Right now, you can get the Bose QuietComfort Headphones at Amazon for $179 (was $359). That’s the lowest price yet for the excellent headphones and a continuation of the same deal we saw during the recent Prime Day sale.

Sales are cyclical, and it’s already halfway through the year. Since this is the lowest price we’ve seen for the Bose QuietComfort Headphones, once it expires, I wouldn’t count on seeing it again until a major commercial holiday like Black Friday or Cyber Monday.

Today’s best headphones deal

The QuietComfort are some of the best Bose budget headphones, even if the word “budget” is more comparative to the price of the QuietComfort Ultra. They are intentionally designed to be light, offer a comfy fit and focus on active noise-cancellation for an affordable price.

Overall, these cover the basics well and keep the noise out for much less than the pricier but more powerful QuietComfort Ultra counterpart. These have stayed a popular, fuss-free choice if you’re looking for a reliable brand with ANC and aesthetics.

In our Bose QuietComfort Headphones review, we rated it four out of five stars for the ANC, comfort, portability, and ease of use. Our reviewer clocked up to 26 hours of battery life during testing, which is lower than many other competitors but still acceptable given the specs.

For more, see our best headphones (for more than just wireless) and best wireless headphones. We even have a list of best wireless earbuds for those who prefer in-ear listening.

from the phew dept

While we’ve been discussing a bunch of other Supreme Court end-of-term decisions this week, we should also call out two decisions the Supreme Court thankfully decided not to make. These non-decisions continue to help preserve First Amendment speech protections.

First, and most importantly, they rejected Alan Dershowitz’s attempt to appeal his laughably embarrassing SLAPP suit against CNN, which was filed in the hopes of getting it before this Supreme Court as part of the ongoing and extremely dangerous project by the rich and powerful to dismantle the “actual malice” standard found in NYT v. Sullivan. If you want to learn more about that dangerous project, listen to the podcast I recorded with reporter David Enrich, whose book, Murder the Truth, goes deep on this issue.

Dersh seemed to really hope that his case would be the one to overturn Sullivan, but it’s not to be. The Supreme Court denied cert. Of course, with that denial, Justice Clarence Thomas decides to pen another whiny blog about how much he hates the “actual malice” standard. He cites his own previous whining as well as his mentor’s, former Judge Laurence Silberman, who picked up the same cause soon after Thomas starting yelling about it.

The “actual malice” standard for public figures “bears ‘no relation to the text, history, or structure of the Constitution.’” Berisha v. Lawson, 594 U. S. ___, ___ (2021) (THOMAS, J., dissenting from denial of certiorari) (slip op., at 2) (quoting Tah v. Global Witness Publishing, Inc., 991 F. 3d 231, 251 (CADC 2021) (Silberman, J., dissenting)….

Instead, Thomas believes that public figures deserve extra special protection from critics, again citing his own previous whining:

Instead, the founding generation believed that, if anything, public figures had stronger claims for damages when they were defamed. See McKee v. Cosby, 586 U. S. 1172, 1177 (2019) (THOMAS, J., concurring in denial of certiorari). I and others have thus called for reconsideration of the actual-malice standard for public figures.

Thankfully, seven other Justices have no interest in this. However, Thomas did get Gorsuch to sign on to this, which perhaps isn’t surprising, as he’s joined Thomas’s anti-actual malice crusade in the past. However, in Enrich’s book, he uncovers that Gorsuch’s hatred for “actual malice” was based on a study… that was wrong. Apparently Gorsuch hasn’t adjusted his position, even though the data he has relied on has been proven to be incorrect. Not great, but at least this misinterpretation hasn’t infected others on the court yet.

The actual malice standard is what makes First Amendment speech protections function in practice — it’s the mechanism that keeps powerful people from drowning critics in expensive litigation. I get that Clarence Thomas hates the fact that people criticize him and his rich and powerful friends, but that’s a reason for him to go retire somewhere, not to rewrite one of the core planks that makes the First Amendment work.

