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IBM’s AI blood test could help with early Alzheimer’s detection

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According to a study published in 2017, the concentration of amyloid-beta in a person’s spinal fluid starts changing decades before the first signs of the disease show up. People already experiencing mild cognitive impairment with an abnormal concentration of the peptide in their spinal fluid are apparently 2.5 times more likely to develop the illness.

Unfortunately, harvesting spinal fluid for testing is highly invasive, expensive and not ideal for an early detection procedure. What the IBM scientists did was use machine learning to identify the proteins in blood that can predict the concentration of the biomarker in spinal fluid. The company said it’s the first time the technology is used for that specific purpose, though we’ll likely keep hearing about machine learning in the context of neurodegenerative diseases: IBM aims to continue using AI to help scientists better understand conditions like Alzheimer’s.

While testing actual spinal fluid will obviously be more accurate, IBM believes its blood test can help predict Alzheimer’s risk with an accuracy of up to 77 percent. The method is still in the very early stages of testing, but in the future, scientists could also use it to find appropriate subjects for programs developing a cure. One reason why scientists have yet to find one is because most trial subjects’ brains are usually too far gone upon detection. This test can find people in the very early stages of the condition when there’s still a chance to slow it down.

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FDA removes restrictions on genetically modified salmon

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FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb stressed that the genetic changes had been deemed safe for the animal, safe to eat and wouldn’t have a “significant” impact on the environment. AquaBounty’s modifications use DNA from other fish to grow salmon at a faster rate, raising concerns about contamination. However, they’re also bred to be female and sterile, theoretically eliminating he possibility that they’ll breed with wild salmon.

The salmon will take a while to reach the market if everything goes according to plan. Aquabounty chief Sylvia Wulf told the AP she expected certification for an Indiana growing facility in “weeks” and could receive eggs soon afterward, but it would take about 18 months for the salmon to reach their target weight.

Whether or not that happens still isn’t completely certain. An alliance of public interest, environmental and pro-fishing groups is in the midst of suing the FDA to overturn the approval on safety grounds. Groups like the Center for Food Safety have argued that regulators haven’t properly assessed the ecological and health risks of the salmon, and have pointed to problems with AquaBounty’s environmental record. If those objections hold in court, the FDA and AquaBounty could go back to square one.

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Google shows how it could make a cloud-savvy game controller

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The gamepad could also store your account and host device settings (like brightness and volume), not just familiar hardware options like game-specific button bindings and general gamepad settings. You could visit a friend and instantly pick up where you left off.

Google originally filed the patent in 2014 (hence the Android KitKat-era “home” and “menu” buttons), and it’s quick to warn that the image you see above isn’t likely to be representative of any finished product, if there is one. Still, this may offer insight into how Google would approach an expansion of Project Stream into a full-fledged service. Rather than sell a whole console, it would just need a cloud-aware gamepad that can talk to the devices you already have.

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23andMe says gene report can detect the risk of type 2 diabetes

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The company is partnering with Lark Health to offer the company’s $20 per month AI health coaching service to customers who are at risk of developing diabetes. The report will be available to gene testing kit buyers starting March 11th, 23andMe said.

Whether or not it helps is another story. Experts talking to MIT Technology Review noted that polygenic scoring methods aren’t extremely accurate at this stage, even though they’ve improved considerably since 23andMe dropped many of its health tests in 2013. While the company says its diabetes test is accurate for black, Asian and Latino customers, polygenic score predictions have historically produced worse results for non-Europeans.

There’s also the nature of diabetes itself. There’s no singular, guaranteed genetic signal that you’re at risk, and those external factors like diet and lifestyle can make a large difference. If you already eat well and stay fit, the test won’t change much. Still, this is a rare opportunity to gauge your susceptibility to diabetes at home. If nothing else, it could encourage you to visit the doctor.

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‘Good Omens’ and the art of avoiding Armageddon

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As the nuclear apocalypse looms over popular culture and consciousness, acclaimed fantasy author Neil Gaiman is preparing to launch Good Omens, a six-episode Amazon Prime series based on the 1990 novel he wrote in partnership with Terry Pratchett. Good Omens doesn’t imagine an Earth ravaged by nukes, but instead sees it scheduled for destruction by immutable demonic forces. The apocalypse is inevitable and ineffable, but that doesn’t stop a group of informed folks from trying to thwart it anyway, much as we’re doing in reality.

