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As much as we like the AirPods 4, Apple isn't interested in making earbuds for Android users: while they'll work with Android phones, most of their best features are specific to iPhone users. So we're intrigued by the new and very AirPods-esque Air5 Wireless Earbuds from Soundpeats. They look like AirPods 4, they have similar features to AirPods 4 and their smart features work on Android, like AirPods 4 don't. They're also considerably more affordable, coming in at half the price of Apple's earbuds.

The Air5 are one of two new earbud launches from Soundpeats; there's also an even more affordable set of ear-hook buds called the Breezy.

This isn't the first time the brand has made an interesting Android alternative to Apple's earbuds: the Soundpeats Air4 Pro are a very affordable AirPods Pro rival, and while they don't quite deliver the same audio experience as Apple, they're still pretty decent for such a low-priced pair.

Soundpeats Air5 earbuds and Breezy open-ear buds: key features and pricing

Let's start with the Air5. They have Bluetooth 5.4 with multi-point connectivity, Snapdragon Sound and Hi-Res Audio support. The drivers are large for earbuds of this class – each bud contains a 13mm dynamic driver – and there are three noise canceling modes, including adaptive noise cancelling that adapts to changes in your audio environment such as moving from indoors to busy streets. There are three mics with AI noise reduction and an AI wind-noise reducer, too. Battery life is claimed to be 6 hours from the buds alone and 30 hours via the charging case, which is fairly typical for cheaper options among the best noise cancelling earbuds.

The Breezy open-ears have 12mm dual-magnet dynamic drivers, the same Bluetooth 5.4 as their siblings, and 10 hours of play time with 40 hours from the case, plus a dynamic EQ algorithm to deliver more powerful bass.

Both earbuds are designed to be customizable via the firm's PeatsAudio app, which in the case of the Air5 earbuds enables you to customize the touch controls, adjust the EQ, manage noise cancelling levels and get your audio just-so. The Air5 are available in black, white, beige or purple, while the Breezy buds are black.

Both sets of buds are priced keenly to battle with the best budget earbuds. The Soundpeats Air5 are $89.99 and the Breezy are $39.99; from October 8 – which is when Prime Day starts – through October 20, both sets of buds are heavily discounted, with the price down to just $53.99 for the Air5 and $27.99 for the Breezy. 

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Content credentials should make it easier to understand where an image came from. They'll also help artists protect their work from AI.

You can save for months to come with this shopping strategy.

The Roli Airwave uses infrared cameras to track your hand movements on a keyboard. That visual data can be used to teach you how to play a song or to compose entirely new sonic creations.

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Geoffrey Hinton, the oft-recognized 'Godfather of AI' and now-vocal alarm ringer for an AI-infused future, just won a Nobel Prize in Physics for his work in – wait for it – training artificial neural networks using physics.

That's right, the brilliant Turing Prize-winning scientist most afraid of how artificial intelligence might harm humanity has won the world's biggest science award for his foundational work in AI.

As The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (the group that awards the Nobel Prize) describes it, "Geoffrey Hinton invented a method that can autonomously find properties in data, and so perform tasks such as identifying specific elements in pictures." Hinton shares his Nobel with John J. Hopfield of Princeton University. Hinton's work built upon Hopfield's breakthrough work where he created a network system that could save and recreate patterns.

Combined, their work led to future breakthroughs in Machine Learning (systems that can learn and improve data without programming) and the concept of artificial neural networks, which is often at the core of modern AI.

Post by @nobelprize_org View on Threads

Hinton, who is currently teaching Computer Science at the University of Toronto, has a storied AI history that started with those early breakthroughs and led him to Google's DeepMind where he and his team helped lay the groundwork for today's chatbots like OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google Gemini. However, when Hinton left in 2023, he sounded the alarm, worrying that Google was no longer, as he told The New York Times, "a proper steward" for AI.

The warnings ranged from companies going too fast and acting recklessly to AI being responsible for a flood of fake content, gutting the job market, and outthinking us. A year later, it seems like some of those fears are coming true; companies are increasingly employing AI to handle basic writing tasks, our feeds are now flooded with AI-generated content that sometimes includes AI watermarks, but not consistently, and we are racing toward the unknown of General Artificial Intelligence, which may mean computers that can think as well or better than we do.

I emailed Hinton for comment on his win and how that affects his thinking about the current state of AI and will update this article when I hear back.

Still, it makes sense to honor Hinton for his pioneering work. AI as we know it would probably not exist without Hinton and Hopfield. Applying physics to the problem of pattern recognition was a novel solution that, in some ways, helped computers operate more like the human brain. The concept of neural networks, arguably AI's most powerful tool, would not exist without Hinton.

Surely, Hinton's other accomplishment is waking us up to the notion that AI is a double-edged sword. It's a vastly powerful tool that is already changing our lives and it's one that desperately needs guardrails to protect humanity from AI run amuck. Hinton may not have understood what he unleashed when he first developed these concepts in the 1970s but he's now an honored beacon of light and reason in a confusing and fast-moving world of AI.

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Climate change hasn't increased the total number of hurricanes hitting the U.S., but it is making dangerous storms more common.

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Save $130 on one of the top monitor brands. This deal with a coupon code is available today only.

Assassin's Creed Mirage will be the first Assassin's Creed game to arrive on Steam marking a return to the platform for the series.

In September, Ubisoft delayed Assassin's Creed Shadows from its original November 12 release date to February 14, 2025, announcing that it needs extra time to polish the game before it's ready for launch.

In addition to the delay, the company confirmed that, unlike more recent Assassin's Creed games, Shadows will also launch day one on Steam alongside PS5, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, and Amazon Luna.

