Your muscles, fat and other cells respond differently to exercise depending on the time of dayPanoramic Images/AlamyUsain Bolt smashed the 100-metre sprint record at the 2009 World Championships in Athletics in Berlin in a floodlit stadium under an inky night sky.This article is part of a series on fitness that answers eight questions about exercise and its influence on our bodies and minds. Read more here.This was no coincidence: when it comes tosporting prowess, timing matters. For activities relying on sheer muscle power andendurance, evening or late afternoon arewhenmost world records have been set, probably due to assistance frompeaks in thedaily rhythms ofanumber of the bodys key physiological outputs.But what about everyday exercisers? Is therean optimal timeof day, or month, togetthe most out ofworkouts and reduce therisk of injury?AdvertisementWhichever aspect of sport you look at whether its sports medicine or exercise response time of day matters, says Qing-Jun Meng at the University of Manchester, UK. Later afternoon or evening is when our bodytemperature peaks, resulting in fastermetabolic reactions and nerve signal transmission compared with the early morning. Connective tissue is also more flexible in the afternoon, while our reserves of glycogen the biochemical energy source our muscles draw on during moderate to intense exercise have had time to be replenished.Circadian rhythmsOther physiological parameters also varyover the 24-hour period, which could berelevant for exercise: testosterone secretion peaks at around 9am; coordination tends tobebest at around 2.30pm; reaction times arefastest at around 3.30pm; cardiovascular efficiency, muscle and grip strength peak at 5to5.30pm.Circadian rhythms exist in almost all cellsof the body and regulate key processes relating to exercise and metabolism, says Meng. Depending on what time you exercise, your muscle, fat and other cells will also be inadifferent state, and they will respond to exercise differently.Indeed, a recent study by Renske Lok at Stanford University in California and her colleagues found that, on average, Olympic swimmers are more than athird of a second faster if they compete in theevening rather than in the morning. In40per cent of [swimming] races, the time-of-day effect isbigger than the difference between finishingfirst or second, they wrote.For sports involving more technical skills, such as tennis or soccer, peak performance tends to arrive a little earlier possibly because our cognitive abilities usually peak in the late morning or early afternoon. Soccer players juggle and chip the ball with the greatest precision at around 4pm; tennis players servestend to be faster in the evening, but more accurate in the morning. Of course, thesetimings are based on averages in reality,larks who tend to wake early and bemore active in the mornings will be at theirbest earlier, while owls, who naturally come to life in the evenings, will peak later.What are the implications of all this for howthe rest of us time our exercise? Last year, Fabienne Bruggisser at the University of Basel in Switzerland and her colleagues pored over the evidence from 26 previous studies and found little to support or refute the idea that training at a specific time leads to better performance or improved health outcomes.They did, however, find some evidence tosupport training at the same time of day asarace or competition to improve physical performance at this time. In other words, morning training improves morning performance more than evening training does,and vice versa. However, given that thestudies only included young male participants, it remains to be seen whether such conclusions apply to the general population, the authors said.Monthly cyclesWomen may have a further layer of complexity to consider. In recent years, several womens soccer teams, including Chelsea FC Women, have started tailoring their players training programmes around their menstrual cycles, claiming that doing so boosts their performance and reduces their risk of injury.The theory is that when oestrogen is high and progesterone is low thats an anabolic environment; its a good [time] to work hard, says Stuart Phillips at McMaster University in Canada. Yet when he and his colleagues recently reviewed the evidence for an influenceof menstrual cycle phase on exercise performance, they found it was remarkably thin. The evidence that we do have suggests that theres no merit to it, says Phillips.Even so, he doesnt dismiss recording symptoms and using them as a guide to scheduling training. I know some women aregenuinely adversely affected at certain phases of their cycle with menstrual-related symptoms: cramps, backaches, a lack of motivation, fatigue, etc. And for women athletes that do experience symptoms, tryingto manage them and making their coachaware of them is a great thing, he says.But as for a blanket, this-is-the-way-you-do-things-type approach, theres no consistent pattern to performance when its studied systematically, and we know gold medals andworld records have been set at different [menstrual] phases, and on and off the contraceptive pill.Meng believes there may be yet other factors to consider. Generally, he advocates exercising in the morning especially outdoors as this exposes people to bright light, which helps to synchronise our biological clocks with the time of day. Our bodies work best when the