The Google Pixel 10 is down to $549 in a limited-time deal, a $250 saving off its $799 list price, and it’s the unlocked Android phone I’d point most people toward at this price right now. The Tensor G5 chip, a new triple rear camera system with 5x telephoto, and Gemini AI built in from the ground up make this a considerably more complete package than the price drop alone suggests.
The Tensor G5 is the chip that makes the Pixel 10 worth talking about beyond the camera specs. Google designed it specifically around AI workloads, which means Gemini integration feels native rather than layered on top of a chip built for something else. Gemini Live lets you have a free-flowing conversation with the assistant, point the camera at something and ask about it in real time, or get things done across apps without switching contexts constantly. It’s the kind of feature that changes how you actually use a phone day to day, rather than one you try twice and forget about.
The camera system on the Pixel 10 gets a meaningful upgrade with the addition of a 5x telephoto lens, bringing the rear setup to a proper triple configuration. Up to 20x Super Res Zoom pulls in detail from distances that most phone cameras handle poorly, Night Sight keeps low-light shots clear without the grain that plagues competitors at this price, and Camera Coach offers real-time guidance to help you get the framing and timing right before you shoot rather than fixing it after.
The 6.3-inch Actua display runs at 120Hz with 3,000 nits of peak brightness, which is readable in direct sunlight in a way that most phone screens aren’t. Gorilla Glass Victus 2 and an IP68 rating cover durability and water resistance, and the unlocked configuration works across all major US carriers, including Google Fi, Verizon, T-Mobile, and AT&T.
The Pixel 10 at $799 was already a well-priced phone for what it offers. A $250 saving brings it to a point where the camera system, Gemini integration, and Tensor G5 performance add up to a package that competing Android phones at this price don’t match cleanly. The limited-time nature of the deal means this is worth acting on before it moves.
The Google Pixel 10 at $549 is the everyday Android phone deal worth prioritizing right now. The Tensor G5, triple camera with 5x telephoto, and Gemini AI built in from the start add up to a phone that feels genuinely current, and the $250 saving makes it one of the more clear-cut smartphone purchases at this price.
Updated with further information from Bitwarden.
The Bitwarden CLI was briefly compromised after attackers uploaded a malicious @bitwarden/cli package to npm containing a credential-stealing payload capable of spreading to other projects.
According to reports by Socket, JFrog, and OX Security, the malicious package was distributed as version 2026.4.0 and remained available between 5:57 PM and 7:30 PM ET on April 22, 2026, before being removed.
Bitwarden confirmed the incident, stating that the breach affected only its npm distribution channel for the CLI npm package and only those who downloaded the malicious version.
“The investigation found no evidence that end user vault data was accessed or at risk, or that production data or production systems were compromised. Once the issue was detected, compromised access was revoked, the malicious npm release was deprecated, and remediation steps were initiated immediately,” Bitwarden shared in a statement.
“The issue affected the npm distribution mechanism for the CLI during that limited window, not the integrity of the legitimate Bitwarden CLI codebase or stored vault data.”
Bitwarden says it revoked the compromised access and deprecated the affected CLI npm release.
According to Socket, threat actors appear to have used a compromised GitHub Action in Bitwarden’s CI/CD pipeline to inject malicious code into the CLI npm package.
According to JFrog, the package was modified so that the preinstall script and the CLI entry point use a custom loader named bw_setup.js, which checks for the Bun runtime and, if it does not exist, downloads it.
The loader then uses the Bun runtime to launch an obfuscated JavaScript file named bw1.js, which acts as credential-stealing malware.
Once executed, the malware collects a wide range of secrets from infected systems, including npm tokens, GitHub authentication tokens, SSH keys, and cloud credentials for AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud.
The malware encrypts the collected data using AES-256-GCM and exfiltrates it by creating public GitHub repositories under the victim’s account, where the encrypted data is stored.
OX Security says that these created repositories contain the string “Shai-Hulud: The Third Coming,” a reference to previous npm supply chain attacks that used a similar method and text string when exfiltrating stolen data.
The malware also features self-propagation capabilities, with OX Security reporting that it can use stolen npm credentials to identify packages the victim can modify and inject them with malicious code.
Socket also observed that the payload targets CI/CD environments and attempts to harvest secrets that can be reused to expand the attack.
