’re affected by this issue. Fingers crossed that this resolution arrives swiftly, then.
Meantime, if you’re getting these head-scratching time zone notifications, there’s nothing you can do but keep dismissing them.
When the Meta Quest 3 was unveiled I was impressed by a lot of what it had to offer in both the virtual- and mixed-reality departments, but by far the most interesting feature was Augments – persistent MR elements that you can use to decorate your home. As we approach the one-year mark since the headset was unveiled, Meta’s CTO has finally explained why Augments haven’t launched yet.
If you've forgotten about Augments, the concept is they’re a mixture of functional and visual mixed-reality decorations. Some are just meant to look pretty or offer basic functions, like a clock, while others act as portals to your favorite games or quick access to your favorite apps. You can see a version of them in your VR Meta Home as the little pod that launches First Encounters.
When the Quest 3 was first shown off back in September 2023 at Meta Connect 2023 we saw a little of what Augments would offer, and a promise that they’d launch in the not-too-distant future. Now Andrew Bosworth, Meta’s CTO, has revealed on Instagram that back in January Meta “decided it wasn’t good enough,” and so the team decided “to go back to the drawing board.”
Bosworth explained that Augments felt too much like a toy rather than living up to what Meta felt it had promised and wanted to deliver. However, in order to improve the feature it needed to start from scratch with a “completely different technical architecture.”
As a result the feature has been delayed, and Bosworth didn’t provide any kind of timeline for when we might eventually see Augments in action.
With September’s Meta Connect 2024 fast approaching there’s a small chance we’ll see the feature again there, but I hope the next time we see Augments is when Meta is actually ready to it to the public.
Mixed reality is good, but Augments could make it better (Image credit: Meta)
Over-promise, under-deliver
Meta is developing a worrying habit of teasing updates and hyping up features that it then takes way longer than expected to release, or which don’t live up to expectations.
Augments are the latest example, but we’ve seen it take a year to roll out virtual legs, and oversell the metaverse way ahead of when it could feasibly work as described, while hardware-wise the Meta Quest Pro wound up being a disappointment compared with more budget-friendly offerings like the Quest 3 that launched not long after – with software like Batman: Arkham Shadow being released as a Quest 3 exclusive and skipping the Pro.
I think Meta is also doing a lot of exciting things in the XR space (a catchall for VR, AR and MR); it recently made Horizon OS available to third-party hardware makers, and I love that it gets frequent software improvements. But its errors stick out and if they persist it’ll be a challenge to trust the announcements Meta makes until the product is actually in people’s hands – either physically or virtually.
Going into Meta Connect 2024 I hope Meta takes on board the lessons it's learned over the past couple of years, and as we go beyond the press conference I’d like to see it be more open with its plans, and with obstacles it faces. Setbacks happen, but if a major feature is getting delayed maybe let us know when that decision is made, rather than leaving us in the dark for months.
Microsoft has already been dragged over the coals regarding its Recall functionality inbound for Windows 11 by security researchers and privacy watchdogs alike – and it’ll need a flame-retardant suit for the latest fiery outpouring against the AI-powered feature.
This comes from security expert Kevin Beaumont, as highlighted by The Verge. The site notes that Beaumont worked for Microsoft briefly a few years ago.
To recap – in case you missed it somehow – Recall is an AI feature for Copilot+ PCs, which launches later this month and acts as a photographic timeline – essentially a history of everything you’ve done on your PC, recorded via screenshots that are taken regularly in the background of Windows 11.
He’s come to the conclusion that Microsoft has made a giant mistake here, at least going by the feature as currently implemented – and it’s about to ship, of course. Indeed, Beaumont asserts that Microsoft is “probably going to set fire to the entire Copilot brand due to how poorly this has been implemented and rolled out,” no less.
So, what’s the big problem? Well, principally, it’s the lack of thought around security and how there’s a major discrepancy between Microsoft’s description of the way Recall is apparently kept watertight and what Beaumont has found.
