Latest Gadgets News

President Joe Biden attended a White House meeting with CEOs of top artificial intelligence companies, including Alphabet's Google and Microsoft, on Thursday to discuss risks and safeguards as the technology catches the attention of governments and lawmakers globally. Biden, who "dropped by" the meeting, has also used ChatGPT, a White House official told Reuters.

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I Tried the Ninja Ice Cream Maker Everyone's Buzzing About. Here's How It Went - CNET

If your ice cream bill gets scary during summer, start making the sweet stuff at home with this easy appliance.

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The Best Horror Movies on HBO Max - CNET

It really doesn't get better than HBO Max's horror selection right now.

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iOS 16.5 Beta 4: A Look at Your iPhone's Potential New Features - CNET

These features aren't guaranteed, but beta testers can try them now.

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California's Guide to Solar Panels, Including Pricing and Incentives - CNET

Going solar in California could be worth it even with the state's new net metering rules.

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These Quick Tricks Add a Personal Touch to Your New Place - CNET

Spruce up your new apartment or home on the cheap with these tips and tricks.

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Latest Gadgets News

Amazon Great Summer Sale 2023 is currently live for Amazon Prime members in India. The new sale will be accessible to all users on May 5. This year, the sale brings discounts on a range of smartphones. The sale brings no-cost EMI options and exchange discounts on various smartphones in all price segments.

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Best Sonos Deals: Save on New Era 100 and 300 Speaker Bundles - CNET

Sonos speakers rarely go on sale, but there are some decent discounts right now on speaker sets, including bundles with the new Era 100 and Era 300 speakers.

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California's Guide to Solar Panels, Including Pricing and Incentives - CNET

Going solar in California could be worth it even with the state's new net metering rules.

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Latest Tech News

Amazon is rolling out a substantial Matter update by expanding support to more hardware, improving the compatibility between the smart home standard and Alexa.

A big part of the overall package is all the changes coming to the company’s Echo line. Starting today, the “second generation Echo, Echo Plus, and Echo Dot” speakers will upgrade into proper Matter controllers for your at-home network. 

The Echo (4th Gen) now supports the Thread protocol giving it another category of gadgets to control in addition to those on Wi-Fi, Zigbee, and Bluetooth Low Energy Mesh. 

Put everything together, you now have “over 100 million Echo devices across 20 models” supporting the smart home standard, according to a post on the Amazon Developer Blog. And to help out any newfound customers, the update will also allow people to “set up their Matter devices with iOS”.

The other half of the roll out involves smart home brand Eve Systems integrating its own products with Amazon’s platform. 

Eve systems adopts Matter standard

First, Eve Systems devices will now support the Matter standard as well as the Thread protocol, running contrary to the brand’s previous decisions of only operating with “certain smart home systems.” Additionally, Eve products being sold on Amazon will have a Works with Alexa (WWA) badge slapped on product listings. Gadgets with the WWA certification are confirmed to work with Alexa, promising to “deliver a great experience” with the digital assistant. 

The last update has Eve System is enabling Frustration Free Setup (FFS) to its Matter lineup. FFS, if you don’t know, is the Amazon's attempt at simplifying the “device setup experience”. 

For example, customers can ask the tech giant to enter Wi-Fi credentials into a Fire TV at checkout. That way, when the Fire TV gets to your house, it’s already set up and all you have to do is plug it in. With regards to Eve Systems, the first batch getting this feature consists of the Eve Energy smart plug, Eve Motion, and the Eve Door & Windows smart contact sensor.

The FFS upgrade will be released later this month, running contrary to the rest of the update. And when it does, those products will work right out of the box the moment they get turned on. 

Amazon states Eve Systems has plans to expand “FFS to all its Matter-enabled devices” seemingly hinting at another round, but didn’t give any further details. We asked Amazon for more information on the future release, and we will update this story if and when we hear back from the company.

In the meantime, don't forget to check out TechRadar’s list of the best cheap Amazon Echo deals for May 2023. 

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Remove Stubborn Pet Hair From Your Car With This Household Staple - CNET

Hate dog hair getting all over your car? This one hack can clean it fast.

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Latest Tech News

If you've taken advantage of Google Chrome's nifty tool that makes it the default browser for Windows — without even needing to open your PCs app settings! — we regret to inform you that Microsoft's most recent update introduces an annoying bug that seems to only go away if you switch your default back to Microsoft Edge. 

Weird, huh?

The April Windows update in question, KB5025221, has been causing no small amount of trouble for enterprise users, according to Gizmodo. 

