Strands is the NYT’s latest word game after the likes of Wordle, Spelling Bee and Connections – and it’s great fun. It can be difficult, though, so read on for my Strands hints.

Want more word-based fun? Then check out my NYT Connections today and Quordle today pages for hints and answers for those games, and Marc’s Wordle today page for the original viral word game.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen says the app is technically ready and will be available to citizens soon.

The European Commission yesterday (15 April) unveiled a digital age verification app aimed at shielding children from harmful content online, with European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen declaring there are “no more excuses” for platforms that fail to act.

Announcing the tool in Brussels on Wednesday (15 April), von der Leyen painted a stark picture of the risks children face in the digital world. “One child in six is bullied online. One child in eight is bullying another child online,” she said, warning that social media platforms use “highly addictive designs” that damage young minds and leave children vulnerable to predators.

Users set up the app using a passport or ID card, after which they can confirm their age anonymously. The free app, which the Commission says is technically ready and will soon be available to citizens, allows users to verify their age when accessing online platforms “without revealing any other personal data”, according to von der Leyen. “Users cannot be tracked,” von der Leyen stressed, adding that the app is fully open source and compatible with any device.

Drawing a comparison with the EU’s Covid certificate – adopted in record time and used across 78 countries – von der Leyen said the age verification tool follows “the same principles, the same model.” Seven member states, including France, Italy, Spain and Ireland, are already planning to integrate the app into their national digital wallets.

The announcement comes ahead of the second meeting of the Commission’s Special Panel on Children’s Safety Online, which is due to deliver its recommendations by summer. Von der Leyen was unambiguous about the Commission’s direction of travel on enforcement. “Children’s rights in the European Union come before commercial interest. And we will make sure they do.”

Platforms were put on notice that voluntary compliance alone will not suffice. “We will have zero tolerance for companies that do not respect our children’s rights,” she said, adding that the Commission is “moving ahead with full speed and determination on the enforcement of our European rules”.

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Jeff Bezos’ space company Blue Origin successfully re-used one of its New Glenn rockets for the first time ever on Sunday, but the company failed at its primary mission: delivering a communications satellite to orbit for customer AST SpaceMobile.

AST SpaceMobile issued a statement Sunday afternoon that the upper stage of the New Glenn rocket placed BlueBird 7 satellite into an orbit that was “lower than planned.” The satellite successfully separated from the rocket and powered on, the company said, but the altitude is too low “to sustain operations” and will now have to be de-orbited — left to burn up in the atmosphere of Earth.

The cost of the loss of the satellite is covered by AST SpaceMobile’s insurance policy, according the company, and there are successive BlueBird satellites that will be completed in around a month. AST SpaceMobile has contracts with more than just Blue Origin, and the company said it expects to be able to launch 45 more to space by the end of 2026.

But this represents the first major failure for Blue Origin’s New Glenn program, which only made its first flight in January 2025 after more than a decade in development. This was the second mission where New Glenn carried a customer payload to space, after launching twin spacecraft bound for Mars on behalf of NASA last November. The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The apparent failure of New Glenn’s second stage could have wider implications beyond Blue Origin’s near-term commercial ambitions. The company is pushing hard to become one of the main launch providers for NASA’s Artemis missions to the moon and beyond. The space agency — and the Trump administration — has put pressure on Blue Origin and SpaceX to be able to put landers on the moon by the end of President Donald Trump’s second term, before advancing to returning humans to the lunar surface.

Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp has even said his company “will move heaven and Earth” to help NASA get back to the moon faster.

Blue Origin recently completed testing its first version of its own lunar lander, which the company is expected to try and launch at some point this year (without any crew). Blue Origin had suggested last year that it was considering launching this lander on New Glenn’s third mission, but ultimately decided to launch the AST SpaceMobile satellite instead.