Microsoft told media outlets a hacker cannot exfiltrate Copilot+ Recall activity remotely.Reality: how do you think hackers will exfiltrate this plain text database of everything the user has ever viewed on their PC? Very easily, I have it automated.HT detective pic.twitter.com/Njv2C9myxQMay 30, 2024
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As you can see in the above post on X (formerly Twitter), one of the security expert’s main beef with Microsoft is that it informed media outlets that a hacker can’t possibly nab Copilot+ Recall data remotely. In other words, an attacker would need to access the device physically, in-person – and this isn’t true.
In a long blog post on this topic, Beaumont explains: “This is wrong. Data can be accessed remotely.” Note that Recall does work entirely locally, as Microsoft said – it’s just that it isn’t impossible to tap into the data remotely, as suggested (if you can access the PC, of course).
As Beaumont elaborates, the other big problem here is the Recall database itself, which contains all the data from those screenshots and the history of your PC usage – as all of this is stored in plain text (in an SQLite database).
This makes it very easy to snaffle all the Recall-related info of exactly how you’ve been using your Windows 11 PC – assuming an attacker can get access to the device (either remotely, or in-person).
Analysis: Recall the Recall feature, or regret it
There are lots of further concerns here, too. As Microsoft pointed out when it revealed Recall, there are no limits to what can be captured in the AI-powered history of the activity on your PC (save for some slight exceptions, like Microsoft Edge’s private browsing mode – but not Chrome Incognito, tellingly).
Sensitive financial info, for example, won’t be excluded, and Beaumont further points out that auto-deleting messages in messaging apps will be screenshotted, too, so they could be accessed via a stolen Recall database. Indeed, any message you delete from the likes of WhatsApp, Signal, or whatever could be read via a Recall compromise.
But wait a minute, you might be thinking – if your PC is remotely accessed by a hacker, aren’t you in deep trouble anyway? Well, yes, that’s true – it’s not like these Recall details can be accessed unless your PC is actively exploited (though part of Beaumont’s problem is Microsoft’s apparently errant statement that any kind of remote access to Recall data wasn’t possible at all, as mentioned above).
(Image credit: Milan_Jovic)
The real kicker here is that if someone does access your PC, Recall seemingly makes it very easy for that attacker to grab all these potentially hugely sensitive details about your usage history.
While info stealer Trojans already exist and scrape victims at a large scale on an ongoing basis, Recall could enable this kind of personal data hoovering to be done ridiculously quickly and easily.
This is the crux of the criticism, as Beaumont explains it: “Recall enables threat actors to automate scraping everything you’ve ever looked at within seconds. During testing this with an off the shelf infostealer, I used Microsoft Defender for Endpoint – which detected the off the shelve infostealer – but by the time the automated remediation kicked in (which took over ten minutes) my Recall data was already long gone.”
This is a major part of the reason why Beaumont calls Recall “one of the most ridiculous security failings I’ve ever seen.”
If Microsoft doesn’t take action before it ships, mind – as there’s still time, in theory anyway, although the release of Copilot+ PCs is very close now. (However, Recall could still be kicked temporarily to touch while it’s further worked on – perhaps).
If Recall does ship as it’s currently implemented, Beaumont advises turning it off: “Also to be super clear you can disable this in Settings when it ships, and I highly recommend you do unless they rework the feature and experience.”
Herein lies another thorny issue: the AI-powered functionality is on by default. Recall is highlighted during the Copilot+ PC setup experience, and you can switch it off, but the way this is implemented means you have to tick a box to enter settings post-setup, and then turn off Recall there – otherwise, it will simply be left on. And some Windows 11 users will likely fall into the trap of not understanding what the tick box option means during setup and just end up with Recall on by default.
