Universal Audio: UA Guitar Month & new Woodrow plug-in Launched to celebrate the upcoming release of their new UAD Woodrow 55 plug-in, UA Guitar Month will see discounts and offers applied to a selection of UAD plug-ins and UAFX pedals. 

Introducing the Audio Branding Academy The Audio Branding Academy brings together a network of experts from the fields of musicology, psychology, psychoacoustics, branding and marketing, offering a variety of services for audio branding, sound design and music-related projects.

Get free LFO path presets for Serum 2 (designed by certified artists)
Add unique rhythms to your sounds by using our free LFO path presets for Serum 2, each meticulously designed by certified artists.

Music Industry reacts to Executive Order on Ticket ScalpingThe music industry is reacting to President Trump's Executive Order on ticket scalping "Combating Unfair Practices In The Live Entertainment Market."
The post Music Industry reacts to Executive Order on Ticket Scalping appeared first on Hypebot.

“I love the guitar, but it belongs to the 20th century”: How Steven Wilson is embracing plugins and modern production to reinvent the guitarWith the abundance of amp sims and plugins available in today’s market, is the age of the traditional guitar-and-amp rig over? Porcupine Tree guitarist Steven Wilson certainly seems to think so.
Speaking in the latest issue of Guitarist magazine, Wilson explains how “there’s never been more ways to process, twist and mutate sound”, adding, “It’s a gift for someone like me, who thinks of himself primarily as a producer.

READ MORE: The best free and paid-for plugins you need to know about this week

The cornucopia of new technology allows Wilson to mix “the two worlds of the vintage and the modern”, he explains. On his latest solo record, The Overview, listeners can hear him flavouring more vintage-style guitar tones with fresher sounds courtesy of newer plugins and processing.
“I’m not a purist,” he insists. “I’m not interested in getting vintage tones for the sake of it. I like vintage tones, of course I do, and there are some on this record. But I’m a massive fan of what you can do in the digital realm.”
Wilson even goes on to label the guitar as “old-fashioned”, explaining that modern processing could unlock a new lease of life for the instrument. “I love the guitar, but it’s an instrument that belongs to the 20th century in many ways,” he admits. “So it’s a question of, what can you do to reinvent [the guitar’s] vocabulary to make it seem relevant?”

He praises the work of his longtime collaborator Randy McStine, noting that he encourages Wilson to embrace new production and mixing techniques on his solo record. “Randy, being the young whippersnapper that he is, understands that,” he says.
“It was really fascinating to go down that road with him. We tried to create something in the tradition of the epic guitar solo but in a way that perhaps was fresher to people who’ve heard that before.”
Steven Wilson’s new album The Overview is out now.

The post “I love the guitar, but it belongs to the 20th century”: How Steven Wilson is embracing plugins and modern production to reinvent the guitar appeared first on MusicTech.

The music industry’s weakest link: Getting artists from A to BThe music industry is so focused on getting artists from point B to C that they are skipping the step of getting artists from A to B. Without an effort to build a solid foundation, the next generation of musicians may never make it past this critical starting point, writes Tatiana Cirisano of MIDiA.
The post The music industry’s weakest link: Getting artists from A to B appeared first on Hypebot.

Here’s why Softube Echoes is almost a great delay plugin€149/$149, softube.com
We all have access to several different delay plugins, whether it be the tools that come with your DAW, modules that are built into multi-effects or guitar effects suites, or via additional plugin purchases. The humble delay can, however have multiple flavours based on various techniques and hardware tech. Whilst some plugins will focus on a single style, Softube’s new Echoes delay aims to be a workhorse that covers a number of these bases.

