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Ring says its app will allow more control over data shared with Google, Facebook

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A couple of weeks ago, the Electronic Frontier Foundation published the results of its investigation into data the Ring app is sharing with third parties. While the Amazon-owned company has faced criticism over its links to law enforcement and the security of user’s accounts, this particular issue was all about tracks information from the mobile devices users install its apps on, and who it shares it with. Those that get the infor include names you know like Google and Facebook, but also other data companies like MixPanel and AppsFlyer.

On Friday afternoon a company spokesperson told CBS that soon, users will be able to opt-out of information sharing agreements “where applicable.” There’s no real detail on what exactly that means, although apparently some information will still be shared.

Apps and services frequently ask users (or don’t even ask) about sharing information to various trackers, usually stating it’s for diagnostic reasons. But as we’ve seen, data collected by apps on your phone can include far more pervasive and personal location tracking than you’d probably expect, or they do things like record your entire screen while you use them. Once the toggles are available, we’ll see what Ring says about the information it’s sharing and how much control you have over it.

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Delta hopes to be the first carbon neutral airline

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The company is promising to be both transparent about its progress and “nimble” in adapting to the latest technology. It teased a “number of milestones” coming in 2020.

It’s an ambitious plan (BP isn’t expecting neutrality until 2050), and it’s notable that Delta isn’t trying to ‘cheat’ by using carbon offsets. This is still a tall order, however. About 98 percent of Delta’s emissions, roughly 39.4 million imperial tons per year, come from its aircraft. Even if there’s a dramatic improvement in fuel efficiency, the airline will have to invest heavily if it’s going to compensate for its contribution to climate change.

There are also no tangible plans to move to electric aircraft or other zero-emissions sources. CEO Ed Bastian told CNBC in an interview that he didn’t “ever see a future” where Delta would eliminate jet fuel use. The air carrier might produce significant CO2 emissions for a long, long time. Still, this might prompt Delta’s rivals to follow suit and lower the airline industry’s overall footprint. When air travel accounts for 2 percent of worldwide CO2 emissions, they might play a significant part in reducing humanity’s effect on the planet.

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It doesn’t matter if China hacked Equifax

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It was a message of PR reprieve for the skinsuits at Equifax, who spend their life cycles profiting from tracking and trading our personal and financial information (and we’re powerless to stop them). Especially now as we’re seeing reports about how four Chinese hackers “took down Equifax.”

That sure sounds a lot better (for them) than the fact that Equifax’s security failures were so bad for so long that a breach was inevitable. One month after Equifax admitted the breach, press and pundits remarked on the multitude of issues saying it was probable “that more than one group of hackers broke into the company.”

Yeah, something makes me think China’s hackers are more of the “hoarders” variety, not the ‘sing Kumbaya’ sharing kind — and our stolen Equifax data was definitely shared. “Katie Van Fleet of Seattle says she’s spent months trying to regain her stolen identity, and says it has been stolen more than a dozen times,” reported NBC. “I didn’t sign up to use Equifax, so I feel all of that stuff has been taken, and now I am left here trying to sweep up the pieces and just trying to protect myself and protect my credit,” Van Fleet said.

And that’s the thing: None of us signed up for Equifax. Yet here we are.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before

Google wifi and iCloud illustration

In late 2017, the plucky little credit bureau that built its business nonconsensually getting dirt on Americans in order to deny them insurance claims (Equifax) suffered a wholly predictable calamity, endemic to powerful corporations whose engines are fueled by arrogance, hubris, and greed.

In early September 2017, Equifax was forced to reveal a breach it had known about for months. It impacted approximately 143 million U.S. consumers, as well as information on some Canadians and up to 44 million British residents, putting the total just shy of 200 million.

The stolen files were described as “records.” But by early 2018 Equifax was forced to admit “records” meant our names, home addresses, dates of birth, Social Security numbers, credit records, drivers licenses, passports, and really, just everything.

By March 2018, the company revealed it found a few more breach victims in its couch cushions. “In September last year Equifax said it had discovered that 145 million US customers may have had their information stolen,” BBC cavalierly reported. “Its investigation into the breach has revealed that the details of a further 2.4 million Americans went astray.”

