The Belkin division responsible for developing the excellent Phyn Plus smart water shut-off valve has been acquired by an investor group led by contractor and TV personality Jonathan Scott (HGTV’s Property Brothers). The announcement is the latest sign that Belkin, which brought the Phyn Plus to market back in 2018, is rapidly losing interest in developing new smart home products following its own acquisition by Foxconn. Belkin has already discontinued many of its Wemo-brand smart home products, and it “paused” its efforts to develop Matter-compatible products in early 2023. We’ve praised both the first- and second-generation Phyn Plus devices for their ability to not only warn homeowners of leaky or burst pipes, but to automatically take action to shut off a home’s main water supply to prevent the catastrophic damage that can result. In an exclusive telephone interview with Scott and Phyn CEO Ryan Kim late last week, Scott described himself as a “technology nut” and expressed his admiration for the Phyn Plus, which he said he’d previously installed in his own home as well as in a guest house and in his parents’ home. Celebrity contractor and TV personality Jonathan Scott is leading a group of investors buying Phyn from Foxconn’s Belkin.Scott Brothers Global “One of the benefits of being on the air for as long as we have is that when something feels ‘off’ to me, I have to dig in. My brother [Drew Scott] once spent $3,000 to put in a water leak-detection system in his own home, but if it detected a leak and shut off your water, you had to be there to turn it back on. There was nothing like Phyn at the time.” Asked why more consumers haven’t already installed products like the Phyn Plus, Scott replied “Sometimes you can tell people all the benefits in the world that a product has to offer, but they still don’t see the value.” Scott continued: “People hate to spend money on what they don’t see, but eliminating the risk of a flood [caused by a pinhole leak or a burst pipe] is so worth it. [My family has] already recouped 10 times the value of the Phyn devices we’ve installed just based on the kids leaving the tap on or a toilet handle getting stuck. The Phyn Plus is one of the greatest kept secrets that no one knows about.” The Phyn Plus leak detection and smart water shut-off valve also tracks household water consumption patterns.Michael Brown/Foundry Phyn CEO Ryan Kim said the acquisition “will unlock not only massive awareness in the consumer space but also increased adoption by the insurance industry.” Given the average cost of a water damage claim stemming from a leaking or burst pipe is around $12,500, many insurance companies already offer policy discounts to homeowners who install water leak detections systems with smart shut-off valves, such as the Phyn Plus and Moen Flo. Scott believes the insurance industry will eventually move beyond just offering homeowners incentives to install such products. “I think in a matter of years,” he said, “all insurance companies will require this type of leak detection and smart water shut-off [as a condition of coverage].” Phyn has revenue streams beyond selling its hardware, according to Kim. “Phyn is not just a hardware company.” he said “It’s also a data company. There’s value in the data we’ve collected from the 2.5 billion [water-related] events we’ve collected. The data is anonymized—we don’t track individual homes—but we can see trends on a regional basis, which can help insurance companies and utilities understand trends to offer better services. It’s exciting for me that this powerhouse group came together.” In addition to Scott, the investor group acquiring Phyn includes Intuit founder and Quicken developer Tom Proulx, who will serve as an advisor and board member; Silicon Valley venture capitalist and Microsoft board member David F. Marquardt; and Allen Sands, founder of Icon Builders, a construction company focused on renovating affordable housing. Terms of the deal were not made public as of this writing, but we’ll update the story if we receive additional information. Read...

AUCKLAND, 23 May 2025: Transport technology services company EROAD Limited (NZX/ASX: ERD) attaches a copy of the FY25 Governance Roadshow presentation that will be presented to a number of investors and stakeholders in the coming weeks Read...

Immersive has launched a new SaaS cybersecurity training suite to help industrial teams tackle rising threats in operational technology environments. Read...

Thermal paste, the heat-transferring goop that goes between a computer chip and whatever you’re using to cool it down, is boring. Does it work? Is it efficient? That’s all I care to know. But PCWorld’s Adam Patrick Murray, veteran technology journalist and scent savant, has been hunting scented thermal paste for years. He found it at Computex 2025. ID-Cooling is the vendor, Frost X55 is the paste. It’s being offered in five different scents: Luna, Viola, Bella, Poma, and unscented. If you want to watch Adam shove little capsules of smelly chemicals under his nose, see below for the video. Enjoy. The specific “flavors” of scent aren’t often hitting the mark. “I don’t mean to be mean, it’s not a bad scent, but it kinda smells like diapers,” said Adam when sniffing the Viola flavor, which is supposed to be floral. “No, no, no, no, no, a clean diaper, let me clarify! A clean diaper is what it smells like, not a dirty diaper!” ID-Cooling will be selling the paste in the usual squeeze tubes. But I wonder how much of the scent will actually make its way into the room after you’ve used it in a desktop PC. “I’d be willing to pay extra for comparable, or maybe even less performance, just to get this scent in my house,” says Adam. For more live coverage of Computex, be sure to subscribe to PCWorld on YouTube and check out our weekly podcast The Full Nerd. Read...

