AppleMagazine
OPENAI CEO SUGGESTS INTERNATIONAL AGENCY LIKE UN'S NUCLEAR WATCHDOG COULD OVERSEE AI
Artificial intelligence poses an \"existential risk\" to humanity, a key innovator warned during a visit to the United Arab Emirates this week, suggesting an international agency like the International Atomic Energy Agency oversee the ground-breaking technology.
2 min |
AppleMagazine #606
AppleMagazine
DELAWARE SUPREME COURT UPHOLDS JUDGE'S FINDING THAT TESLA ACQUISITION OF SOLAR CITY WAS FAIR
Delaware's Supreme Court has upheld a judge's decision in favor of Tesla CEO Elon Musk in a lawsuit challenging the electric car maker's $2.4 billion acquisition of a solar panel company founded by two of his cousins.
2 min |
AppleMagazine #606
AppleMagazine
BANKS' GROWING RELIANCE ON CHATBOTS TO HANDLE CUSTOMER SERVICE TASKS WORRIES CONSUMER WATCHDOG
Can you trust Erica, or Sandi or Amy to increasingly control parts of your financial life without giving you inaccurate information or sending money to the wrong place?
2 min |
AppleMagazine #606
AppleMagazine
SEE APPLE'S PIVOTAL PRODUCT ANNOUNCEMENTS THROUGH HISTORY
Apple has a long history of designing products that aren't the first to be introduced in a particular category but still redefine the market.
2 min |
AppleMagazine #606
AppleMagazine
Vision Pro
THE DAWN OF SPATIAL COMPUTING
6 min |
AppleMagazine #606
AppleMagazine
BLUESKY.CHAMPIONED BY JACK DORSEY, WAS SUPPOSED TO BE TWITTER 2.0. CAN IT SUCCEED?
Bluesky, the internet's hottest members-only spot at the moment, feels a bit like an exclusive club, populated by some Very Online folks, popular Twitter characters, and fed up ex-users of the Elon Musk-owned platform.
4 min |
AppleMagazine #606
AppleMagazine
BINANCE MISHANDLED FUNDS AND VIOLATED SECURITIES LAWS, ACCORDING TO SEC LAWSUIT
The world's largest cryptocurrency exchange Binance and its founder Changpeng Zhao are accused of misusing investor funds, operating as an unregistered exchange and violating a slew of U.S. securities laws in a lawsuit filed by the SEC.
2 min |
AppleMagazine #606
AppleMagazine
DNA SUCKED INTO AIR FILTERS CAN REVEAL WHAT PLANTS AND ANIMALS ARE NEARBY
DNA is all around us even in the air we breathe. Now scientists have found that air quality monitoring stations - which pull in air to test for pollution - also pick up lots of DNA that can reveal what plants and animals have been in the area.
2 min |
AppleMagazine #606
AppleMagazine
MONEY STORED IN VENMO AND OTHER PAYMENT APPS COULD BE VULNERABLE, FINANCIAL WATCHDOG WARNS
Customers of Venmo, PayPal and CashApp should not store their money with those apps for the long term because the funds might not be safe during a crisis, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau warned.
2 min |
AppleMagazine #606
Stereophile
Miyajima Laboratory Wo-1 - PREAMPLIFIER
A phenomenon formerly unique to Japan, which in recent years has been emulated in cities around the world, is the jazz café (known as jazz kissa in Japan), where salarymen can find respite from their hectic lives, loosen their ties, and enjoy hi-fi jazz over coffee or a drink.'
7 min |
July 2023
Stereophile
SPIN DOCTOR - Swiss precision
In 1928, Swiss engineer and inventor Jean-Léon Reutter created a clock that could run for years without human interaction or any type of external power source. The Atmos Clock required no AC power, batteries, solar panels, or hand-winding. It was able to wind itself by leveraging subtle changes in atmospheric pressure and temperature.
10+ min |
July 2023
Stereophile
Living Sounds Audio Discovery Warp 1 - POWER AMPLIFIER
It takes a while for audio-related technologies to mature. Tubed amplifiers were invented by Lee de Forest in the nineteen-teens, but while there are still some adherents of early high-distortion triode designs, the age of mainstream high-fidelity amplification dawned with higher-power/lower-distortion amplifiers developed by Williamson and McIntosh followed by the Ultralinear take on the Williamson concept.
10+ min |
July 2023
Stereophile
BRILLIANT CORNERS - Come Hell or High Water
New York is an ugly city, a dirty city,\" John Steinbeck wrote in 1953. \"But there is one thing about it-once you have lived in New York and it has become your home, no place else is good enough.\" Decades later, the novelist's insight about this appalling, incomparable city still feels true.
10+ min |
July 2023
Stereophile
Bowers & Wilkins 705 S3 - LOUDSPEAKER
Over a lifetime of involvement in audio, I have had stand-mount speakers-bookshelf speakers, as they were called back then-only twice.