The other denial is a bit less eventful. The Court refused to hear an appeal from Donald Trump on his $5 million loss (by jury verdict) in one of the defamation suits filed by E. Jean Carroll against him:

In November, Trump came to the Supreme Court, asking the justices to hear his appeal. He contended that Carroll’s lawyers should not have been allowed to introduce testimony by other women who also alleged that Trump had assaulted them, as well as the 2005 “Access Hollywood” tape in which Trump bragged about grabbing women by their genitals.

In her brief responding to Trump’s petition, Carroll argued that even if the jury should not have been allowed to consider the evidence, it ultimately would not have made a difference because the rest of her case was so strong. She asked the justices to deny review.

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On Monday, the justices did so, without a noted dissent from the denial.

Of course, this is just one of two separate cases that Trump lost to Carroll on, and he’s also appealing the other one — the $83 million verdict — and that’s still pending. However, for now Trump appears shocked that his buddies on the Supreme Court didn’t get him out of this particular pickle. Once again, nothing short of total, unconditional loyalty will ever satisfy Trump.

In the meantime, though, we have the Court passing on these two cases, both of which might have messed with the basic standards regarding defamation. Passing on both means that, for now, the Supreme Court hasn’t taken a sledgehammer to First Amendment protections.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, actual malice, alan dershowitz, clarence thomas, defamation, donald trump, e. jean carroll, free speech, neil gorsuch, nyt v. sullivan

Companies: cnn

from the opacity-as-a-strategy dept

There are bad takes on AI, and then there are bad takes on AI. Some of you think my takes on the use of AI in gaming are bad. Cool, love you, kiss kiss. I think the takes from folks on both extremes, the never-AI-ers and the AI evangelists, are pretty awful most of the time. I’ll accept your love and kisses in return. And I particularly don’t like it when those in gaming journalism act like there is zero place for this technology in the industry nearly as much as I absolutely hate it when those within the industry itself fuel the concerns about it by claiming AI will do all the things most gamers feverishly don’t want it to do. I can assure you it can be very frustrating being me when it comes to this particular topic. And, no, I don’t expect any sympathy over it.

But what Tim Sweeney just said about Steam’s use of AI disclaimers on its platform might well be one of the dumbest fucking things I’ve ever heard someone in the industry say.

In the past few months, video game publishers and developers have been going all in on generative AI with the justification that it speeds up and improves development. In the attempt to help gamers make informed choices about their purchases, Valve has started enforcing AI disclosures on Steam, which Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney believes is irresponsible of the company, as it has a negative impact.

“It’s unfortunate that so many developers now are put into this position. If you want to launch a game, and get it as widely publicized as possible, you’ve got to put it on Steam so people can wish list it, and if you want to play it on Steam, then you have to get this Scarlet Letter of AI attached to your product, and now there is a hater community trying to kill the game,” Sweeney said to PC Gamer in a new interview. “I think it’s really irresponsible of Valve. They shouldn’t do it, because it makes it much, much, much harder for a game developer to have a chance of success. You have to choose from either not using tools that can make you way more productive, and probably failing due to competition that does.”

First, to quibble with the article: claiming that “video game publishers and developers” writ large are “going all in” on generative AI is just plain wrong. In fact, there are plenty of developers and publishers out there that have flatly sworn off the use of this technology entirely. And that’s a good thing, to my way of thinking. Every experiment needs a control group, after all.

But the real issue here is just how tone deaf and idiotic it is for Sweeney to chide a rival platform for the severe crime of informing customers about the content of the games they purchase and how they were created, specifically on a hot button issue like the AI in gaming. While I, too, have made it clear that I think pre-judging every game that made any use of AI at all in development is a mistake, the cure for it is certainly not obfuscating that information from the very people that pay for these games.

Customers are supposed to be making informed buying decisions. I didn’t really think that was a matter open for debate. And Steam making that information transparent to the public is quite literally the opposite of “irresponsible”. It’s being very responsible to Steam’s customers. As for calling such disclosures a “scarlett letter”, well, I think the lady doth protest too much, as it were.

Especially when it’s obvious why Sweeney is taking this position.

To be fair, it’s not surprising to see Tim Sweeney staunchly defending the use of AI in game development, as Epic Games’ upcoming Unreal Engine 6 is going all-in with AI integration.