The company had been warned by a security researcher to fix its vulnerabilities months before the first attack was alleged to have happened. That researcher shared their findings with press, showing that a public web portal allowed anyone “with no authentication whatsoever … to access the personal data of every American, including social security numbers, full names, birthdates, and city and state of residence.” What’s more:

While probing Equifax servers and sites, the researcher said that they were also able to take control—or get shell access as hackers refer to it—on several Equifax servers, and found several others vulnerable to simple bugs such as SQL injection, a common, basic way of attacking sites. Many servers were running outdated software … Equifax had thousands of servers exposed on the internet…

The researcher reported all of this to the company. “If it took me three hours to find that website, I definitely think I’m not the only one who found it,” they told Motherboard. “It wasn’t just one breach. It was maybe dozens.”

Six months after that first researcher notified the company about the vulnerability, Equifax patched it — but only after the massive breach had already taken place, according to Equifax’s own timeline.

When called in on the carpet for a congressional hearing about the privacy and consumer identity apocalypse Equifax ushered into our cursed timeline, WSJ reported that Equifax’s temporary chief executive told Congress he wasn’t sure whether the company was encrypting consumer data. Equifax was indeed storing unencrypted user data on a public-facing server, and “didn’t encrypt its mobile applications either. — and when it did encrypt data, it left the encryption keys on the same public facing servers.”

Eventually, one big class-action lawsuit revealed that wasn’t all: we found out Equifax used ‘admin’ as a username and password internally.

But okay. They want us to blame China.

Chinese Hackers Equifax

The breach earned Equifax a lot of public humiliation — besides all the bad press, at least 240 lawsuits were filed. Still, it seemed like the company liked that sort of thing. Security company FireEye quietly removed its boasting about protecting Equifax from its website, but was still hired to handle Equifax’s incident response.

Equifax’s response to everything was a masterclass in how to do everything wrong.

Right after the breach, it came out that Equifax had been rated an “F” in app security; the company responded by silently disappearing its apps from the Apple App Store and Google Play (Android).

Equifax tried to blame the breach on a single vulnerability in Apache Struts; Apache wasted no time releasing a statement showing Equifax was to blame for not patching it. The company had been notified about it six months before the alleged incident occurred.

Within an hour of the breach’s public admission, information emerged that three Equifax executives sold stock just before the breach and after the company had internal knowledge of the incident (a month prior to the public acknowledgement).

Speaking of profiting off our pain… One of the engineers who worked on coding Equifax’s “equifaxsecurity2017.com” website was found to have abused people’s information for insider trading Equifax stock. This was the WordPress site Equifax sent consumers to, to find out whether they were impacted by the breach. It was totally broken: Visitors got different answers with every query. It also told visitors that Equifax’s credit monitoring service was not available, and to check back later in the month; many noticed you could enter any gibberish to get the same answers.

It also seemed for a while that those who signed up for credit monitoring waived some legal rights.

Then, the $700 million data breach settlement. This turned into $125 per person. Except Equifax only planned to pay 248,000 of the actual victims — and over four and a half million applied, bringing the payout down to $6.80 per victim.

Stock in golden parachutes is way up

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From any angle, we consumers — none of whom consented to being in Equifax’s databases — got the worst of it. Equifax was pwned in a completely stupid and avoidable way and are now the biggest plop in the swirling toilet bowl of our modern privacy apocalypse.

Even though officials were mad at Equifax for a minute and consumers want to burn them to the ground and salt the earth, they’re doing just fine. NY Post reported that the company’s big corporate clients are giving the despicable data dealers a pass. “The embattled credit bureau said Friday it hasn’t lost any significant business.”

The outlet reminded us, “Equifax largely does business with banks and other financial institutions — not with the people they collect information on.” According to GovTech, “A year after the worst data breach in U.S. history to date, Atlanta-based Equifax has been chastened, but its business model is unchanged and the company churns on, virtually undamaged by legislative, regulatory or prosecutorial penalties.”

Equifax got a “get out of jail free” card: The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau decided not to do a damn thing about it. Former Director of the CFPB Richard Cordray had authorized an investigation, Reuters wrote, “But Cordray resigned in November and was replaced by [Mick] Mulvaney, President Donald Trump’s budget chief.”

Mulvaney, head of the CFPB, pulled the agency back from doing a full-scale probe and indefinitely suspended plans for on-the-ground tests on how Equifax protects its data. “The CFPB also recently rebuffed bank regulators at the Federal Reserve, Federal Deposit Insurance Corp and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency when they offered to help with on-site exams of credit bureaus,” reported Reuters.