The third New Glenn launch seemed to start just fine on Sunday, with the the mega-rocket lifting off at 7:35 a.m. local time from Cape Canaveral, Florida. It was the first time Blue Origin re-used a previously-flown New Glenn booster — the same one that flew during New Glenn’s second mission. Roughly 10 minutes after liftoff, the booster came back down and landed on a drone ship in the ocean, just like it had last November. Jeff Bezos even shared drone footage of the booster’s landing on X, the social media site owned by his rival Elon Musk. (Musk offered congratulations.)

Roughly two hours after the launch, though, Blue Origin announced in its own post that the New Glenn upper stage placed AST SpaceMobile satellite in an “off-nominal orbit.” The company has not released any more information since that post.

Blue Origin spent a long time developing New Glenn, and it has been taken as a sign of confidence in that process that the company decided to start launching commercial payloads during these early missions. By comparison, SpaceX has spent the last few years flying test versions of its massive Starship, but has stuck with using dummy payloads as it works out the rocket’s kinks.

SpaceX did lose payloads deeper into its Falcon 9 program. In 2015, on the 19th Falcon 9 mission, the rocket blew up mid-flight and lost an entire International Space Station cargo spacecraft. In 2016, a Falcon 9 exploded on the launch pad during testing, causing the loss of an internet satellite for Meta.

Good morning! Let’s play Connections, the NYT’s clever word game that challenges you to group answers in various categories. It can be tough, so read on if you need Connections hints.

What should you do once you’ve finished? Why, play some more word games of course. I’ve also got daily Strands hints and answers and Quordle hints and answers articles if you need help for those too, while Marc’s Wordle today page covers the original viral word game.

Digit is seen performing deadlifts with a 65-pound weight in the center of a lab. Agility Robotics shared the video a few days ago, and to be honest, the robot maintains a fairly steady balance and completes the task from beginning to end. Someone mentions that the new version can lift significantly more weight than the previous one, while another laughs about how it can run all day without stopping.

The engineers designed the test so that Digit had to work harder than usual. Every additional pound it must lift causes the robot to modify its entire body at simultaneously, including its arms, legs, torso, and everything else. The system must keep the weight centered and avoid tipping over, therefore the legs, arms, and rest of the robot must all function together. These actuators and joints can withstand repeated load without breaking down. Digit’s video simply shows the robot grasping the weight, rising up, then effortlessly placing it down repeatedly in a standard indoor location built for people.

Unitree G1 Humanoid Robot（No Secondary Development）

• Sleek & Durable Design: Standing at 132cm tall and weighing only approx. 35kg, the G1 is constructed with aerospace-grade aluminum alloy and carbon…
• High Flexibility & Safe Movement: Boasting 23 joint degrees of freedom (6 per leg, 5 per arm), it offers an extensive range of motion. For safety, it…
• Smart Interaction & Connectivity: Powered by an 8-core high-performance CPU and equipped with a depth camera and 3D LiDAR. It supports Wi-Fi 6 and…

Simulation is where all of the training takes place, because before it touches a real weight, an engineer creates a digital copy of the same thing in a virtual world. Then they anticipate what will happen when the weight shifts. The grip pressure remains constant, with no slipping or lowering. Any changes to the robot’s equilibrium are registered extremely instantly. The policy learns the perfect lift in the simulated environment with no complications before being transmitted directly to the real robot. When you see the real robot perform it, it looks fairly natural because it has already handled every potential variable thousands of times in the simulation.

Engineers chose deadlifts for the test because the movement requires complete body control. A simple arm raise would not put the hardware under the same level of stress. By incorporating weight into the simulation loop, the team is able to handle balancing changes that a pre-programmed script cannot handle alone. As a result, Digit lifts consistently, with no wobbling or resets. This method is easily adaptable to other objects or larger loads in future tests.

Digit was built by Agility to manage long, repetitive jobs that wear people out, such as working in factories or warehouses where you must squeeze into tight spaces, pick up oddly shaped goods, and continue without taking a break. This deadlift test demonstrates Digit’s ability to lift weight on ordinary floors while remaining steady, which is ideal for picking up boxes, carrying tools, and stacking things in human-designed places.

