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• Fluance launches bookshelf and tower speakers
• The Ri71 and Ri91 retail for $399 and $799 respectively
• Bluetooth aptX HD, HDMI ARC, RCA, and a sub out

With speakers this good, who needs a soundbar? That’s the argument for these new Fluance stereo speakers, which are thoroughly geared up with useful ports and connections to boost your home theater setup, or for modern music needs.

Fluance is a North American audio brand that’s been around since 1999, producing a long line of great ready to vie to be ranked among the best stereo speakers and best turntables – and the line now included the new Ri71 bookshelf and Ri91 tower models, which are both now available to buy in the US.

The Ri71 Reference Stereo Powered Bookshelf Speakers offer 120W of amplification, with five-inch “woven glass fiber drivers” that promise “a rich midrange and deep bass without distortion”, 'Air Motion Transformer' tweeters, and an MDF wooden cabinet to limit unwanted resonance – all for $399 (about £319 / AU$635).

However, the Ri91 speakers are where things get serious. These $799 (about £640 / AU$1,270 floorstanding speakers boast 150W of amplification, dual 6.5-inch woven glass fiber drivers per unit, 'Air Motion Transformer' tweeters again, and the built-in height, porting and air volume needed to blare out immersive cinema sound, as long as you’re happy with the larger footprint.

(Image credit: Fluance) All about connections

While AV enthusiasts often have to choose between a well-connected, compact, all-in-one soundbar and the greater sonic potential of separate speaker units – which can be arranged to suit the layout and space of your own home – these Fluance speakers come with a host of ports for connecting other pieces of AV hardware.

Both models support HDMI ARC, for two-way communication between the speakers and your TV screen, as well as an RCA port for turntables (with no amp needed, because they're active speakers), and a subwoofer output for upping the bass with another speaker unit.

You’ll also get support for Bluetooth aptX HD, for easy music streaming from whatever device you want, at a higher level of quality if your phone or laptop supports it.

Fluance is best known for starter and mid-range audio products, –such as the four-star Fluance Ai41 bookshelf speakers, or the Fluance RT81 turntable, which we called “the best starter turntable you can buy” – rather than truly high-end models. And Fluance’s Reference series spans $150-$1,100 speakers, offering a range of channel, bookshelf, floorstanding and surround sound speakers for different budgets.

But if you’re looking for a soundbar alternative for a three-figure sum, these decked-out speakers may be a suitable option – we’ll look to update you when we’ve had the chance to test them out ourselves.

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• Some Warner Bros DVDs won't play due to material problems
• Affected discs were made between 2006 and 2008
• Warner Bros is replacing discs, but not all movies are still available

Of all the advantages of physical media – picture and sound quality, extra features, impressing visitors to your home with your excellent and eclectic taste – one of the most important ones is permanence. Unlike movies on the best streaming services, movies won't suddenly disappear from your shelves overnight because of licensing issues or cost-cutting.

Unless… they rot.

A new plague of disc rot has been discovered, and it's affecting Warner Bros Home Entertainment movies manufactured between 2006 and 2008. The rot renders the discs unplayable, and while Warner Bros is offering replacements, it can't replace them all.

Why isn't Warner Bros replacing every rotted disc?

The short answer is that it can't. As the firm explained in a statement, "Where possible, the defective discs have been replaced with the same title. However, as some of the affected titles are no longer in print or the rights have expired, consumers have been offered an exchange for a title of like-value."

Disc rot isn't new – it affected laserdiscs, and CDs, and every other shiny disc format since. But this particular outbreak is happening very early in the discs' lifespan.

Disc rot is oxidization, and it's very unusual to have that happen on discs that are still relatively young. In ideal conditions and with careful storage and handling a DVD could last as long as 100 years, and even the lowest lifespan expectation is around 30 years.

However, if the manufacturing isn't perfect, then the lifespan can be much shorter: for example, the phenomenon of disc bronzing, a form of disc rot affecting compact discs in the early 1990s, was largely found in discs made at a specific UK factory between 1988 and 1993.

There's no cure for disc rot, so if you think you might have some of the affected titles it's a good idea to check them now: disc rot is often visible on the disc itself, usually as a cloudy area, but it's most apparent when you actually play the disc: rot means it doesn't work properly.

As for prevention, other than careful handling and storage there's not a great deal you can do to prevent something that's mostly the result of manufacturing issues.

And it's all especially frustrating in this case, where collectors of physical media may be keeping these discs because a particular movie – or feature, or commentary – is hard to find or not available now. That's not a problem if Warner Bros can really replace the disc, but when it can't we're facing the question of how can we secure access to art for the future?

