Memorizing all of the past Wordle answers is nearly impossible – after all, there have now been more than 1,100 of them. But knowing what’s gone before is important, because Wordle answers don’t repeat – so you could easily be wasting guesses.

What you need then, is a list of past Wordle answers, and that’s what I’ve made for you here. It’s organized by month and you can simply search the page to see whether the word you’re thinking of has already been used.

On today’s You Asked: A new segment pitting me against ChatGPT. What should you prioritize when upgrading your A/V system? What happens if you send a Dolby Pro Logic signal to a modem receiver or soundbar? How to banish gremlins in your A/V system. And another Amazon Prime Day is coming up: What’s at the top of my list to buy and how can you save money on things that matter?

To upgrade or not upgrade (my A/V system)? That is the question

Dipam Patel, who writes in from the U.K., wants some guidance on what to upgrade first in their A/V system. Dipam says they have an 83-inch G4 with bias lighting, a Denon X3400H receiver, and a bunch of Dali speakers: Oberon 7, Center Vokal, Alteco C1 Atmos speakers, and an e12F subwoofer. After going to a local hi-fi show and hearing about systems costing upward of half a million quid, they now want to upgrade their system. They are wondering what to upgrade first — amp or speakers — and which item and in which order. 

I feel like I know where you’re at right now. You heard those incredible, expensive systems, and now that you’ve experienced them first-hand, you realize that you want to get closer to that sound, but without going broke in the process.

My advice is to not start with replacing any of your gear — not just yet. I have not heard the Dali speakers you have, but by reputation I know Dali makes good stuff. That Denon receiver is about seven years old now, but it was at the upper end of its midrange receiver line and is no slouch of an amp.

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The first thing I would do? Tweak what you’ve got to get the most out of it. And that means upgrading your room, if you can.

The acoustic nature of your room and how you have all this stuff set up has a much bigger impact on the sound and experience you get than from any of the gear you have. You have quality gear, which has its own limitations. But I suspect that your room and maybe some of your receiver settings and speaker placements are preventing you from hearing the full potential of your gear.

Now, I understand that most folks don’t have dedicated media rooms where they can put speakers wherever they want and throw anything they want up anywhere on the walls. Also, there might be others in the home who have something to say about it. I do understand if this isn’t possible for you. But the first thing I would do is look at your speaker placement.

Do you have those towers less than 6 inches from the back wall? Pull them out. Is your subwoofer wedged in a corner? There’s almost certainly a better place for it. Is everything in your receiver set up for the best sound? I bet adjusting some crossover points and speaker levels could do wonders. Also, did you run Audyssey XT auto-setup on that receiver? If so, turn it off. Do a manual setup using a DB meter to set channel levels and your knowledge of your speakers’ roll-off points for the crossover levels. Just ditching the auto-EQ can make a world of difference. And that auto-EQ can’t fix first reflections. So if you have bare walls to the left and right of your towers, just putting something there to absorb the sound where it bounces off will make a big difference as well.

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And if you don’t know how to do this stuff and don’t have the time to research? Learn and do the work, or consider hiring someone who can.

Again, I understand that you may be limited in what you can change. But optimize what you can first. Because I’m here to tell you that pouring more money into new components is not going to be the magic bullet. What’s holding your current system back will also be holding your new system back, too. If you can never drive your car faster than 35 miles per on anything other than a straight road, then upgrading from a Ford Fiesta to a Lexus may get you there in more style, but you’re not likely to experience much of the performance boost that’s available. See what I mean?

But, if you do want to get new gear, I’d start by upgrading your receiver to something with more power or, more to the point, headroom. You can unlock a lot more performance from your speakers with a new amp. I don’t think new speakers are going to unlock anything from the Denon that you aren’t already getting.

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Can all new soundbars still decode Pro Logic?

Vinnie from Melbourne, Australia, writes: I just love sitting down and watching old movies on LaserDisc and recently I purchased a Samsung Q990C. What is the best audio setting on the Q990C to receive the old Dolby Pro Logic format – because these movies are in the Dolby Pro Logic format. Can all new soundbars still decode Pro Logic?

OK, first off, Vinnie, I love that, too. No, the resolution on LaserDisc isn’t great, but … I still love it! I have a collection of LaserDiscs from back when that was the format. (My LaserDisc player is currently eating discs so I need to fix or replace it.)

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To answer your question, I’d like to introduce a new ongoing segment to the You Asked show, which I am, for now, calling “Me vs. ChatGPT.” This is where we ask ChatGPT a viewer question and compare that to the answer I provide.