READ MORE: Money well spent? SSL 18 brings more channel power to Solid State Logic’s growing interface range

Echoes is a multi-tap stereo delay plugin with six delay types, a wide sonic palette and a comprehensive preset selection. Although it’s versatile and sounds excellent, a lofty price and restrictive design decisions stop it from reaching its true potential.
Softube has a broad catalogue of plugins, with a blend of classic emulations that favour hardware-like designs and contemporary effects with crisp, modern user interfaces. Echoes falls into the latter camp, with easy-to-read text and a large grid showing individual delay taps as nodes. You can choose to work with a single delay line, or you can click to add up to 10 taps to spread across the stereo field. Each tap can be positioned as a percentage of the main delay time, although this is fiddly to fine-tune, as there’s no obvious snap feature. You can, however, select multiple nodes and move them around at the same time. Once you start digging into the amplitude, time and pan modulation, you also get useful visual feedback as each node changes in size and position.
The bottom half of the plugin presents the main controls where you can tweak delay time (with DAW sync), dry/wet amount and feedback. There’s an FB. Limit button that engages a limiter in the feedback loop set at -6dB. This is an excellent safety feature that stops the delay tails from getting dangerously loud at high feedback settings.

Aside from the intuitive visualisation of the taps and their placement, the main thing that makes Echoes stand out is its six delay modes; Filter, Reverb, BBD, Tape, Pan and LoFi. Each one has mode-specific controls for basic editing, although it’s not always immediately obvious exactly what each is doing, as some controls affect more than one parameter. Filter mode lets you choose from a low-pass or high-pass filter to help shape the tails, alongside three options that alternate filter types across each tap. This gives the tail more variation and can help to separate each tap in the stereo field.
The next mode is Reverb, which can create an FDN (feedback delay network) algorithmic reverb effect. You can increase the Diffusion amount to smear the sound and make it more reverb-like, while the Tone control shapes the overall tonal balance. There are also Modulation and Mod Balance controls that add movement to the pitch and amplitude of each tail. These introduce a more organic and chorus-like feel, but given the limited controls, it’s difficult to edit speed and pitch with precision.
BBD mode emulates the warm-sounding bucket brigade stomp boxes of the 70s, along with their crunchy aliasing artefacts. The mode includes an LFO with five shapes that can modulate the delay time for crazy-sounding effects, plus a low-pass filter, should you wish to tame the aliasing noise.
Modes. Image: Press
Next is Tape, with controls for Drive, Dirt and Wobble. And then Pan, which lets you use an LFO to modulate the stereo position of each tap. This is useful for widening mono sources or adding movement to static sounds. Finally, there’s a LoFi mode that delivers crunchy degradation alongside a modelled four-pole filter with envelope follower.
Softube has a history of coming up with quality-sounding plugins, and Echoes is no exception. It’s clean when it needs to be, but can sound deep and rich when pushed. The BBD, Reverb and Tape modes are definite highlights when it comes to adding character; each mode gives a different flavour of delay to play with, and it’s useful to have them all in one plugin.
However, the controls are limited and you can only choose one mode at a time. Although this makes sense in terms of certain algorithms being used, it’s annoying that there’s not more flexibility that would allow you to combine the features of different modes. So, if you want to apply filtering, drive and the excellent pan modulation of Reverb mode, you’re out of luck. It boils down to a fundamental design limitation where each of these modes is separate, whereas it would be more useful to have several character modes, followed by the filter, pan and lo-fi sections as additional effects in the chain.
Taps. Image: Press
Thankfully, there are a few useful extras that help redeem Echoes and increase its usability. The output has a built-in Ducking section complete with Threshold and Release controls, and an optional sidechain input. You also get filters to help tame the wet signal, plus a Width control (from 0 to 300%) with a mono maker to keep low frequencies in the centre. Echoes also has Softube’s ‘Extended Parameters’, which can be shown or hidden from the plugin window. This adds in-depth input and output metering, multiple plugin states, gain matching, latency-free bypass, as well as Headroom, High Pass and Phase Invert controls. It’s also worth noting the excellent preset browser that includes useful tags and a search feature, and a decent collection of presets that cover a lot of bases.
Echoes is a good plugin, it’s just not a great plugin. At €149, you expect a bit more. Concise editing controls for each mode make it fairly quick to dial in, but the lack of flexibility when it comes to modulating the parameters and the fact that certain features are tied to single modes, it’s far more limited than it should be.
Issues aside, there’s no denying that Echoes sounds awesome and covers a lot of sonic ground. And with useful additional features like ducking, a feedback limiter, width control and gain matching, it still stands up as a potential workhorse delay. Softube often has sales, so picking it up at a lower price would also sweeten the deal.
Extras. Image: Press
Key features