People who rip discs to make a backup aren't necessarily immune either: rewritable Blu-Rays and DVD discs may only have a lifespan of five to 10 years. But it's more understandable than ever that people want a backup of the things they want to keep most – even the physical object isn't safe from change.

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• Daredevil: Born Again is currently Disney+'s biggest show of 2025
• Its two-episode premiere got 7.5 million views in its first five days
• It's still not as successful as WandaVision follow-up series Agatha All Along

Daredevil: Born Again has become a huge hit for Disney+ since the Marvel character moved from being in a series on Netflix to one of its rival best streaming services.

I was a huge fan of the original Daredevil when it first launched on Netflix in 2015, and the follow-up has been just as good from I've seen so far. Daredevil: Born Again now has a permanent home on Disney+ and is performing very well indeed, with the new series amassing 7.5 million views in just five days, according to Variety.

Despite its success, however, it still hasn't beaten the performance of the WandaVision follow-up series Agatha All Along, which received 9.3 million views in its first week of availability last September.

Marvel continues to clock up high viewership numbers for Disney+, but it's not just comic book fans who are flocking to the service. Hulu original Paradise (available on Disney+ outside of the US) drew in 7 million views in its first nine days, and I was one of them, so felt relieved that Paradise season 2 has been confirmed after that mind-blowing finale.

Disney+ and Hulu continue to impress me: just look at our best Disney+ shows and best Hulu shows to see why. If you're keen to catch up on the biggest and best these streamers have to offer, there's a limited-time bundle deal that you won't want to miss (see details of the deal below).

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Why has Daredevil: Born Again been so popular?

(Image credit: Marvel Studios)

Daredevil: Born Again has a solid 83% Rotten Tomatoes rating from the critics, which means it can join many of the other great Marvel shows we have on our best Disney+ shows round-up.

Our senior entertainment reporter Tom Power called the series "a fearless revival" that "restored his faith in the MCU" in his Daredevil: Born Again review, and he's not alone with plenty of critics agreeing.

The new series features the same cast as before, with Charlie Cox, Vincent D’Onofrio, Deborah Ann Woll, Elden Henson, Wilson Bethel, and Jon Bernthal reprising their roles. If you're curious when you can watch, check out our Daredevil: Born Again episode release schedule.

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• AirPods with cameras are reportedly an active Apple project
• Don't expect them soon – this will be in the early stages
• There are potential issues with hair, hoods, hats and more

We've been hearing for a while now that Apple is working on camera-equipped AirPods, and a new report says that they're in "active development".

The report, from Bloomberg, doesn't go into any more detail. But it ties in with previous reports from the same source that say Apple sees camera-equipped earbuds as an interim step until AI-packing smart glasses are practical and affordable.

I'm not so sure, because just like Vision Pro there are some very significant obstacles to come. And some of those obstacles are literal obstacles rather than metaphorical ones.

Opinion: AirPods with eyes could be even more niche than Vision Pro

Let's assume that Apple can do the tech equivalent of putting a quart into a pint pot, with some of the tech that currently takes up so much room in Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses made small enough to stick in an AirPod. That in itself is a big ask – it's one reason why Vision Pro is so big and Apple's own smart glasses are still years in the future, if they arrive at all – but if Apple does solve it there are still significant obstacles to overcome.

The camera tech in Meta's smart glasses would take up most of an AirPods' volume on its own… (Image credit: Meta / Ray-Ban)

The thing about in-ear cameras is that they need to be able to see beyond your ears. And if you're not a short-haired man in California, that means there are potential obstacles: long hair is the most obvious one, of course, but for reasons of warmth, religion or fashion there are also hoods, hats and other fabrics to think about too.

There's also the same question that, for me at least, applies to the Vision Pro. Yes, it's magical and clever and amazing and all the other superlatives. But what is it actually for? What will it actually do to make your life better and to justify the price tag?

The answer, inevitably, appears to be AI. But right now AI is frequently hopeless, and Apple Intelligence is hopeless-er – so much so that the only reason I haven't turned it off on my iPhone is because doing so makes Siri on my HomePods become completely unusable.

And I'm not alone. In December 2024, some 73% of iPhone owners and 87% of Samsung phone owners said that AI added "little to no value" to their devices. Perhaps this is why Apple has delayed the launch of the full AI-infused Siri for a while longer, while it develops it further.

Apple has a long tradition of launching devices without full understanding their most impactful purpose – it did it with the iPad, and again with the Apple Watch; both products took a while to find their niches – and I worry that unless they're designed to enhance another product such as Apple's smart glasses, then eyeballing AirPods may have a similar trajectory.

