In slightly unexpected news this week, Barco, a Belgian company that specialises in AV projection has just snapped up the Focal / Naim brands for €135 million.
While Focal / Naim is a premium, even luxury brand, I think this deal is different from the spate of acquisitions seen over the last few years, where Bose bought the McIntosh Group, and Harman ate up Sound United.
Those were MA deals where brands were looking to move into more luxury areas of the market, as well as grab a foothold in the growing in-car audio market, too. I suspect that this deal from Barco is more about the custom install space.
Similar to the in-car audio market, this is an area that seems to be growing and growing, though not getting much attention in the mainstream market. But give Naim’s expertise with two-channel amplification, while Focal has pushed towards more immersive sound systems; Barco’s own knowledge in the projection market would make an obvious lining up of all these skills.
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Your own private cinema
I can’t really speak to what’s driven interest in the custom install market but there’s increasingly more attention being paid to that area by brands.
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Sonos has been a player in that space for years, releasing its Amp Multi as a solution to driving multiple speakers in a custom home audio set-up. Q Acoustics has been making forays into that area with its in-wall systems and speakers, as has Linn Audio and L Acoustics, which if you ever go to a music festival in 2026, you’re likely to hear sound through one of their speakers.
And let’s not forget the likes of Loewe, Sharp, JBL, DALI, all of whom were present at ISE 2026 with their professional AV solutions. I went to an event by a prominent British audio brand (which I’m not allowed to talk about yet) that had a prominent emphasis on custom-install and private cinema-based solutions. There’s even a whole awards show (CEDIA) that’s dedicated to this area of the market.
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So it is growing, and given these systems can start in the range of a few hundred Pounds for a speaker, to tens of thousands for kitting out a private cinema, this is an area where there’s a lot of money to be made.
The pandemic has likely contributed to this growth, with people hunkering down in their homes rather than venturing out to the cinema, with video delivery systems such as Kaleidescape that can funnel films to your home network that are arguably even better in terms of quality than 4K Blu-ray.
So Barco’s purchase of Focal / Naim would seem, from what I can see, to be firmly entering an area where they can now offer the visual solution (with its projectors) and the audio solution (with in-wall/ceiling speakers), it seems like a match made on the silver screen. It’s a surprise that no one else made a bid for these brands.
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What does it mean for Focal / Naim?
There’s no smoke without fire, and while we’ve seen this deal from Barco’s POV, it’s possible that Focal / Naim were inviting bidders on their part.
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But I don’t think Focal / Naim will stop being Focal / Naim. They’re a luxury brand(s) that have done impressive work in the last few years with their streaming products, wireless speakers and large-sized active speakers – so I don’t see much changing on that front.
Focal already covers indoor and outdoor audio solutions – it even has audio solutions for boats, another area I could see Barco pushing into – and Focal has been developing in-car solutions for the likes BWM, Toyota, Tesla, Mercedes, Volkswagen, Ford and others.
Image Credit (Trusted Reviews)
I see the Barco deal enhancing what Focal / Naim already does and not mucking about with its DNA. And I imagine they’ll be a renewed focus on the professional side but considering it exists, and has existed, along with the commercial side for decades, I don’t imagine any disruption to headphones, wireless speakers etc
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I could be wrong, but Barco seems to have bought Focal / Naim for what they represent now, rather than purchasing them as a means to turn them into something other than what they are. I sense a “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” attitude to this acquisition, which could be a good thing for the future of Focal / Naim.
Firefly aired for just one season in 2002 before Fox canceled it. In the 24 years since, the sci-fi show has skyrocketed in popularity and now fans are finally getting more. Nathan Fillion has announced that an animated Firefly series is currently in advanced development, Deadline first reported.
Fillion shared the news at AwesomeCon during a live taping of his podcast Once We Were Spacemen with his Firefly co-stars Gina Torres, Morena Baccarin, Summer Glau, Sean Maher, Jewel Staite and Alan Tudyk. Tudyk co-hosts the podcast, in which the duo look back at their careers and interview past coworkers. Each of the actors present at AwesomeCon are expected to voice the animated versions of their characters.
