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Enlarge / The far side of the Moon. No robotic spacecraft has ever made a soft landing here. (credit: NASA) China's space agency has taken a critical first step toward an unprecedented robotic landing on the far side of the Moon. On Monday, local time, the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation launched a Long March 4C rocket from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center. ...   Ars Technica

Enlarge / WASHINGTON, DC - JANUARY 26: Tesla's new Model 3 car on display is seen on Friday, January 26, 2018, at the Tesla store in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Salwan Georges/The Washington Post via Getty Images) (credit: Getty Images) On Saturday night Tesla CEO Elon Musk made a few announcements via Twitter about new options for the Tesla Model 3. ...   Ars Technica

Enlarge (credit: Apple) A small group of developers for Apple platforms has banded together to request new features and policies from Apple, and its members say they have ideas for ways to make it easier to make a living on the platform, Wired reports. ...   Ars Technica

Trailer for Who Is Arthur Chu? Some 50-plus years in, Jeopardy’s cultural impact seems definitive. The iconic game show has fans of all sorts: Drake listeners, scholars of classic cinema, local-pub-trivia diehards. ...   Ars Technica

Enlarge (credit: Lisa Cooper / Flickr) It’s not every day someone develops a malware attack that, with one click, exploits separate zero-day vulnerabilities in two widely different pieces of software. It’s even rarer that a careless mistake burns such a unicorn before it can be used. ...   Ars Technica

Enlarge / Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon), as seen on April 18, 2018. (credit: New America / Flickr) The Federal Communications Commission has taken preliminary steps to examine the actions of LocationSmart, a southern California company that has suddenly found itself under intense public and government scrutiny for allowing most American cell phones’ locations to be easily accessed. ...   Ars Technica

On May 13, 2005, Star Trek: Enterprise ended its four-season run with the controversial two-part finale, “These Are the Voyages… î The finale infamously brought in cast members from The Next Generation to tell the final chapter in Enterprise’s story, and it was viewed by some as a disrespectful and ignominious end to 18 almost-unbroken years of Trek on the small screen. ...   Ars Technica

Paradox hasn't been shy about the fact it's working on a new grand strategy game. It's been two years since Stellaris and Hearts of Iron IV, and despite the usual trickle of post-release DLC for each game it's felt like maybe time for something new. Paradox said as much in February, hinting we'd see more at Paradox Con—and that it would not be the long-awaited Victoria III. ...   PC World

Valentina Palladino NEW YORK—Upon walking into a gray, bricked-facade gallery in Manhattan's Chelsea area, color immediately flooded my eyes. LEGO chose an unassuming location to show off some of the more than 100 new sets coming out in time for the 2018 holiday season. ...   Ars Technica

Enlarge / A view of 597 5th Ave, where the New York City office of Cambridge Analytica is on the 7th floor, May 2, 2018 in New York City. (credit: Drew Angerer/Getty Images) Cambridge Analytica LLC, the American arm of the London-based data analytics firm of the same name, filed for bankruptcy in federal court in New York on Friday. ...   Ars Technica

Enlarge / Charging at night. (credit: Jordan Golson) A coalition of utilities and electric vehicle makers, including Tesla, filed a petition with a US Federal Appeals Court to force the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to reconsider its recent work to roll back auto emissions standards. ...   Ars Technica

Enlarge / Do you get it? It's the temperature at which a book burns. (credit: Michael Gibson / HBO) Warning: This post contains minor spoilers for HBO's Fahrenheit 451. Media and entertainment have been stripped of thought and reduced to quick dopamine hits. ...   Ars Technica

If last week was the week of E3 rumors, this is the week of delays. Phoenix Point, Metro: Exodus, and Skull & Bones were all pushed back this week, meaning the first few months of 2019 are already looking busy. ...   PC World

Say it with me: Finally. EVGA is bucking the trend and embracing the new normal by shipping the drivers for its new motherboards on a tiny flash drive instead.“No more driver DVDs in future EVGA motherboards including the new H370,î EVGA product management director Jacob Freeman tweeted late Thursday. “Instead you get the drivers on this small 8GB flash drive. ...   PC World

Enlarge / Congressman Mo Brooks wanted to know if scientists were including the influence of rocks falling into the ocean when they calculated sea level rise. A poll came out this week indicating that huge majorities of the US public think that the federal government isn't doing enough to protect the environment. ...   Ars Technica

Enlarge / This is not a pre-rendered cut scene. This is how Pixar-perfect Kingdom Hearts 3 looks in the middle of its zany action-RPG battles. (credit: Square Enix / Disney-Pixar) SANTA MONICA, California—Through Japanese interpreters, the director and co-director of Square Enix's Kingdom Hearts series introduced the first-ever playable version of Kingdom Hearts 3 by talking about the ...   Ars Technica

