I know what you’re thinking: “Isn’t Fender a guitar company?” It sure is, and has been one of the most iconic names in guitars and amplifiers since 1946. So what is the company doing making headphones and speakers? Well, it isn’t, exactly. Like Zound Industries used to do with Marshall (before buying the amp business), another company is licensing the Fender name for its consumer audio products. Fender Audio, the brand that’s on the headphones I’m reviewing, is owned by the Fender Corporation, but Riffsound oversees the design and production of portable audio gear. 

The first products from Fender Audio are the Mix headphones and the Elie speaker (in two sizes). The company revealed these in January before properly showing them off  at CES. I’ll get to those speakers in a few weeks, but the Mix headphones are first up on the review docket. 

With the Mix, Fender Audio seeks to offer a set of premium over-ear, noise-canceling headphones at a lower price than the likes of Sony, Bose and Sennheiser. There’s also marathon battery life, several smart design touches, a lossless Bluetooth transmitter and swappable parts that combine for a unique formula to take on those big names. I’m honestly impressed that Fender Audio could cram all of that in a more affordable package, but the final verdict on the Mix isn’t so straightforward.

What’s good about the Fender Mix headphones?

Fender Audio made numerous smart design decisions on the Mix headphones, and they resulted in my favorite things about using them. To start, you can swap out the ear pads, ear cups and headband as you see fit. The ear cups attach to the headband via USB-C ports, so they’re easy to snap on and off. Obviously, this allows you to change the look of the Mix over time, within the bounds of Fender’s available colors. 

Underneath the ear pads, Fender put a storage slot for the lossless dongle on the left side and gives you access to the removable battery on the right. I’m thrilled that I can enjoy higher quality Bluetooth connectivity without having to remember to bring along such a small accessory. Plus, it’s nice to know that users will be able to install a fresh battery, provided the company sells those at some point. 

I also enjoy how Fender Audio designed the onboard controls. First, they’re physical buttons, which are always my preference over touch- or gesture-based options. Second, the main one is a five-way joystick, so they’re very simple. Press it to play/pause, press and hold for pairing mode or press longer to power on or off. If you push the joystick up or down, you can adjust the volume, while moving it left and right skips the track forward or backward. You can also push down twice to enable Auracast pairing right on the headphones. A second button, which is just the regular kind, is used to cycle through noise canceling modes: ANC, transparency and both off. 

Billy Steele for Engadget

Sonically, the Mix headphones are at the height of their powers in lossless mode, which is enabled by the Bluetooth dongle hidden inside the ear cup. Bass tuning that’s otherwise overpowering in most cases is restrained, and you can pick up finer details in the more balanced mix. When listening to Watchhouse’s Rituals, I got the sense that I was surrounded by the band, with strings, drums and vocals enveloping my ears with sound — rather than it simply being projected from the left and right channels. There’s more nuance with the lossless mode, and it kept calling me back to the Mix headphones at the times when I’d probably opt for the conveniences of earbuds or a speaker. 

ANC performance is respectable, although it’s not on the level of Bose. It’s good enough to block out mild-to-moderate distractions, but it struggles with louder human voices and sudden jolts of noise. It will certainly do the job in the office or coffee shop, but you may notice some sounds invade your ears during a commute. For calls, transparency mode provides natural sound and it picks up enough of my voice that I never felt the need to shout. Call quality, though, is a different matter (more on that in a bit). 

Another big perk of the Mix is its long battery life. Fender Audio says you’ll get up to 52 hours with ANC on or a whopping 100 hours with it off. The company is forthcoming with the fact that the latter number is achieved at 50 percent volume, which will be too low for most “regular” use. Still, with noise canceling enabled and the volume around 70 percent, I had 52 percent battery left after nearly 30 hours of use. I spent most of that time with either ANC or transparency mode on. 

What’s not so good about the Fender Mix?

Billy Steele for Engadget

Out of the box, Fender Mix’s tuning is too bass heavy. I realize a lot of people prefer a thundering low-end tone out of their headphones, but I found it to be too overpowering here. The stock sound profile is my biggest issue with this model, although it’s somewhat alleviated by using the lossless Bluetooth dongle. In that mode, the bass is slightly subdued, but it’s still quite prominent at times when it shouldn’t be. 

On that Watchhouse album, the kick drum starts to drive the sound, rather than the guitars, mandolin and other instruments. When I listen to the same songs on other headphones, I’ve noticed a better blend of drums and strings. With more intense genres, like the hardcore riffs and breakdowns of Incendiary’s Product of New York, the booming bass isn’t as much of an issue. The distorted guitars still cut through, and there’s plenty of texture in their tone. And when each song hits its climax, the cranked up lows offer extra oomph. It works for metal, but it isn’t always nice for bluegrass, jazz and synth-laiden electronic tunes where the extra bass can muddy the mix. 

