It’s an incredible time to be a guitarist who doesn’t want to own a bunch of $2,000 amps and an expensive pedalboard of gear. Amp and pedal simulators, which have been around for decades, have in the last few years finally come into their own as nearly indistinguishable sonic replacements. Even John Mayer is now willing to ditch his beloved tube amps for digital models.

I certainly don’t have Mayer’s chops or gear budget, but I do love messing with this sort of tech and have purchased everything from NeuralDSP‘s Archetypes series to Amplitube and Guitar Rig. Last week, as part of an early Black Friday sale, I picked up two amp/effects suites from British developer Polychrome DSP—Nunchuck (Marshall amps) and Lumos (clean through mid-gain tones). They are both excellent.

Any reasonable person should be satisfied with this tech stack, which models gear that collectively costs as much as my house. After my Polychrome DSP purchases, I reminded myself that I am a reasonable person, and that I could therefore ignore any further amp sims that might tempt my wandering eye.

And then on Monday, Universal Audio, one of the premier names in audio technology, released Paradise Guitar Studio. Unfortunately for my wallet, it is amazing.

Two tickets to Paradise

Universal Audio—henceforth “UA”—has been developing top-tier emulation of classic studio gear for many years. More recently, they have also released a set of modelled amps in both plugin and physical pedal form, with each pedal going for over $300.

With Paradise Guitar Studio, the company has brought most (though not all; Anti and Knuckles are not included) of these amps into a single plugin, then paired them with a generous suite of tone-shaping gear, including six classic distortion pedals, seven modulation effects units, a couple of compressors, four delays, four reverbs, and a couple of EQs.

As for the amps, you get six: a few Fenders, a Marshall, a Vox AC 30, and a Dumble. Most of these have several variants and small mods; the Dumble alone features four different iterations of the legendary boutique hardware, and it gives you the ability to tweak the main Dumble circuit by altering capacitor values and internal trim levels.

Each amp comes with a specially selected set of cabinet and mic emulations, and in Paradise, you can use any amp with any set of mics and cabs. Want to pair a Fender Twin Reverb with a 4×12 Marshall cabinet miced by two SM57s? Go for it.

The tone is astonishing. UA is well-known for its emulations of 1176 compressors, tape delays, and Lexicon reverb units, and all that gear has been shoved into Paradise. (Some of the controls are simplified, but this appears to be the “full-fat” version of these tools under the hood.) Plus, each amp allows you to control the amount of “room tone” captured by the mics, and this room simulation is terrifically convincing.

Paradise hits the sweet spot—for me, at least—of offering options without overload. You can place five effects before the amp and cab and five after. The interface is large and clear, with chunky buttons and knobs, and it’s simple to create a new pedalboard and dial in a tone. It doesn’t hurt that Paradise comes with several hundred presets, which are very good indeed.

While I think Paradise, Polychrome DSP, and NeuralDSP all edge out products like Amplitube on sound quality, they really win by being more fun to use. Amplitube is a mess of a bazillion amps and effects that you can arrange in complex routing chains: splitting signals, running DIs, maneuvering virtual mics near virtual speaker cones, selecting room tone, and twiddling a bajillion almost illegible knobs. It’s too much. At some point, all the choice works against creativity.

I whipped up two short demos in Paradise in a couple of hours, just to show the kinds of tones on offer here. (You can listen below.) One uses lots of 80s-style rock tones, while the other showcases some edge-of-breakup tones on the Dumble. No fancy gear was used, just a cheap PRS guitar and a generic Craigslist bass plugged directly into an audio interface in my office.

Rock ‘n roll will never die! (Unless I kill it). [above]

Breakup tones from a Dumble amp sim. [above]

Downsides? Well, like many UA products, Paradise is expensive. The “intro price” is $149, though there is a loyalty offer for anyone who owns previous UA amp sims. Given that NeuralDSP and Polychrome DSP both just had 50 percent off sales, and that Amplitube is practically being given away at this point, you might spend more on Paradise. Still, you get a lot for that money, and the patient will likely find Paradise on a big sale within the next year.

It’s likely to sting more for people who have already invested in UA’s amp plugins and who will now find them nearly obsolete. Even with a $79 upgrade price, loyal UA users might find themselves spending more in total than new buyers to get Paradise.

Second, Paradise is plugin-only. There’s no standalone version of the software, so starting a practice session requires firing up a DAW like Logic or Pro Tools, adding Paradise to an open track, and configuring inputs and monitoring—annoying extra work if you’re not recording anything. Amplitube, Guitar Rig, Lumos, Nunchuck, and the NeuralDSP collections all work either as plugins or standalone applications. It’s a strange but significant oversight in functionality.

