Sony has revealed a cheaper model of its speaker that looks like a lamp. Style-conscious audiophiles will be able to order the LSPX-S3 glass sound speaker starting in August.
The Bluetooth-enabled device features an organic glass tweeter with three actuators that enable it to emit sound in all directions, according to Sony. The company claims the tweeter "produces clear and powerful high tones" and spreads sound evenly throughout a space. The LSPX-S3 has a 46mm speaker unit and you can adjust the levels via the Sony Music Center app. It also has LDAC support for high-resolution audio.
Sony
The speaker won't light up an entire room, but the flickering candlelight-style illumination should provide a cozy ambiance for nighttime reading. The LED can pulse in sync with music and there are several lighting modes and brightness levels.
You can take the LSPX-S3 outdoors, too. It weighs around 1.1kg and has a battery that Sony says can power the device for up to eight hours on a single charge. You can recharge it via the USB-C charging port.
There's also an option to link two units for stereo playback and it can form part of a multi-room audio system. In addition, the speaker has a built-in microphone for calls, a metal base and a fabric bottom.
Almost six years ago, Sony first showed off a prototype for the stylish product. The company released the LSPX-S2 in Japan in 2019 and brought it to the US the following year. The LSPX-S3 will cost $350/£315/€350, which is around $100 cheaper than the previous model. It's not yet clear when Sony will start shipping the speaker.
With Space Jam: A New Legacy coming out this week, LA Lakers small forward LeBron James is making his way to Fortnite. On July 14th, two days before the movie comes out in the US, Epic will start selling two different King James skins. The first draws inspiration from the star’s pregame style and sees him wearing a blazer, hoodie, shorts and shirt and tie.
The second outfit gives lets you dress up James either in his Tune Squad uniform or a Taco Tuesday-themed getup. Naturally, all of the skins feature LeBron wearing his latest signature Nikes — which, as you might have guessed, come out this month as well. As a third option, you can buy the skins together in a bundle that comes with extra in-game items, an emote and a special loading screen.
LeBron isn’t the first real-life star to make his way into Fortnite. Previously, Epic released skins of Travis Scott and Tyler “Ninja” Blevins. Given that Epic frequently does crossover events with other brands, it’s not surprising to see James get that same treatment now. At this point, Fortnite is another channel companies can use to market their latest products.
For the second time in the span of less than a year, the price of ESPN+ is increasing. Starting on August 13th, an annual subscription will cost $69.99 per year, up from $59.99 previously. At the same time, the price of a monthly plan is going up as well. Come August 13th, ESPN+ will cost $6.99 per month, up from $5.99 as of last year. Opting for an annual subscription instead of a monthly one will save you about $13 over the span of a year. A Disney spokesperson told Engadget the company will start informing existing customers of the price increase as early as later today.
Since April 2019, Disney has allowed UFC fans to watch pay-per-view events through ESPN+. The price of that programming is not going up at the moment. The company is also not increasing the price of the Disney Bundle, which includes ESPN+, as well as Disney+ and Hulu. That package will continue to cost $13.99 per month, following a recent increase in March.
Microsoft is buying RiskIQ, a cybersecurity firm best known for working with organizations like Facebook and the US Postal Service to identify where and how they’re vulnerable to online attacks. The company didn’t disclose the terms of the deal, but according to Bloomberg, Microsoft agreed to pay approximately $500 million. Outside of its software, RiskIQ is known for publishing an annual report called the Evil Internet Minute that looks at just how much malicious activity can happen in 60 seconds or less.
Following last year’s SolarWinds data breach, which saw state-sponsored hackers access its source code, Microsoft has bought several companies to bolster its security offerings. Just last month, it acquired ReFirm Labs, a company that specializes in IoT resilience. The need for better enterprise security was highlighted (yet again) earlier this month with the Kaseya attack. While Kaseya has tried to downplay the severity of the event, security response firm Huntress has estimated that “thousands of small businesses” could be impacted by what happened.
Google is streamlining how Drive users backup and sync their files. The company is rolling out the new Drive for desktop app on Mac and Windows.