Now, Sweeney went on to talk about how generative AI can be used by developers to reduce the need for game makers to buy pre-made assets off of asset stores, content libraries, and reduce the economic costs for developing a game as a result… and I think those arguments are interesting and worthy of debate.

But pretty blatant attempts to try to inoculate the ecosystem against backlash for games produced by Epic’s engine by purposefully making the consumer less informed is an absolute loser of an argument.

Filed Under: ai, ai in video games, disclosures, information, tim sweeney, video games

Companies: epic, valve

Inspired by the hit anime and manga series Jujutsu Kaisen, Jujutsu Infinite lets players master a variety of powerful Innate Techniques. However, not every Technique is equally powerful, even if it has a higher rarity. Some perform much better in battles, while others are better left behind. If you’re unsure which Technique deserves your spins, this Jujutsu Infinite Innate tier list will help you find the strongest choices for both PvP and PvE gameplay.

Best Jujutsu Infinite Innate Tier List

Every Innate Technique has its own strengths and weaknesses. Some are excellent for most situations, while others have limited use. We have ranked every Technique from S Tier to D Tier to make your choice easier. Your main Innate Technique should ideally come from the S or A Tier. These Techniques deliver serious damage and powerful Domain abilities. B- and C-tier techniques are better suited for support roles. They can help you build, but aren’t reliable for challenging content. These rankings reflect their overall performance across the game.

S Tier Innate Techniques

A Tier Innate Techniques

B Tier Innate Techniques

C Tier Innate Techniques

Technique	Pros	Cons
Blood Manipulation	• Visually impressive abilities • Can bind enemies and apply pressure	• Inconsistent damage • Low overall damage
Boogie Woogie	• Excellent mobility and disruption • Good combo potential in 1v1 and team fights	• Lacks raw damage
Blazing Courage	• Decent choice for the early game • Features flashy fire effects	• Not strong enough for high-level content

D Tier Innate Techniques

Technique	Pros	Cons
Cloning Technique	• Decent mobility	• One of the weakest Innate Techniques • Clones are easy to destroy • Very low damage
Construction	• Can stun enemies	• One of the weakest Innate Techniques • Difficult to aim • Performs poorly in PvP
Tool Manipulation	• No major advantages	• One of the weakest Innate Techniques • Lacks damage output

Eight months in, they’re looking to set up a physical stall to meet growing demand

When brothers Gary Wong, 32, and James Wong, 31, were growing up, food was always part of their lives.

They were born into a family of cooks who ran dim sum and zi char stalls, though those ventures never quite took off. While F&B was, as Gary put it, “in our blood,” their family actively discouraged the brothers from entering the industry.

That changed at the start of 2026, when the brothers and their wives launched Hippopotato, a home-based rösti business operating out of their mother’s executive flat in Tampines.

We spoke to Gary and his wife, Yiying Tan, about how the family scaled the business to sell around 150 rostis a day, generating between S$30,000 and S$35,000 in monthly revenue, with plans to open a physical store soon.

Starting out as a canteen stall

James holds a degree in culinary arts from the Culinary Institute of America—one of the world’s most prestigious institutions for aspiring chefs—through a joint programme with the Singapore Institute of Technology.

Before Hippopotato, he worked as the head chef at a café, giving him a firsthand understanding of the industry’s demands: long hours, capped pay, and little upside working for someone else.

That convinced him he wanted to build an F&B business of his own.

For Gary, who had spent years in private equity and venture capital, the motivation was different. He saw Hippopotato as a side project at first—a chance to test whether the idea could work before committing to it fully.

Gary and James’s wives would eventually join the business, but in its early days, Hippopotato looked very different. The brothers weren’t selling rosti yet.

Their first venture was a cai fan (mixed economy rice) stall at a local junior college, which they secured in Jul 2025, selling a rotating menu of up to 16 dishes daily.

While schools mandate that canteen vendors stay open until 2PM, the food was almost always sold out by noon. Faced with a choice between going home and cooking another batch, they’d top up, but doing so came with a risk: anything that didn’t sell by closing time would go to waste, eating directly into their already-thin margins.

For every dollar of sales we made from the cai fan stall, 60% was just food cost. If you don’t sell, you’re screwed.

