Technologies

Does Putting AirPods Max in a Freezer Actually Fix Them?

It sounds crazy, but some cold therapy might resuscitate your expensive Apple headphones.

I’d been looking forward to listening to new albums by Sloan and Taylor Swift, but I needed to put something on ice first.

In fact, I needed to put my AirPods Max in the freezer. If that sounds strange, it is. And yet it allowed me to listen to The Life of a Showgirl. At least for a while.

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The three amber lights of death

I bought my AirPods Max in 2021 and have used them nearly every day since. After becoming increasingly frustrated with other Bluetooth headphones that required manual connection to different devices, I felt justified in spending $500 on headphones that, for the most part, work as intended. Plus, the over-ear design is more comfortable for me during long stretches than having AirPods Pro jammed into my ear canals.

Lately, however, my AirPods Max have had some issues, requiring a reboot to activate. That involves holding the noise-control button and the Digital Crown for several seconds until the indicator light blinks amber. (Dear heavens, Apple, why couldn’t you include a simple on/off switch?)

Then, one day, that button-press ritual no longer worked.

Time for the headphone nuclear option: factory reset. That involves the same button press combination, but for around 15 seconds, at which point the light should blink amber once and then white.

There was no white. Instead, the light blinked amber three times and went dark.

Online searching revealed mentions of the «three amber lights of death,» and a bizarre fix that made me think AI had hallucinated a result: Put them in the freezer for 30 minutes or longer.

A chilling solution

Being the type of person who tries to take care of his electronics, the idea of tossing $500 headphones in with frozen peas sounded decidedly risky and, at the very least, unscientific. But further online research revealed reports that the fix actually worked.

So into the icebox they went, wrapped in the case they came with. It’s not clear if the case is necessary, but its built-in magnets serve to put the AirPods Max to sleep when not in use or charging, so it seemed like a reasonable option.

Online advice suggests letting them chill for at least 30 minutes, but I ended up leaving them in for over an hour just to be sure.

When they came out, I removed them from the now-stiff case, put them over my ears, and sure enough, heard the chime that indicates a successful Bluetooth pairing with my device. Aside from wiping them down to remove condensation — and dealing with chilled ears for a few minutes — the headphones worked just like they should.

Why would freezing AirPods Max work?

As I listened to my new tunes, I couldn’t help wondering why this low-tech solution worked. Speculation I’ve read (namely, a Reddit post by MuesliCrunch) suggests that the thin wires carrying power can crack over time, specifically after hundreds or thousands of swivels of the earcups (since they turn 90 degrees to fit flat into their case). That microscopic crack can cause issues with the connection.

By freezing the AirPods, the cold can cause the lining around the wires to contract, temporarily bringing the cracked sections together.

Plan B: Cleaning the contacts

Another possible solution I tried involves removing the headband and cleaning the contacts, which resemble small versions of Apple’s Lightning pin connector. First, I had to pop off the magnetic earcups and grab a SIM card removal tool. (That’s the little oblong metal piece that would have been included with your smartphone, although Apple stopped including them in its models starting with the iPhone 14, after replacing the SIM card tray with eSIM.)

Next, I pressed it into the small hole near the stem and lifted the connector out. I took a Q-tip (you can use a cloth) to wipe the contacts with alcohol. The post snapped back in for me, though some people say you might need a slight turning motion to get it to fully engage. I dutifully cleaned the contacts, but I’m unsure how much of a difference it made in my case.

Is freezing AirPods Max a long-term solution?

Unfortunately, several days after my initial elation with the freezing method, the AirPods Max returned to their unresponsive state, confirming that the cooling technique is only a temporary solution.

The headphones are no longer under warranty, so I now need to decide if it’s worth buying a new pair (which features the same technology as my current pair, but with a USB-C port instead of Lightning). I could also search for an alternative set of headphones. Or, I could continue giving my pair the cold shoulder until Apple decides to finally update them to a second generation.

In the meantime, I’m keeping some space in the freezer clear to try another round of resuscitation. I’ll remember to remove the magnetic cups before placing the headphones there. That way, I can chill out to music right away without my ears getting chilled too.

Apple did not respond to a request for comment.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Strands Hints, Answers and Help for Nov. 11 #618

Here are hints and answers for the NYT Strands puzzle for Nov. 11, No. 618.

Looking for the most recent Strands answer? Click here for our daily Strands hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections and Connections: Sports Edition puzzles.

Today’s NYT Strands puzzle is a fun one, especially for fans of certain fables and childhood stories. If you need hints and answers, read on.

I go into depth about the rules for Strands in this story.

If you’re looking for today’s Wordle, Connections and Mini Crossword answers, you can visit CNET’s NYT puzzle hints page.

Read more: NYT Connections Turns 1: These Are the 5 Toughest Puzzles So Far

Hint for today’s Strands puzzle

Today’s Strands theme is: Aesop’s animals.

If that doesn’t help you, here’s a clue: Stories with morals.