Microsoft has begun testing a new power-saving technology within Windows, as well as assigning AI actions to a right-click menu within File Explorer. Microsoft is also tweaking the way in which widgets are laid out, letting Copilot handle the decisions itself. Microsoft published the changes as part of the Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26120.4151 (Beta Channel) and Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26200.5603 (Dev Channel), which share many of the same features. By testing these features, Microsoft doesn’t necessarily have to commit to eventually rolling them out, although many appear to be under consideration for a more general release. Under the hood, Microsoft said that it’s testing out what it calls User Interaction-Aware CPU Power Management, “an OS-level enhancement that helps reduce power consumption and extend your battery life.” Laptops can drop into various power states, such as idle or hibernate; this appears to be slightly different. “After a period of inactivity on your PC, Windows now conserves power by automatically applying efficient power management policies, Microsoft says. But it’s difficult to say when this will happen, how sharp the decline in performance and power will be, and how much your laptop’s battery life will improve as a result. Microsoft does promise that when you begin working again, your device will regain full performance. Microsoft is also applying “Click To Do” assignments to File Explorer. Right-click a file, and you may see options for Bing Visual Search, Blur Background, Erase Objects, and Remove Background. Click to Do in File Explorer within Windows.Microsoft Essentially, what Microsoft is doing is using these right-click commands as a macro of sorts. Right-click a file and select “Blur Background,” for example, and Windows will open the Photos application, use AI to distinguish the subject from the background, and then blur the background. “Bing Visual Search” will “open” the file and then visually search for it, using Bing. Only JPEG and PNG files are supported. We will add Microsoft 365 files and actions over the coming weeks, summarizing files (without even opening them explicitly!) and creating FAQs. A Copilot-generated file summary.Microsoft Although the file name should serve as its summary, hovering over a shared file and seeing what it includes could be rather handy. How do you feel about widgets? I tend to forget that they’re hiding behind the small weather icon to my lower left. But if you do click them, several suggested stories and small apps open up. In this case, you might see a relatively mammoth block open up, as Copilot begins suggesting either stories or packages of stories. Here’s the way that will look: Microsoft’s new Copilot-authored design in Widgets.Microsoft This Copilot Discover view can be toggled on and off. Microsoft is also testing some smaller changes: Snipping Tool: Although WIN+SHIFT+S launches the Snipping tool, a new feature — Text Extractor — is receiving its own shortcut, WIN+SHIFT+T. Windows Share: When sharing documents, you can specify the image quality (affecting the size of the image) as either High, Medium, or Low Quality. Microsoft Taskbar Search: Microsoft will tell you whether a searched document is in the cloud or on your PC. Quick Settings: The accessibility settings now come with text descriptions. Developer settings are now available, under Settings > System > Advanced. Read...

Red Hat launches a technology preview of Edge Manager, a new console to streamline management and security of large, distributed edge device fleets. Read...

