This new version of the WATT/Puppy is the first redesign of the speakers since 2011. However, they don’t come cheap, costing over $53,000 for a pair (£41,998 if you speak British). You can customize individual parts of the speakers, such as grill colors and hardware pieces, allowing you to put together a variety of distinctive-looking sets. You can also install spikes on the feet for almost complete vibration isolation, which should prevent the sound from getting mushy when Walter Becker plays the lower notes on his 180-gram audiophile vinyl. AHA remaster.
Elon’s payday
Elon Musk really likes money. Or at least that is what one might assume, since he is currently in a fight to get $56 billion in salary to continue as CEO of the electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla.
On June 13, Tesla shareholders will vote to approve the gigantic salary of the richest man in the world. It’s been a tense dispute, with Tesla’s chairman asking shareholders to approve the money so Musk doesn’t leave for, well, greener projects. And (surprise, surprise) Musk has been Tesla Shareholders Talking Shit who say they will vote against the expensive package.
In Elon’s other adventures, The Wall Street Journal reported that Musk diverted a shipment of Nvidia AI chips from Tesla and sent them to the facilities of his other pet project, the social site formerly known as Twitter. (Now stupidly known as X.)
An overview of AI overviews
As Google tends to do these days, the company’s latest AI ambitions have once again irritated people online. AI overviews are Google’s most recent written summaries that appear at the top of the results page of some Google searches. The goal is to present a short, easily readable answer to a search engine’s question in an instant. In reality, those answers are sometimes completely wrong or misleading. Not only that, but giving searchers an immediate response without them having to click on any links creates an almost existential crisis for websites that depend on people visiting their page. Like, you know, every journalistic publication out there.
This week in the gadget lab In the podcast, WIRED writers Kate Knibbs and Reece Rogers join the show to talk about how AI overviews are changing the way we find information online, how Google has handled the rollout of the feature, and what happens when the reviews start to steal what you have written.