The Fender Mix also lacks many of the smart features that are present in premium headphones today, which is probably how the company is able to sell them for $299. Things like automatic EQ tweaks and adaptive ANC are missing, as is automatic pausing when you speak or things like head gestures. These headphones don’t have wear detection either, so they don’t pause the audio when you take them off. There’s also no app available to dial in the EQ or adjust other settings (it’s coming soon).

These headphones only have two microphones for calls, and you can tell almost instantly that those are insufficient. Despite claims of “crystal clear calls,” your voice will just sound okay to the person on the other end. Honestly, I would’ve sounded better just using my iPhone with no headphones. The Mix works to get your voice across, but don’t dream of dialing into a podcast recording with them. What’s more, the Mix isn’t good at blocking background noise, so you’ll need to use them in a quiet location to have a chance at sounding decent. Which, again, is about the best these headphones can muster.

While the modular design allows for a decent degree of customization, the extra parts you’ll need aren’t on sale yet. What’s more, only two colors — white, which is really more of a light gray, and black — are currently available. So, for now, one of the perks of the Mix remains untapped. 

Wrap-up

Billy Steele for Engadget

There’s a lot to like about the Fender Mix, from the clever design choices to the crisp, detailed sound. The lack of finesse with the bass tuning and the omission of advanced features, particularly the absence of an app for settings changes, keeps these headphones firmly planted in the midrange category. 

Clearly that’s not what the company is aiming for with tools like the lossless Bluetooth dongle, but that’s where it lands for me at the end of the day. So, at $299, the Mix is a tough call when a $250 price tag would make these an easier sell. Sure, there’s enough here to make these a capable daily audio accessory, but not everything I’d need to call them a must buy.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/audio/headphones/fender-mix-review-well-designed-headphones-that-just-fall-short-of-greatness-120000974.html?src=rss

There were two questions I was looking to answer as I fired up MLB The Show 26. First, how much does the game cater to a baseball newbie like me? Second, will it keep me hooked enough to keep playing after my first few games?

I think it’s important to share some personal context. I have very limited experience with baseball. I have been to one MLB game, which was on my first visit to Canada as a teen. The lead-off Toronto Blue Jays hitter scored a home run on his first at-bat. Fireworks went off and everyone was going wild. Fun! 

But that was the only score of the whole game. My dad and I (both lifelong soccer fans, for what it’s worth) were bored lifeless for the rest of the three hours. 

An incredible run of a dog playing a baseball game at Games Done Quick aside, I had no real interest in the sport for the next couple of decades until the Blue Jays made a deep run into the 2025 playoffs. This time, now as a Canadian citizen, I bought into the excitement and watched all of the World Series last year. I was enthralled. 

I slowly started to appreciate the nuances of pitching, the skill of trying to make every pitch look identical at the time the ball is thrown to hopefully hoodwink the batter. Friends who are in-the-know tolerated my most basic of questions about how everything works as the postseason wore on. Now, I’m planning to watch a lot more games this year and MLB The Show 26 arrived at just the right time to get me ready for the new season. 

Sony’s San Diego Studio seemed to be speaking to me, personally, when the first thing the game asked me to do was select my preferred playstyle. The Competitive track was definitely out for now. The Simulation option offers an “authentic MLB experience that plays true to player and team ratings.” I wasn’t quite feeling that either. As a newcomer to all of this, I had to select the Casual style. That’s billed as “an easier, fun, pick up and play experience with an emphasis on learning the game.” Exactly what I needed. 

I was immediately impressed with how deeply you can customize the gameplay, even if the vast array of batting and pitching options in particular felt a little overwhelming. Using both a thumbstick to aim and button to swing at the ball seemed too much for someone who has no idea as yet how to read pitches. 

Dipping my toes in slowly was surely going to help me avoid getting too frustrated too quickly and uninstalling the game, so I chose to keep everything as simple as possible. I’m not switching off options like automated bullpen warm ups for a long time, if ever. 

Finally, after about 20 minutes of fine-tuning some settings in the tutorial, it was game time. 

The Dodgers didn’t know what hit ’em as I won my first game 38-0. I thought this Shohei guy was supposed to be good? Pffft, he didn’t even register a hit. His team only got a measly two players on base, while I had 46 hits. That blowout was a fun intro to MLB The Show 26, but I had to bump up the difficulty and make it a little more challenging if there was any chance of me sticking with it.

