An anonymous reader quotes a report from GeekWire: A team inside Microsoft has been quietly building a platform for devices that run AI agents instead of apps, based on Android instead of Windows, with two working hardware designs so far, and an initial set of big-name companies lined up to run pilots. The platform, dubbed “Project Solara,” is Microsoft’s bet that AI will open up entirely new scenarios for computing — using agents to avoid the constraints of traditional software, and off-the-shelf components to develop new devices quickly and inexpensively. […] The company unveiled Solara on Tuesday at its Build conference in San Francisco, describing it as a new platform that spans from chip to cloud. GeekWire got a behind-the-scenes look at the project during a briefing last week in Redmond, including demos of the first two concept devices based on the platform:

– A desktop hub that sits beside a PC and responds to voice commands, signs users in using facial recognition, and surfaces the day’s most pressing items. With a monitor attached, it becomes a full Windows machine running in the cloud.

– A wearable badge that reimagines the standard employee ID card. A fingerprint button wakes an agent in one press; a single tap records and transcribes a conversation; and a built-in camera lets the agent act on what the user sees.

Microsoft says it won’t ship these devices itself. Instead, it envisions hardware makers and other industry partners turning the reference designs into implementations of their own, each intended for a specific industry, company, or scenario. For example, in one demo shown by the company, the high-tech badge ran on agents designed for use by a health-care worker, including the ability to scan a patient’s QR code, record and transcribe the visit, log vitals, and start a prescription. In another application of the same badge, the built-in camera scanned a brainstorm board with ideas for an office revamp, and made a suggestion: add some plants.

The two devices are a starting point. The bigger opportunity, the company says, is all the tasks and workflows where a PC or phone gets in the way or isn’t practical to use. […] In the coming months, companies including AccuWeather, Best Buy, CVS Health, Levi’s, and Target are expected to begin pilots of devices based on the reference designs. The operating system is the Microsoft Device Ecosystem Platform, or MDEP, an enterprise version of Android that Microsoft developed for devices including Teams meeting-room hardware. The company says it chose MDEP over Windows deliberately, to run on smaller, lower-power devices while keeping the management and security features IT departments expect: patch and over-the-air updates, device integrity, Microsoft Defender, Intune, and Entra ID sign-in. While the project is still in the early stages, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella encouraged the team to show it at Build sooner than the company would normally show its work in public. “That underscores just how competitive and fast-moving the AI world is right now, but it also illustrates the pace that the new technologies are enabling,” reports GeekWire.

The report notes that the business model for the platform still needs to be worked out. The devices run on Microsoft’s Azure cloud, but beyond that, “the economics are still taking shape.”

Qualcomm and MediaTek have been chosen as the first chip partners. “The badge runs on a new Qualcomm wearable chip; the desk hub runs on MediaTek IoT silicon,” reports GeekWire. “Both are off-the-shelf, not custom, which is central to how Microsoft plans to keep devices cheap and fast to build.”

Audeze has spent the past few years proving that planar magnetic headphones are not just for audiophiles listening alone in dark rooms, questioning cable choices. The California brand made two very smart pivots with its driver technology: gaming headsets and studio headphones. The Maxwell became one of the most successful premium wireless gaming headsets on the market, and the newer Maxwell 2 has already pushed that platform further with SLAM technology, upgraded wireless performance, and stronger spatial/bass performance.

That gaming momentum was significant enough that Sony Interactive Entertainment acquired Audeze in 2023 to strengthen its PlayStation audio ecosystem. 

The studio side has been just as important. Audeze’s Manny Marroquin Signature Series gave the company a credible way into the professional headphone market, taking aim at established studio staples from Beyerdynamic, Sony, and Sennheiser. The MM-500 set the tone, the more affordable MM-100 expanded the audience, and now the new $1,799 Audeze MM-520 arrives as the next step in that lineup. Audeze says the MM-520 builds on the MM-500 foundation while adding its SLAM technology, designed to improve bass accuracy, low-frequency impact, and spatial detail without giving up the midrange neutrality that made the MM-500 useful as a mixing tool. 

Developed with 18-time Grammy-winning mix engineer Manny Marroquin, the MM-520 is being positioned as a professional studio headphone for creators who need mixes to translate beyond the control room. That is the entire fight here. Audeze is not just chasing headphone collectors with another planar trophy piece.

