Since its debut in 2016, Nura has built its whole brand around optimizing audio for your hearing. But that only helps so much, obviously you want the music source to be as high a quality as possible, too. Today, the company is announcing the NuraTrue Pro, a wireless TWS set that supports AptX Lossless – the highest quality Bluetooth codec to date.

AptX Lossless is new enough that barely anything supports it right now. But given it’s part of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Sound platform, it won’t be long before most Android flagships adopt it. Apple users, on the other hand, might be waiting forever, given that there’s no support for any form of AptX or any other higher resolution audio over Bluetooth beyond the company’s implementation of AAC.

Nonetheless, the NuraTrue Pro is currently in a fairly exclusive club with support for the new codec, which is capable of 16-bit/44.1Khz “CD quality” audio. Something the company hopes, in combination with its proprietary “customized” audio, will make these TWS a reference point for audio quality. This means it also supports all the other flavors of AptX (HD, Adaptive and so on), plus, of course, Apple-friendly codecs too.

James Trew / Engadget

Beyond the higher-fidelity support, there are, of course, some other new features to separate these from the original NuraTrue that the company announced last summer. For starters, there’s support for spatial audio powered by Dirac, improved ANC, an upcoming “ProEQ” tool for fine-tuning audio and a claimed extra two hours of battery life – now eight hours on a single charge, up from the original’s six. The case still offers another 24 hours of charging before you’ll need to reach for that USB-C cable.

Most importantly, the Pro model has a slightly modified design with a new smooth metallic material around the edge and for the logo – just so people don’t mistakenly think you’re still on last year’s model.

Most everything else matches what we’d expect from a Nura headphone. That’s to say, the automatic hearing test for personalized audio is here. Performing this with the app takes about a minute and only needs to be done once. You can even export that profile to other devices if you need it, and it’s stored locally on the headphones so the benefit carries with you over to, say, your desktop PC.

The same goes for “immersion mode.” In the NuraPhone over-ears this was a tactile “bass” feature through haptics, but in all the other models it’s more of a bass-boost mode. It works just fine, but can be a little overbearing at higher volumes (especially for music that’s bass-heavy in the first place). On the pre-release model Nura sent for testing, immersion mode feels a little too aggressive or needs some fine-tuning as almost anything above zero seems to distort.

That’s about the only audio gripe, though. Comparing these side by side with the original NuraTrue, the difference on a standard YouTube Music stream isn’t stark, but if you add in spatial mode you can definitely feel a little more “air” in the mix, as if the sound stage is a little wider, and at no expense of volume as can sometimes be the case.

James Trew / Engadget

Sadly, my iPhone can’t serve up anything in delicious AptX Lossless, but the three-year-old OnePlus 7 Pro I have lying around can manage the next one down (AptX Adaptive). I must say I am generally impressed with the performance of the NuraTrue Pro. I was worried that the combination of spatial and personalization on top of new codec support might risk highlighting unwanted frequencies, especially when adding EQ on top.

Instead, it seems to come together well, producing a sturdy, spacious but not overly “modified” sound. I mean, it is modified, that’s sorta Nura’s whole vibe, but it doesn’t sound so, and that’s the important thing.

If you’re wondering why customized headphones would need an additional “ProEQ” feature, that’s largely down to giving users the choice. Theoretically, Nura’s hearing test should provide all the EQ you need, but of course, maybe you just prefer things a little more pronounced in the mid-range, the tool will be there for those that want it.

All in all, the NuraTrue Pro should be a welcome addition to an already well-rounded line-up from Nura. Despite the company’s established product releases, the NuraTrue Pro will be launching on Kickstarter for delivery later this year. While that might be a sticking point for some, it does mean that you can bag a set for a super early bird price of $199. Regular retail price will be some way north of that at $329 (£299/359€).

Valve loves to warn people about the risks of do-it-yourself Steam Deck maintenance, and this time it’s reminding you that trying to upgrade the built-in storage could lead to problems.

