The 7 best noise-canceling headphones of 2023

Tech specs: Form factor: Over-ear, closed-back | Wireless protocol(s): Bluetooth 5.0 | Charging options(s): Lightning | Battery life: 20 hours (1.5 hours on a 5-minute charge) | Frequency response: 10 Hz-20,000 Hz (estimated) Before the AirPods Max came around, Apple’s small, plastic earbuds targeted a very general audience. The Apple AirPods Max are over-ear headphones with a mostly metal construction. They […]

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“Please slow down”—The 7 biggest AI stories of 2022

Enlarge / AI image synthesis advances in 2022 have made images like this one possible, which was created using Stable Diffusion, enhanced with GFPGAN, expanded with DALL-E, and then manually composited together. Benj Edwards / Ars Technica More than once this year, AI experts have repeated a familiar refrain: “Please slow down.” AI news in […]

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How to Prepare for the Declining Power of Link Building in SEO

SEO is not what it used to be. Search engines are changing faster than they have in the last decade, thanks in part to the help of artificial intelligence tools like OpenAI’s GPT-3. The unfortunate aspect of these new tools is that they are further proliferating the overabundance of content and link building spam on […]

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CES 2023 preview: 4 big questions that will shape the week

CNET/Sarah Tew CES remains the biggest week of the year in tech. Every January, the show connects the world’s biggest tech companies, the next generation of startups chasing disruptive ideas, tech reporters and influencers, big box retailers looking for products to fill their shelves, and tens of thousands of tech enthusiasts trying to get a […]

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A Crucial Particle Physics Computer Program Risks Obsolescence

Recently, I watched a fellow particle physicist talk about a calculation he had pushed to a new height of precision. His tool? A 1980s-era computer program called FORM. Particle physicists use some of the longest equations in all of science. To look for signs of new elementary particles in collisions at the Large Hadron Collider, […]

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Happiness Should Be the Most Important KPI for Tech Employers

During economic downturns, businesses resort to muscle memory and do what they’ve done before. That often means budget cuts—and the deepest cuts commonly target technology investment and people. This time, however, things already feel very different. Businesses increasingly see their tech talent as a hard-won strategic investment, which they are reluctant to lose. New McKinsey […]

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Stop Using Social Media Apps. The Web Version Is Often Better

I can scroll through my timeline of choice whenever I want, which is a miracle of technology. The downside: I do so, a lot, even when I wish I were doing something else.  With this in mind, I’ve been thinking lately about how I’d like social media to be just a little bit worse—to add […]

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What is 5G? The Complete Guide to When, Why, and How

The future depends on connectivity. From artificial intelligence and self-driving cars, to telemedicine and mixed reality, to as yet undreamed technologies, all the things we hope will make our lives easier, safer, and healthier require high-speed, always-on internet connections. To keep up with the demand, the mobile industry introduced 5G—so named because it’s the fifth […]

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Road Robots Are Coming to the Rescue

Developing cars that can drive without a human is a unique challenge. There are many kinds of events that fully autonomous vehicles have to be prepared to handle in milliseconds, and mistakes can have serious consequences. Solving these problems requires innovation across a number of fields, such as AI and machine learning, advanced sensors, simulation […]

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