Drive for desktop will replace the Backup and Sync app (which supplanted the Google Drive desktop app in 2018) as well as Drive File Stream, which is for business users. Given that Google Workspace is now available to everyone, it doesn't make a lot of sense to have separate sync methods.
The new app combines the best parts of Backup and Sync and Drive File Stream, according to Google. You will be able to upload and sync your photos and videos across Google Photos as well as Drive. There's the option to sync external storage devices with the cloud as well. In addition, you'll be able to mirror Drive files on your computer, with locally stored versions of files for faster access.
On top of that, you can sync local folders such as your desktop and documents. There's also integration with Microsoft Outlook and Meet scheduling, and you'll be able to see who's editing Microsoft Office files in real time.
Drive File Stream users won't have to do much. Google renamed the app to Drive for desktop, and it will gain features from Backup and Sync in the coming months. Google will prompt Backup and Sync users to switch over to Drive for desktop. From October 1st, Backup and Sync will stop working, so you'll need to make the transition to keep backing up your files with Drive.
After a limited release in India late last year and a US beta at the start of 2021, YouTube is expanding the availability of Shorts, its TikTok competitor, to 100 countries. When the company first introduced the format, anyone could view a Short. However, only those in about two dozen countries could access the tools YouTube created for filming and editing Shorts. With today’s announcement, the company is making those tools widely available, meaning you’re likely to see more and more of the clips appear on the platform.
YouTube’s embrace of short-form videos comes just as TikTok itself becomes a bit more like YouTube. At the start of July, the company, following months of testing, gave all of its users the ability to record clips up to three minutes long. In dropping its 60-second limit, TikTok said its goal was to give creators more flexibility, especially for those making cooking and beauty tutorials.
Apple has signed a deal with producer Alexander Rodnyansky's company AR Content to make Russian-language and multilingual shows for Apple TV+. Rodnyansky told Variety that the agreement makes Apple "the very first of all the global streaming platforms to sign a strategic partnership with a company with Russian roots."
Rodnyansky's credits include Cloud Atlas, Sin City: A Dame to Kill for and Machete Kills, but he says it's his experience and production expertise in Russia that primarily led Apple to work with him. He produced Russian films Leviathan and Beanpole, which both won awards at the Cannes Film Festival and were Best Foreign Language Film Oscar nominees.
The deal with Apple is for several shows, some of which will be set inside Russia. The shows will be overseen by Russian writers and directors as well as international creatives.
Rodnyansky notes streaming has helped shows made in a variety of languages and countries to become international hits. “This is an amazing time when you have Fauda in Hebrew and Arabic doing really well across multiple territories, when you have French-speaking shows like La Mante or Marianne, or German shows like Dark or Babylon Berlin crossing borders,” Rodnyansky said. “This is a time for Russian-speaking shows to do the same, or multilingual shows."
Apple has similar first-look deals in place with Ridley Scott and Ron Howard's production companies, but the AR Content pact hints at its international ambitions. Netflix, which has expanded to all but a few countries and territories, has found success in acquiring and making international content. Spanish crime drama Money Heist has been a massive hit, while French thriller Lupin is Netflix's most successful original series so far this year. Anime and Korean dramas are also growing in popularity among subscribers. Earlier this year, Netflix picked up a modern-day adaptation of Anna Karenina as its first original drama series in Russian.
It's not too surprising that Apple is looking at a similar approach to content. Apple TV+ only has a few non-English-language projects available to stream, including Tehran and Losing Alice, so there's a lot of scope for Apple to expand its library with Russian and multilingual shows.
You'd think that Elon Musk and Richard Branson would hold grudges against each other when they both have space tourism plans, but that's not true — if anything, they're surprisingly buddy-buddy. Virgin Galactic told the Wall Street Journal in a statement that Musk bought a ticket aboard the company's air-launched rockets. It's not certain just where the SpaceX founder is in the queue, but it's safe to say his ride will garner some attention.
The feeling is mutual. In an interview with the Sunday Times, Branson said Musk was a "friend" and suggested he might fly on a SpaceX ship "one day." He even went so far as to tweet a photo showing him and Musk together.