So, ChatGPT, “Does the Samsung Q990C support Dolby Pro Logic?”

ChatGPT says:

Newer soundbars like the Samsung Q990C are designed to handle more modern audio formats, but they can still process older formats like Dolby Pro Logic through upmixing and audio processing.

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Dolby Pro Logic is an older analog surround sound format, and while most new soundbars don’t explicitly advertise support for it, they can often decode the stereo signal and use their own technology to simulate surround sound. The Q990C doesn’t natively decode Dolby Pro Logic, but it will likely treat the Pro Logic signal as stereo and upmix it to its multi-channel speakers.

Here are some tips to get the best audio experience when watching LaserDisc movies with Dolby Pro Logic:

Best Audio Settings on Samsung Q990C for Dolby Pro Logic Content:

1. Set Sound Mode to Adaptive Sound:
   Adaptive Sound mode is designed to analyze the audio in real-time and optimize it for the soundbar’s configuration. It’s a good choice for getting the most out of older formats like Pro Logic because it enhances dialogue and can intelligently upmix audio into a surround-like experience.
2. Upmixing with Surround Sound Mode:
   You can also try the Surround Sound mode, which will push the stereo signal to all speakers in the soundbar system, creating a more enveloping sound stage. This will simulate the Pro Logic surround effect, although it’s not the exact same processing.
3. Standard Sound Mode:
   If you want to preserve the original stereo or Pro Logic-like effect without too much processing, you can choose the Standard sound mode. This mode aims to reproduce the audio without too much alteration, though it will still use all the soundbar’s speakers.

Can New Soundbars Decode Pro Logic?

No, most new soundbars, including the Samsung Q990C, don’t explicitly decode Dolby Pro Logic because it’s considered outdated. They rely on upmixing technologies to simulate surround sound from older stereo or analog formats like Pro Logic. In most cases, the soundbar will interpret the Pro Logic signal as stereo and enhance it using its own processing.

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If you’re looking for an experience similar to Dolby Pro Logic, the soundbar will still deliver an impressive surround sound effect using its modern processing, even if it doesn’t support the exact decoding of that format.

Caleb says:

Wow, I don’t have a ton to add to that other than some context. ChatGPT did pretty well on this one. But I don’t think I’m out of a job yet.

I’d add this: So, Dolby Pro Logic is a decoding technology that takes a soundtrack encoded with Dolby Surround and extracts four channels of surround from it: front left and right, center, and surround. In Pro Logic you get mono surround, meaning both surround speakers play the same sounds. Pro Logic II gave you stereo surrounds. Many LaserDiscs are encoded with Dolby AC-3, which was the precursor to Dolby Digital.

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Now, the Q990C doesn’t have a Pro Logic decoder, but it can still process the digital audio signal that a Pro Logic decoder would. Like ChatGPT says, though, it is likely to upmix the sound to include stereo effects for the surround speakers and it is going to add sounds to pump into the up-firing Atmos speakers as well.

To get the best sound, make sure your LaserDisc player is outputting a digital audio bitstream through the optical output. And then, as ChatGPT said, you can experiment with the various sound modes to see which one you like best. If you want to stick to the original experience, then Standard Sound Mode is probably the best call.

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Soundbar turns on randomly

Stan writes: I’ve had the Samsung Q950a soundbar surround for about two years now, and something started occurring recently — I guess after a firmware update. It randomly turns on a few times throughout the day. Whether I’m streaming YouTube, Netflix, or anything like that, the soundbar, which is turned off, suddenly turns on, switching the TV audio to the soundbar audio. I have it plugged into an eARC port if that helps, but the thing is, it only started doing this quite recently. I’ve scoured the internet for solutions but nothing much on it. I’d very much appreciate any help or tips you may have. 

I’m sorry you’re having this problem. I can only guess here, but if the issue started after a firmware update, there is probably an unintentional consequence of something that was changed to how the soundbar operates. I suspect that the soundbar is turning on because an HDMI CEC trigger signal — short for consumer electronics control — is telling the TV that it is present and the TV is responding with, “Right, sure, we’ll send sound there instead of the internal speakers!”

It could be tied to Samsung’s implementation of Q-Symphony sound, but you didn’t mention the TV make or model.

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Go into your TV and find the setting for HDMI CEC and turn it off. Now, that means that you won’t be able to control some features of the TV with your soundbar remote and vice versa, but if the issue is related to HDMI CEC messages, then turning off that feature in the TV should put a stop to it — and you’ll just have to manually turn on and adjust the volume of the soundbar with your soundbar remote. Should you have to do this? No. But since it is a bug that will need to be reported to Samsung, and hopefully fixed in a future update, this is the only way I know to stop the issue until that time arrives — assuming it does get fixed at some point.