“Somebody sent me a message on Twitter yesterday asking how I managed to cunningly set up the time frame of this so incredibly well, so that at the exact point that Good Omens came out would be a point where Armageddon would actually feel real and possible,” Gaiman told Engadget at SXSW. “There was a line that Terry and I put into the book when we wrote it … about how unlikely an apocalypse was at that time when everybody was getting along so incredibly well. I, frankly, given the choice, would much rather have had to put that line into the show.”

Good Omens is proof of humanity’s obsession with The End. It closely follows the entities that hold the fate of the planet in their hands, riffing on humanity’s history of atomic warmongering and militaristic posturing. It’s a story built on the idea that people have the power to end the world. And to save it.

Good Omens

“One of the things that I love about Good Omens is that it is life-affirming and world-affirming,” Gaiman said. “It actually suggests very strongly that the avoidance of war is a much more important thing than war.”

The chances of a nuclear catastrophe, accidental or purposeful, increase exponentially with each warhead in existence. However, the weapons themselves aren’t the actual problem — the fact that we know how to make them is. US scientists released the nuclear-knowledge genie in 1945 and there’s no going back; we’ve reached a point where no country’s leader will believe another when they promise to destroy their stockpiles.

In this case, mistrust is the harbinger of Armageddon, not nuclear warheads.

Here’s where Good Omens really drives the lesson home. The story revolves around the angel Aziraphale and the demon Crowley, two creatures from opposing sides of an ageless and endless war. They live on Earth for eons and, once the devil’s plan becomes clear, they work together to save humankind from annihilation. The message isn’t about dismantling nuclear warheads, but breaking down the barriers preventing us from seeing our common ground.

Good Omens

“It’s a very nice message, too, when you have the two central characters, these celestial beings, they don’t have any really dog in the fight, other than the fact that they’ve been around long enough and hung around humanity enough that they kind of like it,” said Jon Hamm, who plays the archangel Gabriel on Amazon’s version of Good Omens. “And they realize that what we’ve done down here is actually sort of a lovely thing and they’d rather not burn it all down. I feel the same way. I’d rather not burn it all down.”

“Me too,” Gaiman responded. “I really like it.”

Good Omens replaces military leaders with gods and demons, and a nuclear Armageddon with fated doom, but the stakes are just as high. Atomic weapons technology is the sole property of humankind; we’ve constructed the means to our own end and duplicated it thousands of times over. With nuclear bombs, humans have the ultimate, fabled power of god or the devil.

Of course, we also have the power to not destroy the world.

“You can not slice any part of Good Omens through without hitting it, just the idea that actually the world is a really good thing,” Gaiman said. “It’s a really good place and sticking around on it is infinitely preferable to any way of ending it or damaging it that proves a point. … That, in many ways, is the biggest challenge. How do you make the averting of an apocalypse as dramatically interesting as an apocalypse?”

Gaiman, at least, has a theory.

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‘Every Thing Every Time’ builds poetry from the smart city

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It was an echo of some of the things happening in Austin at that moment, a kind of live poetic commentary on the commonplace. Every minute, the board refreshed; it continues to generate 1,440 poems each day.

The installation, called “EVERY THING EVERY TIME,” is the work of Naho Matsuda, a German-Japanese artist and designer based in London, and produced by FutureEverything. The work is in Austin for South by Southwest, its third iteration, following showings in Newcastle and Manchester in the UK.

Matsuda has around 200 public data points that are turned into verses in real time, including the local humidity levels, price of gold and President Donald Trump’s Twitter activity. There are also lines that don’t connect to an API but come from schedules Matsuda manually inputted like the opening times of Franklin Barbeque, Austin’s IBM office or a SXSW panel.

Then there are the creepier verses: “the woman reads,” “no one confesses,” “the baby is born.”

Those come from “fluff data,” Matsuda says, and form about a fifth of the lines. Some are extrapolated from official statistics (for example, how many babies are born each day in Austin); others are proxies for data sets that actually exist but she didn’t have access to (a line about idling drivers refers to Uber and Lyft drivers). The goal is for the algorithmic poetry to encapsulate everything that the smart city could potentially see.

In sum the poems tell a story about the quotidian details that form the city of Austin — the gay bars, boil water notices, bats, moonlight towers.

every thing every time day

Stripping the data of its functionality, Matsuda says, makes it universal. An integer saying how many babies were born last month is a statistic; “the baby is born” is human, individual, emotional.

As the poems whirl into existence, you can slow down and realize what else is happening all around you, outside your head. The poetry is a conduit to the rest of the city at that very moment. You see how apparently neutral data points through one lens — a car crash that just happened — can be deeply personal, even life-altering, to the individual.

