Apple says some AirPods Pro have sound problems, will fix for free - CNBC

A man shows AirPods Pro at an Apple store on East Nanjing Road on October 30, 2019 in Shanghai, China. Apple's new AirPods Pro with active noise cancellation are on sale on October 30 in China.

Wang Gang | VCG | Getty Images

Apple said on Friday that it's replacing AirPods Pro headphones that have sound problems.

These problems include a static or crackling sound that increases in loud environments and issues with active noise cancellation.

Apple said AirPod Pros made after October 2020 don't have the issue.

Owners who experience problems can contact Apple online or make an appointment at an Apple store to get their AirPods Pro replaced for free. Only devices that are confirmed to have the issue will be replaced.

The replacement only applies to the buds, not the charging case. Apple's not offering a similar program for other AirPod models.

Crackling problems with AirPod Pros were reported by users earlier this year. In May, Apple issued support documents on its website with troubleshooting advice for the issue. It was replacing those units under warranty.

Apple's AirPods are a popular line of wireless headphones. Apple doesn't break out revenue from AirPods, but it reported $7.8 billion in other products revenue in the quarter ending in September, which includes AirPods along with other headphones and the Apple Watch.

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Three of the Four Connecticut Legislative Leaders Will Retire - NBC Connecticut

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No matter what happens on election night, at least three legislative leaders who have been in the Connecticut House and Senate for decades won’t be returning to the state Capitol in January.  

“It’s hard to leave. It’s very, very hard to leave. I love that institution, but you know in your heart and your soul when it’s time to move on,” Senate Republican Leader Len Fasano said. 

Fasano who presided in 2017 over the first tied Senate in more than 100 years said he knew it as time to go and give someone else a shot. 

House Minority Leader Themis Klarides, Senate President Martin Looney, and Senate Republican Leader Len Fasano

“I don’t want to lose the passion. I don’t want to leave in anger. I don’t want to leave in frustration. I want to leave when I’m sort of at the top of my game if I would,” Fasano said. 

Speaker of the House Joe Aresimowicz served in the house for 16 years, the last four as Speaker. There’s an unwritten rule that any speaker of the house serves two terms. 

What will be their legacy? 

“I think it was the bipartisan budget. Getting together in a room with the Republicans absent the governor, I think it was the first time in history that it was done and coming up with a budget that is really saving us right now. The rainy day fund and everything else is a result of that bipartisan budget,” Aresimowicz said. 

Fasano also mentioned the bipartisan budget as a tipping point. 

“I’m very proud of the bipartisan budget that we put together that people said it was never going to happen,” Fasano said. 

The bipartisan budget the leaders put together in 2017 without input from then Gov. Dannel P. Malloy was mentioned by all three outgoing leaders. 

Klarides the first female Republican leader of the House, is also retiring, but will continue to stay involved. She recently started a federal PAC to raise money to help Republicans get elected to Congress. 

“I don’t know what it’s going to look like after this next election, but I will tell you as far as the House Republican caucus goes we’re just going to continue to fight for common sense things that we have in the past of getting the state back on track and making it a state people want to live in,” Klarides said. 

Klarides is the only one of the three that has not ruled out a future run for governor. 

“I’m trying to figure out what role I would like to play and what role the state of Connecticut would need me in. So I’m still thinking about that,” Klarides said. 

Fasano and Aresimowicz both ruled out a run for governor. 

Senate President Martin Looney, who had a kidney transplant and hip replacement in 2016, is the only one of the four who is seeking reelection. He’s being challenged by Republican Jameson White and petitioning candidate Alex Taubes. 

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The Sound in Their Ears? Black Thinkers Sharing 'Lessons in Survival' - The New York Times

In 1993, Toni Morrison appeared on “Charlie Rose.” The occasion was her new novel, but the conversation turned to the eruption in the streets of Los Angeles after the acquittal of three white police officers whose beating of Rodney King had been captured on video.

