If you live stateside and hadn’t heard of Amphion Loudspeakers, I wouldn’t blame you. The small Finnish audio company has been around for over two decades, offering a neatly curated line of speakers for home and professional use alike, but doesn’t have a huge presence in the US. Needless to say, I was curious when the company reached out to let me try the Argon1, a high-end compact bookshelf speaker coming in at roughly $1,600. Clean design Truth be told, part of my interest in Ampion was its design approach; I’m a sucker for speakers with clean lines, and the Amphions… This story continues at The Next Web

My “wow” moment came when I picked up the Acoustasonic Stratocaster for the third time and finally plugged it into an amp. The first couple of times I noodled around with it I’d just played it acoustic. It sounds fantastic and it’s the most comfortable acoustic I’ve ever played. But a hollow-body Stratocaster can only make so much sense until you plug it in. I’m a beginning player. I started learning last year and I’ll be the first to admit that this particular axe is a bit too much guitar for me. I wasn’t sure what to do with the different… This story continues at The Next Web

An algorithm used to calculate exam results in England risks unfairly punishing poorer pupils, politicians have warned. The system was introduced when school exams were cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Teachers were instead asked to hand over their predicted grades for each student to exam regulators. The algorithm then adjusts their estimates by comparing them to the school‘s past results. The approach aims to moderate teacher predictions that are overly generous. But critics fear that basing results on a school‘s past performance rather than a student’s work will unfairly penalise children from disadvantaged backgrounds. In Scotland, a similar system downgraded… This story continues at The Next Web