Gary Wong

The waste problem pushed them to rethink. Instead of preparing food in advance, what if they sold something made to order? Ideally, it would also appeal to junior college students without requiring them to cook 16 different dishes before dawn.

The answer came from one of James’s earliest F&B jobs: a brief stint at Marché’s rosti station nearly a decade earlier. The brothers decided to give the Swiss potato dish a shot at their canteen stall.

And it was the right call. Students started queuing almost immediately, with lines growing long enough that the school principal joined in.

To manage volume, the brothers capped sales at 30 portions a day, first-come, first-served—and even that wasn’t enough.

“It was similar to the scene at those Pokémon card queues at Plaza Singapura,” Gary said.

Escaping the limits of the school calendar

The school canteen proved successful for the rosti concept, but it came with its own problem: schools would close for holidays. Long breaks meant canteens would be empty of customers, and there was no income to be made.

To fill those gaps and to avoid being entirely dependent on a school calendar, Gary and James decided to launch Hippopotato as a home-based business in Nov 2025, while continuing to operate the canteen hall.

Although business was slow in the first week or two, with only one or two orders a day, business picked up gradually after that.

By the new year, momentum had built. Media coverage followed, while new menu items kept customers coming back. Orders climbed steadily from just a handful a day to an average of 100 to 150 rostis daily.

Hippopotato operates out of Gary and James’s mother’s 1,500 sq ft executive flat in Tampines, which the family shares. As Gary put it, the business is very much a family affair, with his wife, James’s wife, and their 70-year-old mother all playing a role in its day-to-day operations.

Even so, Gary has not left his full-time job, saying he still sees Hippopotato as a business in its early stages.

What makes a good rosti?

James’s culinary training shaped everything about how Hippopotato approaches the product, from the ingredients to the cooking process. They only use 100% USA Russet potatoes, and everything, even the sauces, is freshly made on the same day. 

“If we want to do it, we will do it right,” Gary said. 

Using Russet potatoes gives the rostis a crispy, golden crust while keeping the inside moist and fluffy, Gary said. Just as importantly, the brothers have kept prices deliberately accessible: a chicken schnitzel with rosti costs S$12.50, compared with around S$35 for a similar dish at Marché.

The brothers have also experimented with flavours such as the Salted Egg Chick rosti and Okonomirosti—a rosti topped with okonomiyaki sauce, Japanese mayo, and bonito flakes—which have become customer favourites.

There are more flavours the brothers want to explore, but the constraints of a shared home kitchen have kept the menu tightly curated for now.

Every new item adds prep work, ingredients, and storage requirements, while Singapore’s Home-Based Business Scheme means they can’t hire staff from outside the household to cope with the extra workload.

That said, for a business still finding its feet, the numbers made financial sense.

Without rent or significant overheads, the main cost is ingredients, and those margins are covered quickly. Compared to the cai fan stall’s punishing 60% food cost and pre-dawn starts, running Hippopotato from home five days a week gave them the room to breathe, refine the product, and build a customer base before committing to a commercial space.

Forging the road ahead for Hippopotato

Taking all this into account, it only made sense to the Wongs to close the canteen stall.

Running both simultaneously—the cai fan stall from the early hours of the morning until 2PM, followed by Hippopotato’s evening service and the prep work in between—was burning the family out.

The final confirmation came during the Mar school holidays, when the canteen closed, and the team focused solely on Hippopotato. The experience reinforced what they had already suspected: the rosti business delivered stronger returns, generated less waste, and made better use of their time.

With that, the family decided not to renew the cai fan stall’s lease when it expired in May, choosing instead to focus entirely on Hippopotato.

But Hippopotato’s home-based model was always meant to be a stepping stone, not a destination. The constraints of a shared domestic kitchen have a ceiling, and the brothers are aware of it.

Thus, Hippopotato has plans to open its first physical store later in 2026, with a potential second location to follow. The customer base it has built makes a compelling case for the expansion: the business has amassed more than 200 five-star Google reviews, while customers travel from across Singapore for its rostis.

For the Wongs, it’s a sign that Hippopotato has outgrown the home kitchen where it all began.

• Find out more about Hippopotato here.
• Read other articles about Singaporean businesses here.

