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Beats updated its high-end flagship wireless headphones last year, bringing a slew of upgrades over the Studio 3 Wireless, the model it replaced. The Beats Studio Pro has better sound, active noise cancellation (ANC), Spatial Audio and more. But at $350, it didnt necessarily stand out among stiff competition from Sony and Bose. Well, today at Amazon, the premium headphones have a new draw that those rivals dont: Theyre on sale for a mere $170. Thats 51 percent off and only $10 more than the record low. Although the Beats Studio Pro doesnt look starkly different from the Studio 3 Wireless it replaced, it adds subtle aesthetic touches like new colors, a tone-on-tone finish and UltraPlush memory foam (wrapped in leather) earpads. Of course, you still get the brands iconic lower-case b logo on each earpiece. But the biggest changes are on the inside. Using Beats second-gen audio chip and new 40mm drivers with a two-layer diaphragm, micro vents and acoustic mesh, they have improved clarity and a more balanced profile than the Studio 3 Wireless. Although Beats was once known for overpowering bass at the expense of mids, highs and clarity, thats no longer the case. Engadgets audio guru, Billy Steele, found that the cans produced even-handed tuning and attention to precision once unheard of in the brands pre-Apple days. The Studio Pro also has Spatial Audio, familiar to anyone whos used Apples recent AirPods. (Bose also added its equivalent in its Ultra line.) The technology simulates 64 speakers around you, creating a more distinct separation between instruments and voices. You can choose between head-tracked and fixed modes, too. However, the digital trickerys effectiveness can vary depending on the track, ranging from breathing new life into old tracks to hardly providing a noticeable difference in some other genres. The headphones also let you listen to high-resolution and lossless music via USB-C wired listening up to 24-bit / 48kHz. They also have a transparency mode, up to 40 hours of listening with ANC off (or around 24 hours with ANC or transparency mode on) and a fast-fuel feature that gives you four hours of playback after just a 10-minute charge. If ANC isnt your priority, you may want to look at the cheaper Beats Solo 4, also on sale. Offering better sound quality and longer battery life over the Solo 3, this 2024 model is on sale at Amazon for $100 half off. Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribe to the Engadget Deals newsletter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/the-beats-studio-pro-headphones-are-half-off-right-now-172541818.html?src=rss
Category:
Marketing and Advertising
Its never been more exhausting to be online than in 2024. While its been clear for some time that monetization has shifted social media into a different beast, this year in particular felt like a tipping point. Faced with the endless streams of content thats formulated to trap viewers gazes, shoppable ads at every turn, AI and the unrelenting opinions of strangers, it struck me recently that despite my habitual use of these apps, Im not actually having fun on any of them anymore. Take Instagram. I open the app and Im greeted by an ad for bidets. I start scrolling. Between each of the first three posts at the top of my feed is a different ad: lingerie, squat-friendly jorts, shoes from a brand selling items that appear to be dropshipped from AliExpress at a markup. Then, thankfully, two memes back to back. I fire off the funny one to five of my friends in a way that feels obligatory. After that, another ad, then a bunch of seemingly off-target Reels from accounts I dont even follow. Minutes pass before I encounter a post by someone I know in real life. Oh yeah, its time to turn off suggested posts again, something I have to do every 30 days or my feed will be filled with random crap. But before I get a chance to do that, Im distracted by a Reel of a cat watching The Grinch. Then by a Reel of a guy with a tiny chihuahua in his coat pocket. Curiosity gets the better of me and I open the comments, where people are angrily writing that the dog must be suffocating. Oh no. I scroll to the next Reel, a video Ive seen several times before of a rooster marching around in a pair of pants. Below, everyones fighting about whether its cruel to put pants on a chicken. Is it? Next, a video of a girl doing her makeup, where men are commenting that this should be considered catfishing. Deep sigh. I realize 30 minutes have somehow passed and I close Instagram, now in a worse mood than when I opened it. Ill compulsively return in an hour or so, rinse and repeat. Its not just an Instagram problem. On TikTok (which may or may not get shut down in the US very soon), the For You page has me figured out pretty well contentwise and the presence of toxic commenters is minimal, but every other post is either sponsored or hawking a product from the TikTok Shop. And its too easy to get sucked into the perpetual scroll. I often avoid opening the app at all just because I know Ill end up getting trapped there for longer than I want to, watching videos about nothing made by people I dont know and never will. But it still happens more frequently than Id like to admit. These days, it feels like every gathering place on the internet is so crowded with content thats competing for and successfully grabbing our attention or trying to sell us something that theres barely any room for the social element of social media. Instead, were pushed into separate corners to stare at the glowing boxes in our hands alone. Fittingly, Oxford announced at the end of November that its Word of the Year for 2024 is brain rot, a term that expresses the supposed consequence of countless hours spent on the internet consuming stupid stuff. Just as fitting, Australias Macquarie Dictionary chose enshittification, which describes how the platforms and products we love get ruined over time as the companies behind them chase profits. (It was also The American Dialect Societys 2023 Word of the Year). Social media platforms were in theory designed around ideas of friendship and connection, but whats playing out on them today couldnt feel further from genuine human interaction. Facebook if you even have an account still might be where youd go if you really wanted to see updates from family and other people you know IRL, but its UI has become so cluttered with recommended Reels and products that it feels unusable. Twitter, where it was once fun to keep up with live discourse around major events or fandom happenings, no longer exists, and X, its new form under Elon Musk, is filled with bots and political propaganda. On the other hand, Threads, an offshoot of Instagram and Metas answer to Twitter/X, took off this