If you’ve done any wireless earbuds shopping lately, you’ve likely noticed a new design category cropping up everywhere. They’re called open earbuds (or open-ear buds, depending on the brand), and just about every audio brand has a pair (or three). They come in a slew of styles, but most either loop around your ears like older Beats buds, or they clip on like funky-futuristic earrings. Whatever the style, they’re designed to deliver satisfying sound while keeping your ear canals open to the sounds of the world around you.

Open earbuds are a natural fit for staying aware during outdoor activities like jogging, hiking, and especially cycling, where the tiny microphones in traditional buds are rendered useless by wind. They don’t sound as full or detailed as regular earbuds, but the best open earbuds can sound quite good.

Buying such a specified item might seem extravagant when buds with noise-canceling and transparency modes work in the vast majority of scenarios. That was my stance at first, too. Like many things in life, sometimes you need to try something in real life to see if you’ll like it. Over the last year or so, I’ve gone from open earbuds skeptic to evangelizer—and now I can’t imagine living without them.

That New Sound

Photograph: Ryan Waniata

“Occlusion” is mostly a foreign word outside audio circles, but it describes that plugged-up feeling you get from traditional earbuds. The best wireless earbuds counter occlusion with venting and other design factors, but you can’t fully out-swerve physics, and most of us get tired of blocking our ear canals after a few hours.

Open earbuds (along with solutions like bone conducting headphones) fix the occlusion problem, with sound that seems to pop into your head like magic. The airy designs of my favorite pairs from brands like Bose and Soundcore are so comfy I can wear them all day, often forgetting they’re on.

Comfort alone wasn’t enough to sell me on an entire genre of buds you can’t use in loud places, but as it turns out, that’s rarely a problem. As WIRED’s primary open earbuds reviewer, the more time I spend with these buds, the more use cases seem to unfold before me. From the complications of life to my ever-fraying attention span, open earbuds meet me where I live.

My main use case is probably also yours: I love using them for outdoor activities, from keeping in touch with my neighborhood while enjoying Comedy Bang Bang on a dog walk to blissfully grooving to my favorite yacht-rock playlist on an ebike test ride. But that’s actually just the beginning.

It’s about that time. Apple is gearing up for a slew of hardware announcements that will include upgrades for the entry-level iPad, iPad Air, MacBook Pro and MacBook Air, according to Mark Gurman’s Power On newsletter. In line with what we’ve seen in recent years, Gurman reports, “A product launch is currently slated for as early as the week of March 2.”

Apple unveiled the M5 MacBook Pro in October, bringing the chip first to the 14-inch model. With the coming announcements, we should see the M5 Pro and M5 Max chips finally arrive. Gurman notes that new 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pros are on the way, along with a new MacBook Air. We’re also likely to see new iPads soon. A new entry-level iPad will be able to support Apple Intelligence thanks to the inclusion of the A18 chip, and the iPad Air will be getting the M4, according to Gurman.

Updates to the Mac Studio and Studio Display are expected to follow, as well as a Mac mini refresh down the line this year. As Gurman previously reported, Apple is also said to be releasing its first “low-cost MacBook” sometime in the very near future.

Rome’s “La Sapienza” university has been targeted by a cyberattack that impacted its IT systems and caused widespread operational disruptions at the educational institute.

The university first disclosed the incident in a social media post earlier this week, saying that its IT infrastructure “has been the target of a cyberattack.”

“As a precautionary measure, and in order to ensure the integrity and security of data, an immediate shutdown of network systems has been ordered,” the organization said.

The university, which is Europe’s largest by number of in-campus students, with over 112,500 enrolled, notified the authorities of the incident and formed a technical task force to initiate remediation and restoration procedures.

As of writing, the university’s website remains offline, and new status updates published on Instagram reflect a continued effort to recover from the cyberattack.

As of yesterday’s announcement, temporary “infopoints” have been set up for students to provide information accessible through digital systems and databases that are currently unavailable.

Although the university has not disclosed much information about the attack type or the perpetrators, Italian newspaper Corriere Della Sera claims that the incident is a ransomware attack perpetrated by a pro-Russian threat actor called Femwar02 and resulted in data encryption.

The outlet released the information based on malware characteristics and operational patterns, which are similar to the Bablock/Rorschach ransomware.

This is a ransomware strain that first appeared in 2023, featuring fast encryption speeds and extensive customization options. Cybersecurity company Check Point estimated that it was a project built from bits of the leaked sources of Babuk, LockBit v2.0, and DarkSide.

According to Corriere Della Sera’s sources, a ransom exists, but the university staff has not opened it to avoid triggering the 72-hour timer. Hence, the ransom amount hasn’t been specified.

Currently, the university’s technicians are working together with Italian CSIRT and specialists from Agenzia per la Cybersicurezza Nazionale (ACN) and the Polizia Postale to restore the systems from backups, which have reportedly not been impacted.

Although Rorschach does not operate an extortion portal on the dark web, stolen data could be disseminated or sold to data extortion groups, so the risk of it ending up online remains significant.

Given the situation, students and staff at Sapienza University of Rome should remain on high alert for phishing attacks, avoid clicking links in unsolicited communications, and monitor accounts for suspicious activity.

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