Craft Recordings and Bluesville are adding two more essential titles to one of the stronger all-analog blues reissue programs currently on vinyl: Jimmy Reed’s Jimmy Reed at Carnegie Hall and Skip James’ Devil Got My Woman. Both LPs have been cut from the original analog master tapes by Grammy-nominated engineer Matthew Lutthans at The Mastering Lab, using an AAA mastering chain, and pressed on 180-gram vinyl in partnership with Acoustic Sounds.

The packaging is not an afterthought, either. Each release comes in a tip-on jacket with an obi strip and new album reflections by Grammy-winning producer, songwriter, and bluesman Scott Billington—details that help distinguish Bluesville from the usual bare-bones catalog recycling. High-resolution and standard digital remasters will also be released alongside the vinyl editions.

Reed’s 1961 Jimmy Reed at Carnegie Hall is a studio recording despite the misleading title, and includes “Bright Lights Big City.” Skip James’ Devil Got My Woman, released in 1968, is a far starker and more intimate affair, built around the Delta blues legend’s singular guitar work, fractured vocals, and the title track that became his signature song.

The new releases follow Bluesville’s recent AAA editions of Albert King’s I’ll Play the Blues for You and Eddie Kirkland’s It’s the Blues Man!, both of which we just reviewed. Those records demonstrated that Craft is taking the series seriously: strong tape work, clean pressings, properly made jackets, and prices that have not yet wandered into the usual audiophile nonsense.

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Jimmy Reed at Carnegie Hall Vinyl Reissue Brings a Blues Essential Back

Jimmy Reed’s Jimmy Reed at Carnegie Hall is not a live album, despite the title’s rather shameless attempt to borrow some Manhattan prestige. Originally released by Vee-Jay in 1961 as a double LP, the record was assembled from studio material rather than Reed’s actual Carnegie Hall appearance the previous year. Bluesville’s new edition focuses on the first disc, collecting sides A and B on a single 180-gram LP.

That distinction matters less once “Bright Lights Big City” begins rolling out of the speakers. Reed’s best work was built from deceptively modest ingredients: a loose, infectious shuffle, clipped electric guitar, harmonica, and a vocal delivery so relaxed it could sound almost casual. Yet the groove was nearly impossible to resist. “Bright Lights Big City” reached No. 3 on the R&B chart in 1961, crossed onto the Billboard Hot 100, and later became a No. 1 country hit for Sonny James. The song’s influence on British rock, country, and American blues is difficult to overstate.

Born Mathis James Reed in Dunleith, Mississippi, Reed became one of the defining figures of postwar electric blues after signing with Vee-Jay in 1953. Working closely with guitarist Eddie Taylor and drummer Earl Phillips, he built an extraordinarily successful run of singles that included “You Don’t Have to Go,” “Honest I Do,” “Baby What You Want Me to Do,” and “Big Boss Man.” His appeal was never about virtuoso fireworks. Reed made the blues feel conversational, danceable, and accessible enough that everyone from Elvis Presley and the Rolling Stones to Van Morrison and the Grateful Dead eventually came knocking.

The new Bluesville pressing includes “Bright Lights Big City,” “Tell Me You Love Me,” “Hold Me Close,” and “Blue, Blue Water,” the latter featuring Eddie Taylor and Phil Upchurch. It also benefits from the same careful production approach as the recently reviewed Bluesville editions of Albert King’s I’ll Play the Blues for You and Eddie Kirkland’s It’s the Blues Man!.

For listeners who know Reed only through compilations, or through somebody else covering “Big Boss Man” — this is a strong place to start. It is not the full double album, but it contains enough of Reed’s particular magic to explain why so many musicians spent the next several decades trying to find that same pocket.

Where to buy: $32.99 at Amazon (available August 21, 2026)

Skip James Devil Got My Woman

There are plenty of Delta blues records that sound old. Devil Got My Woman sounds as though it was transmitted from a place slightly outside time, where conventional tuning, meter, and emotional restraint were politely asked to leave the building.

Born Nehemiah Curtis “Skip” James in Bentonia, Mississippi, James was never a conventional bluesman. His singing could rise into a high, ghostly falsetto, while his guitar work moved through unusual minor-key voicings and open D-minor tuning with a fluidity that still feels unnerving almost a century later. He was also a formidable pianist, and the music rarely follows the tidy twelve-bar rules that made other Delta blues artists easier for later generations to imitate.

James recorded for Paramount in 1931, but the records did not turn him into a star. The Depression did not help, nor did the fact that his music was too strange, too personal, and too far removed from the more accessible blues styles of the day. He largely disappeared from public view for more than three decades before John Fahey, Bill Barth, and Henry Vestine found him in a Tunica hospital in 1964.

