Sony’s WH-1000XM5 ANC headphones fall to a new all-time low of $279

Sony’s WH-1000XM5 is a highly desirable set of wireless headphones, thanks to improved sound quality, a comfortable fit and incredible active noise cancellation (ANC). If you’ve been eyeballing a pair, now is absolutely the time to act. They’re currently on sale in silver at Amazon for $279 (30 percent off), the lowest price we’ve seen to date, by far. 

The WH-1000XM5 scored an excellent 95 in our Engadget review, thanks to improvements in nearly every way over our previous favorite headphones, the WH-1000XM4. Perhaps the biggest improvement was in fit and comfort thanks to the more optimal weight distribution, synthetic leather ear cups and slightly reduced weight. 

Sound quality also went up, due to the new 30mm carbon fiber drivers that deliver punchier bass. We also saw more clarity that helps you hear fine detail, along with improved depth that makes music more immersive. And Sony’s DSEE Extreme sound processing recovers detail lost to compression, without any noticeable impact on sound quality.

The ANC is equally impressive. With double the number of noise cancellation microphones found in the M4, along with a new dedicated V1 chip, the M5 does a better job at minimizing background noise. And in terms of the microphone, we found that the M5 offers superior call quality over its predecessor. Moreover, you get 30 hours of listening time with ANC enabled, enough for the longest of flights. 

The main drawback of the WH-1000XM5 headphones is the $400 price tag, but at $279, they’re a stellar deal — as long as you’re good with the silver color. Just act fast before the sale ends.  

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LG teases a smaller smartphone camera module with true optical telephoto zoom

LG may not make smartphones anymore, but it’s still building components for them. The company’s LG Innotek arm just unveiled a periscope-style true optical zoom camera module with a 4-9 times telephoto range. That would allow smartphone cameras to reta…

Biometric devices sold on eBay reportedly contained sensitive US military data

German researchers who purchased biometric capture devices on eBay found sensitive US military data stored on their memory cards, The New York Times has reported. That included fingerprints, iris scans, photographs, names and descriptions of the indivi…

OnePlus 11 will debut in China on January 4th

The OnePlus 11 is launching globally on February 7th, but the flagship smartphone will actually make debut in China earlier on January 4th, OnePlus announced. The company has also announced pretty much all the specs, including the processor, RAM and storage, showing it’ll be right up there with other high-end smartphones. 

The OnePlus 11 will be powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chip, already announced with recent Xiaomi and Vivo phones. That chip promises not just the usual speed improvements, but upgrades to AI, camera features, 5G speeds and graphics, including ray tracing support. 

OnePlus 11 set to debut on January 4th with high-end specs
OnePlus

You’ll get 12 or 16GB of LPDDR5X RAM, along with up 512GB of UFS 4.0 storage, and it should have OnePlus’s Color 13 version of Android 13 right out of the box. Full camera specs have yet to be released, but we’re seeing three cameras on a circular module with Hasselblad branding front and center. 

Along with the smartphone (shown in green and black colors), OnePlus is expected to unveil the Buds Pro 2 and TWS earbuds on January 4th, and also internationally in February. We should learn all the details (perhaps apart from international pricing) at the event on January 4th, though you’ll have to pay close attention with CES 2023 going on at the same time.  

Microsoft’s humble NotePad might be getting tabs in Windows 11

Shortly after Windows 11 arrived, Microsoft made some key improvements in the Notepad app that hasn’t seen much change since the Windows 95 days. Now, it may be introducing an even bigger feature, judging by a leak from a senior Microsoft product manager spotted by The Verge. “Notepad in Windows 11 now has tabs!” the person said on Twitter, before the tweet was deleted several minutes later. 

The screenshot included in the tweet shows two tabs, along with a note “confidential, don’t discuss features or take screenshots.” That warning clearly failed to do the job, but the screenshot indicates that tabs are in testing and may arrive to Windows Insiders sometime down the road.

Microsoft's humble NotePad might be getting tabs in Windows 11
Microsoft

Given how much we all depend on tabs in web browsers, it’s hard to believe they’re not more ubiquitous on other apps. Microsoft added that feature to File Explorer on Windows 11 earlier this year, helping reduce the sprawl across screens when you’re searching or copying files. The company did test tabs for Windows 10 apps some years ago, but essentially abandoned that project.

Notepad is an old app, to say the least, having arrived in 1983 to help Microsoft sell people on using a mouse in MS-DOS. Considering it’s largely the same plain text editor it was two decades ago, it’s amazing it’s still used as much as it is. If you’re using Notepad so much that you need tabs, my hat’s off to you — but the feature is just a rumor until we see it released into the wild. 

Twitter Blue perks now include higher ranking replies and 60-minute video uploads

Twitter Blue has enabled new perks for subscribers including “prioritized rankings in conversations” and video uploads up to 60 minutes in length, according to an updated feature list spotted by TechCrunch. Both features were promised by Elon Musk last month when he said Blue subscribers who pay $8 per month would get “priority in replies, mentions & search” and the ability to post long videos. 

Reply priority is now in effect, with the support page stating that “this feature prioritizes your replies on Tweets that you interact with.” That seems to be the case on severaltweets I looked at, with Twitter Blue subscribers (many with few followers) appearing as the top replies. It’s not clear if users paying $8 per month will always appear at the top in replies, or whether or factors are also used.

