water resistance
Watch Party: The Best TAG in Years, a '60s Sensation, and Omega Goes All White
Watch Party: The Best TAG in Years, a '60s Sensation, and Omega Goes All White It's LVMH Watch Week, so here's WIRED's pick of the timepieces that made their debut--plus one notable gatecrasher. The watch world is readying itself for the slew of new releases from the likes of Patek Philippe and Rolex when Watches and Wonders descends on Geneva in April. But this week, the watchmaker Omega and the luxury conglomerate LVMH both spotted a window of opportunity to get pieces out ahead of the annual gathering. Since 2020, LVMH has been kicking off each new year by serving up watches from its stable of brands, including Zenith, TAG Heuer, Hublot, and Louis Vuitton. Meanwhile, Omega--muscling in on LVMH's party somewhat--is leaning into its connection to next month's Winter Olympics in Italy, where it will once again serve as the event's official timekeeper.
MUA-RL: Multi-turn User-interacting Agent Reinforcement Learning for agentic tool use
Zhao, Weikang, Wang, Xili, Ma, Chengdi, Kong, Lingbin, Yang, Zhaohua, Tuo, Mingxiang, Shi, Xiaowei, Zhai, Yitao, Cai, Xunliang
With the recent rapid advancement of Agentic Intelligence, agentic tool use in LLMs has become increasingly important. During multi-turn interactions between agents and users, the dynamic, uncertain, and stochastic nature of user demands poses significant challenges to the agent's tool invocation capabilities. Agents are no longer expected to simply call tools to deliver a result; rather, they must iteratively refine their understanding of user needs through communication while simultaneously invoking tools to resolve user queries. Existing reinforcement learning (RL) approaches for tool use lack the integration of genuinely dynamic users during the RL training process. To bridge this gap, we introduce MUA-RL (Multi-turn User-interacting Agent Reinforcement Learning for agentic tool use), a novel reinforcement learning framework that, for the first time in the field of agentic tool use, integrates LLM-simulated users into the reinforcement learning loop. MUA-RL aims to enable autonomous learning of models to communicate with users efficiently and use various tools to solve practical problems in dynamic multi-turn interactions. Evaluations are done on several multi-turn tool-using benchmarks (see Figure 1). Specifically, MUA-RL-32B achieves 67.3 on TAU2 Retail, 45.4 on TAU2 Airline, 28.3 on TAU2 Telecom, 28.4 on BFCL-V3 Multi Turn, and 82.5 on ACEBench Agent -- outperforming or matching the performance of larger open-source models such as DeepSeek-V3-0324 and Qwen3-235B-A22B in non-thinking settings.
Anker's 'AI party speaker' can automatically remove vocals for karaoke nights
At CES 2025, Anker has a pair of new speakers under its Soundcore brand. The first, the Soundcore Rave 3S, is a 349 party speaker with AI-powered karaoke tricks and built-in light shows. Joining it is the SoundCore Boom 2 Pro, a more powerful follow-up to its non-Pro namesake, which adds boomier bass and better protection from water and dust. The appropriately named Rave 3S is described as an "AI party speaker" with 200W output and 108dB volume. Anker says it can fill spaces of up to 1,076 square feet. Like some other Soundcore models, its RGB LEDs can create a light show that syncs with the beat of your music.
Google Pixel 8a review: new Android mid-range champion
The Pixel 8a starts at 499 ( 549/ 499/A 849). That may be 50 more than last year's 7a, but the new model improves just about everything, and undercuts the Pixel 8 by 200. Google has revamped the design of the phone, giving it a more rounded shape, particularly at the corners, which makes it nicer to hold without a case. It is still unmistakably a Pixel, with a big aluminium camera bar across the back, and looks great in one of its more bold colours. The 6.1in screen has been upgraded from last year to match the more expensive Pixel 8, and is significantly brighter, running at up to 120Hz for smooth scrolling. It is a crisp and colourful display at a good size.
25 gadgets from CES 2024 that you can buy right now
The best part about CES 2024 has been all of the cool product announcements. Many of these products are early in development, so not available for purchase. Some, however, are already on store shelves, allowing tech-crazed consumers to see what all the fuss is about. Here are some of the niftier items displayed at this year's CES that are ready, willing and able to empty your bank account. These products range from cool smartphone accessories to gaming laptops and some items that simply defy description.
The 92 Absolute Best Prime Day Deals We've Found (Day 2)
Amazon Prime Day is winding down, ending in just a few hours (11:59 pm PT to be exact). Most of the deals are for Prime subscribers, but there are great discounts for non-members as well. We've spent hours combing through thousands of deals; these are our favorites on WIRED-tested gear, from Alexa-enabled speakers and robot vacs to laptops and tablets. The WIRED Gear team tests products year-round. We sorted through hundreds of thousands of deals by hand to make these picks. Crossed out products are out of stock or no longer discounted. Our Amazon Prime Day coverage page has the latest stories, and our Prime Day Shopping Tips will help you avoid bad deals. You can also get a 1-year subscription to WIRED for $5 here. Updated July 13: We've added new deals, including the OnePlus 9 Pro, Logitech K380 Keyboard, and Bose QuietComfort 45 Headphones. We've also removed expired deals and updated prices. If you buy something using links in our stories, we may earn a commission. This helps support our journalism. We've got a separate roundup of more great home and kitchen deals right here. There are blenders, and then there are Vitamix blenders. I was skeptical, but like my fellow Gear reviewer Joe Ray, the Vitamix made me a blender person.