So, I’m sorry Scooby gang. It doesn’t matter who hacked the “credit risk assessment” company no one can opt out of. Old Man Equifax is going to get away with it.

Imagine a company with the dated incompetence of Yahoo security circa 2013-14. The arrogance and greed, growth-at-all-costs-to-society hubris of Uber circa 2009-2017. The “hot or not” contempt for human beings and rapey privacy machinations as Facebook circa 2004-present.

Equifax, for being the world’s oldest, old-timey, redlining-era, data-plantation owner (circa 1899) that couldn’t even set up a WordPress site in 2017 sure knows how to keep up with the techbro Jonses. Loads of money and zero consequences has a way of keeping you nimble like that.

It’s quite insane, really.

Images: Jaap Arriens/NurPhoto via Getty Images (Equifax / Matrix); AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin (AG Barr); cthoman via Getty Images (Golden parachute)

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The IRS won’t ask you to report ‘Fortnite’ V-Bucks on tax returns

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The tax forms won’t clarify matters, though. Schedule 1 in Form 1040 asks taxpayers if they have “any financial interest in any virtual currency” without a definition or an indication of what to do next. While many will check with the IRS for a clarification or simply assume the tax bureau is referring to crypto, this could lead to confusion for gamers who aren’t sure if their in-game cash needs to be declared.

The ambiguity has prompted calls for the IRS to explicitly outline its approach to in-game currency, and it might need to take action relatively soon given the sheer volume of transactions in games. Fortnite alone racked up an estimated $1.8 billion in worldwide revenue in 2019 from people buying season passes and cosmetic gear. While only a fraction of in-game currency use is likely to be of any concern to the US government, the numbers might grow too large for officials to ignore.

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Motorola Razr review: A fashion statement, not a flagship

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There are a few more things to note about the Razr’s software. Unlike most other premium phones you’re likely to see in 2020 — including the new Galaxy Z Flip — the Razr only runs Android 9.0 Pie. Now, that’s a fine flavor of Android, but Motorola could’ve done better. Oh, and for you retro fanboys, there’s a classic Razr mode you can access from the Quick Settings panel — once enabled, it swaps the stock launcher out for a nearly pixel-perfect recreation of the original RAZR V3, right down to the jaunty boot chime and laser-etched keypad. It’s a total gimmick and not meant to be used seriously, but whatever, it’s a fun nod to a device this new Razr owes so much to.

More than anything, though, I was concerned about power management and battery life. How could I not be? The best Motorola could do is squeeze in two slim, discrete batteries with a combined capacity of about 2,510mAh — that’s far less than any other smartphone I’ve tested in the last year. (Even more troubling, a recent YouTube teardown suggests the actual combined battery capacity is closer to 2,400mAh.)

Motorola Razr (2020) review

Thankfully, the reality wasn’t quite as bad as I expected. If you play your cards right and don’t use the phone constantly, the Razr could feasibly last for about 12 hours; I’ve gotten pretty close a few times. Things get a little dicier when we start talking about sustained use. If you’re the kind of person who sits around scrolling through Instagram for hours on end, you’ll probably want to keep the included 18W TurboCharger handy. The Razr’s screen-on time maxes out at around four hours. Plus, it gets pretty warm, pretty quickly. (I suspect that’s because there’s so little room inside for proper heat management, but Motorola wouldn’t say so on the record.)

If this were another review, these slightly underwhelming results wouldn’t feel so distressing. Again, you’re being offered a level of performance and battery life that is at best just adequate, but a $1,500 phone should be able to do at least a little better, right?

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Gmail for iOS will let you attach items from the Files app

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In the iOS app, users will simply click the attachment icon, scroll to the “Attachments” section and select the folder icon. This isn’t a huge change, but attachments have always felt a bit limited in the Gmail app, so it’s a welcomed improvement. This is an “extended rollout,” so don’t be surprised if you don’t see the change right away.

G Suite

The update comes roughly one year after Gmail introduced larger changes to the iOS app, like a refreshed design and more accessible account switcher. Since then, Gmail has added other features, like customizable swipe actions and the ability to prevent images from loading automatically.

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Australian court orders Google to reveal user who wrote a dentist’s bad review

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The surgeon in question, Dr. Matthew Kabbabe, had asked Google share the identity of the anonymous user, “CBsm 23.” Google rejected the request, stating it didn’t “have any means to investigate where and when the ID was created.” However, a judge said that Dr. Kabbabe had the right to pursue a defamation case and that Google must hand over personal details like names, phone numbers, location metadata and IP addresses.

