News from the web

Yes, it’s even more expensive than the Flo by Moen, but Phyn doesn’t charge extra to inform you how you’re using water.   PC World

Enlarge / School IT is old school. And still vulnerable to EternalBlue. (credit: PhotoAlto / Frederic Cirou / Getty Images) If you're wondering why ransomware continues to be such a problem for state and local governments and other public institutions, all you have to do to get an answer is poke around the Internet a little. ...   Ars Technica

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | amesy) Netflix and other online video services have expanded their customer-satisfaction lead over cable and satellite TV, the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) found in its annual telecommunications report released today. Streaming-video services averaged a score of 76 on the ACSI's 100-point scale, up from 75 last year. ...   Ars Technica

Enlarge / May 21, 2018: Lava erupts and flows from a K?lauea volcano fissure, near to the Puna Geothermal Venture (PGV) plant on Hawaii's Big Island near Pahoa, Hawaii. The plant, currently shut down in the wake of encroaching volcanic activity, provides electricity to around 25 percent of the island. ...   Ars Technica

Enlarge (credit: David Holt / Flickr) To avoid a replay of the problems faced by the Windows 10 October 2018 Update, version 1809, Microsoft has taken a very measured approach to the release of the May 2019 Update, version 1903, with both a long spell as release candidate and a much less aggressive rollout to Windows Update. That rollout starts today. ...   Ars Technica

Enlarge / David Sandberg will reprise his role as Kung Fury, a Miami detective with superpowers who travels through time to take out Hitler. (credit: YouTube/Laser Unicorns) Kung Fury is a ridiculously over-the-top short film that became an instant cult classic, racking up over 32 million views on YouTube since it debuted in 2015. ...   Ars Technica

Enlarge (credit: Huawei) The Trump administration is working to ban Huawei products from the US market and ban US companies from supplying the Chinese company with software and components. The move will have wide-ranging consequences for Huawei's smartphone, laptop, and telecom-equipment businesses. For the next 90 days, though, Huawei will be allowed to support those products. ...   Ars Technica

Microsoft appears to have pulled Huawei's Matebook X Pro from its online shelves, and Best Buy, too, has followed suit. Huawei phones and devices are still available from Amazon and Newegg as of this posting, however.Neither the Huawei Matebook X Pro nor the Huawei Matebook 13 appear on Microsoft's Store site, though at least the Matebook X Pro appeared previously, as the Verge noted. ...   PC World

Microsoft said Tuesday that it has begun making the Windows 10 May 2019 Update generally available, though the company said that it will take a “measured and throttled approachî toward rolling it out. ...   PC World

New Coke, Stranger Things-style Stranger Things season 3 is coming to Netflix this July 4, and it's going to be set in the year 1985. As a period detail, the show is going to make reference to New Coke, a disastrous 1980s effort from Coca-Cola to update its namesake drink. ...   Ars Technica

Enlarge / The Food and Drug Administration headquarters in White Oak, Md. (credit: Getty | Congressional Quarterly) The Food and Drug Administration allowed the maker of a faulty implantable heart device to secretly log 50,000 malfunction incidents, according to a series of investigations by Kaiser Health News. ...   Ars Technica

Enlarge / A false color synchrotron X-ray image of the fossil chemistry. Blue represents calcium in the bones, green is the element zinc, which has been shown to be important in the biochemistry of red pigment, and red is a particular type of organic sulfur that cannot be imaged by traditional methods. This type of sulfur is enriched in red pigment. ...   Ars Technica

Enlarge / The 2017 and 2018 15-inch MacBook Pros side by side. Each has a butterfly keyboard. (credit: Samuel Axon) In the second update to the current crop of MacBook Pros since they were released in July 2018, Apple this week has expanded the available CPU options for both the 13-inch and 15-inch models. ...   Ars Technica

The parts of the P30 Pro, courtesy iFixit. [credit: iFixit ] President Trump's Huawei ban is in full effect, and companies from all over the country are announcing they will no longer be doing business with Huawei. ...   Ars Technica

Sony's official video comparing performance of PS4 Pro vs next-gen PlayStation pic.twitter.com/2eUROxKFLq — Takashi Mochizuki (@mochi_wsj) May 21, 2019 Last month, Sony showed Wired a demo highlighting how the PS4's successor would utilize SSD storage to heavily improve load times over the PS4. ...   Ars Technica

Mozilla released Firefox version 67 on Tuesday, promising that the browser is 40 to 80 percent faster compared to a year ago. Firefox 67 also ships with a number of other new features, including amped-up Private Mode options and an intriguing GPU acceleration tool. ...   PC World

