After experiencing temporary hearing loss in my left ear, I became committed to protecting my hearing. Even though losing my hearing for a few weeks was caused by eustachian tube dysfunction — when the tube connecting the middle ear to the back of the nose no longer functions properly — I began to wonder about what else can negatively impact our ears.

While researching ear health tips, I discovered that a common piece of technology, my earbuds, could have contributed to my hearing issues. To find out more, I spoke to audiologists, health care providers who diagnose and treat hearing, balance and or ear disorders. This is what they taught me.

The hearing and ear health risks earbuds can pose

Earbuds can pose a few risks, according to Dr. Ruth Reisman, a licensed audiologist and New York hearing aid dispenser. They can trap heat and moisture in the ear, increasing the risk of ear infections. With repeated use, earbuds can also push earwax deeper into the ear, leading to buildup or impaction. Plus, if your earbuds don’t fit correctly or you wear them for long periods, they can cause irritation or soreness in your ear canal. 

“Earbuds sit directly in the ear canal, which can increase several risks. The biggest concern is noise-induced hearing loss if volume is too high or listening time is too long,” said Reisman. “I have witnessed all of these problems in the course of my 15 years as an audiologist.”

When you listen to content at high volume, particularly for an extended period, Dan Troast, an audiologist at HearUSA, explains that it can permanently damage the delicate hair cells in your inner ear. Earbud use combined with high volume can cause:

• Noise-induced hearing loss
• Tinnitus (ringing, buzzing or hissing in the ears)
• Sound sensitivity over time

Misusing earbuds is also common. If they don’t have noise cancellation, you might repeatedly turn up the volume to avoid hearing background noise, which can put you in an unsafe listening range fast. However, even listening at a moderate volume can become a problem if you do so for hours each day. 

“Early signs of overexposure include temporary muffled hearing or ringing after listening sessions — both are warning signals from the auditory system,” Troast said. Even if you periodically experience temporary ringing in your ears, it can ultimately increase your risk of developing chronic tinnitus. 

Earbuds and radiation

In my search for ear health tips, I came across several articles discussing whether wireless Bluetooth earbuds can cause harm through radiation. I asked Reisman if this is true. 

“Current scientific evidence doesn’t show that the energy from Bluetooth earbuds causes harm,” she said. “These devices emit far less radiation than cell phones and remain well below established safety limits. From an audiology standpoint, sound exposure is a far greater risk than radiation.”

Follow the 60/60 rule when using earbuds

Both Reisman and Troast recommend the “60/60 rule” to people who wear earbuds. The 60/60 rule means you listen at no more than 60% of the maximum volume for no more than 60 minutes at a time. 

“Daily use is fine if the volume stays safe and ears are given time to rest,” Reisman advises. “I usually tell patients to take a 15- to 20-minute break for every hour of use.”

If you haven’t already, Troast recommends checking whether your devices have built-in hearing health settings that automatically monitor volume exposure. For instance, on your iPhone, Apple Watch or iPad, you can set up headphone notifications to alert you to lower the volume when you’ve reached the seven-day audio exposure limit (such as 80 decibels for 40 hours over seven days). Or, you can activate the Reduce Loud Audio feature to have your headphone volume automatically lowered once it exceeds your set decibel level.

Safer headphones for your ears

Over-the-ear headphones are generally safer, according to Reisman, because they sit outside the ear canal and don’t concentrate sound as directly on the eardrum. Since they aren’t in the ear canal like earbuds, they’re also less likely to cause irritation or earwax buildup. 

“Over-the-ear headphones can be safer — if they allow for lower listening volumes,” said Troast. “Even better are noise-canceling headphones, which reduce background noise, so listeners don’t feel the need to crank up the volume.” Just make sure you’re still aware of your surroundings, especially if you’re outdoors near traffic. 

Open earbuds could also be a safer option. They use bone-conduction technology, which transmits sound through the earbones and the skull rather than directly to the eardrum. “Several headphone companies claim open earbuds are better for your hearing health and are more hygienic,” said David Carnoy, CNET’s resident headphone expert. 