The dental surgeon’s lawyer called the rule “groundbreaking,” saying Google was effectively responsible for dealing with defamatory postings on its platform. “If you’re out there trying to hide by anonymity, even via VPN, I think the court system’s catching up now and there are ways and means of obtaining that information,” Mark Stanarevic told an Australian TV station.

It has been illegal since 2016 for US companies to punish consumers with “gag clauses” in contracts, particularly after one infamous incident where a New York state hotel tried to fine a guest for a bad review. However, that law doesn’t necessarily apply to slanderous comments nor to other countries. In fact, US companies are required by the Hague convention to pass on information demanded by foreign courts.

In Australia, large corporations can’t sue users for bad reviews, but non-profits and small businesses with less than 10 employees definitely can. Meanwhile, Google told the ABC that it won’t comment on ongoing legal matters. However, it has previously told Australian courts that such court orders could lead to “the suppression of information that would have prevented consumers suffering from unfair business practices.”

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Online-only platforms are going offline with permanent spaces

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Hunker describes itself as an editorial website to help “first-timers improve their homes — with inspiring tours, practical solutions and design advice for real people.” Shopify is an all-in-one commerce platform where users can start and run an online business, facilitating 820,000 online stores since June 2019. Depop calls itself “the creative community’s marketplace” and projects that its existing user base will increase threefold over the next three years, from 5 million to 15 million users.

In the last two years, each company has added a physical space that isn’t exactly a store and isn’t really an office, though they definitely borrow aspects of each. Hunker’s space, known as Hunker Home, is a three-story loft in the Abbot-Kinney neighborhood of Venice, CA. Shopify opened a 1,600 square foot location in downtown Los Angeles’ The Row, and Depop’s two community spots are in Little Italy, Manhattan, and Silver Lake, LA.

“When you are competing online, whether it’s with other marketplaces, brands or services or vendors like Shopify, you have to add something that people can’t get elsewhere,” Vogue Business Editor Hilary Milnes explained. “I don’t know if it’s totally proven that this really works, but if you are going to experiment, the idea of what makes really loyal customers is that community mindset. Even if it’s more of a marketing arm than an actual sales outlet.”

She also said that online businesses, with all the user data they possess, have a greater understanding of their customers than pre-online shopping brands that simply opened stores in efforts to reach the largest scale. “It’s totally different because of how intentional and strategic these spaces are.”

Depop LA

Depop opened two locations in New York and LA in 2018. Users could book a free photo studio to photograph items for their stores or shop featured-users’ collections. The brand also used them as event spaces, or to feature collaborations with users. The New York location closed in December 2019, but the west coast one remains open. Depop US Country Manager Sarah Haith says, “Providing our community, regardless of where they are, with a place to experience new fashion culture and creativity in real life is important to us and will remain a focus for Depop going forward.”

Shopify’s LA outpost is a communal space for Shopify merchants to work and get IRL technical support. It’s also where Shopify hosts a full calendar of educational entrepreneurship programs. Hunker Home is a showroom, but not in a sense that visitors can buy from the floor. It’s flipped quarterly to show design trends and establish their aesthetic, while also acting as a content studio, outlet for partnerships (to feature brands’ home wares or host influencers) and an event space.

There are two consistent components among the three spaces — programming and retail — but traditional retail is probably the smallest part of the equation.

Traditional retail is probably the smallest part of the equation.

Both Depop and Shopify feature select users’ goods in their spaces. Amin Adjmi, owner of Depop shop StayCool, did a pop-up at the New York location. He had a kick-off party with drinks and music and decorated the room in line with his brand’s aesthetic to launch and sell his winter 2019 collection. “Depop put people purchasing my clothes through their POS system and fulfilled it. Obviously, they gave me a space to have my product, which was amazing, and were an extra set of hands. I didn’t have to be there each day after the event to sell my stuff.” They did, however, take ten percent of his sales (as they would for items sold online), and he went on to use the space, attending other pop-ups and using the free photo studio to shoot models in his clothing.

Shopify’s space also features merchants’ items for sale, but it goes a step further and brings in more established merchants to offer insight to their community through panels, masterclasses and other educational events. The team from The Hundreds, a 16-year-old LA-based streetwear and media company, did a Merchant Mentor Session, bringing in a couple hundred people for a two-and-half-hour event to hear the founders’ story, ask questions and meet other like-minded merchants looking for perspective.

