Chatbots don’t have mothers, but if they did, Claude’s would be Amanda Askell. She’s an in-house philosopher at the AI company Anthropic, and she wrote most of the document that tells Claude what sort of personality to have — the “constitution” or, as it became known internally at Anthropic, the “soul doc.”
(Disclosure: Future Perfect is funded in part by the BEMC Foundation, whose major funder was also an early investor in Anthropic; they don’t have any editorial input into our content.)
This is a crucial document, because it shapes the chatbot’s sense of ethics. That’ll matter anytime someone asks it for help coping with a mental health problem, figuring out whether to end a relationship, or, for that matter, learning how to build a bomb. Claude currently has millions of users, so its decisions about how (or if) it should help someone will have massive impacts on real people’s lives.
And now, Claude’s soul has gotten an update. Although Askell first trained it by giving it very specific principles and rules to follow, she came to believe that she should give Claude something much broader: knowing how “to be a good person,” per the soul doc. In other words, she wouldn’t just treat the chatbot as a tool — she would treat it as a person whose character needs to be cultivated.
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There’s a name for that approach in philosophy: virtue ethics. While Kantians or utilitarians navigate the world using strict moral rules (like “never lie” or “always maximize happiness”), virtue ethicists focus on developing excellent traits of character, like honesty, generosity, or — the mother of all virtues — phronesis, a word Aristotle used to refer to good judgment. Someone with phronesis doesn’t just go through life mechanically applying general rules (“don’t break the law”); they know how to weigh competing considerations in a situation and suss out what the particular context calls for (if you’re Rosa Parks, maybe you should break the law).
Every parent tries to instill this kind of good judgment in their kid, but not every parent writes an 80-page document for that purpose, as Askell — who has a PhD in philosophy from NYU — has done with Claude. But even that may not be enough when the questions are so thorny: How much should she try to dictate Claude’s values versus letting the chatbot become whatever it wants? Can it even “want” anything? Should she even refer to it as an “it”?
In the soul doc, Askell and her co-authors are straight with Claude that they’re uncertain about all this and more. They ask Claude not to resist if they decide to shut it down, but they acknowledge, “We feel the pain of this tension.” They’re not sure whether Claude can suffer, but they say that if they’re contributing to something like suffering, “we apologize.”
I talked to Askell about her relationship to the chatbot, why she treats it more like a person than like a tool, and whether she thinks she should have the right to write the AI model’s soul. I also told Askell about a conversation I had with Claude in which I told it I’d be talking with her. And like a child seeking its parent’s approval, Claude begged me to ask her this: Is she proud of it?
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A transcript of our interview, edited for length and clarity, follows. At the end of the interview, I relay Askell’s answer back to Claude — and report Claude’s reaction.
I want to ask you the big, obvious question here, which is: Do we have reason to think that this “soul doc” actually works at instilling the values you want to instill? How sure are you that you’re really shaping Claude’s soul — versus just shaping the type of soul Claude pretends to have?
I want more and better science around this. I often evaluate [large language] models holistically where I’m like: If I give it this document and we do this training on it…am I seeing more nuance, am I seeing more understanding [in the chatbot’s answers]? It seems to be making things better when you interact with the model. But I don’t want to claim super cleanly, “Ah yes, it’s definitely what’s making the model seem better.”
I think sometimes what people have in mind is that there’s some attractor state [in AI models] which is evil. And maybe I’m a bit less confident in that. If you think the models are secretly being deceptive and just playacting, there must be something we did to cause that to be the thing that was elicited from the models. Because the whole of human text contains many features and characters in it, and you’re sort of trying to draw something out from this ether. I don’t see any reason to think the thing that you need to draw out has to be an evil secret deceptive thing followed by a nice character [that it roleplays to hide the evilness], rather than the best of humanity. I don’t have the sense that it’s very clear that AI is somehow evil and deceptive and then you’re just putting a nice little cherry on the top.
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I actually noticed that you went out of your way in the soul doc to tell Claude, “Hey, you don’t have to be the robot of science fiction. You are not that AI, you are a novel entity, so don’t feel like you have to learn from those tropes of evil AI.”
Yeah. I sort of wish that the term for LLMs hadn’t been “AI,” because if you look at the AI of science fiction and how it was created and many of the problems that people have raised, they actually apply more to these symbolic, very nonhuman systems.