Finally, there’s the sound. Paradise sounds great, but it seems largely built around classic rock tones from the ‘60s through the ‘90s, and most of the preset names reflect this. If you’re a high-gain metal player, this is probably not your best option at the moment; go with NeuralDSP or similar instead. Similarly, if you’re a more modern or experimental player, you might want something like Guitar Rig, which has some truly gonzo effects units, or Polychrome’s McRocklin suite.

But this is mere carping. In reality, there has never been a better time to be a guitar player. Even bedroom strummers can now sound like guitar gods for minimal cash (and without shaking the floors, waking the neighbors, or warming up the tubes first).

Like all tools, the sign of a good amp simulation suite is that it unlocks creativity. I’ve lost hours to each of the top amp sims mentioned here, tweaking tones and stumbling through presets until suddenly coming upon one that instantly suggests a song, a vibe, or a rhythmic figure. The same has been true so far of Paradise, which sounds so good that I just keep wanting to pick up the guitar. And isn’t that the goal?

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Have you been trying to cast Stranger Things from your phone, only to find that your TV isn’t cooperating? It’s not the TV—Netflix is to blame for this one, and it’s intentional. The streaming app has recently updated its support for Google Cast to disable the feature in most situations. You’ll need to pay for one of the company’s more expensive plans, and even then, Netflix will only cast to older TVs and streaming dongles.

The Google Cast system began appearing in apps shortly after the original Chromecast launched in 2013. Since then, Netflix users have been able to start video streams on TVs and streaming boxes from the mobile app. That was vital for streaming targets without their own remote or on-screen interface, but times change.

Today, Google has moved beyond the remote-free Chromecast experience, and most TVs have their own standalone Netflix apps. Netflix itself is also allergic to anything that would allow people to share passwords or watch in a new place. Over the last couple of weeks, Netflix updated its app to remove most casting options, mirroring a change in 2019 to kill Apple AirPlay.

The company’s support site (spotted by Android Authority) now clarifies that casting is only supported in a narrow set of circumstances. First, you need to be paying for one of the ad-free service tiers, which start at $18 per month. Those on the $8 ad-supported plan won’t have casting support.

Even then, Casting only appears for devices without a remote, like the earlier generations of Google Chromecasts, as well as some older TVs with Cast built in. For example, anyone still rocking Google’s 3rd Gen Chromecast from 2018 can cast video in Netflix, but those with the 2020 Chromecast dongle (which has a remote and a full Android OS) will have to use the TV app. Essentially, anything running Android/Google TV or a smart TV with a full Netflix app will force you to log in before you can watch anything.

Streaming lockdown

Frequent travelers have long appreciated the prevalence of Google Cast support. You can drop into an Airbnb and begin streaming content to a big screen from your phone without typing your credentials into a TV you don’t own. Not only is logging into TVs often logistically annoying, but you must also remember to log out again later, and Netflix likes to hide that option.

Netflix has every reason to want people to log into its TV apps. After years of cheekily promoting password sharing, the company now takes a hardline stance against such things. By requiring people to log into more TVs, users are more likely to hit their screen limits. Netflix will happily sell you a more expensive plan that supports streaming to this new TV, though.

Netflix is also building a very particular kind of TV experience that pushes people to watch more content with a never-ending reel of previews and trailers. Engagement is now one of the primary metrics Netflix reports to investors. You can’t do that when people are only watching a single item at a time via casting sessions.

There are definitely Netflix subscribers up in arms about this change. Many claim to be frequent travelers who don’t want to log into new TVs in every Airbnb or hotel. However, the chorus of discontent is not as loud as it might have been in the past. Fewer people rely on casting support now that Google has retired the Chromecast brand to focus on more powerful streaming devices. At the same time, TV makers would be crazy to sell a screen without a certified Netflix app in 2025.

So Netflix may have a good reason to think it can get away with killing casting. However, trying to sneak this one past everyone without so much as an announcement is pretty hostile to its customers.

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Streaming services have a way of reviving love for old shows, and HBO Max is looking to entice old and new fans with this month’s addition of Mad Men. Instead, viewers have been laughing at the problems with the show’s 4K premiere.

Mad Men ran on the AMC channel for seven seasons from 2007 to 2015. The show had a vintage aesthetic, depicting the 1960s advertising industry in New York City.

Last month, HBO Max announced it would modernize the show by debuting a 4K version. The show originally aired in SD and HD resolutions and had not been previously made available in 4K through other means, such as Blu-ray.

However, viewers were quick to spot problems with HBO Max’s 4K Mad Men stream, the most egregious being visible crew members in the background of a scene.