8 min |
July 2023
Stereophile
RE-TALES - Succession
Many family-owned hi-fi companies have experienced generational leadership transitions over the last few years: Wilson Audio, Von Schweikert Audio, PS Audio, and VPI Industries, to name a few. In two of those cases, the founding father is still around. One of those is VPI Industries.
4 min |
July 2023
Stereophile
GRAMOPHONE DREAMS - An affordable purist amplifier with punch
It was a cold March-in-Brooklyn morning. Clouds had been shedding wintery mix since daybreak. By 9am, birds were flash-mobbing my window, demanding suet. But I was frozen-unable to pull my mind loose from the grave flowings of American composer Ned Rorem's Book of Hours, as performed by Les Connivences Sonores on the album Musikalische Perlen (24/48 FLAC, Ars Produktion/Qobuz). The sounds in my room were sensuous and mesmerizing, and I needed to float in their mysterious energy as long as I could.
10+ min |
July 2023
Stereophile
Antipodes Oladra - SERVER/STREAMER/RECLOCKER
Servers, servers, servers. How we who embrace digital hi-fi love them for their potential to make files and streams sound better (more alive, vital, musical, moving, transparent) than music served from a computer.
10+ min |
July 2023
Sound & Vision
Thank You, Douglas Mandel
Recently, I described how a certain airline has devised a fiendish way to torment its passengers. That is, a type of torment beyond the usual runof-the-mill torture of flying on any airplane. In a letter to the editor, alert reader Douglas Mandel commiserated with me but pointed out that I was overlooking another kind of torture that is much, much worse.
3 min |
June - July 2023
Sound & Vision
Netflix By Mail Ends Its 25-Year Run
Once as ubiquitous as a Blockbuster plastic bag, the Netflix envelope defined the era between video cassettes and streaming. Subscribers to the disc-by-mail service were informed in April that the company will ship its last disc on September 29, 2023. The announcement, coming 25 years after Netflix gave new life to First Class Mail, was seismic but not surprising.
3 min |
June - July 2023
Sound & Vision
Visual Brilliance
IT IS amazing how rapidly TVs have grown in capability while their prices have dropped, defying inflation. I am very familiar with TCL's 6-Series and remember its first U.S. market iteration.
10 min |
June - July 2023
Sound & Vision
Headphone Heaven
THEY SAY money can't buy happiness. Without a doubt, it can buy the $999 Mark Levinson No. 5909 headphones, and without a doubt, these make me happy.
6 min |
June - July 2023
Sound & Vision
Bright and Bold
THIS IS the third edition of LG's Gallery Edition OLED, replacing last year's 65-inch, G2 (reviewed in the August/ September 2022 Sound & Vision and also at Sound & Vision.com).
10+ min |
June - July 2023
Sound & Vision
I SEE YOU
How James Cameron and his Visual Effects Team Create an Otherworldly Reality in Avatar: The Way of Water
10+ min |
June - July 2023
Sound & Vision
Affordable Amplification
AUDIO AMPLIFIERS have but one task: take an electrical signal and make it more powerful without changing its character.
6 min |
June - July 2023
Sound & Vision
Hidden Bass
RENOWNED FOR their expertise in crafting high-performance subwoofers, SVS has carved a niche for itself within the home theater and music system communities.
8 min |
June - July 2023
Sound & Vision
Studio Quality
HOW DO you know when an audio trend is more than just a bandwagon? When America's oldest hi-fi brand climbs on board. (Yes, I know that JBL and Klipsch were both founded in 1946. But JBL's earliest incarnation goes back to the 1930's.)
8 min |
June - July 2023
Sound & Vision
Juke Audio Multiroom Streaming Amplifier
A Simple Streaming Solution
3 min |
June - July 2023
Sound & Vision
New World Mix
Producer/engineer Richard Chycki shares the spatially motivated secrets behind his Dolby Atmos mix of Rush's sonically transitional 1982 album, Signals.
3 min |
June - July 2023
Sound & Vision
Sofabaton X1 Remote - Out of Control
When Logitech stopped making Harmony remotes in 2021, few options remained. The Sofabaton X1, with its vast database of codes for TVs and other devices, sounded promising. If you want a single remote and are willing to invest time to set it up, you may get what you need but it's not a substitute for what it's intended to replace.
3 min |
June - July 2023
Sound & Vision
Ultra Short Throw Projectors
Ultra Short Throw (UST) projectors have steadily increased in performance while also massively decreasing in price. My first UST experience was a Sony model at CES several years ago selling for $20,000. Today you can get a UST projector with 4K HDR resolution and a laser-light engine rated for a 20,000-hour lifespan that is capable of producing 2500+ lumens for under $2500!
4 min |