That rediscovery brought James to the Newport Folk Festival and back into the studio, where he recorded a run of material for Melodeon, Takoma-related sessions later issued as She Lyin’, and Vanguard. Today! arrived in 1966, followed by Devil Got My Woman in 1968, his final album released during his lifetime.

The Vanguard set is a solo performance in the truest sense. James handles the vocals, guitar, and piano himself, moving between instruments rather than relying on a backing band to soften the edges. The title track, a revisiting of one of his 1931 Paramount sides, remains the centerpiece, but the album is deeper than a single famous song. “Little Cow, Little Calf Blues,” “22-20 Blues,” “Sickbed Blues,” and “Illinois Blues” reveal a musician still capable of making familiar blues language feel unsettling, intimate, and completely his own.

James died in 1969, only a year after Devil Got My Woman was released, but the music kept finding new listeners. The title track later reached a wider audience through Ghost World and was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2020. That is deserved recognition, although the better reason to own this album is simpler: nobody else in blues sounded remotely like Skip James, and nobody has managed to replace him since.

Where to buy: $32.99 at Amazon or get both for $57 at Craft Recordings (available August 21, 2026)

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The Cleer Arc 5 are open earbuds designed not for sports, but for the rest of us. I was skeptical when I first saw them, but they’ve surprised me — in both good and bad ways.

OpenAI has released GPT-5.6 Sol, its most powerful model, to roughly 20 partners whose names were individually approved by the US government. The release is the first time an American AI company has launched a frontier model under a government-managed access list, a step beyond the voluntary pre-release review framework Trump’s AI executive order established on June 2.

Sol is the most capable model in a new three-tier series that also includes Terra, a mid-range option, and Luna, which is optimized for speed and cost. OpenAI described Sol as excelling at coding, biology, and cybersecurity, and introduced a new “max reasoning effort” mode that gives the model extended time to work through complex problems. The company plans to add an “ultra” mode that splits tasks among multiple sub-agents.

The limited preview follows a direct request from the Trump administration to stagger the release, with the government approving access customer by customer during the preview period, according to Bloomberg. OpenAI said in a blog post that it does not believe “this kind of government access process should become the long-term default,” but agreed to participate.

The arrangement is the first practical test of the executive order Trump signed earlier this month, which asks AI companies to voluntarily give the government up to 30 days of pre-release access to models deemed to have advanced cyber capabilities. The order explicitly rejects mandatory licensing, but the Anthropic precedent gave it teeth. Two weeks ago, Washington ordered Anthropic to shut down Fable 5 and Mythos 5 after a reported jailbreak, the first time the government forced a commercial AI model offline.

OpenAI’s decision to cooperate contrasts with Anthropic’s experience. Anthropic complied with the shutdown order but publicly called the action disproportionate, warning it would halt all frontier model deployments if applied across the industry. OpenAI appears to be taking the opposite approach, framing voluntary compliance as a way to avoid a more coercive outcome while preserving its ability to push back on the principle.

Sol is also available through Amazon Bedrock, making it the first model in the new series accessible on a competing cloud platform. OpenAI said it plans to make all three tiers generally available in the coming weeks, though it has not set a public date.

The broader question is whether government-gated releases become the template for every frontier model that follows. OpenAI clearly wants to prevent that, and said so publicly. But with Anthropic’s models still offline and the executive order’s voluntary framework already producing mandatory-looking outcomes, the line between cooperation and compliance is getting harder to draw.

Elon Musk is eyeing an acquisition of Mesh Optical Technologies, a startup founded by three former SpaceX engineers last year developing hardware for fast data center communications.

The potential acquisition, which was revealed in a Federal Trade Commission filing and first reported by Bloomberg, confirmed the agency expedited its antitrust review.

Mesh Optical came out of stealth in February when it announced that it raised a $50 million Series A led by Thrive Capital.

Before founding Mesh Optical, the startup’s co-founders, Travis Brashears, Cameron Ramos, and Serena Grown-Haeberli, developed the optical communication links that keep thousands of SpaceX’s Starlink satellites interconnected.

The Mesh co-founders saw an opportunity to develop optical transceivers for terrestrial data centers, as light-based hardware is faster and more energy-efficient than traditional electrical-based systems.

SpaceX has recently entered into agreements with Anthropic, Google, and the open-source AI developer Reflection AI to provide them with compute capacity at its data centers, generating a substantial new revenue stream for the newly public company. Acquiring Mesh could eventually allow SpaceX to improve the efficiency of its data centers, whether they are located on Earth or, in the future, in space.