Stereo multi-tap delay plugin (VST, VST3, AU, AAX – requires iLok)
10 available taps
6 modes (Filter, Reverb, BBD, Tape, Pan, LoFi)
X/Y grid visualisation of taps
Feedback limiter
Onboard ducker
Output filter and width control with mono maker
Wide range of presets with search and tagging
Resizable interface

The post Here’s why Softube Echoes is almost a great delay plugin appeared first on MusicTech.

“Unlike most competitors, we don’t say, ‘How much could I charge and get away with it?”: Uli Behringer on Behringer’s pricing philosophyBehringer has built a loyal following of synth and gear obsessives thanks to its ability to develop uber-affordable music hardware – often inspired by far more expensive counterparts.
And in a new interview with Sweetwater, the company’s main man Uli Behringer explains why its pricing model is so instrumental in its success.

READ MORE: Behringer’s DeepMind X Series has an aesthetic inspired by a particular classic Roland synth line…

He explains that keeping profit-per-product-sold low means the likelihood of nurturing longer term relationships with customers is far higher.
“We have not invented synthesizers, nor will we ever claim [to], but hopefully people will remember us for having brought all these jewels back to life,” he says.
“But only a few people can afford those, and I think it’s important to make them available, accessible to people who do not have deep pockets. That’s something we feel strongly about, and that’s the purpose why we exist.”
Behringer explains that it’s this purpose, not money, which drives the company forward.
“You have to have a purpose,” he says. “You need to have a reason to get up. And it can’t be money, can’t be business. I don’t care, right? It’s about doing something for customers. And if you do that, and you notice very well, then people will reward you. Profit and money and all this stuff is a consequence, but it’s not a purpose.
“And we have a very simple [saying] that the way we price our products is that we look at the cost and we add a small profit on top of it, and that’s the sales price. So we don’t go out like most competitors [and say], ‘How much could I charge and get away with it?’ We say it doesn’t matter.
“We just take the cost at a small margin, and that’s the sale price. Customers will appreciate it, and you have a long term or lifetime customer, and that’s what matters.”

2025 has already seen a slew of new product releases from Behringer, including the Chorus Symphony pedal, which takes inspiration from the Boss CE-1 Chorus Ensemble, the RD-78, its take on the “granddaddy to all drum machines”, Roland’s CR-78, and the 676, which recreates Universal Audio’s 6176 Vintage Tube Channel Strip.
See the latest products from Behringer.
The post “Unlike most competitors, we don’t say, ‘How much could I charge and get away with it?”: Uli Behringer on Behringer’s pricing philosophy appeared first on MusicTech.

Best MIDI controllers to buy in 2025: 8 best FL Studio controllers to buyLaunched in 1998 as a simple MIDI drum machine named FruityLoops, FL Studio has become one of the production community’s most beloved DAWs. Its intuitive interface and robust feature set have attracted a diverse user base, from those at the very start of their journey to seasoned pros like Martin Garrix and Metro Boomin.