Nicole Beharie and Anthony Mackie star in 'Striking Vipers,' one of three new episodes in the upcoming fifth season of the Netflix anthology series Black Mirror. The long-awaited fifth season of Black Mirror debuts next month, and Netflix just released three—count 'em—new one-minute trailers to stoke fans' anticipation. ...   Ars Technica

Apple's MacBook Pro now features eight- and ninth-generation Intel Core procesors.   PC World

Enlarge (credit: Microsoft) Microsoft's Xbox chief Phil Spencer has written a paean to video gaming, calling games a unifying force that anyone and everyone can enjoy. He rejoices in gaming's ability to sustain communities, foster friendships, and even reduce stress and depression. ...   Ars Technica

Enlarge (credit: UpNorthMemories) Reconstructing crime scenes is more or less what most geoscientists do for a living. Sometimes the “whodunnitî revolves around a mass extinction event 66 million years ago, and sometimes it’s about an extreme weather pattern just last week. But as with a homicide investigation, geologists also have to consider natural causes. ...   Ars Technica

Enlarge (credit: Valentina Palladino) Greetings, Arsians! The Dealmaster is back with another round of deals today. Topping our list is a pre-Memorial Day doorbuster from Lenovo for a very popular ThinkPad machine. Now you can get the 5th-gen ThinkPad X1 Carbon, featuring an Intel Core i5-6200U processor, 8GB of RAM, and 512GB SSD for just $849. ...   Ars Technica

Enlarge / PlayStation Now currently offers 780 streaming games, and Sony promises to expand that catalog significantly going forward. In a wide-ranging investor presentation that focused on Sony's future gaming plans, Sony Interactive Entertainment President and CEO Jim Ryan echoed comments from companies like Google in saying, 'We believe the streaming era is upon us and is about to begin ...   Ars Technica

Enlarge / PANAMA CITY, Fla. - OCTOBER 19: Mark Mauldin hangs a sign near the front of his property expressing his dissatisfaction with his Verizon cell phone service following Hurricane Michael, which slammed into the Florida Panhandle on October 10. ...   Ars Technica

Video shot and edited by Justin Wolfson. Click here for transcript. Lucas Pope is an important name in modern gaming—not only did he help bring us Uncharted and Uncharted 2, but he's also responsible for the indie smash hit Papers, Please, which managed to pack a surprising amount of storytelling and emotion into what is effectively a document stamping simulator. ...   Ars Technica

Using a robot vacuum to care for your home not only makes you look cool, but adds some hands-free convenience to your cleaning routine. Of course, they can get a little pricey, but today you can get one of our favorites on a ludicrous sale. ...   PC World

Enlarge / The Stark children during happier times? (Back in April when the final season of Game of Thrones premiered in Belfast and no one else knew what was coming.) (credit: Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic for HBO) Like many workplaces, the Ars Orbital HQ has been filled with many Game of Thrones proclamations these last six weeks. ...   Ars Technica

Enlarge / Are you telling me you don't pack remote-detonation explosives, a dozen clips full of bullets, and a silenced pistol on your family kayak trip? Phantom: Covert Ops, a VR stealth game coming later this year to Oculus Quest and Oculus Rift, would like to have a word with your camping-trip organizer. ...   Ars Technica

The camera whirs into focus. Distorts. Whirs into focus again. Scanlines and static make the scene hard to process at first, but they slowly fade. There’s an astronaut here—Emma Fisher, one of your crew. She sounds worried. “That wasn’t good. SAM, run your self diagnostic procedure. What errors are you showing?îYou check, one memory module at a time. ...   PC World

Enlarge / Subtropical Storm Andrea, about 475km southwest of Bermuda, isn't much to look at. (credit: NOAA) On Monday evening, forecasters at the National Hurricane Center determined that a low pressure system in the Atlantic Ocean had sustained winds of 40mph, and therefore should be named Subtropical Storm Andrea. ...   Ars Technica

Amazon’s current one-day sale is one you don’t want to miss if you’re on the lookout for fresh PC gear. The online retailer is dropping prices on laptops, gaming headsets, mice, keyboards, and moreRemove non-product link. Some of these deals are up to 50 percent off, according to Amazon. ...   PC World

Universal Audio has released UAD Software v9.9 featuring the Capitol Chambers plug-in, the world's first authentic plug-in emulation of Capitol Studios' iconic underground echo chambers,... Read More   KVR Audio

