There were workarounds—European or Australian gamers will likely remember dual-boot adapters that used a local cart to ‘spoof’ the console into accepting an imported American game—but with different TV standards to consider, most players were effectively limited to only the games released in their home territory.

With the SN Operator, that’s all literally consigned to the past. All cart sizes fit, and lockout chips are ignored—insert a game from anywhere in the world and, so long as it’s still in good working order, it’ll load. Modern displays mean old hurdles like different NTSC or PAL display standards are irrelevant.

That brings a few material benefits for purists. When the NTSC versus PAL distinction was an issue, it often meant PAL games ran more slowly due to the standard’s lower 50-Hz refresh rate compared to NTSC’s 60 Hz. Being in the UK, I can finally play Street Fighter II Turbo at its original speed, or the classic action platformer Spider-Man and the X-Men in Arcade’s Revenge without Spidey feeling like he’s web-swinging through mud. Region-free also benefits North American players, allowing previously incompatible exclusives from other countries to be imported without worry—great for cult curiosities like Konami’s Pop’n Twinbee games, only released in Japan and Europe.

The Playback software even identifies which region’s version of the game it is—accurately clocking my UK copy of Star Wing (Nintendo couldn’t use the Star Fox name at the time). Counterfeit carts are detected, too. Speaking of Star Fox/Wing, there’s a host of options to tweak how the SN Operator handles Mode 7, the SNES’ pseudo-3D visual trickery. Throwing in super-sampling and upscaling features can give 30+-year-old games quite a glow-up.

Another great touch is how it accounts for classic accessories like the SNES Mouse, supporting titles like Mario Paint or Populous II—a strategy game and another PAL exclusive—with your regular, modern, non-SNES mouse. That same mouse can stand in for the Super Scope​, Nintendo’s bulky light-gun peripheral designed for obsolete CRT screens. The only downside is that the precision afforded by a high dots-per-inch (dpi) mouse cursor makes those games incredibly easy, as I discovered with a Japanese copy of Super Scope 6, a six-game showcase for the tool. (Incidentally, it’s really only two games, Blastris and LazerBlazer, with three modes each—historically false advertising!) Still, there were only ever 12 Super Scope games released, so it’s great to see even this incredibly niche category of games considered.

By far the best improvement over the GB Operator, though, is an expanded suite of save data tools. Directly saving progress to a cart as you would on a real SNES remains a baked-in feature, and the SN Operator retains the ability to transfer game saves between your computer and cart, but now virtual save states are supported. At any point, you can create snapshot saves of wherever you are in a game—an absolute godsend in playing through Secret of Mana, a sizeable ’90s Japanese role-playing game (JRPG), and one I can now pick up and put down without worrying about in-game save points.

In late May, federal authorities charged a Google software engineer with insider trading after he won $1.2 million on the prediction market website Polymarket. The 36-year-old Michele Spagnuolo allegedly placed bets that musician D4vd and rapper Kendrick Lamar would top Google’s most-searched list. The bets paid off, prosecutors said, because Spagnuolo had access to confidential company data. 

The popularity of prediction markets, where you can bet on thousands of real-world outcomes across nearly every facet of modern life, is spreading faster than governments can keep up. Even Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s chief executive, is reportedly developing a standalone prediction market app to compete with the most popular platforms, Kalshi and Polymarket. 

You may have even been tempted yourself to put down cash on your favorite pop-culture hunch. But the recent Google case highlights just one of the biggest concerns for a multibillion-dollar industry prone to abuse. Numerous insider trading cases have prompted federal regulators to intensify scrutiny, cracking down on the illegal use of classified information for betting. 

A New York Times investigation in May flagged more than 11,000 Polymarket accounts for suspicious, high-profit trading patterns, often involving perfectly timed bets on geopolitical events, and flawless, loss-free track records. And it’s not just corporate employees; it’s also military personnel and government officials manipulating classified information. 

A US Army special forces soldier allegedly received a payout of $400,000 by “predicting” the capture of Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro. Former Congressman George Santos allegedly won tens of thousands of dollars by betting he wouldn’t be at Trump’s State of the Union address, despite posting on X that he would be.

Last month, a Wall Street Journal investigation revealed that Polymarket ran a deceptive, secret marketing campaign by paying social media influencers to film fake trades and stage massive winnings on lookalike dummy websites to draw people in.

“This industry is growing fast and will continue to grow as long as courts and regulators allow it,” Columbia University professor of economics Rajiv Sethi told CNET.

People generally have strong opinions surrounding prediction markets, and many (like me) feel a bit icky about them. But how the industry shakes out will depend on several regulatory battlegrounds. Prediction markets are facing intense pushback from lawmakers over insider trading, highlighted by a congressional probe and a proposed bill to ban prediction-market bets by service members. Yet because no one can agree whether betting markets are legitimate financial tools or just a glorified form of gambling, they’re causing a massive headache at the state and federal levels. 