This is not the way a feature like this should operate – particularly given the privacy concerns highlighted here – and we’ve made our feelings on this quite clear before. Anything with wide-ranging abilities like Recall should be off by default, surely – or users should have a very clear choice presented to them during setup. Not some kind of weird ‘tick this box, jump through this hoop later’ kind of shenanigans.
Cocreator will run locally on Copilot+ PCs and make use of the more powerful NPUs (Neural Processing Units) on these devices to generate images based on text prompts that you provide. The current Paint app does have an AI-powered Image Creator feature, but it’s not the same as Cocreator.
Cocreator is different because it will work locally on your computer and won’t need to go online to tap the computing power to generate images. Furthermore, it’ll produce images faster than Image Creator, although the latter isn’t being dropped – the two options will run side-by-side.
The new feature was demonstrated by Microsoft on a Surface Pro, showing the presenter putting in a prompt and drawing a basic outline of what they wanted the image to look like. Cocreator then used this information to generate the image based on the rough shapes that were drawn.
(Image credit: Microsoft)
Cocreator is also shown to have a ‘Style’ dropdown menu, presumably to choose the style you’d like the image to be generated in, and a ‘Creativity’ slider.
Increasing that Creativity slider produces a higher quality image filled in with a greater level of detail, with the AI exercising its abilities more, whereas towards the lower end of the scale, the generated image sticks more closely to the rough sketch provided by the user.
The ability to experiment with styles in the Photos app
The Photos app in Windows 11 is also getting an AI boost on Copilot+ PCs in the form of a feature named ‘Restyle Image.’ This enables you to transform your own photos with preset artistic styles, for example taking a photo of your pet and making it an anime-style picture.
There is a text box where you can enter prompts to give the feature your own specific instructions about what kind of style you’d like it to transform your photo into, and a ‘Creativity’ slider that apparently works similarly to the one in Cocreator.
One interesting aspect that was picked up on by Windows Latest is that there doesn’t appear to be a fixed number of credits limiting the amount of times you’re able to use either feature. Both Cocreator and the ‘Restyle Image’ capabilities can be run as many times as you like locally on your PC using small language models.
Both features will also require the PC to have a processor with a suitable NPU, so they won’t be available on all Windows PCs, including existing devices running Windows 11. This will be for laptops using the new Snapdragon X chip only, or other Copilot+ PCs with future AMD or Intel silicon.
For those keen on AI assistance, this is good news, as are the other AI tools Microsoft is introducing to Windows 11. It’ll make things that were unimaginable to most people not all that long ago easily accessible with a few clicks without even going online.
If you’re not a fan of AI-powered apps, then I can imagine this news will simply be a continuation of issues you may have with AI getting everywhere these days.
Either way, it doesn’t seem like Microsoft is going to be remotely discouraged from forging on this path, and it will continue to try and push to become the industry standard for AI-focused consumer products.
Chrome extensions are a great way to enhance internet browsing, but some of them may be slowing down your browser. The development team behind DebugBear, a web page optimizing service, analyzed 5,000 extensions to see how they impacted Google Chrome. According to their findings, some can cause longer load times on websites although it depends how data is processed. Certain ones are better than others.
DebugBear states extensions that process data “before a page has rendered will have a much worse impact on user experience.” VPNs seem to be among the worst at this, with some causing a full second of delay. It makes sense why load times would be particularly bad with a VPN as they “route traffic through an intermediary server.” Other extensions that may cause long load times include Trancy AI Subtitles and Klarna Pay Later.
Extensions that run their code “after the page has loaded” can also impact Chrome, but to a seemingly lesser extent. Processing times can result in web page slowdown as the software strains the hardware, but not always. The Monica AI Assistant, for instance, was discovered to add “1.3 seconds of processing time;” however, it actually reduces page load speeds. This is because extensions like Monica run “as soon as the page starts loading.”
