Tech
The New Bose QC Ultra 2 Are the Best Noise-Canceling Headphones Right Now

When it comes to cutting out annoying outside noise, there is no brand in history that has denatured more decibels than Bose. The pioneers of noise-canceling haven’t been without challengers in recent years, including Sony, Apple, and others, but Bose has maintained the crown for generation after generation. Perhaps no product showcases this iterative talent more than its latest earbuds, the QuietComfort Ultra 2.
There wasn’t anything wrong with the first pair. I liked their ergonomic fit, excellent noise reduction, and bold low end, not to mention their excellent microphones, angled toward your mouth in an homage to Apple’s popular AirPods Pro.
With the new QC Ultra 2, we get wireless charging, more customizable sound, better immersive audio, and improved noise reduction. As far as I’m concerned, if you’re a business traveler or someone who wants a compact pair of headphones that truly removes the sound of the world around you, these are—once again—the best you can buy.
Generation 2
Photograph: Parker Hall
I find it very hard to fault Bose for its rubber-stamped design approach; the previous pair were very comfortable and functioned extremely well. The slight changes that appear on the new model are welcome, and I’m not mad at the lack of physical changes.
You now get wireless charging in the clamshell case and a guard to prevent earwax buildup, and you can toggle the included touch controls in the app, which is very helpful when doing activities where you might brush your ear.
Places I don’t find improvements include the weight (the new buds are about a gram heavier but still perfectly fine in your ears) and battery life (the new buds have the same six hours with ANC on, 24 hours in the case as the old model). Bose has even opted for the same drivers in this new generation of buds, with slight tuning adjustments that I’ll get into in a bit.
Features Galore
Courtesy of Bose
If you’re new to the world of wireless earbuds or are coming from a more basic pair, the amount of customization that you can do with Bose’s latest buds can feel daunting. You can choose various “modern traditional” adjustments like EQ and noise canceling/transparency modes, but the buds also allow you to dial in two kinds of immersive 3D upscaling (one for staying in place, one for while you move around), among other wild and fantastical new settings that take advantage of modern processors and machine learning tech.
Tech
LG Promo Codes and Coupons: 50% Off

LG makes some of the best TVs you can buy. Its OLED TVs in particular are perennial favorites at WIRED, with C-series models like the C4 (9/10, WIRED Recommends) providing among the best performance for your dollars on the market. LG is about way more than TVs of course. The Korean brand offers multiple products across the A/V landscape, from soundbars to Bluetooth speakers, along with a host of other products like home appliances, laptops, and more. Save over 40% with LG promo codes and online exclusive discounts on home appliances, laptops, and more tech.
Save 20% With Today’s LG Promo Codes
If you’re looking to save on LG gear today, you can get up to 20% back on your first order with select eligible products when you sign up for LG rewards with your email address. Simply go to the My LG Membership rewards page, follow the instructions to sign up, fill your cart, and use code WELCOME20.
If you’re ready to check out one of those TVs mentioned above, LG’s C4 and the ultra-bright step-up model G4 are both eligible right now in 77-inch sizes. Otherwise, there are plenty of other products to shop currently on sale that you stack with MyLG Rewards for 5% back and points on every purchase.
Labor Day Discounts: 40% Off TVs, Fridges, Washers, and More LG Coupons
There are also online exclusive offers for the LG’s Labor Day Savings Event continuing to roll out this month. Deals include up to 67% off TVs and appliances, perks like free delivery to the room of choice, and free installation included on a variety of appliances purchased. Some of our favorites are on deep discount, like fridges as low as $599, French Door Refrigerators up to $1,700 off, washer/dryer combos up to $1,000 off, and Smart Wifi enabled ovens and electric/gas ranges up to a whopping $1,900 off.
Fall is near, which means football season—and staying inside more generally—is on the horizon. Now’s a great time to invest in a TV that will last. Samsung has sales just in time, with up to $300 off LG OLED AI Smart TVs, from 55 to 100 inches. Plus, you can get $900 off the new 77 inch Class OLED evo AI C5 4K, now $2,800. There’s also savings of up to $500 off, with same-day pickup in store on select models if you want to purchase with online discounts and get it ASAP—perfect for those in the middle of binging a season when the vertical bars of death appear on the screen. There’s also deals for $499 off the 86 inch QNED evo AI Mini LED 4K Smart TV and $399 off the 75 inch model.