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How prediction markets work

To any casual observer, Polymarket and Kalshi seem like virtual casinos, except you’re betting against other participants, not against “the house.” You can buy and sell contracts about anything: the weather, geopolitical events, election results, sports, entertainment awards, ad nauseam. 

Several high-profile predictions over the past several months involved the US attacking Iran, Michael B. Jordan winning the Oscar for Best Actor and bitcoin topping $125,000. You can even predict if someone is going to utter a certain word in a speech or news conference in what are called “mention markets.” 

With a mainstream boom in prediction market platforms over the last few years, other companies have joined the fray: Robinhood, PredictIt, Metaculus and even traditional sportsbooks FanDuel and DraftKings. 

These types of “idea futures” aren’t new, though. Informal information markets date back hundreds of years, as seen in the 1500s in Italy, where people predicted who the next pope would be.

Today’s prediction markets claim they aren’t technically gambling or akin to trading stocks, even though you’re risking money in hopes of a profit. In essence, you’re predicting something will or won’t happen. For every “share” you buy for that event outcome, you get $1 if you’re right and nothing if you aren’t. The markets don’t set the “odds,” and neither do the platforms — the traders do.

The amount of shares you’re able to buy for a certain outcome depends on how many shares are being sold for the opposite outcome by other traders. For example, if you wanted to buy 500 shares of a Yes outcome on France winning the World Cup, there would have to be 500 corresponding shares of No on France winning. 

Though the basic unit for prediction markets is only $1, business is booming for Kalshi and Polymarket, which collect transaction fees for each trade. Together, they’ve crossed $150 billion in lifetime trading volume.

A personal look inside

I’m not a bettor. I suck at poker, I still can’t understand a Daily Racing Form, and don’t get me started about March Madness brackets. So, I’m not about to test my luck (yet) with Kalshi or Polymarket, but I did want to take a peek under the hood.

Kalshi and most other prediction markets are available for customers in the US. Polymarket is split into two distinct platforms, including a newly launched domestic platform. Polymarket’s global platform is an unregulated, offshore crypto-based exchange that’s barred in the US, though many try to bypass geographic restrictions using a VPN.

Kalshi and Polymarket both offer a dizzying array of exchanges. Kalshi has basic event categories, from the California governor race to the price of a gallon of gas. It also has some rather off-the-wall ones, like the “Scary Tomatoes” score on Rotten Tomatoes and the US government’s disclosure of aliens. 

The mention markets on Kalshi were even stranger. Will someone say “road trip” or “meals for two” during the next Cracker Barrel earnings call? What will the hosts say during Love Island Aftersun? I’ll pass.

Columbia professor Sethi advises anyone interested in trading prediction markets to tread lightly at first.

“Most novice retail traders lose money, so my advice to those who want to experiment is to focus on events about which you know something about the topic, and keep bets small to begin with, until you get a feel for your likely performance,” Sethi told CNET.

The hard truth is that prediction market traders are far more likely to lose than to win. The Wall Street Journal reported in May that 0.1% of all Polymarket accounts won 67% of the profits. That translates to 2,000 top traders netting more than $500 million, while 1.1 million Polymarket customers didn’t make a profit.

Moreover, given the difficult task of preventing insider trading, I’d say “buyer beware” when trading in these speculative markets. 

Social function or political tool

Another fundamental question I have is whether these markets serve a socially useful purpose. 

Better Markets, a nonprofit focused on financial and economic justice, argues that prediction markets lack real value. While traditional financial contracts help institutions manage risks, prediction markets do not. Unlike the stock market, they fail to fund businesses or help investors build long-term wealth.

Amanda Fischer, chief operating officer at Better Markets, said that bets around elections or war in Iran “serve no function but to degrade our democracy and encourage insider trading.” According to Fischer, prediction markets look more like gambling, especially since over 90% of bets on those platforms are related to sporting events. 

In response to scandals around insider trading, Kalshi says it is aggressively self-policing by tracking suspicious activity and requiring some of its users to disclose their employers. Kalshi also says its safeguards against politicians and athletes are stricter than those of traditional stock exchanges.

Meanwhile, Polymarket’s decision to maintain user anonymity has drawn heavy criticism from financial experts, who argue it leaves the platform vulnerable to fraud. Without strict identity verification, the platform allows insiders to exploit nonpublic information while enabling bad actors to “spoof” trades and trick ordinary people into following fake trends, according to Sethi, who wrote an opinion piece for the Financial Times titled “Polymarket Anonymity Must End.”

As prediction markets continue to face security concerns over fraud and insider trading, they have a powerful shield from the federal government and President Trump, who has aggressively pushed back against state-level restrictions. 

This political alignment is further complicated by the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., who reportedly has an eight-figure investment in Polymarket and serves as an adviser to Kalshi. Although his involvement has sparked intense suspicion of a conflict of interest, Trump Jr. maintains that he does not trade on the platforms or lobby the government on their behalf.