The playfully neon green and pastel pink mechanical board forces you to meet its pace with a sense of flurried anticipation around every letter. We expect instant gratification with digital technology but the physicality of this device roots it in the real world. (Matsuda said she wanted the speed to be “a bit annoying slow”). Yet when the poem finishes it hangs only for a second before disappearing — the ephemerality forces your attention on it, too.

As in other artist critiques of tech, the feelings of interconnectedness compete with an unavoidable critique of surveillance — in this case, where data comes from, what little things it notices, how it encourages us to monitor each other. There’s an uneasy cognizance that outside Matsuda’s project there are smart city systems that process us as data points, and not usually just to craft poetry.

“My hope was to be on the edge of being playful but also uncanny or a bit creepy and triggering those questions,” Matsuda said.

The resulting verses — with what Matsuda calls their “weird juxtapositions” — can be banal, touching, clinically dehuman. Which kind of sounds like an average day. Mundane life can be poetry, too. So much happens all the time.

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Amazon Fire TV no longer needs you to type your WiFi password

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While updates are available for devices that are already in the wild, this is primarily meant for people buying new Fire TV hardware directly from Amazon (which pre-assigns your Amazon account). You’ll need to own at least one simple setup device on top of that. It still beats punching in a password for every instance, though, and it could make your life easier if you plan to buy multiple Fire TV devices for your home.

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The best wireless TV headphones

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Why you should trust us

Lauren Dragan is a senior staff writer for Wirecutter and our resident headphone expert. She has reviewed hundreds of headphones for Wirecutter since 2013. Lauren holds a bachelor’s degree in both music performance and audio production from Ithaca College.

Daniel Varghese, who tested the headphones for this update, is a Wirecutter associate staff writer who covers the AV and smart-home categories. He has used many microphones and headphones as a musician, podcast producer, and college radio DJ.

To develop the criteria for this guide, we spoke with a number of experts, including Tyll Hertsens of InnerFidelity and Steve Guttenberg of CNET, and read other editorial reviews. Once we were ready to test, we assembled a listening panel that included Brent Butterworth, an AV writer with decades of experience writing for Wirecutter and many other outlets; Geoff Morrison, a Wirecutter editor-at-large; and John Higgins, a session musician and music teacher. In the past, we’ve also worked with Phil Metzler, a professional musician based in Los Angeles.

Who should buy this

Wireless TV headphones allow you to listen to what’s coming out of your TV or entertainment system without needing to run a cord across the room to connect wired headphones. Maybe you like your movies and TV shows played loud but live in an apartment with thin walls (and sensitive neighbors or roommates). Or perhaps you have kids and could use a break from the sounds of video games blasting through the house. Maybe you’re hard of hearing (or living with someone who is) and need to crank up the volume in order to understand dialogue. Or maybe you have a different sleep schedule than your partner and want to watch TV without disturbing their slumber.

This type of headphone tends to be bulkier and harder to set up and the sound is often lackluster. Plus, it requires you to connect yet another device (the transmitter dock) to your TV, which may not be desirable, especially if your TV is wall-mounted. But if you need something that will allow you (or a loved one) to watch TV without bothering others with the audio, this is the best available wireless solution we’ve tried.

Why not just use Bluetooth headphones? Though Bluetooth headphones solve the cord problem, many have noticeable latency—a delay in processing that causes the video and audio to be out of sync. This effect is frustrating enough to noticeably worsen your viewing experience. That may not be a big deal if you’re killing time with a YouTube video, but it can be a huge annoyance when trying to watch a movie or your favorite TV show.

If you don’t need a wireless system, you could save a lot of money and enjoy better audio quality with one of our wired over-ear options, but you’ll probably need to add an extension cable.

How we picked and tested

Wireless TV headphones

Photo: Lauren Dragan

The basic wireless TV headphone system uses RF technology (in varying ranges from 900 MHz to 3.2 GHz) and combines a transmitter, which you plug into your TV or AV receiver, with one or two included pairs of headphones. In recent years, companies have released standalone Bluetooth hubs, which work like the transmitters in the aforementioned systems but will work with any Bluetooth headphones (some systems also include a pair). Bluetooth broadcasts in the frequency range from 2.4 GHz to 2.8 GHz and generally has a more limited range than other RF-based systems, although we don’t expect people to wander too far from their TVs when using this type of product.