However, it won't be the first title in the franchise to make a return to Steam.

According to a brand new Steam store page for Assassin's Creed Mirage, fans will be able to purchase the game on the platform in "October 2024", so it looks like an official release date announcement from Ubisoft itself could arrive soon.

"Experience the story of Basim, a cunning street thief seeking answers and justice as he navigates the bustling streets of ninth-century Baghdad," the description reads. "Through a mysterious, ancient organization known as the Hidden Ones, he will become a deadly Master Assassin and change his fate in ways he never could have imagined."

Although there's no release just yet, you can wishlist the game on Steam.

Assassin's Creed Mirage first launched in October 2023 for PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, and PC via Epic Games and the Ubisoft Connect.

Ubisoft stopped releasing its PC games on Steam in 2019 after releasing its own launcher but hasn't given a reason for the decision, however, it could come down to a need to increase overall sales after Star Wars Outlaws performed badly for the company.

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Former President Donald Trump has made several claims about FEMA's disaster response. NPR has fact-checked them ahead of Hurricane Milton. And, how you can turn climate anxiety into collective action.

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This small town in upstate New York is home to nature-filled attractions like the Mohonk Preserve. Here are CNET's picks for home internet in New Paltz.

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Your smart TV is a "privacy nightmare", a new report claims, suggesting that the streaming industry has created a sinister surveillance system that's undermining our privacy and our consumer protection too. That's according to a damning 48-page report by the Center For Digital Democracy (CDD), which has been passed to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

According to the report, the price of streaming isn't just in its ever-increasing subscription fees. It's in its "connected television media and marketing system with unprecendented capabilities for surveillance and manipulation." And thanks to AI, it's about to get even worse.

What's so sinister about streaming?

You can read the full PDF report here, but here are some of the key points. What the report calls "connected TV" is now the dominant way for US consumers to watch TV, and it says that the manufacturers and streamers have collectively turned connected TVs into "a sophisticated monitoring, tracking and targeting device."

In the report's introduction it uses Tubi as an example. "Tubi's fundamental business model is based on harvesting rich and detailed information from its viewers" using advertising tech, and that tech can then be used to change what content is recommended to you and even what products are featured in your shows. And Tubi is far from alone in this: the report goes into a lot of detail about technologies it says are used by Disney+, Amazon, Netflix and many more of the best streaming services.

The CDD report says that the streaming industry "has deliberately incorporated many of the data-surveillance marketing practices that have long undermined privacy and consumer protection in the 'older' world of social media, search engines, mobile phones and video services… millions of Americans are being forced to accept unfair terms in order to access video programming, which threatens their privacy and may also narrow what information they access – including the quality of the content itself."

The report paints a bleak picture, and the CDD wants the US Government to take action. In particular it wants:

• Robust privacy protection
• Digital marketing safeguards covering politics, health and children
• Regulation of anti-competitive and monopolistic behaviors

The CDD has written to the FTC, FCC, the California attorney general, and the CPPA demanding an investigation into the US connected TV industry. If you're feeling cynical, the size of the companies involved and the size of their political donations may make such an investigation unlikely – and the result of the Presidential election may make the likelihood of an investigation is even slimmer. However, it's clear that to have such a massive and influential industry effectively self-regulating may not be the best way to protect our privacy or save us from corporate misbehavior. You need only look at the many lawsuits facing the likes of Google to see that.

Should this put you off buying the best TVs today, which are all smart and connected? Well, you don't have a ton of options – unless you want to use a basic PC monitor to watch TV, everything is setup for the new world of data collection. You could switch to one of the best projectors and best 4K Blu-ray players to keep things more offline, though they won't be for everyone due to their size – and you can't get them for the same cheap price as today's TVs.

As is often the case, we don't have quite the range of choice in the market that you might think, considering just how many TVs are available.

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Wiping out smallpox had an unintended consequence: the rise of mpox in the past few years. Here's the story — starting with patient zero for mpox back in 1970.

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Voting for the 42nd Golden Joystick Awards is now open.

The longest-running annual award show will return on November 21, 2024, and can be watched live here, but ahead of the event fans have the opportunity to vote for their favorite games of 2024 in a total of 19 categories.

Included in those categories are Console Game of the Year, PC Game of the Year, and Best Storytelling, but it's worth noting that the nominees for the Ultimate Game of the Year shortlist will not be announced until November 4, with voting in that category opening the same day.

Among the games nominated in the Console Game of the Year are the critically acclaimed Astro Bot for PS5 which was released last month, Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, Dragon's Dogma 2, Helldivers 2, Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, and the latest game in The Legend of Zelda franchise, Echoes of Wisdom.

This year's event will also introduce a few brand-new categories, including Best Soundtrack and Best Audio Design, which will replace the Best Audio award, and the Still Playing Award has also been split into two, with separate ‘Mobile’ and ‘Console & PC’ categories.

A new Best Indie Game - Self Published award has also been created to sit alongside the long-standing Best Indie Game category.

You can vote in the currently available categories here. Voting closes on November 1 at 4pm PDT / 7pm EDT / 11pm BST.

"2023 was one of video gaming’s best years ever, with Baldur’s Gate 3 and Larian Studios claiming a record seven trophies at last year’s Golden Joystick Awards," said Daniel Dawkins, content director for games, video, and digital events.

"2024 has been a challenging year for the games industry in so many ways, but the variety and diversity of releases over the last 12 months has made this one of the most difficult - and exciting - Golden Joystick Awards nominees list we’ve ever compiled."

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