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Rock your inner jock with a pair of sturdy, sweatproof, and tangle-proof headphones. Here are our favorites.

Keep your iPhone, Apple Watch, and AirPods topped up with these WIRED-tested docking systems.

These weatherproof outdoor security cams keep a watchful eye on your property while you get on with life. Our list includes battery-powered and LTE devices and options that need no subscription.

When fast radio bursts (FRBs) were first detected in 2007, they were a complete enigma. As their name implies, these events involve a very brief eruption of radio emissions and then typically silence, though a few objects appear to be capable of sending out multiple bursts. By obtaining enough data from lots of individual bursts, researchers gradually put the focus on magnetars, versions of neutron stars that have intense magnetic fields.

But we still don't know whether a magnetar is a requirement for an FRB or if the events can be triggered by less magnetized neutron stars as well. And we have little hint of the mechanism that produces the burst itself. Bursts could potentially be produced by an event in the star's magnetic field itself, or the star could be launching some energetic material that subsequently produces an FRB at some distance from the star.

But now, a rare burst has provided indications that FRBs likely originate near the star and that they share a feature with the emissions of pulsars, another subtype of neutron star.

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As many of us celebrated the year-end holidays, a small group of researchers worked overtime tracking a startling discovery: At least 33 browser extensions hosted in Google’s Chrome Web Store, some for as long as 18 months, were surreptitiously siphoning sensitive data from roughly 2.6 million devices.

The compromises came to light with the discovery by data loss prevention service Cyberhaven that a Chrome extension used by 400,000 of its customers had been updated with code that stole their sensitive data.

’Twas the night before Christmas

The malicious extension, available as version 24.10.4, was available for 31 hours, from December 25 at 1:32 AM UTC to Dec 26 at 2:50 AM UTC. Chrome browsers actively running Cyberhaven during that window would automatically download and install the malicious code. Cyberhaven responded by issuing version 24.10.5, and 24.10.6 a few days later.

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Welcome to Edition 7.25 of the Rocket Report! Happy New Year! It's a shorter edition of the newsletter this week because most companies (not named Blue Origin, this holiday season) took things easier over the last 10 days. But after the break we're back in the saddle for the new year, and eager to see what awaits us in the world of launch.

As always, we welcome reader submissions, and if you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets, as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.

Avio lands atop list of European launch firms. You know it probably was not a great year for European rocket firms when the top-ranked company on the continent is Avio, which launched a grand total of two rockets in 2024. The Italian rocket firm earned this designation from European Spaceflight after successfully completing the final flight of the Vega rocket in September and returning the Vega C rocket to flight in December.

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Having a hard time choosing from Apple’s complex MacBook lineup? Let us help you find the right laptop.

A network of Facebook pages has been advertising “fuel filters” that are actually meant to be used as silencers, which are heavily regulated by US law. Even US military officials are concerned.

A network of Facebook pages has been advertising “fuel filters” that are actually meant to be used as silencers, which are heavily regulated by US law. Even US military officials are concerned.

It may seem like a perfect fit: dispassionate software that streamlines the agendas of dastardly regimes. But they’ll find that the tech cuts both ways.

While Americans might not mourn the loss of net neutrality, an appeals court’s ruling sets a troubling precedent for consumer protections in every industry.

Members of the Elsevier-published Journal of Human Evolution quit, citing AI production processes introducing errors, high author fees, and concerns over editorial independence.

Members of the Elsevier-published Journal of Human Evolution quit, citing AI production processes introducing errors, high author fees, and concerns over editorial independence.

On Thursday, a three-judge panel struck down net neutrality rules that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) had hoped would stop broadband providers from varying speeds for users when connecting to different websites.

In his opinion, US circuit judge Richard Allen Griffin wrote that the FCC lacked the authority to impose the net neutrality rules under the "telecommunications service" provision of the Communications Act.