Instead of jumping into the Road to the Show career mode, an online match or another exhibition game to get my feet a tad wetter, I next tried the Storylines feature. This is what really drew me into MLB The Show 26.

San Diego Studio has been sharing the stories of several notable players from the Negro Leagues in the last few editions of the series. I know very little about baseball history outside of household names. So I was fascinated to learn about the likes of Roy Campanella, who debuted in the league as a 15-year-old catcher, and Mamie “Peanut” Johnson, the league’s first female pitcher. 

The developers did a fantastic job of connecting these athletes’ stories to playable moments from their playing careers. Cutscene insights from Bob Kendrick, the president of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, tied everything together quite beautifully. Great stories are such an effective way to pull you into a sport and to start learning about it. Stories connect us more than just about anything else. 

The default difficulty in the Storylines mode was much higher than I dealt with in my first washout game. Still, that gave me a chance to practice the Competitive playstyle without having to play a full game or the stop-start nature of the tutorial. 

My pitching was less accurate, so figuring out how to compensate for that made for an interesting challenge. Batting was a lot tougher too, with balls travelling faster and pitchers trying to trick me. At first, I was swinging at every ball, but that clearly was the wrong idea. I tried to be more judicious and wait to see if a ball was breaking, but that meant I was swinging too late and fouling or giving the fielders an easy catch. That’s a tricky conundrum to solve, and I’ll need a lot more practice before I dream of playing online. I’m not even going to get started on how woeful I am at catching. 

And yet all of this deepened my appreciation for baseball. There’s so much more nuance and complexity to the sport than I realized until a few months ago. And even as someone who doesn’t typically enjoy turn-based games, I found myself getting into the swing of it… so to speak.

I’m never going to care about Diamond Dynasty, MLB The Show’s take on Ultimate Team modes in EA Sports games. I can’t see myself diving into the team management-focused Franchise mode, in large part because I don’t yet have a strong enough understanding of stats to have a decent handle on what makes a specific player great in their role. And as much as I like the idea of the Road to the Show career mode — in which you can stick with a player from their high school days all the way to a Hall of Fame induction — I don’t think I can invest enough time into that to make it worth the effort. 

I did find the answers to the two main questions I had about MLB The Show 26. It does a bang-up job of easing a baseball newbie like me into the fray. I’m eager to keep playing as well. I don’t think MLB The Show has quite enough pull to keep me away from my actual forever game, Overwatch, for too long. But I can absolutely see myself playing it on a second screen while streaming some MLB games this season. After all, I’m always on the lookout for a great story.

MLB The Show 26 is out now on PS5, Xbox Series X/S and Nintendo Switch.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/playstation/mlb-the-show-26-is-turning-me-into-more-of-a-baseball-fan-120000724.html?src=rss

Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio has revealed more details about its upcoming title, Stranger Than Heaven, at the Xbox Partner Preview stream. While previous teasers showed that it was going to be set in the 1910s and 1940s, it turns out its gameplay will span five different time periods: 1915, 1929, 1943, 1951 and 1965. The game’s events will also take place in five different cities. Ryu Ga Gotoku has yet to reveal what the locations will be based on, but the setting for 1965 seems to be Kamurocho. That’s the fictionalized version of Tokyo’s Kabukicho entertainment district in the studio’s games, the Yakuza and Judgment series.

One time period seems to be set during winter, while another focuses on a hot spring town. It’s clear from teasers and the new trailer RGG released that new title will share Yakuza’s aesthetics and maybe even its fighting mechanics. The studio has yet to say whether it will be connected to the Yakuza series, but fans believe Stranger Than Heaven could focus on the beginnings of the yakuza clans that appeared throughout the franchise.

RGG Studio will reveal more details about the game on another stream with Xbox on May 6 at 7PM Eastern time. For now, you can watch the trailer below for a preview. Take note that while the studio has teamed up with Xbox for these reveals, the game will also be available on Steam and the PS5.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/rggs-stranger-than-heaven-game-will-span-five-time-periods-114554699.html?src=rss

OpenAI has indefinitely paused plans for an erotic mode in ChatGPT as part of a broader strategy shift away from side projects and toward business and coding tools. TechCrunch reports: The proposed “adult mode,” which CEO Sam Altman first floated in October, had inspired considerable controversy from tech watchdog groups as well as from OpenAI’s own staff. In January, a meeting between company executives and its council of advisers got heated, with one of the advisers cautioning that OpenAI could be in the process of developing a “sexy suicide coach,” The Wall Street Journal previously reported.