A regulatory dilemma 

At its core, the regulatory mess stems from an identity crisis. Prediction markets are hard to classify, straddling the line between commodity contracts and security-based investments. This has triggered a massive turf war over jurisdiction, as the federal government attempts to override state and tribal gaming laws that view these markets as illegal sportsbooks trying to bypass local restrictions.

Several US states and even private citizens have sued Kalshi, claiming the company has violated state gambling laws. Native American pueblos and a tribe in New Mexico have also sued Kalshi, alleging the company is violating gaming agreements and federal law.

Sandia Pueblo Gov. Stuart Paisano, one of the plaintiffs, in a statement, said, “The use of prediction markets for gambling purposes diverts essential revenue away from our governments, provides an end-run around regulation of gaming on our lands, and allows gaming by underage people.”

At the federal level, prediction markets are formally categorized as commodities and derivatives, placing them under the jurisdiction of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, or CFTC. 

Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour, who, along with fellow MIT graduate Luana Lopes, founded the company in 2018, says prediction markets aren’t traditional sportsbooks but more like open marketplaces. Mansour says Kalshi’s event contracts are financial derivatives, just like common futures, options and swaps, and should be appropriately regulated by the CFTC.

But some legal scholars and financial reform advocates argue that prediction markets should fall under the purview of the Securities and Exchange Commission, or SEC.

According to Better Markets’ Fischer, the CFTC has fewer tools to police insider trading in prediction markets. As an agency tasked with specifically overseeing agricultural and certain financial derivatives, it was only recently self-appointed as a gambling regulator. “As a result, there are some gaps and ambiguity in the CFTC’s legal framework,” she said. 

Fundamentally, the CFTC’s rules on insider trading are historically much weaker than the SEC’s. “The SEC has 90 years of law and legal precedent, which have created a robust set of rules around insider trading,” said Fischer. 

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The CFTC is also chronically understaffed, according to Fischer. The agency has cut more than 20% of its staff during the second Trump administration.

Fischer said CFTC’s enforcement is a “drop in the bucket” compared with the enormous volume of trades being transacted at Kalshi. “The CFTC has only been able to identify and prosecute the most egregious cases, and in many other instances, has delegated enforcement to firms like Kalshi, whose only tool is to kick users off the platform,” Fischer said.

Do we really need this?

The danger of prediction markets is the financialization of our society at large, where “every opinion is a tradeable asset,” wrote Jathan Sadowski, associate professor at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia.

There’s also a risk if prediction markets define “truth” as simply a publicly verifiable consensus. If, as Sadowski noted, “the market is the ultimate arbiter of what’s valuable and true,” that leads to a “world that creates endless incentives for arbitrage, manipulation, collusion and exploitation in the pursuit of profit extraction.”

In an episode of Last Week Tonight on prediction markets, comedian John Oliver asked if we’ll be able to believe our eyes when future events occur. “When something unexpected happens in the world, it would be really nice not to have to automatically question whether it’s only because someone is trying to move a market.”

At the end of the day, I keep coming back to why these tools exist in the first place. Prediction markets shouldn’t just be a playground for day traders looking for their next fix. But to prove that it’s not just another corrupt form of speculative gambling, the industry has some massive hurdles to clear. 

CNET’s Laura Michelle Davis heavily contributed to and edited this story.

TCS’ Ciarán O’Dowd, explores the impact advanced technologies have on careers at the intersection of design and STEM.

“No two days are ever the same, which is one of the aspects I enjoy most,” said TCS head of design at Letterkenny, Ciarán O’Dowd. “My work spans creative delivery, operational oversight and people leadership.”

He explained, a typical day can involve managing client output, translating complex business requirements into clear customer experiences and working with designers on problem‑solving, reviews and career development. 

He said, “Alongside that, there’s a strong operational element monitoring capacity, timelines and resourcing to ensure delivery is both high‑quality and sustainable. It’s a role that demands constant context‑switching, but the common thread running through all of it is making sure creativity, technology and people are pulling in the same direction.”

What advanced technologies are essential in your role?

The role requires a broad and constantly evolving technical toolkit. On the creative side, advanced proficiency in tools such as Adobe Illustrator, InDesign and Photoshop is essential, along with a strong understanding of motion and digital design. Equally important are workflow and productivity technologies. I work extensively with automation, scripting and AI‑enabled tools to cut out manual effort and improve consistency at scale. Data and reporting tools are also critical particularly for managing capacity, delivery and performance across distributed teams. But honestly, the real value isn’t just in knowing the tools, it’s in knowing when, why and where they actually make a difference and add real business value.

How do you stay technically skilled in a constantly changing field?

I treat learning as a core part of the role rather than a nice to have add on. The pace of change in this space means standing still really isn’t an option. At TCS, we are continually experimenting with new tools, pursuing formal learning where it aligns with future skills and most importantly applying new knowledge immediately to real delivery challenges. I don’t try to master everything, but I do aim to understand enough across different disciplines to collaborate effectively and make informed decisions.