The 88 Absolute Best Prime Day Deals We've Found (Day 2)
Amazon Prime Day is here. The mega-retailer's two-day sales event for Prime subscribers is in full swing, and there are plenty of deals on some of our favorite gear and gadgets, from Alexa-enabled speakers to robot vacs to laptops and tablets. The WIRED Gear team tests products year-round. We sorted through hundreds of thousands of deals by hand to make these picks. Crossed out products are out of stock or no longer discounted. Our Amazon Prime Day coverage page has the latest stories, and our Prime Day Shopping Tips will help you avoid bad deals. You can also get a 1-year subscription to WIRED for $5 here. Updated July 13: We've added five new deals, including JackRabbit eBike, Apollo City 2022 electric scooter, and more. We've also shifted a few sections around to highlight new deals, removed a number of expired deals, and updated prices and links throughout. If you buy something using links in our stories, we may earn a commission. This helps support our journalism. We've got a separate roundup of more great home and kitchen deals right here. There are blenders, and then there are Vitamix blenders. I was skeptical, but like my fellow Gear reviewer Joe Ray, the Vitamix made me a blender person. A blender is, essentially, just a blade atop a motor.
The 85 Absolute Best Prime Day Deals (Day 2)
Amazon Prime Day is here. The mega-retailer's two-day sales event for Prime subscribers is in full swing, and there are plenty of deals on some of our favorite gear and gadgets, from Alexa-enabled speakers to robot vacs to laptops and tablets. The WIRED Gear team tests products year-round. We sorted through hundreds of thousands of deals by hand to make these picks. Crossed out products are out of stock or no longer discounted. Our Amazon Prime Day coverage page has the latest stories, and our Prime Day Shopping Tips will help you avoid bad deals. You can also get a 1-year subscription to WIRED for $5 here. Updated July 13: We've added new deals, including the lowest price we've seen on a Covid-19 at-home test kit, removed several expired deals, and updated prices and links throughout. If you buy something using links in our stories, we may earn a commission. This helps support our journalism. Prime Day is the best time to pick up a new Amazon device, whether that's a Kindle, Fire tablet, or Echo speaker--they're unlikely to get cheaper than this. For a complete list, read our Best Prime Day Deals on Amazon Devices roundup. Be sure to also read through our Best Kindles, Best Fire Tablets, and Best Alexa Speakers guides. The Paperwhite is the best overall Kindle.
The 84 Absolute Best Prime Day Deals
Amazon Prime Day is here. The mega-retailer's two-day sales event for Prime subscribers is in full swing, and there are plenty of deals on some of our favorite gear and gadgets, from Alexa-enabled speakers to robot vacs to laptops and tablets. The WIRED Gear team tests products year-round. We sorted through hundreds of thousands of deals by hand to make these picks. Crossed out products are out of stock or no longer discounted. Our Amazon Prime Day coverage page has the latest stories, and our Prime Day Shopping Tips will help you avoid bad deals. You can also get a 1-year subscription to WIRED for $5 here. Updated July 12: We've added 7 new deals and crossed out the offer of an Amazon credit with purchase of a $50 gift card, which is no longer available. We've also updated prices and links throughout. If you buy something using links in our stories, we may earn a commission. This helps support our journalism. Prime Day is the best time to pick up a new Amazon device, whether that's a Kindle, Fire tablet, or Echo speaker--they're unlikely to get cheaper than this. For a complete list, read our Best Prime Day Deals on Amazon Devices roundup. Be sure to also read through our Best Kindles, Best Fire Tablets, and Best Alexa Speakers guides.
The 78 Absolute Best Prime Day Deals
Amazon Prime Day is here. The mega-retailer's two-day sales event for Prime subscribers is in full swing, and there are plenty of deals on some of our favorite gear and gadgets, from Alexa-enabled speakers to robot vacs to laptops and tablets. The WIRED Gear team tests products year-round. We sorted through hundreds of thousands of deals by hand to make these picks. Crossed out products are out of stock or no longer discounted. Our Amazon Prime Day coverage page has the latest stories, and our Prime Day Shopping Tips will help you avoid bad deals. You can also get a 1-year subscription to WIRED for $5 here. Updated July 12: We've added 7 new deals and crossed out any that are no longer available. We've also updated prices and link throughout. If you buy something using links in our stories, we may earn a commission. This helps support our journalism. Prime Day is the best time to pick up a new Amazon device, whether that's a Kindle, Fire tablet, or Echo speaker--they're unlikely to get cheaper than this.