Since open earbuds don’t sit inside or cover the ear:

• Warmth and moisture, like sweat, won’t build up, which can cause ear infections. 
• Debris, such as dust, won’t transfer from the earbuds into the ear. 
• They won’t push earwax deeper in your ear, which can lead to impaction. 
• Don’t rub or press on the ear canal, reducing discomfort or irritation.

However, if you listen to content at high volumes, no headphone style is completely safe. What matters most for your ear and hearing health is total sound exposure over time, so make sure you’re monitoring your volume level and giving your ears breaks. 

Expert earbud tips

If earbuds are your preferred headphone type for listening to your favorite music, shows and podcasts, Troast offers the following tips from an audiology perspective:

• Use built-in volume limit settings on smartphones.
• Choose noise-canceling earbuds or headphones to avoid increasing volume in loud environments.
• Take regular listening breaks.
• Avoid sleeping in earbuds.
• Get a baseline hearing test, especially if you use earbuds daily.

If you’re already experiencing tinnitus, it’s especially important that you manage your volume level to prevent it from worsening. 

Carnoy adds that there have also been instances of people being allergic to the materials used for earbud tips. If you have a known allergy, make sure your earbuds don’t use that material, or replace the tips. If you do have an allergic reaction, stop using the earbud tips until you can find a substitute. 

Lastly, Reisman advises keeping your earbuds clean, avoiding sharing them and ensuring they fit properly. Most earbuds come with tips in different sizes, so you can find the right fit for your ear size.

When to see an audiologist or doctor for hearing issues

If you experience ringing in the ears, muffled hearing, ear pain or frequent infections, Reisman recommends you consider an evaluation with an audiologist. 

You’ll also want to pay attention to early warning signs of inner ear damage from noise exposure, such as ringing in the ears, difficulty hearing or needing to turn up the volume over time.

If you’re already experiencing hearing loss, Troast said that addressing it with hearing aids can provide relief. Tinnitus, on the other hand, can be treated with evidence-based approaches such as sound therapy or specific counseling strategies. 

“Hearing damage is gradual and cumulative,” Reisman said, “but it’s also largely preventable with smart and healthy listening habits.” And that includes using your headphones — or, in my case, earbuds — responsibly. 

Strands is the NYT’s latest word game after the likes of Wordle, Spelling Bee and Connections – and it’s great fun. It can be difficult, though, so read on for my Strands hints.

Want more word-based fun? Then check out my NYT Connections today and Quordle today pages for hints and answers for those games, and Marc’s Wordle today page for the original viral word game.

Spoiler for the very first thing you see in the upcoming game Saros: It’s a bunch of words. The letters type out one by one onto the screen, spelling out some world-building that gives context to kick off the game’s story. I don’t remember what any of it said, because I was so focused on the tactile vibrations coming from the controller in my hands. There is a sharp haptic buzz for every letter, and it immediately feels very clicky-clacky. From the very beginning, Saros makes its intentions clear—this is a story you’ve got to feel.

Since the launch of the PlayStation 5, Sony’s DualSense controllers have enabled haptic feedback that developers can use to make the controller vibrate in just the right way to communicate the feel of what is happening on the screen. Maybe it’s letters typing across the screen, little patters of rainfall, or a big rumble when shooting a gun or whacking something with a melee weapon. Adaptive triggers add resistance to the main triggers, meaning the difference between feathering the trigger and pulling it all the way down is very apparent.

Saros, launching on April 30, is developed by Housemarque, a Finnish studio owned by Sony. It has been here before, when it released the highly regarded PlayStation 5 game Returnal in 2021. That game, as a launch title for the console, aimed to make use of all the new technology Sony was offering with its hardware, especially the haptic and adaptive features in the DualSense controller. Gregory Louden, the creative director at Housemarque who has helmed development on both games, says both titles came with an added bit of pressure to show off what the console could do.

“Back when we started Returnal, we almost felt a responsibility—because we were a launch window title for PlayStation 5—what can you do with this hardware?” Louden tells WIRED. “In a lot of ways, we’re doing it for our players, but also doing it for the medium to try to inspire others.”