It is trying to make its studio models legitimate daily tools for engineers, producers, and creators who have spent decades trusting German and Japanese studio cans. The MM-520 will have to earn that space, but based on the MM-Series track record, Audeze is no longer knocking politely. It has a badge, a warrant, and a very expensive pair of earcups.

“The MM-520 represents the latest entry in our mission to provide creators and professionals with the ultimate monitoring tool” stated Sankar Thiagasamudram, Audeze CEO. “By adding SLAM™ technology to Manny’s signature series, we’ve created a headphone that delivers even more truth in the low-end while maintaining the signature clarity Audeze is known for“, he added. 

Audeze MM-520: SLAM Technology, 90mm Planar Drivers, and Studio-Focused Design

The Audeze MM-520 builds on the MM-Series platform with the addition of Symmetric Linear Acoustic Modulator, or SLAM, technology. Audeze says SLAM is designed to improve bass performance and spatial imaging by managing airflow and pressure inside the earcup. The goal is stronger low-frequency definition and better spatial clarity without moving away from the more neutral midrange balance that defined the MM-500.

The MM-520 uses 90mm planar magnetic drivers with Ultra-Thin Uniforce diaphragms and Fazor phase management, technologies Audeze has used across its planar magnetic headphones to reduce distortion and improve phase behavior. For studio users, the focus is accuracy, low distortion, and consistency during mixing, mastering, and content creation. Audeze also claims the headphone’s high sensitivity and low impedance allow it to be driven from consoles, audio interfaces, and laptops, which should make it more practical for both studio and mobile work.

Comfort has also been addressed with upgraded memory foam earpads designed for longer sessions. The earpads attach magnetically, making replacement easier over time. For a studio headphone, that matters. Pads wear out, sessions run long, and nobody wants a maintenance project between takes.

Why the Audeze MM-500 Became a Serious Studio Headphone Contender

The original Audeze MM-500 was not just a smaller variation of the LCD Series with Manny Marroquin’s name attached. It was designed as a professional studio headphone, with a more durable aluminum and steel build, a hard travel case, and tuning aimed at mixing and mastering rather than audiophile system matching. In our review, we found that the MM-500 belonged in the same conversation as the LCD-X ($1,199), LCD-MX4 ($2,995), and even the flagship LCD-5, but with a very different purpose. 

The MM-500 used Audeze’s 90mm planar magnetic driver with Fluxor magnets and a Uniforce diaphragm, and its 18-ohm impedance and 100dB/mW sensitivity made it easier to drive than some of the company’s more demanding models. Sonically, it delivered excellent midrange clarity, strong resolution, very good imaging, and a more neutral balance than the LCD-X, although its bass was more controlled than visceral. We also noted that it responded well to EQ, which matters for studio users making small mix decisions. 

The tradeoffs were real. The MM-500 could sound somewhat thinner than Audeze’s higher-end models, the smaller pad opening could bother listeners with larger ears, and it performed best with a capable high-current amplifier rather than modest portable gear. Still, the conclusion was very positive: for users who needed a serious mastering headphone with excellent build quality, strong accuracy, and studio-focused tuning, the MM-500 was one of the best values in Audeze’s lineup.

Specifications Compared

The Bottom Line

The Audeze MM-520 is a focused evolution of the MM-500, built for studio users rather than casual listening. Its most important upgrade is SLAM technology, which Audeze says improves bass performance and spatial imaging while preserving the MM-Series’ neutral midrange balance.

With 18-ohm impedance and 102dB sensitivity, the MM-520 should be easier to drive from interfaces, consoles, and laptops than many planar designs. However, the 100mW minimum power recommendation still suggests better gear will matter.

Potential buyers should note the 555 gram weight and open-back design. This is not ideal for tracking near microphones, travel, or noisy rooms. It is for mixing, mastering, production, and creators who want Audeze planar accuracy with more low-end insight and spatial detail than the MM-500.

Where to buy: $1,799 at Audeze

Related Reading:

from the victim-blaming dept

When Russia kicked off its war of aggression against neighboring Ukraine for completely made up reasons, there were global efforts to isolate Russia as a result. Many of those efforts have waned in the years since, unfortunately. You may recall that there was a small effort among video game companies and platforms to deny sales and service to Russia as part of this cultural blockade. While the war still rages on, and anyone who wants to can call all of this effort a failure, the point is that gaming companies and platforms took something of a moral stand against Russia as a result of the war.