“What struck me most about the people who were burning down shops and stealing was how long they waited — the restraint, not the spontaneity, the restraint,” Morrison said, leaning quietly but emphatically into each word.

“The moment to be anarchic was when we saw those tapes,” she continued. “They waited — how long was it? Nine months? A year? They waited for justice, and it didn’t come.”

Morrison’s words seem aimed right at 2020. And in “Lessons in Survival,” a multipart project presented virtually by the Vineyard Theater, that’s exactly where they land.

The project, created by a new collective called the Commissary, takes a two-sided (at least) approach to the idea of survival. On one level, its eight episodes — which feature verbatim performances of interviews and speeches by James Baldwin, Lorraine Hansberry, Angela Davis and other Black artists and activists — investigate how African-Americans have endured centuries of racism and trauma.

But it also offers one provisional answer to the question of survival for theater itself, at a time when the pandemic shutdown and a national reckoning on race have left artists wondering not just when they’ll be onstage again, but who, how and why.

“An alarm has been pulled,” Tyler Thomas, the project’s director, said in a video interview. “What we have tried to do is collect the spiritual, intellectual and performative tools to reimagine new ways of being, to say the old cannot be the same.”

The project began by exploring a two-hour dialogue between James Baldwin (played in one episode by Reggie D. White) and Nikki Giovanni (Crystal Dickinson).Credit...via Vineyard Theatre

The work, whose final installment begins streaming on Nov. 1, is part consciousness-raising, part history lesson and, for the actors, part white-knuckle ride, thanks to the unusual tool they are charged with using — reciting the lines not from a memorized text, but off an audio recording fed directly into their ears.

“It’s like its like running after a locomotive in Birkenstocks,” the actor Reggie D. White said of trying to keep up with Baldwin, whom he plays in one episode. “You’re just doing the best you can to hold onto the caboose before you get left in the dust.”

“Lessons in Survival” grew out of an informal group that started gathering at the apartment of the actor Marin Ireland in January. She was between projects, and decided to invite about a dozen friends from a 2019 production of Abby Rosebrock’s “Blue Ridge,” including the actor Peter Mark Kendall, to read through plays.

In March, the pandemic shuttered the entire theater industry. Ireland got sick with Covid-19, and after recovering, reconvened the group via Zoom in April. At first, they did readings of old plays, or helped writers in the group with work in progress. Then, in late May, came the killing of George Floyd, and the explosion of protest across the country.

“As a collective that was already meeting, we started asking, ‘What can we do? What can we say? Does anything matter?” White said.

The actor Kyle Beltran suggested the group look at an extraordinary two-hour 1971 dialogue between Baldwin and Nikki Giovanni recorded for the PBS show “Soul!” But it didn’t feel right to claim the words, or inject them with too much actorly ego. So Ireland suggested trying a technique she was familiar with from work with the Wooster Group: performing off a recording of the text piped directly into the actors’ ears.

“The whole sky lit up,” Ireland said of the initial attempt, which rotated the two roles through several sets of actors. “It was truly an electric feeling. We were all texting each other saying, ‘Everyone needs to see this!’”

The group had already tapped Thomas, an assistant director on “Blue Ridge” who has also worked with found texts, as its resident director. Within a few weeks, they were pitching the Baldwin-Giovanni dialogue to theaters, including the Vineyard, which has won acclaim with found-text pieces like Tina Satter’s “Is This A Room” and Lucas Hnath’s “Dana H.” (which featured Deirdre O’Connell, who is also part of “Lessons in Survival”).

Sarah Stern, the Vineyard’s co-artistic director, said she was sold within two minutes of hitting play on the sample the group sent. “I just felt it right in my body,” she said. “I thought this should be nourished into something that can be shared with audiences.”

The Commissary, which expanded to about 40 regular participants, is emphatically non-hierarchical. Ireland, White and Kendall, who along with Thomas are credited as “co-conceivers” of “Lessons in Survival,” jokingly call themselves “the interns.”