“The IRL extension of Shopify allows us to connect with our customers face-to-face, to share the realities of starting a brand while learning on a personal level how our brand has impacted them,” the brand’s digital director Ceilidh MacLeod, who spoke at the event, said. “Additionally, it gives us an opportunity to connect with people who don’t even know our brand. We had people far removed from our typical customer demographic come out purely for the business advice.”

Hunker’s programming is similar but operates on a much smaller scale for now. “I’d say community and communion are big parts of the way I think about building the Hunker brand, and the way our team thinks about our relationship to our audience,” VP of Content Eve Epstein says. “Being able to host these conversations is so important, both literally, like our Black History Month panel where we’re speaking to some of the most amazing and creative people in the design community about the challenges that they’ve encountered in the course of their amazing careers, or [in a] slightly more abstract, but still equally important way, through creating content that really represents a conversation between two brands.”

Hunker House

While Shopify and Depop’s spaces are more for their users, Hunker’s Home is highly leveraged for content creation, in an effort to make Hunker a more attractive partner to their advertisers. “Every partner and activation is really different, with different people, needs and goals.” This has shed light on how versatile the house has become when working with a wide variety of partners. “You’re not just publishing all of the same kind of content on one channel. You are really creating stuff based on what works well. I’ve noticed that the house is a really natural extension of a lot of those properties.”

Much like social media, which is best leveraged for branding, this new era of brick and mortars are part of a larger integrated strategy rather than a clear-cut sales contribution to the bottom line.

“We really didn’t think about optimizing for customer revenue, we thought about optimizing it for brand experience and content creation,” said Hunker’s Epstein, about the house.

Hunker is tied into a five-year lease on the prime real estate in Venice, and Shopify is expanding. Depop says its New York location is only closed to the public, not its community, and its LA location continues to grow. But none of them are responsible for generating sales revenue. While it’s unclear whether this new physical retail model will work right now, these community spaces only really have one thing in common with the shops that are consistently dying off around them⁠ — the square footage.

Images: Depop, Shopify, Hunker



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How to connect your new turntable to any audio system

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Before we jump in, it’s important to understand what components and technologies you need to get the music from a vinyl record into your speakers (you can find more detailed definitions of terms in our guide to the best turntables). Unlike the audio signal coming out of your phone, computer, or CD player, the audio signal coming from your turntable’s cartridge (the part that holds the stylus or needle) first needs to pass through a specialized processing device called a phono preamp. A phono preamp can be a standalone component, or it might be built into a turntable, a receiver, or a set of powered speakers (check the specs or look for a port labelled “phono”). If neither your turntable nor the audio system you want to connect it to has a built-in phono preamp, you need to add one. (Both of the top picks in our best turntables guide have built-in phono preamps.) Any phono preamp will work with the moving-magnet (MM) cartridge that comes fitted onto most turntables. Many audiophiles like to retrofit their turntables with moving-coil (MC) cartridges; these require a phono preamp that’s designed to work with both MM and MC cartridges.

Turntables without a built-in phono preamp also require a ground cable between the turntable and the phono preamp (or the receiver or speakers with a built-in phono preamp) to eliminate any potential hum or noise between components. This can be a separate ground cable or one combined into the audio cables. The turntable and the phono preamp both have screws for attaching the ground cable (see the photo below).

Connecting to receivers and other old-school audio gear

Most receivers, including all of the models in our best stereo receiver guide and most of the top picks in our best AV receiver guide, have phono preamps built in, so you can connect your turntable directly to the receiver’s phono input (pictured below). If your turntable also has a built-in phono preamp, you should connect it to one of the receiver’s other analog inputs—otherwise you’ll be “cascading” the phono preamps, and the sound will be extremely boomy and distorted.

Turntable

Photo: Brent Butterworth

A few powered bookshelf speaker pairs, such as the Klipsch R-51PM, have phono inputs, so they can connect directly to turntables that lack phono preamps. But with most powered speakers, you need to use a turntable with a built-in phono preamp or connect an external phono preamp between the turntable and the speakers.

Connecting to Bluetooth speakers and headphones

As we mentioned above, a few turntables now incorporate Bluetooth wireless transmitters, which can stream audio directly to your wireless speakers or headphones. Examples include Audio-Technica’s AT-LP60XBT and Sony’s PS-LX310BT. With either of these models, you simply pair the turntable with your audio device, and you’re ready to play. Every record player with built-in Bluetooth also has a built-in phono preamp.