Amidst all of the criticism, the release of the feature was delayed multiple times. FT notes that the erotic feature now has no timeline for release. When reached for comment by TechCrunch, an OpenAI spokesperson said the company had “nothing further to add.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The court has granted Anthropic’s request for a preliminary injunction, preventing the government from banning its products for federal use and from formally labeling it as a “supply chain risk,” at least for now. If you’ll recall, things turned sour between the company and the Trump administration when Anthropic refused to change the terms of its contract that would allow the government to use its technology for mass surveillance and the development of autonomous weapons.

In response to Anthropic’s refusal, the president ordered federal agencies to stop using Claude and the company’s other services. The Defense Department also officially labeled it as a supply chain risk, which is typically reserved for entities typically based in US adversaries like China that threaten national security. In addition, department secretary Pete Hegseth warned companies that if they want to work with the government, they must sever ties with Anthropic. The AI company challenged the designation in court, calling it unlawful and in violation of free speech and its rights to due process. It asked the court to put a pause on the ban while the lawsuit is ongoing, as well.

In a court filing, the Defense Department said giving Anthropic continued access to its warfighting infrastructure would “introduce unacceptable risk” to its supply chains. But Judge Rita F. Lin of the District Court for the Northern District of California said the measures the government took “appear designed to punish Anthropic.”

Lin wrote in her decision that it seems Anthropic is being punished for criticizing the government in the press. “Punishing Anthropic for bringing public scrutiny to the government’s contracting position is classic illegal First Amendment retaliation,” she continued. The judge also said that the supply chain risk designation is contrary to law, arbitrary and capricious. She added that the government argued that Anthropic showed its subversive tendencies by “questioning” the use of its technology. “Nothing in the governing statute supports the Orwellian notion that an American company may be branded a potential adversary and saboteur of the US for expressing disagreement with the government,” she wrote.

Anthropic told The New York Times that it’s “grateful to the court for moving swiftly” and that it’s now focused on “working productively with the government to ensure all Americans benefit from safe, reliable AI.” The company’s lawsuit is still ongoing, and the court has yet to issue its final decision. Judge Lin said, however, that Anthropic “has shown a likelihood of success on its First Amendment claim.”

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/court-temporarily-blocks-us-government-from-labeling-anthropic-as-a-supply-chain-risk-083857528.html?src=rss

CERN has confirmed it will host an expanded version of Open Research Europe, the EU-backed fee-free open access publishing platform that works to “keep knowledge in public hands.” Research Professional News reports: A little over a year ago, 10 European research organizations announced that they would add their support to Open Research Europe, to broaden eligibility beyond only those researchers funded by the EU research program. Earlier this year, RPN reported that this group had expanded further and that Cern was set to host the broadened version of ORE, currently provided by the publisher F1000.

On March 26, Cern itself finally announced the news, saying it will “provide the technical and operational infrastructure” for the broader version. It said this will build on its “longstanding experience in developing and maintaining open science infrastructures and community-governed services.” […] In its own announcement, the Commission said ORE will have a budget of 17 million euros for 2026-31, with the EU providing 10 million euros.

Since it launched five years ago, ORE has published more than 1,200 articles. Cern said the platform is “expected to support a growing number of research outputs each year.” Last month, experts told RPN they thought uptake of the increased eligibility will depend on how the newly participating national organizations engage with their communities. Eleven members of Science Europe, a group of major research funding and performing organizations, are part of the expansion.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: Apple provided the FBI with the real iCloud email address hidden behind Apple’s ‘Hide My Email’ feature, which lets paying iCloud+ users generate anonymous email addresses, according to a recently filed court record. The move isn’t surprising but still provides uncommon insight into what data is available to authorities regarding the Apple feature. The data was turned over during an investigation into a man who allegedly sent a threatening email to Alexis Wilkins, the girlfriend of FBI director Kash Patel.

“On or about February 28, 2026, Person 1 received an email from the email address peaty_terms_1o@icloud.com,” the affidavit reads. Earlier on, the document explicitly says that Person 1 is Alexis Wilkins. […] The affidavit says Apple then provided records that indicated the peaty_terms_1o@icloud.com email address was associated with an Apple account in the name of Alden Ruml. The records showed that account generated 134 anonymized email addresses, according to the affidavit.

Law enforcement agents later interviewed Ruml and he confirmed he had sent the email, the affidavit says. Ruml said he sent the email after reading a February 28 article about how the FBI was using its own resources to provide security to Wilkins. The specific article is not named or linked in the affidavit, but a New York Times article published that same day described how Patel ordered a team to ferry his girlfriend on errands and to events.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.