The technology is being piloted in 40 secondary schools and is expected to impact 20,000 students from September.

Psychotherapist, broadcaster and former professional footballer Richie Sadlier has launched Let’s Talk SPHE (social personal and health education), which is reportedly Ireland’s first digital solution aligned with the updated SPHE curriculum. 

By 2027, SPHE will be a mandatory subject for fifth and sixth year students. Figures from the Department of Education suggest that only 18pc of Ireland’s more than 700 secondary schools previously timetabled SPHE in fifth year. 

Designed to support schools using the reformed course, Let’s Talk SPHE is being piloted in more than 40 schools and is expected to reach roughly 20,000 students from September. Established by Sadlier, as well as guidance counsellor and SPHE teacher Pam O’Leary, the subscription-based teaching solution provides structured SPHE lessons, multimedia learning and teacher guidance.

Commenting on the launch, Sadlier said: “When you introduce a requirement for 60 hours of structured delivery in every secondary school, that’s a significant shift for the system. It’s not a short-term initiative. By 2027, every post-primary school will be delivering a senior cycle SPHE. The question now is how prepared schools are to deliver it.

“For a long time, most education technology focused on examinable academic subjects. What this reform does is recognise that wellbeing and relationships education are just as important. That creates a responsibility to ensure schools have the right supports in place.”

The launch comes at a time when the media, via shows such as Adolescence and Louis Theroux’s Inside the Manosphere, have put an increased focus on the importance of having complex conversations with young people. 

Sadlier has spent more than 10 years working with young people in workshops covering issues such as relationships, masculinity, consent and mental health. He also previously led an RTÉ documentary exploring Ireland’s sex education landscape. 

In late February, Educate.ie, an Irish-owned publishing company, announced the creation of a new digital learning platform for the classroom called EdPal. The aim is to reduce the administrative burden for teachers, improve clarity for parents and give students a more consistent learning experience. 

Developed specifically for post-primary and secondary school students, users will have access to interactive e-books, educational resources and tools to support lesson delivery, engagement and assessment.

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When Amazon first announced the Echo smart speaker and Alexa, it felt as though the future that Star Trek had promised us was finally upon us. Here was a computer we could interact with naturally, faster and more convenient than apps or traditional interfaces.

 Unsurprisingly, Amazon sold a bucket load of Echo devices, and soon expanded the range with devices to fit in everywhere. Only, it turned out that perhaps the future wasn’t really here.

Alexa speak

As noted in my column from a few weeks ago, I largely use physical controls over voice commands alongside automated routines: it’s faster to turn a light on with a button, or to have my alarm turn off and blinds open when the office door unlocks, than it is to use a voice command for either job.

A lot of that was down to how Alexa (and other voice assistants) expected commands to be phrased. While Alexa is still the best of the bunch, its required terminology gave birth to the phrase, “Alexa speak”. 

It’s that slightly unnatural way that you must phrase a command, such as, “Alexa, set the living room radiator temperature to 20°C.” That phrase doesn’t seem so bad, but it’s fraught with potential problems.

Get the order slightly wrong, and Alexa might not work; name the device you want to control incorrectly, and the command doesn’t work; or just pause while you try and think of the right words to use, and the command doesn’t work. 

Outside of voice control, Alexa is good for basic requests or for answering simple questions, but it often can’t understand more complicated requests, can’t take actions on your behalf, and you still must phrase things as though you’re talking to a computer. 

Natural conversations and context

Alexa+ promises to change that and, from what I’ve seen of it, delivers the end of Alexa speak, switching to natural language, so you can ask a question or issue a command as though you were talking to a real person. And Alexa+ remembers context and allows itself to be corrected.

At the Alexa+ UK launch event, I saw a demo where Alexa+ gave the latest Arsenal result; it knew the presenter was a fan, so it recounted the score with a positive tone.

Next, the presenter asked Alexa+ to tell someone else the Chelsea score. Alexa began retelling the loss with excitement, since the presenter hadn’t mentioned that the other person was a Chelsea fan.

A quick interruption to say that the other person was a Chelsea fan had Alexa+ start again, but with a neutral voice. There was no need to rephrase the entire question with something like, “Alexa, my friend is a Chelsea fan, tell him the latest score” or something similar.

Alexa+ understood that the change applied to the current request and adjusted its response accordingly. In addition, Alexa+ would then remember who’s a Chelsea fan for future requests.

