Month: August 2022

Enlarge (credit: Ars Technica)

It's Wednesday, which means it's time for another Dealmaster. Our latest roundup of the best tech deals from around the web includes a new low on HyperX's Cloud Alpha Wireless gaming headset, which is currently down to $140 at Amazon with an on-page coupon. While that's still not quite cheap for a pair of gaming headphones, it is $60 off HyperX's MSRP and $20 below the previous best price we've seen.

I've had the Cloud Alpha Wireless on hand for the past several weeks. As with most gaming headsets, they are a bit overpriced compared to standard headphones purely in terms of sound quality, as the "V-shaped" signature here bumps the bass and, to a slightly lesser extent, treble at the expense of some detail and emphasis in the mid-range frequencies. But what's here is still good, especially next to other gaming headsets, lending bass-heavy songs and in-game explosions a good sense of impact. (It's possible to customize the Cloud Alpha Wireless' sound through a companion app, too, though that is only available on Windows PCs.) For competitive games, it's also fine at locating sounds like footsteps accurately.

Like the wired Cloud Alpha—which we've also recommended—this is a highly comfortable headset to wear for hours at a time. There's plush padding on the earcups and headband, and the whole build doesn't clamp down too hard on the ears. Just note that it can let in a bit more outside noise than some other closed-back headphones in particularly noisy environments. The included boom mic is perfectly competent for casual gaming chat, too, though a dedicated USB mic will still sound much fuller. It's also worth noting that these headphones can only connect over an included USB dongle, not Bluetooth or a 3.5 mm cable. This won't be an issue if you use them with a PC or a PlayStation console (or a Switch's dock), but for mobile devices or Xbox consoles (which require special wireless tech to work), it's a no-go.

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images)

There's a classic irony with new technology, that adopters are forced to limit themselves to two of the three things everyone wants: fast, cheap, and good. When the tech is batteries, adoption is even more challenging. Cheap and fast (charging) still matter, but "good" can mean different things, such as light weight, low volume, or long life span, depending on your needs. Still, the same sorts of tradeoffs are involved. If you want really fast charging, you're probably going to have to give up some capacity.

Those tradeoffs keep research into alternate battery chemistries going despite the massive lead lithium has in terms of technology and manufacturing capabilities—there's still the hope that some other chemistry could provide a big drop in price or a big boost in some measure of performance.

Today, a paper is being published that appears to offer low price combined with a big boost in several of those measures. The aluminum-sulfur batteries it describes offer low-priced raw materials, competitive size, and more capacity per weight than lithium-ion—with the big plus of fully charging cells in far less than a minute. The one obvious problem it has right now is that it needs to be at 90° C (nearly the boiling point of water) to work.

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Streaming media platform Plex on Wednesday said it was hacked by intruders who managed to access a proprietary database and make off with password data, usernames, and emails belonging to at least half of its 30 million customers.

“Yesterday, we discovered suspicious activity on one of our databases,” company officials wrote in an email sent to customers. “We immediately began an investigation and it does appear that a third-party was able to access a limited subset of data that includes emails, usernames, and encrypted passwords.”

The email said that the passwords were “hashed and secured in accordance with best practices,” meaning the passwords were cryptographically scrambled in a way that requires attackers to devote additional resources to crack the hashes and revert them back to their plaintext state. A Plex spokesperson said that the passwords were hashed using bcrypt, among the strongest algorithms for protecting passwords. bcrypt automatically applies what's known as cryptographic salting and peppering to make cracking harder.

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Apple has officially confirmed the date and time for this year's iPhone-centric product launch event: September 7 at 10am PDT (1pm EST).

This is the same date that was leaked in a Bloomberg report last week, though members of the media are being invited to the Steve Jobs Theater on Apple's campus to cover the event and go hands-on with devices in person (the report suggested it would be entirely livestreamed, as many of Apple's pandemic-era product reveals have been). Apple's invitation was characteristically cryptic, but it's safe to assume that the company plans to announce an updated iPhone lineup and a release date for iOS 16.

The Bloomberg report said that Apple would be discontinuing the "mini" iPhone size for the iPhone 14 lineup, and it would be launching a less-expensive 6.7-inch iPhone 14 Max for people who want a large screen but don't want to step all the way up to the Pro iPhones. It sounds like the best new features are being reserved for the higher-end phones, including a notchless display with smaller cutouts for the front-facing camera and sensors, an all-new processor, and a new main camera with a 48-megapixel sensor.

Enlarge (credit: Johnny Louis / Contributor | Getty Images Entertainment)

According to a lawsuit filed this week by comedian George Lopez, all Pandora had to do to negotiate streaming rights for two of his popular comedy specials was contact him directly. Instead, Lopez's complaint says that Pandora considered the comedian a "cash cow"—alleging that Lopez is yet another comedian whose copyrighted materials have been illegally streamed to Pandora listeners without the streaming service securing proper licensing or sharing royalties.

"Pandora found a cash cow in a new revenue stream, and in a brazen business decision determined that the risk was worth the gain—that is until now," Lopez's lawyer, Richard S. Busch of the Los Angeles law firm King & Ballow, wrote in the complaint.

Busch was already representing other comedians suing Pandora, including Lewis Black, Ron White, and the estates of late comedians George Carlin and Robin Williams. According to The Wrap's exclusive report, all the lawsuits have been consolidated and will be heard in the California Central District Court before the end of August.

Enlarge / The green Pixel 6. (credit: David Urbanke)

Canalys' North American smartphone market share numbers are out, and the big mover for Q2 2022 is once again Google, which is seeing huge growth numbers thanks to the Pixel 6. Last quarter, Canalys had Google up 380 percent year over year, and this quarter, the company is up 230 percent!

That sounds incredibly successful, but this is Google's tiny hardware division we're talking about, so it's all relative success. The company is now at 2 percent North American market share, having shipped 800,000 devices for Q2 2022. Along with last quarter, Google is now regularly hitting whole-digit market share numbers. That's good enough for fifth place, behind Apple (52 percent), Samsung (26 percent), Lenovo/Motorola (9 percent), and TCL (5 percent).

Canalys also has a list of the best-selling models. The top five are all iPhones, of course, with the base model iPhone 13 taking the top spot, followed by the super-cheap iPhone SE. The iPhone 13 Mini, which is rumored to be selling so poorly that there won't be an iPhone 14 Mini, took the ninth spot. The first Android phone on the list, the flagship Galaxy S22 Ultra, clocks in at No. 6.