It also illustrates how far they’ve come in teaching robots to perform physical tasks. Whole-body synchronization was originally a nightmare, with hand-tuned code for each joint angle. But now they can simply train a policy in simulation that adapts on the go. Digit detects weight using its sensors, corrects itself in real time, and completes the lift without assistance, while the hardware can keep up because the training has already taught the actuators and joints to be more durable.
[Source]

Most loudspeaker designers don’t spend much time debating open versus closed the way headphone enthusiasts do. Cabinets are part of the equation for a reason, offering control, efficiency, and predictable performance. That’s the accepted playbook. But like any good rule in audio, someone is always trying to break it.

At AXPONA 2026, La Dolce Audio showed what happens when you ignore that playbook and lean into experimentation. Founder Terry Gesualdo isn’t approaching amplification or speaker design from a traditional standpoint, he’s part of a growing group of builders exploring open designs and current drive amplification as an alternative to the usual voltage driven norm.

I met Gesualdo on the shuttle ride over to the show, which feels about right. This isn’t a polished, corporate origin story, it’s the familiar path of someone who started by modifying gear, then building his own tube amps for himself, then for friends and family. The difference here is that he didn’t stop at tweaking circuits. He kept pushing until the results looked and sounded like something entirely his own.

Current Drive Tube Amplification: Why La Dolce Audio Isn’t Following the Script

Having built a few tube amps, I’m always curious to see what others are doing, and Terry Gesualdo is not following the usual path. Most of his designs are single ended pentode circuits, not triodes, and not push pull designs chasing more voltage swing. That choice alone puts him in a different lane than a lot of tube builders.

Where things really diverge is the move to current drive. Most amplifiers are voltage driven. That’s the standard approach across both solid state and tube designs. Current drive shows up more often inside DACs where signal levels are extremely small, and occasionally in headphone amplifiers, but rarely in loudspeaker systems where current demands are far higher.

The idea behind current drive is fairly straightforward. By controlling current instead of voltage, the amplifier reduces the impact of back EMF from the driver. That back EMF is the voice coil behaving like a generator as it moves through the magnetic field, feeding energy back into the amplifier. Reduce that interaction and, in theory, you reduce distortion and improve control over the driver.

It’s not a new concept, but it’s one that almost nobody is applying to loudspeakers in this way, especially with tube amplification. That’s what makes what La Dolce Audio is doing worth paying attention to.

Control Over Harmonics Instead of Chasing Purity

Circling back to that idea of ignoring the usual playbook, another aspect that reinforces how La Dolce Audio is taking a different path is the near exclusive use of pentode tubes instead of the more common triodes. Triodes are the simplest form of amplification with three active elements, anode, cathode, and grid. Fewer parts in the signal path is why many listeners and designers gravitate toward them. The assumption is less complexity means lower distortion and fewer unwanted artifacts.

But that’s only part of the story. Harmonic distortion doesn’t disappear just because the circuit is simpler. It just changes character. And not all harmonics are a problem. A lot of what people describe as tube warmth comes from second and third order harmonics, which many listeners actually prefer.

Terry Gesualdo leans into that reality rather than trying to avoid it. By using pentodes, which add additional control elements beyond what a triode offers, he can shape those harmonic structures instead of accepting whatever the circuit gives him. That includes adjusting the balance between second and third order harmonics and even their phase relationships.

It’s a different mindset. Instead of chasing the lowest possible distortion number, the goal is control over how that distortion presents itself, and giving the listener a way to fine tune the result.

Some will find that approach a bit sacrilegious. There’s a large part of the hobby focused on removing as much of this behavior as possible, chasing lower distortion numbers and cleaner measurements. That’s not the goal here.

La Dolce Audio leans into a different philosophy. “If it sounds good, do it” is more than a slogan. It reflects the idea that listening is subjective and that not every system needs to be locked into a single interpretation of neutrality. By giving users control over harmonic structure, the design puts some of that decision making back in the listener’s hands.

UA2.5 and UA2.5M: Modular Power and User Tunability

La Dolce Audio offers two amplifier paths built around the same core ideas but with different roles. The UA2.5 is a dual channel amplifier rated at roughly 3 to 5 watts depending on tube selection, and it’s where most of the flexibility lives. With 24 possible sound signatures, it gives the user direct control over how the amplifier presents harmonic content and overall character.