The attack comes after Checkmarx disclosed a separate supply chain incident yesterday that impacts its KICS Docker images, GitHub Actions, and developer extensions.
While it is not known exactly how attackers gained access, Bitwarden told BleepingComputer the incident was linked to the Checkmarx supply chain attack, with a compromised Checkmarx-related development tool enabling abuse of the npm delivery path for the CLI during a limited time window.
Socket told BleepingComputer that there are overlapping indicators between the Checkmarx breach and this attack.
“The connection is at the malware and infrastructure level. In the Bitwarden case, the malicious payload uses the same audit.checkmarx[.]cx/v1/telemetry endpoint that appeared in the Checkmarx incident. It also uses the same __decodeScrambled obfuscation routine with the seed 0x3039, and shows the same general pattern of credential theft, GitHub-based exfiltration, and supply chain propagation behavior,” Socket told BleepingComputer.
“That overlap goes beyond a superficial resemblance. The Bitwarden payload contains the same kind of embedded gzip+base64 components we saw in the earlier malware, including tooling for credential collection and downstream abuse.”
Both campaigns have been linked to a threat actor known as TeamPCP, who previously targeted developer packages in the massive Trivy and LiteLLM supply chain attacks.
Developers who installed the affected version should treat their systems and credentials as compromised and rotate all exposed credentials, especially those used for CI/CD pipelines, cloud storage, and developer environments.
Update 4/23/26: Updated the story with information from Bitwarden confirming the incident was linked to the Checkmarx supply chain attack.
AI chained four zero-days into one exploit that bypassed both renderer and OS sandboxes. A wave of new exploits is coming.
At the Autonomous Validation Summit (May 12 & 14), see how autonomous, context-rich validation finds what’s exploitable, proves controls hold, and closes the remediation loop.
Hackers are actively exploiting a critical vulnerability in the Breeze Cache plugin for WordPress that allows uploading arbitrary files on the server without authentication.
The security issue is tracked as CVE-2026-3844 and has been leveraged in more than 170 exploitation attempts by the Wordfence security solution for the WordPress ecosystem.
The Breeze Cache WordPress caching plugin from Cloudways has more than 400,000 active installations and is designed to improve performance and loading speed by reducing page load frequency through caching, file optimization, and database cleanup.
The vulnerability received a critical severity score of 9.8 out of 10 and was discovered and reported by security researcher Hung Nguyen (bashu).
Researchers at WordPress security company Defiant, the developer of Wordfence, say that the problem stems from missing file-type validation in the ‘fetch_gravatar_from_remote’ function.
This allows an unauthenticated attacker to upload arbitrary files to the server, which can lead to remote code execution (RCE) and complete website takeover.
However, successful exploitation is possible only if the “Host Files Locally – Gravatars” add-on is turned on, which is not the default state, the researchers say.
CVE-2026-3844 affects all Breeze Cache versions up to and including 2.4.4. Cloudways fixed the flaw in version 2.4.5, released earlier this week.
According to statistics from WordPress.org, the plugin has had roughly 138,000 downloads since the release of the latest version. It is unclear how many websites are vulnerable, though, because there is no data on the number that have the Host Files Locally – Gravatars enabled.
Given the active exploitation status, website owners/admins who rely on Breeze Cache to boost performance are recommended to upgrade to the latest version of the plugin as soon as possible or temporarily disable it.
If upgrading is currently not possible, admins should at least disable the “Host Files Locally – Gravatars.”
AI chained four zero-days into one exploit that bypassed both renderer and OS sandboxes. A wave of new exploits is coming.
At the Autonomous Validation Summit (May 12 & 14), see how autonomous, context-rich validation finds what’s exploitable, proves controls hold, and closes the remediation loop.
Spending too much time on social media and doomscrolling is bad for your brain. We all know it instinctively, and research has proven it time and again. But the fear of missing out keeps us glued to our feeds anyway.
Noscroll, a new AI-powered service, aims to solve that by reading the internet for you and texting you only what matters. The pitch is simple: no feeds, no brainrot, just signal.
To get started, you text Noscroll’s AI agent at (415) 718-4828. It sends you a link to connect your X account, which gives it access to your likes, bookmarks, and the accounts you follow.