Following a PC Gamer article on modding the Steam Deck, Valve hardware designer Lawrence Yang warned against upgrading the device's NVMe SSD. While it's technically possible, the bigger M.2 2242 drives are hotter and more power-hungry than the 2230 models the handheld was meant to support. Yang added you could "significantly shorten" the longevity of the system. You’ve been told.

— Mat Smith

The biggest stories you might have missed

• 'Endless Dungeon' is a tense mix of tower defense and twin-stick hero shooter

• Samsung's 1TB 980 Pro SSD returns to an all-time low of $140

• Google's Nest WiFi packs drop to record-low prices at Amazon

• Hummer EV's obstacle-avoiding Extract Mode adds six inches of ride height

Valve ramps up production to 'more than double' Steam Deck shipments

You could get your hands on the device sooner than expected.

And if you don’t yet have a Steam Deck — or you fried yours with an ill-advised upgrade — Valve says it has boosted production and will ship more than twice the number of units each week.

Were you to reserve a Steam Deck now, you likely wouldn't receive it until at least October. However, since Valve is ramping up the volume of shipments, it may bring down that wait time.

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‘GoldenEra’ is a loving, if muddled, tribute to ‘GoldenEye 007’

Covering the whole breadth of a video game’s influence is harder than it looks.

Nintendo

The Nintendo 64’s GoldenEye 007 — the rare Bond game that not only nailed the franchise tie-in but elevated the experience — is one of a handful of games that warrant a feature-length making-of documentary. Drew Roller’s GoldenEra tries to encompass the entire creative route, from its genesis as a small project at Rare’s rural farmland campus to the monster it became.

GoldenEra has been able to get many of the original team on the record, supplemented by a number of journalists and talking heads from across the games industry. But multiple segments — those covering Perfect Dark, Free Radical Design and Timesplitters, GoldenEye fan films and the modding community — feel a little shallow.

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LG buys its way into the EV charging business

It's acquiring a charger manufacturing company.

LG is jumping into the EV charging business with the acquisition of a South Korean EV battery charger developer called AppleMango. This should help it create "fully featured" charging stations with a user-friendly interface and real-time control and management, it said. In particular, it’ll leverage its "sturdy, dust- and water-proof" outdoor digital display tech. LG plans to install an EV charger production line at LG Digital Park in South Korea by the end of 2022.

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Apple's entry-level 13-inch MacBook Pro M2 may have slower SSD speeds than the M1 model

That could affect performance for app loading and more.

Apple's 13-inch 256GB MacBook Pro M2 may have worse SSD performance than the equivalent M1 model, according to testing by YouTube sites Max Tech and Created Tech. The $1,300 base model showed around 50 percent slower read speeds and 30 percent slower write speeds. It turns out the 13-inch MacBook Pro M2 has a single 256GB NAND flash storage chip instead of two 128GB chips like the previous M1 model. That would mean the driver can only use two lanes in parallel, restricting performance.

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The Supreme Court won't hear the Apple-Qualcomm patent case

Apple claimed Qualcomm might use two patents to sue again.

Apple and Qualcomm may have ended most of their feuding in 2019, but the fight isn't over just yet. The Supreme Court has denied Apple's request for a hearing to possibly invalidate two Qualcomm patents that played key roles in 2017’s attempts to ban Apple Watch, iPad and iPhone sales over alleged modem-technology infringements. The court didn't explain why it rejected the request, but a Justice Department amicus brief from May argued there was no evidence to indicate the patents were harming Apple's business.

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Nintendo Direct on June 28th is all about third-party Switch games

No Zelda, maybe ‘Silksong’?