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Best bets on Amazon Prime Day?

Finally, folks, we have another Amazon Prime Day coming. Did you know? I suppose if, like me, you use the Amazon Prime app, then you’ve seen this message every time you load it up and you are already aware. It’s kind of like Black Friday in September — just like it was just Black Friday in July a few months ago. There are savings to be had, and I intend to take advantage. But what might you want to save money on?

I think most folks turn their minds to TV savings. And that is not a bad idea. My hope is that we will see some discounts on lingering inventory of last years’ TV models. I’d be looking at all the top recommended TVs of 2023 and if they are still in stock, they will likely be discounted below their already low prices. The , the , the , the from 2023, and maybe even some Sony models like the might be available at a good price.

However, I’m personally more interested in saving money on a bunch of small things that I need or want, and you might want to think about this, too. I’d look for deals on HDMI cables, HDMI switchers, LED bias lighting (the stuff Govee makes is pretty great), and batteries for anything that you have that still needs them. Get those on sale now. Never pass up a chance to save on batteries — the markup on those things is ridiculous.

Other high-markup items you might think about: surge protectors, high-grade power strips, and line conditions. I have these and love them. You secure them into your power outlets – they have some line conditioning and surge suppression in them, and they provide four or five standard outlets along with USB-C and USB-A ports, meaning you can ditch your power bricks if you want. I use them in the studio and love them. That may be my hottest shopping tip of the year, actually.

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Google launched the Pixel 9 series with some improvements compared to previous generations. While the new features and design stand out above everything else, there are also improvements at the security level. Google has revealed how it has enhanced security against modem or baseband attacks in the Pixel 9 series.

The importance of preventing modem-related vulnerabilities

Our smartphones have become an extension of ourselves. Protecting these devices from potential attacks is crucial as they store a significant amount of personal data. Google has worked hard to solve or mitigate vulnerabilities that may be present in Android. Although the most visible efforts are at the OS level, there are components, such as basebands, that require special treatment.

The baseband is part of the set of hardware and software that manages mobile signals on your device. The device’s baseband and modem work together to fulfill the tasks of sending/receiving and processing signals, respectively. When talking about vulnerabilities, many focus mainly on the OS or on apps. However, baseband firmware is a sensitive component whose nature makes it prone to certain types of external attacks, like phishing campaigns using false base stations.

Google had security issues with Exynos modems

Google has already had to deal with baseband vulnerabilities in Tensor chips. The company’s hardware inherited these vulnerabilities from the Exynos modems it relies on. Between late 2022 and early 2023, Google found and disclosed a modem vulnerability that “remotely compromises a phone at the baseband level with no user interaction.” At the time, the Mountain View giant advised users to disable VoLTE and Wi-Fi calling while they worked on a fix.

Additionally, baseband security is the responsibility of each Android brand. “Mature software hardening techniques that are commonplace in the Android operating system, for example, are often absent from cellular firmwares of many popular smartphones,” Google says in a blog post. Anyway, Android includes system-level protections for attacks arising from potential baseband vulnerabilities.

This is how Google “shielded” the Pixel 9 series’ modem against baseband vulnerabilities

The Pixel 9, Pixel 9 Pro, Pixel 9 Pro XL, and Pixel 9 Pro Fold use a new Exynos 5400 modem and baseband set. The modem is not only more efficient but also more secure. Google has built in multiple layers of security at the hardware level, on top of Android’s native security layers. First, “Bounds Sanitizer” prevents malicious code from running or memory corruption from data overflow techniques.

“Integer Overflow Sanitizer” is another of the security measures implemented by Google. The system ensures that calculations during data processing are accurate to prevent attackers from “confusing” the baseband with false values that cause unexpected behavior. “Stack Canaries” is a system that guarantees the correct flow of code execution. If any block of code tries to “circumvent” the correct order, the modem will receive an alert.

“Control Flow Integrity (CFI)” acts similarly to “Stack Canaries,” but focuses on the “paths” along which code is executed rather than the execution order. If the system detects code that attempts to deviate from set execution paths, it will reset the modem. Finally, “Auto-Initialize Stack Variables” prevents the leakage or manipulation of confidential data caused by code initialization errors.

By the end of 2024, the world will have nearly 2,000 Gigawatts of solar generation capacity in service. Each panel is made of silicon, glass, various polymers, aluminum, copper and an assortment of other metals that capture the sun’s energy. It’s a rule of thumb that, barring damage, a panel will last for up to 30 years before it needs to be replaced. But what happens to all of those raw materials when the current crop of solar panels becomes obsolete? Surely, we’re not just wasting it all, are we?