From there, you tell the bot in plain language the topics you want to follow and the ones you don’t care about. It then pulls information from across the web, including news sites, blogs, Reddit, Hacker News, Substack, research papers, and more. You can even point it to specific sources you want it to monitor.
The bot then texts you news digests at whatever frequency works for you. If you are a casual reader, you might want a weekly roundup, while a news aficionado might prefer multiple updates a day.
Each digest includes links and a short summary, but you can always tap through to read the full article. You can also reply to the bot to discuss what you’re reading and tweak your digest.
Noscroll was built by Nadav Hollander, former CTO at NFT marketplace OpenSea. He told TechCrunch that his relationship with X inspired the idea. “It’s phenomenally entertaining and really informative in ways you just don’t get from normal media,” he said, but added that the platform is “so toxic culturally.”
He wanted the news without the misery. So he built the tool himself, alongside a friend from the open source world. Noscroll costs $9.99 per month, but you can try it free for seven days. You can find it at Noscroll.com.
United States soldier Gannon Ken Van Dyke has been arrested and charged for placing bets on prediction marketplace Polymarket using classified information he had access to related to the capture of former Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro. The US Army Special Forces master sergeant, who was directly involved with the planning and execution of the operation, allegedly made $409,881 in profits.
According to the Department of Justice, Van Dyke created a Polymarket account around December 26, 2025 and made 13 bets related to Maduro from December 27 to January 2. He took the “Yes” position on several Polymarket wagers, including “US Forces in Venezuela… by January 31, 2026,” “Maduro out by… January 31, 2026, “Will the US invade Venezuela by January 31” and “Trump invokes War Powers against Venezuela by… January 31.” The US military captured Maduro and his wife on January 3.
Van Dyke allegedly bet a total of $33,034 and made over ten times that amount from his winnings. He withdrew his money from Polymarket on the day Maduro was captured and then sent it to a foreign crypto vault before depositing it to a new online brokerage account.
Shortly after Maduro’s capture, reports came out about how an anonymous gambler made almost half a million dollars before it was announced, raising concerns that someone had profited off insider military knowledge. The Justice Department says Van Dyke tried to cover his tracks. After reports about the potential insider bets were published, he allegedly asked Polymarket to delete his account, falsely claiming that he lost access to the email he used. He also changed the email address linked to his crypto account to another one not associated with his name.
Van Dyke has been charged with three counts of violation against the Commodity Exchange Act, with each one carrying a max sentence of 10 years in prison. He has also been charged with one count of wire fraud with a max penalty of 20 years in prison, as well as one count of unlawful monetary transaction with a max sentence of 10 years.
Prediction marketplaces have been struggling with insider trading problems, and this is far from the first incident. Recently, Kalshi took action against three political candidates, accusing them of insider trading related to their campaigns. Matt Klein of Minnesota and Ezekiel Enriquez of Texas face a fine of less than $1,000 and suspensions of up to five years. Meanwhile Mark Moran of Virginia faces disciplinary action, a five year suspension and a fine of more than $6,000.
In the year 2,000 (cue the Conan O’Brien music), America had so successfully defeated measles as a disease that we were awarded elimination status for the disease. Then Trump was elected to a second term, for reasons I still can’t fully explain, after which RFK Jr. somehow was confirmed as the Secretary of HHS. Almost simultaneously, a massive measles outbreak began in Texas, spreading to most of the other states in the union, with particularly bad outbreaks in Arizona, Utah, and North Carolina. The reason for the outbreak is clear in the CDC statistics: falling vaccination rates for the MMR vaccine allowed the disease to gain a foothold and spread. Meanwhile, Kennedy offered up confused and confusing messaging to the public as to what do about it, oscillating between muted calls for vaccinations, musing that everyone should just get measles for natural immunity, and declaring out loud that measles victims were at fault for not being healthy enough.
Because of his inept leadership on the matter, measles in 2026 is going to be even worse than 2025. We’re on pace to blow past last year’s numbers and, again, it’s because not enough people are getting vaccinated.
Kennedy is, of course, the living avatar of the anti-vaxxer movement. He didn’t create it, but he has worked very hard to propel it into popularity and, now, into government policy. He has everything to do with the current outbreak. But he recently faced Congress and said with a straight face that it has nothing to do with him. Instead, it was those dirty immigrants that are to blame.