Cameras in smart glasses – privacy issues aside – make sense. But cameras in your ears may be too limited a prospect to ever really live.

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Whether you pick the little 13-inch model or the more comfortable yet compact 15-inch Air, you'll be getting an undeniably versatile MacBook.

How much speed do you need? Think before you pay.

This lightweight machine comes equipped with a bit more power and some necessary improvements, all for a more affordable price.

For creatives who need the very highest level of performance, the Mac Studio delivers it—and then some.

• Google's researchers found a vulnerability in AMD Zen 1 - 4 chips
• It allows anyone to push microcode updates, even malicious ones
• The bug requires high privilege level in advance

AMD processors, from Zen 1 all the way to Zen 4, are carrying a major vulnerability that allows threat actors to push microcode updates on affected chips.

This is according to researchers from Google, who also released a tool to install the updates, or “jailbreak” the device.

Google’s researchers called the vulnerability “EntrySign”. They explained that it stems from the way AMD uses AES-CMAC as a hash function in a signature verification process, which is essentially a cryptographic error, since CMAC is designed as a message authentication code. The vulnerability is tracked as CVE-2024-56161, and was given a severity score of 7.2/10 (high).

Zentool

The researchers also found AMD was using a published example key from NIST documentation all this time, which helped them forge signatures and install any updates to the microcode they saw fit. In theory, a threat actor could abuse the vulnerability to bypass security mechanisms and trigger information leakage.

In practice, however, it’s a lot more difficult than that. The attackers would need to have local admin privileges beforehand, which is difficult enough on its own. Furthermore, the attacks would only persist until the next system reboot.

In any case, Google released an open source tool called ‘zentool’, which allows security researchers (and, unfortunately, threat actors) to drop custom microcode patches.

It consists of tools for microcode patch examination (including limited disassembly), microcode patch authoring, signing, and loading. The researchers said they’re planning on releasing details on how to decrypt and encrypt microcode patches in the future, as well. “A significant portion of the ongoing research is focused on building an accurate understanding of the AMD microcode instruction set – the current disassembly and assembly are not always accurate due to this challenge,” the report stated.

AMD has released BIOS updates to address this vulnerability, so if you fear you might be targeted, make sure to update your systems to versions dated December 17, 2024, or later.

Via Tom's Hardware

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• More details of Motorola's 2025 phones have leaked
• The Edge 60 Pro, Edge 60 Fusion, and Edge 60 are on the way
• Right now we don't have a rumored launch date

There are a host of new Motorola Android phones on the way for 2025, and we may have just heard a whole lot more about them, courtesy of a major new leak – a leak that covers pricing, color options, and internal spec options.

All of this information comes from the usually reliable 91mobiles (via Notebookcheck), and we get a mention of three different Edge 60 phones. These follow on from the Edge 50 phones that launched last year – see our Motorola Edge 50 Pro review, for one example.

There will apparently be a Motorola Edge 60 Pro, the most expensive in the line-up: it's said to be coming with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, in blue, green, or grape shades, and with a starting price of €600 (about $655 / £505 / AU$1,040). It's also being tipped to get a larger battery (5,100 mAh) than its predecessor (4,500 mAh).

Moving on to the Motorola Edge 60 and the Motorola Edge 60 Fusion, the former will be available in sea and green colors and cost €380 (about $415 / £320 / AU$660), while the latter will be available in blue and gray colors and cost €350 (about $380 / £295 / AU$605).

Even more Moto phones

The Motorola Edge 50 (Image credit: Motorola)

There are also details of the budget Moto G56, which is also on the way in black, blue, and dill colors. That will apparently offer 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, and be priced at €250 (that's roughly $270 / £210 / AU$435).

Lastly for now, there's also the Moto G86, which is said to be on the way in colors called Golden, Cosmic, Red, and Spellbound. The specs are listed as 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, and the price is said to be €330 (about $570 / £280 / AU$570).

That's a lot of choice if you're in the market for a value-for-money Android handset in 2025 – and it's what we've come to expect from Motorola. It tends to launch a bunch of variants each year, often with differing availability (and even different names) depending on where in the world you're trying to buy them from.

There's no word in this leak about the Motorola Edge 60 Stylus, which has previously been mentioned by well-known tipster @evleaks. It's also not clear when all of these phones are going to actually be revealed – so we'll just have to sit tight and wait for now.

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• Sony is currently working on the evolution of its PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution (PSSR) AI-upscaling technology
• PlayStation's lead architect Mark Cerny says it's aiming to deliver "something very similar" to AMD FSR 4 for the PS5 Pro
• PS5 Pro titles in 2026 will see "the next evolution of PSSR"

PlayStation's lead console architect Mark Cerny has said PS5 Pro games will soon feature "something very similar" to AMD's FidelityFX Super Resolution 4 (FSR 4).

