microphone Archives - usatoday24

I have tested the Logi Dock, the combination of USB-C hub, speaker and microphone for video calls. It’s a sum that makes a lot of sense.

May 18, 2026 by usatoday24

I have been working from home for nine years. It wasn’t long ago that I realized that my laptop, a 2021 MacBook Prois the answer to a question that no one has ever asked me: “what do you want, power or flexibility?”. I answered flexibility, but I didn’t know until it was too late. The MacBook Pro is always on the table, but sometimes it also travels or I take it to the cafeteria when my head demands a different environment. It is a desktop computer that from time to time has to go outside. Logitech, who knows a lot about peripherals and how we work, has understood this very well. The Logi Dock is not just a hub of ports to compensate for the fact that recent laptops are not as generous in ports. It is a value proposition that goes beyond: it is an operations center that stays on the desktop while the laptop comes and goes. One USB-C cable to connect everything when you arrive, one to disconnect everything when you leave. That, in practice, has a higher value than what appears on a specification paper. Behind the dock there…: HDMI 2.0 (4K, 60Hz, HDR). DisplayPort 1.4 (4K, 60Hz, HDR). 2 USB-A (USB 3.1 at 5 Gbps). 2 USB-C (USB 3.1 at 5 Gbps) 1 extra USB-C on the side with 7.5W fast charging. and USB-C upstream dedicated to 100W for the laptop. All in a single connection strip that you never touch again. What it does not have is Thunderbolt, Ethernet or card reader. View of the ports of the Logi Dock. A side USB-C is missing, designed primarily for charging the mobile phone. Image: Xataka. There’s that USB-C on the side. Image: Xataka. Immediately the most important question about this product appears, which deserves a completely honest answer. A hub USB-C generic costs between 30 and 80 euros. This dock right now it costs from 276 euros on Amazon. What justifies paying five or ten times more for the Logi Dock than for a simple hub USB-C? That’s the gist. The short answer is that it depends on whether you need what’s extra, not whether you appreciate what’s equal. Ports are ports. What sets the Logi Dock apart from any other hub random are two things: the speakers and the microphone. And that changes the equation… for a specific user profile. In my case, I have had it connected to the MacBook Pro M1 Pro and the Huawei MateView 28 inches. Keyboard, mouse, Scarlett 2i2 interface with the Rode PodMic for the podcastand charging the laptop at 100W. A cable from the Mac to dock. Everything resolved. I start with what does not have a hub anyone and it does have the Logi Dock: the speakers. My Huawei monitor has a built-in speaker that does the bare minimum. And those on the MacBook, which stays closed to one side, are “trapped.” With a hub Generic would have solved the connectivity, but not the audio: the Logi Dock provides good speakers and a microphone designed to not sound boring during video calls. The buttons are designed to be used as quick access during video calls, and also to join them directly with Logi Tune. Image: Xataka. Image: Xataka. The Logi Dock’s 55mm drivers with their side-mounted passive radiators produce full-bodied sound, some bass, and enough clarity to listen to music while working. It is not an audio monitor. But it doesn’t pretend to be either. In the video calls in which I have used them, giving up the headphones, the microphone beamforming six capsules works well. My interlocutors do not complain and background noise is reasonably attenuated. The real argument for the Logi Dock is not that it is the best at anything, but that He’s good enough at everything at once. The texture of the fabric mesh, in macro photo. Image: Xataka. Three months of use have also shown me where it is weak. No Thunderbolt, no Ethernet, no card reader… The touch buttons on the top panel work fine, but calendar integration via Logi Tune is the most dispensable part: with the Mac you already have your notifications, and join a meeting with a tap on the dock It is a shortcut that in practice you almost never use. It sounds like a function forced in to reinforce its proposal and better justify its existence. In my opinion that value is not there. What you do use, every day, is the most difficult to quantify: the absence of friction. He dock It’s been plugged in for months and has never given me a single problem. does not ask drivers to reinstall or annoying updates, the ports work well and there is no audio that is lost when waking the Mac from sleep. Is it worth paying five times more than a hub generic? If your desktop already has good speakers and a microphone, or if you simply prefer using headphones, probably not. Buy the hub cheap and you will save. But if in your case the Logi Dock becomes the only real speaker on the desk, the microphone in meetings and the only cable that connects and disconnects the laptop every day, then the comparison is no longer with a hub of 60 euros. It is with “a hub “more speakers, more microphone, plus the convenience of everything coexisting without conflict in a single block.” And that last comparison is won by the Logi. Featured image | Xataka In Xataka | The Nike Mind 001 are the strangest shoes I have ever tried. And that is precisely why they are being sold This device has been provided for testing by Logitech. You can consult how we do reviews in Xataka and our relations policy with companies.