But despite Kennedy being the most vocal source of vaccine misinformation, the secretary tried to blame the outbreaks entirely on immigrants who come to the U.S. from countries where measles is not eliminated — framing the issue as a global epidemic rather than a national public health crisis.
“It has nothing to do with me,” he told lawmakers. “If you’re worried about polio and tuberculosis, you should look at the immigration policies in this country. ’Cause the place where it’s occurring are the place[s] where the immigrants are going, because they’re not vaccinated.”
So, a couple of things to say here, both equally important. The scapegoating of immigrants over disease outbreaks is an American tradition going back centuries. It’s stupid, it’s wrong, and it’s plainly racist. I have no doubt that diseases can be spread through foreign visitors, as they can be by domestic travelers as well. But the desire to blame immigrants for whatever the outbreak du jour happens to be is so reliable and predictable that it’s silly. And if you don’t believe that this happens as a result of bigotry, well, you’re just plain wrong.
The other item on which to take note is the complete failure of leadership exhibited by Kennedy. In his remarks, Kennedy went into full CYA mode. He said he’s not anti-vaxx, but he absolutely is. He said the measles outbreak isn’t his responsibility, but he’s the fucking Secretary of Health and Human Services, and it absolutely is. He said dropping vaccination rates are due solely to how the American government responded to COVID-19, but that isn’t remotely the full story, given that vaccination rates experienced declines long before 2020, after which they fell sharply.
And the question that remains for Kennedy is a simple one: what are you doing about all of this? What do you even plan to do about all of this? The job doesn’t end by saying it’s immigrants at fault and then we move on. The disease still has to be combated and, right now, nobody is fighting the fight at the federal level. Instead, we’re talking about curtailing vaccine schedule guidance even further, or eliminating childhood vaccines altogether. Even if Kennedy sincerely wants to help in all of this, his messaging is so muddled and misguided that it isn’t getting through to the public.
Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.) expressed concern to Kennedy, a longtime anti-vaxxer, over the rising number of infectious disease cases such as measles and polio.
“Every patient, every child with measles should be treated with compassion. But I had seven cases just in the last couple of weeks in my county. The contagious spots have been grocery stores and colleges, you can’t stop it,” Dingell said of measles, the highly contagious disease that U.S. officials announced they eliminated in 2000.
“I’ve met with the family of one of them, and I said, ‘Why didn’t you get immunized?’” she continued. “And they said, ‘We’re listening to our government. Our government tells us not to.’”
Even if you wanted to argue that those people are wrong, they’re not making up lies when they say this. The message they’re getting from HHS is to not vaccinate. This is why public health policy needs to be very clear and in a language the average person can understand. These are life and death situations we’re talking about.
Kennedy’s comments read like an abdication of his responsibility. I can’t think of another way to describe his hand-washing of our current measles fiasco. And that’s one of many reasons he has to go.
Filed Under: anti-vaxxers, blame game, health & human services, measles, rfk jr.
Looking for the most recent Mini Crossword answer? Click here for today’s Mini Crossword hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Wordle, Strands, Connections and Connections: Sports Edition puzzles.
Need some help with today’s Mini Crossword? It’s got one of those two-parter questions, where 1-Across and 6-Across represent words in the same phrase. I hate these kinds of questions because they essentially take away one clue, which doesn’t seem fair. Read on for all the answers. And if you could use some hints and guidance for daily solving, check out our Mini Crossword tips.
If you’re looking for today’s Wordle, Connections, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands answers, you can visit CNET’s NYT puzzle hints page.
Read more: Tips and Tricks for Solving The New York Times Mini Crossword
Let’s get to those Mini Crossword clues and answers.
The completed NYT Mini Crossword puzzle for April 24, 2026.
1A clue: With 6-Across, kind of person who loves when things are messy
Answer: DRAMA
6A clue: See 1-Across
Answer: QUEEN
7A clue: Circus prop that provides extra height
Answer: STILT
8A clue: “___ boy!”
Answer: HOO
9A clue: Hoped-for symbol on a weather app
Answer: SUN
1D clue: Tosses out of a competition, informally
Answer: DQS
2D clue: ___ Chris Steak House (restaurant chain)
Answer: RUTHS
3D clue: Vowel quintet
Answer: AEIOU
4D clue: Fruit that’s often in an Edible Arrangement
Answer: MELON
5D clue: Crumb-carrying insect
Answer: ANT
Samsung has extended SmartThings support to IKEA’s Matter-over-Thread devices, covering air quality sensors, remote controls, smart lights, and smart plugs from the Swedish furniture brand’s connected home range.