What kills a solar panel?

Received wisdom suggests solar panels last for around 30 years, but that’s not the whole story here. “30 years is our best guess,” explained Garvin Heath of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). NREL found there was a higher rate of failures at the start of a panel’s life, often due to manufacturing or installation faults. In midlife, only a handful of panels fail. Then the statistics begin to climb northward the closer to the three decade mark you get but, even so, the number of panels that break are “less than one percent” of the total in operation at that time.

Matt Burnell is the founder of ReSolar, a British startup looking into reusing, repowering and recycling solar panels. As part of his work, Burnell visited a 40,000 panel array solar farm where 200 of the panels were broken during installation. “I took about 50 from that site, tested them to see their value for reuse [and] generation capacity,” he said, most of which were within the “tolerance range of the manufacturer.” Essentially, for the odd crack in the glass or bump on the frame — which may cause problems down the line — the panels were otherwise perfectly functional.

If a panel has survived its birth and installation, then the biggest thing that kills solar panels is the weather. Heath said a common cause is extreme weather events damaging the panel, or even just regular, aggressive weather causing things to degrade. Sadly, once a panel is broken, it’s often not worth the effort to repair.

So panels deemed “broken” during manufacture or installation may still be very capable of making power from the sun. But there are also plenty of panels that are being withdrawn from service after 25 or 30 years, even if they aren’t broken in any meaningful sense. There’s a fairly simple reason solar farms don’t allow these panels to soak up rays until they simply cease to function.

It’s the economics, stupid.

The key issue is efficiency loss, which is when panels aren’t able to generate as much power as they did when first installed. Most solar panels are made with laminated adhesive layers that sit between the glass and the solar cells to hold them together and aid rigidity. Sun exposure can cause those laminated layers to discolor, reducing the amount of light that can reach the cells. That diminishes the energy-generation capacity, which is a problem for large commercial farms.

“Manufacturer’s warranty their [solar] modules’ performance for a 30-year period,” explained Garvin Heath. For instance, a maker will pledge that its panels will be at least 80-percent efficient for the bulk of its expected three-decade service life. These warranties give large utility-scale customers confidence in what they’re buying, and at the point that term has expired, it’s often far more cost-effective to simply junk and replace them.

Power grids have a limited number of interconnections, essentially the on-ramp that enables them to push power to the grid. Each interconnection has a hard upper limit in terms of the power it can send, so solar farms need to generate the maximum permitted electricity at all times. “[Even when] they’re working within warranty performance, the opportunity cost of having a module producing [more] power on your interconnection is quite valuable,” said Heath.

ReSolar’s Matt Burnell used an example of a 10 Megawatt solar farm in the UK that had a 15 Megawatt interconnection. “10 years ago, they could only fit 10 megawatts into the space that they had […] but with newer and more efficient modules, it’s now financially viable for them to strip the asset down and rebuild it.” “You have these big pension funds looking at this from a spreadsheet,” looking for ways to better maximize their investment. The end result is that all of these otherwise fine panels are junked. “When you think about the embedded carbon of bringing [the panels] over [from China]” said Burnell “and then they go into the waste stream […] seems mad.”

Even if panels could be repaired to full efficiency,it’s not likely solar panel repair shops will be opening in droves. “There’s a serious question around the labor costs of testing and repairing versus just buying a new panel,” said Burnell. He added in another example of panels that had to be taken down to address fire safety legislation, which were similarly at risk of being discarded because the effort to repurpose them was too great. To reduce waste, ReSolar actually wound up collecting and sending on a consignment of those panels to Ukraine for use in a hospital.

In the trash

Another rule of thumb is that only one in 10 solar panels is recycled, with the remaining nine sent to landfills. There is no standard method for tracking a panel’s eventual destination, and it’s not clear how such a system would be implemented. But there’s a risk landfills are about to be overwhelmed with the volume of panels that’ll be coming down from roofs. The Los Angeles Times, for instance, reported on the coming glut of panels in California after the state’s push to get more solar installed from 2006 onwards.

The legal situation is barely patchwork, with Grist describing things in 2020 as the “wild west,” since only Washington has any sort of mandatory legislation. Decommissioned solar panels are covered by federal solid and hazardous waste rules, dependent on the materials used in their construction. If a panel includes heavy metals like lead and cadmium, then they can’t be sent to a general landfill, lest their poisons leech into the soil. But that often just means those panels are redirected to landfills that are designed to handle specialist waste.