Page interactions
Even if an extension doesn’t create slow load times, it may cause slow page interactions, meaning that clicking around on a website may not feel snappy. Avira Password Manager reportedly adds a “160 millisecond delay when clicking on… random content [headings]”. Granted, 160 milliseconds is less than half a second, but we can’t help but wonder if the delays add up.
Let’s say, for example, you have seven extensions, each individually adding a 160 millisecond delay. Now, imagine if all those delays turn into a big performance drop. That’s an entire second of delay added to a webpage. Is this possible? To be honest, we don’t know as DebugBear doesn’t state whether or not the delay of these tools can accumulate.
What is true is that most ad-blockers can improve your browsing experience. Websites with tons of ads directly cause a slowdown, and without an ad-blocker, DebugBear found the average CPU processing time on ad-heavy websites was 57 seconds. With uBlock Origin installed, the time drops “down to just under 4 seconds,” saving your computer precious power.
uBlock Origin appears to be one of the best ad-blockers you can add to Chrome alongside Malwarebytes and Privacy Badger. AdBlock Plus is one of the worst, as it takes up a lot of processing time – over 40 seconds.
What you can do
So, if you’re a frequent Chrome user experiencing a browser slowdown with extensions installed, there isn't much you can do to remedy the issue. Fixing extensions ultimately falls on the developers who made them. But there are a couple of things you can do to help.
First, the easiest thing you can do is uninstall the offending tool or restrict it to only enable on certain sites. DebugBear also recommends using their Chrome Extension Performance Lookup tool to help you find the best, lightweight extensions for the browser.
Be sure to check out TechRadar's list of the best ad blockers for 2024. uBlock Origin is the best one, but there are other great options out there.
Google has unveiled its latest video-generation AI tool, named Veo, at its Google I/O live event. Veo is described as offering “improved consistency, quality, and output resolution” compared to previous models.
Generating video content with AI is nothing new; tools like Synthesia, Colossyan, and Lumiere have been around for a little while now, riding the wave of generative AI's current popularity. Veo is only the latest offering, but it promises to deliver a more advanced video-generation experience than ever before.
Donald Glover invited Google to his creative studio at Gilga Farm, California, to make a short film together. (Image credit: Google)
To showcase Veo, Google recruited a gang of software engineers and film creatives, led by actor, musician, writer, and director Donald Glover (of Community and Atlanta fame) to produce a short film together. The film wasn't actually shown at I/O, but Google promises that it's “coming soon”.
As someone who is simultaneously dubious of generative AI in the arts and also a big fan of Glover's work (Awaken, My Love! is in my personal top five albums of all time), I'm cautiously excited to see it.
Eye spy
Glover praises Veo's capabilities on the basis of speed: this isn't a deletion of human ideas, but rather a tool that can be utilized by creatives to “make mistakes faster”, as Glover puts it.
The flexibility of Veo's prompt reading is a key point here. It's capable of understanding prompts in text, image, or video format, paying attention to important details like cinematic style, camera positioning (for example, a birds-eye-view shot or fast-tracking shot), time elapsed on camera, and lighting types. It also has an improved capability to accurately and consistently render objects and how they interact with their surroundings.
Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis demonstrated this with a clip of a car speeding through a dystopian cyberpunk city.
The more detail you provide in your prompt material, the better the output becomes. (Image credit: Google)
It can also be used for things like storyboarding and editing, potentially augmenting the work of existing filmmakers. While working with Glover, Google DeepMind research scientist Kory Mathewson explains how Veo allows creatives to “visualize things on a timescale that's ten or a hundred times faster than before”, accelerating the creative process by using generative AI for planning purposes.
Veo will be debuting as part of a new experimental tool called VideoFX, which will be available soon for beta testers in Google Labs.
The last few weeks have been plagued with bugs and oddities for users who updated their Mac devices to macOS Sonoma 14.4, including a particularly thorny issue that functionally broke a lot of users' USB hubs. A new update, macOS 14.4.1, has just been released to address the most notorious issues – so you’ll want to update your system as soon as possible.