Curiosity and adaptability are, without question, the most important skills of all. I constantly have to work on strengthening my technical capability, but on top of this, my time with TCS has really allowed me to develop my leadership skills which are equally important when you are passionate about leading a team.

How can organisations support consistent and modern upskilling?

Upskilling works best when it’s built into the system rather than delivered as a one‑off initiative. That means genuinely allocating time for learning, linking training clearly to career progression, supporting relevant certifications and encouraging peer‑to‑peer knowledge sharing. People engage far more when they can see a direct connection between what they’re learning today and where it can take them tomorrow. Organisations that invest in structured, continuous learning are far better placed for long‑term change.

TCS actively supports upskilling through a mix of internal learning and externally funded programmes. I recently completed an ILM leadership and management course through the Donegal ETB. The course covered areas such as managing change, communication and team motivation and I was able to apply those skills immediately within my role, helping with strengthening both delivery and my leadership capability.

You describe yourself as a “Jack of all trades”, how important is cross‑collaboration in STEM?

It’s absolutely critical. The most complex problems in STEM rarely sit neatly within a single discipline, they exist in the spaces between them. Being a “Jack of all trades” doesn’t mean lacking depth. For me, it means having enough breadth to connect ideas across different areas, ask the right questions and translate between specialists who might otherwise misunderstand each other. Some of the best outcomes I’ve seen have come from TCS’ design, technology, data, marketing, and compliance teams working together early and often rather than being siloed until it’s too late. The ability to collaborate across disciplines is now as important as technical expertise itself.

What are the main challenges in your sector today?

One of the biggest challenges is balancing rapid technological change with increasing regulatory and compliance demands, particularly within financial services where the stakes are high. There’s also the very human issue of burnout across the industry in fast‑paced delivery environments, which doesn’t get talked about enough. Sustainable delivery isn’t just about output, it’s about creating the right conditions for teams to do their best work consistently. These challenges are best addressed through smarter workflows, greater use of automation and strong people leadership.

What advice would you give to students or professionals considering a similar career path?

First, build strong fundamentals but don’t wait until you feel completely ready before stepping up. You rarely will, and growth comes from taking ownership before it feels comfortable. Second, take the time to understand how the business actually operates, not just how the tools work. Communication, adaptability and curiosity will take you just as far as technical skill and often further. And finally, be open to reinvention. Careers in this space are rarely linear and the people who tend to thrive are those willing to learn, unlearn and evolve as the landscape shifts around them.

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.

Nothing has officially launched the Ear (3a), and while the name sounds like someone at the company lost a fight with their accountant, the product itself is a lot more interesting than another pair of inexpensive wireless earbuds with ANC and a transparent case.

At $99, the new Nothing Ear (3a) sits directly in the crowded budget ANC category, but the hook is not just price. Nothing has added built-in audio capture, call recording, and something it calls Audio Snapshot, which lets users capture short clips of what they are hearing and sync them to the Nothing X app for playback, editing, sharing, and transcription. The NSA would like a word.

That matters because most $99 wireless earbuds are fighting the same battle: stronger ANC, longer battery life, better bass, more colors, and an app that claims to understand your soul but mostly just lets you move sliders. The Ear (3a) still checks many of those boxes, but the recording feature gives Nothing a real point of difference.

For a company called Nothing, that is not nothing.

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Audio Snapshot Is the Feature to Watch

The headline feature is Audio Snapshot. Instead of reaching for your phone when you want to save a clip from a podcast, video, audiobook, meeting, lecture, or other media, the Ear (3a) can capture audio directly from the earbuds and move it into the Nothing X app.

The earbuds include 32MB of total internal storage, split across the two earbuds, which allows the Ear (3a) to store short Audio Snapshot clips as well as call recordings before syncing them back to the phone. That is megabytes, not gigabytes, which is either delightfully old school or a reminder that nobody under 30 remembers how much work we used to squeeze out of 32MB.

Nothing’s implementation is split into two parts. Audio Snapshot is designed for capturing short media clips, while call recording is designed for phone calls and meetings. The recordings can then be accessed through the Nothing X app, where Nothing supports playback, editing, sharing, and transcription.

That does not turn the Ear (3a) into a field recorder, and Nobody should be pretending this replaces a dedicated interview mic or proper recording rig. But for students, commuters, journalists, creators, and anyone trapped in meetings that should have been three emails and a strongly worded glance, the idea is useful.

The important detail is that Nothing is moving the recording function into the earbuds themselves rather than relying only on the phone. That makes the Ear (3a) feel less like a cheaper version of the flagship Ear (3) and more like a product with its own identity.

Call Recording Is Useful But Complicated

The Ear (3a) can also record calls and meetings, with around two hours of recording capacity before files need to be synced. Nothing has also added a privacy alert that lets participants know when recording starts.

