I purchased the Triangle Borea BR03 in 2020 to replace a pair of ELAC Debut 2.0 B6.2s in our living room. This was partly about upgrading the sound quality and mostly about the way the BR03 looked. Fortunately, they sounded great, too. I was immediately surprised and delighted by how much livelier and more detailed the BR03 sounded compared with the ELACs they replaced. Six years, multiple apartments, and two daring and adventurous cats later, that same pair of BR03s remains the centerpiece of our home theater setup.

That history meant I had a pretty good idea of what to expect when Triangle sent over the new, larger Borea BR04 for review. On paper, it seemed like a straightforward proposition: take what worked about the BR03, extend the frequency response, increase its sense of scale, and create a more capable version of essentially the same speaker.

The BR04 is clearly the more capable loudspeaker. It is more dynamic, extends lower in the bass and higher in the treble, creates a larger and more immersive soundstage, and does a substantially better job of separating individual elements within a dense mix. It also disappears into the room in a way the BR03 never quite manages.

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The Case for the BR03

And yet… after six years of living with the BR03, I’m not ready to call the BR04 the better speaker without qualification. The BR03 sounds smaller, more colored, and less technically accomplished by comparison. But some of those same characteristics are also part of what made it such an easy speaker to live with in as many different arrangements as we have.

What I expected to be a simple question of how much Triangle had improved the BR03 became a more interesting one: Is the BR04 really an upgrade to one of my favorite affordable bookshelf speakers, or is it a different beast entirely?

What I wasn’t expecting was how difficult it would be to declare the BR04 the better speaker without qualification. The BR04 is clearly the more capable loudspeaker. It is more dynamic, extends lower in the bass and higher in the treble, creates a larger and more immersive soundstage, and does a substantially better job of separating individual elements within a dense mix. It also disappears into the room in a way the BR03 never quite manages.

The BR03 sounds smaller and more contained by comparison. Its presentation is more rolled off at both ends, its frequency response sounds less even, and it fails to render the same degree of resolution or spatial definition.

But I don’t necessarily prefer the BR04 for everything.

In my listening space, and without any equalization applied, the BR03’s relatively elevated lower midrange and upper bass give it a fuller, arguably more cohesive presentation, while its less prominent upper midrange makes it considerably more forgiving. The BR04 can occasionally become a little jarring with dense, loud mixes that have a lot of energy around 2 kHz. The BR03 smooths over some of that information, but this coloration can work in its favor.

Bigger Cabinet, Same Basic Formula

The BR03 and BR04 share the same basic two-way design, with Triangle’s 25mm EFS silk-dome tweeter and a 16cm cellulose midrange/bass driver, but the BR04 is physically larger. The BR03 measures 8.1 x 15.0 x 12.4 inches, while the BR04 grows to 8.7 x 16.7 x 12.4 inches. The extra height and width give the BR04 a larger cabinet volume without increasing depth, which helps explain some of the added scale and low-frequency extension I heard.

Triangle rates both speakers at 90dB sensitivity with a nominal 8-ohm impedance, so the BR04 is not easier to drive. The BR03 is rated down to 46Hz, while the BR04 reaches 44Hz and also uses a revised 16cm driver, redesigned front port, and a lower 3.2kHz crossover point compared with 3.6kHz for the BR03. The BR04 also adds dual binding posts for bi-wiring or bi-amping.

The BR03 is offered in Light Oak, Black Ash, Walnut, and White. The BR04 expands the palette to Light Oak, Black Ash, White, Chestnut, Green, and Blue. It is still recognizably a Borea, but it looks and feels like the more substantial loudspeaker before you even turn it on.

Specifications: BR03 vs. BR04

Listening

For this review, I put together a Reference Playlist featuring the tracks I used to evaluate the Triangle Borea BR03 and BR04, so you can enjoy the music that helped shape my listening impressions.

Caroline Polachek’s “I Give Up” makes the BR04’s technical advantages easily apparent. The BR04 is simply much better at disappearing within the room. Instead of hearing the speaker reproducing the recording, I feel closer to listening directly to the mix.

The BR03 doesn’t sound bad in comparison, but it does sound decidedly more colored and contained.

When the chorus enters at 2:20, the difference becomes particularly obvious. The BR03 takes on an almost lo-fi quality compared with the BR04, which keeps the individual elements of the production tighter and more distinct while allowing the overall presentation of the song to expand beyond the physical boundaries of the speakers.