Many are still convinced that Instagram listens to the microphone. The app of the app has wanted to set the subject

October 3, 2025 by usatoday24

In a meeting between friends you talk about making a weekend getaway, rural houses and whether it is worth renting a car. Hours later, when Instagram opens, ads appear for travel agencies, car rental portals and route recommendations. The feeling that The mobile “hears us” It is installed easily. In this context, Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram, published a video to disassemble that myth and explain why we see ads that seem to guess our conversations. Meta has almost a decade denying sharply that their applications access the microphone without permission, but doubts never disappear at all. Now the discussion returns to the front line because The company has announced thatas of December, conversations with their artificial intelligence assistant will also be part of the customization of ads and recommendations (this change will not apply, at least for now, in the European Union). The denial and this novelty have communicated almost at the same time, which adds a striking nuance to the message. Mosseri says they don’t listen to us, while finishing another key novelty The closeness between both communications did not go unnoticed. Instagram head chosen a personal tone, even light, but at the same time he wanted cut the suspicion that the application listens to its users. He presented that statement as a starting point on which to build his explanation. His words were clear and it is worth reproducing them in full: “We do not listen to you. We do not use the microphone of the phone to spy on. If we did, it would be a serious violation of privacy. In addition, we would exhaust the battery of the device and noticed it, and you would even see a small light in the upper part of the screen that would tell you that the microphone is on.” For Mosseri, what seems to really be the effect of four quite common situations. One possibility is that before talking about a topic and lor we have sought without remembering it. Another is that someone in our environment has done it and the platform takes it as a indication. It can also happen that the announcement has appeared before and we did not pay attention, but that it later sneaks into the conversation. And the simplest explanation of all remains: it is a mere coincidence. “I want to reiterate that we do not listen to your microphone. I know that some of you are not going to believe me no matter how much I try to explain, but I wanted to make things clear. I am sure that the comments in this publication will be a bit intense. We see you soon. Paz.” It was not the first time that the company was trying to settle the suspicion. In 2016, Facebook said that did not use the phone’s microphone to guide ads or to change what appears in the Feed. Two years later, in an appearance before the United States Senate, Mark Zuckerberg was asked directly on the subject and rSponge With a “no” just as sharp. Years later, Meta support website itself included A document on the same line. Click to watch the video on Instagram Doubts about possible listening also led the academic community to test it. In 2017, a group of researchers from Northeastern University analyzed more than 17,000 Android applications, including those of Facebook, to check if they activated the microphone without the user knowing. After months of evidence, They found no evidence What happened. They did observe other data collection behaviors, but do not listen undercover. The authors themselves clarified, yes, that there were scenarios that were left out of their study. Beyond the studies, there is a technical aspect that should be remembered. In current mobiles, both in iOS and Android, any application that wants to use the microphone You need explicit user permission. In addition, when an actor appears active on the screen (a color point or a warning in the upper bar) that immediately points it. These notices, together with the extra battery consumption that would involve permanent listening, make it difficult to hide an undercover use of the microphone without the user noticed. The persistence of this myth is better understood if the context is observed. The directed advertising is so precise and so difficult to decipher for the average user that it is easier to attribute it to a microphone on than to an invisible data network. Our memory also influences. To this is added the history of mattress controversies in privacy. Images | Brett Jordan | Xataka with Gemini 2.5 | Screen capture In Xataka | I’ve been hooked to Sora 2 for two days: I’m generating absurd memes where I am the protagonist and I can’t stop