Twitter support said earlier that priority rankings will “help lower the visibility of scams, spam and bots.” However, some users have expressed concern that the new system will lower the experience for non-paying users, or that paid priority might help spammers, trolls and others amplify their messages. 

The new video rules will boost length from 10 minutes and 512MB to 60 minutes and 2GB at up to 1080p resolution, though only on the web — the 10-minute rule still applies to Android and iOS users. Twitter also notes that it may “modify or adapt your original video for distribution, syndication, publication or broadcast by us and our partners” or change the bitrate/resolution depending on a viewer’s internet speeds. 

Musk said that Twitter will eventually pay creators for uploaded videos, noting that it might even exceed the 55 percent cut that YouTube offers. However, it hasn’t said whether that will be done with ads or other means. It’s also not clear how it may address piracy issues, given that much of its moderation team has been let go or quit. 

@ElonJet returns to Twitter with a 24-hour delay on the plane’s location

Last week, Twitter banned Jack Sweeney’s @ElonJet account that tracked Elon Musk’s private jet, then unveiled a new policy against sharing live locations shortly afterward. Now, Sweeney is back with a new account called @ElonJetNexDay that still tracks Musk’s aircraft, but adds a 24-hour delay to the location, TechCrunch has reported.

It appears to be Sweeney’s effort conform to Twitter’s new rules, which state that it’s permissible to share “publicly available information after a reasonable time has elapsed, so that the individual is no longer at risk for physical harm.” The account has only been online for a short time, however, so it remains to be seen whether Twitter will see it the same way

Sweeney and his @ElonJet account have been on Musk’s radar for a while. In January, a few months before Musk announced a deal to buy Twitter, he offered Sweeney $5,000 to delete the account. Sweeney rejected the overture, instead asking for $50,000. As CNBC notes, @ElonJet had more than half a million followers. 

The ban came about after Elon Musk said a car carrying his son X Æ A-12 was followed by a stalker in Los Angeles. Twitter soon told Sweeney that his account “broke Twitter rules,” though didn’t specify which ones. Musk later said that “legal action” would be taken against Sweeney and “organizations who supported harm to my family.”

Sweeney’s @ElonJet tracker bot now has 67,000 followers on Mastadon and tracks jets belonging to Musk and others on Facebook and Instagram. The bans are part of a large amount of Twitter drama around Musk that recently culminated in one of Musk’s famous Twitter polls, with a decisive number of users voting that he should step down as CEO of Twitter. 

Meta settles Cambridge Analytica class-action lawsuit for $725 million

Fallout from Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica privacy scandal continues over four years after it was first exposed. Parent company Meta has agreed to pay $725 million to settle a long-running class-action lawsuit accusing Facebook of allowing Cambridge Analytica and other third parties to access users’ private information, Reuters reports. 

The settlement resolves user claims that Facebook violated federal and state laws by allowing the company’s preferred vendors and partners to harvest their personal data without consent. It’s reportedly the largest ever in a US data privacy class action and the most Meta has ever paid to resolve a class-action lawsuit. 

“This historic settlement will provide meaningful relief to the class in this complex and novel privacy case,” the lead lawyers for the plaintiffs said in a statement. 

Meta admitted no wrongdoing as part of the settlement, which is still subject to approval by a federal judge. “Over the last three years we revamped our approach to privacy and implemented a comprehensive privacy program,” Meta said in a statement, adding that the settlement “was in the best interest of our community and shareholders.” 

Cambridge Analytica, now defunct, worked for Ted Cruz and Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaigns. It accessed the personal data of up to 87 million people by an app (thisisyourdigitallife) and used the information gathered to target individuals with personally tailored messages. The scandal was exposed by The New York Times and The Guardian in 2018, thanks in large part to whistleblower Christopher Wylie.

In 2019, Facebook agreed to pay a $5 billion fine following a Federal Trade Commission investigation and $100 million to settle US Securities and Exchange Commission claims. It also paid £500,000 (about $644,000) in fines to the UK, a pittance compared to what it would have paid had the GDPR been in place when the scandal occurred. 

Facebook hasn’t put Cambridge Analytica behind it yet, either. The company is still fighting a lawsuit by the Washington DC attorney general, as well as a number of state attorneys general. 

Google is making its internal video-blurring privacy tool open source

Google has announced that two of its latest privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs), including one that blurs objects in a video, will be provided to anyone for free via open source. The new tools are part of Google’s Protected Computing initiative designed to transform “how, when and where data is processed to technically ensure its privacy and safety,” the company said.

The first is an internal project called Magritte, now out on Github, which uses machine learning to detect objects and apply a blur as soon as they appear on screen. It can disguise arbitrary objects like license plates, tattoos and more. “This code is especially useful for video journalists who want to provide increased privacy assurances,” Google wrote in the blog. “By using this open-source code, videographers can save time in blurring objects from a video, while knowing that the underlying ML algorithm can perform detection across a video with high-accuracy.”

The other with the unwieldy name “Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) Transpiler, allows developers to perform computations on encrypted data without being able to access personally identifiable information. Google says it can help industries like financial services, healthcare and government, “where a robust security guarantee around the processing of sensitive data is of highest importance.”

Google notes that PETs are starting to enter the mainstream after being mostly an academic exercise. The White House recently touted the technology, saying “it will allow researchers, physicians, and others permitted access to gain insights from sensitive data without ever having access to the data itself.” Google noted that both the US and UK governments are held a contest this year to develop PET solutions around financial crime and public health emergencies.