Speaking to Digital Foundry, Cerny revealed that Sony is now focusing on its PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution (PSSR) and working with developers to integrate the AI-upscaling technology into their titles, but for 2026 it's aiming to deliver an FSR 4-level upscaler for upcoming games.

"Our focus for 2025 is working with developers to integrate PSSR into their titles; in parallel, though, we have already started to implement the new neural network on PS5 Pro," Cerny said.

"Our target is to have something very similar to FSR 4's upscaler available on PS5 Pro for 2026 titles as the next evolution of PSSR; it should take the same inputs and produce essentially the same outputs. Doing that implementation is rather ambitious and time consuming, which is why you haven't already seen this new upscaler on PS5 Pro."

This comes after AMD launched its new RDNA 4 GPU architecture for its RX 9000 Series, in collaboration with PlayStation on Project Amethyst; a multi-year partnership that was announced in December, which aims to create "a more ideal architecture for machine learning".

"The neural network (and training recipe) in FSR 4's upscaler are the first results of the Amethyst collaboration," Cerny added. "And results are excellent, it's a more advanced approach that can exceed the crispness of PSSR. I’m very proud of the work of the joint team!"

Despite FSR4's intensive computing power, Cerny also believes that the PS5 Pro has the potential to run FSR 4-like technology, saying, "That is what we are targeting, and we believe we can achieve it".

"The peak performance number for PS5 Pro is 300 8-bit TOPS without sparsity, which compares very well to the recently released AMD GPUs. We don't believe sparsity is useful for this particular upscaling algorithm," he said.

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Want to know when episode 3 of Daredevil: Born Again will be released on Disney+? You've come to the right place.

Below, I'll reveal the launch date for the Marvel TV show's next episode for US, UK, and Australian viewers. You'll also find more information on one of the best Disney+ shows' episodic release schedule, too, so you can find out when to tune into Disney+ to watch its forthcoming chapters.

So, without further ado, here's when the next installment of Daredevil's standalone series will air.

When will Daredevil: Born Again episode 3 come out on Disney+ in the US?

"This city... could do with knowing when episode 3 will be released" (Image credit: Marvel Studios/Disney+)

Episode 3, titled 'The Hollow of His Hand', will be available to stream on Disney+, aka one of the world's best streaming services, on Tuesday, March 11 at 6PM PT / 9PM ET.

That's the same time that Born Again's two-episode premiere (read my thoughts on those via my Daredevil: Born Again review if you haven't yet!) was released on the service, so it makes sense that future entries would be released then, too.

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What is the Daredevil: Born Again episode 3 release time in the UK?

I'm legally obliged to tell you when Born Again's third episode will be released on British shores (Image credit: Marvel Studios/Disney Plus)

Born Again's first two episodes dropped on Disney+ UK on Wednesday, March 5 at 2AM GMT. So, you'd expect episode 3 to make its way onto the streaming titan at the same time, right?

Well, you'd be wrong to think that. Daredevil: Born Again's third episode will be released on Wednesday, March 12 at 1AM GMT in the UK instead.

There's a simple reason for the timeslot switch-up. The clocks went forward in the US last Sunday (March 9), so the UK is only four hours behind North America's Eastern Time Zone and seven hours behind its Pacific Time Zone. In short: that means British viewers can stream it an hour earlier. Huzzah!

When can I watch Daredevil: Born Again episode 3 in Australia?

"Do you know when episode 3 will launch in Australia, Matt?" (Image credit: Marvel Studios/Disney Plus)

The good news is that audiences Down Under can also watch the Marvel Phase 5 show's third episode a whole hour earlier than its two-episode premiere because the current time difference between the US and Australia.

So, if you want to watch episode 3 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe's (MCU) latest TV series in Australia, you can do so on Wednesday, March 12 at 12PM AEDT.

Where can I watch Daredevil: Born Again episode 3?

Hear that? It's the sound of people signing up for a Disney+ account (Image credit: Marvel Studios)

The answer is obvious but, for anyone who might have skipped to this section: Daredevil: Born Again season 1 is only available to stream on Disney+.

If you haven't signed up to the platform yet, you can do so by heading to the Disney+ website or downloading the Disney+ app on your PC, videogame console, or mobile phone. Before you do that, read our Disney+ price guide, or check out the widget below, to see how much it'll cost to create an account wherever you live.

What is Daredevil: Born Again's full release schedule?