year and it quickly became a hotspot for copy-paste engagement bait, a problem so bad that Adam Mosseri has publicly acknowledged it. The Threads team has apparently been working to get it under control, but I still cant scroll through my For You feed without seeing a dozen posts that are either just regurgitated memes being passed off as original thoughts, or questions to the masses that are crafted with the intention of stirring the pot. The same feed is otherwise dominated by viral videos that are ripped off from other creators without credit and pop culture commentary that almost always devolves into sex- and genderism. I often step away from Threads feeling the need to go scream in a field. Threads doesnt have DMs, meaning all conversations take place in public. It finally gave users the ability to create custom feeds around searchable topics in November, but those topic pages are generally still riddled with bait-style posts, just more subject-specific versions. Thats meant so far that its been pretty hard to find communities to authentically connect with. It all feel so impersonal. It doesnt help that Threads Following feed currently isnt the default view and theres no way to change that (though Threads recently began testing the option). And at the end of the day, its 275 million or so monthly active users doesnt include all that many people I actually know, especially outside of the media industry. The same goes for fediverse social networks like Mastodon and Bluesky, which are far less populated but have a cliquier feel. Visiting those platforms feels like walking into a room full of people who all know each other really well, and realizing youre the odd one out. But at least Bluesky nor Mastodon arent poorly veiled shopping experiences. (Threads isnt at the moment, either, but ads are reportedly coming). Maybe it all comes down to burnout in the era of excessive consumption, but lately Ive found myself wishing for a place on the internet that feels both inviting and human. Im sure Im not alone. In recent years, weve seen alternative social apps pop up like BeReal, Hive and the Myspace-reminiscent entrants SpaceHey and noplace, all aiming to bring character and interpersonal connection back into social media. But none have quite cracked the code for lasting mainstream adoption. Discord and even Reddit to some extent address the same person-to-person need, yet they share more in common with proto social media chatrooms and forums than with the sites that sprung up during the social heyday. Meanwhile, Meta is increasingly pushing AI across its apps. Just this summer we got the chatbot-maker, AI Studio, which Meta touted not only as a way for users to create AI characters, but for creators to build an AI as an extension of themselves to reach more fans. Rather than talk to your real friends or make new ones around a common interest, you can deepen your parasocial relationship with celebrities, influencers and fictional characters by chatting with the AI versions of them. Or, pick from several AI girlfriends you can now find in the menu of your DMs. Weve completely lost the plot, I fear. Ive started dipping back into Tumblr here and there, if only to see a less chaotic, more curated feed and relish in the reminder of how fun customization can be. A few friends have mentioned that theyve been doing the same. But given the platforms past policy upheavals and its current AI partnerships, its not exactly an online oasis either. As if on cue, I was recently served a mock Tumblr poster during my evening scroll that felt uncannily apt: we didnt get better. the rest of the internet just got worse.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/in-2024-using-social-media-felt-worse-than-ever-170047895.html?src=rss
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Marketing and Advertising
Following months of speculation, OpenAI has finally shared how it plans to become a for-profit company. In a blog post penned by its board of directors, OpenAI said Thursday it plans to transform its for-profit arm into a Public Benefit Corporation sometime in 2025. PBCs or B Corps are for-profit organizations that attempt to balance the interests of their stakeholders while making a positive impact on society. As we enter 2025, we will have to become more than a lab and a startup we have to become an enduring company, OpenAI said, adding that many of its competitors are registered as PBCs, including Anthropic and even Elon Musks own xAI. [The move] would enable us to raise the necessary capital with conventional terms like others in this space. As part of the transformation, OpenAIs nonprofit division would retain a stake in the for-profit unit in the form of shares at a fair valuation determined by independent financial advisors, but would lose direct oversight of the company. Our plan would result in one of the best resourced non-profits in history, claims OpenAI. Following the reorganization, the for-profit division would be responsible for overseeing OpenAIs operations and business, while the nonprofit arm would operate separately with its own leadership team and a focus on charitable efforts in health care, education and science. OpenAI did not state whether CEO Sam Altman would receive an equity stake as part of the restructuring. Last year, OpenAIs board of directors briefly fired Altman before bringing him back, in the process sparking the institutional crisis that led to this weeks announcement. According to some estimates, OpenAIs for-profit arm could be worth as much as $150 billion. In 2019, OpenAI estimated it would need to raise at least $10 billion to build artificial general intelligence. In October, the company secured $6 billion in new funding. The hundreds of billions of dollars that major companies are now investing into AI development show what it will really take for OpenAI to continue pursuing the mission, OpenAI said. We once again need to raise more capital than wed imagined. Investors want to back us but, at this scale of capital, need conventional equity and less structural bespokeness. Despite this weeks announcement, OpenAI is likely to face multiple roadblocks in implementing its plan. In addition to its ongoing legal feud with Elon Musk, Meta recently sent a letter to Californias attorney general urging him to stop OpenAI from converting to a for-profit company, saying the move would be wrong and could lead to a proliferation of similar start-up ventures that are notionally charitable until they are potentially profitable.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/openais-for-profit-plan-includes-a-public-benefit-corporation-163634265.html?src=rss
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Marketing and Advertising
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