Featured Image Credit: Hippopotato

Makers assembled a compact handheld unit that listens to standard wireless network signals and converts subtle shifts in those signals into a real-time radar display of nearby human activity. The entire system fits comfortably in one hand and comes together for roughly fifty dollars in parts. Movement registers even when walls or other barriers stand between the device and the person. No camera, no infrared sensor, and no dedicated motion detector appears anywhere in the build. Instead the unit taps into Channel State Information (CSI) carried by ordinary Wi-Fi traffic in most homes and offices.

CSI contains a wealth of information on signal intensity and phase across several sub-channels, acting as a unique fingerprint that is written into the air by every surface, item, and person in its vicinity. Then there’s human tissue, where the water reacts with radio waves in a way that makes it stand out from everything else in the room. Of course, motion alters this distinct pattern, allowing the device to detect it. After calibrating the device with a quick empty room scan, the firmware can set a baseline and compare new data to it. Any continuous changes that exceed a specific threshold will trigger a detection and leave a mark on the radar display. One processing core is constantly collecting data, while the other maintains the screens responsive, with no lag.

GL.iNet GL-SFT1200 (Opal) Portable WiFi Travel Router, Mini VPN Wireless Router, Mobile Internet WiFi…

• 【AC1200 Dual-band Wireless Router】Simultaneous dual-band with wireless speed up to 300 Mbps (2.4GHz) + 867 Mbps (5GHz). 2.4GHz band can handles…
• 【Easy Setup】Please refer to the User Manual and the Unboxing & Setup video guide on Amazon for detailed setup instructions and methods for…
• 【Pocket-friendly】Lightweight design(145g) which designed for your next trip or adventure. Alongside its portable, compact design makes it easy to…

Building it all begins with an M5Stack Cardputer ADV board, which already has an ESP32-S3 microcontroller, a small screen, a keyboard, and a battery. Then you simply slap an extra display onto the board and place it in a simple 3D printed frame above the primary unit, and you’re ready to go. Dual displays are no problem, and because it reuses existing Wi-Fi networks rather than creating its own, the parts list is kept to a minimum.

When it first powers up, it scans for available networks; select one, input your password, and you’re ready to go. Connection is confined to the networks you manage, which prevents the unit from spying on other people’s traffic. Once the connection is established, the radar activates and the smaller screen displays all connection details, a scrolling graph of recent activity, and options such as a clear or presence banner, as well as the sensitivity setting. The larger screen displays the real radar image, which is a sweep line slowly traveling across a circular view with fading trails indicating where earlier movements were identified, and as the marks emerge, they grow or shrink depending on how much the signals shifted at the time.

Of course, there are keyboard shortcuts for things like triggering a fresh calibration, adjusting the detection threshold, and navigating to the settings menu. The entire machine can run totally on battery power or a USB connection when necessary, and because it just uses Wi-Fi signals that are already floating around, it can work in the dark and through most interior walls. With some furniture around, readings can be thrown off as reflections bounce off everything, causing your gadget to go berserk, but with careful positioning and tweaks, you can generally keep the false triggers under control. The problem is that the current design just provides you a general sense of movement in the area and does not provide precise direction or distance.

Because the code, build files, and enclosure designs are now public on Github, anybody can recreate or adapt the project to meet their own requirements. The same Wi-Fi signals that make life so convenient also allow you to utilize this device to determine whether anyone is in the room or if there’s any unusual activity going on someplace. As a result, it has a variety of helpful uses, such as automatic lighting control when you enter a room and simple notifications when someone does something unexpected. The only issue is attempting to completely avoid using it without blocking Wi-Fi connections.
[Source]

Glasgow-headquartered FullProxy provides cyber consultancy services to public and private sector organisations across the UK.

Irish telecoms and IT company Viatel Technology Group has acquired Scottish cybersecurity consultancy FullProxy for an undisclosed amount.

The acquisition – which is backed by investment from Macquarie Capital – is designed to expand Viatel’s presence in the UK and its cyber capabilities, according to the company.

FullProxy was founded in 2015 by CEO Ewan Ferguson and CTO Chris Templeton and provides cyber consultancy services to public and private sector organisations across the UK.

