Month: May 2018

Enlarge (credit: VirtualWolf)

If you put your system into the Windows Insider program so that you could get your hands on the April 2018 Update (aka Redstone 4), but don't want to move on to the preview of the next release (Redstone 5), it's time to drop out of the Insider program altogether or switch to the Release Preview channel.

For most of the development cycle, the two main Insider rings—Fast and Slow—offer builds of the next version of Windows. However, there's a short window within the development cycle where Microsoft offering the current build. We're in that window right now: the Fast and Slow rings are both now on build 17134. This build has been deemed the stable build and hence was released on Monday, before beginning its wider distribution next Tuesday.

If you opt out of the Slow and Fast rings right now, your system will simply pick up the regular stable Windows updates as they're released each month. If you wait too long, however, you'll soon receive a Redstone 5 build. From there, the only way to revert to a stable build will be either to roll back the installation entirely—which normally works—or reinstall from scratch. The Release Preview ring, in contrast, will continue to track stable Redstone 4 releases for the next five or so months, up until the point that Redstone 5 is ready for release.

Enlarge / Romaine lettuce stalks (credit: Getty | Justin Sullivan)

A savage strain of E. coli spread on romaine lettuce has killed its first victim in an outbreak that now grips 25 states, sickening at total of 121 people.

The California Department of Public Health confirmed to Ars that a resident had died from an illness linked to contaminated romaine lettuce grown in the Yuma region. “Due to patient privacy laws, we cannot provide further details,” the department said in a statement. But it added that the death was among 24 cases of illnesses in the state linked to the salad staple.

The Yuma region produces the lion’s share of romaine lettuce and other leafy greens for the whole of the US during the winter months. Production shifts northward to California’s Central and Salinas Valleys in March to early April. Therefore, the lettuce you see on grocery store shelves now is likely not from Yuma, and new reports of cases are likely due to reporting lags.

HMD

HMD has announced that the Nokia 6.1 smartphone is now officially available in the US for $269. This device was originally announced for other territories as the Nokia 6 (2018) in January, but somewhere along the line it got a name change. The phone also been trickling out to US retailers since April, but now HMD says this is the "official" launch, so stock should be readily available.

The Nokia 6.1 is an important smartphone because, well, how many other $200 to $300 devices can you name? In the US, there's this one, the Moto G6, the Xiaomi Mi A1, and that's about it. With more and more companies focusing mainly on the $800 to $1,000 price ranges, anything less than that immediately has our attention.