The UA2.5M monoblocks step things up in output, delivering around 9 watts per channel, but they take a more focused approach. They are designed to be paired with the UA2.5, which handles preamp duties and sound shaping. As a result, the monoblocks do not include the same tuning controls, focusing instead on providing additional power while maintaining the same underlying design philosophy.

HPA2.3 Headphone Adapter

Alongside its amplifiers, La Dolce Audio offers the HPA2.3 headphone “amplifier,” although that label needs a bit of clarification. It’s not an amplifier in the traditional sense. The HPA2.3 is a passive device designed to work with the UA2.5, relying on it for signal processing and gain. In practice, it converts the UA2.5 into a headphone amplifier rather than operating as one on its own.

That means the HPA2.3 can drive a wide range of headphones depending on how the UA2.5 is configured, but it cannot function independently. No preamp, no sound.

Pricing reflects that modular approach. The UA2.5, which serves as the foundation of the system, runs between $1,799 and $2,499 depending on configuration and tube selection. The UA2.5M monoblocks are $1,999 each, and the HPA2.3 adds another $599. A full system lands in the $3,500 range, depending on how far you go down the rabbit hole.

The Bottom Line

La Dolce Audio isn’t trying to fit into the usual mold, and that’s the point. In a category where a lot of designs feel like small variations on the same theme, this is a reminder that there are still different ways to approach amplification and system building.

Beyond the amplifiers, the partnership with ABX Audiophiles on Discord to offer open baffle speaker kits adds another layer. It invites listeners to get involved, not just as buyers but as participants, with a community that shares ideas, solves problems, and pushes designs forward together. We’ll have more on that ABX side of things in a forthcoming article.

It won’t be for everyone. If you want plug and play simplicity, this isn’t it. But if you’re the type who likes to understand what your system is doing and shape it to your preferences, La Dolce offers something most companies don’t. A system you can actually interact with, not just listen to.

For more information: ladolceaudio.com

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Unlike previous years in what TV nerds like me call the “brightness wars,” the U7SG doesn’t outblast its predecessor, but it’s not a problem. It gets around three times as bright as anything you can stream (which is naturally capped due to compression), and has enough firepower for all but the flashiest 4K HDR Blu-rays. Its color processing shows a little more restraint than in previous models. It’s not quite what I’d call “accurate to the director’s intent,” like the best TVs I test, but it does keep itself from blasting your eyeballs most of the time.

The high brightness is matched by deep black levels, without much of the “blooming” or “haloing” around bright objects that can dilute the contrast of many budget-friendly TVs. It’s not as striking as OLED TVs, which can control each of their millions of pixels on demand, but it’ll wow you in deep space scenes just the same. I was pleased that the TV’s odd local dimming issue didn’t crop up in real-world content, but the picture does tend to flatten shadows in dark scenes more than expected, even as the matte-like screen does a good job keeping reflections at bay.

Photograph: Ryan Waniata

There are some other notable flaws. Moving off to the TV’s side in my easy chair led to dimmer colors, washed-out contrast between the brightest and darkest images, and uneven backlighting, aka the “dirty-screen effect.” That stood out most in the green backdrop of the Masters on Sunday as Rory McIlroy held on for the win. It wasn’t an issue when viewing head-on, but even then, I noticed some dingy yellow lines along the screen’s left and right sides with light backgrounds. (I may not have noticed them much if I hadn’t been bombarding this TV with test content first.)

The U7SG still doesn’t feel quite like a premium model. But it’s a very clear, bright TV, and will feel more like it’s worth the money once RGB shows up on other Hisense models and the price on this one drops. If you want something brighter than a similarly priced OLED like the LG B5, the U7 is a great buy and has a few good upgrades over last year’s U75QG.

We’ll know more about the 2026 TV landscape once the new RGB TVs have landed, but if you need a powerful, classy-looking TV before then, the U7SG should be on your list.