That is not just a nice touch. It is necessary.

Call recording laws vary by country and, in the United States, by state. Some states require only one party to consent, while others require all parties to be notified or give consent. In other words, the feature is convenient, but it is not a legal invisibility cloak. Users should know the rules where they live before they start archiving every awkward call with their contractor, boss, ex, or cable company.

Still, as a practical feature, this could be very useful. Apple, Google, Samsung, and others already live in the world of AI summaries, transcripts, and voice capture. Nothing is bringing part of that behavior to a $99 pair of earbuds, and that is more interesting than pretending another half millimeter of case curvature changes civilization.

Bigger Drivers and Hi-Res Audio

The Ear (3a) uses a 12mm dynamic driver, which is larger than the 11mm driver used in the older Nothing Ear (a). Nothing claims stronger bass and greater detail, along with Hi-Res Audio Wireless support and LDAC for higher bitrate Bluetooth playback on compatible Android devices.

That sounds good on paper, but the usual warning applies: LDAC is not fairy dust. A good codec can help, but it cannot rescue poor tuning, bad driver behavior, or a lousy seal. The ear tip fit will matter, and Nothing has added an extra small tip size, which is a smart move. A better seal improves bass, ANC, and perceived clarity. A bad seal makes even good earbuds sound like they were tuned inside a recycling bin.

Nothing is also including an advanced 8-band EQ through the Nothing X app, which gives users more control than the usual bass, mids, treble adjustments that are often quite coarse. For listeners who want to tune around brighter recordings, bass heavy pop, podcasts, or gym use, that could be more valuable than another vague “immersive mode” buried in an app menu.

ANC and Everyday Use

Nothing rates the Ear (3a) for up to 45 dB of active noise cancellation, with improvements across a broader frequency range. The earbuds also include transparency mode and multiple microphones for voice calls.

At $99, expectations need to remain sane. The Ear (3a) is not likely to embarrass the best ANC models from Bose, Sony, Apple, or Samsung. Those brands charge more for a reason.

But the more relevant question is whether the Ear (3a) can provide effective commuter and office noise reduction. If the ANC can take the edge off train rumble, HVAC noise, street chatter, and the guy two tables over explaining crypto to someone who clearly wants to leave, it has done its job.

The call recording feature may ultimately be more important than the ANC spec. A lot of companies can deliver acceptable ANC for under $100 now. Far fewer are offering native recording and audio capture in this price class.

Battery Life Looks Competitive

Battery life is another strong point. Nothing rates the Ear (3a) at up to 10 hours from the earbuds with ANC off and up to 42 hours total with the charging case. With ANC on, playback drops to up to 6 hours from the earbuds and up to 25 hours total with the case.

Those are very good numbers for a $99 ANC earbud, although real world use will depend on volume level, codec, ANC, multipoint, and how often users rely on recording and transcription features. LDAC usually consumes more power than SBC or AAC, and ANC always takes its cut. Bluetooth giveth, Bluetooth taketh away.

The case charges over USB-C. Unlike the more expensive Ear (3), the Ear (3a) case is not the star of the show. It is there to charge and store the earbuds, not to act like a tiny broadcast studio in your pocket; which has always felt like a feature that nobody will ever use.

Design and Colors

Nothing has not abandoned its visual identity. The Ear (3a) keeps the transparent design language that helped the brand stand out in a market full of glossy white plastic clones. The case has been rounded off compared to the previous model, and Nothing has added a small LED status matrix for battery and pairing information.

Color options include Black, White, Yellow, and Pink. The Pink finish is new, and whether that is brilliant or dangerous depends entirely on how many people in your house think earbuds are communal property.

The earbuds and case carry an IP54 rating for dust and water resistance, making them suitable for workouts, commuting, and general abuse. That does not mean you should swim with them, shower with them, or test them against the Atlantic Ocean because you once read a spec sheet too quickly.

Where the Ear (3a) Fits

The Ear (3a) lands in a slightly awkward but potentially smart place in Nothing’s lineup.

The older Nothing Ear (a) launched as the affordable option, while the Ear (3) moved into a more premium space with its Super Mic case, stronger design language, and higher price. The Ear (3a) now brings some of the recording concept down to $99, but does it through the earbuds themselves instead of relying on the case.

That makes the Ear (3a) more than just a refreshed Ear (a). It also makes the Ear (3) harder to justify for some buyers unless they specifically want the Super Mic case, more premium materials, or the higher end design treatment.

The real competition, however, is not only from Apple, Sony, Samsung, Soundcore, EarFun, and Nothing’s own CMF line. It is from consumer fatigue. Most people already own wireless earbuds. To make them upgrade, a company needs something more compelling than “now with slightly more bass and a color called Whatever Yellow.”

Audio Snapshot and call recording are at least different. That alone gives the Ear (3a) a stronger story than most budget earbud launches.

