A horror story of sorts is unfolding in the United States. It goes like this: AI has made it so effortless to access information, and short-form video has made it so easy to entertain ourselves, that nobody reads anymore.
Tech
Apple could soon offer home security and monitoring service as it plans security camera foray
It looks like Apple has plans to make a splashy entrance in the smart home and security segment. Back in 2024, industry analyst Ming-Chi Kuo wrote that Apple was prepping its foray into the smart home IP camera market. A year later, Bloomberg reported that Apple had started work on a home security camera code-named J450. Now, the outlet reports that the company will also launch a home security service to go with its camera, something all major players in the domain currently offer.
“Apple is planning a privacy-centric home security camera and automation device that will use AI to monitor the surrounding environment instead of actual video footage. It will tap into a new home security and monitoring service,” says a new report by Bloomberg.
Why could privacy be Apple’s main selling point?
The move isn’t surprising. In fact, given Apple’s market appeal as the more privacy-friendly name in the pool of tech giants, it just might make the rumored service a preferred choice among customers. Of course, seamless integration with Apple’s vast network of consumer devices — and the planned wall-mounted smart home tablet — will potentially make it the most cohesive choice on the market.
The planned home security and monitoring service will put Apple in direct competition with the likes of Google and Amazon’s Ring, both of which offer multi-tier home security services and subscriptions to go with their smart doorbells and security cameras. Even the likes of Arlo and SimpliSafe offer their own monitoring plans and subscription-based services with extra perks.
The ecosystem is already in place
Apple already has a product that is ready to integrate services tied to smart home and security devices. That service is Apple One, which already combines benefits tied to other Apple products such as iCloud for storage, Apple Arcade for games, Apple TV, and Apple Music, among others. As far as the planned hardware goes, Bloomberg claims that Apple’s security camera will come with facial detection capability and will also come equipped with an infrared camera.
Continue Reading
If you’re familiar with this tale, it’s possible, ironically, that you read about it. A viral Atlantic story from earlier this summer put a chilling headline on trend: “The End of Reading Is Here.” Teachers and professors, the magazine reported, don’t even bother assigning entire books to their students, because excerpts are good enough to prepare for standardized texts. The piece said we’re living in a “postliterate era.”
This is a cultural crisis, yes — but for a lot of us, it’s a personal one. We’re all short on time, and we’d like to read more, but the ascendancy of attention-stealing tech companies has made it feel like we have less of it.
“Reading was and is a crime of opportunity,” said Leah Price, a professor of modern book history at Oxford and the author of What We Talk About When We Talk About Books. “The limiting factor isn’t reading matter, but reading time.”
- Reading is changing, not dying. The bigger problem is competition for people’s time and attention.
- Print offers productive difficulty. E-readers and audiobooks make reading easier, but the friction of print promotes deeper comprehension.
- Leisure reading should be fun! It’s totally fine to peek at the ending, skip boring parts, or just give up on boring books.
Losing the reading habit is especially bad because it’s a healthy practice in a world obsessed with self-improvement. Studies suggest that reading is an astonishingly good mental exercise, as well as a very accessible one. Reading, especially leisure reading, can improve your language skills. It exposes you to new knowledge and ideas. Reading can help relieve stress, anxiety, and insomnia. It can make you more empathetic and combat cognitive decline. Reading is absolutely great for kids. Reading, perhaps above all, also happens to be fun.
There are, I’m happy to say, some bright spots in this story — and some helpful news.
There’s evidence that reading isn’t over. It’s just changing. A 2025 Pew study found that the number of Americans who say they read books has remained roughly the same in recent years, although the way that they read them is changing. The vast majority of books read in the United States are print, but a growing number of people are reading e-books and listening to audiobooks. The number of print books sold is actually growing on the backs of the science fiction and self-help genres. The number of e-books and audiobooks borrowed from their local libraries, meanwhile, topped 820 million last year, a new record. There’s no shortage of books to read. And it’s never been easier to access any book you want in your preferred format.
The other bit of good news is useful to you: Reading is like a muscle. Even if you feel like your ability to pore over a book has atrophied, that muscle is still there, ready for exercise. The more you do read, the more your vocabulary improves, the more you learn, and the more you’re able to put new information in context. In other words, the more you read, the better you get at it. And probably as a result, the less appealing algorithmic feeds become.
It’s one of those personal habits that extends beyond your own life, too. Becoming a better reader is good for American society. The nation’s founders believed that an informed citizenry was necessary to preserve democracy — and to prevent tyranny. A nation of people passively flipping through 10-second videos on a smartphone or bedrotting with a streaming show can be informed in a sense. You might want to be a better American.
The big question, then, is: How does one become a better reader in an era that increasingly appears to be postliterate? Actually, there are some interesting insights — and ironically, some technology — that can help.
One thing that keeps a lot of people from reading is simply friction. Reading can be hard — or at least effortful — for a lot of different reasons.
For me, I hit friction every time I pick up all 1,300 dense pages of The Power Broker by Robert Caro. It’s the weight of a doorstop in my hands, as I struggle with the context of mid-century New York bureaucratic history, ultimately unsure if I’ll live long enough to reach the end of the book. Reading is full of friction, and finding ways to reduce friction is one way to read better.
Technology is good at this. Just take the growth in e-book popularity as proof. Whereas people over 65 have historically read more than young people, more than 40 percent of young people have read an e-book in the past year, according to an April Pew study. You can’t blame them. Once you get used to the lack of pages and paper, e-readers are incredibly convenient. The classic Kindle Paperwhite is more portable than a doorstop, and you can keep an entire library on something the size of a side plate. It’s even waterproof, or at least more waterproof than paper. More advanced devices, like the Kobo Libre Colour, offer color e-ink displays and the ability to scribble on the page.