The two companies conducted multiple rounds of validation before the rollout, with Samsung building dedicated integrations and a tailored user experience within the SmartThings app to improve connectivity stability across IKEA’s supported hardware.
That level of platform-specific work stands in contrast to what Matter is supposed to deliver, as the smart home standard was designed to eliminate the need for manufacturer-by-manufacturer integration by offering universal compatibility across different ecosystems.
IKEA’s Matter devices have a documented history of connectivity difficulties, with users reporting persistent problems connecting the company’s hardware to home networks since the brand adopted the standard across its smart home product lines.
Those difficulties illustrate a broader gap between Matter’s stated ambitions and its real-world performance, as the standard has struggled to deliver the frictionless cross-platform experience it originally promised to both manufacturers and consumers looking for a unified smart home solution.
Samsung and IKEA’s closer alignment on SmartThings also signals a wider industry shift toward platform holders taking a more hands-on role in validating third-party Matter devices, rather than relying on the standard alone to guarantee compatibility across brands and product categories.
That hands-on approach extends to how the integration surfaces within the SmartThings app itself, where Samsung has implemented a dedicated interface for IKEA devices to reduce friction for users managing the brand’s hardware alongside other connected products in the same environment.
The SmartThings and IKEA integration follows Samsung’s recent addition of Siri voice command support to the platform, continuing a period of steady expansion as SmartThings works to position itself as one of the more broadly compatible smart home hubs available to consumers across different device ecosystems.
The integration is available now and covers IKEA’s current range, with the SmartThings app receiving the dedicated IKEA user experience as part of the same update that brought the expanded device support to the platform.
Someone misused Rec Room’s friend-finder feature to match phone numbers to the user names of hundreds of thousands of players on the social gaming platform — assembling a database that connects their online identities directly to their real-world contact information.
The incident, which took place in January, hasn’t been previously reported or publicly acknowledged except in a brief response by a Rec Room staffer to a question in an online forum. It’s not directly related to the subsequent announcement that the Seattle-based company will shut down the social gaming platform June 1, after 10 years in business.
In messages to GeekWire, a person familiar with the incident expressed concern that Rec Room has never proactively notified users whose phone numbers and user identities were linked through the brute-force attack — leaving them unaware of the situation and vulnerable to harassment, phishing, or other attacks, especially as the platform shuts down.
Responding to our inquiries about the incident, the company acknowledged that it learned in January that an individual was running a high volume of queries against its friend-finder API. After discovering this, the company said, it disabled the feature and banned the user.
Rec Room said it engaged an outside legal and forensics firm to conduct a review, which concluded that disabling the API was sufficient and no regulatory notification was required. The feature only returned a username when matched with a phone number or email, Rec Room said, and did not expose additional account information or credentials.
“We take user safety and security seriously and have robust measures in place to protect user data,” a Rec Room spokesperson said in a follow-up statement, adding that the company “reviewed our privacy settings and confirmed they’re working as intended.”
What happened: The incident didn’t involve someone breaking into Rec Room’s servers or accessing its database directly.
Instead, it happened through the platform’s friend-finder feature, which let players upload their phone contacts to see which of their friends were already on the platform. Under the hood, the system accepted a phone number and returned a Rec Room username if there was a match.
The feature was designed for individual users checking their personal contacts. However, the system had no apparent safeguards to prevent someone from querying it at a massive scale.
That’s what happened in January, according to the person familiar with the matter. Someone systematically ran all US and Canadian phone numbers through the system, collecting every hit. The result, the person said, was a database of nearly 279,000 records.
The database was subsequently sold to others, according to the person familiar with the incident, who said the system used to distribute it was itself not secure, potentially making it accessible to a wider audience.
Rec Room’s response: Asked about the size of the database, Rec Room said it did not recognize the number provided by the source, but did not offer its own count of affected users. Without additional information, it’s unclear if the company has determined the size of the assembled database or the full scope of the incident.
Rec Room said no phone numbers or emails were acquired directly from the company.
Responding to a user question about the incident in the company’s Discord server on Feb. 19, a Rec Room staffer said the platform had previously allowed users to find friends by searching their contacts, and that some users were “abusing this functionality at scale.”