Save Up To $1,000 With LG Bundle Offers and Back to School Tech Deals
Summer is winding down, and back to school deals are back. With discounts of essential academic tech, like up to 40% off lightweight laptops and monitors—plus an extra 5-10% off when you bundle 2 or more). Some bestsellers we’ve seen trending this season are UltraGear Gaming Monitors and Curved UltraWide QHD Monitors. Plus, if you want an upgrade, there’s up to $1,000 off LG gram Copilot/AI enabled laptops. If you need to stock up on tech, LG and LG STUDIO appliances have bundle offers, which include up to $1,000 off with Instant Rebate specials and extra $150 off with trade-in (which includes free delivery).
There are also bonus discounts if you buy LG STUDIO models, including the LG Studio UltraHeat gas cooktop for $600 off, discounts of $800 for the Instaview Electric Slide-in range, and $350 off a Over Range Convection Microwave with Air Fryer.
Students, Teachers, and First Responders Get a 10% Off LG Promo Code
Looking for further discounts? If you’re a teacher, student, or first responder, you could receive an additional LG Promo Code for more savings. To see if you’re eligible, simply click on the LG Appreciation Program link and follow the info to register your account. Exclusive discounts include free installation on refrigerators, cooking ranges, and washer/dryers, including select LG Studio and LG Signature appliances. You could also get year-round savings on LG products with a minimum guaranteed discount of 10% compared to LG.com sale prices.
Get up to 20% Back With MyLG Rewards or 5% Off Referral Code
With MyLG Rewards, you can get up to 20% back in rewards, as well as exclusive deals, extended warranties, and free installation. Eligible rewards members can get an additional 5% off LG products if you refer a friend or loved one with the LG Referral program when they make an eligible purchase of $200 or more. They’ll get 5% off, and you’ll earn 5,000 MyLG Rewards points, so it’s a win-win. This coupon is stackable with other promotions too, so you can still take advantage of the many other featured discounts.
When to Get the Best Discounts on LG of the Year
Black Friday and Cyber Monday are often the biggest times to save on LG gear, but the brand has promotions going all year. Last year’s LG TV models like the C4 and G4 are both on sale right now, as again the company clears out stock for 2025. Those are frankly the best deals you’ll likely see this year, including Black Friday, but if you’re not interested in last year’s models, there are already some discounts on the next wave.
LG’s new evo G5 OLED TV is poised to be one of the brightest, most beautiful TVs released this year. I saw it in person at CES 2025, and from my brief time with it I can already tell you its new quad-stack panel is a scorcher that keeps the perfect black levels and fabulous colors for which LG OLED TVs are praised. They’ve rolled out their latest version, the OLED evo AI G5 4K Smart TV, enhanced with AI for more personalization, an ultra crisp picture, and even less lag time. On top of up to $400 off, get free professional wall mounting, a free $200 TV stand, and $200 off when you bundle with a matching soundbar.
Looking for something for the kitchen or laundry room? You could save $200 on select Heat Pump laundry bundles, or up to 45% off on LG’s best-selling appliances. There are plenty of other ways to save, so if you’re excited to get your LG on, check out these deals now.
Tech
Massive Leak Shows How a Chinese Company Is Exporting the Great Firewall to the World

A leak of more than 100,000 documents shows that a little-known Chinese company has been quietly selling censorship systems seemingly modeled on the Great Firewall to governments around the world.
Geedge Networks, a company founded in 2018 that counts the “father” of China’s massive censorship infrastructure as one of its investors, styles itself as a network-monitoring provider, offering business-grade cybersecurity tools to “gain comprehensive visibility and minimize security risks” for its customers, the documents show. In fact, researchers found that it has been operating a sophisticated system that allows users to monitor online information, block certain websites and VPN tools, and spy on specific individuals.
Researchers who reviewed the leaked material found that the company is able to package advanced surveillance capabilities into what amounts to a commercialized version of the Great Firewall—a wholesale solution with both hardware that can be installed in any telecom data center and software operated by local government officers. The documents also discuss desired functions that the company is working on, such as cyberattack-for-hire and geofencing certain users.
According to the leaked documents, Geedge has already entered operation in Kazakhstan, Ethiopia, Pakistan, and Myanmar, as well as another unidentified country. A public job posting shows that Geedge is also looking for engineers who can travel to other countries for engineering work, including to several countries not named in the leaked documents, WIRED has found.