This isn’t one of those maybe one day it will happen announcements, with many steps already being taken. The animated reboot is under the direction of showrunners Tara Butters (Agent Carter, Reaper) and Marc Guggenheim (DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, Arrow) — original creator Joss Whedon is not involved, but has given his blessing. It has early concept art from ShadowMachine, an Oscar- and Emmy-winning animation studio. Fillion is producing the show through Collision33, his production company, and with 20th Television Animation. There’s even already a script in place.
According to Fillion, the one thing left is a home for the series. He and his co-stars took to Once We Were Spacemen‘s Instagram to provide more details and implore FireFly fans to show demand for the reboot.
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Firefly took place in 2517, centuries after a universal civil war. It followed a group of people living aboard a transport ship, Serenity, flying through the galaxy. In 2005, the show got a sequel in the form of a movie, Serenity.
If you have ever read science fiction, you’ve probably seen “alternate history” stories. You know, where Europeans didn’t discover the New World until the 19th century, or the ancient Egyptians stumbled upon electricity. Maybe those things happened in an alternate universe. [BillPG] has an alternate history tale for us that imagines IPv6 was shot down and a protocol called IPv4x became prominent instead.
The key idea is that in 1993, the IP-Next-Generation working group could have decided that any solution that would break the existing network wouldn’t work. There is precedent. Stereo records play on mono players and vice versa. Color TV signals play on black and white sets just as well as black and white signals play on color TVs. It would have made perfect sense.
How could this be? The idea was to make everyone who “owns” an IPv4 address the stewards of a 96-bit sub-address block. IPv4x-aware equipment extracts the entire 128-bit address. IPv4-only equipment routes the packet to the controlling IPv4 address. Wasteful? Sure. Most people don’t need 79 octillion addresses. But if everyone has that many, then why not?
The fictional timeline has DNS and DHCP, along with dial-up stacks, changing to accommodate the new addresses. Again, you had to assume some parts of the network were still IPv4-only. DNS would return both addresses, and it was up to you to pick the IPv4x address if you understood it.
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Your ISP would probably not offer you the entire extra space. A regional router could handle all traffic for your neighborhood and then direct it to your specific 128-bit address or your pool of addresses, if you have multiple devices. No need for NAT to hide your devices, nor strange router configurations to punch traffic through.
Of course, back in the real world, we have two incompatible systems: IPv4 and IPv6. IPv6 adoption has been slow and painful. We wondered why [BillPG] wrote about this future that never was. Turns out, he’s proposed a gateway that IPv6 hosts can provide to allow access from IPv4-only networks. Pretty sneaky, but we can admire it. If reading all this makes you wonder what happened to IPv5, we wondered that, too.
Two Netflix films, “Frankenstein” and “KPop Demon Hunters,” won multiple Academy Awards tonight.
Director Guillermo del Toro’s reimagining of “Frankenstein” won for Best Production Design, Best Costume Design, and Best Makeup and Hairstyling, while Netflix’s most-watched movie ever “KPop Demon Hunters” won for Best Animated Feature and Best Original Song.
In recent years, films produced and distributed by streaming companies have become a steady presence at the Oscars, with “Roma,” “The Power of the Dog,” and “All Quiet on the Western Front” winning major awards. However, the biggest prize seems to remain out of reach for Netflix — Apple’s “CODA,” released near the height of the pandemic, remains the only streaming film to win Best Picture.
Host Conan O’Brien even noted the presence of Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos at the beginning of the ceremony, joking, “This is exciting: It’s his first time in a theater!”
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“Frankenstein” was nominated for nine Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Supporting Actor. Netflix’s “Train Dreams” and Apple’s “F1” (which won for Best Sound) were also nominated Best Picture, but that award went to “One Battle After Another.”
The demonstration marks the first public, reproducible breach of the Xbox One’s hardware-level defenses, a milestone in console hacking that recalls the famous Reset Glitch Hack that compromised the Xbox 360 years earlier. But Gaasedelen’s technique goes deeper, operating below the software stack, against the boot ROM on the Xbox… Read Entire Article Source link
The HEMI nameplate has been practically synonymous with raw Chrysler horsepower since the 1960s, though the engine configuration itself dates back much farther. Named for its hemispherical combustion chamber, these engines feature inherently unique geometries: Valvetrains, pistons, and other components are all different to other layouts by design — combustion chambers are optimized for different purposes based on what’s expected of the engine.