As it did with Returnal, Housemarque has developed its newest game to take full advantage of the PlayStation 5’s DualSense controllers. It also uses 3D audio features to make the world feel more lively. Returnal and Saros came out on the same hardware, but Louden says it all gels even more now than ever.

“We’ve really pushed the graphics and pushed the hardware,“ Louden says. “We wanted to do something even better for players and really make the most of the DualSense.”

From the few hours I’ve spent with it, Saros feels quite excellent to play. It is a dark sci-fi roguelike where you mow down dozens of hostile aliens in a barrage of frenetic, tactile gameplay. The battles feel especially palpable because everything onscreen translates to what you feel in the controller. The obvious moves are replicating the feel of shooting a weapon or feeling the reverberations when the enemies’ bullets and explosives crash into your shield. But Housemarque has also deployed haptics in more careful, subtler ways, like during cinematics, where a steady haptic pulse helps make the onscreen characters’ tension and anger more visceral.

BYD may be known for its affordable all-electric cars, but that doesn’t mean it won’t dabble in the occasional hypercar under one of its subsidiary brands. Through its Denza subbrand, BYD unveiled the Denza Z, a hypercar that can push out more than 1,000 horsepower with an all-electric motor, at the Beijing Auto Show. According to CarNewsChina, the Denza A can hit 0 to 60 mph in less than two seconds, rivaling the likes of the Rimac Nivera.

BYD first showed off the Denza Z as a concept during the Shanghai Auto Show in 2025. A year later, the Chinese EV maker confirmed its latest hypercar as a four-seater that will come in hard-top, convertible and “track” configurations. BYD hasn’t revealed the Denza Z’s full specs yet, so we’re not sure what differentiates the track edition. So far, the company has shared that it would use the company’s intelligent suspension system called DiSus-M, which is similar to Chevrolet Corvette’s Magnetic Ride Control, and its Flash Charging system. BYD also told AutoExpress that the Denza Z will have some of the features seen with the BYD’s YangWang U9, like autonomous driving and “tank turning.”

Surprisingly, BYD is planning to release the Denza Z to Europe first, with an inaugural ride at the Goodwood Festival of Speed in the UK in July. The automaker hasn’t revealed pricing yet, but it should be more available than BYD’s other hypercar under its YangWang subsidiary that’s limited to 30 units.

China’s Ministry of Commerce warned on Friday that US legislation advancing through Congress would “severely disrupt the international economic and trade order and seriously undermine the stability of the global semiconductor industry chain and supply chain.” The legislation in question is the MATCH Act, the Multilateral Alignment of Technology Controls on Hardware, which passed the House Foreign Affairs Committee on April 22 as part of what lawmakers described as the largest markup on semiconductor export controls in congressional history. The bill would require the Netherlands and Japan to align their chip equipment export restrictions with American rules within 150 days or face unilateral US enforcement, including an expanded Foreign Direct Product Rule that would give Washington jurisdiction over equipment containing any American technology, regardless of where it was manufactured. If enacted, the MATCH Act would cut off China’s access to the DUV immersion lithography machines that ASML still sells there and ban the servicing of machines already installed, a step that would affect every advanced and near-advanced fab in the country.

The markup

The House Foreign Affairs Committee advanced more than 20 export control bills on April 22, chaired by Representative Brian Mast. The MATCH Act, introduced by Representative Michael Baumgartner on April 2, has bipartisan support in both chambers. Senators Jim Risch, Pete Ricketts, Andy Kim, and Chuck Schumer introduced the Senate companion on April 8. The bill names SMIC, Huawei, Hua Hong, CXMT, and YMTC as “covered facilities,” including all subsidiaries and affiliates, and would prohibit the export of DUV immersion lithography equipment to any of them. It would also ban allied firms from providing engineering services to maintain or upgrade machines already operating in Chinese fabs, a servicing restriction that would degrade existing capacity over time as machines require regular maintenance to sustain yield.