Alexa+ is also agentic, which means it can take actions on your behalf. In the demo, Alexa+ could book a table at a restaurant using OpenTable, based on a few simple bits of information, all spoken naturally, and where the order of information was unimportant (the name of the restaurant, how many people the table was for, the date and when there was at least two hours free in the diary).

That kind of interaction seems better, easier and faster than having to search for the restaurant and do the job manually.

Not perfect, but certainly better

As part of Alexa+ launching in the UK, Amazon has fine-tuned the system to understand a wide range of British accents and to understand the way we speak. This information is also used in how Alexa+ responds. Is it perfect? No.

Particularly with responses about football, Alexa+ seemed to like using the word ‘mate’ a lot, which feels a bit false and over-friendly. I’m not sure I want Alexa+ to be my friend; I just want it to do what I want, when I want, with clear replies. I’ll have to see, once I have access to Alexa+ soon, if I can tone down its replies.

Then, there was a demonstration where Alexa+ was asked when the next match was for a football club. The result was right, but when asked to add the game to the diary, Alexa+ added it in for one hour from the start time.

Surely, if Alexa+ is so smart and understands context, it should know that a football match is 90 minutes, plus 15-minutes of halftime, plus extra time. That’s a minimum of one hour and 45 minutes, but two hours would be a safer bet.

I was told that because there was lots of background noise, Alexa+ might be struggling to work out what was said. It did get the match details right, and it did understand to add a calendar appointment, so we’ll have to see if Alexa+ can be smarter than this in real life.

Likewise, context can be hard to understand. When asked, on a Fire TV device, who won the Best Actress Oscar, Alexa+ correctly replied that it was Jessie Buckley for Hamnet. Next, what asked, “Can we watch it?”, I thought that would mean that Alexa+ would find a clip of the Oscar ceremony and show that. Instead, Alexa+ started to stream Hamnet from Prime Video (currently £15.99 to rent or £19.99 to buy).

Either response is correct, but does Alexa+ have a bias towards trying to sell you things, or is it just picking one option because that’s what it thinks is the right one? It’s hard to tell, as even humans can struggle with context and ambiguity.

Too many clichés?

Alexa+ also seemed to like its clichés and longer responses. When asked to recommend some coffee machines (all on Amazon, of course), it described one’s price as something that “won’t break the bank”. 

Training any AI means pulling data in from lots of resources, but the issue is that lots of people use clichés, and there’s a horrible chance that any system will reinforce that behaviour.

When I used to work on a print title, our sub editor banned all clichés and had a list of banned phrases, opting for brevity, to deliver clarity. One example was ‘value for money’, as what else would something be value for? Value for cheese? Value for magic beans? 

Likewise, there’s no ‘make use of’. It’s just use. You don’t say, make drive of my car, do you?

Nor should you overexplain and add filler words. It’s quite common to see reviews that say something like, “the best phone on the market”. What market? Portobello Road? Are you Del Boy? Are there better phones not on the market, but in shops? It’s word slop.

Commonly, people will use adjectives over a strong verb. As Stephen King explained in On Writing, you shouldn’t use “angrily closed the door” and should write “slammed the door”. 

Good writing and good speech are noticeable. Lots of people may use too many words when writing or speaking, or fall back on clichés, but I want Alexa+ to be better, clearer, and more direct.

Let’s see whether that’s the case, and if it’s not, whether Alex+ can be fine-tuned not to spout clichés and if it can be made less Verbose. The original Alexa system had a Brief Mode, although this would replace a voice response with a short chime for simple request, such as asking Alexa to turn a light on. That’s too far, but a brief mode that makes Alexa+ less chatty and more to the point would be good.

Improvements will come

While there are things that I don’t like, my overall impression from seeing Alexa+ in live demonstrations is that the voice assistant is a big improvement over the old. Simply being able to talk naturally and have Alexa+ understand is a big improvement, while the ability to tweak a response partway through makes it all feel a lot more natural. As I get to try it out over the coming weeks, I’ll see if this is the future of voice communication. I do hope so.

Go big or go home. The Instax Wide’s larger image has always made it the Instax of choice for photographers. Ingenious enthusiasts even figured out how to mod older models (the Wide 300) with custom lenses for even better quality images. The Instax Wide 400 is similar in most ways to the 300 that preceded it. It uses the same lens and the same full auto exposure system. If you want full exposure control, this is not the Instax for you. That said, I love this format and hence this camera.