In the HEMI’s case, a hemispherical combustion chamber generates higher chamber pressures versus a a more typical pentroof chamber, meaning it burns all the fuel faster and hotter, pushing the piston down sooner. This gives more mechanical leverage on the crankshaft, thus producing more power for a given amount of fuel, at least in principle.
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It’s this unique configuration which leads to some interesting design choices with the HEMI’s cylinder head. Unlike a typical pentroof-shaped design, a HEMI uses a dome-shaped chamber with a rounded piston head, functionally increasing the surface area that the explosion pushes on and improving the engine’s volumetric efficiency. However, this increased surface area leads to a number of downsides, the notable ones here being heat and airflow. The more surface area there is, the faster heat dissipates. The airflow tends to get squashed in the sides of a traditional HEMI, which leads to poor efficiency. Moreover, the valves are huge; you simply cannot put a spark plug directly in the middle.
To solve this problem, modern HEMI designs incorporate two spark plugs on opposite ends of the combustion chamber. This ensures a more complete, even, and efficient burn across the entire chamber, as opposed to one centralized explosion which isn’t possible with the head design or airflow pattern. Let’s dive in and discuss how this works.
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Airflow and spark in modern HEMI engines
Right off the bat, why do modern HEMI engines have two spark plugs at all when you only need one, aside from the valvetrain? Simple: Modern HEMI engines aren’t actually hemi engines in the traditional sense, and that’s a good thing. As stated before, a true hemi head, while excellent for hotter loads (think high-performance applications), isn’t ideal for passing modern EPA standards.
All those unburnt hydrocarbon emissions sitting so far away from the explosion, tucked away along the sides of the combustion chamber, eventually go out the exhaust and create too much pollutants. The solution Chrysler implemented was to modify the hemispherical chamber design into what’s best described as an oblong spheroid.
If you look at a HEMI piston head, you’ll notice grooves cut into the top. These are called quench pads, designed to swirl airflow in a certain predictable pattern. This allows the combustion process to occur more efficiently and cleanly, flowing like a river throughout the cylinder.
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Basically, you want the airflow to reach every part of the combustion chamber for the most efficient burn. It’s like a miniature wind tunnel — if you have a pocket that’s out of the way, it won’t get enough air, whereas other areas get too much airflow. The modern HEMI’s head is designed in such a way to minimize these areas, creating its own unique airflow pattern within the combustion chamber. In order to provide a complete and efficient burn, Chrysler implemented a dual spark plug orientation, with 16 spark plugs across eight cylinders.
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The valvetrain simply won’t allow it
One of the benefits of a hemi head is being able to fit larger valves; in the case of modern Gen III HEMIs, these valves are so large that there’s no physical space between them to fit a single spark plug. This means using two spark plugs on either side of the valves, which then necessitates different airflow for a complete burn with two spark plugs, and so on. In other words, this all revolves around the head design and the combustion event’s inconsistency within the domed shape.
Is the second spark plug even necessary, though? In the old days, hemispherical chambered engines have implemented various fixes for the inconsistent combustion event dilemma. Because the more domed you make the chamber, the more disrupted and awkward the combustion process becomes, engineers have attempted fitting different shaped pistons, specialized slots, different chamber and head coatings, and more. Conversely, a modern HEMI’s design differs from the original template in substantial ways, thanks to its more advanced piston configuration. Its coil-on-plug ignition system, coupled with the dual spark plug configuration, leads to a more consistent, reliable, and even burn.
Against the classic (single-plug) HEMI configuration, modern designs offer a far cleaner solution while still making good power. Granted, it might not have the same character as older HEMI designs, but let’s be real: you simply cannot produce such an inefficiently-burning design today and get away with it; the engine would simply produce too many hydrocarbon emissions. In that sense, yes, it’s absolutely worth the trade-off of buying the extra eight spark plugs when you go to change them on your 5.7-liter HEMI.
Instagram verification has become an important feature for creators, influencers, and businesses looking to build trust online. The well-known blue badge confirms that an account truly belongs to the person or brand it represents. Today, Instagram provides two main ways to obtain verification: through a Meta Verified subscription or by qualifying as a notable public figure. Each method comes with its own requirements, approval process, and costs depending on the region.
What Does the Instagram Verified Badge Mean?