READ MORE: “FL Studio’s duty is to get more people to stick with music-making”: CEO Constantin Koehncke on FL Studio 2025 and beyond

No matter what stage you’re at, incorporating a hardware controller into your setup can transform your workflow. Tactile control over effects, more efficient sequencing and arranging, highly expressive performances of virtual instruments — controllers can foster a more intuitive and hands-on production process.
Whether you need a realistic weighted keybed, knobs and faders for dialling in automation, or a pad-based setup for live performance, the right hardware controller will keep you in your creative flow and your eyes off the screen. And to help you find your MIDI controller soulmate, we’ve selected eight of the best options for FL Studio.
The top 8 controllers for FL Studio in 2025:

Novation FLkey – Overall best native FL Studio controller
Akai Fire – Best FL Studio controller for beatmakers
Nektar LX+ mk3 – Best budget FL Studio controller
NI Kontrol S-Series – Best FL Studio controller for keys players
IL Remote – Best mobile app for controlling FL Studio
Yaeltex Custom Controllers – Best modular FL Studio controller
Erae 2 – Best FL Studio controller with MPE support
iCON P1-M – Best DAW control surface for FL Studio

Novation FLkey – Overall best native FL Studio controller
Price: £99 (FLkey Mini) / £199 (FLkey 37) / £229 (FLkey 49) / £279 (FLkey 61)
Novation FLkey Mini
Kicking things off is the FLkey, touted by manufacturer Novation as the ‘ultimate MIDI keyboard for making music in FL Studio’. Available in four sizes from a compact 25-key controller with mini keys to a capable 61-key version, this controller is one of the few that have been designed specifically for use with FL Studio.
With that in mind, there’s plenty of additional functionality on board. All models come with a 2×8 pad grid that’s mapped to FL’s step sequencer, ready for playing straight into the Channel Rack or FPC, or triggering samples in Slicex. There are eight potentiometers alongside, which can control Image-Line plugins out the box. Those opting for the 49- or 61-key variants also get nine faders.
Throw in bells and whistles like transport controls, chord and scale modes, and a host of inspiring bundled software, and FLkey is sure to slide seamlessly into your existing workflow while uncovering new ways to create.
[products ids=”5fzXVyErkRDsNorW0SODOS”]
[products ids=”3BARKnqjyyjrE1UgAy8SlL”]
Read our review of the FLkey 37 & FLkey Mini here.
Akai Fire – Best FL Studio controller for beatmakers
Price: £149

Developed in close partnership between Akai and Image-Line, the Fire will be instantly recognisable to those who’ve spent time with FL’s step sequencer. Mapped one-to-one to what you see on screen, programming beats with Fire is incredibly fast — and you can even chain up to four units for an extended 8×32 grid.
The device has a few more tricks up its sleeve. Drum Mode — akin to Akai’s own MPC — lets you control FPC and Slicex with the first quarter of the sequencer for a more traditional beatmaking workflow, while Performance Mode can be used to launch clips and audio directly from the device.
And while it won’t replace a proper keyboard, Note Mode transforms the pad matrix into three octaves for inputting melodies and chords. To top it off, there are four capacitive encoders and a handy OLED display along the top, with transport controls placed at the bottom of the unit.
While Fire has sadly been discontinued by Akai, it’s readily available on the used market and remains a premier choice thanks to its close-knit integration with FL Studio.
Read our review of the Akai Fire here.
Nektar Impact LX+ – Best budget FL Studio controller
Price: £89 (LX25+) / £138 (LX49+) / £170 (LX61+) / £246 (LX88+)

Nektar’s Impact LX+ keyboards are the perfect entrypoint if you’re looking for an FL Studio controller with a smaller price tag. Since the manufacturer handles hardware-to-software integration in-house, these devices map seamlessly to FL Studio and other DAWs from the get-go — so there are no headaches setting things up.
And while Impact LX+ isn’t going to break the bank, that doesn’t mean you have to sacrifice on capabilities. Alongside its velocity-sensitive keyboard, users get 8 four-colour RGB pads, nine 30mm faders, and a range of handy transport controls.
Nektar unveiled the mk3 version of the LX+ at NAMM 2025, bringing new features like scale and chord modes, two new hold modes for creative legato effects, new loop playback and recording modes, and endless high-res encoders replacing the pots on previous models. They’re keeping schtum about a potential release date, so it might be worth holding off for an official announcement if you need this additional functionality.
Read our review of the Nektar Impact LX49+ here.
NI Kontrol S-Series – Best FL Studio controller for keyboard players
Price: £649 (S49) / £749 (S61) / £1,129 (S88)
Native Instruments Kontrol S88 MK3. Image: Simon Vinall
Native Instruments’ S-Series controllers have long been top of the pile for those seeking a more realistic feel. Built using high-end Fatar keybeds with polyphonic aftertouch, the 49- and 61-key models are semi-weighted, while the 88-key version boasts fully weighted hammer action.