clocks inall our cells and tissues are aligned with oneanother, and with the time of day.And even if there isnt a best time of daytowork out, there may be a time to avoidexercise. Recent research by Meng andhis colleagues has suggested that a key mechanism for keeping the biological clocks inour bones and joints synchronised with those in other tissues is exercise, and that if mice are encouraged to exercise when they would usually be sleeping, this causes their skeletal clocks to desynchronise from their brain clocks a phenomenon Meng has namedskeletal jet lag.Though the implications for injury and physical performance in humans are unclear, further experiments in mice suggest that consistently exercising during their equivalent of night-time leads to the activation of genes that are associated with osteoarthritis. We suspect that if you did this over a long period of time, it could be really detrimental, says Meng.Topics:

MIT Technology Reviews Whats Next series looks across industries, trends, and technologies to give you a first look at the future. You can read the rest of themhere. For the last couple of years weve had a go at predicting whats coming next in AI. A fools game given how fast this industry moves. But were on a roll, and were doing it again. How did we score last time round? Our four hot trends to watch out for in 2024 included what we called customized chatbotsinteractive helper apps powered by multimodal large language models (check: we didnt know it yet, but we were talking about what everyone now calls agents, the hottest thing in AI right now); generative video (check: few technologies have improved so fast in the last 12 months, with OpenAI and Google DeepMind releasing their flagship video generation models, Sora and Veo, within a week of each other this December); and more general-purpose robots that can do a wider range of tasks (check: the payoffs from large language models continue to trickle down to other parts of the tech industry, and robotics is top of the list). We also said that AI-generated election disinformation would be everywhere, but herehappilywe got it wrong. There were many things to wring our hands over this year, but political deepfakes were thin on the ground. So whats coming in 2025? Were going to ignore the obvious here: You can bet that agents and smaller, more efficient, language models will continue to shape the industry. Instead, here are five alternative picks from our AI team. 1. Generative virtual playgrounds If 2023 was the year of generative images and 2024 was the year of generative videowhat comes next? If you guessed generative virtual worlds (a.k.a. video games), high fives all round. We got a tiny glimpse of this technology in February, when Google DeepMind revealed a generative model called Genie that could take a still image and turn it into a side-scrolling 2D platform game that players could interact with. In December, the firm revealed Genie 2, a model that can spin a starter image into an entire virtual world. Other companies are building similar tech. In October, the AI startups Decart and Etched revealed an unofficial Minecraft hack in which every frame of the game gets generated on the fly as you play. And World Labs, a startup cofounded by Fei-Fei Licreator of ImageNet, the vast data set of photos that kick-started the deep-learning boomis building what it calls large world models, or LWMs. One obvious application is video games. Theres a playful tone to these early experiments, and generative 3D simulations could be used to explore design concepts for new games, turning a sketch into a playable environment on the fly. This could lead to entirely new types of games. But they could also be used to train robots. World Labs wants to develop so-called spatial intelligencethe ability for machines to interpret and interact with the everyday world. But robotics researchers lack good data about real-world scenarios with which to train such technology. Spinning up countless virtual worlds and dropping virtual robots into them to learn by trial and error could help make up for that. Will Douglas Heaven 2. Large language models that reason The buzz was justified. When OpenAI revealed o1 in September, it introduced a new paradigm in how large language models work. Two months later, the firm pushed that paradigm forward in almost every way with o3a model that just might reshape this technology for good. Most models, including OpenAIs flagship GPT-4, spit out the first response they come up with. Sometimes its correct; sometimes its not. But the firms new models are trained to work through their answers step by step, breaking down tricky problems into a series of simpler ones. When one approach isnt working, they try another. This technique, known as reasoning (yeswe know exactly how loaded that term is), can make this technology more accurate, especially for math, physics, and logic problems. Its also crucial for agents. In December, Google DeepMind revealed an experimental new web-browsing agent called Mariner. In the middle of a preview demo that the company gave to MIT Technology Review, Mariner seemed to get stuck. Megha Goel, a product manager at the company, had asked the agent to find her a recipe for Christmas cookies that looked like the ones in a photo shed given it. Mariner found a recipe on the web and started adding the ingredients to Goels online grocery basket. Then