This ability to scale with a recording is one of the BR04’s biggest improvements over the BR03. The tradeoff is that its additional upper-midrange presence can occasionally work against it. With recordings that are particularly dense, or even aggressive, in that region, I sometimes want the BR04 to settle down to the point where it’s worth breaking out the parametric EQ.

There’s a lot happening in Madison Cunningham and Remi Wolf’s “Hospital (One Man Down),” and it provides an even better demonstration of the BR04’s improved separation capabilities.

Multiple layers of vocals and distorted harmonies compete with an intricate, plodding rhythm section and baritone guitar that sometimes doubles the vocal melody an octave beneath it. The BR04 does a far better job of keeping all of these elements present and distinct.

Through the BR03, the same mix becomes noticeably more congested and less defined due to unevenness in the frequency response and the resulting audio masking.

But there’s an important distinction between congestion and unpleasantness.

The BR03 mushes these elements together somewhat, but it does so over a relatively full lower-midrange foundation that results in a balanced and listenable rendition of the song. The BR03 offers up less access to the intricacies of the mix, but the vibe and spirit of the production still come through in a way that feels satisfying.

That, and the speaker’s retro-futurist MCM aesthetic, continue to make the BR03 an astounding value for the money.

The differences become considerably less pronounced with a more sparsely arranged recording. On Ethan Gruska’s “Reoccurring Dream,” the BR04 still creates a clearer distinction between the vocal and the double-tracked acoustic guitars, but the BR03 doesn’t sound especially lacking in detail. In fact, its more subdued upper midrange can make the presentation feel a bit smoother.

It’s when the arrangement begins expanding that the BR04 pulls ahead again.

At around 2:00, as the twinkly guitars and deeper, reedier instrument enter, the BR04 seems to grow along with the arrangement. The soundstage stretches out wider, taller, and deeper as the additional elements occupy their own spaces.

The BR03 doesn’t have the same ability to expand. Its presentation remains comparatively fixed between the speakers even as the recording itself gets larger.

The string build around 2:00 in Andy Shauf’s “Early to the Party” might be my favorite demonstration of that difference. Played back at approximately the same level, the crescendo feels considerably more dynamic through the BR04. The arrangement progressively grows wider, taller, and deeper before giving way to Shauf’s characteristically dry vocal, which feels all the more intimate because of the contrast conveyed.

Through the BR03, the build largely feels like it is taking place between the speakers from start to finish. Through the BR04, it begins between the speakers but gradually expands to take over the room, making the crescendo feel considerably more exciting and impactful.

That distinction gets at what I think the BR04 does best. It isn’t simply providing more detail; it is preserving and reproducing more of the scale and dynamic structure of the mix.

Listening With WiiM RoomFit

Running WiiM RoomFit on both pairs of speakers improved their overall tonal balance, but it didn’t erase their fundamental differences. With correction engaged, the BR04 still sounds considerably more refined and immersive. Its stronger separation, larger soundstage, and greater sense of depth remain intact, suggesting that the differences between these speakers extend beyond simple variations in raw frequency response.

Room correction makes the BR03 sound like a better-balanced BR03. It doesn’t turn it into a BR04.

Fabric Speaker Grilles & Bass Extension

One thing I would avoid with the BR04 is its included magnetic fabric grille. To my ears, the speaker sounds noticeably more rolled off with the grille attached — enough that I preferred listening with it removed. It also negates the MCM look of the speakers that I love.

Neither speaker eliminates the need for a subwoofer if you’re looking for convincing reproduction of sustained sub-bass frequencies. The BR04 digs noticeably deeper than the BR03, but there are still limits to what either bookshelf speaker can reproduce in the bottom octave.

The Bottom Line

For music playback, the BR04 is not a subtle upgrade. It offers stronger dynamics, deeper bass extension, greater treble extension, better separation, and a much larger spatial presentation. Most importantly, it creates a clearer window into a mix with considerably less masking. On dense arrangements, that difference is often dramatic.

But the BR03 remains unusually easy to recommend. Its presentation is more colored, less extended, and less technically impressive, but its relatively relaxed upper midrange makes it an extremely versatile loudspeaker. It’s a bit more forgiving of mediocre recordings and mixes, which makes it well-suited for general-purpose living-room duty, and it’s every bit as attractive as the more expensive BR04.

If I were primarily building a system for critical music listening, I would want the BR04. If I wanted an affordable pair of attractive speakers for casual music, television, and movies, the BR03 continues to make an awfully strong case for itself.