Just don't expect that kind of warmth and camaraderie from Jeff Bezos. Blue Origin was more than a little eager to trash-talk Virgin ahead of its first fully crewed spaceflight, claiming that Branson and team were merely brushing the edge of space. While the company later wished Branson a "great flight," we wouldn't expect Bezos and Branson to have heart-to-heart coffee chats any time soon.
It's not a complete shock that Branson and Musk would be so cozy. However well their personalities mesh, the two aren't quite direct competitors. Virgin Galactic is aimed primarily at space tourists content with suborbital flights, while Virgin Orbit is focused on launching satellites for outfits that can't justify expensive conventional rockets. SpaceX, meanwhile, has focused its tourism efforts on lunar flybys and usually carries costlier payloads into space. This isn't to say the two execs will start feuding if their businesses truly overlap — just don't count on the positive vibes lasting forever.
Big day ahead. Great to start the morning with a friend. Feeling good, feeling excited, feeling ready.
The Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission have charged a man they claim sold insider trading tips on the dark web. Apostolos Trovias allegedly used anonymizing software, pseudonyms (he is said to have gone by the nickname "The Bull") and bitcoin to mask his identity.
According to the complaint, Trovias sold stock information individually and on a subscription basis on defunct black market AlphaBay and other sites on the dark web. He's said to have styled himself as a “hedge fund insider” who worked in a trading branch as an office clerk.
In 2017, not long before authorities seized and shut down AlphaBay, Trovias allegedly sold an undercover Internal Revenue Service agent pre-release earnings report information for at least one publicly traded company. He is facing one count of money laundering (which has a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison) and one count of securities fraud, which could lead to a prison sentence of 25 years if Trovias is convicted.
The complaint was filed in February but kept sealed until after Trovias was apprehended. He was arrested in Peru in May, according to a filing spotted by PCMag, which notes the US Government was working on extraditing him.
Others have been charged or convicted in connection with AlphaBay activity. In February 2020, feds charged Larry Harmon for allegedly running a $300 million bitcoin money laundering scheme. Last September, Bryan Connor Herrell was sentenced to 11 years in prison. Herrell was a moderator for AlphaBay and resolved disputes between vendors and customers. He pled guilty to conspiring to engage in a racketeer influenced corrupt organization.
Spoofed scam calls are bad enough, but neighborhood spoofing is worse — it can all be too tempting to answer when you see a number eerily similar to your own. Verizon (currently Engadget's parent company) might have a solution. It's updating its free Call Filter app with a "Neighborhood Filter" that blocks calls from numbers that share your area code and prefix. Scammers who try to reach you will go straight to voicemail.
You can specify other neighborhood numbers if you know scam artists use them, provided you pay $3 per month for Call Filter Plus. And yes, you can make exceptions. Any number in your contact list or allowed numbers will still get through, and you can correct an accidental block by telling the app to ignore the filter for future calls.
The updated app is available now for Android and iOS. Neighborhood filtering isn't the most sophisticated defense against scam calls, but it's arguably overdue. This kind of spamming is frequent, to the point where you might get multiple calls per day. A simple filter could lead to far fewer annoyances, not to mention greater trust in those calls that do come in.
When it comes to adding quick detail to an image or design, there aren’t many better ways to do it than by adding a texture vector. Texture can completely turn a design around, taking it from something flat and lifeless to almost popping off the screen!
Luckily there are quite a few free vector textures and Illustrator brushes that you can find floating around the web, and I’ve scoured the internet to find the best ones!
Do you need high-quality vector texture Illustrator add-ons for your professional work? Check out the best professional texture Illustrator add-ons from Envato Elements and Envato Market after the selection of free Illustrator textures.
32 Best Free Vector Textures
Now, let’s take a look at the top 32 free vector textures that the internet has to offer!
Gradients are a great way to add both subtle texture and color to your designs quickly and easily! This pack of unicorn-themed gradients boasts bright pastels that are vibrant while remaining soft and smooth.