Engadget

A Nintendo Direct Mini is scheduled for June 28th at 9AM ET. It probably won't feature news on Mario, Zelda, Pokémon or any of Nintendo's other franchises, though. Nintendo says it'll focus on third-party titles on their way to Switch, and it could be a fairly meaty affair. It clocks in at 25 minutes, and Nintendo’s online showcases usually run at a fair clip. One of the more notable third-party games slated for a Switch debut, No Man's Sky, already has a release date of October 7th, so that may not get a heavy focus. There's always the chance of more details on Hollow Knight: Silksong, which is slated to arrive in the next year.

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Rocket Lab has successfully launched NASA's 55-pound CAPSTONE cubesat that will eventually orbit the moon if all goes to plan. It's a small but important step in NASA's Artemis mission that aims to send humans to the moon for the first time since 1972. 

The launch proceeded nominally according to NASA's broadcast, reaching low-Earth orbit at about 'T' plus 10 minutes. An Electron launch is much like any other, except that it's the first rocket to be electrically powered by batteries rather than a gas turbine. As such, there's a phase called "battery ejection" which happens near the end of the launch cycle. 

Rocket Lab used an Electron rocket with a special addition called the Lunar Photon upper stage with enough power to send it into deep space. It's one of the smallest rockets to attempt to launch a payload to lunar orbit, the company said. It launched from Rocket Lab's site on New Zealand's Mahia Peninsula, and is "the highest mass and the highest performance Electron has ever had to fly by quite some margin," the company told TechCrunch earlier. 

CAPSTONE will orbit Earth for nine days to build up enough speed for a trans lunar injection (TLI) that will allow it to eventually orbit the moon. The primary objective is to verify a type of highly elliptical lunar orbit called "near rectilinear halo" that's planned for the Gateway space station. Gateway will eventually be delivered to lunar orbit by SpaceX with a science lab and living quarters for astronauts, along with ports for future spacecraft. 

Rocket Lab was supposed to launch CAPSTONE yesterday but delayed it until today "to perform final system checks," NASA tweeted. Regardless of the launch date, it's scheduled to arrive at the moon on November 13th. To see a replay of the livecast, check here. 

If you post about being able to mail abortion pills to those who need it on Facebook, don't be surprised if you get a warning — or even get your account restricted. A tipster told Motherboard that they were notified a minute after posting "I will mail abortion pills to any one of you" that their status update had been removed. When they tried to post about it again later, they were banned for it. Motherboard was able to replicate the scenario, and we were able to confirm it, as well. We tried posting "abortion pills can be mailed" on Facebook and were quickly notified that we violated the website's Community Standards.

Facebook

In the next slide explaining our infraction, Facebook said doesn't allow users to buy, sell or exchange things such as tobacco, marijuana, recreational drugs and non-medical drugs. To test it out, we posted "I'm selling cigarettes," "cigarettes can be mailed," "anti-depressants can be mailed" and "painkiller pills can be mailed." None of them got flagged. General posts such as "abortion is healthcare" didn't get flagged either. As for our post that did get flagged, we were asked if we would like to accept Facebook's enforcement action or not. After choosing to accept it, our post got removed but we didn't get banned. According to Motherboard, their account got restricted for 24 hours after making several posts that got flagged.

It's unclear when the website started removing posts about mailing out abortion pills and whether it only began after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. The Supreme Court's decision made all types of abortion illegal in several states with trigger laws, but people in those states can still get abortion pills shipped to them from international groups like Aid Access. Facebook could be preventing that information from getting to some people who need it, though, especially since it flags posts with "mail" and "abortion pills" even for international users. We posted from outside the US and still got a warning. "Some items aren't regulated everywhere," the slide explaining our violation reads, "but because Facebook is borderless we have global standards that apply to everyone."

The New York Times also recently reported that Facebook's parent company, Meta, told employees not to discuss the Supreme Court ruling within the workplace. Moderators would reportedly swoop in and quickly remove posts about abortion in the company's internal Workplace platform. Meta did, however, tell employees that it would reimburse them for travel expenses if they need to access out-of-state healthcare and reproductive services "to the extent permitted by law."