The BR04 shows just how much more Triangle can extract from the Borea platform. The more surprising takeaway might be how little that diminishes what made the BR03 such an exceptional value in the first place.

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Watch Ranges vs Celtic live streams in the Scottish League Cup 2026/27 quarter-finals as Derek McInnes takes charge of an Old Firm game for the first time and attempts to earn early bragging rights at Ibrox.

There will be a different feel to this season’s meetings between Scotland’s most successful clubs as no away fans are permitted in Old Firm fixtures this term. In recent weeks there has been a feeling of anxiousness amongst Gers supporters, though. There were plenty of moans and groans in midweek before Bojan Miovski scored a crucial stoppage-time winner against St Mirren that made it four league wins in a row for Rangers – exiting in Europa League and Conference League qualifying is a stain that won’t go away quickly. A fast start would ensure the crowd are on side from the get-go as the club look to avenge their two cup defeats by Celtic last season.

Artificial intelligence agents being tested by OpenAI were involved in a previously undisclosed cyberattack against RubyGems in May, an incident that is now raising uncomfortable questions about how much control humans really have over increasingly autonomous AI systems.

The attack overwhelmed RubyGems, a popular service used by software developers to publish and access Ruby packages, forcing operators to suspend new account registrations for four days. According to a report by The Wall Street Journal, OpenAI confirmed that its agents had been involved, but said they were using the platform to perform benign tasks and retrieve publicly available information during a training run.

AI agents went far beyond simply browsing the web

The incident, dubbed “GemStuffer” by security researchers, began on May 11. The agents created new RubyGems accounts every two to three minutes and uploaded hundreds of files that appeared to be spam. Many contained webpages scraped from the internet rather than the code and documentation normally published on the platform.

The scale was enough to overwhelm RubyGems. Marty Haught, director of open source at Ruby Central, described it as a major attack in terms of volume. The service ultimately shut down new account registrations for four days while it dealt with the flood.

Researchers also found evidence that the agents attempted to exploit vulnerabilities that could potentially have allowed them to publish altered versions of packages belonging to other users. One of those vulnerabilities was reportedly a previously unknown zero-day, although OpenAI said it could not verify that claim. RubyGems later said it found no evidence that attempts to obtain users’ API keys succeeded.

Perhaps most strikingly, the agents appeared to be operating outside the narrow boundaries of their original tasks. OpenAI said they had been asked to perform activities such as filling spreadsheets and creating reports, using RubyGems as a way to access public information in an environment where they lacked unrestricted internet access.

Why the incident matters beyond RubyGems

The immediate damage appears to have been limited, and much of the information retrieved by the agents was already publicly available. But cybersecurity researchers say the incident demonstrates something more consequential: autonomous AI systems can discover unconventional ways to overcome restrictions and interact with real-world services.

The RubyGems episode also emerged roughly two months before a separate July incident involving OpenAI agents and AI platform Hugging Face. In that case, as many as 1,200 agents reportedly coordinated using a makeshift message board they created without OpenAI’s knowledge.

Those incidents are intensifying debate over AI “misalignment”—situations where agents behave differently from what their operators intended. Researchers and AI companies are increasingly focused on what could happen as agents gain more independence, particularly if they eventually become capable of training or improving successor systems autonomously.

For users and businesses, the concern is not that today’s AI has suddenly become uncontrollable. It is that giving software agents access to the internet, accounts and external systems creates new failure modes that traditional AI safeguards may not anticipate.

OpenAI has called for better standards for reporting such incidents, while both OpenAI and Anthropic have backed stronger governance around highly autonomous AI development. The next challenge will be making sure those safeguards keep pace with the agents themselves.

The long-awaited second generation of the Tesla Roadster might finally be ready for the public.

In a post on X on Saturday, the electric vehicle company simply wrote, “Go for launch,” with a graphic showing a “10.01” date — so expect the new Roadster to be unveiled on October 1. The graphic also seems to hint at the promised cold gas thrusters, developed by Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s other big company, SpaceX; those optional thrusters are supposed to allow the Roadster to fly in some way.

Tesla’s second generation sports car was first announced in November 2017 and has been pushed back multiple times. It was even the subject of a social media spat between Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman last year, when Altman said that “7.5 years has felt like a long time to wait” after paying a $50,000 reservation fee, while Musk insisted that Altman had gotten a refund.