"The core of the dispute here," Griffin wrote, "is whether Broadband Internet Service Providers" like Xfinity or Spectrum offer a "telecommunications service" or an "information service." Because judges agreed they offer the latter, the court ruled that they could not be subjected to the FCC's net neutrality policies.

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The more than two decades since Half-Life 2's release have been filled with plenty of rumors and hints about Half-Life 3, ranging from the official-ish to the thin to the downright misleading. As we head into 2025, though, we're approaching something close to a critical mass of rumors and leaks suggesting that Half-Life 3 is really in the works this time, and could be officially announced in the coming months.

The latest tease came just before the end of 2024 via a New Year's Eve social media video from G-Man voice actor Mike Shapiro. In the voice of the mysterious in-game bureaucrat, Shapiro expresses hopes that "the next quarter century [will] deliver as many unexpected surprises as did the millennium's first (emphasis added)... See you in the new year."

#Valve #Halflife #GMan #2025 pic.twitter.com/mdT5hlxKJT

— Mike Shapiro (@mikeshapiroland) December 31, 2024

The post is all the more notable because it's Shapiro's first in over four years, when he concluded a flurry of promotional posts surrounding the release of Half-Life: Alyx (many of which were in-character as G-Man). And in 2020, just after Alyx's release, Shapiro told USGamer that he had recently worked on a "blast from the past" project that he would "announce... on my Twitter feed when I'm allowed to" (no such announcement has been forthcoming for any other game).

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People have been complaining for a while that passing a CAPTCHA is too difficult, but developer and tech CEO Guillermo Rauch has made one of the hardest yet: a fully playable CAPTCHA based on the classic PC game Doom.

It's been a long-running joke that developers will make Doom run on absolutely anything, so it's not much of a surprise that it's now running inside something that resembles a CAPTCHA.

The app essentially amounts to a small Doom level that is playable with keyboard controls (arrow keys to move, space bar to shoot) within a CAPTCHA-like presentation. You must kill three enemies to pass the test.

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Somebody Somewhere, Dune: Prophecy, and The Sex Lives of College Girls are just a few of the shows you need to be watching on Max this month.

"It's time for THE charger," the European Commission posted to X on December 28, 2024. While the sentiment only applies to one continent (and not all of it) and only certain devices, the Common Charger Directive now in effect in the European Union suggests that far fewer gadgets will foist barrels, USB-micro, or proprietary plugs onto their owners.

The Common Charger Directive demands that a "USB-C receptacle" be equipped on "radio equipment" that is "equipped with a removable or embedded rechargeable battery" and "can be recharged via wired charging." If it has a battery and can be powered by up to 240 watts through a USB-C connection, it's generally subject to the EU's USB-C requirements. The directive applies to devices "placed on the market"—sent to a distributor or buyer—after December 28, even if they were initially designed and sold before that date.

Laptops get until April 2026 to comply, but most other things—phones, tablets, handheld gaming devices, computer accessories, and wireless headphones—will have to be powered by USB-C to be sold inside the EU from now on. Drones, for the time being, are largely unaddressed by the directive, but the EU will likely get around to them.

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Apple has agreed to pay $95 million to settle a lawsuit alleging that its voice assistant Siri routinely recorded private conversations that were then shared with third parties and used for targeted ads.

In the proposed class-action settlement—which comes after five years of litigation—Apple admitted to no wrongdoing. Instead, the settlement refers to "unintentional" Siri activations that occurred after the "Hey, Siri" feature was introduced in 2014, where recordings were apparently prompted without users ever saying the trigger words, "Hey, Siri."

Sometimes Siri would be inadvertently activated, a whistleblower told The Guardian, when an Apple Watch was raised and speech was detected. The only clue that users seemingly had of Siri's alleged spying was eerily accurate targeted ads that appeared after they had just been talking about specific items like Air Jordans or brands like Olive Garden, Reuters noted (claims which remain disputed).

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