What turned me into a Kindle enthusiast is the existence of Libby, an app that lets you check out e-books from your local library. From the comfort of the New York City subway, I can find, borrow, and download just about any book I’d ever want and start reading it in a matter of seconds. You might call this a frictionless experience. The raw simplicity of the device also means that I can’t easily navigate away from the book to check my email or start doomscrolling.
Audiobooks open up another avenue: the ability to read a book while doing something else, like chores or driving. You might disagree on whether listening to an audiobook counts as “reading,” but there’s evidence that people can comprehend and retain information from audiobooks equally as well as they can from printed material. Audiobooks can even make difficult language more accessible for more readers.
There are drawbacks, too. Audiobooks force you to listen at the speed of the narrator, although you can probably speed it up or slow it down in increments. And it’s difficult to go back and review the text or to skip ahead, which is also true for e-books. This spatial component of reading is something that printed books will always have going for them. Rereading text can improve comprehension, and the spatial nature of books makes it easier to find certain passages. Just think about that effortless feeling of flipping back toward the beginning of a book for that really juicy section. That’s not easy to do on a Kindle or with an e-book.
There’s an interesting paradox here: In order to become a better reader, you need to reduce enough friction that you read more. But you also need to preserve certain kinds of friction that help you fully appreciate what you’re reading.
There’s a good reason your teachers and professors assigned hard books when you were in school. “Learning only happens when there is some cognitive friction, if you’re actually grappling with the ideas,” said Daniel Willingham, a psychology professor at the University of Virginia.
Reading difficult text, scribbling notes in the margins, rereading the difficult text, taking breaks to think about it — this friction-full process leads to deeper comprehension. Certain inconveniences that come with reading print books, including turning physical pages and navigating the spatial elements of the object, invite you to do the mental work that promotes learning. Screens, with their lack of friction, may actually make it harder to comprehend what you’re reading.
The advantage of print is small but meaningful. A 2018 meta-analysis of nearly two decades’ worth of studies showed that paper-based reading had a slight advantage to screen-based reading when it came to comprehension, especially when dealing with informational texts, rather than narratives. Another meta-analysis published a year later suggested that readers were more efficient when reading on paper and, interestingly, seemed to have a more accurate awareness of how well they understood the text. In other words, when you read on your phone, you might think you’re absorbing more than you actually are.
There are other drawbacks to reading on screens. Scrolling alone is bad for comprehension, according to yet another meta-analysis, because it basically forces us to lose our place on the page. There’s also been research into how reading on screens demands more of our cognitive resources than reading on paper, perhaps because the technology requires the reader to process more information, leaving them with a little less gas in the tank to actually comprehend the text. But again, plenty of studies show that the difference in how well we comprehend information by reading on screens versus print is small.
What’s perhaps more meaningful are the vibes we bring when we approach a medium. We’ve been trained to read on screens a certain way, according to Naomi Baron, a professor emerita of linguistics at American University. From the early days of Google, screens became places where we searched and scanned for information, quickly clicking through to the next page in pursuit of an answer. That’s a far cry from the millennia-old tradition of poring over printed manuscripts.
“We got used to thinking a digital device is that which one doesn’t concentrate on,” Baron said. “One keeps moving like a shark. … Print is a medium that encourages stopping.”
It turns out two things can be true. Indeed, keeping a smartphone next to you while you’re trying to read a book is an invitation to distraction. You may also feel like your attention span is already shredded, probably thanks to your smartphone. You just have to be more intentional about your attention and harness your focus. Taking breaks can help restore your attention stamina, especially if you do so in nature. Try reading a book for a few minutes every day, and you’ll soon find that you can read for longer. The next thing you know, you’ll have read a book.
Let’s not lose the plot here
Some people read to learn. Others read because their job demands it. The luckiest of us read for fun. Some people read to escape or to imagine. And depending on your purpose, you might choose a different approach or device to stuff that text into your brain.
If you’re simply trying to become a better reader, it doesn’t matter how you do it.
You should keep reading, again, because reading more makes you better at reading. If you’re trying to learn, printed books can facilitate that, but you can also learn quite a bit by listening to an audiobook. If a Kindle and a library card can unlock all the hard sci-fi and fantasy your eyes could ever consume, go for it and enjoy.
Part of what keeps some people from reading, I have to imagine, is the preconception that reading needs to be difficult to be rewarding. And as many teachers and professors will point out to you, navigating your mind through the difficult text can be especially rewarding, since that friction leads to better comprehension and learning. Still, you don’t need to read everything like you’re trying to get a good grade.
“There are no rules about leisure reading,” Willingham told me. “You can peek at the end. If you’re not enjoying a book, drop it. You can do whatever you want. The whole point is for you to have fun.”
You should read material that feels magnetic to you, that keeps you coming back for more. If reading is going to have any chance of competing with TikTok, it needs to be interesting and compelling, regardless of how literary or sophisticated you might think reading needs to be. You should read books, longform articles, and blog posts on whatever medium makes sense in that moment — and whatever medium makes it easy to keep reading.
That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to read the big difficult, doorstopper-sized classics, though, if that’s important to you. Just think twice about using AI to summarize what you’re reading. It’s tempting to ask ChatGPT why Anna Karenina is a classic — I just did, and ChatGPT says “psychological realism, moral complexity, continuing relevance” — but it’s not fun.
Using AI as a reading partner may help initial understanding of reading material, but old habits like note-taking better promote engagement and long-term comprehension. Pia Kreijkes, author of a study on this topic published earlier this year, is worried about young people leaning on AI to do more of the cognitive lifting that reading requires.