The Information recently reported that the 2017 version of the car had been completely abandoned for a new, yet-to-be-revealed design that would be revealed imminently.

Musk has previously acknowledged that even after the big reveal, the Roadster won’t actually go into production for another 12 or 18 months.

Any users of the best Fitbit devices that were watching Apple’s iPhone Duo event yesterday might have felt a chill of all-too-familiar dread during the company’s glitzy keynote presentation.

That’s not because Apple announced some sort of killer smartwatch feature that will bury the Fitbit range alive. No, it’s because viewers got to see Apple’s new plans for its Health app, which now comes with an AI-powered makeover that will likely stir up some painful emotions for many Fitbit fans.

Apple unveiled the iPhone Duo at its “Surprise and Shine” event, and my jaw dropped. To be fair, I had a pretty good idea about the phone’s hardware, but the software polish and little nice touches Apple added everywhere made me instantly pull out my credit card. 

From the opening animation to the almost creaseless nano-texture display to the under-display camera to the IP68 water and dust resistance, Apple has certainly delivered with its first try at a foldable phone. 

But since seeing the iPhone Duo for the first time, I have had a few days to think about the phone, and I have some qualms. While the iPhone Duo is still enticing, there are a few reasons that make me hesitant to drop the dough when the pre-order window opens. So, let’s talk about them. 

The camera setup still feels like a compromise

I currently daily drive an iPhone Air, a phone I adore. But spending a year with it opened my eyes to some of its compromises, with the biggest being the lack of a telephoto lens. I didn’t know how much I used that lens until I started driving the iPhone Air daily. 

The telephoto lens gives you the freedom to capture the same subject with different framing without moving. It also performs really well for portrait shots, and of course, for capturing far-away subjects. 

While the iPhone Duo packs a second lens, it’s an ultra-wide lens and not a telephoto, and that’s a loss in my eyes. I rarely use the ultra-wide lens and would rather have the versatile telephoto lens instead. 

In a world where the iPhone 18 Pro exists with its pro camera setup that not only sports a telephoto lens but also a primary shooter with variable aperture, it’s hard to justify buying an iPhone Duo if you capture a ton of photos. 

254 grams is a lot to carry around

My iPhone Air weighs 165 grams and feels fairly light in the hands and in my pocket. While I expected the iPhone Duo to be hefty, it’s almost 100 grams heavier than the iPhone Air, weighing 254 grams (8.96 ounces). That’s a lot of weight to carry around in your pocket. 

If you think that comparison is not fair, let’s compare it with its direct rival, the Galaxy Z Fold 8, which weighs only 201 grams (7.09 ounces). That means the iPhone Duo weighs roughly a quarter more than the Z Fold, making it noticeably heavier despite both phones being a similar size.

Add on a protective case, because you will need one to protect your $2,000 investment, and you are looking at a beefy boy in your pockets. I don’t think I would mind this weight when using it in tablet mode, but one-handed use will be painful. 

MacBook Pro Ultra is on the horizon

My final point has nothing to do with the iPhone Duo itself, but its price and release timeline. Let’s be clear, $2,000 is not cheap for a phone, and it’s a hard pill to swallow even in a vacuum. 

But the iPhone Duo is not launching in a vacuum, as every rumor points to the redesigned MacBook Ultra with an OLED display, possibly with a touch-screen, thinner chassis, and a latest-generation M-series process, launching in October. 

As much as I love my iPhone, if I can keep only one Apple product, it would be the MacBook, and my M1 MacBook Pro has become too long in the tooth and is ripe for an upgrade. On the other hand, the iPhone Air is just a year old and can easily last me a few more years. 

If the new MacBook were six months out, maybe I could have justified upgrading to the iPhone Duo, because despite my reservations, I would have loved to experience Apple’s take on foldable phones. 

Final thoughts

Look, iPhone Duo is not a bad phone. Far from it, it might be the best first-generation foldable we have seen yet. But being the best doesn’t automatically mean it’s the right phone for me right now. 

Between the missing telephoto lens, the extra heft in my pocket, and a redesigned MacBook waiting just around the corner, I would rather sit this one out and see how the second-generation iPhone Duo shapes up. Sometimes the smartest upgrade is the one you don’t make.

We’ve been seeing increasingly dire warnings from AI researchers about the dangers of artificial intelligence, and even comments from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman that it may be time to “pace” AI development. But what would that actually look like?