The company, which is headquartered in Glasgow, has particular expertise in network design and implementation, cloud authentication and endpoint security, and counts customers in data-sensitive sectors such as healthcare, local government, financial services and critical infrastructure with clients including the NHS, Scottish government, Virgin Money and FNZ.

As well as being recognised as an Expert Fortinet Partner and elite F5 Gold Tier partner, FullProxy has also been featured in TechUK’s Tech200 Growing Companies, and shortlisted twice for Scottish Cyber Security Company of the Year at the Scottish Cyber Awards.

“Over the last decade we’ve built FullProxy around a deeply felt principle: helping customers solve complex cybersecurity challenges and achieve ROI through expert advice, deep technical capability and long-term trusted relationships,” said Ferguson. “The growth we’ve achieved in recent years is a testament to the quality of our people, the trust of our customers and the strength of our partnerships. We are incredibly proud of what the team has built.

“Joining Viatel gives us the opportunity to build on that success.”

Viatel said the acquisition will further strengthen its “core cybersecurity capabilities” at a time when organisations are under growing pressure to secure complex digital infrastructure while preparing for wider AI deployment.

“As clients adopt AI and manage increasingly complex digital estates, the need for deep cybersecurity expertise has become more urgent,” said Paul Rellis, CEO of Viatel Technology Group. “FullProxy strengthens our position as an integrated technology partner with expertise across security, networking and digital services and enhances our ability to deliver solutions that are aligned to customer priorities.

“It also represents a strong endorsement of our cyber division and our long-term strategy to help organisations build resilience today and grow securely for the future.”

FullProxy is the latest in a series of tech companies to be acquired by Viatel in recent years.

Last year, the company acquired the Belfast-based cyber operations of UK IT services firm Cybit.

In 2024, Viatel acquired the technology division of managed print services provider MJ Flood in a deal reportedly valued at €30m, while in 2023, it snapped up US-headquartered cloud-connected infrastructure provider Sungard Availability Services – its eighth acquisition since 2020.

Its other acquisitions include Wifiber, Nova Telecom, Irish Telecom, SupportIT and Action Point.

Don’t miss out on the knowledge you need to succeed. Sign up for the Daily Brief, Silicon Republic’s digest of need-to-know sci-tech news.

Nvidia competitor Etched announced this week that TSMC had manufactured its first chip earlier this year. While the four-year-old startup valued at $5 billion is getting ready to ship systems powered by that chip to customers later this summer, scaling production may prove challenging. Like other chip designers, Etched must compete for limited capacity at TSMC’s Taiwan factories.

Copper Sky Capital, one of Etched’s early investors, is hopeful that the chipmaker will find a solution to its manufacturing constraints by eventually producing chips at Arizona’s TSMC facility. When the four-year-old VC firm invested in Etched’s $120 million Series A two years ago, founder Jack Selby secured an allocation in part by promising to help the startup eventually reshore its chip fabrication to Arizona.

Selby, a former PayPal exec and longtime managing director to Peter Thiel’s family office, Thiel Capital, founded Phoenix-based Copper Sky in 2021 (formerly known as AZ-VC). The firm’s first $115 million fund focused primarily on startups based in Arizona and the Southwest. Selby’s thesis was that most coastal startups, particularly those based in California, Massachusetts, and New York, are grossly overpriced compared to companies popping up in his region. However, Selby saw an opportunity to bridge the gap in the other direction by helping California-based hardware startups move their production to Arizona.

Selby credits Copper Sky’s investment in Etched — an otherwise hard-to-access startup — to his influential role in Arizona’s economy. As a board member of the Arizona Commerce Authority, Selby is deeply involved in recruiting out-of-state businesses to set up manufacturing operations in the region.

“When Copper Sky invested with Etched, the company clearly understood our connectivity to the Arizona semiconductor industry, and in particular the local TSMC GIGAFAB,” Selby told TechCrunch.

While Copper Sky has recently expanded its focus beyond the Southwest to include nontraditional venture hubs nationwide, Selby said that the firm is also interested in backing hardware companies, including in the defense sector, that can set up manufacturing operations in Arizona. 

The firm is expected to soon have more capital to invest in those higher-priced coastal companies, and those throughout the United States. Copper Sky is currently raising a $300 million second fund, according to a regulatory filing.