The initial pitch to the Vineyard was just to do the Baldwin-Giovanni dialogue. But the group also began digging up and working on other recorded interviews and speeches, to flesh out references in the dialogue, and to explore figures that individual Commissary members wanted to know more about.

They crowdsourced about 50 pieces, many of which have been presented more informally in weekly livestreamed “open rehearsals.” All those sessions are archived, and like the eight filmed episodes will remain available through Nov. 29 to those who buy a season pass, and to Vineyard members after that. (A separate Commissary project, “Why Would I Dare: The Trial of Crystal Mason,” based on the transcript of a 2016 voting rights case, is being presented online by Rattlestick Playwrights Theater through Nov. 2.)

Marin Ireland, left, who plays the British interviewer Mavis Nicholson, and Myra Lucretia Taylor as Maya Angelou.Credit...via Vineyard Theatre

The filmed episodes, which run between 30 and 45 minutes, are more tightly structured around themes like what it means to be a revolutionary, or lesser-known Black women activists who have been obscured by the traditional focus on charismatic male leaders. (White actors have mostly small roles as interviewers, who are often uncomprehending or antagonistic or both.)

Dates for the interviews are flashed onscreen. But the lack of any other context, along with the contemporary Zoom-room aesthetics of most backdrops, underlines the sometimes uncanny sense that these historical figures are, in fact, appearing on television right now.

It’s hard to find exactly the right verb to describe the relationship between actor and character. Playing? Embodying? In interviews, most performers went with some variation on “channeling.”

“We talk about it as like hearing a song you’re remembering the lyrics to,” said Kalyne Coleman, who portrays Giovanni and Hansberry. “With Hansberry, I think of her sound as flute and sax. I think of Nikki Giovanni as a soft drum that hits hard.”

Joe Morton as Baldwin in another part of the 1968 interview with Giovanni, played here by Kalyne Coleman.Credit...via Vineyard Theatre

The recording process was nightmarishly complicated, and not just because of Wi-Fi failures and video freezes. Depending on the number of actors, each one might be hearing four or six or more voices in their ear simultaneously.

But Thomas’s guiding principle as a director, she said, was simple: “I’m doing what the actors are doing, which is listening. I’m also trying to get out of the way.”

The piece is a multilayered exploration of the nature of intergenerational transmission. It’s an idea baked into the 1971 dialogue between Baldwin, who was 46 at the time, and Giovanni, who was 28. And it’s there in the multiple Baldwin interviews in the series, whose dates range from 1968 to 1987, a few months before his death.

It’s also there in the cast which includes veterans — like Joe Morton (also in the Public Theater’s recent audio play “Shipwreck”) and Myra Lucretia Taylor (a current Tony Award nominee for “Tina: The Tina Turner Musical”) — who are old enough to have heard the interviews when they first aired alongside recent M.F.A. graduates who sometimes only knew the Black luminaries’ names, if that.

Thomas, who is 27, said she was struck by how often the figures channeled in “Lessons in Survival” spoke about the next generation.

“We all were learning from our ancestors,” she said, “and what was amazing was how much they referenced us, and what their hopes were for us.”

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Four killed in Turkey as strong earthquake strikes Aegean Sea - Reuters

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By Reuters Staff

4 Min Read

ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Fourteen people were killed in Turkey and Greece after a strong earthquake struck the Aegean Sea on Friday, bringing buildings crashing down and setting off tidal waves which slammed into coastal areas and islands.

People ran onto streets in panic in the Turkish city of Izmir, witnesses said, after the quake struck with a magnitude of up to 7.0. Neighbourhoods were deluged with surging seawater which swept debris inland and left fish stranded as it receded.

Turkey’s Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency (AFAD) said 12 people died, one due to drowning, while 419 people were injured. On the Greek island of Samos two teenagers, a boy and a girl, were found dead in an area where a wall had collapsed.

