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What Makes Cheap Earbuds a Real Value? Here's How I Find the Hidden Gems

A few months ago, Final Audio, a boutique Japanese brand, sent me its new, relatively low-priced ZE3000 SV noise-canceling earbuds to test. I was curious: Would this be a hidden gem among the dozens, even hundreds, of budget headphone options out there? Even as a full-time reviewer of these products, I can't keep up with all of them. So I did what I always do. I charged them up, then swapped out the default medium-size tips for the largest set of included ear tips and hoped I'd get a tight seal

Nobody knows how to build with AI yet

Last week I released Protocollie. Built in 4 days with languages I don’t know, without even directly touching the code. People keep asking “how?” but I’m not entirely sure it’ll work the same way twice. We’re all making this up as we go. The Great Experiment Nobody's Running the Same Way There's this moment in every new technology where everyone pretends they know what they're doing. We're past that moment. Or maybe we haven't reached it yet. Either way, we're in this delicious middle ground

Ccusage: A CLI tool for analyzing Claude Code usage from local JSONL files

ccusage Analyze your Claude Code token usage and costs from local JSONL files — incredibly fast and informative! Installation Quick Start (Recommended) Thanks to ccusage's incredibly small bundle size ( ), you can run it directly without installation: # Using bunx (recommended for speed) bunx ccusage # Using npx npx ccusage@latest # Using deno (with security flags) deno run -E -R= $HOME /.claude/projects/ -S=homedir -N= ' raw.githubusercontent.com:443 ' npm:ccusage@latest 💡 Tip: We recomme

Spotify brings shared audiobooks to Family and Duo plans, but there’s a catch

Audiobook access on Spotify has always been limited to the account owner, meaning that even for Premium Family or Duo subscriptions, only the person who set up the plan could actually use the included hours each month. That’s about to change, depending on where you live. Two add-ons for Individual, Duo, and Family plans Until now, Spotify’s audiobook access has been limited to the primary user and capped at 15 hours per month. But this week, Spotify announced that Premium subscribers in select

Spotify’s new 30-hour audiobook plans are too short to finish long books

Spotify has launched two new Audiobooks Plus add-on subscriptions that allow Premium users to double their audiobook listening limit to 30 hours. They’re available to individual Premium subscribers and users who manage Family and Duo plans. Other users on Premium accounts can now also request 15 hours of audiobook access from their plan manager. However, the new plans are still too short for those who prefer to listen to longer books. The 30-hour limit won’t get you through titles like George R

The best Sony TVs of 2025: Expert tested and reviewed

Sony is known for their high-quality OLED TVs, which feature excellent picture and audio quality as well as high refresh rates for smoother motion while watching sports and fast-paced TV and movie scenes or console gaming. The latest Sony TVs also have exclusive VRR support for gaming on the PlayStation 5 to prevent screen tearing and stuttering that can ruin your immersion. While Sony TVs can get expensive, especially at larger screen sizes, there are more affordable options that still offer p

My experience with Claude Code after two weeks of adventures

My Experience With Claude Code After 2 Weeks of Adventures 17 Jul, 2025 Hatching... Cursor Shenanigans Cursor, my beloved, started rate limiting shenanigans a few days back. For a good 2 weeks after June 16, 2025, we had almost infinite API request access. I had a lot of code-related work around this time as I was working on Gumroad bounties plus my AI engineering/LLM eval-related consulting work. Apart from just codegen, I also use these tools to onboard/understand codebases faster and just

My experience with Claude Code after 2 weeks of adventures

My Experience With Claude Code After 2 Weeks of Adventures 17 Jul, 2025 Hatching... Cursor Shenanigans Cursor, my beloved, started rate limiting shenanigans a few days back. For a good 2 weeks after June 16, 2025, we had almost infinite API request access. I had a lot of code-related work around this time as I was working on Gumroad bounties plus my AI engineering/LLM eval-related consulting work. Apart from just codegen, I also use these tools to onboard/understand codebases faster and just

My Experience with Claude Code After 2 Weeks of Adventures

My Experience With Claude Code After 2 Weeks of Adventures 17 Jul, 2025 Hatching... Cursor Shenanigans Cursor, my beloved, started rate limiting shenanigans a few days back. For a good 2 weeks after June 16, 2025, we had almost infinite API request access. I had a lot of code-related work around this time as I was working on Gumroad bounties plus my AI engineering/LLM eval-related consulting work. Apart from just codegen, I also use these tools to onboard/understand codebases faster and just

Fighting AI with AI, finance firms prevented $5 million in fraud - but at what cost?

d3sign/Getty Imageds When most people think of AI, the first thing that probably comes to mind isn't superintelligence or the promise of agents to boost productivity, but scams. There've always been fraudsters among us, that small percentage of the population who'll use any means available to swindle others out of their money. The proliferation of advanced and easily accessible generative AI tools in recent years has made such nefarious activity exponentially easier. Also: Meet ChatGPT agent,

Spotify's Audiobooks+ add-on is now available to some Premium subscribers

It’s likely that you predominantly associate Spotify with music and podcasts, but if you’re a Premium member, you also get 15 hours of audiobook access per month. For some members, though, that clearly isn’t enough, as Spotify has introduced a new add-on subscription that doubles that listening time. Audiobooks+ was first trialled in Ireland and Canada, and is launching initially for Premium Individual and Plan members in a number of countries in Europe, as well as Australia and New Zealand. On

Adobe's AI Videos Get Audio: Is It Better Than Google's Veo 3?