Clue words to unlock in-game hints

Your goal is to find hidden words that fit the puzzle’s theme. If you’re stuck, find any words you can. Every time you find three words of four letters or more, Strands will reveal one of the theme words. These are the words I used to get those hints but any words of four or more letters that you find will work:

BEND, MOLE, BLAM, BRAN, PAIL, FALL, MULE, RIOT, RISE, ROSE, RAMBLE, SORT

Answers for today’s Strands puzzle

These are the answers that tie into the theme. The goal of the puzzle is to find them all, including the spangram, a theme word that reaches from one side of the puzzle to the other. When you have all of them (I originally thought there were always eight but learned that the number can vary), every letter on the board will be used. Here are the nonspangram answers:

BULL, GNAT, HARE, LION, WOLF, CRANE, MOUSE, TORTOISE

Today’s Strands spangram

Today’s Strands spangram is FABLEDPAIR. To find it, look for the F that’s three letters to the right on the top row, and wind down.

Toughest Strands puzzles

Here are some of the Strands topics I’ve found to be the toughest in recent weeks.

#1: Dated slang, Jan. 21. Maybe you didn’t even use this lingo when it was cool. Toughest word: PHAT.

#2: Thar she blows! Jan.15. I guess marine biologists might ace this one. Toughest word: BALEEN or RIGHT.

#3: Off the hook, Jan. 9. Similar to the Jan. 15 puzzle in that it helps to know a lot about sea creatures. Sorry, Charlie. Toughest word: BIGEYE or SKIPJACK.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Mini Crossword Answers for Tuesday, Nov. 11

Here are the answers for The New York Times Mini Crossword for Nov. 11.

Looking for the most recent Mini Crossword answer? Click here for today’s Mini Crossword hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Wordle, Strands, Connections and Connections: Sports Edition puzzles.

I admit, I was stumped by 8-Across in today’s Mini Crossword, but I figured out the other answers, and the letters just filled in. Need help to solve it? Read on. And if you could use some hints and guidance for daily solving, check out our Mini Crossword tips.

If you’re looking for today’s Wordle, Connections, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands answers, you can visit CNET’s NYT puzzle hints page.

Read more: Tips and Tricks for Solving The New York Times Mini Crossword

Let’s get to those Mini Crossword clues and answers.

Mini across clues and answers

1A clue: Villain’s counterpart
Answer: HERO

5A clue: California governor Newsom
Answer: GAVIN

6A clue: Home to Prada (and pasta)
Answer: ITALY

7A clue: Shipping company with a purple-and-orange logo
Answer: FEDEX

8A clue: Three-pointer, in basketball lingo
Answer: TREY

Mini down clues and answers

1D clue: Hard person to please
Answer: HATER

2D clue: Get around
Answer: EVADE

3D clue: «Inside Out» girl
Answer: RILEY

4D clue: Deep black gemstone
Answer: ONYX

5D clue: «Today is a ___. That’s why it’s called the present» (cliché)
Answer: GIFT

Technologies

Wikipedia Asks AI Companies to Stop Scraping Data and to Start Paying Up

The free internet encyclopedia is the seventh-most visited website in the world, and it wants to stay that way.

The Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit organization that hosts Wikipedia, wants AI companies to stop scraping its data to train AI models and to begin paying to use its Application Programming Interface instead, the foundation said in a blog post on Monday.

Wikimedia says AI companies need high-quality human-curated information to keep their models working. Wikipedia’s extensive volunteer network of editors ensures that its information remains well-sourced, and its content is available in over 300 languages.

At the same time, running Wikipedia is a costly endeavor. It’s currently the seventh-most visited website in the world, according to Semrush. It cost $179 million to run Wikipedia for the 2023-2024 fiscal year, according to a Wikimedia Foundation audit. Wikimedia keeps Wikipedia afloat primarily through donations and doesn’t run advertising.

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But AI is changing people’s research habits. Instead of researching subjects on Wikipedia, people are turning to AI to answer their questions. Although Wikipedia is free to use, if people circumvent it by using ChatGPT, they won’t see donation requests at the top of the Wikipedia home page, and the site could lose money.

Wikimedia is asking AI companies to pay to use its Enterprise API, which will allow them «to use Wikipedia content at scale and sustainably without severely taxing Wikipedia’s servers, while also enabling them to support our nonprofit mission.»

Representatives for Google, OpenAI, Meta, Perplexity, Anthropic, Microsoft, DeepSeek and xAI didn’t immediately reply to requests for comment, and a representative for Wikimedia also didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Google did agree to a deal with Wikimedia in 2022 to commercially access Wikipedia content.

Wikimedia’s request comes as online content creators are pushing back against AI companies using online data without permission or payment. Online publishers, such as Penske, the New York Times and News Corp, are suing AI companies for copyright infringement. Other companies, such as the Associated Press and Reuters, have signed licensing deals with AI firms.

(Disclosure: Ziff Davis, CNET’s parent company, in April filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.)

During the AI boom, Big Tech stocks have soared to stratospheric heights. Nvidia briefly became the world’s first $5 trillion company late last month, with Microsoft and Google’s parent company, Alphabet, breaking the $4 trillion barrier earlier this year.