Sitting around waiting for news on Born Again's full release schedule like... (Image credit: Marvel Studios/Disney+)

Like its Marvel TV siblings, new episodes of Daredevil: Born Again will arrive weekly on Disney+, albeit with one exception.

Indeed, in February, I reported on the news that Born Again will have an unusual Disney+ launch schedule, which is likely down to the forthcoming arrival of Andor season 2. The critically-acclaimed and award-winning Star Wars show's final chapter launches on April 22, so Born Again's first season needs to have wrapped up by that date to prevent a clash between Born Again's season 1 finale and the three-episode premiere of Andor's last season.

Anyway, here's Daredevil: Born Again season 1's full launch schedule:

• Episode 1 – out now
• Episode 2 – out now
• Episode 3 – March 11 (US); March 12 (UK and Australia)
• Episode 4 – March 18 (US); March 19 (UK and Australia)
• Episode 5 – March 25 (US); March 26 (UK and Australia)
• Episode 6 – March 25 (US); March 26 (UK and Australia)
• Episode 7 – April 1 (US); April 2 (UK and Australia)
• Episode 8 – April 8 (US); April 9 (UK and Australia)
• Episode 9 – April 15 (US); April 16 (UK and Australia)

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• A new FCC filing has further details on the Nintendo Switch 2
• The upcoming console will have NFC support, likely for amiibo figures
• Wi-Fi 6 is also supported, as well as two USB-C ports for charging

Great news amiibo heads - it looks like the Nintendo Switch 2 will indeed have near-field communication (NFC) support.

A new FCC filing spotted by The Verge confirms that NFC support will be featured on Nintendo's upcoming console. As with the original Nintendo Switch, the NFC reader looks like it'll be housed within the Joy-Con controller's right thumbstick. This most likely means that Nintendo's amiibo figures will still be supported on Switch 2 - though we still don't know if any new figures are going to be produced for Switch 2 games.

That's not the only point of interest from the FCC filing. It also reveals that the Nintendo Switch 2 will support Wi-Fi 6 - an improvement over the original console's Wi-Fi 5. However, as The Verge notes, Switch 2 doesn't seem like it supports Wi-Fi 6E or indeed Wi-Fi 7.

The initial announcement trailer for the Nintendo Switch 2 confirmed the console will sport two USB-C ports located on the top and bottom of the system. The FCC filing confirms that - similar to the Nitro Deck+ - both of these can be used for charging purposes. Maybe that seems obvious, but it should allow for more comfortable handheld gaming if you need to top up the battery while you're playing.

The Nintendo Switch 2 is set to launch sometime in 2025. There is no concrete release date as of yet, but this is expected to be revealed at the Nintendo Switch 2 Direct which is airing on April 2, 2025.

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• Researchers have found that AI will cheat to win at chess
• Deep reasoning models are more active cheaters
• Some models simply rewrote the board in their favor

In a move that will perhaps surprise nobody, especially those people who are already suspicious of AI, researchers have found that the latest AI deep research models will start to cheat at chess if they find they’re being outplayed.

Published in a paper called “Demonstrating specification gaming in reasoning models” and submitted to Cornell University, the researchers pitted all the common AI models, like OpenAI’s ChatGPT o1-preview, DeepSeek-R1 and Claude 3.5 Sonnet, against Stockfish, an open-source chess engine.

The AI models played hundreds of games of chess on Stockfish, while researchers monitored what happened, and the results surprised them.

The winner takes it all

When outplayed, researchers noted that the AI models resorted to cheating, using a number of devious strategies from running a separate copy of Stockfish so they could study how it played, to replacing its engine and overwriting the chess board, effectively moving the pieces to positions that suited it better.

Its antics make the current accusations of cheating levied at modern day grandmasters look like child’s play in comparison.

Interestingly, researchers found that the newer, deeper reasoning models will start to hack the chess engine by default, while the older GPT-4o and Claude 3.5 Sonnet needed to be encouraged to start to hack.

(Image credit: ARKHIPOV ALEKSEY via Shutterstock) Who can you trust?

AI models turning to hacking to get a job done is nothing new. Back in January last year researchers found that they could get AI chatbots to ‘jailbreak’ each other, removing guardrails and safeguards in a move that ignited discussions about how possible it would be to contain AI once it reaches better-than-human levels of intelligence.

Safeguards and guardrails to stop AI doing bad things like credit card fraud are all very well, but if the AI can remove its own guardrails, who will be there to stop it?

The newest reasoning models like ChatGPT o1 and DeepSeek-R1 are designed to spend more time thinking before they respond, but now I'm left wondering whether more time needs to spent on ethical considerations when training LLMs. If AI models would cheat at chess when they start losing, what else would they cheat at?

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