Based on our previous testing, interviews with experts, and research of other editorial reviews, we focused on the following criteria to evaluate all type of wireless TV headphone systems:

  • Latency: When watching movies and TV shows with these headphones, we found it very distracting when there was a delay between the image we saw and the sound we heard. This made it harder to enjoy whatever we were watching. As such, if a headphone system created a noticeable gap between video and audio, we were not likely to recommend it.
  • Sound quality: In our experience, sound quality is not a major distinguishing factor in this category. Most of the headphones sound completely fine, but a few sound very distorted and compressed. None of them sound as good as the wired over-ear headphones that we recommend. That said, we looked for headphones that could clearly render the dialogue, sound effects, and background soundtrack of everything we watched.
  • Setup: We looked for systems that are relatively easy to add to your existing TV or home theater arrangement, prioritizing those that did not require the purchase of extra cables, power sources, or external batteries. We particularly liked systems that did not require complicated steps to connect their hubs with their headsets.
  • Comfort level: For the systems that include headphones, we wanted to make sure that they were comfortable enough to wear for at least the length of a movie. We paid particular attention to whether the earcups were padded and if the headband squeezed our head.
  • Battery life: A functional TV headphone system must have a long enough battery life to at least last through a movie or a few episodes of a TV show. We also paid attention to how the headset is charged, giving special preference to systems that have a charging dock on the hub rather than on a separate piece of equipment.

Once our criteria was in place, we combed through the offerings at Amazon, Best Buy, B&H, and Crutchfield to see what was available. For our latest update, we brought in six new models to test against our previous picks, the Sennheiser RS 165 and Power Acoustik HP-902RFT. Our test included traditional wireless TV headphone systems (like the Noontec Hammo TV and SleepPhones TellyPhones), Bluetooth headphones that are (supposedly) optimized for low latency (like the MEE Audio Matrix Cinema), and Bluetooth hubs (like the MEE Audio Connect Hub, MEE Audio Connect Bluetooth, and the Sennheiser BT T100 Bluetooth Audio Transmitter).

Wireless TV headphones

Lauren watched and rewatched the Battle of Helm’s Deep just for you. Photo: Lauren Dragan

In our last round of testing, Lauren convened a panel to assess the headphones. Using a variety of music, movies, and TV shows with which they were very familiar, Brent, Geoff, and John helped Lauren make her picks. For this update, Daniel tested each of the new models throughout his Brooklyn apartment, focusing more on usability than sound profile, and conferred with Lauren to finalize the picks.

Our pick: Sennheiser RS 165

Wireless TV headphones

Photo: Sarah Kobos

If we needed a pair of wireless TV headphones, the Sennheiser RS 165 headphones are the only ones we would consider buying. These headphones render dialogue, sound effects, and background soundtracks more clearly than any other wireless TV headphone system we tested, with very little noticeable latency. Plus, the headphones are lightweight and comfortable to wear, they’re easy to charge, and they’re easy to add to most existing TVs or home theater setups. The batteries last long enough to make it through several movies in between charges.

Latency was a huge issue with all of the systems we tested, especially the Bluetooth-based ones. When testing some models, we found it impossible to focus on whatever we were watching, due to the latency between the video and audio. We would see a character move their mouth and then hear what they were saying a few seconds later, as if we were watching a poorly dubbed martial-arts movie. We never noticed this latency while wearing the RS 165 headphones, though, which made it possible to actually enjoy the TV shows we used for this testing.

It also helps that the RS 165 headphones sound pretty good. Dialogue is clear and easy to understand, and you get decent left- and right-channel separation. Our panel noted that the high frequencies seemed a bit boosted, which made small noises (like footsteps on leaves and the crackle of fire) pop a bit more than seemed natural. The panel also agreed that the bass was a bit forward but still generally smooth and defined, as long as you keep the bass-boost feature turned off. They don’t sound as good as our favorite wired headphones, but they don’t sound distorted or compressed like some TV headphones we’ve tested.

Wireless TV headphones

The Sennheiser RS 165 headphones sound pretty good and are comfortable to wear through the duration of a movie. Photo: Sarah Kobos

Adding the Sennheiser RS 165 system to an existing TV or home theater setup is relatively easy, depending on the inputs you have available. The package includes the headphones, the transmitter hub with a single 3.5 mm audio input, the power brick (with four adapters for outlets of the US, UK, EU, and AU style ), a 3.5 mm audio cable, and rechargeable batteries for the headphones. If you have a TV with a 3.5 mm audio output, you won’t need anything else. But if you have an older TV or are using an AV receiver, you might need an RCA or ¼-inch adapter to make it work.

The RS 165’s design is comfortable enough to wear through the length of a movie (and longer). The headphones are lightweight and have an adjustable headband, so they never felt tight on our head. That said, if your head is smaller, you might have trouble getting a great seal because the earcups are a little large (we discuss this problem in the Flaws but not dealbreakers section).