“Given that children are already on a trajectory of declining reading frequency and enjoyment, and that reading skills are also declining, we should be very concerned about this,” Kreijkes said. “The more we use AI to reduce our reading effort, the more likely reading skills are to decline.”
After all, if the kids stop reading, there’s not a whole lot of hope for future generations to be readers of books. If we let technology remove too much friction from our pursuit of knowledge, we will lose the plot entirely and slide into the postliterate horror so many people are currently afraid of, AI-dominated dystopia and all. When you put it that way, though, this is also a great premise for a sci-fi novel.
For most people, birdwatching starts with a glance through a window. A flash of red near the feeder. A hummingbird hovering for a few seconds. A bird perched on a fence before disappearing into the trees. These moments are easy to miss, and even when we notice them, we may not know what we are looking at.
Birdfy is changing that dynamic by bringing technology into one of the most ordinary places for observing wildlife: the backyard. The company has now surpassed one million smart birding devices worldwide. In the U.S., its smart birding community is capturing bird activity across everyday residential spaces, creating a growing dataset on how birds interact with the places where people live. Instead of relying on a handful of traditional observation sites, Birdfy’s technology is recording bird activity from thousands of everyday residential spaces. The resulting data offers a different way to look at how birds interact with the places where people live, and how people are responding to those encounters.
The new Birdfy U.S. Birdwatching Insights Report 2026: A Million Devices, One Portrait of Nature examines that activity through the company’s U.S. smart birding community. It is not intended to replace professional ecological surveys. Instead, Birdfy describes it as a portrait of birdwatching behavior and everyday nature observation, built from what its devices record.
And the portrait is surprisingly large. Over the past year, Birdfy says its network completed approximately 2.1 billion AI bird identifications, equivalent to about 66 bird visits recorded every second. Those observations are not happening exclusively in national parks or remote wilderness. They are taking place in the backyards, gardens, balconies, and feeding spots of ordinary households.
That scale is beginning to reveal patterns that can be difficult to see from a single backyard.
A growing network of observation points reveals how busy nature really is
One of the most striking findings in the report is how much bird activity happens before most people have even started their day. At around 6 AM, Birdfy recorded more than 63.2 million bird visits. The report says detections rose from fewer than 14 million by 5 AM to roughly 63.2 million by 6 AM, representing more than a fourfold increase in a single hour.
The activity does not stop there. Across the day, Birdfy’s data shows backyard visits rising around dawn, peaking between 7 AM and noon, with 8 AM emerging as the busiest hour. Activity then declines through the afternoon and falls sharply after 7 PM, with very little activity late at night.
In other words, the backyard has its own daily rhythm. Different species follow different schedules within that rhythm. The report notes, for example, that House Finches are most active around 10 AM, Black-capped Chickadees around 2 PM, and Dark-eyed Juncos as early as 7 AM. Northern Cardinals appear both early and late, with the report identifying them as a particularly persistent presence throughout the day.
These patterns are interesting precisely because they come from places where people may not think of themselves as conducting nature observation. Birdfy’s devices are effectively creating a growing network of small observation points. Each one sees only what happens in its own backyard, but collectively, those observations begin to form a broader picture.
The same principle applies geographically.
The report identifies a clear dividing line around the Rocky Mountains. East of the Rockies, across 19 states, the Northern Cardinal is the dominant familiar backyard bird, while west of the Rockies, the House Finch takes that position across another 19 states. The report attributes these differences to factors including climate, vegetation, and bird behavior.
The hummingbird data reveals another geographic pattern. East of the Rockies, the Ruby-throated Hummingbird accounts for 61.6% of hummingbird identifications, while western backyards show greater variety, including Anna’s, Allen’s, Rufous, and Costa’s hummingbirds.
Technology is not creating these differences. It is making them easier to see at scale.
The surprising birds are closer than we think
One of the most compelling ideas in Birdfy’s report is that discovering unusual wildlife does not necessarily require traveling into remote habitats.
Sometimes, it just requires looking more closely at home. Birdfy’s identification system has a library covering more than 6,000 species, while more than 1,000 species have actually been identified through its real-world data. That distinction matters. The library represents what the system is capable of recognizing, while the 1,000-plus figure represents species that have genuinely appeared in the platform’s recorded observations.
The report’s hummingbird data provides an especially striking example. Across more than 20 million hummingbird identifications, Birdfy recorded 17 species beyond the three most common hummingbirds. Among them were the Broad-billed Hummingbird, Berylline Hummingbird, and Lucifer Hummingbird, species described in the report as rare visitors in the areas where they were recorded. These observations came from ordinary backyard feeders rather than nature reserves.
That changes the way a backyard can be perceived. For someone who does not consider themselves a birdwatcher, an unidentified bird can be just another visitor. AI identification can put a name to it. The report describes this as a progression from “that red bird” to a Northern Cardinal, for example. Once an unfamiliar bird has a name, the barrier to learning more about it becomes smaller.
This accessibility is important because birdwatching is already a much larger part of American life than its reputation as a niche hobby might suggest. The report cites U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service research estimating that 96 million Americans watch birds, including approximately 91 million who do so at home or nearby. Backyard birding has therefore become an everyday activity for millions of people, not something reserved for dedicated birders equipped with binoculars and field guides.
Birdfy’s technology fits into that existing behavior by reducing some of the knowledge required to get started. You do not necessarily need to know the name of a bird before you can become interested in it.
From seeing a bird to sharing it
The most interesting part of Birdfy’s data may not be the birds themselves. It may be what people do after they see them. Birdfy users shared more than 2 million bird photos and videos, while the volume of sharing increased by 227%, or more than threefold.
