My YouTube algorithm is sacred, with years of data about my preferences and viewing history fermenting into whatever videos it picks for my home screen. YouTube’s algorithm, while not perfect, sure knows what I want to see. The current top three videos on my front page are an Apple Watch analysis, a Big Brother season 28 update, and something called “I Lost to the Muppets” from comedian Chris Fleming. Click. Click. Click.

As part of its Made on YouTube event Wednesday, Google released several new features, including a Custom Feeds button for adjusting what videos pop up on your front page. It’s a rare chance for users to directly tweak their algorithmic feed on YouTube, in ways that go beyond just pressing thumbs up on a video or blocking a creator.

To try it out, users can click the Your custom feeds button below the search bar and type a request for the feed they’d like to see. YouTube uses large language models to process your request and whip up a freshly personalized homepage. “I want a rainy Shanghai vibe: café jazz, street food, and vlogs,” read one of my suggested prompts.

Courtesy of YouTube

YouTube tested Custom Feeds as an experimental feature earlier this year, before deciding that it was a good fit. The company plans to roll it out soon as an option for all US users, whether viewing on mobile, desktop, or TV.

“Users are always telling us that they want more control,” says Emily Moxley, YouTube’s vice president of product management. “They want more ability to steer their algorithm. With custom feeds, we’re giving them a natural-language way that they can do that. They can tell us exactly what they want.”

So, I told YouTube exactly what I wanted to see: “Gooey macaroni and cheese recipe videos, Caleb Hearon clip compilations, and crystal singing bowl videos under 15 minutes.” And the feed it generated was exactly that. My perfect zen blend for rotting on the couch after a long day. YouTube suggested potential additions to expand my prompt, like “uploaded this month” and “without talking or commentary.” Not bad.

The Custom Feeds button sits next to other topic tabs below the search bar, like “Music” and “Podcasts.” Experimenting with this tool doesn’t replace your standard homepage, which you can access anytime by clicking the “All” button. Users can save multiple custom feeds.

Beats has just unveiled its latest pair of headphones with the Beats 360, but how does it measure up to Apple’s AirPods Max 2?

Beats is part of Apple, and has been since being bought by the company back in 2014, which means choosing between the two for headphones can feel like a difficult task. That’s where we come in.

Although we haven’t reviewed the Beats 360 yet, we have reviewed the AirPods Max 2 and have noted the key differences between the two headphones below. 

Read on to see what’s different with the Beats 360 and whether it stands a chance at making it into our best headphones guide. Or for more on the recent Beats launch, our Beats 360 vs Beats Studio Pro explains what’s new with Beats’ flagship, while I’ve offered my early thoughts on the headphones too.

Price and Availability

The Beats 360 is available to order now and has an RRP of £299.95. The headphones come in a choice of four colours – Sky, Cloud, Pink and Black – and will include colour-coordinated earcup and headband cushions. 

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You can also purchase different coloured earcups and headband cushions separately with Cushion Kits. At the time of writing, you can buy Cushion Kits for just £9.95 directly from Apple, which is £40 less than they’ll usually be.

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The AirPods Max 2 is considerably more expensive in comparison, with an RRP of an eye-watering £499.

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Beats 360 has interchangeable earcup and headband cushions

One of the biggest design differences between the Beats 360 and AirPods Max 2 is that the 360 has interchangeable earcup and headband cushions. That means alongside the colour-matched cushions that come in the 360’s box, you can buy additional knit cushions in six colours – Black, Cloud, Pink, Sky, Navy and Volt (which is a vibrant yellow), or UltraPlush options in either Black and Cloud. The latter is the same engineered leather that’s found on the Studio Pro.

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In comparison, although the AirPods Max 2 comes in a choice between five colours – Blue, Purple, Starlight, Orange and Midnight – you can’t change the earcups or headband.

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Both can be paired with either an Android or iPhone, but the Beats 360 offer Android features

Contrary to popular belief, you can pair the AirPods Max 2 with an Android phone, however you will lose access to Apple features like Siri, Find My and easier pairing. 