The committee also advanced the Chip Security Act, which would require advanced chips to include location verification mechanisms before export so that exporters can flag the government if a chip reaches an unauthorised destination. The Semiconductor Industry Association opposes this provision, warning of “untested and potentially infeasible on-chip mechanisms” that could undermine global trust in American semiconductors. The ECRA Penalty Increase Act would quadruple civil penalties for export violations, raising the per-violation ceiling from $300,000 to $1.2 million. The ECRA Statute of Limitations Extension Act would double the window for prosecution from five to ten years. The Deterring American AI Model Theft Act would authorise sanctions on Chinese AI firms accused of misusing US-developed models. Smuggling $2.5 billion of Nvidia servers to China, as Super Micro Computer’s co-founder is alleged to have done through a diversion scheme routed via Southeast Asia, demonstrates both the scale of demand for restricted chips and the limits of an enforcement regime that relies on declared end-use and corporate compliance teams.

The escalation

The MATCH Act would be the most significant escalation in US semiconductor export controls since the initial restrictions imposed in October 2022. Those rules prohibited the export of advanced computing chips and chipmaking equipment to China. They were updated in October 2023 to close loopholes, expanded in December 2024 to cover high-bandwidth memory and additional equipment, and supplemented in January 2026 when the Trump administration imposed a 25% Section 232 tariff on advanced semiconductor imports and shifted the export review policy for Nvidia’s H200 and AMD’s MI325X from presumption of denial to case-by-case evaluation. Blackwell-class chips remain under presumption of denial. The January 2026 changes were partly a response to pressure from Nvidia, whose CEO Jensen Huang had dinner with Trump at Mar-a-Lago and argued that overly restrictive controls would push Chinese AI labs toward domestic alternatives. DeepSeek optimising AI models for Huawei chips instead of Nvidia hardware is, in Huang’s words, “a horrible outcome” for the United States, because it would break the software dependency on Nvidia’s CUDA ecosystem that currently gives American chips their lock-in advantage.

The MATCH Act moves in the opposite direction from the January relaxation. Where the executive branch loosened restrictions on finished chips, Congress is tightening restrictions on the equipment used to make them. The logic is that controlling equipment is more effective than controlling chips because a lithography machine is a $200 million tool that requires years of servicing by the manufacturer, while a chip is a commodity that can be rerouted through intermediaries. ASML, the sole manufacturer of both EUV and the most advanced DUV immersion lithography systems, has seen its shares fall since the bill’s introduction. China accounted for 33% of ASML’s 2025 revenue. The company expects that share to drop to approximately 20% in 2026 even without the MATCH Act. If the bill passes, the decline would be far steeper. Applied Materials projects $600 million to $710 million in lost China revenue for fiscal 2026. Lam Research reported that China still accounted for 43% of its Q1 fiscal 2026 revenue, $2.28 billion, but expects that share to fall below 30% this year.

The response

China’s countermeasures are already extensive. Beijing imposed export bans on gallium, germanium, and antimony in December 2024, suspended them in November 2025 for one year but retained licensing requirements. It restricted exports of seven medium and heavy rare earths, including terbium, dysprosium, and yttrium, in April 2025, then partially suspended those restrictions in November 2025. It announced silver export controls on December 31, 2025. On April 7, 2026, the State Council published Order No. 834, the “Regulations on Industrial and Supply Chain Security,” which creates a unified legal framework monitored by more than 15 agencies, including MOFCOM and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, authorising legal action against companies deemed to be harming China’s supply chains. China has mandated that domestic chipmakers procure 50% of their equipment from Chinese suppliers, a requirement that threatens an estimated $18 billion in annual US equipment sales. The MOFCOM statement on Friday said China would “resolutely take necessary measures to firmly safeguard the legitimate and lawful rights and interests of Chinese enterprises.” No specific new retaliatory measures were announced, but the regulatory architecture for them is now in place.