Add some nature vibes to your design with this wood texture vector Illustrator pack. Subtle enough to be used alongside any design, but detailed enough to be used as part of the main element as well!
This grunge texture Illustrator pack contains nine premium vector textures for a non-premium price. You guessed it, they are free! These vector blots and textures are a free download that can be used for anything from vintage designs to grungy apocalyptic illustrations.
Create a seamless paisley textured effect using this vector texture! Not only can the pattern be repeated infinitely, but you can also change the color of the background for quick editing.
Can’t get enough texture? Want everything to be grime, or look as if it’s from a vintage era? Then this grunge texture Illustrator set containing nine hand-drawn grunge texture vectors for free is the set for you! This set even includes a halftone texture variant of grungy goodness.
Adding leather to design is the perfect way to add both texture and subtle detail without taking away focus. This free vector texture mimics realistic leather in a seamless, easy-to-use pattern.
These vector blots and textures are free to download and are endlessly useful. Use them to add subtle detail or pair them with high contrasting colors to create an even grittier-looking aesthetic. This particular pack features wider spread grit, with larger blotches.
Need an eroded texture vector that’s a bit more concentrated? Then this vector pack will give you that aged and weathered appearance, while maintaining a scaleable vector format. It’s incredibly detailed while remaining a vector!
These eight free seamless dot patterns give you a halftone vector effect, but with even more dots. Easily add interesting textured backgrounds to your designs, and never have to worry about a misaligned or out-of-place dot again!
Give your designs a worn and distressed look with this speckled vector textures pack. The distressed texture Illustrator set contains seven high-quality textures available in both a vector format and transparent PNG. If you are looking to add a rust or distressed look to a metal texture vector design, then these distressed texture Illustrator add-ons are a great option!
Don’t miss out on this set of 12 high-quality, distressed Illustrator textures in vector EPS format, an absolute must-have resource for any digital artist or designer. You can never have too many vintage texture vectors, after all!
Add some funky waves to your design using this texture background vector! Add a pop of color and texture to flyers, CDs, and posters with this repeatable design. Cover your design in it for a bold, trendy look, or keep it minimal by using it as an accent color.
Give your art a true canvas feel with this set of handmade canvas vector textures. Despite their highly detailed texture, they are indeed vector textures, so you can scale them infinitely as well as changing their color!
Be prepared to turn even the most contemporary design into a 100% vintage artwork in a click, with 15 impressive halftone Illustrator textures. Each and every one of these textures is hand-drawn, making them incredible value for a free resource!
This pack contains 14 free texture background vectors that are perfect for adding a rough or distressed look to any design. Use them to mask type, or add them to an illustration to add more grit and detail.
These ten halftone textures are free for both commercial and personal use! Use them to add a subtle hint of detail or mix and match them to create bold designs. You can even create a stipple-like effect with them!
Round off your Illustrator brush stash with this collection of 30 free brushes. These brushes feature a variety of hand-drawn line textures in horizontal, vertical, diagonal, and cross-hatched angles! Add them to typography or illustrations for added vintage texture!
This set contains a total of 12 brushstrokes, all of which were made by hand, scanned, and then vectorized, before being turned into this handy art brush library! Brushstroke textured vectors are a great way to add more of a “homemade” character to modern or minimal designs.
The Worn Textures pack offers a realistic option to fade and distress, offering a subtler but still detailed texture. The pack contains a total of nine textures, great for distressing your graphic designs and illustrations or even creating mockups of screen-printed T-shirts!
Use these simple but effective Illustrator brushes to add texture to text, designs, and illustrations. Great for gritty posters and flyers or vintage designs.
This pack of four graphic styles adds grungy textures to your logos, typography, and any other single-color shapes. Eliminate those clean vector lines and give your designs a hand-made ink print appearance!
This free vintage texture Illustrator pack with dust vector textures offers subtle, hyper-realistic detail. It can also be used as a paper texture Illustrator pack, mimicking cardboard or other thicker types of paper and boxing material!