For turntables that lack built-in Bluetooth, one option is to bypass the Bluetooth function in your wireless speakers or headphones and instead use the analog input, assuming they have one (many do). If your turntable has a built-in phono preamp, you can run a basic RCA stereo interconnect cable from its analog output to your audio device’s analog input. Most wireless tabletop speakers and all wireless headphones lack a phono preamp, so if your turntable doesn’t have one built in, you need to connect a standalone phono preamp between the turntable and the speaker system or headphones, which adds a second set of cables to the chain.

Of course, the drawback to that approach is that your system is no longer wireless when you’re listening to records. If you wish to have your turntable on a table or shelf that’s not close to your speakers, you need to connect the phono preamp (or the turntable with a built-in phono preamp) to a Bluetooth transmitter. Many of these are available, for prices starting at less than $20. Once you’ve done that, you simply pair the transmitter with your speaker or headphones.

Connecting to Wi-Fi–based speakers (Sonos, Amazon Echo, AirPlay)

Connecting a turntable through Wi-Fi can be difficult and costly, depending on how you choose to set things up. The easiest and cheapest way to use a turntable with Wi-Fi–based wireless audio systems is to bypass the Wi-Fi and make an analog connection. Many Wi-Fi speakers have an analog input that you can connect directly to a phono preamp or a turntable with a built-in phono preamp.

If you wish to keep the Wi-Fi speakers wireless, you have two possible approaches. If your Wi-Fi speaker also offers Bluetooth and your turntable has Bluetooth, you can use that wireless connection method instead of Wi-Fi. If not, you need to buy a device that bridges your turntable and your wireless audio system. For Sonos, that device is the Port (you can also use the analog input on a Sonos Play:5 speaker to send signals from your turntable to your entire Sonos system). For an Amazon Echo, it’s the Echo Link. For DTS Play-Fi or Apple AirPlay systems, it’s the MartinLogan Unison. The big advantage of this approach is that the system can stream sound from your turntable to multiple speakers throughout your home, and the result can sound slightly better than on a Bluetooth connection. The drawback is that this bridge device may cost more than your turntable, and none of them has a built-in phono preamp—so unless your turntable has one, you have to connect a phono preamp between the turntable and the wireless interface.

If you’re building a system from scratch, there is currently one turntable that offers built-in Wi-Fi: the Yamaha MusicCast Vinyl 500. The Wi-Fi connectivity works only with Yamaha’s MusicCast speakers and audio components, though, so you have to build your system around that brand.

Connecting to wired headphones

If you own headphones that require a cabled connection, you have a couple of options. If you have a receiver with a headphone jack, just connect the receiver as described above and plug in the headphones. You can also use an external headphone amp, as long as it has an analog input; simply connect the output of the phono preamp (or the turntable with a built-in preamp) to the headphone amp, and then plug the headphones into the amp. A few phono preamps, such as the GOgroove Phono Preamp Pro, have headphone amps built in, so you need only the one box between your turntable and headphones.

By now you can see that, although the connections might be a little complex (and, in the case of Wi-Fi–based systems, expensive), there really is a way to connect your new turntable to the audio gear you already own—and to bring the tactile experience and classic sound of vinyl records into your life.

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

When readers choose to buy Wirecutter’s independently chosen editorial picks, Wirecutter and Engadget may earn affiliate commissions.

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Pandora’s Apple Watch app can stream music without an iPhone

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The Pandora Watch app is now completely standalone. Previously, you could download music to the wearable through Pandora, but being able to stream whatever you want without having your phone close by is a neat update.

Pandora’s stealing a march on many of its rivals here. Apple, of course, allows direct streaming to Apple Watch with Music and Podcasts. The likes of Spotify and Deezer still need an iPhone connection, effectively making their Watch interfaces remotes for their iPhone apps. YouTube Music and Tidal don’t support Apple Watch at all.

Given that Apple is selling several million watches every quarter, Pandora has a sizable market to tap into for people who want an alternative to Apple Music. Most people seem to still use their Apple Watch in conjunction with their iPhone, rather than leaving their phone behind. So while direct music streaming to the Watch is still a bit of a niche use case, Pandora is setting itself apart a bit from many competitors in the music and podcast department with this move.

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