The message said the feature had been disabled “out of an abundance of caution.”
Why it matters now: The company has not proactively notified affected users. Rec Room said its support team has been responding to players who’ve contacted the company after receiving unsolicited texts that were apparently connected to the assembled database.
With the platform now scheduled to shut down June 1, the window for proactive notification is closing. After that date, Rec Room will no longer have an in-app channel to reach its players.
Rec Room’s shutdown itself could increase the risk. An attacker with the database could use the closure to craft convincing phishing messages — for example, a text or email impersonating Rec Room and urging players to click a link to export their data before the platform goes dark. The shutdown would give such a message built-in plausibility.
Phone numbers can also be used to find real names and home addresses through publicly available records, or to attempt SIM swapping, in which an attacker takes over a victim’s phone number to intercept calls, texts, and authentication codes. Users can lock their phone number through their wireless carrier’s app or website, typically with a PIN, to help prevent this.
Privacy settings: One issue in dispute involves Rec Room’s privacy settings. The platform offered users a toggle to prevent others from finding them by phone number or email address.
But the person familiar with the incident said the setting did not protect against the type of mass queries used in the attack. This person said their own data appeared in the database despite having the setting turned off, and provided a screenshot supporting this assertion.
(The person declined to be identified, citing concerns that publishing their name could allow someone to use the data to connect their identity to their home address and other personal details using public records.)
Asked about the privacy setting, Rec Room said it verified that it worked as designed.
Historical precedents: It’s not the first time a social platform has faced this type of incident.
In 2014, an attacker used the same approach against Snapchat’s friend-finder feature, matching usernames to 4.6 million phone numbers. Snapchat was criticized for initially dismissing the vulnerability and took more than a week to apologize, but later acknowledged the breach, updated its app, and let users opt out of the feature.
In 2021, a similar technique was used to assemble a database of phone numbers and personal information from more than 530 million Facebook users. Facebook said it had fixed the underlying flaw in 2019 but declined to individually notify affected users, saying it couldn’t be certain which users needed to be notified.
Rec Room’s approach has more closely resembled Facebook’s: maintaining that the incident did not create a security or privacy risk and that no user data was acquired from its systems.
Rec Room’s user base: Rec Room attracted more than 150 million lifetime players across phones, consoles, PCs, and VR headsets, with millions still active each month before the shutdown was announced.
Rec Room CEO Nick Fajt told the Wall Street Journal in 2021 that the bulk of the platform’s users were between the ages of 13 and 16 — meaning many of the phone numbers in the assembled database would belong to minors or their parents.
The company’s path: Rec Room launched in 2016 as a platform for building and sharing virtual worlds. Founded by a group of former Microsoft engineers, the company went on to raise $294 million in venture funding over its lifetime, and was valued at $3.5 billion at its peak in 2021.
But it never found a way to become profitable, cutting staff in two rounds of layoffs last year.
The person familiar with the matter said last year’s layoffs significantly impacted the company’s cybersecurity team. The company also paused its bug bounty program on the security platform Bugcrowd on Feb. 10, halting new vulnerability reports. The program has not reopened.
After the March shutdown announcement, Snap acquired select assets from Rec Room, and some members of the team joined the Snapchat parent’s hardware subsidiary to work on its Specs augmented reality glasses. It’s not clear if any were impacted in Snap’s cuts last week.
What to know: Rec Room users who linked a phone number to their account should be aware that their number may have been connected to their user name in the assembled database.
Users should be skeptical of any unsolicited texts or emails related to Rec Room or to the upcoming shutdown, particularly messages urging them to click links.
With the platform closing in less than seven weeks, the person familiar with the incident said they hope bringing public attention to the issue will help users be alert to the risks.
Gouri Hiremath explores the importance of an early STEAM education and why building skills doesn’t need to be complicated.
The educational route, when planning a future career, can come with many twists and turns. Often young people may have already graduated from school or are taking a year out to contemplate their options before settling on a course or company.
This can have its own benefits as you may find that now you are more emotionally prepared or mature enough for the next phase of your life. But for others, it can be a straighter road, where they know from a young age exactly how their professional life will begin.