Nothing Ear (3a) Specifications:

• Colors: Black, White, Yellow, Pink
• Driver: 12mm dynamic driver
• Hi Res Audio: Yes
• Bluetooth Codec Support: LDAC, AAC, SBC
• Active Noise Cancellation: Up to 45 dB
• Transparency Mode: Yes
• Microphones: Three per earbud
• Internal Storage: 32MB total
• Audio Capture: Audio Snapshot for short media clips
• Call Recording: Supported, with approximately two hours of recording storage
• App: Nothing X
• EQ: Advanced 8 band EQ
• Bluetooth: Bluetooth 6.0
• Multipoint: Dual connection support
• Fast Pair: Supported
• Low Latency Mode: Supported
• Battery Life With ANC Off: Up to 10 hours from earbuds, up to 42 hours total with case
• Battery Life With ANC On: Up to 6 hours from earbuds, up to 25 hours total with case
• Charging: USB-C
• Water and Dust Resistance: IP54
• Ear Tip Sizes: Includes XS size

The Bottom Line

The Nothing Ear (3a) looks like one of the more interesting $99 wireless earbud launches of 2026 because it does not rely only on the usual budget ANC checklist.

The 12mm driver, LDAC, 45 dB ANC, long battery life, IP54 rating, and advanced EQ make it competitive. The Audio Snapshot and call recording features make it newsworthy.

That distinction matters.

This is not an audiophile product until someone actually listens to it properly, and nobody should confuse built-in recording with professional capture quality. But as a daily pair of affordable ANC earbuds with a useful trick that competitors will probably start copying, the Ear (3a) deserves attention.

Nothing did not reinvent wireless audio here. But it did make the $99 earbud category less boring, which is more than most of its competitors managed this week.

Where to buy: $99 at Amazon

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from the speech-laws-always-get-weaponized dept

For over a decade, a particular argument keeps resurfacing from well-meaning progressives: the rise of authoritarianism around the globe is a good reason to pass laws suppressing speech. The idea is that somehow, magically, without free speech, authoritarians and fascists would never come to power in the first place. This is historically illiterate. It’s also stupid. As we’ve argued for many, many years, speech suppressing laws are always eventually used by the powerful to suppress the speech of their critics.

The latest example comes from Mexico, where the current leadership has played up “press freedoms,” but at the same time, powerful politicians are using laws ostensibly passed to protect the marginalized… to imprison journalists instead. The New York Times piece makes the pattern concrete in a way that should be eye-opening to many.

Take, for example, the situation with politician Mara Chama Villa. She used a law that was passed to stop “gender-based political violence.” That sounds good, right? Most good folks would agree that “gender-based political violence” is bad. But in this case, Chama Villa claimed that a satirical radio skit mocking her for being a nepobaby candidate violated the law:

It started with a one-minute audio cartoon. Three siblings asked their influential father to buy them candidacies for the upcoming 2024 elections, squabbling over who got to run for which party.

The satirical spot broadcast on Radio Teocelo, the local community-run radio station that also produced the ad, did not mention names, actual political parties or locations.

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But Mara Chama Villa, who was running to represent the area in Congress with Mexico’s Ecologist Green Party — and whose father had been the mayor of Teocelo, a coffee-producing town in the state of Veracruz, the deadliest for journalists — felt targeted. She filed a complaint against Radio Teocelo and reporters from other outlets who had previously covered her failed attempt in 2021 to succeed her father as mayor.

Their coverage, she argued in legal filings reviewed by The New York Times, minimized her career and hurt her chances to win the election.

In April 2025, a federal court found five reporters guilty of gender-based political violence because they had “minimized” Ms. Chama Villa “by subordinating her to a male figure with political power,” the court said in its ruling.

The impact of being found guilty — again, for making a satirical radio spot that would be common all over the globe — was pretty massive:

The penalties were sweeping: fines exceeding a month’s salary, mandatory public apologies, the deletion of the radio spot and all denounced articles and placement on a national registry of gender-violence offenders.

Oh, and some more chilling effects, just for fun. If you criticized the ruling? Well, you got added to a follow-on legal process:

When journalists, analysts and organizations across Mexico criticized the outcome, the dispute ballooned into a nationwide case targeting about 70 people.

This is, quite obviously, the opposite of freedom of the press or freedom of speech. And I’d argue it does not do anything positive towards stopping “gender-based political violence.” It’s just become a tool for a powerful political family to punish journalists who produced a bit of satire.

And this isn’t a one-off, as the Times highlights other cases using the same law to target activists as well:

Earlier this year, a court sanctioned Miguel Alfonso Meza, an anti-corruption activist, for gender-based political violence against Silvia Delgado, a lawyer who represented the notorious drug lord Joaquín Guzmán Loera, best known as El Chapo. Mr. Meza had called her a “narco lawyer” when questioning her candidacy for a criminal judgeship in Mexico’s first-ever judicial election.