While these brushes might be great for furry monsters, they will also work wonderfully for adding small accents of furry texture onto a number of things! Think furry typography on a child’s birthday invitation or even furry spots on a dog-sitting flyer. Have fun and get creative!
Use these bold watercolor patterns for Illustrator to bring a trendy and modern look to your designs. They’re great for flyers, posters, and social media—who says that watercolors can’t be big, bold, and vibrant?
Add a burst of color and childlike whimsy with this pack of 12 free Illustrator brushes, for imitating crayons and colored pencils that have been scanned from the actual strokes of a crayon! Great for adding texture to illustrations or just adding textured borders around designs.
This halftone vector pack boasts a collection of ten vector halftone textures. Halftone textures are great to use in craft projects, artistic prints, business cards, or any other graphic design project you might have! These textures work well with both modern and vintage designs.
Take your design to the next level with this set of mini grit textures! Each texture’s grittiness is on the smaller or finer side to work perfectly with more detailed artwork. They are a great companion to your larger, more grungy texture vectors.
Add both motion and color to your design in just a matter of seconds! No more fussing with trying to create that perfect stroke—these textures already have you covered. Create bold, trendy designs or keep it minimal—these textures can go both ways, depending on how you use them!
Adore black and white graphics and comic art illustration? Recreate the hand-drawn look and feel with these vector scatter Illustrator brushes! Ultra-modern and minimal, these brushes offer endless possibilities!
This pack contains over 90 brushes of different shapes and forms, making it the perfect Illustrator brush kit for adding a variety of different paint and marker-like texture to your designs!
Incredibly popular in apparel design and illustrations with a retro vibe, stippling is one of the easiest ways to add texture to an otherwise flat design. These brushes will perfectly mimic the stippling process, so you can start creating your own!
20 Premium Texture Illustrator Add-Ons From Envato Elements
Free vector textures can be a good option when the budget is tight. But free Illustrator textures don’t offer the same quality as premium texture vector brushes.
If you’re a graphic designer and spend most of your time working in Illustrator or Photoshop, you need a professional source of texture Illustrator sets. Envato Elements is your best option.
This bundle is chock-full of inky goodness! Load up the watercolor brush in Illustrator, throw in a mess of textures, and your next design is ready to be splashed in all kinds of inky paintbrush texture glory! These textures would pair particularly well with any crumpled paper texture Illustrator sets.
The Complete Vector Blueprint Kit is packed full of vector textures as well as matching Illustrator brushes containing everything you need to create your own vector blueprint designs! Pair it with a crumpled paper texture vector for an extra touch of realism.
While many stipple brush sets focus on larger, more graphic stipple styles, this brush set recreates an incredibly realistic stippling effect. Using just a single brushstroke creates hundreds of tiny dots!
Chalk as a medium has so many uses: for illustrations, menu boards, hand lettering, or as a learning aid in the classroom. This set of authentically detailed, digital chalk Illustrator brushes is no different! Add texture to your typography or use it as a shader brush.
Add depth and style to your designs and artwork with these textured halftone pattern Illustrator brushes and textures! The brushes are pressure sensitive, making them perfect for illustrating, but they’re also repeatable patterns, so they work just as well in traditional design too!
Easily add on the years to enhance the retro realism of your work—both design and illustrations—with this set of vintage texture Illustrator brushes! This vintage texture Illustrator pack can be used to create high-contrast folds or add a very subtle texture.
This set of watercolor brushes and textures is great for adding a hand-made feel to your designs! There are six textures and a whopping 36 watercolor Illustrator brushes in total, making it the only watercolor texture pack you may ever end up needing!
The Subtlecraft texture pack can be used to add subtle textures to your designs in order to achieve authentic retro effects. It includes 50 vintage texture vectors as well as 10 Illustrator brushes! This mega pack can also double as a grunge texture vector resource.
The Tileable Textures pack is here to solve your design woes with these tremendous tileable textures! These textures are so highly detailed, it’s almost hard to believe that they are not only vectors, so they can be infinitely upscaled with no blurriness, but they are also tiled and can be repeated infinitely! There are few abstract texture vectors that can claim both!