Amazon Prime Day hits different in 2026, even if it is the last day of the week-long event. Prime Day is often a moment to pick up a big-ticket item—and there are great Amazon Prime Day TV Deals, Prime Day Apple Deals, and Prime Day Tech Deals aplenty for those in need of a serious life upgrade.

But honestly, this year has been a bear for most people I know. I’m shopping on a budget. That’s why I’ve assembled these great Amazon Prime Day Deals under $100. Each is a chance to pick up a necessity, a level-up, or a little treat without having to explain anything to yourself later—whether a low-cost Kindle or a great budget Fitbit. With only hours left in Prime Day, it’s your last chance to snag all of these with such a good price.

For the best of the best of the best deals this Prime Day, check out WIRED’s Absolute Best Prime Day Deals. For lightning deals of the moment, see our Amazon Prime Day live blog for updates in real-time.

Updated 9PM ET on Friday, June 26: We’ve updated this story with a final refresh on deals you can still buy in the last hours of Prime Day.

WIRED Featured Deals

The Best Fitbit for $85 ($75 off)

Even after three years, this Charge 6 is still the Fitbit WIRED recommends for most people. The AMOLED touchscreen is bright and easy to read, and it does all the basic stuff that you want a fitness watch to do. It will monitor your blood oxygen, your heart rate, and your skin temp—plus monitor sleep and flag signs of stress or irregular heart rhythms. It’s not as ultra-accurate as some, but it’s good enough for most enthusiasts, and the price is very, very right at the moment.

WIRED’s Favorite Power Bank for $91 ($29 off)

A good power bank is actually life-changing. It means never having to race to a cafe, hunting desperately for a table near an outlet. This compact little puppy is our top power bank for good reason: Ample 25,000-mAh capacity. Fast-charging capability for phones or laptops. Ability to fast-charge two devices at the same time, with a retractable flat 2-foot USB-C cable, and another 1-foot USB-C that doubles as a carry loop.

Looking for the most recent Mini Crossword answer? Today’s puzzle is long, and there are a few tricky clues. (I did NOT know the answer to 10-Across, though it was fairly easy to figure out.)  Click here for today’s Mini Crossword hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Wordle, Strands, Connections and Connections: Sports Edition puzzles.

Need some help with today’s Mini Crossword? Read on. And if you could use some hints and guidance for daily solving, check out our Mini Crossword tips.

If you’re looking for today’s Wordle, Connections, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands answers, you can visit CNET’s NYT puzzle hints page.

Read more: Tips and Tricks for Solving The New York Times Mini Crossword

Let’s get to those Mini Crossword clues and answers.

Mini across clues and answers

1A clue: Halloween costumes with eye patches
Answer: PIRATES

8A clue: “That’s great!”
Answer: AWESOME

9A clue: One with an aggressive savings plan?
Answer: PACKRAT

10A clue: Insect that has two stomachs, curiously enough
Answer: ANT

11A clue: U.S. medical research org.
Answer: NIH

12A clue: Like music that sounds good to the ear
Answer: TONAL

14A clue: Wear away, as the soil
Answer: ERODE

15A clue: “Good lord!”
Answer: MYGOD

Mini down clues and answers

1D clue: Nickname for Dad
Answer: PAPA

2D clue: “Gimme those!”
Answer: IWANTEM

3D clue: Minister’s house
Answer: RECTORY

4D clue: Pose a question
Answer: ASK

5D clue: Weather phenomenon measured from EF-0 to EF-5
Answer: TORNADO

6D clue: Corresponded by computer
Answer: EMAILED

7D clue: Rogen of “The Studio”
Answer: SETH

13D clue: Seasonal drink topped with nutmeg, maybe
Answer: NOG

Hubble has delivered a crisp new view of NGC 6723, a globular cluster tucked in the constellation Sagittarius. The image shows a tight swarm of stars that fills the frame with countless points of light, each one a distinct sun shining across 27,000 light-years of space. Blue stars crowd the center while warmer orange stars appear more often near the edges, and many of the brighter ones carry the sharp, cross-shaped spikes created by the telescope’s optics.

Globular clusters are some of the Milky Way’s oldest structures, containing a wealth of ancient history and celestial knowledge. We have one in particular, NGC 6723, which originated over 10 billion years ago and is still going strong, with tens of thousands to millions of stars gravitationally linked together in a roughly spherical shape. As you move through this region, you can’t help but notice how dense and brilliant everything is, as the stars are far away from those near the Sun and move through a much smaller volume of space.