That behavior suggests that backyard birding is becoming increasingly social. A person who sees something unusual does not necessarily keep the moment to themselves. They may save it, show a family member, or share it with someone else. Birdfy describes these as small “come look at this” moments, turning a private observation into something that can be experienced collectively.
The report also points to another layer of engagement. Birdfy says users spend close to 20 minutes in total viewing bird imagery through its Moments section. Combined with identification and sharing activity, the company sees a behavioral progression from recognizing a bird to returning to watch it and eventually sharing it with others.
That progression is central to Birdfy’s larger argument. Technology can make nature easier to notice, but the bigger impact may come from what happens after someone notices it.
The report describes a progression from access to awareness, awareness to attachment, and attachment to action. It is difficult to measure something as personal as caring, but the repeated behaviors in the data provide one indication that users are spending more time engaging with what is happening outside their homes.
There is also an important social and environmental context to that engagement.
North America has lost an estimated 3 billion birds since 1970, according to research cited in the report. At the same time, public participation in bird observation has grown, with platforms such as eBird contributing more than a billion observations to conservation research. Birdfy positions backyard observation as another way people can become more aware of the wildlife around them.
The idea is simple: people are more likely to care about something they have learned to recognize and notice.
A different future for nature observation
Birdfy’s million-device milestone ultimately points toward something larger than smart bird feeders. It suggests that technology can change where nature observation happens and who gets to participate. Traditional wildlife observation often requires expertise, equipment, travel, or access to particular locations. A connected camera placed in a backyard changes that equation. The observation point is already there, and AI can help interpret what the camera sees.
But Birdfy is careful about what its data can and cannot demonstrate.
The company’s dataset reflects observations from Birdfy devices and therefore does not constitute a comprehensive census of wild bird populations. Device distribution varies between regions, different products attract different species and behaviors, and areas with more devices can naturally generate more observations. The report explicitly says its data should not replace field surveys or peer-reviewed research.
The company also acknowledges limitations in AI recognition. The system performs better with common species and clear images, while recognition can become less reliable with juveniles, unusual plumage, regional variations, poor lighting, or difficult viewing angles. Rare or unusual records may receive additional manual review.
Those limitations do not necessarily diminish the value of the dataset. They define what it is. Birdfy’s report is not claiming that a million devices can replace professional ecological monitoring. Instead, it offers a large-scale look at what happens when ordinary people have the ability to observe wildlife continuously in the places where they live.
That may be the more important shift. Birdfy has also tied this growing community to conservation through the Birdfy Fund, which receives $1 from every device sold. According to the report, the fund has raised $1 million, partnered with 14 conservation organizations, and supported 64 projects across 17 U.S. states. Its initiatives include conservation grants, research partnerships, bird-friendly backyard education, and community support.
The result is a feedback loop: technology makes birds easier to see, identification makes them easier to understand, sharing makes the experience more social, and greater awareness can create more opportunities for people to engage with conservation.
More than one million Birdfy devices sold globally therefore represent more than a sales milestone. They reflect a growing community of people choosing to pay closer attention to the wildlife around them. And when those individual moments are brought together, the picture becomes much larger. The data shows when birds arrive, where different species appear, how unusual visitors can turn up in ordinary yards, and how people increasingly choose to save and share those encounters.
Nature was never absent from our backyards. Birdfy’s data suggests that we are simply getting better at noticing it. Read the full Birdfy U.S. Birdwatching Insights Report 2026 here.
Note: Birdfy’s report states that its data reflects the company’s device user base and should be understood as a portrait of birdwatching behavior, not a comprehensive ecological census. Its statistical periods and methodologies vary by metric, with some early cumulative figures estimated from historical averages.
Wireless headphones have spent the past decade becoming smarter, more convenient and considerably harder to repair. Batteries are usually sealed inside, ear pads eventually deteriorate, and too many otherwise functional headphones become disposable once one critical component wears out.
That is starting to change. A small but important group of manufacturers is putting greater emphasis on replaceable batteries, removable ear pads and serviceable components, and beyerdynamic is leaning directly into that idea with the new AVENTHO Y.
Introduced at IFA 2026 for $149.99, the closed-back wireless over-ear headphone offers active noise cancellation, Bluetooth 6.0 multipoint connectivity, 45mm dynamic drivers, app-based EQ and up to 90 hours of battery life. None of those features alone makes it unusual, but beyerdynamic has taken a different approach to durability and long-term ownership that deserves more attention.
What Makes the AVENTHO Y Different?
Wireless headphones eventually develop the same problem as every other rechargeable product: batteries wear out. On many models, that can turn an otherwise perfectly functional headphone into electronic waste or an expensive repair project.
Beyerdynamic has designed the AVENTHO Y with a user-replaceable battery, magnetic interchangeable ear pads, aluminum sliders and stainless-steel hinges. The company also offers optional black or gray velour ear pads, while an upgrade package adds a low-latency USB-C dongle and detachable boom microphone. An integrated compartment inside the earcup can store the optional dongle or a spare battery.
That modular approach is probably the AVENTHO Y’s strongest differentiator. The optional dongle and microphone also broaden its usefulness beyond commuting and music listening, giving owners the ability to configure it for gaming, video calls or work without purchasing a separate headset.
ANC, Bluetooth 6.0 and 45mm Drivers
The AVENTHO Y uses 45mm dynamic drivers in a closed-back, foldable over-ear design with a specified frequency response of 20 Hz to 20 kHz. Active noise cancellation is joined by a Transparency mode, while two integrated microphones use environmental noise cancellation to reduce background noise during calls.