Kazrog has updated the transformer saturation plugin True Iron to version 1.2.5. True Iron 1.2.5 is a maintenance update for True Iron 1.2.x, and is recommended for all users.... Read More   KVR Audio

HoRNet has released HoRNet SongKey MK3, the third version of HoRNet's key recognition tool. It can detect the chord being played and the song tempo. The new version also adds MIDI input... Read More   KVR Audio

Blue Cat Audio has released Blue Cat's DP Meter Pro 4.2, an update for their unique audio metering and side chaining plug-in. The new version comes with an updated zoomable graphical user... Read More   KVR Audio

Acousticsamples has released version 2.5 of the B-5 Organ. The new version contains a few internal fixes and optimizations, but more importantly, 2 new organ voicings. New organ... Read More   KVR Audio

Swar Systems, the Indian music software company, has just released iShala 3.0 on the App and Play Stores. iShala is designed to be a handy tool to play Indian music accompaniment for practice... Read More   KVR Audio

Klevgrand has updated Korvpressor to version 2.0. The original interaction concept is still there, but the GUI has gotten a facelift and the screen footprint is now more streamlined.... Read More   KVR Audio

Fracture Sounds has released Dulciano, a concert grand piano performed with Dulcimer hammers, for Kontakt. This unique hybrid instrument produces a similar timbre to a dulcimer... Read More   KVR Audio

Soundiron has announced the release of UFO 61, a classic '70s vintage synthesizer library for the full version of Kontakt 5.5.2 or later. UFO 61 is a vintage five-octave electronic... Read More   KVR Audio

Cherry Audio has updated Modular to v1.3.13, and is offering new bundles. Free Voltage Core Modules Owners of the Voltage Core package will find two new modules - for free... Read More   KVR Audio

Duck can pump, LFO, trance gate, rhythmize and more Devious Machines has announced the release of Duck, an instant sidechain pumper with custom curves, dual-band and triggering,... Read More   KVR Audio

HY-Plugins has updated HY-Delay4 to v1.1.21. Changes: Added dark skin mode. Some minor changes. Read More   KVR Audio

Venomode has updated all their plugins. This update fixes various bugs, removes false positives when scanning with Virus Total, and improves VST3 handling. All the updates... Read More   KVR Audio

xoxos has released version 2.0 of the free spectral resynthesizer resyn for Windows VST. Version 2.0 expands sample memory, analysis and resynthesis parameterization, allowing... Read More   KVR Audio

Synapse Audio has updated The Legend to version 1.3, with numerous improvements: ProTools AAX version added. 8-voice mode for higher polyphony. Host Tempo sync switch added for OSC... Read More   KVR Audio

iPhone, iPad / Tools / Audio Editing: If you're a musician who likes to learn new songs and techniques by listening to the same piece of music over and over but wish that the music could be played a little slower, then you'll enjoy Amazing Slow Downer. You can repeat any section of the music at...   440Software

iPhone, iPad / Education / Courses: This is the ad-free version with additional contents: 'Guitar Notes' 'Reading Guitar Sheet Music' It includes seventy lessons on the following contemporary music styles: Rock (15) Blues (15) Jazz (5) Funk (15) Latin Music (15) Fusion (5) Each lesson is...   440Software

iPhone, iPad / Education / Training: Warm Me Up! is the most comprehensive and varied vocal warm up tool available to today's singer. Tailored to your voice type, there are 50 vocal warm up exercises split over five different categories, specifically designed to guide you through a warm up that...   440Software

iPhone, iPad / Tools / Controllers: The Hohner MIDI SqueezeBox is a 31-button three-row diatonic Button Accordion CoreMIDI control surface for the iPad. The app doesn't produce any sound on it own, it is designed for playing hardware and software VST-style MIDI synthesizers via a CoreMIDI...   440Software

iPhone, iPad / Education / Sheet Music & Tablatures: +++ The sheet music & fake book reader / organizer for your iPad +++ This feature rich music score tool provides you with some unique capabilities: • intelligent layout of your scores as you play • no page turnings required and no...   440Software

iPhone, iPad / Education / Sheet Music & Tablatures: Music Notation is easy and fun when you use iWriteMusic! Have you ever been frustrated by Music Notation Apps because “They are too complicated to learn?' or ​“It takes forever to finish writing?â€Â? ​We've been...   440Software

iPhone, iPad / Tools / ToolBox: Measure the time of music, sounds and ambient noise Sound Control detects the ambient noises and sounds using the built-in microphone of the iPhone/iPod touch. If noises are detected over a selectable volume, the counter starts and it can be determined how long the...   440Software