It’s a rather chunky thing. The film is pretty good sized, so the camera is as well, but for me that just makes it easier to hold than some of the others here. There’s a nice big grip, which holds the 4 AA batteries, enough to shoot 100 images according to Fujifilm’s specs. Design-wise, the single color look is reminiscent of the SQ1 (see above), spare and simple. The 95mm f/14 lens is made of two elements (both plastic) and gives you the equivalent of a 35mm focal length on a full frame camera. Fujifilm did add a new close focus option to go with the 10 foot to infinity focus. I wish Fuji had reversed the order, as I sometimes forgot to turn the lens of the second click and ended up with out-of-focus images. Once you get used to it, though, it’s fine.

There’s not a lot to this camera, and that’s part of its appeal. The lens produces decent images, and large format makes it more fun to share with friends. I do wish there were a way to manually control … something, anything, as that would open up some more possibilities, but if you like this format this is the best camera to get.

Other Instax Wide Cameras:

Lomography Lomo’Instant Wide for $200: If you want to spend a bit more, Lomography’s Instant Wide shoots Instax Wide film and has some extra lenses you can add on. It shoots in both full auto and offers a programmatic shutter mode. I haven’t tested this one yet, so I can’t speak to the image quality, but the built-in 90mm Lens is roughly the same field of view.

Fujifilm Wide Evo for $409: At first glance the Wide Evo looks like a clone of our top pick, the Mini Evo, but for the wider format Instax film. Would that it were so. There are some similarities. You get the filter effects, a couple of new lens filters, and the “intensity” ring, which allows you to dial in how strong the various effects are. The lens can switch between wide angle (16-mm full-frame equivalent) and standard (28-mm full-frame equivalent), and there’s dials for controlling all the effects. The shutter button is an annoying lever-style shutter, where you flip down, rather than a button you press. This head-scratching design decision is, um, not good. It’s awkward and mars the experience of shooting in irredeemable ways in my experience. Combine that with a nasty shutter lag (even by Instax standards) and the price tag, and this one is hard to recommend. If you want a printer, go for the Instax Wide. If you want a camera, either the Wide 400 or the Lomography Lomo’Instant Wide are better deals and better cameras.

When This Does Not Compute set out to restore a Sun SPARCstation IPX computer from 1991, he was expecting a straightforward salvage project. What he got instead was weeks of stubborn resistance from a machine that seemed determined to make his life difficult. The IPX was a respectable mid-range workstation in its day, packing a 40 megahertz processor into a compact white shell, and you rarely see them in working condition anymore. By the time it was all over, he was openly admitting he had come to dislike the thing, which tells you everything you need to know about how the restoration went.

Power issues arose first, as previous maintenance had previously repaired the supply unit. Once the electricity was restored, the onboard diagnostic system lit up and delivered its verdict. The solitary 8-kilobyte static memory chip at board position 207 had failed. That little bit obstructed any boot routine.

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Fresh replacement chips were installed with careful soldering. The system rebooted but returned the same problem. Extra memory modules were swapped in to rule out any other possibilities, but nothing changed. Donor parts arrived next, from an unexpected source. An complete mainboard came from an earlier BriteLite laptop project. That board still included modifications from its previous life, including an SBUS card originally intended for an LCD screen and a breakout board with colorful wires attached to the bottom pins. The inventor also transferred the clock chip. Its original battery had died years ago, resetting all network addresses to FFFF. A modern coin-cell holder accurately kept time.

ROM chips were relocated across boards to ensure compatibility. Even after those swaps, the video output produced just vertical stripes on all connected monitors. Another used SBUS video card was inserted into an expansion slot. Clear images finally showed on the screen. Storage arrived via a clever modern addition. A BlueSCSI adaptor linked an SD card with disk images. A custom 3D-printed bracket neatly nestled the entire system inside the original casing while maintaining the aesthetics. Boot efforts began with the virtual media.

Solaris 2.3 loaded but failed to start the graphical interface. Hours were spent working in single-user mode. Switching to Solaris 2.6 finally provided the whole desktop environment. One careful adjustment in the vi text editor changed the startup file to launch the CDE window manager. Once, a wrong command bricked the installation, but a backup image quickly recovered it. Memory improvements were installed to increase speed. The machine required specialized parity-checked RAM. Self-tests on the new sticks failed, therefore the increased capacity was left out. Even without it, the system performed basic functions, but drawing simple windows felt slower than expected.