The files, including Jira and Confluence entries, source code, and correspondence with a Chinese academic institution, mostly involve internal technical documentation, operation logs, and communications to solve issues and add functionalities. Provided through an anonymous leak, the files were studied by a consortium of human rights and media organizations including Amnesty International, InterSecLab, Justice For Myanmar, Paper Trail Media, The Globe and Mail, the Tor Project, the Austrian newspaper Der Standard, and Follow The Money.
“This is not like lawful interception that every country does, including Western democracies,” says Marla Rivera, a technical researcher at InterSecLab, a global digital forensics research institution. In addition to mass censorship, the system allows governments to target specific individuals based on their website activities, like having visited a certain domain.
The surveillance system that Geedge is selling “gives so much power to the government that really nobody should have,” Rivera says. “This is very frightening.”
Digital Authoritarianism as a Service
At the core of Geedge’s offering is a gateway tool called Tiangou Secure Gateway (TSG), designed to sit inside data centers and could be scaled to process the internet traffic of an entire country, documents reveal. According to researchers, every packet of internet traffic runs through it, where it can be scanned, filtered, or stopped outright. Besides monitoring the entire traffic, documents show that the system also allows setting up additional rules for specific users that it deems suspicious and collecting their network activities.
For unencrypted internet traffic, the system is able to intercept sensitive information such as website content, passwords, and email attachments, according to the leaked documents. If the content is properly encrypted through the Transport Layer Security protocol, the system uses deep packet inspection and machine learning techniques to extract metadata from the encrypted traffic and predict whether it’s going through a censorship circumvention tool like a VPN. If it can’t distinguish the content of the encrypted traffic, the system can also opt to flag it as suspicious and block it for a period of time.
Tech
Solid-state device harvests body heat to power battery-free wearables and IoT sensors

A research team affiliated with UNIST has unveiled a technological advancement that allows body heat to generate electricity sufficient to power electronic devices. This innovation paves the way for the commercialization of battery-free wearable gadgets and Internet of Things (IoT) sensors that operate solely on heat generated by the human body.
Led by Professor Sung-Yeon Jang from the School of Energy and Chemical Engineering at UNIST, the research team developed the world’s first high-performance n-type solid-state thermogalvanic cell capable of powering actual electronic devices. The paper is published in the journal Energy & Environmental Science.
Thermogalvanic cells are compact generators that convert temperature differences—such as the human body temperature (~36°C) versus surrounding air (20–25°C)—into electrical energy. However, due to the minimal temperature gradient, previous systems struggled to produce enough power to operate real-world electronics.
The newly developed solid-state device overcomes this challenge by delivering sufficient voltage and current to power practical devices. While solid-state designs typically offer advantages such as safety from leakage, ion mobility issues within the electrolyte have historically limited their current output. The research team engineered an electrolyte that facilitates efficient ion transport, and further, the thermally driven ion diffusion enhances overall output voltage.
By connecting 100 of these cells in series—similar to building with LEGO blocks—approximately 1.5V can be generated from body heat, comparable to standard AA batteries. Connecting 16 such series-connected modules enables the activation of devices like LED lights, electronic clocks, and temperature/humidity sensors.
Notably, the cell’s Seebeck coefficient (voltage change per temperature difference) is –40.05 mV/K, representing up to a fivefold increase over conventional n-type cells. The device also demonstrated excellent durability, maintaining consistent performance after 50 charge-discharge cycles.
The core of this solid-state cell comprises a conductive polymer, PEDOT:PSS, and a redox couple of Fe(ClO₄)₂/3. Electrostatic interactions between the negatively charged sulfonate groups (–SO₃⁻) of the polymer and the Fe²⁺/Fe³⁺ ions establish a stable structure, while perchlorate ions (ClO₄⁻) are free to move, facilitating ion diffusion and thermodiffusion effects that boost power output.
Professor Jang stated, “This research marks a new milestone in low-temperature waste heat energy harvesting and flexible energy conversion devices. It has the potential to serve as a self-powered system for wearable electronics and autonomous IoT devices driven solely by body heat.”
More information:
Jeong-Ye Baek et al, Solid-state n-type thermodiffusion-assisted thermogalvanic cells with unprecedented thermal energy conversion, Energy & Environmental Science (2025). DOI: 10.1039/D5EE01216C
Citation:
Solid-state device harvests body heat to power battery-free wearables and IoT sensors (2025, September 8)
retrieved 8 September 2025
from https://techxplore.com/news/2025-09-solid-state-device-harvests-body.html
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