With that in mind, for Gouri Hiremath, a senior software engineer and STEAM Studio ambassador at Liberty IT, it is critical that students and young people be exposed early on to positive, career-shaping opportunities, so that they have the know-how to make the most of their education.
Initially established at the Ulster Museum in Belfast, Liberty IT have expanded the STEAM Studio in partnership with the Galway City Museum, with the location now serving as a dedicated west of Ireland hub.
Offered to young people in secondary school, the STEAM Studio is a collaborative workspace that has been designed to connect coding and technology with the museum experience, inspiring young people to explore and develop their tech skills and empowering them to consider a career in the industry.
Hiremath explained: “As part of the free programme, which includes return transport for schools availing of the workshop, Junior Cycle students are upskilled in coding that enables them to design and create their own arcade game, all inspired by Galway’s maritime heritage and supported by Liberty IT volunteers who are our STEAM Studio ambassadors.
“The Galway programme is structured as recurring workshops across the school year, rather than a one-off event,” she added. “It’s been purposely created for students aged 13 to 15, at that key point where they’re starting to think about higher education and future pathways.”
For Liberty IT, the STEAM Studio is a tangible medium through which the organisation can invest in the communities in which its employees live and work, helping to inspire the “next generation of tech talent in the region” – which Hiremath noted is of particular importance as young people living in the west often have less access to structured, industry-led STEAM programmes.
She explained: “Many of our STEAM Studio ambassadors are from in and around Galway and they’re hugely passionate about showing students that you can build a tech career here, in your own city, without having to leave.
“Partnering with Galway City Museum to expand STEAM Studio has given us a unique setting to blend local heritage, creativity and technology. Coding a game inspired by maritime history lands very differently when you’re doing it in the museum that tells that very story.”
The programme is designed to build a mix of technical and transferable skills, where young people can explore coding while also developing creativity through simple game design. They learn how software works behind the digital world, and design their own characters and stories.
“We want them to leave thinking, ‘I made this, what else could I build?’,” said Hiremath.
And it isn’t just about developing coding skills, Hiremath noted how initiatives such as the STEAM Studio programme build career skills. She explained, students work together in groups, communicating their ideas, building confidence and resilience as they talk through what they have created and the challenges. She said that they see first-hand how “getting it wrong is both normal and fixable”.
To fully engage with learning in the STEAM space, Hiremath finds that consistency is key. With that in mind, the programme made the deliberate decision to use an approved coding platform that was already familiar to teachers, so that STEAM Studio visits can be easily connected back to everyday classroom learning. It also provides important safety measures that don’t limit a child’s potential or curiosity.
“A vetted platform also builds trust with schools and parents by ensuring strong standards around privacy, safeguarding and age-appropriate content,” she said. “Because the tools are available in schools, students can continue experimenting after the workshop, allowing STEAM Studio to act as a catalyst rather than a self-contained experience.”
Ultimately, for Hiremath, positive experiences at a young age can influence how young people view their future careers.
“When a 13-year-old builds their first game with a STEAM Studio ambassador beside them, technology stops being abstract,” she explained. “It becomes something they can do and that identity shift is hugely powerful when they make subject and career choices later.”
She said that this direct interaction both with technology and with the people who inhabit the roles they may want to step into down the line, can empower students to ask the right questions, making what is often viewed as a complex field more relatable and attainable.
“Having STEAM Studio ambassadors from different backgrounds, career paths and regions helps challenge the idea that tech is only for a particular ‘type’ of person,” she added. “They can see someone from Galway, working in tech in Galway, giving back to the city.
“Our long-term ambition is that some of the students who come through STEAM Studio will go on to become the tech talent of the future.”
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If you listen to music a lot, chances are that it’ll be a digital music file you’re listening to.
However, what you might not realise is that in order to hear that file, you’ll need a DAC. Digital-to-analogue converters are built into every bit of kit capable of digital sound.
You’ll find a DAC in your phone or laptop, but also your TV or games console, in CD players, as well as wireless headphones, portable music players and more, taking analogue signals and turning them into the digital signal that you hear.
But what exactly are DACs, and why do they matter? Read on to understand why they hold such importance in the audio scene.
Before we get into exactly what a DAC is and does, let’s go through a quick re-cap. Human ears aren’t capable of hearing the 0s and 1s that make up digital music; unless you’re secretly an Android (or AI), us humans can only hear analogue signals.