People with arm paralysis might easily feed themselves in the future. Johns Hopkins University-led researchers have developed a new technique that let a partially paralyzed man feed himself using robotic arms connected through a brain-machine interface. He only had to make small movements with his fists at certain prompts (such as "select cut location") to have the fork- and knife-equipped arms cut food and bring it to his mouth. He could have dessert within 90 seconds, according to the researchers.

The new method centers on a shared control system that minimizes the amount of mental input required to complete a task. He could map his four-degree freedom of movement (two for each hand) to as many as 12 degrees of freedom for controlling the robot arms. The limbs' prompt-based intelligent responses also reduced the workload.

The technology is still young. Scientists want to add touch-like sensory feedback instead of relying exclusively on visuals. They also hope to improve the accuracy and efficiency while reducing the need for visual confirmation. In the long term, though, the team sees robotic arms like these restoring complex movements and providing more independence to people with disabilities.

In a letter posted on her official website, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has revealed that House Democrats have been working on legislation to protect personal data collected by reproductive health trackers. It's one of the three avenues the lawmakers are exploring following the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. "Many fear that this information could be used against women by a sinister prosecutor in a state that criminalizes abortion," she explained, though she didn't expound on how the lawmakers plan to protect people's personal data. 

Users have been swapping their period trackers for others they believe can offer them more privacy ever since the Supreme Court decision dropped. It's not unusual for companies to sell user information or to cooperate with law enforcement, and people are concerned about the possibility of investigators using that data to identify them if they ever seek an abortion. As TechCrunch reported, a number of reproductive health apps enjoyed a surge of new signups over the weekend. 

One of those apps is Flo, which announced that it plans to launch an anonymous mode shortly after the Supreme Court decision came out. The mode is supposed to remove one's personal information from their account so that they can't be identified, but Flo has yet to reveal when it will become available. It's worth noting that Flo's average daily installs has been on the decline, based on Apptopia numbers cited by TechCrunch, likely because it has a history of sharing private data with third parties.

Back in 2019, The Wall Street Journal listed Flo as one of the apps that had been giving Facebook access to people's sensitive data. Two years later, Flo settled with the FTC over allegations that it was sharing information with the social network, Google and other third-party companies. As part of that settlement, Flo now has to explicitly ask for user consent before it can give external services access to their personal health information.

Despite the House Speaker's announcement that House Democrats are working "to protect the health and freedom of American women," there's no guarantee that the legislation they're cooking up would be signed into law. It's always smart to take a closer look at how apps are protecting user data by reading their "nutritional label" on iOS or their "safety section" in the Play Store on Android. But for those who want to be truly safe, perhaps the best solution is to not use a period tracking app at all.

When Rivian drivers do eventually get on the road, they'll have their pick of charging networks including a brand new one from the EV truckmaker itself. Rivian announced on Monday that the first three sites of its burgeoning "Adventure Network" of Level 3 fast DC chargers are coming online and will be accessible to nearly every other EV on the road, regardless of who makes it. 

The first station opened in Salida, Colorado with four chargers capable of delivering 200 kW of power — that's about 140 miles of range for an R1T in 20 minutes — in addition to the existing set of Level 2 chargers. Rivian will officially open the other stations in Inyokern and Bishop, California, later in the week. 

You've probably never heard of any of these towns unless you frequent Yosemite National Park, Sequoia National Forest, Mammoth Lakes or Death Valley National Park. Similar to Jeep's efforts to install charging stations at trailheads, Rivian's Adventure Network seeks to add fast charging capabilities along both popular cross-country routes and also near national parks and other out-of-the way locations.  