A verified profile with a blue badge on Instagram indicates that the profile is genuine and associated with the actual person or brand it claims to represent. The blue badge helps people distinguish between genuine and fake accounts. One should be aware that a verified badge on an Instagram account does not reflect the account’s popularity. There are two ways to get verified on Instagram in 2026. One way is by subscribing to the Meta Verified program, which is paid. The second way is to apply as a public figure or brand that meets Instagram’s requirements for the verified program.
1. Get Verified with Meta Verified
The easiest way to get the Instagram blue checkmark is by subscribing to the Meta Verified program. Meta Verified is a paid monthly subscription that allows users to get verified and earn the verified badge on their accounts. Here’s how to subscribe to the program.
Tap the menu icon (three horizontal bars) at the top right of your screen.
Select Meta Verified from the menu.
Add your government ID to verify your identity.
Turn on two-factor authentication for extra security.
Complete the payment for the subscription.
Submit your application. If your account is okay, Instagram verifies it within 48 hours.
Prices vary depending on your location and device. In India, it will cost you around ₹699 to ₹899 per month. In the United States, it costs $14.99/month when you use a web browser. iOS and Android users will be charged $19.99/month.
2. Apply for Instagram Verification
Users of Instagram can apply for the verified badge through the Instagram app itself. If your account meets Instagram’s eligibility criteria, you can request a verified badge by following these steps. However, Instagram does not consider paid or sponsored articles when reviewing media coverage.
Submit the application. The review process may take up to 30 days.
Tips to Increase Your Chances of Getting Verified
To increase your chances of being verified on Instagram, try to develop a strong online presence. Your goal is to be featured by popular media sources. This will allow Instagram to easily locate your public profile. Meanwhile, on your Instagram profile, try to keep it clean. Ensure your bio is clear, your profile picture is decent, and you’re posting regularly.
Recentreports about AI project failure rates have raised uncomfortable questions for organizations investing heavily in AI. Much of the discussion has focused on technical factors like model accuracy and data quality, but after watching dozens of AI initiatives launch, I’ve noticed that the biggest opportunities for improvement are often cultural, not technical.
Internal projects that struggle tend to share common issues. For example, engineering teams build models that product managers don’t know how to use. Data scientists build prototypes that operations teams struggle to maintain. And AI applications sit unused because the people they were built for weren’t involved in deciding what “useful” really meant.
In contrast, organizations that achieve meaningful value with AI have figured out how to create the right kind of collaboration across departments, and established shared accountability for outcomes. The technology matters, but the organizational readiness matters just as much.
Here are three practices I’ve observed that address the cultural and organizational barriers that can impede AI success.
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Expand AI literacy beyond engineering
When only engineers understand how an AI system works and what it’s capable of, collaboration breaks down. Product managers can’t evaluate trade-offs they don’t understand. Designers can’t create interfaces for capabilities they can’t articulate. Analysts can’t validate outputs they can’t interpret.
The solution isn’t making everyone a data scientist. It’s helping each role understand how AI applies to their specific work. Product managers need to grasp what kinds of generated content, predictions or recommendations are realistic given available data. Designers need to understand what the AI can actually do so they can design features users will find useful. Analysts need to know which AI outputs require human validation versus which can be trusted.
When teams share this working vocabulary, AI stops being something that happens in the engineering department and becomes a tool the entire organization can use effectively.
Establish clear rules for AI autonomy
The second challenge involves knowing where AI can act on its own versus where human approval is required. Many organizations default to extremes, either bottlenecking every AI decision through human review, or letting AI systems operate without guardrails.
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What’s needed is a clear framework that defines where and how AI can act autonomously. This means establishing rules upfront: Can AI approve routine configuration changes? Can it recommend schema updates but not implement them? Can it deploy code to staging environments but not production?
These rules should include three elements: auditability (can you trace how the AI reached its decision?), reproducibility (can you recreate the decision path?), and observability (can teams monitor AI behavior as it happens?). Without this framework, you either slow down to the point where AI provides no advantage, or you create systems making decisions nobody can explain or control.
Create cross-functional playbooks
The third step is codifying how different teams actually work with AI systems. When every department develops its own approach, you get inconsistent results and redundant effort.