READ MORE: Native Instruments: “We had to modernise our architecture… We’re now more aligned in new ways to integrate our hardware and software”

Of course, Kontrol is particularly well-suited to producers who are already part of the Native Instruments ecosystem. The controllers are specifically designed to integrate with Komplete software and NKS plugins, with a high-resolution screen and rotary encoders for browsing and editing patches without taking your eyes off your fingers.
Image-Line has officially supported these controllers since early 2024 — so if NI instruments and effects are a core part of your workflow, the S-Series and FL Studio are a match made in heaven.
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Read our review of the Native Instruments Kontrol S-Series MK3 here.
IL Remote – Best mobile app for controlling FL Studio
Price: Free

Want to experiment with external control of FL Studio without having to spend a dime or find space for yet another piece of gear? Or maybe you’re just looking for a MIDI controller that fits in your pocket. Image-Line’s free app for iPhone and Android — IL Remote — holds the key, connecting over Wi-Fi for wireless command of your DAW.
Effectively, IL Remote is FL Studio’s answer to the likes of TouchOSC or OSC/Pilot. Highly customisable, you can create your own modular configurations of virtual pads, faders, and knobs to control FL in a way that suits you. To get you started, Image-Line have included default ‘tabs’ for things like transport controls, a MIDI piano, clip triggering in Performance Mode, and dedicated modes for FPC, Slicex, and Gross Beat.
However, once you get familiar with custom layouts, the sky’s the limit. You can even connect up to 15 devices at once. Old phones or tablets lying around, looking for a new purpose? With zero cost to download, we reckon IL Remote is worth a try.
Yaeltex Custom Controllers – Best modular FL Studio controller
Price: Varies
Credit: Yaeltex
Jumping back into the physical world, Yaeltex is another manufacturer providing custom solutions to all your controller needs. Unlike fixed-grid controllers, Yaeltex lets you decide the exact layout of buttons, faders, rotary knobs, LED indicators, and even joysticks. Its web-based editor tool lets you create highly granular mappings for each component, from MIDI note and CC information to individual keystrokes.
If you have no need for a custom controller, you can select from factory models like the Turn, Btmkr, and Miniblock, or preconfigured devices designed by the wider Yaeltex community.
Yaeltex hardware looks the part too — it could easily become the centrepiece of your studio thanks to handcrafted wooden enclosures, a full rainbow of coloured buttons and lights, and the option to add a custom faceplate.
Naturally, you can expect to pay a pretty penny for these pretty devices. You’ll also likely need to spend some time mapping and tweaking scripts. But for power users who want total control over FL Studio, Yaeltex is a worthy solution.
Erae 2 – Best FL Studio controller with MPE support
Price: £809
Credit: Embodme
A rather unique entry on our list, the Erae 2 contains 16,000 embedded force sensors beneath a silicone skin, adding a tactile dimension to your workflow that’s quite literally an extension of your fingers.
Infinitely customisable, the Erae’s surface can be configured to do whatever you need — live looping, a drum pad layout, a sequencer, you name it. Each high-precision sensor outputs X/Y/Z values so you can dynamically bend, slide, and modulate individual notes — perfect for MPE-compatible VSTs in FL Studio.
Although FL Studio’s MPE support is still developing, nothing comes close to Erae 2 for expressive playing. If you need a hand getting started, check out this guide to setting up your Erae controller with FL Studio.
iCON P1-M – Best DAW control surface for FL Studio
Price: £459