When the court later partly revoked the penalties on Mr. Meza, Ms. Delgado said that she would appeal that ruling. Her goal, she added in an interview, was “not to silence anyone, but to fight for dignity.”

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“By describing my candidacy as highly dangerous and comparing me to other candidates investigated for drug trafficking,” she said, “he unleashed excessive attacks against me.”

The article also describes a crime reporter who was accused of “terrorism” because his reporting on local drug cartels “caused public panic” leading him to being dragged from his car and arrested (he thought he was being kidnapped). He now admits that he’s stopped chasing stories he used to chase.

The chilling effects in such a system are unavoidable.

Mexican politicians can defend these laws all they like. No one supports gender-based political violence or terrorism — and that’s exactly what makes the laws so useful to the people abusing them. A law nobody can be seen opposing is a law nobody can stop. And so a community radio station gets fined a month’s salary over a one-minute cartoon, an anti-corruption activist gets sanctioned for calling El Chapo’s lawyer a “narco lawyer,” and a crime reporter stops chasing the stories that made him a crime reporter.

This is how it always goes. Every time you hand the state a tool to punish “bad” speech, the people who end up wielding it are whoever holds power — and they get to decide what counts as “bad.”

If that still sounds like a worthwhile trade — speech restrictions now to keep the fascists out later — consider that we ran this exact experiment a century ago. Weimar Germany had hate speech laws. Prosecutors used them against Nazis, including Julius Streicher, the publisher of Der Stürmer, who was convicted and jailed more than once for incitement against Jews. The laws did not stop the Nazis. Indeed, the Nazis used these prosecutions as yet more “evidence” that they were being prosecuted for their beliefs. Then, the Nazis took power, inherited those very tools, and turned them on everyone else. Streicher walked out of the courtroom a martyr and into the Reichstag. The speech laws meant to stop authoritarians became the authoritarians’ speech laws.

So here’s the only test that matters before you back a law like this: imagine the politician you distrust the most holding the pen. Because eventually, they will. And anyone who answers “with this law on the books, they’ll never get into power” is indulging in childishly naive wishful thinking — the same wish that has been losing to authoritarians for as long as there have been authoritarians.

You don’t keep bad people from power by handing the office a weapon and hoping good people get there first. You keep them out with stronger elections, stronger institutions, and an educated public that can see through them.

Not by deciding which speech to outlaw — and then praying you’re always the one holding the pen.

Filed Under: free press, free speech, gender-based political violence, mara chama villa, mexico

Companies: radio teocelo

Level Infinite has opened pre-registrations for Gangstar Mirage City, the newest game in Gameloft’s long-running Gangstar series. Indian players can now enroll on the official website before the game’s soft launch in August 2026. Players who register for the game will receive rewards upon its release. There will be mission stories and open-world gameplay. According to the developer, player choices will influence certain missions and gameplay events.

Key Features the Game Offers

Gangstar Mirage City brings together open-world exploration, racing, and action in a single experience. In addition to story missions, players can explore different parts of the city, collect vehicles, and compete in street races. The game also includes cooperative heists, allowing friends to complete missions together.

Building a criminal empire is yet another important aspect of the game. Capturing territories can help players enhance their influence and generate revenue. They can also personalize their weapons and vehicles according to the requirements of specific missions and fights. If you are one of those people who like competitive gaming, you can join the team fights, vehicle fights, last-man-standing games, and PvP-based objective games. The developers have also confirmed that more arenas and multiplayer content will arrive in future updates.

Pre-Registration Rewards

Players who have already signed up for Gangstar Mirage City can participate in the Global Vault Heist campaign, scheduled prior to the game’s soft launch. This campaign offers rewards available only to early participants. More rewards will become available to those who are signed up for the event as more people sign up. Participants can also invite up to three friends to join the campaign. Each successful invitation unlocks extra bonuses, allowing groups to start the game with additional rewards when the soft launch begins.

The pre-registration campaign also lets players join one of four in-game factions before launch. Each group has its own background and role in the game’s world. The Family focuses on power and influence, while O-Rage represents a more rebellious approach. The Ghosts are known for underground street racing, whereas Jersey Boyz control the city’s supply chain. Choosing a faction also unlocks a unique avatar reward for launch.

Languages and Availability

Gangstar Mirage City will begin its soft launch on August 20, 2026, and will be available on Android and iOS. There will be nine language options in the game, allowing gamers from various regions to play in their preferred language. Those interested can already complete the pre-registration process through the official website.

from the make-up-your-mind dept

For a while there, you might remember how giant telecom monopolies, running out of new subscribers, all decided to get into the media business. But because terrible telecom monopoly executives can’t innovate and generally don’t know how competition works, it never really goes that well.