The EPA is, at present, looking at developing rules that would standardize the recycling process for solar panels and lithium batteries. But while there are no federal mandates for recycling, or even tough legislation at the state level, the situation is far from ideal. A small fraction of the panels are actually sent to recycling centers, the rest left to an uncertain fate. As Heath points out, the risk is that while recycling is uneconomical and unavailable, we’ll see huge boneyards of working solar panels, left piled up while the situation changes.

In the UK and Europe, solar panels are covered by the Waste from Electrical and Electronic Equipment directive, or WEEE. The rules oblige supplying companies to collect and recycle discarded panels, or to shoulder the cost for another entity to do so. It means that, hopefully, we won’t see tons more panels being dumped to landfills, but also means it’s often going to be more economical to send working panels to recycling rather than repurposing them.

Recycling

If you want to free up the raw materials lurking inside a solar panel, then there are two approaches. There’s the mechanical way, in which you can shred the components, which is both simpler and more wasteful: it can recover glass and metal, but little else. Or there are thermal and chemical approaches that seek to separate the components, enabling more of the rarer metals to be recovered.

“Existing recyclers have traditional markets that their economics are built around, so glass recyclers look at a module and say ‘wow, a module is 80 percent glass by weight, I know what to do with that,” said Heath. “With the materials inside, there are more precious metals with higher value,” he said, “but they’re mixed in with the plastic polymer layers […] which are hard to separate economically.” Consequently, the silicon, silver and copper embedded in the cells are often ground down into bulk and abandoned.

The IEA’s 2024 report on panel recycling looked into how these mechanical methods aren’t great for material qualities. “The outputs of mechanical processing are usually not very pure and better yields of high-quality materials […] especially silicon and silver, should be targeted,” it said. It added that often these recycling processes aren’t optimized to run solar panels, and so “there is frequently some downgrading of recovered material quality,” hardly a great step on the road to circularity.

It’s also hard to know what goes into a solar panel. “The variation in materials [found in solar panels] is wild,” said ReSolar’s Matt Burnell. The litany of manufacturers don’t yet have any obligation to share their raw material data, although new regulations will change that soon. Until then, it’s difficult for recyclers to know what they’ll be pulling out of the panels they’re looking to process.

As well as recyclers not knowing the composition of the panels, there’s the risk of noxious chemicals being added to expedite some processes. Antoine Chalaux is the general manager of ROSI Solar, a specialist solar panel recycler in France. He talked about the inclusion of chemicals like Teflon and antimony, both of which are toxic and cannot be released into the atmosphere. “We’ve developed our recycling processes to capture [them],” he explained, “but we’re pushing [manufacturers] to use it less [in future].”

Burnell believes that the industry is really at the “very dawn” of solar recycling but is confident that with investment today, solutions will be quickly found in the very near future. “We’ve got this massive lead-in time,” he said “so we know what’s coming onto the market today, and we know what’s coming into the system in 25 to 30 years.” The real ticking clock is for the glut of panels that were installed in the early 2010s that will start entering the waste stream in the next decade.

Right now, ROSI’s processes aren’t as cheap as other recyclers, and Chalaux knows that it can be a problem. “Right now, there’s no economic reason for companies to [recycle with us], but there’s the question of image,” he said. “All of the manufacturers and owners of PV projects want a good story for the end of life for their panels.” The other benefit of this process, however, is to produce high-purity recycled materials that can be used by local manufacturers.

The future

One step toward a more recyclable solar panel might be to eliminate the use of those adhesive polymers in its construction. If a panel could just use sheets of glass with the solar cells sandwiched inside, it would be a lot easier to deconstruct. Not to mention you’d likely get a longer and better performance out of them, since there would be no polymer layers to discolor.

Thankfully, a team from the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has demonstrated that such a product can exist. Rather than gluing the layers together, femtosecond lasers weld the front and back panels of glass to each other. The solar cells are sandwiched inside, held by the bonding of the glass to its sibling, and nothing else. And when the panel eventually reaches its end of life, which may be a lot longer than 30 years, it can just be recycled by shattering the glass.

The project, led by Dr. David Young, says that if the proposals are accepted, we could see a commercial version of the panel within two to three years. He added that the rigidity offered by welding will be just as sturdy and waterproof as panels using polymer layers. Unfortunately, by that point, we’ll have decades upon decades of panels made using the old system that we’ll still need to deal with. And until we get a cost-effective, scalable way to recycle them, the answer to the question ‘What happens to solar panels when they die?’ will be ‘nothing good.’