Otherwise, thanks to its custom Beats chip, the Beats 360 promises seamless integration across both Apple and Android ecosystems. For example, if you pair the Beats 360 with an iPhone then you’ll benefit from one-touch pairing, Siri, audio sharing, personalised spatial audio with dynamic head tracking and Find My integration. However, pair the Beats 360 with an Android and you’ll see Google Fast Pair, access to Find Hub and audio switch too.

Essentially, if you’re an Android user and are torn between the Beats 360 and AirPods Max 2, then the decision is easy, as the Beats 360 offer more features specifically for your Android ecosystem.

Both are fitted with ANC and nine microphones

Both Beats and Apple make pretty hefty claims with regards to their respective flagship headphone’s ANC prowess. While Apple stated that the AirPods Max 2 saw 1.5x better ANC than the original AirPods Max, Beats promise the 360 has the brand’s best ever ANC that’s 1.75x more powerful than the Studio Pro.

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As we’re yet to review the Beats 360, we can’t currently verify this claim. Having said that, in my brief time with the headphones, I was instantly impressed with how well the headphones muted a noisy event – even without playing an audio. With that in mind, we have high hopes for the 360. 

During our time with the AirPods Max 2, we found the headphones did a great job at cancelling noise from public transport and general chatter. While some sounds did creep through, mainly traffic and cars, generally we were impressed with its ANC and found it comparable to some of the best noise cancelling headphones on the market. 

Beats 360 has a Power button and no Digital Crown

One of our biggest annoyances with the AirPods Max 2 is the fact it doesn’t have a dedicated Power button. Instead, you either need to simply leave the AirPods Max 2 untouched for an extended period, or place the headphones into the so-called Smart Case to power them down. It’s such a strange decision, and feels like we’re potentially wasting battery.

Fortunately Beats hasn’t made the same mistake as Apple, with the 360 fitted with easy-to-use controls on the back of each earcup. These controls include a volume rocker and a play/pause button on the right, and a listening mode and a power button on the right. What isn’t included on the Beats 360 is a Digital Crown. 

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Found on the AirPods Max 2, the Digital Crown can be used for multiple features, from volume control and playing or pausing media, to answering calls, using the camera remote feature, accessing Siri and more. It’s useful, but still frustrating that you can’t use it to turn the headphones off.

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Beats 360 promises longer battery

During our time with the AirPods Max 2, we found the headphones matched Apple’s claim of 20 hours of battery between charges. It’s decent, but falls far behind many other over-ear headphones – including the Beats 360.

In fact, the Beats 360 promises to deliver up to 32 hours of battery life between charges while a five minute charge results in an additional hour of playback too. Considering we found the Studio Pro actually surpassed Beats’ battery promise, we have high hopes for the Beats 360.

Early Verdict

Judging by its specs alone (as we haven’t reviewed it yet), the Beats 360 looks like a seriously promising set of headphones. With the promise of Beats’ best ever ANC, a customisable design and longer battery life, the Beats 360 will suit both iPhone and Android users – especially as it has a more affordable price tag too.

That doesn’t mean the AirPods Max 2 isn’t a great choice – in fact, we concluded the headphones to be Apple’s best sounding option. It’s just with a £499 price tag, a fairly pointless case and a below-average battery life, unless you’re a diehard Apple fan, the AirPods Max 2 isn’t the most appealing option on the market.

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People across the world are increasingly turning to AI for everyday tasks, from looking up recipes and doing their homework to researching work projects or making presentations.

But using AI every day doesn’t necessarily mean people are feeling comfortable with its implications for the world: About 68% of Americans who use AI daily are worried about it, according to a new survey conducted by opinion research firm Gallup, and concern about the tech skews even higher among people who use it less frequently.

Coming at a time of intense debate around the dangers of AI, quick developments around AI safety, the implications of AI going rogue, and accusations of anti-competitive behavior, these findings complicate the notion that adoption can serve as a straightforward measure of public enthusiasm for AI.