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For a long time, scientists believed that these clusters created all of their stars in a single huge burst, but this was before Hubble got involved. New data from the reliable space telescope has thrown that notion out the window for NGC 6723. It turns out that there were two independent rounds of star creation, the second of which began only 634 million years after the first. That may not seem like much, but given the age of this object, it’s more like a brief halt in the big scheme of things, demonstrating that globular clusters have more complex histories than the older model anticipated.

Hubble gathered the raw data through two coordinated programs. The first examined 65 globular clusters using visible and near-infrared light, allowing researchers to observe how heavier stars shift towards the center over time while lighter stars drift away. A follow-up experiment adds UV sensitivity to the combination, allowing it to detect variations in the stars’ chemical makeup and sharpen the timeframe of those two formation phases.

The colors in the image aren’t simply for show, as they also offer information about the stars in the cluster. The hotter, bluer stars are usually younger or have been impacted by close encounters with other stars or mergers deep within the cluster’s dense core. The cooler, orange stars, on the other hand, are frequently older, having emerged from the main sequence and developed into the giants you see before you. The contrast between these two populations gives the cluster a layered appearance and reveals information about the mechanisms that caused its creation.

NGC 6723 is located in the Milky Way’s halo, not the flat disk around which the Sun orbits. That’s significant because clusters like this one presumably formed before the galaxy took on its current shape. This shows that the stars in this cluster have some of the earliest chemical traces from our galaxy’s first star formation generations. Studying them in this way helps us to track how the Milky Way grew from its basic building blocks.

Even though Steve Jobs could be demanding, Ron Johnson says he still managed to make Apple Stores “the most productive in the world.”

Ron Johnson joined Apple in 2000 and served as the company’s head of retail until 2011. During his time at Apple, Johnson says he employed unique strategies and helped make Apple Store locations the success they are today.

Speaking to WWD, Johnson also detailed his experiences working with Steve Jobs, Apple’s co-founder and CEO at the time. Jobs often needed convincing, and Johnson periodically experienced pushback for his ideas.

Ron Johnson recounts that, for instance, Steve Jobs hated the idea of having retail locations in malls. Jobs apparently said malls were “full of crappy stores,” and absolutely hated stores with columns. Johnson eventually had to move a few retail locations to appease Jobs.

Even though Jobs was demanding, he recognized Johnson’s expertise in the retail industry. Over the years, the two built a lasting friendship and partnership.

In the wide-ranging interview which covered far more than just Apple, Johnson also recounts his most significant accomplishments, including Apple’s iconic cube-shaped Fifth Avenue store in New York.

Beating records in a glass cube

Johnson explained that for an Apple Store to become profitable, it needed to hit $15 million in volume. On its first night, the New York store generated $1 million in sales and made $350 million in a single year.

The stores routinely surpassed these figures. Every Apple Store location hit around $50 million annually by the time he left Apple in 2011.

“The stores were the most productive in the world, but it didn’t happen overnight,” he said.

“It took time to get there,” Johnson continued, “There was a lot of refinement, but we never gave up on our vision.”

That vision included a unique take on retail locations, which meant ensuring that customers could quickly learn about the products they intended to purchase.

In an era of poorly-maintained super-stores like CompUSA and Circuit City, and smaller venues like Apple Specialists who often didn’t have demo units, customers had a vastly improved experience at Apple Retail. In the new locations, those customers didn’t just get to see a new Mac or iPod; they were able to find out everything they could do with a new device, how it worked with existing accessories like cameras, printers, and so on.

Apple wanted them to know how they could use a Mac to burn CDs, upload and edit photos, and more. That’s why Apple retail locations have a Genius Bar.

Johnson says that Apple Store employees “[tried] to understand what you came to the store for, and solve that for you through a new product or help.”

Apple Stores were built around that idea, and Johnson had the freedom to create his vision and to pick the team who would make it happen. Still, any stores with columns had to be approved by Steve Jobs personally.

Johnson recounted how he informed Steve Jobs of his decision to leave Apple. Jobs was supportive, acknowledging Johnson’s love for the retail industry.

However, Johnson planned to leave Apple during a particularly difficult time for the company in 2011. Jobs had just found out that he only had six months to live.

Out of respect, Ron Johnson agreed to stay with Apple until Steve Jobs passed away. Johnson ultimately left Apple for JCPenney and eventually became CEO of the company, but his accomplishments at Apple have left a lasting mark.

Ron Johnson’s new book, written together with Zander Nethercutt, is set to debut on September 22. It is called “Shop Different: How Retail Revealed Apple’s Genius.”