Curiosity prompted another experiment, as the developer installed the Macintosh Application Environment, an official 1994 emulation that allowed Solaris to run vintage Mac software. Applications took over 30 minutes to load and operated like a much older system. At that time, This Does Not Compute decided that continued spending even more on hard to find parts made little sense. The original enclosure components, metal brackets, and some memory modules remained, but the restored machine now runs consistently on Solaris 2.6 and has a functional CDE desktop.
[Source]

Merino wool is a super fiber. The best merino wool clothing somehow manages to be comfortable in 95-degree heat, and merino base layers keep you warm well below freezing. Unlike synthetic fibers derived from petroleum, merino wool is natural and renewable.

Merino wool’s versatility means there’s a bewildering array of blends and options to choose from. Here are our favorite merino wool products that we’ve tested by wearing and washing (usually in cold water, and hung to dry, although we do machine dry them just to see what happens) over the course of months and even years in some cases. Once you’re done here, don’t forget to check out the rest of our apparel guides, like the Best Merino Wool T-Shirts, Best Base Layers, Best Puffer Jackets, Best Hoodies, and Best Hiking Boots.

Updated April 2026: We’ve changed out top pick boxers to Wool & Prince, added more hoodies, and the Ibex women’s Goat short sleeve. We also updated prices and links throughout.

Base Layers

To really see how remarkable merino wool is, start at the bottom, with the clothes next to your skin. Merino really shines as a base layer. It’s warmer for the weight, wicks moisture well, and unlike synthetic fabrics, merino stays stink-free for days of wear. Be sure to read our layering guide for more on how to put it all together and stay comfortable in any weather. We also have a separate guide to the best base layers if you want know all your options, but here are our top merino picks from that guide.

Ibex

Woolies Pro Tech Crew

The Ibex Woolies Pro Tech base layer crew is the best lightweight merino base layer we’ve tested. If you want a hard-wearing shirt, this it it. Woolies are Nuyarn (see above), which is 85 percent merino wool and 15 percent nylon—the merino wool is wrapped around a nylon core, which increases the warmth while being lighter (5 oz for the men’s large) and more durable. This is my top pick for all things technical. It’s what I bring hiking, backpacking, and it’s reviews editor Adrienne So’s pick for running, climbing and other high-aerobic activities when it’s cold. I also love the Woolies Pro Tech Bottoms ($115), which are what I bring backpacking in all but the warmest of weather. There’s also a quarter zip version of the shirt if you prefer.

Aside from comfort and warmth, a bit part of the reason we recommend Woolies is that they last. Ibex is what passes for a heritage company in this space; the company was founded in 1997 and has been cranking out merino garment for a long time. Adrienne’s parents bought her two sets of Ibex base layers in 2001 that she still wears today, in the year of our Lord 2025. Properly cared for, Woolies will keep you comfortable warm for years to come.

SmartWool

Merino Classic Long-Sleeve

When I want something a bit warmer than the lightweight Woolies above, I reach for Smartwool’s Classic long sleeve base layer. These may be the most popular merino shirts around, and for good reason: They’re very comfortable, tending to the looser side, feature heavy duty seams that don’t rub, and sit off the shoulder for more comfort when wearing a pack. At 87 percent merino wool (blended with nylon), these are also very durable while remaining lightweight (10.3 oz for a men’s large). This Smartwool shirt, along with the matching pants ($125), are great for chilly winter days.

Courtesy of Unbound Merino

Unbound Merino

Long-Sleeve Merino Crew

The picks above all have what my wife calls “that sporty look,” which the industry refers to as “technical.” This 100 percent merino shirt from Unbound is the opposite: it just looks like a long sleeve shirt. It’s incredibly soft and while it does pill a bit if you run it through the dryer (don’t), it’s proved itself plenty durable—I’ve been wearing it constantly for over a year now and it still looks like it did when I got it. It’s the long-sleeve, base layer twin to our favorite T-shirt (see below). It’s on the thin side for a base layer, which makes it perfect for those cool weather mornings in the shoulder seasons. It’s versatile too; it can be used as a base layer, but it also works as a T-shirt when it’s not too chilly. Fit runs true to size, and if the one you want is sold out, be patient; Unbound frequently updates its stock.

There are so many! Here’s a few more to consider, but really, go read the base layer guide.