According to TweakTown, the update was released yesterday to the public and will resolve an issue that affected USB hubs connected to the monitors people were using with their Macs. Discussions on Reddit threads and Apple’s support forums indicated that while the problem might not have been incredibly widespread, it was still affecting a decent number of people.
While Apple hasn’t released any formal statements about the issues, it’s good to see Apple swoop in and provide a quick, no-frills solution for the issue. The new update doesn’t offer any new features besides the bug fixes, so if you’re worried about possibly catching another macOS bug from it you can assume there’s likely nothing else to go wrong with such a targeted fix.
Call the exterminator!
Sonoma 14.4 hasn’t just been plaguing users' USB hubs, it’s been taking down printers as well. While the printer issue hasn’t been reported as widely as the USB breakdown, it’s still another unwelcome bug that arrived courtesy of the update.
The update has also been reported to be deleting previously saved versions of files in users’ iCloud Drives, effectively deleting people’s backups if they moved files out of iCloud. Normally, when you save your files in iCloud Drive all the edited versions of your file are saved for future reference, but thanks to yet another bug in Sonoma 14.4 these previous versions could be erased – which might mean all your work is gone.
Hopefully, another upcoming update will address these issues alongside the USB hub bug, but we’ll have to wait and see if that is the case. There’s no indication so far that the new update deals with all the currently reported issues – but you’re better off updating your system just in case.
Windows 11’s next major update is coming close to completion, and in fact it’s rumored that it’ll hit its final stage of development very shortly – though its launch for all users will still be a good way down the line (we’ll come back to that).
As well-known Microsoft leaker Zac Bowden shared on X (formerly Twitter), Windows 11 24H2 is on track to hit RTM (release to manufacturing) in April.
For those asking, Windows 11 Version 24H2 (ge_release) is scheduled to RTM in AprilWill ship first on Arm hardware starting in JuneWill hit GA for everyone in September/OctoberFebruary 8, 2024
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What this means is that the 24H2 update is ready to go to PC manufacturers so that they can work on installing it on their devices. In other words, Windows 11 24H2 is all but done at this point, save for final testing and changes that might need to be applied if PC makers run into any last-minute stumbling blocks.
Bowden mentions the ‘ge_release’ which refers to Germanium, a new platform that Windows 11 is built on with 24H2. While this won’t make any difference to the visible parts of the OS, under the hood, Germanium will offer tighter security and better overall performance.
With RTM for 24H2 happening in April, in theory, the plan is that it’ll take two months to finalize the new Windows 11 Germanium build, and it will be installed on ARM-based AI PCs when they start shipping in June.
Analysis: Clarifying the 24H2 release timeline
Note that as Bowden outlines on X, this does not mean Windows 11 24H2 (Germanium) will be released for everyone in June.
It will only be out on ARM-based laptops running Snapdragon X Elite chips (or variants) initially – like the consumer spin on the Surface Pro 10 or Surface Laptop 6. Which is why only the business models were unveiled recently – they have Intel CPUs that don’t need Germanium. Whereas the Germanium platform is actually required for these new ARM chips – which have been stoking a great deal of excitement – so this is why Microsoft is pushing it out ahead of time so as not to hold up those notebooks any longer than necessary.
As Bowden makes clear in a later tweet, Windows 11 24H2 won’t actually be ‘done’ until August, so the leaker suspects Microsoft wants to limit where Germanium is present until then.
What we can surmise from this is that while Windows 11 24H2 will be out on those mentioned AI PCs as early as June (if everything stays on schedule), not all of 24H2’s full library of features will be enabled – presumably.
Whatever the case, the full rollout of Windows 11 24H2 to all users won’t happen until after it’s fullydone in August, meaning a September or October rollout to all Windows 11 users. This is the timeframe Microsoft is working to based on rumors that go back to the start of this year, in fact.