Bluetooth 6.0 supports multipoint connectivity and a claimed range of up to 20 meters. The beyerdynamic app provides firmware updates, adjustable controls and a 5-band equalizer, allowing users to alter the headphone’s tonal balance rather than being locked into the factory tuning.
There is one specification worth examining more closely. The AVENTHO Y supports SBC and AAC, but beyerdynamic does not list aptX, aptX Adaptive, aptX Lossless or LDAC. Bluetooth 6.0 is the current version of the wireless standard, but the version number should not be confused with automatic support for higher-bitrate Bluetooth audio codecs.
Battery Life Should Be a Major Selling Point
Beyerdynamic rates the AVENTHO Y for up to 90 hours of playback with ANC switched off and up to 60 hours with ANC active. A full charge takes approximately one hour, while five minutes of fast charging can provide up to six additional hours of playback.
Those figures put it near the top of the category, although Audio-Technica’s ATH-S300BT essentially matches them with up to 90 hours without ANC and 60 hours with it. The Audio-Technica requires approximately 2.5 hours for a full charge, however, versus one hour for the beyerdynamic.
The AVENTHO Y weighs 316 grams, which is worth considering for anyone planning to wear it throughout the workday or on long flights. Beyerdynamic is offering four finishes: Liquid Black, Blue Fusion, Soft Jade and Peach Blush.
Plenty of Competition at $150
The AVENTHO Y is entering a much tougher part of the wireless headphone market than its $149.99 price might suggest. Final’s UX3000 SV sells for the same $149.99 and takes a more sound-focused approach, combining custom 40mm drivers with hybrid ANC, multipoint connectivity and support for aptX and aptX HD. Battery life is considerably shorter at 35 hours without ANC and 25 hours with it, but Final has built much of its reputation around tuning rather than winning the specification-sheet contest.
The new EarFun Wave Pro X may be an even more direct threat. Originally shown at CES 2026 and priced at $129.99, it uses a dual-driver configuration with 40mm DLC and 10mm LCP drivers, Bluetooth 6.0 and an unusually comprehensive codec package that includes aptX Adaptive, aptX Lossless, LDAC and LE Audio. Auracast, multipoint connectivity, hybrid ANC, an eight-microphone call system and up to 90 hours of battery life make the absence of anything beyond SBC and AAC on the AVENTHO Y considerably more noticeable.
Nothing’s 2026 Headphone (a) sits slightly higher at a $199 MSRP, although Nothing is currently selling it for $159 in the U.S. It offers adaptive ANC, LDAC, USB-C and 3.5mm wired playback, an 8-band EQ and a remarkable claimed 135 hours of playback without ANC or 75 hours with it engaged. At 310 grams, it is also very close to the 316-gram beyerdynamic, making the comparison considerably more relevant than the lightweight Sony WH-CH720N.
What the AVENTHO Y has that none of those models can match as a complete package is its emphasis on long-term ownership. The user-replaceable battery, magnetic ear pads, stainless-steel hinges and optional low-latency dongle and boom microphone give it an upgrade and repair path that most wireless headphones still lack. That is a stronger reason to consider the beyerdynamic than Bluetooth 6.0 or another hour-counting exercise.
Key Specifications
- Type: Wireless closed-back over-ear
- Drivers: 45mm dynamic
- Frequency response: 20 Hz to 20 kHz
- ANC: Yes
- Transparency mode: Yes
- Bluetooth: 6.0 with multipoint
- Codecs: SBC, AAC
- Wireless range: Up to 20 meters
- Battery life with ANC: Up to 60 hours
- Battery life without ANC: Up to 90 hours
- Charging time: Approximately 1 hour
- Fast charging: 5 minutes for up to 6 hours
- EQ: 5-band via beyerdynamic app
- Battery: User replaceable
- Ear pads: Magnetic and interchangeable
- Weight: 316 grams
- Colors: Liquid Black, Blue Fusion, Soft Jade, Peach Blush
- Price: $149.99
Pricing & Availability
The beyerdynamic AVENTHO Y is priced at $149.99 in the United States and will be sold through beyerdynamic.com and Amazon.
At that price, the replaceable battery might matter more than another Bluetooth codec or marketing feature. Wireless headphones have become better and considerably more affordable, but relatively few are designed around the idea that owners might still want to use them after the original battery has reached the end of its useful life. Beyerdynamic appears to have noticed that problem, and the AVENTHO Y offers a rather sensible solution.
For more information: beyerdynamic.com
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I’ve covered the many ways smart thermostats can convert your home to a well-heated haven and how quickly they can pay for themselves through energy savings, but there’s one glaring issue. Almost all smart thermostats are designed only for central hubs and forced air heating/cooling. Imagine my relief when Sonoff showed up at IFA 2026 with a smart alternative.
Read more: The Weirdest and Wackiest Tech We Found at IFA 2026
At last, I’ve found an alternative, thanks to Sonoff’s announcement of its latest TRV Smart Thermostatic Radiator Valve. It’s designed to fit on the valve pipe of a traditional home radiator, screwing in place and connecting to Wi-Fi to provide app insights and a full suite of control options. It’s available right now on the Sonoff website for $35 and supports both Celsius and Fahrenheit.
It’s difficult to find up-to-date smart radiator solutions in the IS, let alone everything Sonoff is offering here. The valve lets you adjust between several temperature plans and uses an IPS color screen to show temperature and settings at a glance. Its app also offers low-battery alerts so you can recharge it, as well as important reminders for frost protection, anti-calcification maintenance and even connections to window sensors that can automatically stop heating when windows are opened. There’s even a child lock to keep little fingers from messing up your heating schedule.