Valve’s Steam platform was involved in that effort, though that may have had as much to do with payment processing sanctions as any kind of moral stand. Today, Valve is back to operating in Russia, and it appears to have no issues with some of the country’s more notoriously bigoted laws and postures when it comes to LGBTQ+ rights. Recently, the maker and seller of several visual novel style games found her games delisted and a message from Valve chastising her for not following Russia’s bigoted laws.

Ebi-hime, the developer behind yuri visual novels like Her Love, Like Poison and Rituals in the Dark, posted on X that Valve notified her that some of her games had been banned from the storefront in Russia after Roskomnadzor, the Russian federal agency in charge of censorship in the country, determined those projects to be in violation of the country’s rules for distribution. That in and of itself isn’t surprising considering Russia has woven anti-queer legislation into its laws and even designated queer activism as an “extremist” movement. What is surprising is that Valve’s copy-pasted message on the situation is condescending and victim-blamey. It reads in part:

We also want to remind you that you promised Valve under the Steam Distribution Agreement that your games comply with all applicable laws. Therefore, it is your responsibility to do your due diligence regarding where your games are allowed to be distributed, and to inform us of any territory where they cannot be.

Now, if you want to make the herculean effort it requires to take Valve’s side on this, you could argue that operating within a country like Russia necessarily requires an adherence to its local laws. And perhaps you want to argue that that’s all that Valve is doing here.

Except operating within Russia is a choice. Platforms are only neutral to a point. And if you make the use cases more extreme, it betrays just how much of a choice this all is.

Imagine if a country required all video games sold within its borders to prohibit any female characters within the game from speaking. Or one which prohibited any person of color from appearing in a game at all. Or one which required all characters to both be of a certain religion and to profess their faith in that religion. Would Valve still operate within any of those countries? If they did, you would imagine the backlash to be rather extreme.

But, for some reason, Russia essentially outlawing the appearance of any LGBTQ+ characters in games doesn’t quite get Valve’s fur up. Is the morality around my examples and this real occurrence all that different? Are they any different?

And, frankly, couldn’t Valve have done this better than sending what is likely a boilerplate message to someone who is actively being discriminated against that sure sounds like its blaming the victim?

Not that I would expect Valve to take a proper stance against something like the Russian government. I just think that if you’re going to take the stance of compliance that it is taking, you can at least be mindful of how you talk to people using your platform about it. If you don’t want to buy Ebi-hime’s games on Steam, they are also available on itch.io.

Obviously, we don’t look to the monied interests of large corporations for moral clarity. But we can certainly hold them accountable for failing to take even the easiest of moral stances with our dollars, if we want to.

Filed Under: bigotry, russia, steam

Companies: valve

SaaS

Lacking an enterprise content layer for Headless 360, CRM titan went shopping

Salesforce’s planned acquisition of Contentful should give its Headless 360 product – which CEO Marc Benioff gushed about during earnings last week – a much-needed shot in the arm, an analyst told The Register. 

Headless 360 takes the Salesforce logic and data layers and presents them inside other applications the user might be operating, such as WhatsApp, Slack, ChatGPT, or Claude. During the call last week, Benioff said it had seen rapid adoption, including a fivefold increase in usage among customers at Anthropic.

But it came with limitations. 

“It lacked the enterprise-grade content layer to drive the customer facing digital experiences,” Forrester principal analyst Chuck Gahun told The Register. “Enterprise customers that wanted to build a marketing website around product listing and detail pages (powered by Salesforce B2B and B2C commerce), ended up relying on different software vendors. Now, Agentforce agents can query customer data, assemble and deliver content driven digital experiences that are dynamic.” 

It is also another step to move users off of the Salesforce UI, while preserving its unique data and functions. Gahun said that the headless strategy transitions Salesforce’s place in the enterprise from a keeper of CRM records and customer data into a system of action where APIs and MCP server calls are able to produce results for business users. 

“Contentful was one of the strongest headless CMS vendors, with an API-first founding architectural principle. All content management and delivery platform capabilities were accessible via high-fidelity APIs, including an app framework to build, package and distribute frontend and backend apps that are customizable,” Gahun told The Register.

Salesforce has been on a buying spree with the purchases of Convergence AI, Bluebirds, Regrello, Informatica, Qualified, Cimulate, and Momentum, all announced or closed within the last year. 

President and chief operating and financial officer Robin Washington told analysts in September that Salesforce has no plans to slow down M&A. 

“If we see other things out there that make sense, we’re going to buy them,” she said.

