As Sony’s aggressive line of car speakers and UFO-like mini-systems indicate, the company has never been shy or understated in the design of its audio equipment. Though its new MDR-EX500LP earbuds don’t promise to blow out your ears with a name like Xplod, the pair that tops Sony’s new EX line certainly haven’t gone quietly on style.
Upon first inspection, the first thing that stands out about the EX500 are their disc-like drivers. Unlike a traditional earbud that has the flat portion of drive pointing directly into the ear, the EX500 orients it vertically with a soft silicon earbud appended, perpendicular, to the side. And it’s all packaged up in rigid aluminum to minimize vibration – not your typical white plastic.
That unusual design allows room for a beefy 13.5mm driver, which is significantly larger than the 9mm or 10mm drivers found in more mainstream units. Combined with a multi-layer diaphragm, Sony says that difference should translate to deeper bass without reducing clarity on the top end.
The EX500 will take over the top of Sony’s in-ear headphone line when Sonythey go on sale Friday through SonyStyle.com, with an MSRP of $130. More details are available in Sony’s press release.
Google has been finding more ways to make Gemini a part of your daily routine, from putting together playlists to ordering groceries through your favorite apps. Now it's expanding those capabilities to more services, with Google Search joining in, too.
The company has announced a new Connected Apps Platform that makes it easier for developers to bring their services to both Gemini and Search. Alongside this, Google is adding new partners to its growing lineup, bringing more of the apps people already use into its AI ecosystem.
In the broad context of AI and its perceived harms, health and medical risks often pop up in the conversation. The warnings even come from frontier AI labs, such as ChatGPT-maker OpenAI and Anthropic, both of which have warned about misusing AI to cook up bioweapons. Security experts have already spotted a few such incidents in the wild, especially with the usage of AI models without any solid guardrails.
Well, it appears that the risks run deeper. As per an analysis appearing in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), AI bots are now being deployed to influence public policies governing health risks to citizens. In this instance, an attempt was made using AI bots to thwart regulations that aim to restrict the sale of disposable vapes, all while disguising the manipulation efforts as a response from real humans.
What if checking your drinking water for dangerous chemicals were as simple as plugging a tiny gadget into your smartphone? Researchers in Japan have developed a compact sensor that could make that possible, potentially bringing sophisticated water contamination testing out of expensive laboratories and into people's hands.
Scientists at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) have created a portable device capable of detecting extremely low concentrations of PFAS, commonly known as "forever chemicals." The findings were published in the journal Biosensors and Bioelectronics, which demonstrate how an inexpensive sensor and a smartphone could make identifying potentially harmful chemicals in water a lot easier.