New Adobe Firefly video updates are here to bring your AI-generated videos to the next level and to potentially keep the company competitive in the crowded AI market. You'll be able to add sound effects to your Firefly AI videos, thanks to a beta release of a new AI tool rolling out now, the company announced Thursday. It's the second major tech company to release such capabilities, following Google's Veo 3 launch in May. There are also a couple of other changes coming to Firefly video, includi

Spotify expands audiobook access to family plan members for the first time

Spotify on Thursday announced an expansion of its premium audiobooks service, with two new plans that offer additional listening hours to subscribers, and allow other family members to access the service. The options are currently only available for Spotify Premium users in the U.K., Australia, New Zealand, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and Liechtenstein, following initial tests in Ireland and Canada. U.S. users could already purchase 15 hours of

What Makes Cheap Earbuds a Real Value (or Not)? I Dug In to Find Out

A few months ago, Final Audio, a boutique Japanese brand, sent me its new, relatively low-priced ZE3000 SV noise-canceling earbuds to test. I was curious: Would this be a hidden gem among the dozens, even hundreds, of budget headphone options out there? Even as a full-time reviewer of these products, I can't keep up with all of them. So I did what I always do. I charged them up, then swapped out the default medium-size tips for the largest set of included ear tips and hoped I'd get a tight seal

The New Intern on Wall Street Is an AI, and It’s Already Taking Jobs

The transformation underway in finance should give pause to anyone who still thinks artificial intelligence is a distant threat. On July 15, Wall Street met its most overqualified and tireless intern. AI safety and research company Anthropic, a chief rival to OpenAI, unveiled its new “Financial Analysis Solution,” an enhanced version of its Claude AI assistant designed to take over the research, modeling, and compliance grunt work that finance teams typically rely on junior analysts to perform.

Samsung boss cleared of fraud by South Korea's top court

Samsung boss cleared of fraud by South Korea's top court Samsung boss Lee Jae-yong has been cleared by South Korea's top court of fraud charges, concluding a years-long legal battle over his role in a 2015 merger deal. Lee, the grandson of Samsung's founder and the de facto head of the company since 2014, had been accused of using stock and accounting fraud to try to gain control of the firm. In its final verdict, the Supreme Court in Seoul upheld a not guilty verdict, after Lee was acquitted

Claude Code's new tool is all about maximizing ROI in your organization - how to try it

Anthropic / Elyse Betters Picaro / ZDNET Anthropic has distinguished itself from industry competitors for two major reasons: user privacy and coding capabilities. In particular, it's Claude Code's solution -- which allows users to run the coding assistant directly in their workspace to write or manage code -- that has attracted an exponential number of users. It's now a highly requested feature. Also: Anthropic's Claude dives into financial analysis. Here's what's new On Tuesday, Anthropic la

Claude Code revenue jumps 5.5x as Anthropic launches analytics dashboard

Want smarter insights in your inbox? Sign up for our weekly newsletters to get only what matters to enterprise AI, data, and security leaders. Subscribe Now Anthropic announced today it is rolling out a comprehensive analytics dashboard for its Claude Code AI programming assistant, addressing one of the most pressing concerns for enterprise technology leaders: understanding whether their investments in AI coding tools are actually paying off. The new dashboard will provide engineering managers

I couldn't tell these glasses had built-in hearing aids - and you likely couldn't either

ZDNET's key takeaways The Nuance Audio hearing glasses are available in two styles and colors for $1,200 at participating retailers. They provide a stylish and discreet way to aid mild to moderate hearing loss. However, they provide six to eight hours of battery life and a three-hour charging period, which might frustrate power users. View now at Nuance Audio Since the US Food and Drug Administration approved a category of hearing aids that can be sold to consumers without a doctor's prescrip

Claude for Financial Services

Today, we're introducing a comprehensive solution for financial analysis that transforms how finance professionals analyze markets, conduct research, and make investment decisions with Claude. The Financial Analysis Solution unifies your financial data—from market feeds to internal data stored in platforms like Databricks and Snowflake—into a single interface. Access your critical data sources with direct hyperlinks to source materials for instant verification, all in one platform with expanded