Our list wouldn’t be complete without a console-style control surface for taking on mix tasks. And with no dedicated devices offering plug-and-play integration FL Studio, that’s where the P1-M from iCON enters the picture — along with a little bit of work on the user side.
The main focus of the controller is a bank of eight motorized faders that reflect the state of your mix console within FL Studio. A programmable 4-inch touchscreen displays a range of DAW functions, and with a few taps you can set the faders to control other aspects of the console like channel EQ, your FX slots, and stereo separation.
On top, the handy iMap software lets you tweak the functionality to your heart’s content. Check out this video from iCON Pro Audio to set up P1-M with FL Studio.
Why You Can Trust MusicTech
MusicTech reviews hundreds of new products every year, from powerful synthesizers, DAWs and pro plugins through to everyday headphones and portable speakers. Our expert reviewers are producers, engineers and enthusiasts with hundreds of years of collective experience, with a keen ear to the ground on new trends and technologies.
Every guide on MusicTech is created by a producer, musician and tech enthusiast just like you. We understand what you’re looking for when searching for a new MIDI controller, and we want to ensure you purchase genuinely useful products for your craft. So you can guarantee that every product MusicTech recommends to you is a product we’d be happy to have in our studios.
Check out more buyer’s guides on MusicTech here.
The post Best MIDI controllers to buy in 2025: 8 best FL Studio controllers to buy appeared first on MusicTech.

💬 🔥 Weekly Deals & Freebies Thread
Welcome to the BPB Community Weekly Freebie Thread for March 31-April 6, 2025! 😊 Read the Thread Guidelines 💬 This section of our community is where BPB readers can share links to the latest freeware news and deals with fellow music producers in the comments. Thank you for contributing! To keep the discussion helpful and relevant, [...]
View post: 💬 🔥 Weekly Deals & Freebies Thread

NEW MUSIC CRITIQUE: SLOW BUILDINGSContact: slowbuildingsmusic@gmail.comWeb: slowbuildings.bandcamp.comSeeking: ReviewsStyle: Indie-Pop-RockSlow Building’s seventh full-length album, Crash Landings, Coincidences, Chaos, delivers garage-rock. Songwriter Jason Legacy says that this album is “the culmination of two years of personal upheavals, making bad decisions, and unwisely trusting the wrong people.” The lyrics aren’t cheerful—“I left my spine on the firing line” Legacy sings on the album’s lead song “Red Flag Surrender.” The guitar on these tracks punches and the emotionally-charged vocals deliver honesty. It’s not winning Battle of the Bands, but we do think that the crowd would find unexpected pleasure in headbanging to Legacy’s sung trauma. The post NEW MUSIC CRITIQUE: SLOW BUILDINGS first appeared on Music Connection Magazine.