This combination of features is exactly what people need if they live in homes that primarily use radiators, have radiators in addition to central heating, or use radiators only in certain spots, like a finished basement. It offers the same savings potential and convenience as standard smart thermostats, plus some features tailored specifically for radiators.
Since I don’t have radiators in my home, I can’t easily test this smart valve out. I’ll have to ask other CNET editors if one of their rooms has a radiator they could test in so we can get real-world results, but everything looks promising here.
Are you more of a radiant floor heat home? Sonoff has you covered, too
Many newer homes have a different kind of heating technology, radiant flooring heating, popular in bathrooms and homes with certain kinds of wood flooring. If you’re interested in smart additions to this kind of radiant heating, Sonoff brought good news to IFA for you, too.
Sonoff also announced a Thermostat Core, designed to fit standard hydronic underfloor heating systems. It outfits floor heating with complete app controls, scheduling options and connection options with Sonoff temperature sensors, so floor heating can respond to the current temperature of a specific room. It sports a presence-activated screen, frost protection and other synergies similar to the radiator valve, too.
I don’t currently have pricing information for the Thermostat Core, but when I find out the details, I’ll let you know.
While I’m most excited about the smart heating, I’d be remiss not to mention that Sonoff announced several other smart products at IFA. It showed off an indoor siren and, most notably, a window security cam. Eufy also showed up with a window camera at IFA, so it’s apparently a new home security trend. Wyze got in the game much earlier this year with its own window security cam, and you can see what I thought about it here. These unique, covered cams fit directly on windows and are particularly useful for apartments and similar spots.
Turns out, you can rewrite history. Well, a chatbot’s understanding of your personal history, anyway.
Since the summer of 2025, Claude has had the ability to remember past conversations. This feature — which Anthropic, like other AI labs, calls memory — allows the chatbot to personalize its responses and save you the hassle of repeating context for it. By default, memory is enabled for all Claude users, including those with free accounts, and following a recent update allows the chatbot to carry over its memory across both chats and Claude Cowork sessions. In recent weeks, Anthropic has also been rolling out more granular controls that give users the ability to edit the specific topics Claude remembers. Here’s how you can edit what Claude remembers about you.
How to edit Claude’s memory
Claude organizes its memory around specific topics. The easiest way to edit those topics is from the chatbot’s web client, accessible via claude.ai. Once you’re there, follow these steps:
- Select Settings from the profile page menu.
- Click Memory.
- Scroll down and find the Topics section.
- Press the Edit icon to modify a memory, or the Delete icon to remove a topic from Claude’s memory.
- If you’re editing a memory, use the prompt bar to describe what Claude should change.
On mobile, follow these steps instead:
- Tap the profile icon to access the Settings menu.
- Under the App section, select Capabilities.
- Scroll down and tap Memory files.
- Select a topic.
- If you want to edit a memory, use the prompt bar to describe what Claude should change. Tap the trash icon to delete a memory instead.
Following Claude’s latest memory update, Anthropic added an option called Include sensitive topics in memory. By default, Claude won’t save memories related to subjects like your health, race, ethnicity, religious beliefs, politics or gender identity. By enabling the new option, it will begin recording more sensitive information. Each time Claude generates a memory related to a sensitive subject, you will see a notice. According to Anthropic, “if you’re using an older version or the mobile app, you will not see this notice, and Claude won’t save the sensitive topic to its memory.”
The chatbot won’t retroactively save past conversations, and some information, such as government ID numbers, Claude will never save, even with Include sensitive topics in memory enabled.
As mentioned above, by default Claude will automatically generate memories for all users. You can disable this feature by toggling off Generate memory from chats. From there, Anthropic gives you two options: Pause memory or Reset memory. The company warns the latter cannot be undone. “Upon re-enabling the feature, you’ll start from scratch, and Claude will not have its previous memory,” Anthropic notes.
How Claude’s memory works in projects
One wrinkle worth noting is that Anthropic silos Claude’s memory in projects so that the chatbot’s context window doesn’t get overwhelmed with information that isn’t relevant to your current task. You can shape Claude’s memory in projects by adding comments, documents and information from GitHub through the right side of the interface. At the end of each day, Claude will generate a summary of the work it’s done for you, which you can edit from the same interface.
If you accidentally prompt Claude outside of a project, click or tap the three dots icon and select Add to project to properly sort the conversation. If you want Claude to remember something specific across every tool you can interact with, including projects, you can add that information to the Profile section of Memory menu.
Some additional tips
If at any point you want to temporarily avoid the possibility of Claude writing something to its memory, you can switch the chatbot to Incognito mode by clicking or tapping the ghost icon on the top right of the interface. “Incognito chats aren’t saved, added to memory, or used to train models,” Anthropic explains.
In March, Anthropic added an import tool to make it easier for people to bring their conversations from other chatbots over to Claude. Engadget has a full guide on how to export your chats to Claude, but here I’ll mention that you can select Start import next to Import memory from other AI providers to get that process started.
Labor Day sales are usually a great excuse to finally buy the tech you’ve been putting off. Cameras, microphones, webcams— almost everything sees a discount. If you’re a creator or simply love documenting trips, Insta360’s Labor Day sale is worth paying attention to.
The sale runs in the U.S. from August 27 through September 7, with discounts across the company’s flagship 360 cameras, action cameras, webcams, and wireless microphone lineup. Whether you’re looking for an 8K 360 camera or a pocket-sized action cam for travel, here are the five best Insta360 deals to consider.