Commissioned by Microsoft, the Gallup study currently has results from 37 countries, where researchers polled about 1,000 people in each country between April and July. The project will eventually span 140 countries. Notably, India, a large population of tech users, is not currently part of the reported results, nor is Australia and Malaysia.

The findings appear to put the U.S. at the anxious end of an international chart even as people in other parts of the world expect the technology to improve their lives. According to Gallup, Western countries are most concerned about AI, with the United States leading in anxiety — 74% Americans reported feelings of worry, and only 36% expect AI to mostly help the country.

Other wealthy Western countries showed a similar mix of relatively frequent use and concern. In Canada, for example, 29% of those surveyed reported using AI daily, and of those, more than half expressed concerns about the impact of the technology. Overall, 64% of Canadians aware of AI said it worried them.

They’re likely not imagining it. There’s certainly been a growing wave of discontent around AI, with tech companies laying off hundreds of thousands of employees in order to invest in AI, shrinking entry-level openings, life-ending cases of AI psychosis, and dire warnings from AI leaders like Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, who have warned that the tech will wipe out jobs en masse.

The survey paints a different picture in the rest of the world, however. In Singapore, which had the highest portion of daily users in the study (46%), more than 80% of those aware about AI expect the tech to improve their everyday lives, and 77% think it’ll help the country. China, where 35% of people report using AI daily, most people expect it to help the country. The story is similar in Israel.

Still, optimism about AI doesn’t necessarily appear to translate to trust in the tech’s accuracy. According to Gallup, people who use AI daily were generally more trusting of its results, especially in high-adoption countries like Singapore, Israel and China, while less frequent users remain skeptical across the board. In the U.S., only 45% of daily users expressed that level of confidence. Altogether, only 36% (median) of the people surveyed said they trust AI’s results a lot.

Overall, though, Gallup reports that positivity about AI outweighs negative sentiments: In 34 of the 37 countries surveyed, people mostly reported feeling curious about the tech, with a fewer number saying they felt happy or excited. Only about 32% of those surveyed said they felt worried about AI. Positive emotions seem to be most common in China (90%), Singapore (89%) and Kenya (87%).

It’s not clear how much sentiment in some countries, especially China, might have changed since the survey ended in July, as the pace of AI development has lately burgeoned into a matter of international importance. AI safety is one of the major topics on the table for discussion when U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese Premier Xi Jingping meet on Thursday.

Notably, China’s head of the Ministry of State Security, Chen Yixin, wrote in a recent article that AI will have “a systemic impact on the political and security environment,” and could threaten China’s “political security, institutional security, and ideological security.”

“One of the clearest findings is that attitudes toward AI are multidimensional. People can be curious about AI, expect it to be beneficial and use it frequently while still being worried about it. Similarly, they can see considerable potential in AI while remaining skeptical about whether the information it provides is accurate,” Pablo Diego-Rosell, senior scientist at Gallup, told TechCrunch.

While the report paints a picture of optimism colored by some concern, it’s nevertheless true that AI worries are increasingly becoming part of public discourse. People who rely on AI for day-to-day tasks may end up supporting tougher rules or resisting its use in hiring, healthcare, education or government. And there’s certainly an argument to be made that training and serving AI models can harm the climate, and their unregulated use can disrupt cybersecurity, diminish content ownership, upset the creative arts fields, or harm data privacy.

At the end of the day, the report suggests that greater exposure alone will not resolve the unease around the technology. Still, given the amount of money that’s being invested, AI will likely continue proliferating even as disputes rage around where it belongs and what limits should be placed around it.

Geely has revealed a fifth-generation charging system peaking at 2,250 kW, which it says takes new Lynk & Co and Zeekr models from 10 to 70% in four minutes and 30 seconds. Under AFIR a charging pool on Europe’s core network must provide 600 kW in total by 2027.

Geely has revealed a fifth-generation Smart Charging System that peaks at 2,250 kW, InsideEVs reported. New versions of the Lynk & Co 10 and Zeekr 001 charge from 10 to 70% in four minutes and 30 seconds, and from 10 to 97% in eight minutes and 40, the company says.