Not just that, but the kit through which we hear music – whatever that may be – can’t play a digital signal either; it can only receive it. In order to transmit it, that signal must be converted into an analogue soundwave first, and that is where a DAC comes into the equation.
A DAC is the middleman within the whole process, unpacking the binary information stored in the digital file so the resulting sound most accurately represents the original analogue recording.
Of course, digital files can be stored in varying levels of quality/sample rates – from 256kbps MP3 streams to 24-bit/192kHz FLAC digital downloads – and this affects the amount of information they contain.
A DAC can only work with what it’s given though, its raison d’être is to make sense of what’s provided and translate it accurately from its binary format and return it as closely as possible to the original analogue recording.
Just be aware that feeding a good-quality DAC a poor-signal quality signal can make shortcomings in that recording clearer. Our review of the Eversolo DAC-Z10 is a good example of that.
Not all DACs are created equal. Although every source of digital music contains a DAC, how well it does its job can vary widely.
For example, cheaper DACs might not support more unusual file data rates and are more likely (but not always) to have lesser quality circuitry that results in timing errors, distortion and noise in the sound that’s reproduced.
Timing errors are one of the biggest issues with lesser quality DACs, which is the reason devices such as mobile phones and laptops often aren’t the best source for digital music playback. The DAC included is not always the priority, especially in cheaper handsets.
Thankfully, you can improve what you already have and bypass a poor-quality internal DAC with a better quality external one with better internal circuitry that’s focused on making audio sound as good as it can be.
In particular, dedicated hi-fi DACs can tackle timing issues thanks to better, more advanced digital clock circuitry. This means the file conversion to analogue will be tighter, cleaner and more faithful to the original recording.
While any external DAC is likely to offer improvement on the sound pushed through something more basic, this isn’t a given – and its effectiveness will vary. As ever, it’s worth doing your research before you buy.
Device compatibility is an area to take note of, especially as pretty much all mobile devices have now ditched the 3.5mm jack that were common when this article was first published many moons ago.
You can spend thousands on a DAC if you’re rocking a system worthy of that kind of cash – Chord’s top-of-the-range DAVE comes can be had for £10,500.
Equally, if your wallet isn’t quite as flush with money, there are less expensive portable DACs such as the iFi Go Link 2 (£59) which could make all the difference to your audio setup.
This is the reason it’s important to think about how you most listen to digital music. What devices do you use and what functionality do you need?
External DACs can come with a USB-C on-the-go cable, helpful for connecting to Android devices or iOS devices. For added convenience, there are DACs that can connect wirelessly to devices over Bluetooth.
Portable DACs such as the Go Link 2 don’t require any external power as they take it from your device. They keep things simple, with just a USB input and headphone jack for playback.
Spend a bit more on something like the Chord Mojo 2, and you’ll keep the portability but add in coaxial and optical inputs for extra functionality.
A unit such as the Burson Playmate 3 on the other hand, is bigger and requires external power. That makes it one for either your desktop or the hi-fi rack rather. It does offer more connectivity options such as digital or analogue audio inputs, for those with more involved setups.
Make sure these types of DACs come with a built-in headphone amp if you intend to do some private listening through a pair of headphones as not all do.
Regardless of the DAC you end up choosing, you need to start out with good source material. A low-res Spotify stream just won’t cut it.
You’ll hear optimum results with CD-quality content and above, which is best stored in FLAC, WAV or ALAC (for Apple Macs) lossless PCM formats, or alternatively DSD if you prefer that format.
Again, it’s worth noting that the likes of FLAC and PCM and relatively accessible unless we’re talking about high bit-rates and sample rates. Something more exotic, such as DSD, is not as common, but in the right set-up, it can offer excellent audio quality.
If you’re unaware of what DSD is, it’s an audio format that stands for Direct Stream Digital, and is an alternative to PCM (Pulse Code Modulation).
It differs by offering a bit depth of just one, but much higher sampling rates – DSD64 at 2.8 MHz and DSD128 at 5.6 MHz. If you’re in the DSD camp, it’s worth checking if a DAC supports it as again not all of them do. The ones that are compatible with DSD, tend to be on the expensive side.
In any case, if you enjoy listening to music in the best quality possible, you’ll be well served by adding a DAC to whatever system you have.
Do some research, read reviews, and you’ll be on your way to audio nirvana.
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