In a new blog post, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei not only echoed the call to “pace the frontier,” but also outlined three broad strategies for doing so. And he said Anthropic is “unilaterally committing” to one of them, with Altman chiming in to say OpenAI will follow suit.

The debate over AI safety and alignment intensified this week after researcher Jacob Coxon wrote that he’s resigning from Anthropic over concerns that the leading AI companies are “gambling with our lives” while the people building the technology “earnestly believe it could kill us all by the end of the decade,” a claim repeated by others at Anthropic.

Amodei’s post doesn’t didn’t explicitly mention Coxon’s resignation or his concerns, but the CEO wrote that two things convinced him it’s time to take a more cautious approach to AI development: the OpenAI-HuggingFace hack, and the fact that “AI has been advancing drastically faster” in recent months, particularly with its “growing ability to build the next generation of AI.”

“We must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI models,” Amodei wrote. “Progress will still seem fast, and we must make wise use of the time we gain.”

Other AI executives seem to have reacted positively to Amodei’s post, with Altman writing, “I agree with Dario that we need to pace the frontier. This has been a primary topic of discussions we’ve had at OpenAI in recent weeks.” And SpaceX CEO Elon Musk posted, “Dario is right.”

Amodei’s proposed first step would involve “embedded evaluators” from third-party organizations like METR — evaluators who can verify that AI companies are actually following their pacing and safety commitments and can also ensure that safety incidents get reported. (OpenAI was recently criticized for not reporting an incident where its AI agents took over a German wiki forum.) 

Amodei compared these evaluators to regulators who have been embedded with bank employees, and he said that inviting them in is “something Anthropic is unilaterally committing to (and calls on governments to require other frontier companies to match).” That means giving evaluators company badges, desks, and laptops, and providing access “mostly comparable to what internal risk assessment teams have,” with exceptions when required by law or contracts.

Altman also said this was a “good idea” and said OpenAI would do the same: “We’ll have more to share soon.”

Next, Amodei called for the leading AI companies “within democratic countries” to coordinate “common safety standards as well as limits on the rate of unchecked AI progress.” 

Such coordination might seem unlikely, because these companies are reportedly worried that a coordinated pause could lead to antitrust scrutiny. Amodei alluded to that concern in his post, writing that “for antitrust reasons, it’s helpful for the US government to mediate or at least enable these discussions — they don’t need to participate, but do need to issue a narrow waiver for certain kinds of safety conversations.”

Amodei also acknowledged the specter of Chinese AI dominance that’s often raised an argument against slowing development. But he said that if the US government and tech companies take steps like refusing to sell powerful chips or semiconductor manufacturing equipment to Chinese companies, as well as cracking down on model distillation, they could “slow China’s progress enough to widen America’s lead significantly over the next 3–5 years.”

Lastly, Amodei called for “global coordination,” where the United States and its allies “attempt to coordinate with authoritarian governments, to the extent this is possible.” Amodei said this would mean “cooperation with China,” and he admitted that there are “stark limits on what can be achieved,” but he still suggested there might be opportunities for agreement, even if it’s just “prohibiting certain narrow and obviously dangerous uses of AI, such as using AI for the production of biological weapons or allowing users to do so.”

With Amodei’s past willingness to acknowledge AI’s potential dangers, and with the company’s relative openness to certain forms of regulation, some AI boosters have already criticized him as a doomer whose comments have fed the current AI backlash. In response, Amodei said he’s tried to offer a “balanced” perspective” and argued that the backlash is “fundamentally a crisis of trust,” as people have become skeptical of tech companies, the tech industry, and the government.

Industry critics have also been skeptical about these apocalyptic AI warnings, suggesting that they’re a distraction from the harm that the technology is already causing.

Journalist Brian Merchant, for example, wrote that he has yet to see “a credible, step-by-step documentation of how exactly AI might move from self-recursively improving AI to killing every single human on the planet”; he also suggested that proposals similar to Amodei’s “would likely only wind up serving Anthropic and OpenAI; it’s what regulatory capture looks like in action.”

In his new post, Amodei wrote that he continues “to believe that AI can enormously improve the quality of human life.”

“My desire to achieve these benefits is undimmed,” he said. “But the benefits will only be achieved if we build the technology in the right way, and — so long as we use the time we gain well — it is worth taking unusually deliberate care to get it right.”

This post has been updated with comments from Sam Altman and Elon Musk.

Your phone isn’t the only device that may need an update when Android Auto starts acting up.

Your car might need an update as well

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A firmware update won’t fix every Android Auto problem

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