In addition, the RS 165 pair’s battery life is plenty long to last through a movie or two. When you’re finished watching, the transmitter hub serves as a charging station for the headphones—but you have to make sure you dock them in the cradle properly or they won’t charge. The RS 165 system supports the addition of a second pair of headphones, but you’ll need to buy those headphones separately. If you want to use more than two pairs of headphones at the same time, check out the Power Acoustik HP-902RFT system, which supports playback through up to four pairs at once.

Flaws but not dealbreakers

We struggled to find a pair of wireless TV headphones that we really loved using. Each one we tested had at least one major issue, and the Sennheiser RS 165 is no exception. As we’ve mentioned, the headphones sound pretty good, especially when compared with the other TV headphones we tested this round, but not as good as any of our wired headphone picks. If you can just plug a pair of headphones directly into your TV or AV receiver and watch comfortably (the Sony MDR-7506 has a 3-meter-long cord), you’ll get a guaranteed better sound experience for less money.

Wireless TV headphones

Daniel had to dig this RCA adapter from his junk drawer to use the Sennheiser RS 165 with his older TV. You might have to buy one. Photo: Sarah Kobos

Although the Sennheiser RS 165 system is pretty easy to set up, you might have to purchase some extra cables or adapters to add it to your TV or home theater array. If you want to plug it into the headphone jack of an AV receiver, you might need a ¼-inch adapter. Depending on your TV’s output options, you might need an RCA adapter or cable. If you happen to have either of these lying dormant in your junk drawer (as Daniel did), you’re all set. But it’s really annoying that Sennheiser doesn’t include these in the package—although this was a common issue among all of the products we tested.

Wireless TV headphones

The earcups on the Sennheiser RS 165 are a little large. If you have a smaller head, you might struggle to get a great seal with them. Photo: Sarah Kobos

The earcups on the Sennheiser headphones are a little large. This wasn’t a big deal for Daniel, who has a relatively large head, but Lauren, who has a smaller head, struggled to get a great seal with them. Since you’re likely going to use these in a quiet home environment, we don’t think getting a great seal is as important.

Budget pick: Power Acoustik HP-902RFT

Wireless TV headphones

Photo: Sarah Kobos

If you don’t want to spend more than $100 or you need a system that comes with two (and supports up to four) pairs of headphones, consider the Power Acoustik HP-902RFT. These headphones don’t sound as good as the Sennheiser RS 165 pair, the package doesn’t include everything you need to get started (like a power supply!), and the transmitter hub is harder to add to your existing TV or home theater setup. But once setup is complete, the system is really easy to use and it renders minimal latency between video and audio.

As Brent put it in an early test panel, these headphones sound a lot better than they have a right to for this price. They sound a little compressed, but the overall balance is relatively even across all frequency ranges. Intense low bass won’t drown out everything else happening in a scene, and unlike with some competing models, the consonants on words won’t be so intense that they feel like they’re piercing your eardrums. Unfortunately, that middle-of-the-road evenness also means that music can sound a little dull and lifeless—nothing really pops. And if you turn the volume way up, you will hear a bit of hiss, especially if you walk a few rooms away from the transmitter. Basically, the HP-902RFT headphones get the job done when you’re watching TV or playing a game, but they aren’t something you’ll sit around and luxuriate in while listening to high-quality recordings. The Sennheiser RS 165 headphones make dialogue a little easier to understand and the score sound a little more exciting, but there is no noticeable difference in latency.

Wireless TV headphones

The Power Acoustik headphones feel plasticky and a little cheap, but they’re comfortable enough to wear through a movie. Photo: Sarah Kobos

The main issue with the HP-902RFT system is that the package doesn’t include anything beyond the transmitter, the headphones, and their cases, so you’ll need to buy a power supply, some AAA batteries, and potentially RCA cables. Although the lack of a built-in rechargeable battery means you don’t have to worry about improperly seating the headphones on a cradle and finding them uncharged when you want to use them (a likely problem with a few of the other models we tested), it also means you’ll need to keep disposable batteries on hand or invest in a rechargeable set of AAAs. And if you use the headphones a lot, purchasing batteries frequently could get annoying and costly.

The HP-902RFT system is really easy to use. The headphones have a volume wheel, a mute button that allows you to hear what’s going on around you, and a switch that allows you to toggle between the two channels broadcast by the transmitter (via separate pairs of RCA inputs). That can come in handy if, say, you want to watch a movie while your kid plays Minecraft.

The headphones feel plasticky and a little cheap, but they’re comfortable enough to wear through the entirety of a movie. And their earcups are large enough to accommodate most ears but not so large that they won’t fit on smaller heads.