Get the splattered paint look without the mess with these 22 paintbrush textures! These textures are a key tool in any designer’s toolbox, being multi-purpose and suitable for a number of different applications, from party flyers to book covers!
The Memento Shader Illustrator Brushes are some of the best distressed texture vector brushes you’ll find! You get to work with 28 brushes included in the set, divided into four groups, all with their own distinctive features and purposes.
Need distressed texture vector brushes that can also double as an eroded texture vector? Then this is the brush set for you! Grab two for one with this multi-purpose brush set. You can choose from 48 different high-quality texture brushes made from dust, rust, and scratches.
A set of 40 vector paintbrush texture brushes for Illustrator. Use them to create grungy effects, add noise to your shapes, or add texture to your images. All brushes were made on paper with a spray, before being scanned, traced, and polished.
Add depth and texture to your designs and illustrations with these wood texture vectors! These wood texture Illustrator brushes were created by live-tracking photos of real wood, ensuring a high-quality and realistic wood-grain texture Illustrator effect.
This set of engraved patterns is perfect for giving your design an instant overhaul—use them on text, backgrounds, or vector objects! There are 16 seamless patterns in total, and they are an easy way to add texture to an image while keeping things minimal and clean.
Turn your designs and illustrations into beautifully imperfect screen prints in an instant! These grunge texture vector brushes are the easiest way to make your very own authentic-looking prints! They also double as a great vintage Illustrator pattern to create retro-looking designs.
Make your designs look as if they have come straight off the press with these realistic, vintage print layer styles and vintage patterns for Illustrator! They also work wonderfully as a vector rust texture, so you can mix retro with industrial.
This collection of 27 styles for Adobe Illustrator is full of vector rust textures inspired by ghost signs, which are the old signs you might find in antique shops or even abandoned warehouses. The styles are based on a combination of graphic styles and Adobe Illustrator actions, making adding texture to your designs both simple and quick!
The two different sets of brushes that are included in this pack work together harmoniously to make stunning textured, inked art. Add small areas of dots and texture to your current design or create a whole new illustration, all using one set of Illustrator brushes and textures!
These brushes are great for giving your lines a rough, textured, handmade effect. Use it to illustrate or to add texture to borders or even type! Great for flyers and fine art alike!
5 Premium Texture Illustrator Add-Ons From Envato Market
You’ve seen a selection of free Illustrator textures and top premium vector textures Illustrator add-ons. Now, what if you don’t want a subscription but still want a premium texture Illustrator brush?
We’ve got you covered. Here are five premium texture Illustrator add-ons from Envato Market. You’ll get the same quality and professional design, without a subscription. Just buy the texture background vectors you like.
Looking for the newest Illustrator texture brushes? This brand-new distressed texture Illustrator pack is for you.
This set includes 12 distressed texture Illustrator add-ons. You can easily create a vector mask opacity of any vector object, text, or raster. These texture Illustrator files are easy to use and customize.
Paper texture Illustrator add-ons are a great addition to your toolkit. This texture background vector set includes 10 folded paper texture swatches. The patterns are automatically added to Illustrator the first time you open the AI file.
Are you looking for realistic wood texture vectors? Check out this wood texture Illustrator pack. You’ll get a set of 10 rustic wood texture Illustrator patterns. All wood texture vectors are high-resolution and high-quality.
If you like grunge texture vectors for your artwork, you’ll love this set. The pack comes with ten grunge texture Illustrator brushes.
These grunge texture vector brushes were made using textures from real objects, which gives them a realistic look. The grunge texture Illustrator brushes emulate anything from the texture of brick to paint or pastel. The uses are endless!
This grain texture Illustrator pack comes with 54 pressure-sensitive grain brushes.
These premium grain texture Illustrator brushes have varying degrees of density, texture, and grunginess. The AI scatter brushes are perfect for shading, or simply adding some texture or noise to your vector artwork.
Get Your Illustrator Texture Brushes Today!
And there you have it! 55+ of the best Illustrator texture brushes and tools to add detail to your designs and illustrations! Both free vector textures and premium texture vectors.
