Noise-canceling headphones worth the price?

A little bit of silence. Sometimes that’s all we want. Whether it is halfway through a 10-hour flight with a crying baby or trying to sleep through the snoring from the hotel room next door, the     1     of noise-canceling headphones is one that every traveler probably finds charming. Yet are they worth it? These headphones are often expensive, and for some people, they don’t live up to the ads.

I’ve spent a     2     of the last five years traveling, taking dozens of flights and train journeys, and as someone who has reviewed noise-canceling headphones for even longer, I can definitely say maybe.

HOW THEY WORK? Noise-canceling headphones, also called active noise canceling headphones, use electronic processing to analyze nearby sound and attempt to     3     the opposite sound. The result is less noise, over all.

These headphones don’t create silence, nor are they able to     4     noise. The crests and troughs (波峰和波谷) do not perfectly cancel out. The absolute best noise-canceling headphones     5     reduce noise and work best with low-frequency droning sounds.

Two headphone sets could claim to reduce the same amount of noise but     6     completely differently. Only hands-on testing, ideally with objective measurements, can tell the difference.

Noise-canceling headphones require a battery to     7     their electronics. Noise-isolating headphones, which do not require electronics and therefore can be far cheaper, work by creating a seal in your ear canal to block noise. They are     8    like earplugs, but with earbuds. If you can get a good seal, these work reasonably well.

Getting a good seal can be a challenge, however, since everyone’s ears are different, and not all headphones will     9     correctly. And even if you do get a good seal, noise-isolating headphones will not be able to block low-frequency sounds as well as the best noise-canceling headphones. They will reduce a wide range of frequencies, which can help.

WHO REALLY NEEDS THEM? If you are a frequent traveler, good noise-canceling headphones will make any journey in a plane, train or automobile far more pleasant.

In-ear models are easier—though still slightly uncomfortable—to sleep with and are my     10    . Over-ear models reduce a little more noise, as they are able to passively block some sound because of their design. But they are always bulky on your head or in your bag. After I stopped reviewing these headphones for Wirecutter, I bought a pair of Bose QuiteComfort 20s, a long time Wirecutter pick, and I never fly without them.

Google gives $1M grant to Press Association to develop robot journalists

New consumers of the future could be reading stories pieced together by advanced data-analyzing robots rather than human journalists, if Google has its way.

On Thursday, the Press Association, the U.K.’s national news agency, announced that it received €706,000 from the tech giant for its Reporters and Data an Robots (RADAR)     1    .

A collaboration between the Press Association and data-driven news start-up Urbs Media, RADAR aims to set up an artificial intelligene-fueled, news service that will generate tens of thousands of news stories a month using publicly     2     data.

Everyone from big-name news organizations to hyper-local outlets and bloggers could     3     from the program. Press Association editor-in-chief Peter Clifton claimed, “this is a hugely exciting development, and we believe our     4     with Urbs Media can be a genuine game-changer for media outlets across the U. K. and Ireland.”

According to the Press Association, RADAR won’t     5     mark the end of the flesh-and-blood journalists, but will rather enable the AI to produce a volume of stories that would be impossible to match manually.

The envisioned work-flow would begin with human journalists identifying open data sets and “creating detailed story templates across a(n)     6     of topics including crime, health and employment.” The robotic reporter would then take over and scan the data, use language generation software to craft together story text and automatically locate relevant photos and video. Press Association clients would then be able to use a special distribution platform to identify news stories of     7     to their audience.

Content automation isn’t a totally     8     concept in the news industry however. AP estimated that it can free up 20 per cent of journalists’ time, allowing them to focus on more complex, qualitative tasks.

Shockingly, not all journalists are sold on the AI infiltration. A study found that journalists from leading news organizations had several reservations when shown an automatically     9     sports story. “I would never, ever, ever have written a story like that,” one BBC journalist said, while a CNN reporter thought the story was repetitive and lacked variation.

Nevertheless, it looks like AI in journalism is here to stay. At a time when many media outlets are     10     commercial pressure, RADAR will provide the news ecosystem with a cost-effective way to provide insightful local stories.