it stalled; it couldnt figure out what type of flour to pick. Goel watched as Mariner explained its steps in a chat window: It says, I will use the browsers Back button to return to the recipe. It was a remarkable moment. Instead of hitting a wall, the agent had broken the task down into separate actions and picked one that might resolve the problem. Figuring out you need to click the Back button may sound basic, but for a mindless bot its akin to rocket science. And it worked: Mariner went back to the recipe, confirmed the type of flour, and carried on filling Goels basket. Google DeepMind is also building an experimental version of Gemini 2.0, its latest large language model, that uses this step-by-step approach to problem solving, called Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking. But OpenAI and Google are just the tip of the iceberg. Many companies are building large language models that use similar techniques, making them better at a whole range of tasks, from cooking to coding. Expect a lot more buzz about reasoning (we know, we know) this year. Will Douglas Heaven 3. Its boom time for AI in science One of the most exciting uses for AI is speeding up discovery in the natural sciences. Perhaps the greatest vindication of AIs potential on this front came last October, when the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the Nobel Prize for chemistry to Demis Hassabis and John M. Jumper from Google DeepMind for building the AlphaFold tool, which can solve protein folding, and to David Baker for building tools to help design new proteins. Expect this trend to continue next year, and to see more data sets and models that are aimed specifically at scientific discovery. Proteins were the perfect target for AI, because the field had excellent existing data sets that AI models could be trained on. The hunt is on to find the next big thing. One potential area is materials science. Meta has released massive data sets and models that could help scientists use AI to discover new materials much faster, and in December, Hugging Face, together with the startup Entalpic, launched LeMaterial, an open-source project that aims to simplify and accelerate materials research. Their first project is a data set that unifies, cleans, and standardizes the most prominent material data sets. AI model makers are also keen to pitch their generative products as research tools for scientists. OpenAI let scientists test its latest o1 model and see how it might support them in research. The results were encouraging. Having an AI tool that can operate in a similar way to a scientist is one of the fantasies of the tech sector. In a manifesto published in October last year, Anthropic founder Dario Amodei highlighted science, especially biology, as one of the key areas where powerful AI could help. Amodei speculates that in the future, AI could be not only a method of data analysis but a virtual biologist who performs all the tasks biologists do. Were still a long way away from this scenario. But next year, we might see important steps toward it. Melissa Heikkil 4. AI companies get cozier with national security There is a lot of money to be made by AI companies willing to lend their tools to border surveillance, intelligence gathering, and other national security tasks. The US military has launched a number of initiatives that show its eager to adopt AI, from the Replicator programwhich, inspired by the war in Ukraine, promises to spend $1 billion on small dronesto the Artificial Intelligence Rapid Capabilities Cell, a unit bringing AI into everything from battlefield decision-making to logistics. European militaries are under pressure to up their tech investment, triggered by concerns that Donald Trumps administration will cut spending to Ukraine. Rising tensions between Taiwan and China weigh heavily on the minds of military planners, too. In 2025, these trends will continue to be a boon for defense-tech companies like Palantir, Anduril, and others, which are now capitalizing on classified military data to train AI models. The defense industrys deep pockets will tempt mainstream AI companies into the fold too. OpenAI in December announced it is partnering with Anduril on a program to take down drones, completing a year-long pivot away from its policy of not working with the military. It joins the ranks of Microsoft, Amazon, and Google, which have worked with the Pentagon for years. Other AI competitors, which are spending billions to train and develop new models, will face more pressure in 2025 to think seriously about revenue. Its possible that theyll find enough non-defense customers who will pay handsomely for AI agents that can handle complex tasks, or creative industries willing to spend on image and video generators. But theyll also be increasingly tempted to throw their hats in the ring for lucrative Pentagon contracts. Expect to see companies wrestle with whether working on defense projects will be seen as a contradiction to their values. OpenAIs rationale for changing its stance was that democracies should continue to take the lead in AI development, the company wrote, reasoning that lending its models to the military would advance that goal. In 2025, well be watching others follow its lead. James ODonnell 5. Nvidia sees legitimate competition For much of the current AI boom, if you were a tech startup looking to try your hand at