Gahun has been covering Contentful as a content management system for nearly four years. He said with Salesforce adding Contentful as the digital experience layer on top and with Informatica’s customer and enterprise data, it has the potential to unlock better digital and customer experiences for Salesforce. 

“As digital content begins driving context for agents and answer engines, Salesforce now has a unique seat at that business logic table: powered by context, content, and data – flowing through its next gen enterprise agentic SaaS platform,” he said. 

The acquisition of Contentful is expected to close later this year, subject to regulatory conditions. 

Salesforce has not publicly disclosed the purchase price of Contentful. A spokesperson told The Register that it had no comment beyond its statement when asked for more information about the deal. In its statement, Salesforce said Contentful is trusted by 4,800 customers worldwide and gives users a single content layer across email, mobile and web for any use case. 

“Together, Agentforce and Contentful will move enterprises from static, channel-specific content to dynamic content orchestration – assembling 1:1 experiences at scale based on context, channel, language, and business rules,” Salesforce said. ®

A bipartisan group of UK politicians is sounding the alarm over the country’s partnership with the data analytics company Palantir.

In a report published Tuesday, the 11 members of Parliament’s Science, Innovation, and Technology Committee warned that the country’s ballooning reliance on Palantir’s technology “represents an unacceptable point of weakness” that could hand the company overwhelming bargaining power in future negotiations.

“We know that with vendor lock-in, over time, we’ll get more expensive and worse services,” Dame Chi Onwurah, chair of the committee and member of Parliament, tells WIRED. “It’s a trap that has to be avoided.”

In a worst-case scenario, a deeply entrenched supplier could threaten to withhold service as a way of imposing its will, Onwurah believes. “That could bring public services and our economy to a halt,” she says. “That’s a huge risk.”

Though the committee says that its objections to Palantir are not ideologically motivated, the report also describes a “clear mismatch with UK values.” It points to politically charged comments by Palantir cofounder Peter Thiel—who in 2023 described the British public’s affection for the NHS as “Stockholm syndrome”—and a 22-point manifesto based on a recent book by CEO Alex Karp, which advocates for an overriding fealty to the US and its interests.

“We have a key vendor saying they will exercise technology in accordance with their political mission,” Onwurah says. “If what the UK is trying to do in our NHS or our defense does not align with Palantir’s political objectives, we clearly can’t depend upon them as a supplier.”

To minimize the risks, the committee recommended that the National Health Service, one of Palantir’s primary partners in the UK, activates a clause in its contract next February that would terminate the relationship early.

The UK government began to use Palantir’s technology in 2020 as it scrambled to map the spread of the Covid-19 virus and route medical equipment across the country. Since then, Palantir and its partners have won contracts worth a combined $750 million with the NHS and the Ministry of Defense, among others. The company has touted its ability to enable “innovation and fast-paced problem solving” in the UK public sector.

The report outlines similar dependencies on US-based cloud providers Microsoft and Amazon Web Services, and Fujitsu, the Japanese company at the center of the Post Office Horizon scandal. But “Palantir concerns us most,” the committee wrote.

Palantir did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The relationship has attracted increased scrutiny of late over the company’s work with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), as well as the US and Israeli militaries. The manifesto based on Karp’s book further inflamed concerns about the company’s politics.

“They’re not a company that should be anywhere near British public services,” says Donald Campbell, director of advocacy at Foxglove, a nonprofit that has previously campaigned for the NHS to back out of its contract with Palantir. “Do you want to be giving a company of this kind—with these openly expressed opinions and ideologies—a central role in the UK state that it may get harder and harder to remove them from?”

Appearing before the committee in July last year, Louis Mosley, who heads up Palantir’s European business, distanced the company from Thiel’s comments about the NHS. Palantir’s objective is to “support democratically elected governments in delivering the mandate that they have been elected to deliver,” he said. “We represent a diversity of political views and do not take political positions as a company.”

With little fanfare, US President Donald Trump may have signed one of the most important executive orders in his second term at the White House. With the “Promoting Advanced Artificial Intelligence Innovation and Security” EO, the US government is finally putting its finger on the scale of AI development, more or less demanding that AI companies provide it with access to their Frontier Models for a period of 30 days before their public release.

Since no national US regulations currently exist for AI and much of the oversight is being left to a hodgepodge of mostly in-process state-level regulation, this is the first whiff of broad-based control.