Best Insta360 Labor Day deals at a glance
| Product | Best for | Labor Day price |
|---|---|---|
| Insta360 X5 | 360° filmmaking & travel | $464.99 |
| Insta360 Ace Pro 2 | Action camera users | $329.99 |
| Insta360 GO Ultra | Tiny wearable camera | $379.99 |
| Insta360 Mic Pro | Wireless audio | $299.99 |
| Insta360 Link 2 Pro | Streaming & video calls | $209.99 |
Insta360 X5: $464.99
If you just need one recommendation from this list, it has to be the Insta360 X5. Up until just a week ago, it was the company’s flagship 360 camera, and arguably the most versatile option for creators who shoot everything from road trips to mountain biking.
The biggest reason to buy the X5 is flexibility. It captures 8K 360-degree video, meaning you don’t have to worry about framing while shooting. Instead, you record everything around you first, then decide on the camera angle later inside the Insta360 app. That’s especially useful for cycling, skiing, motorcycle rides, or solo travel where you don’t have someone behind the camera.
Insta360 has also improved low-light performance over previous generations, so nighttime city walks and sunset footage retain noticeably better detail than older 360 cameras.
Insta360 Ace Pro 2: $329.99
Not everyone wants a 360 camera. If your priority is traditional wide-angle footage, the Insta360 Ace Pro 2 is arguably the better buy at $329.99. Unlike the X5, the Ace Pro 2 is built around a 1/1.3-inch image sensor paired with dual AI imaging chips. That combination allows it to record 8K video while delivering much cleaner footage in difficult lighting conditions, especially indoors or after sunset.
The camera is also designed for creators who spend more time editing than reframing. You simply mount it, hit record, and get stabilized footage without the additional workflow that comes with 360-degree video.
Insta360 GO Ultra: $379.99
The Insta360 GO Ultra is probably the most unique product in the sale. Priced at $379.99, it’s less about cinematic filmmaking and more about capturing moments you would’ve otherwise missed.
The camera weighs very little and can clip onto clothing or attach magnetically using Insta360’s mounting system. That makes it perfect for first-person cooking videos, walking tours, skiing, or simply recording family moments without holding a camera.
Despite its tiny size, it records 4K stabilized video, and Insta360’s FlowState stabilization keeps footage remarkably smooth while walking or running.
Insta360 Mic Pro: $299.99
Video quality gets all the attention, but audio is usually what separates professional content from amateur footage. That’s where the Insta360 Mic Pro comes in.
Discounted to $299, the Mic Pro is a dual wireless microphone system aimed at creators who shoot interviews, podcasts, or YouTube videos. Its standout feature is the customizable e-ink display, which lets you monitor recording information while consuming very little power.
The system also includes intelligent noise reduction and professional-grade wireless recording, making it a strong alternative to premium options from DJI and Rode.
Insta360 Link 2 Pro: $209.99
If your content is created at a desk rather than outdoors, the Insta360 Link 2 Pro deserves attention. At $209, it’s one of the better premium webcam deals this Labor Day.
The webcam uses a 1/1.3-inch sensor—much larger than what most webcams offer—which translates into sharper 4K video and significantly better performance in dim rooms. It also supports multiple audio pickup modes, making it useful for video calls, livestreaming, and online teaching without requiring a separate microphone in many situations. For remote workers and streamers, it’s easily one of the strongest value picks in the sale.
If you want improve a model rocket’s performance, all the common options come with serious trade-offs: you could increase the motor’s size, which raises safety issues, or you could cut down on weight, which limits the possible payload. [Con Hathy] was therefore intrigued by the design of the Arcas sounding rockets, which with the aid of a gas-fed launch tube could reach an altitude of 100 km. Even in models without a gas generator, a launch tube apparently boosted performance, an effect which [Con] was able to replicate in a much smaller model rocket.
In theory, as the rocket engine fires, it should pressurize the tube behind the rocket, providing an extra boost out of the tube. To test this, [Con] 3D printed a test rocket, launched it both from a standard rail and from a tube, and compared the results. During tube launches, a printed sabot fit around the rocket and formed a seal with the launch tube. The results were surprising: the tube-launched rocket actually performed substantially worse than a rail launch. After building a simulation, [Con] found that, as the rocket moves down the tube, the volume of tube it needs to back-fill with gas increases faster than the engine puts out exhaust; it was pulling a slight vacuum behind it, slowing itself down.
To solve this, [Con] decreased the diameter of the launch tube. To let the rocket fit into the tube, he also modified it to use pop-out stabilizer fins which wrap around the rocket while in the tube. The sabot was also shrunk, and had foam added to improve the seal between it and the rocket. For this second test, [Con] also connected a pressure sensor to the base of the launch tube. The results on the second launch were much better: according to an altimeter, it managed to fly 72% higher. Based on the pressure sensor’s data, a longer tube could have squeezed out still more performance, but this still demonstrated the principle quite well.
We’ve seen a tube-launched rocket before, though not with such a performance focus.
POCO has expanded its X8 lineup with the global launch of the POCO X8 5G. The standard model comes with a 6.83-inch 1.5K AMOLED display with a 120Hz refresh rate and is powered by the Snapdragon 6s Gen 4 SoC. It also packs an 8,340mAh battery and supports 67W charging. The device will launch in India on September 4, where it is expected to feature an even larger 9,000mAh battery.
POCO X8 5G Specifications and Features
The POCO X8 5G gets a 6.83-inch AMOLED panel with 1.5K resolution and a 120Hz refresh rate. It has a resolution of 1280 x 2772 pixels and a maximum brightness of 3,200 nits. The other attributes of the display include HDR10+, 12-bit color depth, and 3,840Hz PWM dimming. The Snapdragon 6s Gen 4 SoC powers the phone with up to 12GB of LPDDR4X RAM. In addition, it comes with up to 256GB of UFS 3.1 storage and runs Android 16 with HyperOS 3.