making an AI model, Jensen Huang was your man. As CEO of Nvidia, the worlds most valuable corporation, Huang helped the company become the undisputed leader of chips used both to train AI models and to ping a model when anyone uses it, called inferencing. A number of forces could change that in 2025. For one, behemoth competitors like Amazon, Broadcom, AMD, and others have been investing heavily in new chips, and there are early indications that these could compete closely with Nvidiasparticularly for inference, where Nvidias lead is less solid. A growing number of startups are also attacking Nvidia from a different angle. Rather than trying to marginally improve on Nvidias designs, startups like Groq are making riskier bets on entirely new chip architectures that, with enough time, promise to provide more efficient or effective training. In 2025 these experiments will still be in their early stages, but its possible that a standout competitor will change the assumption that top AI models rely exclusively on Nvidia chips. Underpinning this competition, the geopolitical chip war will continue. That war thus far has relied on two strategies. On one hand, the West seeks to limit exports to China of top chips and the technologies to make them. On the other, efforts like the US CHIPS Act aim to boost domestic production of semiconductors. Donald Trump may escalate those export controls and has promised massive tariffs on any goods imported from China. In 2025, such tariffs would put Taiwanon which the US relies heavily because of the chip manufacturer TSMCat the center of the trade wars. Thats because Taiwan has said it will help Chinese firms relocate to the island to help them avoid the proposed tariffs. That could draw further criticism from Trump, who has expressed frustration with US spending to defend Taiwan from China. Its unclear how these forces will play out, but it will only further incentivize chipmakers to reduce reliance on Taiwan, which is the entire purpose of the CHIPS Act. As spending from the bill begins to circulate, next year could bring the first evidence of whether its materially boosting domestic chip production. James ODonnell

The unique gameplay loop popularized by Capcom's Monster Hunter franchise has inspired many other games to varying degrees of success. 2014 PlayStation Vita game Freedom Wars is one such game, with the original release earning mixed reviews from critics, yet standing out as one of the more notable titles ever released for PlayStation's ill-fated handheld. Freedom Wars being a PlayStation Vita exclusive limited its audience, and that, combined with the fact that the servers for the original game were shut down years ago, has always made it ripe for a port or remaster. Freedom Wars Remastered makes the game available to a much wider audience, and it does so without forsaking what made the original popular to begin with. However, some may come away feeling as though Freedom Wars Remastered doesn't do enough to bring the 2014 Vita game to modern home console standards.

After your first full Zoomer level in Fire Canyon, Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy treats you to a much less dangerous vehicle level in the form of Precursor Basin. Despite being less deadly to Jak and Daxter, it's arguably much more difficult to complete than Fire Canyon due to offering some very difficult objectives.

The islands of Palworld have seen some interesting new additions lately, making Pocketpair's creation more engaging. The game got the major Feybreak update in December 2024, putting in new things like a much bigger island, more Pals, new dungeons, and more. While all of these are great, one of the more noteworthy implementations would be the bounty system, allowing players to take on jobs that involve eliminating high-value targets for rewards. The new experience is fun and challenging, but it has the potential to be more.

Its the second day of CES 2025, and Im sure youve spent the whole day with your eyes pointed to our liveblog containing all the news of the day. But Im sure there are a few folks who might have sneezed, or blinked, and missed something important. Which is why weve made this lovely list of all the biggest news from this day of the show, just for those folks who sneezed.Lenovo blesses us with its presence at CESThere was plenty more PC-flavored news broadcast to the world, including Lenovos turn in the spotlight. Most notably, it showed off the ThinkBook Plus, a real version of its flexible OLED laptop from a few years back. At the touch of a button, that 14-inch display will expand to a bit more productivity-friendly 16.7-inches, which might justify the $3,500 starting price.Lenovo also showed off a dummy prototype of its Legion Go 2 gaming handheld, and hints as to what specs itll be carrying. Alongside that, it announced the Legion Go S, the first third-party SteamOS gaming handheld thatll offer a legitimate alternative to the Steam Deck. If youd rather play games in a more traditional way, by which I mean with one leg as an ersatz table while you sit awkwardly on a crowded bus, then you can opt for Lenovos new Legion Pro 7i gaming laptop which can be specced with NVIDIAs RTX 5090 graphics.Of course, Lenovo also released some normal laptops, including the Yoga Slim 9i, the first laptop to launch with an under-display camera. The tweak enables it to boast a 98 percent screen to