I’ve been reviewing robot vacuum cleaners since Ecovacs Robotics brought its first Deebot to Australia about a decade ago. So I like to think that I’ve learnt a few things about what to look for when buying one — knowledge that I’ve used to curate the best robot vacuums in Australia right now.

The manufacturers don’t make it easy, do they? They make every spec sheet sound glowing, but you get what you pay for, especially when it comes to robot vacuums. It’s understandable that you’d want an affordable model, and there are plenty that make sacrifices to keep costs down — you just need to be able to understand what those sacrifices mean for your personal use case.

In the same vein, you don’t have to spend thousands on a robovac, although you will get the top-of-the-line models at premium prices that offer plenty of smart features. Some of those, like agentic voice assistants and Matter connectivity, aren’t really necessary, but you might want pet-specific features that cheaper models won’t have. But not all expensive models are reliable cleaners.

So, what’s a good robot vacuum to buy then? I’ve taken a look at the dozens of robovac discounts on Amazon‘s Mid-Year Sale and picked four at different price points even though they all do pretty much the same thing — vacuum, mop, and clean themselves. Without a discount, they’re all on the expensive side, but the offers make each of them a good-value proposition for different reasons.

Follow my live coverage of Amazon’s Mid-Year Sale for more vacuum cleaner discounts.

My top robovac deals

What to look for in a robot vacuum

Looking for the most recent regular Connections answers? Click here for today’s Connections hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle and Strands puzzles.

I have a complaint about the yellow group in today’s Connections: Sports Edition puzzle: How can a word be a synonym for itself? That will make sense once you play today’s game. If you’re struggling with the puzzle but still want to solve it, read on for hints and the answers.

Connections: Sports Edition is published by The Athletic, the subscription-based sports journalism site owned by The Times. It doesn’t appear in the NYT Games app, but it does in The Athletic’s own app. Or you can play it for free online.

Read more: NYT Connections: Sports Edition Puzzle Comes Out of Beta

Hints for today’s Connections: Sports Edition groups

Here are four hints for the groupings in today’s Connections: Sports Edition puzzle, ranked from the easiest yellow group to the tough (and sometimes bizarre) purple group.

Yellow group hint: Helps to be tall.

Green group hint: They’re used to winning.

Blue group hint: Hoops players.

Purple group hint: Clues relating to one player.

Answers for today’s Connections: Sports Edition groups

Yellow group: Dunking synonyms.

Green group: Teams with 5+ NBA titles.

Blue group: Nicknames of players in the NBA finals.

Purple group: Associated with Jalen Brunson.

Read more: Wordle Cheat Sheet: Here Are the Most Popular Letters Used in English Words

What are today’s Connections: Sports Edition answers?

The yellow words in today’s Connections

The theme is dunking synonyms. The four answers are dunk, jam, slam and stuff.

The green words in today’s Connections

The theme is teams with 5+ NBA titles. The four answers are Bulls, Celtics, Lakers and Spurs.

The blue words in today’s Connections

The theme is nicknames of players in the NBA finals. The four answers are Deuce, Kat, Swipa and Wemby.

The purple words in today’s Connections

The theme is associated with Jalen Brunson. The four answers are 11, ECF MVP, Knicks and Villanova.

When hackers break into your computer, one of the first things they do is delete or lock your files and vanish. By the time you realize something is wrong, the damage is often permanent. A researcher at Florida International University has found a way to change that, and the solution is built right into your storage drive.

Understanding where your deleted files actually go

When you delete a file, it does not disappear immediately. It sits in a kind of digital purgatory, existing in fragments on your drive before being permanently wiped to free up space.

If a hacker encrypted or erased your data, you could theoretically reach back in and pull those files out before they vanish for good. The problem is that modern SSDs, which power most laptops and computers today, manage this space carelessly.

When the drive needs space, it clears deleted data based purely on efficiency, with no awareness of how recently files were removed. Files deleted during a ransomware attack could get wiped first, while old junk files from weeks ago survive.

How your SSD can be turned into a cybersecurity tool

The system works by sequencing deleted data by age, so the oldest deleted files go first, and the most recently deleted files stay protected for as long as possible. It also extends the window for recovering deleted data to up to 126 days, improving data protection by at least 60% with minimal impact on drive speed.

Since the storage drive operates independently from your operating system, it can keep protecting your data even after hackers have taken full control of your software. The research is now in active discussions with industry partners about bringing the technology to market.

If this research has you thinking about what your storage drive is really up to, you might also want to read about how websites can spy on your browsing habits through your hard drive.