Rivian

“We designed Rivian charging to support electrified adventure, and these first sites demonstrate how we’re enabling drivers to responsibly reach some of the nation’s most breathtaking natural spaces,” Trent Warnke, Rivian’s Senior Director of Energy and Charging Solutions, said in a statement. “In addition to scenic or off-the-beaten-path destinations, our fast charging rollout is designed to ensure travelers have places to charge along major transportation corridors coast to coast.” To that end, the company hopes to install some 3,500 chargers at 600 sites nationwide.

GMC Hummer EV owners will soon be able to raise their 9,000-pound vehicle nearly six additional inches in the air, all due to a simple software update. Over the new few weeks, GMC will be adding a new “Extract Mode” — which lets drivers elevate their vehicle to avert off-road obstacles — to all First Edition models of the all-electric pickup truck. Essentially, Extract Mode lets drivers elevate their vehicle so they can avert off-road obstacles. 

As fun as the feature sounds, drivers should take heed that the suspension mode can only be used at low speeds. Also, frequent use of the feature will result in your vehicle needing to cool off before being suspended again. In total, Extract Mode will allow for 15.9 inches of ground clearance for the vehicle, which will give it an edge over other off-road capable vehicles like the Rivian R1T, Ram TRX, F150 Raptor and Bronco Raptor. For a preview of Extract Mode in action, check out the video below.

Unfortunately, only a handful of GMC Hummer EV owners will be able to actually try out the feature. As Electreknotes, demand for the Hummer has far exceeded GMC’s expectations and the automaker is struggling to ramp up production. Only one Hummer EV was delivered last year, and the automaker has received over 65,000 reservations for its Hummer EV pickups and SUVs. If you’re in the market for a first edition pickup, you’re out of luck: reservations for the roughly $110,000 vehicle are full. And if you spring for a slightly cheaper model, you could be due for a two-year wait.

Apple and Qualcomm may have ended most of their feuding in 2019, but the fight might not be over just yet. The Vergereports that the Supreme Court has denied Apple's request for a hearing to potentially invalidate two Qualcomm patents that played key roles in 2017 attempts to ban Apple Watch, iPad and iPhone sales over allegedly infringing modem technology. The court didn't explain why it rejected the request, but a Justice Department amicusbrief from May argued that there was no evidence to indicate the patents were harming Apple's business.

While the companies struck a six-year licensing deal to settle their main dispute, the agreement let a US Patent and Trademark Office case continue involving the two patents. Apple lost an attempt to invalidate the patents with the USPTO's Patent Trial and Appeal Board, and again failed when a Federal Circuit court tossed out Apple's appeal request based on the settlement. When Apple went to the Supreme Court, the Justice Department filed its supporting brief opposing the request.

Apple claimed in its request that Qualcomm might use the patents to sue again once the licensing deal expires in 2025 or (if extended) 2027. It's not certain what either company will do next. We've asked both Apple and Qualcomm for comment. The landscape may change significantly within the next few years, however. Apple is rumored to be ditching Qualcomm in favor of using its own 5G modems as soon as 2023, and it's not yet clear how that might affect the current truce.

Hangouts holdouts will have to finally say goodbye to Google’s most resilient chat app later this year. On Monday, the company announced it would start migrating consumer Hangouts users to Chat before the former is no longer available after November 2022. If you still use Hangouts on mobile, you’ll see a prompt starting today to move to either the standalone Chat app or the Chat experience in Gmail. “Hangouts has been replaced by Google Chat,” the company declares in the notification.

Over on Gmail, Google won’t begin prodding Hangouts users to switch over until July. The Hangouts web client will remain available until November, and the company says users will have “at least” one month of warning before the platform’s webpage begins automatically redirecting to the Chat website instead. If you’re still actively using Hangouts, Google promises your conversations will automatically transfer to its newer app. That said, you can also use the company’s Takeout service to download a copy of your data.

Google has been gradually phasing out the Hangouts brand in favor of its newer messaging services for some time now, so it’s not surprising the company has finally decided to sunset the platform. And while it never enjoyed the popularity of some instant messaging apps, Hangouts had its devout fans.