The various Yahoo/Tumblr/Verizon/AOL exploits were a legendary mess, only outshined by AT&T’s disastrous mergers with DirecTV and Warner Brothers. Then there’s the Comcast NBC Universal tie up (Peacock saw a $432 million loss in the first quarter), which now appears on the cusp of being unwound after seeing its stock drop 54% in the past five years.

Last week, Comcast execs stated they’re now formally unwinding NBC Universal from the Comcast telecom properties. Comcast CEO Mike Cavanagh says the company simply “changed its mind” about being a monolithic giant that dominates both media and physical internet access:

“We’ve simply now changed our mind. We’ve now concluded that future success for each of our businesses will depend on focus, speed and strategic flexibility that this separation will unlock. This is the right move to put each company in the strongest position to create value, fully monetize its assets, and aggressively pursue its own organic growth strategies.”

Yadda yadda yadda.

Comcast had already spun off its cable TV network portfolio (except for Bravo) into a new company named Versant Media earlier this year. Comcast executives insist that they’re “definitely not” looking to sell NBC Universal off as part of the broader U.S. media merger madness, but amusingly nobody inside or outside of Kabletown believes them:

“The collective eye roll [on management’s denial] was almost audible,” former NBC Studios president Tom Nunan told TheWrap. “I thought that their recent effort to go after Warner’s was a sign that there was still gas in the tank, that they really still wanted to be among the big media players left standing. When that didn’t work out, they suddenly go, in my view, from a buyer to a seller.”

Unsaid by the trade mag coverage is that telecom giants routinely demonstrate they have absolutely no idea what they’re doing when it comes to Hollywood and content. They’re endlessly just chasing their own tail and shuffling the cards around in the hunt for the next merger, tax break, or giant executive compensation package. None of these deals work out, because the kind of execs birthed in the bowels of telecom monopolization aren’t really competent or competitively/innovatively battle tested.

Normally Wall Street rewards this kind of mindless consolidation chasing by men out of original ideas, but both ends of Comcast’s business are facing headwinds. On one side traditional broadcast TV is dying and Peacock requires a ton of money to remain competitive; on the other Comcast’s steadily losing broadband subscribers due to increased competition from cheaper 5G wireless or community-owned fiber.

Selling the whole thing was likely too much for any suitor to chew. Splitting off NBC Universal makes it a more digestible target for Netflix, Amazon, Disney, or Apple, leaving traditional Comcast time to focus on its core agenda: buying up smaller telecom companies and dismantling U.S. broadband competition.

Comcast’s problem is NBC’s journalism has historically made our mad idiot king cry, so they’ll have to be extra fawning and subservient to gain favor from the administration’s fake antitrust regulators.

Filed Under: cable, consolidation, kabletown, media, mergers, monopoly, streaming, telecom, video

Companies: comcast, nbc, nbc universal

The organisation also announced it is actively expanding the robotics team and is looking to recruit talented research scientists and engineers.

France’s Mistral AI has announced the launch of a new robotics navigation model, as the company further expands in the physical AI space, following deals with a number of key players in Europe’s industrial and manufacturing sector, such as Airbus SE and BMW. 

The new 8B model, Robostral Navigate, allows robots to autonomously move around in complex environments via a single RGB camera and basic language prompts. Combining pointing-based navigation with continuous learning elements, the hardware is also agnostic meaning it can be deployed across any robotics fleet. 

Mistral claims that the model, prompted by a single instruction, can complete the entire task on its own, moving through a live space full of people and obstacles it was never shown, adapting to any setting. Spaces in which it can be used includes offices, residential and commercial buildings and outdoor settings.

In a post announcing the launch, Mistral said, “We leverage our knowledge of post-training LLMs at scale, using online reinforcement learning, to boost the performance of Robostral Navigate. After the supervised training stage, we further improve the model’s performance using CISPO, an online reinforcement learning algorithm. 

“This enables the model to learn from trial and error, recover from failures, and acquire exploratory behaviours, effectively mitigating the distribution shift issue of vanilla behaviour cloning. This alone improved the success rate by 3.2pc. We are not seeing any plateauing, so we are confident that more training and more experiments will continue to push this number up.”

A leader in Europe’s AI space, Mistral is also positioned as a key rival for US counterparts, such as Anthropic and OpenAI. In March of this year, the company raised $830m in its first debt financing, with the intention of funding a new data centre near Paris.

It was announced that the deal, which was supported by a consortium of seven global banks, would pay for Nvidia Grace Blackwell infrastructure with 13,800 Nvidia GB300 GPUs at the “cutting-edge” centre, bringing powered capacity to 44MW.

Previously commenting, Arthur Mensch, the CEO of Mistral AI, said, “Scaling our infrastructure in Europe is critical to empower our customers and to ensure AI innovation and autonomy remain at the heart of Europe.”

Mistral is also looking to recruit, with plans to expand the robotics team. Currently it is aiming to hire additional research scientists and engineers.

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Early talks have already taken place between the BBC and Channel 4.