The supply chain consequences extend well beyond the two principal combatants. Japan, whose Tokyo Electron, Nikon, Canon, Screen Holdings, and Advantest all sell equipment to Chinese fabs, already implemented controls on 23 types of equipment in July 2023. The MATCH Act would require Japan to expand those restrictions within 150 days or lose access to American technology in its own supply chain. The Netherlands faces the same deadline. South Korea’s memory giants, SK Hynix and Samsung, operate fabs in China that depend on equipment servicing from the companies the MATCH Act would restrict. The EU’s 700 million euro investment in its NanoIC semiconductor pilot line at imec in Leuven, backed by ASML and national governments, reflects Europe’s assessment that the chip supply chain is fragmenting and that building domestic capacity is no longer optional.

The race

China’s semiconductor industry has made genuine progress under pressure. SMIC is producing 7-nanometre chips for Huawei’s Kirin processors and is working to double 7nm capacity in 2026. It has entered pilot runs at 5nm, targeting mass production for Huawei and Alibaba, though yield improvement remains the critical challenge. CXMT is mass-producing DDR5 and LPDDR5 memory and is targeting HBM3 production, though the timeline has slipped and mass production within 2026 now appears unlikely. YMTC is expanding NAND flash output and developing HBM packaging technologies. Huawei is reportedly preparing to send a 3nm chip design using carbon nanotubes and 2D materials to SMIC, an unconventional approach that has not been independently confirmed with technical detail. China’s semiconductor self-sufficiency rate was approximately 33% in 2024 and is estimated at roughly 50% in 2025. The new target, embedded in the 15th Five-Year Plan, is 80% by 2030, with priorities including a fully domestic 7nm equipment line and stable 14nm production. Tom’s Hardware assessed that China remains “still a decade behind, despite hundreds of billions spent and significant progress.”

The United States is pursuing the inverse strategy: restricting China’s access to equipment while building domestic manufacturing capacity at unprecedented scale. The US government’s $36 billion stake in Intel under the CHIPS Act, converted from grants to equity, funds fab construction in Ohio and Arizona. Intel’s foundry partnership with Musk’s $25 billion Terafab chip megaproject adds another advanced manufacturing facility. TSMC is building fabs in Arizona. Samsung is expanding in Texas. The theory is that export controls buy time for domestic capacity to come online, at which point the United States can supply its own advanced chips and those of its allies without depending on a supply chain that runs through a geopolitical adversary. The problem is that the timeline for building fabs is measured in years, the timeline for Congressional legislation is measured in months, and the timeline for retaliatory export restrictions on rare earths and critical minerals is measured in days. China’s warning on Friday was not that the MATCH Act would fail to restrict its chip industry. It was that the disruption would not be confined to China. When both sides of a supply chain use restriction as a weapon, the chain does not hold. It fragments, and everyone pays the cost of rebuilding separate ones.

In the last few years, drone cameras have become ever more accessible to the point where they are no longer a specialist’s device. While there are still plenty of options for professionals who need top-of-the-line specs for film and TV productions, budding content creators can get their hands on drones with a simplified UI that’s easy to get to grips with. Whatever your background, we’re here to help with our round-up of the best drones to buy.

For anyone who’s thinking about buying their very first drone, know that the big allure of these devices is their ability to capture stunning cinematic shots of wide open vistas, and to follow subjects/objects from above as they move through an environment. Once upon a time, such a shot was only really possible via a crane or helicopter, but now drones have taken charge as they’re much easier to manoeuvre and set up.

As drone cameras have only grown in popularity, there’s now more choice than ever but that does mean that in order to get paired up with the one that’s right for you, it helps to make a list beforehand of your must-have features. For instance, if you plan on jumping between multiple locations in a day then portability is key, whilst those who are shooting at a professional level and are likely to stay in one location for a while will know that a high-end resolution is essential.

Bear in mind that there are also several legalities to consider when it comes to drone ownership. In the UK, any drone weighing over 250g can only be flown by a registered operator. Anything less than that will require you to get an official Flyer ID, so it’s best to check the official government advice before deciding on which drone to buy.

Once you’re all caught up on the advice and have a solid idea of the features you want the most, our guide can help you with your purchase to make your money go even further. Of course, there’s always a chance that you might be better served by a different type of camera or equipment. For smooth, stable footage, the best smartphone gimbals can get the job done brilliantly, whilst the best action cameras are ideal for fast-paced scenes.

Best drones at a glance

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