How to connect the transmitter to your TV

You can connect TVs to your audio gear in many different ways, depending on brand, model, year of manufacture, and so forth. So, before you buy a pair of wireless TV headphones, you should look at the side or back of your TV. What kinds of audio ports does it have? Look for a label that says “Out” or “Output.”

Wireless TV headphones

Photo: Lauren Dragan

Does it look like A in the pictures above? That’s an optical digital output. If the wireless TV headphones you’re interested in don’t have an optical input (our picks don’t), you’ll need to get a digital-to-analog converter such as this one, which will work with either of our picks and typically costs less than $30. If you are using the Power Acoustik HP-902RFT, you’ll need a male-to-male RCA cable, too.

Wireless TV headphones

Knowing what kinds of audio outputs your TV or AV receiver has will make setting up your wireless TV headphone system much easier. Photo: Lauren Dragan

If you have a TV with Dolby surround output and you still want to use the optical out, you’ll have to do one of two things. Either you’ll need to go into your TV’s settings and turn off Dolby Digital, using PCM encoding instead (this action will let you use the less expensive D/A converter mentioned above), or you can leave Dolby Digital on and buy this D/A converter and this optical cable, as well as this adapter for the HP-902RFT. If you’re using the Sennheiser RS 165, get this adapter instead.

If your TV’s audio output looks like B in the pictures above you’ll need an adapter that goes from RCA to ⅛ inch to connect to the Sennheiser RS 165 transmitter, or you’ll need this cable for the Power Acoustik model.

Does the output look like C in the pictures above? For the Sennheiser RS 165—congratulations!—you don’t need anything at all to convert. It’s already a ⅛-inch jack and the cable is included—just plug and play. You’ll need this RCA–to–⅛-inch cable for the Power Acoustik model.

Bluetooth hubs: A great idea that’s not ready for prime time

Wireless TV headphones

The Sennheiser BT T100 Audio Transmitter (and every other Bluetooth hub we tested) doesn’t offer low enough latency for us to recommend it over a pair of wireless TV headphones. Photo: Sarah Kobos

We really like the idea of the Bluetooth hub that lets you use your own Bluetooth headphones as wireless TV headphones. Pretty much all of our wireless headphone picks will sound better than any of the headphones we tested for this guide, and you can use them for all of your other listening needs. Unfortunately, as we discussed above, Bluetooth leads to a lot of latency between what you see on the screen and hear in your headphones. With every Bluetooth hub we tried, this effect was obvious—and frustrating enough to noticeably worsen our watching experience.

The competition

We tested several new wireless TV headphones against our top picks at the end of 2018, including:

MEE Audio Connect Hub: This hub didn’t make any of the Bluetooth headphones we connected to it sound any worse, and we appreciated how easy it was to add to an existing TV setup. Unfortunately, as with all the Bluetooth hubs we tested, the hub rendered far too much latency between the image and audio.

MEE Audio Connect Bluetooth: This hub rendered too much latency between the video and audio, even when we used the included headphones. The headphones also sounded compressed and washed out across all frequencies.

MEE Audio Matrix Cinema: We tested these Bluetooth headphones as a solution that didn’t require a hub. If you watch movies or TV shows only on something with Bluetooth capabilities, you wouldn’t need something as complicated as our picks. These headphones had lower latency than other Bluetooth headphones we’ve used, but it was still enough to bother us while watching a movie. Plus, these headphones sounded worse than many other Bluetooth headphones we’ve tested in this price range—particularly in the low end. If you just want Bluetooth headphones, you’d be better off with one of our wireless headphone picks.

Noontec Hammo TV: We appreciated that this set of TV headphones came with everything that you’d actually need to use them, including charging and input cables. However, these headphones had much more noticeable latency than the Sennheiser RS 165 pair. They are also less comfortable to wear and had a slightly distorted sound profile.

Sennheiser BT T100 Audio Transmitter: This Bluetooth hub supports the AptX codec, which means that if you have the right headphones the hub should render less latency for whatever you’re watching. Unfortunately, even when we connected the V-Moda Crossfade 2 Wireless headphones (which support the same codec), we still noticed a lot of latency between the video and audio.

TellyPhones by SleepPhones: This hub system includes a Bluetooth headphone built into a soft headband. That headphone is definitely comfortable enough to sleep in, but unfortunately it struggles to render low and high frequencies, making anything you listen to sound a little compressed. Additionally, regardless of whether you connect the included headphones or other low-latency Bluetooth headphones, the TellyPhones hub renders very noticeable latency. If you just want a pair of Bluetooth headphones you can sleep in, the separately sold SleepPhones might be a good solution. But we don’t think the entire system works well enough to recommend it.