The long and short of it is that while Windows 11 24H2 may be ready for RTM next month and on the cusp of finalization technically, it won’t fully arrive until September (at the earliest). And the rollout will be phased as ever, so you might not get it on your particular Windows 11 device until several months after, which is all standard practice.
Spotify recently released the new “Jam” feature for its Windows 11 and 10 app, which allows users to listen to the same playlist or album at the same time on different devices. So you and a friend or coworker can enjoy the same tunes while you work, study, or just jam out (hence the name). However, with this new feature, the queue list has been booted to a small space on the right side of the app's UI.
Please, please change it back. This is the opposite of an improvement.
foryoublue94 via Spotify Forum
This change has proven to be rather unfavorable among Spotify users, who’ve taken to Reddit to voice their complaints. The official blog post that announces the arrival of Jam dubs this change as the “new Queue experience”, explaining that the right sidebar now allows you to browse content in the app and keep an eye on what's currently playing.
The official post has several disgruntled comments from users dismayed by the change, with one user saying “Why on earth has Queue and Recently Played been moved and is now cramped into the small right-hand column? This is just horrible, and a pain to look at. It makes zero sense from a usability standpoint.
Thanks, I hate it
You may be thinking something along the lines of what an odd little change for people to be riled up about! Pre-update, you could have your library on the left, your queue in the center, and your Now Playing view on the right. In other words, you could boot up the app and have everything you need all in one place. Now, you can only have one or two of these views open at once because of the new layout.
If you’re someone who’s a fan of the Jam feature and plans to use it quite often with your mates, you’re probably not as upset as other users. But, as a person who will probably never use the Jam feature, I feel robbed of a pretty decent app layout with nothing in return. Now, I am no longer able to see how long the current song is or the album name in the queue.
It seems like Spotify users live in fear of every new update that is implemented. A common notion that’s shared on Spotify Reddit and in the blog post comments is ‘another Spotify update, another change no one asked for.’ I use Spotify every day, and I can’t remember a single update implemented to the app on mobile and desktop that didn’t make me mad. Hopefully, we can convince Spotify to change everything back to how it was – or we'll just end up waiting until another update comes around and knocks everything out of place again.
We're always keeping an eye on the early preview versions of Windows 11 to see what's coming down the pipe, and so we're pleased to see two small but useful fixes on the way that should be rolling out to everyone soon.
First up, at long last it looks as though Microsoft will add the option to hide the news feed from the widgets box. This has been enabled in build 26058 (via XDA Developers), so you can check up on the weather or sports scores without being bombarded by the latest headlines from across the web.
The new view is simply called My Widgets, and the thinking is that it may have been introduced in part to appease EU regulators – regulators who are keen to give users as much flexibility as possible. Based on the Dev and Canary channels of Windows 11 though, this tweak will be available worldwide.
You can access widgets by clicking the widgets icon on the taskbar. It should be to the left of the other icons, and might already be showing some dynamic information (like the weather or a traffic alert) – otherwise it's a white rectangle next to a blue rectangle.
Clearer cutting, copying, and pasting
(Image credit: Microsoft)
Second, and sticking with Build 26058 (via MSPowerUser), Windows 11 is adding text labels to the cut, copy, and paste icons that appear when you right-click in File Explorer. If you've ever squinted at this pop-up menu to try and figure out exactly where to click, you'll know how useful these labels will be.
Of course, you can still use the familiar keyboard shortcuts if you prefer, but for those of us going through the context menus in File Explorer, this should make a significant difference – and avoid files being moved or copied to the wrong place.
For more details, you can check out Microsoft's blog post on the latest update. Other features to look out for include a new crosshairs mode for the cursor (see above), which is intended to help low vision users select items more accurately.
As always, Microsoft's plans can change, and features that appear in preview versions of Windows don't always make it out to everyone. However, these fixes seem to have a good chance of making it so we're looking forward to seeing them appear.
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