body ratio, which should get all of your friends and enemies feeling jealous. The ThinkPad X9, meanwhile, will likely break hearts of longstanding ThinkPad fans, since it has no aluminum chassis and no Trackpoint. Yes, we can hardly believe it too.Qualcomm brings new chips, while Maingear, ASUS and Razer bring the PC goodiesQualcomm, with less to prove than Intel right now, has announced its Snapdragon X chips will land in more Windows Copilot + PCs in the near future. A plethora of models are currently in development, with a focus on affordability rather than bells and whistles. Qualcomm and its partners, which include Acer, Dell, HP and Lenovo are targeting a base price of $600. Which should be affordable enough for plenty of entry-level buyers to update their ageing hardware to take advantage of whatever we work out what AI is actually good for.ASUS new ZenBook A14 made its debut in the desert, showing off some pretty lovely industrial design and a spec sheet to match. Engadgets Devindra Hardawar was delighted with the premium materials used in its construction, and the look and feel. The one downside is that its equipped / blighted (delete as appropriate) with Qualcomms X or Elite chips, limiting backwards compatibility with older Windows apps.Maingear, meanwhile, went to town on its fancy-looking water-cooled desktops as it attempts to reassert its dominance in the custom PC space. The range comes with heavy-duty plumbing and a whole bunch of fans and radiators to help keep your planet-burning GPUs cool.One permanent fixture of CES 2025 in Las Vegas, Nevada is gaming company Razer showing off its latest lighting-infused hardware. First up, it debuted its new Blade 16 laptop, which it says is its thinnest gaming laptop ever made. It also showed off Project Arielle, an RGB-clad gaming chair thatll glow red as it warms you up and blue as it cools you down. And, to round things out, the company also showed off a fancypants monitor stand that, surprise surprise, was also RGB.Smart Glasses at CES 2025Smart glasses have always been something of a technological cul-de-sac, but the signs are that the technology is quickly maturing. Weve seen plenty of specs at this years CES that arent just a faddy gimmick with a too-expensive price tag. For instance, RayNeos new X3 AR Pro frames comes with a built-in camera and the ability to interact with a ChatGPT-powered assistant. Then theres Even Realities, which brought the G1A and G1B to the show, which impressed me no end. Theyre far lower tech than some of the products on offer, but with a more robust feature set that includes real-time translation, teleprompting and turn-by-turn directions. Xreal, too, was able to show off its latest personal cinema-style AR glasses that didnt make me want to throw up the second I put them on.The CES Auto Show: New Honda EVs and BMWs Panoramic iDrive turn headsHonda rocked up in Nevada to talk up prototype models of the concept vehicles it showed off last year. The 0 Series Saloon sedan, which 100% looks like the car Inspector Gadget would drive, and the 0 Series SUV, which also looks like a car Inspector Gadget would drive. The auto maker said both models will be available to buy at some point next year, harnessing Hondas brand-spanking new EV architecture.And BMW was also here, showing off its new Panoramic iDrive system thatll come to every new BMW. That includes a display running the width of the dashboard with key statistics on your drive, rather than sticking it in an instrument binnacle like a normal person is used to. Of course, the idea here is to give you so many places to stick useful information its impossible for you to miss whats going on. Unless you spend so much time staring at the raft of digital displays that you forget your eyes should really be pointed toward the road.The rest of the best at CES 2025Day two of CES is where the focus pivots from the biggest names to everyone else, and there was plenty of interesting stuff on show. For instance, InkPoster uses color e-paper displays as a canvas upon which you can hang digital art on your walls. MCON by OhSnap is a neat magnetic game controller for your smartphone with high-class features like Hall Effect Joysticks. Anker built a solar umbrella that lets you re-juice your gadgets while catching some rays. And, not one to be outdone, EcoFlow showed off a solar hat thatll do the same thing, but goofier.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/general/the-best-tech-and-gadgets-we-found-on-ces-2025-day-two-110005772.html?src=rss

ASUS is leaning even harder into Copilot+PCs with it's new Vivobook 14 and 16 at CES 2025. And unlike the laptops the company introduced last fall, this time ASUS is going all in on Qualcomm chips.Just like the new ultralight Zenbook A14, both the Vivobook 14 and Vivobook 16 come with a Qualcomm Snapdragon X chip, and in the case of both sizes of Vivobook, 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage. ASUS claims these new internals mean both laptops are 44 percent more performant than last generation Vivobooks and should last longer too, with a battery life of up to 19.8 hours.Regardless of whether you buy the 14-inch or 16-inch laptop, you'll get a 60Hz, 1,920 x 1,200 resolution display. Like past ASUS laptops, both Vivobooks will also use the company's "AI Camera" which can detect when you're not sitting in front of your screen and automatically