The first round of G-Sync HDR displays is almost here after nearly a year of delays and they look awesome, with a specification sheet that checks virtually every box a monitor nerd could dream of. ...   PC World

Smart thermostats are a great way to regulate your home's temperature and control your budget. Right now, two of our top-rated smart thermostats, the Ecobee4 Thermostat with Sensor and the third generation of the Nest Learning Thermostat in white, are both $200, $50 off their list prices on Amazon.To read this article in full, please click here   PC World

Carriers can make or break a phone release. As we’ve seen with Huawei’s debacle earlier this year, selling a new handset in the U.S. pretty much requires retail support of at least one major carrier, namely Verizon or AT&T, and generally both. And getting it isn’t always an easy task. ...   PC World

Plumes of water vapor on Europa? A lander could tell us much more. (credit: NASA/ESA/K. Retherford/SWRI) NASA is in various stages of planning two multi-billion dollar missions to Jupiter's intriguing, ice-covered moon of Europa. ...   Ars Technica

Sometimes people buy laptops for its trendy or sleek looks. A lot of times, however, a bigger concern is value. Today, there's a sleek Asus laptop on Amazon that covers both of those bases. The Asus VivoBook F510UA with an 8th-gen Intel Core i5 is just $479. This is the all-time low price for this laptop, which has been selling between $510 and $550 in recent months. ...   PC World

Enlarge / Treyarch's David Vonderhaar (left) and Dan Bunting speak at the CoDBLOPS4 reveal event. (credit: Sam Machkovech) LOS ANGELES—'Treyarch has never shied away from breaking away from convention. ...   Ars Technica

We’ve seen two attempts at a hybrid mechanical/membrane keyboard so far: Logitech’s G213 Prodigy with its “mech-domeî switch and Razer’s Ornata with its “mecha-membrane.î And I would’ve been happy if that were it, forever. Neither was that great, and it’s hard to convince me to buy an “upscaleî membrane keyboard when true mechanical keyboards are so cheap these days. ...   PC World

Buying a processor for a gaming rig isn’t as hard as it used to be. Now that AMD’s Ryzen and Intel’s 8th-gen CPUs debuted with more performance and cores than ever before, it’s hard to buy a stinker these days—especially since most games favor graphics firepower over CPU oomph. ...   PC World

Enlarge / Elon Musk speaking to a crowd in Los Angeles On Thursday evening in Los Angeles, Tesla, SpaceX, and Boring Company CEO Elon Musk laid out plans for The Boring Company to start building longer tunnels under the city. The first step? A 2.7 mile north-south test tunnel parallel to one of the city's most congested freeways, the 405. ...   Ars Technica

Far better than ordinary power strips, these products will protect your expensive electronics from dangerous power spikes. We'll help you pick the right one for your home or small office.   PC World

This is the right choice for a 10-outlet surge protector with spacing that allows maximum deployment of plugs.   PC World

Enlarge Researchers said a team of hackers tied to North Korea recently managed to get the Google Play market to host at least three Android apps designed to surreptitiously steal personal information from defectors of the isolated nation. The three apps first appeared in the official Android marketplace in January and weren’t removed until March when Google was privately notified. ...   Ars Technica

As pre-E3 hype ramps up, fans have reason to anticipate new sequels and entries from their favorite game series. Today brings a surprise announcement of a brand-new Halo game—the kind of news you might expect as an E3-keynote surprise. ...   Ars Technica

Thomas Keesee (left) and Sahar Sarid (right) were arrested in Florida on Wednesday and await extradition to California. (credit: Palm Beach Sheriff's Office / Broward Sheriffs' Office) Two alleged owners of Mugshots.com—Sahar Sarid and Thomas Keesee—have been arrested in south Florida on a recently issued California warrant. ...   Ars Technica

Ivosight has updated Soundop Audio Editor, a Windows application for audio recording, editing, mixing and mastering, to version 1.5.2.0. Changes: Improved Compressor effect along with side-chain [Read More]   KVR Audio

AudioThing has updated Outer Space to version 1.2. Changes: Improved: All additional controls are now available in a drop-down panel. Improved: CPU performance on both Echo and Reverb sections. [Read More]   KVR Audio

Deskew Technologies has released version 2.3 of Gig Performer, its flagship cross-platform VST/AU audio plugin host for live performance touring and session musicians. Updates: The MIDIIn Block [Read More]   KVR Audio

HoRNet has announced the release of ThirtyOne, a single package that includes a spectrum analyzer and a graphic equalizer, both have the standard 31 one third octave bands. This pair of tools [Read More]   KVR Audio