The episode was “Red in the Face” (Season 1, Episode 7), which was reportedly mislabeled. In it, Roger Sterling (John Slattery) throws up oysters. In the 4K version that was streaming on HBO Max, viewers could see someone pumping a vomit hose to make the fake puke flow.

The Hollywood Reporter, citing an anonymous source, said that the error happened because Mad Men production company Lionsgate gave HBO Max the wrong file. The publication reported that Lionsgate “was working on getting HBO Max the correct file(s)” and was readying to provide them at approximately 10 a.m. PT today. Neither Lionsgate nor HBO Max has commented.

The blunder is likely to be fixed for all viewers soon. There were no problems with the HD versions of HBO Max’s Mad Men stream. However, the mix-up is a revealing look at the complexities of bringing a show or movie to a new distribution platform, how moving to wider aspect ratios or higher resolutions can affect shots, and how important human reviews are for avoiding embarrassing mistakes.

There have been other instances of show remasters inadvertently showing viewers how the sausage was made. For example, a 2020 HD remaster of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997–2001) that took the show from a 4:3 aspect ratio to 16:9 had episodes with visible crew and equipment in addition to “brightly lit and overexposed scenes,” Screen Rant reported at the time. When Seinfeld (1989–1998) came to Netflix, a plot-centric pothole that annoyed George Costanza (Jason Alexander) was cut from some shots, as noted by Wired.

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Jiffy corn muffins are an iconic, low-cost pantry staple introduced during the Depression. Thanksgiving is peak season for the company, which has been run by the same family for five generations.

HP Inc. said that it will lay off 4,000 to 6,000 employees in favor of AI deployments, claiming it will help save $1 billion in annualized gross run rate by the end of its fiscal 2028.

HP expects to complete the layoffs by the end of that fiscal year. The reductions will largely hit product development, internal operations, and customer support, HP CEO Enrique Lores said during an earnings call on Tuesday.

Using AI, HP will “accelerate product innovation, improve customer satisfaction, and boost productivity,” Lores said.

In its fiscal 2025 earnings report released yesterday, HP said:

Structural cost savings represent gross reductions in costs driven by operational efficiency, digital transformation, and portfolio optimization. These initiatives include but are not limited to workforce reductions, platform simplification, programs consolidation and productivity measures undertaken by HP, which HP expects to be sustainable in the longer-term.

AI blamed for tech layoffs

HP’s announcement comes as workers everywhere try to decipher how AI will impact their future job statuses and job opportunities. Some industries, such as customer support, are expected to be more disrupted than others. But we’ve already seen many tech layoffs tied to AI.

Salesforce, for example, announced in October that it had let go of 4,000 customer support employees, with CEO Marc Benioff saying that AI meant “I need less heads.” In September, US senators accused Amazon of blaming its dismissal of “tens of thousands” of employees on the “adoption of generative AI tools” and then replacing the workers with over 10,000 foreign H-1B employees. Last month, Amazon announced it would lay off about 14,000 people to focus on its most promising projects, including generative AI. Last year, Intuit said it would lay off 1,800 people and replace them with AI-focused workers. Klarna and Duolingo have also replaced significant numbers of workers with AI. And in January, Meta announced plans to lay off 5 percent of its workforce as it looks to streamline operations and build its AI business.

That’s just a handful of layoffs by tech companies that have been outrightly or presumably connected to AI investments.

According to analysis from outplacement services and executive coaching firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, as of October, technology firms had announced 141,159 job cuts since the year’s start, a 17 percent increase from the same period last year (120,470).

But some experts question whether or not AI is really driving corporate layoffs or if companies are using the buzzy technology as a scapegoat.

Peter Cappelli, a management professor and director of the Center for Human Resources at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, told CNBC this month that “there’s very little evidence that [AI] cuts jobs anywhere near like the level that we’re talking about.” He noted that effectively using AI to replace human workers is “enormously complicated and time-consuming.”

In September, Gartner analysts predicted that all IT work will involve AI by 2030, compared to 81 percent today. However, humans will remain essential, per VP analysts Alicia Mullery and Daryl Plummer, who said that 75 percent of IT workloads will still involve people.

More broadly, there’s hope that AI will actually lead to more jobs, not fewer. In January, the World Economic Forum released its Future of Jobs Report 2025, which predicted that AI would create 78 million more jobs than it eliminates by 2030. The report was based on data from 1,000 companies with 14 million employees worldwide.

It will be years before we comprehend AI’s impact on the workforce. In the meantime, we can expect AI to be at the center of more layoff announcements —whether people believe the job cuts are solely the results of AI or not.

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