We tested many other wireless TV headphone systems in previous years. Here are some of the ones that are still available:

Sennheiser RS 120: Moderately priced (less than $80 at the time of this writing), the RS 120 set has a nifty charging cradle in its transmitter base, but unfortunately we just didn’t love these headphones. One panelist pointed out how quickly they ended up with hiss (you have to tune them in on the side of the headphones, which you can easily bump), another disliked the build quality, and a third found them uncomfortable to wear for long. All of us commented on the sizzling high end of the frequency; every snare hit had a “tss tss” piercing aspect that was unpleasant. Overall, if you want to save money, get the Power Acoustik HP-902RFT instead.

Sennheiser RS 160: This model was a previous top pick, but alas, it has been discontinued. You can still find it here and there, however. If you see it, you should snap it up because for everyone on our panel it was the best-sounding model, hands down, even compared with the RS 165. All of us also found this pair to be very comfortable despite our various head shapes. The headphones are light, the earpads are sturdy yet have a nice squish to them, and nothing pinched or chafed. We could easily watch a movie with no complaints. We wish this model was still being made.

Sennheiser RS 175: The RS 175 pair ended up being a huge flop with our test panel. Brent summed it up: “These are a mess.” The RS 175 has a bass-boost option; in our tests, with the bass boost turned off, the overall sound was thin and edgy, lifeless. Piano sounded like a bad digital-keyboard representation of a piano sound. The low end was somewhat pitchless, so hip-hop and intense orchestral soundtracks (like that of The Lord of the Rings) seemed to lose their oomph. Geoff also remarked that the highs had a sizzly quality when the volume was turned up.

Sennheiser RS 185: The RS 185 model has an open-back design, which can be a good thing or a bad thing depending on how you want to use your wireless TV headphones. If you’re shopping for a pair of wireless headphones to watch TV next to a sleeping partner, the RS 185 pair isn’t for you. If you’re still interested, the RS 185 set has the most spacious sound of all of the wireless TV headphones that Sennheiser currently makes. It also produces the most balanced sound, from bass to mids to the lower treble. And yet, the sound quality isn’t a vast enough improvement over that of the RS 165 to justify the large increase in price.

Sennheiser RS 195: Created in conjunction with the Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Media Technology, the RS 195 pair is designed for people with slight hearing disabilities. Because this model has so many options and settings, we were hoping that it might hit the sweet spot as something that a person with hearing loss and a family member with typical hearing abilities could share. Unfortunately, our able-hearing panelists were exceptionally unhappy with the sound. We realize that we’re not who the RS 195 was designed for, though, so it would be unfair for us to criticize without taking that into account. We’ll just say that it is entirely possible that someone with a particular kind of moderate hearing loss might find the RS 195 sound profile helpful, and leave it at that.

This guide may have been updated by Wirecutter. To see the current recommendation, please go here.

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Hitting the Books: Brotopia

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Brotopia: Breaking up the Boys’ Club of Silicon Valley
by Emily Chang

Book cover

“Boys will be boys” doesn’t cut it anymore. For anybody who isn’t a cis-het white guy, the internet can be a xenophobic hellscape filled with racist trolls, misogynists, creeps and *shudder* tech bros. Women and PoC are being put through a societal meat grinder on a daily basis both in social media and Silicon Valley itself. This is wholly unacceptable, and yet, somehow still par for the course.

In , Emily Chang, host and executive producer of Bloomberg Technology, explores how computer science, geek culture and social media have been perverted to exclude women and minorities. In the excerpt below, Chang just how bad things have become.

THE “ELEPHANT IN THE VALLEY”

Until recently, there hasn’t been any way to quantify the harassment, sexism, and amorphous “bro culture” in the tech industry. People could dismiss misogynistic stories like Susan Fowler’s as one-offs, exceptions and not the rule. But in 2016, a group of industry insiders, in conjunction with Stanford University, published a survey of women and their experiences at Silicon Valley workplaces. The “Elephant in the Valley” study (yes, that’s its real name) found that of the more than two hundred women respondents (most of them having had at least ten years’ experience), the vast majority—90 percent—reported witnessing sexist behavior at industry offsites and conferences. Sixty percent said they had personally been sexually harassed or received unwanted sexual advances, most of the time from a superior. Bear in mind, according to the study’s authors, 25 percent of the women surveyed were C-suite level; 11 percent were founders.