If you hang out on hardware subreddits long enough, you’ll hear the joke “Nvidia -$50” tossed around about AMD’s long-held Radeon pricing strategy. Well, AMD managed to buck that trend today, in the mainstream segment where pricing matters most. AMD revealed the Radeon RX 9060 XT during the company’s Computex keynote – and it priced the 16GB model at $349. That not only undercuts Nvidia’s avoid-at-all-costs 8GB RTX 5060 Ti by $30, but it means the 16GB 9060 XT is a whopping $80 cheaper than Nvidia’s actually-pretty-good 16GB 5060 Ti. Hot damn. Competition is back on the menu y’all! A quick peek at the Radeon RX 9060 XT’s high-level specs show that it’s available in both 8GB and 16GB configurations (more on the 8GB version below). With 32 RDNA 4 Compute Units, the 9060 XT’s GPU packs half those found in its bigger brother, the $549+ Radeon 9070 series. By pricing the 16GB Radeon RX 9060 XT so aggressively, it lets AMD show why 8GB of memory isn’t enough in 2025. The only performance-comparison slide shared with press compares the 16GB Radeon against the 8GB RTX 5060 Ti (which, again, costs more). AMD claims the Radeon tested an average of 6 percent faster across a suite of 40 games, with wins in individual games hitting up to 30 percent faster. Closely note that the testing was performed at the more memory-intensive 1440p resolution here – the numbers would no doubt be closer if AMD’s graphics card was compared against Nvidia’s 16GB version. The 9060 XT also hangs tough with the 8GB 5060 Ti in Ultra Raytracing games – typically an Nvidia strength. Here, the expanded memory capacity shines even more, driving up to 62 percent higher performance in its peak example. (Ray tracing gobbles up memory.) Speaking of ray tracing, as we saw with the Radeon RX 9070 series, AMD seriously updated its ray tracing chops this generation – at least on games with basic ray tracing features. In games with more intensive ray tracing features, including path-traced games like Cyberpunk 2077 overdrive mode and Black Myth Wukong, AMD’s RDNA 4 architecture struggled, languishing far behind Nvidia. AMD attacked the problem head-on at Computex, announcing “FSR Redstone” (Minecraft Mumbo Jumbo fans rise up). This technology takes a multi-step approach to improving visuals and performance in AI tasks, as you can see in the slides above. If it proves successful, Nvidia’s undoubted lead in ray tracing could be under assault (though Nvidia’s vaunted DLSS 4 already works in advanced versions of these features). Look for FSR Redstone to arrive sometime in the second half of 2025. It’s not the only new Radeon performance-boosting FSR tech coming: AMD says 40 games will support FSR 4 with frame generation when it launches on June 5, with the Radeon RX 9060 series. Finally, AMD also revealed its RTX 5060 competitor. The 8GB Radeon RX 9060 XT will cost $299 when it launches alongside the 16GB model on June 5. In case you don’t remember, Nvidia buried RTX 5060 reviews because 8GB of memory simply isn’t enough in 2025, even for 1080p gaming. That’s still true, even with the Radeon RX 9060 XT 8GB. That being said, if the 8GB version of AMD’s new graphics card still manages to outpace the RTX 5060 at the same price, it could be a great value proposition for people who focus on esports or don’t mind turning down graphics in the latest games. Hopefully AMD provides press with 8GB versions of the Radeon RX 9060 XT for review – unlike Nvidia. (Seriously, don’t buy the RTX 5060 right now.) If not, avoid the 8GB version until independent reviews arrive. Read...

Technology and AI are transforming HR in 2025, shifting it from a back-office role to a strategic function vital for organisational success. Read...

ANPR cameras would charge fees for using busy roads during peak times. Read...

Sometimes AI just feels overwhelming, like it’s another thing to manage. Google, however, is announcing a couple of features within Gmail that will use AI to actually simplify your life. At PCWorld, we’ve written numerous articles on ways to clean out your Gmail inbox. There’s nothing worse than seeing a notification that your cloud storage is out of space, and trying to decide whether to take the time to clean it out (and risk losing something!) or pay more for additional space. And cleaning it out is no fun at all, either. What email should stay? What should go? Trying to decide what’s important or not is a headache, but then trying to navigate through the Gmail interface is a pain. That’s why I’m honestly excited that Google plans to apply Gemini to the job. In a blog post by Yulie Kwon Kim, vice-president of product at Google Workspace, Google said at its Google I/O conference that Gemini is being added to Gmail to help clean up your inbox. “Simply tell Gemini what you want to do (e.g., ‘Delete all of my unread emails from the Groomed Paw from last year’) and watch as it helps you manage and declutter your inbox with a single click.” I don’t think it will be as easy as all that; you’ll still have to decide what stays and what goes. But Google uses a good example here, and you can simply apply tips from our previous stories about looking for and deleting emails with large attachments, and so on. Gemini should work on your Android phone (you do have an Android phone, right?) and Gmail, so that you can probably clean up your inbox while chilling out on the couch. Gmail’s also expanding its predictive capabilities, adding personalized smart replies that use your tone, phrasing, and knowledge of your inbox. Google’s demonstration of the technology offered responses of several sentences, which is always a bit risky. You’ll want to monitor these. On the other hand, Google is also trying to make it easier to coordinate your schedule, offering suggestions for open times and sharing a booking page, if you have one. (Honestly, that’s a lot of why we exchange emails these days, it seems.) All of these features will be available next quarter — sometime in the fall, in other words. It’s one of the few times I can say that I honestly can’t wait. Read...