Search and rescue operations continued at 17 collapsed or damaged buildings, AFAD said. Izmir’s governor said 70 people had been rescued from under the rubble.

Ilke Cide, a doctoral student who was in Izmir’s Guzelbahce region during the earthquake, said he went inland after waters rose following the earthquake.

“I am very used to earthquakes... so I didn’t take it very seriously at first but this time it was really scary,” he said, adding the earthquake had lasted for at least 25-30 seconds.

Crisscrossed by major fault lines, Turkey is among the most earthquake-prone countries in the world. More than 17,000 people were killed in August 1999 when a 7.6 magnitude quake struck Izmit, a city southeast of Istanbul. In 2011, a quake in the eastern city of Van killed more than 500.

Related Coverage

FLOODING

Ismail Yetiskin, mayor of Izmir’s Seferihisar, said sea levels rose as a result of the quake. “There seems to be a small tsunami,” he told broadcaster NTV.

Footage on social media showed debris including refrigerators, chairs and tables floating through streets on the deluge. TRT Haber showed cars in Izmir’s Seferihisar district had been dragged by the water and piled on top of each other.

Idil Gungor, who runs a hotel in Izmir’s Seferihisar district, told broadcaster NTV that people were cleaning the debris after the floodwaters receded. She said fish had washed up on the garden of the hotel, around 50 metres from the shore.

Residents of the Greek island of Samos, which has a population of about 45,000, were urged to stay away from coastal areas, Eftyhmios Lekkas, head of Greece’s organisation for anti-seismic planning, told Greece’s Skai TV.

“It was a very big earthquake, it’s difficult to have a bigger one,” said Lekkas.

Slideshow ( 5 images )

High tidal wave warnings were in place in Samos, where eight people were also injured, according to a Greek official.

“We have never experienced anything like it,” said George Dionysiou, the local vice-mayor. “People are panicking.” A Greek police spokesman said there was damage to some old buildings on the island.

The leaders of Turkey and Greece - caught up in a bitter dispute over exploration rights in the eastern Mediterranean - spoke by phone and expressed hopes that both countries would see a speedy recovery from the quake, Turkey’s presidency said.

Slideshow ( 5 images )

President Tayyip Erdogan said Turkey was ready to help Greece if necessary, it added. Earlier, their foreign ministers spoke and said they were ready to help one another, Ankara said.

Cooperation between the two countries after the devastating 1999 earthquake led to a period of warmer ties between them.

AFAD put the magnitude of the earthquake at 6.6, while the U.S. Geological Survey said it was 7.0. It was felt along Turkey’s Aegean coast and the northwestern Marmara region, media said.

Reporting by Ali Kucukgocmen and Ece Toksabay; Additional reporting by Renee Maltezou, Angeliki Koutantou and Michele Kambas; Editing by Ezgi Erkoyun, Dominic Evans, Jon Boyle and Susan Fenton

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Sound Advice: Talking speakers — and pandemic-driven backorders - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

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MIT Working On App That Could Detect Coronavirus Based On Cough Sound; ‘Pandemics Could Be A Thing Of The Past’ - CBS Boston

CAMBRIDGE (CBS) — Could your phone one day tell you if you’re likely to have COVID-19 based on the sound of your cough? That’s what scientists at MIT envision.

Researchers there have discovered that asymptomatic people – those who do not have any coronavirus symptoms – may sound different from healthy people in the way that they cough. MIT says the human ear can’t tell the difference but artificial intelligence can.

The research team collected tens of thousands of coughs that people voluntarily submitted through web browsers and phones.

“When they fed the model new cough recordings, it accurately identified 98.5 percent of coughs from people who were confirmed to have Covid-19, including 100 percent of coughs from asymptomatics — who reported they did not have symptoms but had tested positive for the virus,” MIT stated.