Since July 2022, Google Chrome came with a function that would let you change your default browser with the click of a button, typically along the top end of the window, but also in the browser's settings menu as well. 

Since the April 2023 Windows update however, Windows enterprise customers have been having an especially tough time of things as the Windows Default App settings page reportedly opens up every time Chrome is opened, forcing the user to close the settings page.

"After today's cumulative update for Windows 10 and 11, 2023-04, every time I open Chrome the default app settings of windows will open," one frustrated user on the Microsoft support forums wrote. "I've tried many ways to resolve this without luck. This is happening to all 600 systems with the update."

Another user of the r/sysadmin subreddit found that just clicking on a link shortcut was enough to trigger the issue.

"If Chrome is set as the default browser clicking on the link shortcut wil[l] open the link in chrome, but also open the windows settings on the default apps," the user, azaaza0909, writes. Tellingly, they also note: "It doesn't happen if we change the default browser to edge."

The Windows update doesn't give much in the way of concrete details as to what it is fixing beyond saying up top that "This update addresses security issues for your Windows operating system."

It's not just enterprise users

(Image credit: Microsoft)

While enterprise users seem to be the most severely impacted by this bug, they aren't the only ones. Consumer versions of Windows 10 and Windows 11 also seem to have been impacted by the April update, though its impact is more annoying than actively frustrating.

For regular customers, the update seems to have disabled Google Chrome's ability to set the default browser through the browser itself. I can confirm that going into Chrome's settings and trying to set the default browser will force the Default App settings to open, but not actually change anything. You'd have to navigate down the app list, select Chrome, and at the top click the button that says Set Default.

After setting Google Chrome as the default browser, I tried to do the same thing through the Settings menu on Microsoft Edge. With Microsoft Edge though, clicking the Set Default button in the Default Browser menu did in fact reset the default browser to Edge.

So, is this a matter of Microsoft dinging its web browser rival? There's no way to assign that kind of motivation to a company of many thousands of people, but I'm inclined to believe that the issue with Default Browser-Gate isn't purely malice on Microsoft's part.

What's behind the bug? 

In order to set the default app on Windows the user just toggles a couple of switches and goes about their browsing journey, but behind the scenes, the record of which app is the default app for opening files with specific extensions (like .html) is recorded in the OS's registry file system. 

This is not the kind of thing you mess around with willy-nilly, since screwing up your registry settings can cause all kinds of havoc and even brick your Windows install. Google, meanwhile, would have to make edits to your OS registry files in order to set Chrome as the default web browsing app, and even though programs do this all the time when installing or uninstalling components, it's usually not as easy as a single button click outside of a Windows settings menu.

And while Google might have gotten away with its tool for several months, this is the kind of vector for security threats that will catch the attention of software security pros. 

Changing your default web browser from inside the browser itself isn't likely to pose any kind of threat, but good information and software security is preventative rather than reactive. So, Microsoft likely just determined that it needed to keep these kinds of registry changeable actions contained within Microsoft's own settings system, which is far more likely to be secure than some future version of Google Chrome.

This is probably what Microsoft is referring to when it writes in one of the few notes on the update that "This update addresses a compatibility issue. The issue occurs because of unsupported use of the registry."

As for why Edge can make the registry changes denied to Google? Well, Edge is Microsoft's product, so it is obviously going to be far more compatible and understood by the Windows OS developers themselves who can work together internally to create a safe way for its browser to do things normally requiring higher level privileges when attempted by a third-party app. This absolutely makes it easier to ensure security is being maintained since Microsoft is in control of both of the actors in the exchange.

Could Microsoft also be acting petty and making it just a teensy bit harder to use its competitor's product while making its own much easier as an alternative? Who's to say; it's not like Microsoft got into a very famous anti-trust battle with the US government (and lost!) over this exact issue of the company giving system-level preference to its own web browser over a competitor's, right? 

Given the increasing intensity of Microsoft's push to increase Edge adoption (including its increasingly grating attempts to get you to switch to its browser), at a minimum, the best you can say is that Microsoft wouldn't go out of its way to necessarily make it easier for Google to win the latest browser war. In the end, it's likely a little of column A, a little of column B, but this one is at least more defensible from a security perspective.

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Best 3D Printer Deals: 10 Fantastic Printers at the Best Prices - CNET

There are heavy discounts on 3D printers, if you know where to look.

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Level Up Your AirPods Pro Experience With These 13 Features - CNET

Apple's AirPods Pro are small but mighty. Here's how to unlock all they have to offer you.

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Slow Wi-Fi? Your Internet Provider May Be Throttling Your Speed. Here's How to Tell - CNET

If your internet is crawling, you might want to check this out.

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