Hyperliquid DEX trading volumes cut into CEX market share: DataHyperliquid is one of the current bull market’s standout DeFi success stories. With daily trading volumes having reached $4 billion, the exchange has become the largest decentralized (DEX) derivatives platform, commanding nearly 60% of the market.Hyperliquid still lags far behind Binance Futures’ $50 billion daily average volume, but the trend suggests that it has started to encroach on centralized exchange (CEX) territory.What’s behind Hyperliquid’s parabolic rise?Launched in 2023, Hyperliquid gained popularity in April 2024 after launching spot trading. This, combined with its aggressive listing strategy and easy-to-use onchain user interface, helped to lure in a wave of new users.The platform’s real explosion, however, came in November 2024, following the launch of its HYPE (HYPE) token. Hyperliquid’s trading volume skyrocketed, and it now boasts over 400,000 users and more than 50 billion trades processed, according to data from Dune.Hyperliquid cumulative trades and users. Source: DuneWhile Hyperliquid started as a high-performance perpetual futures and spot DEX, its ambitions have since expanded. With the launch of HyperEVM on Feb. 18, the project has become a general-purpose layer-1 chain capable of supporting third-party DeFi apps built on top of its infrastructure. As one of Hyperliquid’s founders, Jeff Yan, put it, “Most L1s build infrastructure and hope that others will come build the killer apps. Hyperliquid takes the opposite approach: polish a native application and then grow into general-purpose infrastructure.”If this approach works, the liquidity driven by Hyperliquid’s core DEX could naturally feed into the broader ecosystem and vice versa, creating a flywheel effect.Related: Hyperliquid flips Solana in fees, but is the ‘HYPE’ justified?Will Hyperliquid become a sustainable CEX alternative?According to CoinGecko, Hyperliquid now ranks 14th among derivatives exchanges by open interest, sitting at $3.1 billion. That’s still behind Binance’s $22 billion but ahead of older names like Deribit or derivatives divisions of Crypto.com, BitMEX, or KuCoin. It’s the first time a DEX is competing so closely with established CEXs.Furthermore, as Hyperliquid deepens its focus on specialized trading pairs, it continues to chip away at the market share of major exchanges. The DEX accepts not only Arbitrum USDC as collateral but also native BTC. This makes it one of the few decentralized platforms that handle BTC wrapping and unwrapping natively, giving users the option to use BTC for Web3-wallet-based trading.X user Skewga.hl noted that Hyperliquid’s BTC perpetual futures volume share recently hit an all-time high, reaching almost 50% of Bybit’s and 21% of Binance’s. Skewga.hl wrote,“No DEX has ever come this close to matching Tier 1 CEX volume.” Daily volume ratios, Hyperliquid vs Other exchanges (BTC perp). Source: Skewga.hlSince 2024, perpetual swaps have seen a revival as a trading tool. During the 2021–2022 bull market, daily perps volume averaged around $5 billion. In early 2025, that number often exceeded $15 billion, with Hyperliquid accounting for nearly two-thirds of it.Data from DefiLlama illustrates the shift: while dYdX (green) dominated in 2023–2024, the landscape diversified significantly in 2024—and by 2025, Hyperliquid (pink) had taken the lead.Perps volume breakdown. Source: DefiLlamaDespite the recent JELLY token scandal, which involved the exchange halting trading and delisting a low-market-cap token that a whale had exploited, Hyperliquid remains a popular exchange among DeFi and DEX traders. It has yet to capture institutional investor flows or scale to the level of top-tier CEXs. However, if its layer 1 ecosystem gains traction with developers, Hyperliquid could evolve into more than just a leading DEX.This article does not contain investment advice or recommendations. Every investment and trading move involves risk, and readers should conduct their own research when making a decision.

ChatGPT’s new image generator is really good at faking receiptsChatGPT's new image generator is raising concerns for being really good at creating fake receipts.

Levitating Lego Generator Runs On Air[Jamie] decided to build a generator, and Lego is his medium of choice. Thus was created a fancy levitating generator that turns a stream of air into electricity. 
The basic concept is simple enough for a generator—magnets moving past coils to generate electricity. Of course, Lego doesn’t offer high-strength magnetic components or copper coils, so this generator is a hybrid build which includes a lot of [Jamie’s] non-Lego parts. Ultimately though, this is fun because of the weird way it’s built. Lego Technic parts make a very crude turbine, but it does the job. The levitation is a particularly nice touch—the build uses magnets to hover the rotor in mid-air to minimize friction to the point where it can free wheel for minutes once run up to speed. The source of power for this contraption is interesting, too. [Jamie] didn’t just go with an air compressor or a simple homebrew soda bottle tank. Instead, he decided to use a couple of gas duster cans to do the job. The demos are pretty fun, with [Jamie] using lots of LEDs and a radio to demonstrate the output.  The one thing we’d like to see more of is proper current/voltage instrumentation—and some measurement of the RPM of this thing!
While few of us will be rushing out to build Lego generators, the video nonetheless has educational value from a mechanical engineering standpoint. Fluids and gases really do make wonderful bearings, as we’ve discussed before. Video after the break.

Merlin sues TikTok rival Triller for breach of contract over allegedly unpaid music licensing feesThe digital music licensing org for indie record labels says short video platform Triller owes it $2.55 million
Source