Solid State Logic has released version 6.0 of its SSL Native Plug-ins, which includes: Channelstrip, Bus Compressor, Vocalstrip, Drumstrip, X-Phase, X-EQ, X-Comp, X-ValveComp, and X-Saturator. [Read More]   KVR Audio

Bram Bos has released Perforator, a Rhythmic Gate Mask Effect for iOS priced at $3.99 in the App Store. Perforator lets you add rhythm to simple sustained sounds. It's a rhythmic gating audio [Read More]   KVR Audio

New Loops has released a new sound bank for u-he Zebra. Empyrean features 116 Zebra presets, 22 custom oscillator presets, and 18 MSEG presets and makes good use of Zebra's new wavefolder and [Read More]   KVR Audio

MOD Devices has announced the launch of a new plugin purchasing plan inside its hardware platform. In addition to free plugins, MOD Duo users will now have access to paid plugins from audio [Read More]   KVR Audio

Fred Anton Corvest has released FAC Envolver, an envelope follower AUv3 for iOS. It's available in the App Store for $6.99. Summary: Detection of the contour of the input signal and output of [Read More]   KVR Audio

Sensomusic has updated Usine Hollyhock to v3.0.171. Improvements: New SDK 7.01.006. New recreateParam procedure. New ptBitwise parameter's type. Bugs: Inlets text settings don't work properly. [Read More]   KVR Audio

Universal Audio has announced the UAD-2 Live Rack for live sound engineers. UAD-2 Live Rack is a 16-channel MADI effects processor, allowing users to apply Realtime UAD Processing with MADI-enabled [Read More]   KVR Audio

Steinberg has announced that 'VST 2 coming to an end'. Here's what they say: Late 2013 we announced that the Software Development Kit (SDK) for VST 2 would no longer be maintained and would only [Read More]   KVR Audio

iPhone, iPad / Instruments / Synthesizers: Cube Synth is a groundbreaking new software instrument giving you the power and flexibility of additive synthesis together with easy editing and morphing capabilities. Macro parameters allow you to control this beast with unequalled ease. Intelligent...   440Software

iPhone, iPad / Instruments / Multi-Instruments: Idiotic is a fun, sound recording, pitch changing music keyboard for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. With lots of crazy built-in sounds and the ability to record your own, start making Idiotic music today! Slide the Pitch Control to make the...   440Software

iPhone, iPad / Tools / Controllers: touchAble is THE controller app for Ableton Live. 'A controller that rivals the Push in the hardware space, and almost completely leaves the competition behind in the app space.' DJ TECHTOOLS touchAble 3 offers a vast array of new and improved features and...   440Software

iPhone, iPad / Tools / Tuners: APTuner takes one of the most widely used chromatic tuners and places it in your mobile phone and tablet. Built around an improved version of our pitch recognition engine, APTuner allows you to quickly and accurately tune your instrument using your phone's built-in...   440Software

iPhone, iPad / Tools / Tuners: This app generates the audio signal of 6 channels. [Features] There are 4 types of waveform. (Sine, Triangle, Squire, Saw) It can adjust the volume of each channel (Input) and set OFF / ON that, and can change the 6-channel mixer volume the (Output) in the bottom...   440Software

iPhone, iPad / Education / Sheet Music & Tablatures: Sample app for Blues Masters #1. “...seeing [this] app made my jaw drop for the first time in a decade.â€Â? â€â€?HP Newquist, former Editor-in-Chief, GUITAR magazine An encyclopedia for all those eager to learn the basics of blues...   440Software

iPhone, iPad / Tools / Metronomes: Pulse is a sleek, minimalist, free pro metronome app with haptics and Bluetooth syncing for iPhone and Watch to help you keep a steady tempo and beat during practice. Simple, intuitive interface Tap for BPM Playlists Custom colors and click sounds Tempo...   440Software

iPhone, iPad / Education / Courses: Everyone can sing better with the 1st Gamified Learn to Sing Training Program for FREE! Sing Sharp helps you Learn+Practice, Train+Track, Anytime+Anywhere! Sing Sharp's What You See Is What You Singââ€û¢ technology detects and display your singing pitch...   440Software

iPhone, iPad / Tools / Controllers: This is a controller app for the Eventide H9 effects pedal.   440Software

iPhone, iPad / Tools / Analysis: Pitch Analyzer is a tool for analysing sound's absolute pitch. It detects any sounds input from mic,and analyse the sound's frequency, note name, MIDI number,and cent tolerance... It can help singers or music students to exercise perfect pitch, and help tuners or...   440Software