Nothing sold here is close.

The quickest cars on Western markets peak at 400 kW, and the Mercedes-AMG GT four-door will take 600 kW when it arrives. Geely did not say what peak rate its own cars actually reach.

The rules make the better comparison.

A charging pool on Europe’s core network must provide 400 kW in total by the end of this year under AFIR, rising to 600 kW with two 150 kW points by 2027. One Geely connector is nearly four times that whole site.

The battery claim is the part worth reading.

Geely says an AI system called Xingrui PowerMind predicts cell temperatures and adjusts speed to hold an average of 55 degrees Celsius, with a ceiling of 65. It also claims a lithium-ion pulse restoration technique, using micro pulses to reactivate lithium that plates onto the anode during repeated fast charging.

Europe starts testing that in November.

Euro 7 takes effect on 29 November and requires a battery to retain 80% of capacity after five years or 100,000 km, and 72% after eight years or 160,000 km. BYD put 350 fast charges into one car in nine days and reported 98.7% retention, which measures cycles rather than calendar years.

Deployment is the other gap.

BYD passed 10,000 Flash chargers in August, wants 20,000 by December and plans 3,000 in Europe, beginning with 300 in the United Kingdom. Each of its connectors delivers up to 1,500 kW. Geely has not said how many chargers it intends to build, or where.

It owns two European brands.

Geely’s chairman said in April that the group would stop building factories anywhere in the world and use Volvo’s instead. Volvo and Polestar sit in the same group as Zeekr and Lynk & Co. Neither has been offered this charger.

Two thousand feet of half-inch PEX already slept six to eight feet under Craftsman Chris’s yard when his first homemade cooling plan came up short. Four parallel five-hundred-foot slinky loops and a Taco 009 pump pushed water through a heat exchanger in the furnace plenum, yet the dirt had baked in the sun after excavation and the loop stayed warmer than he needed. Direct ground water barely cooled the house. He needed a machine that could pull heat out of indoor air and dump it into that soil instead of into hot summer wind.

Chris ended up with a 14,000 BTU LG Dual Inverter window unit that he fished from a dumpster. After cleaning the coils with Simple Green and a fin brush, and then washing them with soapy water, he was able to free up the condenser fan without touching any of the copper piping. He then moved the outdoor coil roughly 90 degrees without damaging a single copper line, ensuring that the refrigerant remained sealed. A little of scrap sheet metal and a MIG welder came in helpful for creating a water jacket around the coil, and to make it all work, he rigged up the ground-loop water to feed in at the top, surround the condenser, and exit at the bottom into the underground PEX tubing.

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Keeping the sealed circuit intact was important since he never cut any tubing or vented the refrigerant, thus the compressor and valves continued to function properly. Of course, new problems arose anyhow. For one reason, oil might accumulate at the new low point of the spun coil, starving the compressor. Then there was the issue of uninsulated aluminum on the water jacket absorbing extra heat, as well as air bubbles requiring a long time to purge. I suppose the final nail in the coffin was that the safety plug on the original power cord wouldn’t reset, so he had to temporarily replace the power cord end. Nonetheless, none of these concerns prevented him from running the test.

The control system for the device remained fairly rough, almost as beat up as the tank. He set together an old programmable logic controller and a linear actuator to hit the stock power button whenever the thermostat signaled for cooling. Not exactly a beautiful interface, but rather a production remnant that looks like it belongs on a plant floor and is being used to click a single button on a thermostat. The water flow rate through the jacket was around 3.3 gallons per minute, utilizing the same Taco pump that already serves the loops.

The first true run produced somewhat better results than the previous plenum-only setup. The air leaving the unit was between 49 and 54 degrees. He detected a temperature split of 26.5 degrees, which is fairly good. Water entering and leaving the underground loops varied by barely 3 to 5 degrees, but the jacket itself typically reached the upper 70s or low 80s. As an extra benefit, the cool air was actually making its way upstairs into the main living area. The next topic on the agenda is whether a single window unit and 2,000 feet of piping in the backyard can keep the entire house cool all summer.
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