Researchers have found that asymptomatic Covid-19 patients may have distinctive coughs. Indecipherable to the human ear, the differences can be picked up by artificial intelligence. Cellphone-recorded coughs could provide a convenient screening tool. https://t.co/OyHqC2KqNk pic.twitter.com/0kYdEIXQkd

— Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) (@MIT) October 29, 2020

The next step is to create an easy-to-use app with the model. Researchers say that it could be a great noninvasive prescreening tool to figure out who is likely to have the coronavirus; they even think it could be incorporated into smart speakers so people could be screened daily.

“Pandemics could be a thing of the past if pre-screening tools are always on in the background and constantly improved,” the researchers said.

Click here to read more about MIT’s research.

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Four days from the US elections: What you need to know - Aljazeera.com

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President Donald Trump and his Democratic challenger Joe Biden continue making their closing pitches to voters across the US in the final four days of the 2020 campaign.

For the second day in a row, the two will hold campaign rallies in the same battleground states, although today’s scheduling has a bit of a twist.

Both Trump and Biden stopped in Florida on Thursday, which is unsurprising as polls show the two running neck-and-neck in that swing state. Today, they will visit Wisconsin, another obvious key battleground.

And both will also campaign in Minnesota today, a state that a Republican presidential candidate has not won since 1972 and where Biden holds a small lead in the polls. But Trump came close in 2016, within 1.5 percent of Hillary Clinton. The addition of Minnesota to Biden’s schedule is clearly a late-game effort to head off a Trump upset there.

Al Jazeera took a look at Minnesota’s turn as a battleground state when the two were there on the same day last month.

More than 82 million Americans have already cast their ballots either by mail, a process expanded in many areas due to the pandemic, or during in-person early voting. That number represents 59.5 percent of the total number of votes cast for the 2016 presidential election. Around 60 percent of voting-eligible Americans have participated in recent presidential elections, though some are predicting that number will rise this year.

Where the candidates are today

Trump will hold rallies in Waterford Township, Michigan; Green Bay, Wisconsin and Rochester, Minnesota.

Biden campaigns in Des Moines, Iowa; St Paul, Minnesota; and Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Vice President Mike Pence will visit Arizona, while Kamala Harris makes three stops in Texas, a state not traditionally on Democrats’ travel schedule this late in the campaign season.

Poll position

Biden continues to lead Trump nationally, according to a USA Today/Suffolk University poll released this morning.

Biden is ahead 52-44 percent among likely voters, virtually unchanged from his seven-point September lead in the same poll.

The USA Today poll also found that as the pandemic rages, a significant majority of Americans agree with Biden’s cautious approach to campaign events compared with Trump’s large rallies. The poll says 64 percent agree with Biden’s decision to hold smaller events, something Trump repeatedly ridicules him about, while nearly six in 10 disagree with Trump’s decision to continue holding rallies. The poll has a margin of error of +/-3.1 percentage points.

Meanwhile, Americans are both enthusiastic and fearful as election day approaches, according to a new Gallup poll out today.

That poll says 69 percent of registered voters are “more enthusiastic than usual” about voting this year, up from 50 percent at this point in 2016. Among Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents, 75 percent are “more enthusiastic” compared with 66 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents.

That being said, 64 percent of registered voters say they are “afraid of what will happen” if their preferred candidate does not win on Tuesday, with Democrats and Republicans equally likely to say that.

In case you missed it:

Coronavirus campaign: The pandemic has become the prism through which the 2020 election has been viewed.

Muslim and Arab American candidates:  One California US House race pits Lebanese American Darrell Issa against Ammar Campa-Najjar, who has Palestinian roots. Also, two members of the “Squad” are among the Arab American and Muslim candidates up for election in the House.

Battleground states: As Trump and Biden barnstorm in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa and Michigan on Friday, Al Jazeera tells you what you need to know about the states that will be key to winning the presidential election.

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