For photography, the phone has a 50-megapixel primary rear camera with OIS and EIS. It pairs the main camera with a 2-megapixel depth sensor. A 16-megapixel front camera handles selfies and video calls. In addition, the camera system supports up to 1080p video recording and offers several additional features. These include underwater shooting, dual-video recording, Glare Removal, Erase Pro, Image Expansion, and Image Enhancement.
The POCO X8 5G packs an 8,340mAh silicon-carbon battery with 13 percent silicon content. It supports 67W wired charging and 22.5W wired reverse charging. POCO claims the battery can retain at least 80 percent capacity after 1,600 charging cycles. The Indian model is expected to feature a larger 9,000mAh battery. For connectivity, the phone supports 5G, dual 4G VoLTE, Wi-Fi 5, and Bluetooth 5.1.
Other specifications include a fingerprint scanner within the display, an infrared scanner, and Xiaomi Offline Communication. This mobile comes with IP66, IP68, IP69, and IP69K certifications for dust and water resistance. These are certified for high-pressure and high-temperature water resistance. POCO X8 5G is 163.45 x 78.27 x 8.6mm in size, with a weight of 223 grams.
Price and Availability
POCO has priced the 6GB + 128GB version of the X8 5G at $269, around Rs 25,500. The 8GB + 256GB variant costs $299, roughly Rs 28,400. Meanwhile, the 12GB + 256GB model comes with a $349 price tag, or about Rs 33,100. The phone comes in Black, Orange, and White color options globally. The company has not announced global sale details yet. In India, the POCO X8 5G will launch on September 4 alongside the POCO X8 Power. Both smartphones will go on sale from September 11 at 12 noon exclusively through Flipkart. Customers can also buy the phones with 12-month No-Cost EMI options. The EMI starts at Rs 2,250 per month for the POCO X8 and at Rs 2,750 per month for the Power.
The size of the Go 6 is perfect, both for reading when you’re out and about and at home. Its 6-inch screen puts it on par with the entry level Kindle and the Kobo Clara BW for compactness, landing right in the Goldilocks Zone of portability and readability. It fits in my smallest bags while still having a large enough display to read comfortably. It can sit in the back pocket of most jeans and even some front pockets (barring those afflicted by Bad Designs for Women’s Clothing).
There is at least one limitation to consider when bringing it around, though. The Go 6 (Gen II) doesn’t have an IP rating for water or dust resistance, so I’d hesitate to take it to the beach, camping or even use it poolside without a protective case. Kobo has it beat there.
At roughly 160 grams, it is noticeably lighter than the other device that spends the most time in my hand, my Galaxy Z Flip 6. That makes it great for reading in bed or lying down on the couch. So does its adjustable front light, which you can dim and brighten to your likeness, and shift from cool to warm tones to prevent eye strain. Additionally, its 300PPI ePaper display is crisp and bright.
Cheyenne MacDonald for Engadget
I did notice a fair amount of ghosting when switching between different apps and device menus, but Boox offers a number of refresh and color modes to cut down on this sort of thing if it bothers you. There’s also the option to set how frequently the screen refreshes. I found ghosting was much less of an issue while I was actually reading and I ultimately set my Full Refresh Frequency to every 30 taps. Never is an option as well, and you can set different settings for each app to optimize them for the display. A quick-access gesture launches BOOX EinkWise, where you can fine-tune any given app’s refresh and color modes, layout, contrast and anti-flicker levels.
The 1,500mAh battery will get you several days of use if you’re reading for a few hours a day and using apps moderately. You can get lots more out of the battery by turning off Wi-Fi and Bluetooth when you’re not using them, freezing apps to prevent them from running in the background and keeping the front light low or off when lighting conditions allow. It’s currently been eight days since I last charged it and I still have 24 percent left. That’s still far less than you’ll get with the comparable Kindle and Kobo devices, which have weeks-long battery life, but that’s the tradeoff of having Android.
Putting books on the Go 6 (Gen II) is painless. You can transfer files wirelessly to the device using its BooxDrop file sharing tool, by syncing with several cloud-based storage platforms it supports, like Dropbox and Google Drive, or using the USB-C cable. The built-in Boox store is extremely limited, containing only a small selection of public domain works, so if you want to buy or rent books on-device, you’re going to need to turn to another app.
I’ve really enjoyed the freedom this ereader allows in using my go-to apps to source and read books, as my reading habits tend to be all over the place. I can buy and download a book from the Bookshop.org app, which is only available on iOS and Android, and then go to The StoryGraph app to jot down a review immediately upon finishing it without having to switch over to my phone. Moon+ Reader works alright too, but you’ll want to play with your books’ settings to make them more readable for E Ink, otherwise you’re likely to experience a ton of ghosting.
With artificial intelligence being the bête noir of the moment, there are some projects using it which maybe don’t bring much to the table. So it’s nice to see one that uses it in a creative way, and delivers something new. [arnegiacomo]’s e-paper screen is a great example, as it draws a picture in real time of whatever birds are outside.
Behind the quite large screen sits a Raspberry Pi 5, and on that is BirdNet-Go, an AI-powered birdsong classifier. A USB microphone catches the birdsong, and Birdnet comes up with the species. The birds on the display are then those species as pictures from 19th century bird spotters guides, assembled into a collage. You can even see what the current set of birds it hears are, live, and they are a representative cross section of the European birds you’d find in Norway where it’s located.
We like this project, both for the bird book vibe it gives, and the creative use of machine classification. Surprisingly this isn’t the first project in this field we have seen over the years.
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