dim the display to stretch battery life further, or lock your computer for added security. You'll have plenty of options if you need to plug something in, including two USB-C ports, two USB-A ports, an HDMI port and an audio jack.ASUS imagines the draw of all this new hardware will be the AI features they enable, like Generative Fill and Erase for editing photos or Live Captions for automatically adding subtitles to the audio on your computer. A more powerful laptop that lasts longer is more immediately appealing, though.Alongside the new Vivobooks, ASUS is announcing two new enterprise-focused laptops, the ExpertBook B5 and B3. Both laptops come with up to an Intel Core Ultra Series 2, up to 64GB of RAM and plenty of security features to keep your data safe.ASUS hasn't shared the availability or price of the new ExpertBooks. The ASUS Vivobook 14 and Vivobook 16 are available to pre-order now for $700 and $750, respectively.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/computing/laptops/asus-brings-qualcomms-latest-chip-to-the-vivobook-14-and-16-173007085.html?src=rss

Panasonic has debuted several sets of earbuds under its Technics brand at this point. At CES 2025, the company is adding one more, but this one has some more interesting tech inside than the others. The new Technics flagship earbuds, the EAH-AZ100, have newly-developed magnetic fluid drivers that the company says allowed it to significantly improve audio quality. The previous model, the EAH-AZ80, already sounded great, so Technics really had it work cut out for it in order to improve things even further. But after hearing them for myself, I can confirm the company managed to make yet another sonic leap. Technics says the 10mm magnetic fluid drivers inside the AZ100 produce "clean, high-resolution, low-vibration and low-distortion sounds," which it further describes as "the most authentic, balanced audio thats true to the original source." The drivers utilize technology that has be miniaturized from the company's EAH-TZ700 wired in-ear monitors. That magnetic fluid is an oil-like liquid that's filled with magnetic particles before Technics injects it between the driver magnet and coil. The driver also has a free edge that enables 3Hz of deep bass, plus there's an aluminum diaphragm that produces natural sound separation and details at high resolution. Spatial audio is in play as well. The AZ100 supports Dolby Atmos and Dolby Head Tracking for a full 360-degree listening setup. You can also listen to LDAC content on these earbuds, but battery life takes a hit when you do. Robust adaptive active noise cancellation (ANC), Voice Focus AI for calls, touch controls and three-device multipoint connectivity are all on the spec sheet. There's a one-touch Conversation Mode too, allowing users to instantly pause content and activate transparency mode when needed. Auracast and Google Fast Pair made the cut as well. You can expect up to 10 hours of ANC use on a charge, with another 18 hours worth of power in the case. That accessory supports wireless charging with Qi-certified devices and a 15-minute quick charge is enough for 90 minutes of playback with noise cancellation enabled. The AZ100's updates also include a refined shape as well as size and weight reductions, all of which should lead to a more comfortable fit for the IPX4-rated earbuds. Panasonic's preview event was in a dark Vegas nightclub, so apologies for the image quality. Billy Steele for Engadget I was able to try the AZ100 for a few minutes at Panasonic's preview event at CES. When doing a direct comparison with a set of AZ80 earbuds that were also available, the difference in sound quality was striking. The AZ80 was well-reviewed, and some outlets even picked them as the best option in terms of pure audio performance. The AZ100 blows them out of the water. The first thing I noticed was how much louder the AZ100 is at the same volume level. What's more, all of the claims Technics made about the detail, clarity and deep bass from the new fluid drivers holds true. Across songs from Lewis Capaldi, Dua Lipa, Train and The Eagles (I didn't pick the playlist), there was a wide, immersive sound stage that enveloped my ears with guitars, drums, beats and vocals. There was driving low-end tone when a dance track like "Don't Start Now" called for it, and there was also pristine detail in softer acoustic guitar in "Hotel California." I'll note that Technics offered FLAC files for the demo, so I'll be interested to see how the AZ100 fares with "regular" quality tunes from a streaming service. ANC performance was also quite good during my short introduction. The noise-blocking tech was robust enough to silence most of the clamor from the showroom in a Vegas nightclub, though it struggled with the voices of the people closest to me. Transparency mode sounded pleasantly natural as well, but I'd like to test it in a less-crowded environment before I can say for sure how good it really is. The AZ100 is available today for $300 is silver and black color options. This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/audio/headphones/technics-az100-earbuds-hands-on-ces-2025-173004465.html?src=rss

Disney Plus has ordered a pilot for a reboot of the '90s novel 'Holes', but this time a female lead will take center stage.

Satya Nadella confirms $3 billion Microsoft investment to help equip India with artificial intelligence skills.