Instagram and Tiktok advertising has become short videos of people talking to a microphone. There is a reason: clippers

August 18, 2025 by usatoday24

You enter Tiktok and Instagram and you start seeing ads that (no longer) surprisingly have a great similarity to each other despite promoting a very different product: a startup, a podcast, an application or an event. The key, as the Wall Street Journalis the way to viralize content that these platforms have, which has resulted in the emergence of a figure to earn money working online, Clippers. Mom, I want to be older clipper. The Clippers They are editors who take the long contents of platforms such as YouTube, Twitch or Spotify and make them short viralizable content in Tiktok, Instagram Reels and YouTube shorts at the request (or not) of its creators. They also do the same with promotional videos of companies that want to increase the visibility of a specific product. Getting an attractive and effective video is not simple, but there is an ingredient that is almost always present, subtitles. There is Influencers farms and of clicksso there are also advertisements. You don’t have to have a big account. Nor generate videos to upload them to the corporate account of a client: companies pay in many cases because these editors upload videos to small accounts, but that also manage the contents thanks to FUncionation of algorithms. In addition, in the face of more advanced edition work, a clipper You can use online or free and powerful editing tools such as Capcut. There are even specialized platforms. WHOP is a platform for selling digital products and putting communities in contact. A kind of “app store for creators”. Before the rise of Tiktok, Shorts and Reels, the company identified that short clips were a bomb as viral advertising format, and created Whoop Clips, an ecosystem to contact brands and creators with Clippers. This activity is also promoted on websites such as Clipthis, YT Jobs or even In Reddit. There are also simple ads published as Tiktok videos. The explosion of these videos leads entrepreneurs as Pieter Levels (@levelsio) to offer video tools made with AI which generate subtitles using the Capcut subtitles API. In his day, Levels already said that All marketing around its apps and services would move to Tiktok After getting impressive results. Examples of 1x robot clips, Cluelly and the Smartphones nothing manufacturer The business model. According to the campaign, in whop between $ 0.50 and 5 dollars. He Wall Street Journal Speech reduces the maximum figure to about 2 dollars, dating examples such as Kanoah Cunningham, a former financial sector worker who now leads an eight team Clipperswith what generates monthly between $ 20,000 and $ 30,000 per month. Another case on the same line is that of Nathan Resnick, which pays $ 15,000 per month to about 50 clippers. Unlike what happens on platforms such as Fiver or Upwork, where a client pays an editor A fixed price for a final jobin whop there can be hundreds of Clippers making videos of the same ad and then upload it to small accounts. Only those who manage to obtain a considerable number of visits manage to make money. For others it will be lost time, so there is a strong incentive to optimize creations. The key to having a successful clip, according to Cunningham, is “building a story.” The numbers that explain the phenomenon. The brands, instead of paying an influencer for a video, manage to generate hundreds of clips and millions of low cost views. Roy Lee, founder of the Startup Cluely, states that “you are stupid if you are making a podcast of an hour and only public it in a channel.” His reasons to say it: 800,000 visits a day on Instagram and Tiktok. Max Peterson, who directs a clips market in Discord, directed a Tiktok campaign for the series’Adults‘which achieved 12 million visits in total. Peterson also says that a budget of $ 40,000, 1x technologies, the company after a Advanced humanoid robothe achieved 500 million total visits on the product on Tiktok. Yes, but. That the brands themselves want to see their video in hundreds of channels does not mean that Tiktok or Instagram will not mark it as stolen or copied content of others. So Clippers They have to work well how they cut their “creations” so that they do not eliminate their videos. Another problem of the practice of mass virality is that the veracity of the clips suffers at the will of the editor. According to Cunningham, it is often lie in the subtitles or a different meaning is given to the video looking for more visits. Image | EACH and Alpha film co In Xataka | A disturbing reality makes its way on social networks: we no longer use them to connect with friends

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