If you need a professional solution and want to guarantee the resources you are using were made and vetted by professional artists themselves, then don’t forget to check out all the fantastic Illustrator resources that can be found over on Envato Elements!
Didn’t get enough texture ideas yet? Check out even more helpful Illustrator resources below:
Iran faced its own spate of cyberattacks this weekend. Reuters and The Guardian report that Iran's railway train system and transportation websites suffered a "cyber-disruption" (according to state media) on the weekend. Portal sites went down, although it's not clear just how badly the train system were affected. Officials claimed that only the train displays were compromised with fake messages, but the Fars news agency claimed there was "unprecedented chaos" that included cancellations and delays.
The sites and train systems were back to normal as of Monday morning.
It's not certain who was behind the attack, although telecom minister Mohammad Javad Azari-Jahromi alerted people to the threat of ransomware if they didn't address security vulnerabilities. Iran has historically blamed some cyberattacks on the US and Israel, although ransomware is more often the work of criminal organizations.
The US and other countries have typically pinned cyberattacks on Iran, and both sides have engaged in relatively quiet digital warfare. However, it's not clear that's the cause here — this could just represent 'ordinary' hackers exploiting weak points in Iran's infrastructure, whether to make money or create havoc.
China is tightening restrictions on businesses seeking to go public overseas amid a wave of Chinese origin IPOs in the US. Regulators have thrown down the gauntlet for local companies by announcing new privacy rules for those seeking foreign stock market listings, according to Reuters. As a result, any company that has data on more than a million customers must face a review into how they handle that info in order to receive permission for a foreign IPO.
Regulators will scrutinize the risks of said data being being affected, controlled or manipulated by external governments following overseas flotations. In a broader effort to get companies to list locally, China is adding the two sets of rules that focus on data collection and data storage to its Data Security Law and the Personal Information Protection Law.
The constraints arrive in the midst of a privacy crackdown by Beijing. Regulators have previously rattled their sabres at TikTok and LinkedIn for alleged data collection violations. Just last week, authorities caused shockwaves by ordering ride-hailing giant Didi to remove its app from mobile stores in the wake of its US listing, causing its shares to initially plummet by 20 percent.
With US-China tensions still simmering, the decision will likely pile pressure on President Biden to increase scrutiny of Chinese businesses. Hostility created by Trump-era policies has eased in recent months after the removal of China's Xiaomi and Luokung Technology from military blocklists, which prevented Americans from buying and holding their shares. An expected thaw in relations under Biden likely fueled a recent surge in Chinese company listings. Last year, China-based businesses raised $11.7 billion through 30 IPOs in the US, with even more flotations occurring this year.
Samsung's Galaxy Buds Pro offer a compelling alternative to Apple's AirPods Pro. They're even more tempting when you consider the latest discount. The active noise cancelling earbuds are currently on sale for an all-time low price of $120 at Amazon-owned Woot. That's $80 off their typical price and $20 less than the previous record deal.
Maybe it's because the Galaxy Buds+ landed in February and the Buds 2 are expected in August. Whatever the reasons behind the latest price cut, the Buds Pro are still worthy of your cash due to their bombastic sound. Firstly, unlike the $150 Buds+, they boast active noise cancellation and a wider audio range that features more depth and clarity thanks to the internal 1mm woofer and a 6.5mm tweeter.
Voice calls have also been improved with the help of three microphones, an accelerometer and Wind Shield tech for when you're outdoors. What's more, battery life matches Samsung's estimates at five hours with ANC and Bixby turned on and eight hours with them off, or 28 hours total with the case — which supports wireless charging. For those looking for durability, the IPX7-rating means you can dunk them in up to 1 meter of water for 30 minutes. Overall, they're still our highest rated Samsung earbuds with an exemplary review score of 85.
Just note that before you purchase them it may be worth familiarizing yourself with Woot's terms and conditions. For the uninitiated, the online retailer mainly offers limited-time deals with a modified return policy to its parent Amazon that includes numerous exceptions, including charges for shipping costs.
Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.