Cross-functional playbooks work best when teams develop them together rather than having them imposed from above. These playbooks answer concrete questions like: How do we test AI recommendations before putting them into production? What’s our fallback procedure when an automated deployment fails – does it hand off to human operators or try a different approach first? Who needs to be involved when we override an AI decision? How do we incorporate feedback to improve the system?
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The goal isn’t to add bureaucracy. It’s ensuring everyone understands how AI fits into their existing work, and what to do when results don’t match expectations.
Moving forward
Technical excellence in AI remains important, but enterprises that over-index on model performance while ignoring organizational factors are setting themselves up for avoidable challenges. The successful AI deployments I’ve seen treat cultural transformation and workflows just as seriously as technical implementation.
The question isn’t whether your AI technology is sophisticated enough. It’s whether your organization is ready to work with it.
Adi Polak is director for advocacy and developer experience engineering at Confluent.
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The agreement coincides with the second UK-Ireland Summit taking place in Cork.
UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), which is the UK’s national funding agency for research and innovation and Research Ireland, which is Ireland’s national competitive research and innovation development agency, have announced a memorandum of understanding (MoU).
The MoU is designed to support the current partnership and will coincide with the second UK-Ireland Summit taking place in Cork. The initiative will enable further collaboration on research areas that are critical to technological innovation and economic growth.
It will also support researchers in a number of key areas, such as telecommunications, advanced materials, quantum technologies and a new creative industries programme which will be launched later this year.
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Furthermore, via the MoU, there will be continued collaboration between the existing lead agency agreement between the UKRI Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and Research Ireland.
Commenting on the announcement, Research Ireland’s CEO, Dr Diarmuid O’Brien, said, “Research Ireland is delighted to agree this MoU with UKRI, which paves the way for both an extension and expansion of our partnership arrangements. The MoU is aligned with our strategy, launched earlier this month,which is structured around the three interconnected impact themes of talent, economy and society.
“We look forward to the research collaboration, knowledge exchange, capacity-building and other cooperative activities that will be facilitated by the agreement.”
UKRI international champion and AHRC executive chair professor Christopher Smith, added, “From the creative industries, design and advanced communications to vaccines and biomedical research, collaborations between the UK and Ireland are addressing the major challenges and opportunities of our time.
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“This Memorandum of Understanding deepens the already strong ties between the UK and Ireland’s research and innovation sectors, enhancing our ability to work together to advance our knowledge and deliver growth for the benefit of everyone in society.”
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Burson Audio has been building serious headphone amplifiers since the early days of the Head-Fi revolution, long before personal audio became the center of gravity for the hi-fi industry. The Australian company earned its reputation the old-fashioned way: powerful Class A designs, fully discrete circuitry, and desktop components that deliver clean power, expansive soundstages, and connectivity options that make them easy to integrate into modern listening chains.
Now Burson Audio is expanding its lineup with the new Stellar Series, a range of compact Class A desktop components designed to bring more of the company’s flagship engineering to a slightly more approachable tier. The first model, the Conductor Stellar (Standard Edition), combines a high-resolution DAC, Class A headphone amplifier, and desktop preamp into a single chassis priced at $1,799.
Positioned between Burson’s entry-level Playmate 3 ($599 at Apos Audio) and the flagship Grand Tourer range, the Stellar line pulls key elements from the company’s top-tier Voyager Series; Class A muscle, discrete circuit architecture, and the unmistakable Burson house sound—while packaging it all into a more compact and accessible platform.
The timing also makes sense. We recently reviewed the Burson Audio Conductor GT4, and it remains one of the finest desktop DAC/headphone amplifier combinations currently available, delivering the kind of effortless power and wide open presentation that has long defined Burson’s approach to personal audio.
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Burson Conductor Stellar
Burson Conductor Stellar: Class A Headphone Amp, DAC and Preamp
At the center of the Burson Audio Conductor Stellar is the ESS9039PRO DAC, paired with Burson’s fully discrete output stage and Max Current power supply architecture. Burson rates the unit at 8 watts of pure Class A output, which is substantial for a desktop headphone amplifier and enough on paper to handle a wide range of headphones, from more sensitive in-ear monitors to far more demanding full-size designs.
The headphone amplifier section has a 0.5-ohm output impedance, which should help it maintain better control with a broad range of headphone loads, while the pre-out and DAC-out stages are rated at 1 ohm and 20 ohms respectively.