Turtle Fur

Merino Pipe Dream Neck Gaiter

Don’t forget your neck. I live in this Turtle Fur gaiter during the winter and I also use the lighter, superfine version for hiking at elevation in the summer to keep the sun off my neck without resorting to sunscreen. It’s wonderfully soft, not overly tight, and never smells.

Merino Mid Layers

Fleece has its place, but I rarely wear it these days. I prefer merino for my mid layers. It’s better at helping your body regulate its temperature. The one place fleece still wins for me is backpacking. It’s almost always lighter for comparable warmth, at least in mid layers.

Like the Northern Lights or the McRib, the thickest Ibex wool hoodie appears irregularly and with some fanfare. The Mammoth Hoodie is indeed a big, furry beast of a garment—it’s basically the weight of the classic American Giant hoodie but made of 85 percent wool cut with 15 percent nylon for added warmth and stretch. Ibex says it’s the warmest hoodie they’ve ever made, and in my week of testing, I’ve used it in place of a jacket in mid-30s temps. It has an athletic cut with zippered pockets and thumb holes. I do wear a stocking hat with it in the cold because the scuba hood is meant to fit under a helmet which means it’s too small to provide enough warmth for my large shaved head on its own. —Martin Cizmar

Although the RTL-SDR is cheap, accessible, and capable enough for many projects, it does have some important limitations. In particular, its bandwidth is limited to about 3.2 MHz, and the price of SDRs tends to scale rapidly with bandwidth. [Anders Nielsen], however, is building a modular SDR with a target price of $50 USD, and has already reached a bandwidth of almost 20 MHz.

If this project looks familiar, it’s because we’ve covered an earlier iteration. At the time, [Anders] had built the PhaseLoom, which filters an incoming signal, mixes it down to baseband, and converts it to I/Q signals. The next stage is the PhaseLatch, a board housing a 20-MHz, 10-bit ADC, which samples the in-phase and quadrature signals and passes them on to a Cypress FX2LP microcontroller development board. [Anders] had previously connected the ADC to a 6502 microprocessor instead of the FX2LP, but this makes it a practical SDR. The FX2LP was a particularly good choice for this project because of its USB 2.0 interface, large buffers for streaming data, and parallel interface. It simply reads the data from the SDR and dumps it to the computer.

The FX2LP didn’t support the ADC’s clock rate, and overclocking the ADC led to issues, so [Anders] connected the ADC to an independent 20 MHz oscillator. The frequency spectrum of the SDR was oddly bell-shaped, which turned out to be due to the limited analogue bandwidth of the PhaseLoom (about 650 kHz) falling behind the digital bandwidth of 20 MHz. The PhaseLoom’s bandwidth seemed to be limited mostly by an amplifier, and decreasing its gain greatly improved matters. The SDR doesn’t yet have a 20 MHz bandwidth according to the normal definition, but it’s close enough to be practical, and further improvements will have to wait on an updated PhaseLoom board.

The Cypress development board used here is surprisingly capable – we’ve previously seen it used to build an SDR GPS decoder. Most of the custom-built SDRs we see don’t focus on technical performance, but do use such interesting components as a tube-based receiver or a custom silicon chip.

Google Translate has always been great at telling you what something means. But saying it out loud has always been on you. But now, Google is working on a new feature that could fix your fumbling ways. A new AI-powered “Practice” mode is in development to help users improve their pronunciation instead of just listening to translations.

And yes, it can call you out for butchering that Spanish phrase.

So how does it work?

While Google Translate offered the usual tap-to-listen speaker icon, the new feature goes beyond that and lets you listen to native speakers’ pronunciation samples, record your own attempt, and get feedback on how accurate you sound. It then analyzes your speech and scores your pronunciation, also offering suggestions on how to improve.

There’s even a phonetic breakdown of words offered to the users that makes it easier to understand how something should sound. This is easier than relying on complex linguistic notation.

In development, but shows promise

This isn’t just a one-time event. It’s a whole system that encourages practice with repetition, letting users retry phrases to refine their pronunciation. So users can practice till they get closer to native level accuracy. There are also hints that the feature could be a part of a broader language learning tool, which might include difficulty levels and conversational practice modes.

The feature was discovered in a recent build of the app, with an APK teardown showing that it’s still work in progress. Furthermore, we can expect it to roll out gradually, starting with select language pairs like English and Spanish before expanding to include more options. So you might have to wait a bit before it starts judging your accent.

In related news, Google just added two features to help improve your experience in group chats, and is even using AI to lessen the impact of flights on the climate.