Voxtral – Frontier open source speech understanding models

Voice: the original UI. Voice was humanity’s first interface—long before writing or typing, it let us share ideas, coordinate work, and build relationships. As digital systems become more capable, voice is returning as our most natural form of human-computer interaction. Yet today’s systems remain limited—unreliable, proprietary, and too brittle for real-world use. Closing this gap demands tools with exceptional transcription, deep understanding, multilingual fluency, and open, flexible deploy

Voxtral-Mini-3B-2507 – Open source speech understanding model

Voxtral Mini 1.0 (3B) - 2507 Voxtral Mini is an enhancement of Ministral 3B, incorporating state-of-the-art audio input capabilities while retaining best-in-class text performance. It excels at speech transcription, translation and audio understanding. Learn more about Voxtral in our blog post here. Key Features Voxtral builds upon Ministral-3B with powerful audio understanding capabilities. Dedicated transcription mode : Voxtral can operate in a pure speech transcription mode to maximize p

The most immersive gaming speaker system I've ever tested is $101 off

ZDNET's key takeaways The SteelSeries Arena 9 features a full-fledged 5.1 surround sound system, including subwoofers for added bass. It allows you to connect three devices simultaneously via Bluetooth, USB, and optical cable. While it offers robust EQ customization via the OLED dial and Sonar desktop app, the OLED dial doesn't give you as much control as the Sonar app for non-PC devices. $578.99 at Amazon $679.99 at Lenovo $679.99 at Best Buy more buying choices The SteelSeries Arena 9 syste

Corporate inadequacy has rendered my favorite rediscovered gadget useless

I went for a run this morning while holding my iPhone, which was connected to a cable that attached to my earbuds. I’ve exercised with wired headphones for years, but today, the cord, with its persistent jostling, was especially distracting. That’s because I was previously running with a pair of Bluetooth earbuds, EPOS’s GTW 270. They came out in 2021 for $200, and I received them as a gift. They typically sat in a drawer until this spring, when I started running outside (rather than in a gym o

Mistralai/Voxtral-Mini-3B-2507 · Hugging Face

Voxtral Mini 1.0 (3B) - 2507 Voxtral Mini is an enhancement of Ministral 3B, incorporating state-of-the-art audio input capabilities while retaining best-in-class text performance. It excels at speech transcription, translation and audio understanding. Learn more about Voxtral in our blog post here. Key Features Voxtral builds upon Ministral-3B with powerful audio understanding capabilities. Dedicated transcription mode : Voxtral can operate in a pure speech transcription mode to maximize p

Fickle business strategy has turned my new favorite earbuds into e-waste

I went for a run this morning while holding my iPhone, which was connected to a cable that attached to my earbuds. I’ve exercised with wired headphones for years, but today, the cord, with its persistent jostling, was especially distracting. That’s because I was previously running with a pair of Bluetooth earbuds, EPOS’s GTW 270. They came out in 2021 for $200, and I received them as a gift. They typically sat in a drawer until this spring, when I started running outside (rather than in a gym o

This handy AI voice recorder has changed the way I work (and it's easy to use)

ZDNET's key takeaways Plaud Note is available now on Amazon.com for $159 This device and app combo lifts your note-taking to a new level of efficiency and effectiveness The Plaud Note device does require a paid subscription for the AI features. $159 at Amazon In the world of voice recording apps and devices, it's mostly the same old thing: Click or tap Record, start speaking, stop speaking, and click Save. Some voice recording apps will do basic transcripts (the Pixel Recording app does an im

Ask HN: What's Your Useful Local LLM Stack?

What I’m asking HN: What does your actually useful local LLM stack look like? I’m looking for something that provides you with real value — not just a sexy demo. --- After a recent internet outage, I realized I need a local LLM setup as a backup — not just for experimentation and fun. My daily (remote) LLM stack: - Claude Max ($100/mo): My go-to for pair programming. Heavy user of both the Claude web and desktop clients. - Windsurf Pro ($15/mo): Love the multi-line autocomplete and how it

Anthropic launches finance-specific Claude with built-in data connectors, higher limits and prompt libraries

Want smarter insights in your inbox? Sign up for our weekly newsletters to get only what matters to enterprise AI, data, and security leaders. Subscribe Now As some regulated enterprises cautiously expand their use of AI, platform and model makers are starting to offer bespoke versions to specific industries. Anthropic is making its first step into that direction with the new Claude for Financial Services, essentially a special version of its Claude for Enterprise tier, that could soothe some

Claude AI now integrates with Canva

Anthropic's Claude can now create and edit designs with visual studio Canva from within an AI chat. This integration is powered by a Canva server that uses Anthropic's Model Context Protocol, or MCP. Claude can use Canvas's tools to generate a design or search for materials within a user's Canva workspace. This functionality requires a paid subscription to Claude, and access also varies based on the user's Canva plan. Multiple artificial intelligence platforms have started using MCP to connect