Burson is also using a transistor-based amplification stage built around four Onsemi MJE15032 transistors per channel. Those output devices are configured for high Class A bias, which is consistent with Burson’s long-running design approach in the headphone category.
The company also says the Conductor Stellar includes a dedicated low-noise amplification module for IEMs, aimed at reducing hiss with high-sensitivity earphones. Supporting that is the new Silent Power Module 2, built around the LT3045 voltage regulator, which Burson specifies at 0.8 µV RMS noise. In practical terms, the goal here is lower background noise and cleaner low-level detail, especially with sensitive headphones or lower listening volumes.
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From a connectivity standpoint, the Burson Audio Conductor Stellar is built as an all-in-one desktop control center. Digital inputs include USB-C, optical Toslink, and coaxial SPDIF, with USB handled by an XMOS platform supporting up to DSD512 and PCM up to 32-bit/768kHz. Coaxial and optical inputs support up to 24-bit/192kHz. Wireless playback is handled by Bluetooth 5.0 using the Qualcomm CSR8675 chipset, with support for LDAC, aptX HD, and AAC. It is also listed as Roon Tested.
On the output side, users get balanced XLR and single-ended RCA preamp outputs, balanced XLR and single-ended RCA line outputs, plus headphone connections in 4-pin XLR, 6.35mm, and 3.5mm formats.
Burson’s published measurements point to a design focused on low noise and wide bandwidth. Physically, the unit measures 210 x 200 x 75 mm or 8.3 x 7.9 x 2.9 inches, and weighs about 5 kg or 11 pounds, which makes it compact by desktop Class A standards, though not exactly featherweight. Class A and “small desktop box” usually have a tense relationship. Physics always sends the bill.
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The Three Versions Explained
The Standard version is the entry point into the Stellar range. It ships with NE5532 IC op-amps, the SP01 power module, and a 24V/5A power supply, and it does not include a remote control. This is the version aimed at buyers who may want to experiment later with Burson’s upgrade path rather than paying for everything upfront.
The Deluxe version moves things up with V7 Vivid Pro op-amps, the SP02 power module, Burson’s Super Charger 5A external power supply, and an included remote control. Based on Burson’s own positioning, this is the model intended for buyers who want a more fully optimized setup straight out of the box without stepping all the way to the top trim.
The Max version sits at the top of the range and includes the V7 Vivid Pro op-amps, SP02, and remote as well, but replaces the Super Charger with Burson’s Fusion Core power solution. That makes it the most fully loaded version in the Stellar lineup and the one aimed at users who want the highest-spec factory configuration without adding upgrades later.
All three versions share the same core platform, inputs, outputs, chassis dimensions, and overall functionality. The main differences come down to the op-amp configuration, power supply implementation, and whether a remote is included.
The Bottom Line
At $1,800 for the Standard version, the Burson Audio Conductor Stellar lands in a price tier where most competitors force you to start making trade-offs. Some offer excellent amplification but limited connectivity. Others focus on DAC performance but lack the power to properly drive demanding headphones. Burson is trying to avoid those compromises by delivering a true Class A desktop amplifier with 8 watts of output, a flagship-grade ESS9039PRO DAC, balanced and single-ended connectivity, Bluetooth with LDAC, and a dedicated low-noise IEM stage in one chassis.
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The other differentiator is upgradability. Burson’s modular op-amp design and multiple versions mean users can start with the Standard configuration and evolve the system over time rather than replacing the entire unit. That approach remains relatively rare in this category.
Who is it for? Headphone listeners building a serious desktop system who want enough power to drive virtually any headphone, flexible digital connectivity, and a path for future upgrades without jumping immediately into the $3,000–$5,000 range.
What’s missing? Network streaming and a built-in display interface beyond the basics, both of which are appearing more often in this category.
Still, when you look at the landscape, it becomes clear where the Stellar fits. Getting this level of Class A power, connectivity, and upgrade flexibility from competitors such as Schiit Audio, Feliks Audio, Ferrum Audio, or Chord Electronics typically requires multiple components or a significantly larger investment. Burson’s pitch is simple: put most of it in one box, keep it upgradeable, and deliver the kind of clean Class A power the company has been known for since the early days of Head-Fi.