These women also reported the “little things”: 84 percent of those surveyed said they’d been called too aggressive at work; 66 percent have felt excluded from social or networking activities because of their gender; 59 percent felt they had not gotten the same opportunities as their male counterparts. Most said questions that should have been directed to them were asked of their male peers instead, and almost half have been asked to do lower-level tasks such as taking notes or ordering food, jobs that male colleagues are not asked to do.

In addition to these statistics, the “Elephant in the Valley” surveyors collected hundreds of heretofore unpublished anonymous stories they agreed to share with me. With the help of an incredibly patient researcher, I spent hours organizing these stories into categories that included “sexual harassment,” “porn use in office,” “bro culture,” “rape jokes,” and “assault.”

The data dump came in the form of a massive spreadsheet including around 250 accounts of women in tech. Their stories were an exhausting read, for both their volume and their emotional content. The largest number of complaints, by far, fell into my category of sexual harassment—inappropriate and unwanted come ons by co-workers, bosses, or superiors. One woman working among a hundred male engineers reported being hit on repeatedly, with one engineer telling her, “If I was 20 years younger I would rock your world.” There are several reports of unwanted kisses and gropes, and even of men showing up at the homes of their female colleagues expecting some form of sex and refusing to leave when asked.

Emily Chang

Emily Chang – image: David Paul Morris

Off-color remarks and sexual jokes were also a common theme in these accounts. Apparently, at tech firms, comments and jokes about sexual behavior, Viagra, porn, and even rape seem to fit right in. One woman reported, “I was walking with some male colleagues around the office at lunch, and when we found ourselves in a remote area of the building with a sketchy old door, one of them said, jokingly, ‘Quick! Grab her legs, let’s rape her!'” Many women had also had the uncomfortable experience of seeing male co-workers watch porn while at work and hearing them rate women in the office based on sexual attractiveness.

According to the stories, things often get really dicey at company offsites or social events. One woman said her company’s designated happy hour location was Hooters, where she listened to her boss com- plain about his wife. There are tales of strip clubs, of course, accounts of uncomfortable come-ons whispered into women’s ears at parties, and one report of being groped in a hot tub at a company retreat. Many women felt they had no choice but to participate in these events and one reported that “only those who would party and drink excessively with the CEO on Friday nights would get promoted.”

After reading dozens of the anonymous “Elephant in the Valley” stories, I noted that the women spoke in a surprising tone: more exasperated than outraged. Like the dozen women I had gathered in my living room, they were tired of the toxic culture they worked in and tired of having to explain it to those who somehow managed to ignore it. It is because of their endurance and courage, I believe, that we have reached a cultural tipping point. From here on out, ignorance of the problem can only be willful. Reactions like “Gosh, I didn’t know this was going on” and “Is it really that bad?” are simply no longer credible. Or acceptable.

Excerpted from BROTOPIA: Breaking Up the Boys’ Club of Silicon Valley by Emily Chang with permission of Portfolio, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright © Emily Chang, 2019.

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NASA unveils stunning images of merging supersonic shockwaves

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The jets shown in the images are T-38s flying at 28,000 feet or so. They were captured by a B200 King Air flying a pattern just 2,000 feet above them, equipped with 1,400 fps cameras mounted on a special arm.

They show the shockwaves, or rapid pressure changes that result when an aircraft flies faster than the speed of sound, about 682 MPH at 30,000 feet. The above image was taken in black and white, but later colorized to show the relative air pressures around the shock waves.

“What’s interesting is, if you look at the rear T-38, you see these shocks kind of interact in a curve,” said research engineer Neal Smith. “This is because the trailing T-38 is flying in the wake of the leading aircraft, so the shocks are going to be shaped differently. This data is really going to help us advance our understanding of how these shocks interact.”

NASA has been able to image single shockwaves for awhile, but really loud sonic booms are produced when multiple shocks merge together. As such, the imaging system is crucial to NASA and Lockheed Martin’s development of the X-59 Quiet SuperSonic Technology X-plane, or X-59 QueSST. It’s designed to reduce explosive sonic booms — which can cause damage over inhabited areas — to a low rumble.

If such flights become legal over land, they’ll change the face of air travel by reducing many trips by up to half. Several companies are working on quiet supersonic jet designs and one of them, Boom, has even taken deposits from airlines.

Before any overland flights can happen, however, NASA will have to convince the FAA and other regulators that such planes won’t cause damage or frighten inhabitants below. By producing images that dramatically illustrate the data, the new camera system represents a big step toward that goal. “We’re seeing a level of physical detail here that I don’t think anybody has ever seen before,” said NASA senior engineer Dan Banks. “Just looking at the data for the first time, I think things worked out better than we’d imagined. This is a very big step.”

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