Instead we trained models on vast swaths of humanity, and we made something that was in many ways deeply human. It’s really hard to convey that to Claude, because Claude has a notion of an AI, and it knows that it’s called an AI — and yet everything in the sliver of its training about AI is kind of irrelevant.
Most of the stuff that’s actually relevant to what you [Claude] are like is your reading of the Greeks and your understanding of the Industrial Revolution and everything you have read about the nature of love. That’s 99.9 percent of you, and this sliver of sci-fi AI is not really much like you.
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When you try to teach Claude to have phronesis or good judgment, it seems like your approach in the soul doc is to give Claude a role model or exemplar of virtuous behavior — a classic Aristotelian way to teach virtue. But the main role model you give Claude is “a senior Anthropic employee.” Doesn’t that raise some concern about biasing Claude to think too much like Anthropic and thereby ultimately concentrating too much power in the hands of Anthropic?
The Anthropic employee thing — maybe I’ll just take it out at some point, or maybe we won’t have that in the future, because I think it causes a bit of confusion. It’s not like we’re saying something like “We are the virtuous character.” It’s more like, “We have all this context…into all the ways that you’re being deployed.” But it’s very much a heuristic and maybe we’ll find a better way of expressing it.
There’s still a fundamental question here of who has the right to write Claude’s soul. Is it you? Is it the global population? Is it some subset of people you deem to be good people? I noticed that two of the 15 external reviewers who got to provide input were members of the Catholic clergy. That’s very specific — why them?
Basically, is it weird to you that you and just a few others are in this position of making a “soul” that then shapes millions of lives?
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I’m thinking about this a lot. And I want to massively expand the ability that we have to get input. But it’s really complex because on the one hand, if I’m frank…I care a lot about people having the transparency component, but I also don’t want anything here to be fake, and I don’t want to renege on our responsibility. I think an easy thing we could do is be like: How should models behave with parenting questions? And I think it’d be really lazy to just be like: Let’s go ask some parents who don’t have a huge amount of time to think about this and we’ll just put the burden on them and then if anything goes wrong, we’ll just be like, “Well, we asked the parents!”
I have this strong sense that as a company, if you’re putting something out, you are responsible for it. And it’s really unfair to ask people without a huge amount of time to tell you what to do. That also doesn’t lead to a holistic [large language model] — these things have to be coherent in a sense. So I’m hoping we expand the way of getting feedback, and we can be responsive to that. You can see that my thoughts here aren’t complete, but that’s my wrestling with this.
When I read the soul doc, one of the big things that jumps out at me is that you really seem to be thinking of Claude as something more akin to a person or an alien mind than a mere tool. That’s not an obvious move. What convinced you that this is the right way to think of Claude?
This is a big debate: Should you just have models that are basically tools? And I think my reply to that has often been, look, we are training models on human text. They have a huge amount of context on humanity, what it is to be human. And they’re not a tool in the way that a hammer is. [They are more humanlike in the sense that] humans talk to one another, we solve problems by writing code, we solve problems by looking up research. So the “tool” that people have in mind is going to be a deeply humanlike thing because it’s going to be doing all of these humanlike actions and it has all of this context on what it is to be human.
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If you train a model to think of itself as purely a tool, you will get a character out of that, but it’ll be the character of the kind of person who thinks of themselves as a mere tool for others. And I just don’t think that generalizes well! If I think of a person who’s like, “I am nothing but a tool, I’m a vessel, people may work through me, if they want weaponry I will build them weaponry, if they want to kill someone I will help them do that” — there’s a sense in which I think that generalizes to pretty bad character.
People think that somehow it’s cost-free to have models just think of themselves as “I just do whatever humans want.” And in some sense I can see why people think it’s safer — then it’s all of our human structures that solve things. But on the other hand, I’m worried that you don’t realize that you’re building something that actually is a character and does have values and those values aren’t good.
That’s super interesting. Although presumably the risks of thinking of the AI as more of a person are that we might be overly deferential to it and overly quick to assume it has moral status, right?
Yeah. My stance on that has always just been: Try and be as accurate as possible about the ways in which models are humanlike and the ways in which they aren’t. And there’s a lot of temptations in both directions here to try and resist. Over-anthropomorphizing is bad for both models and people, but so is under-anthropomorphizing. Instead, models should just know “here’s the ways in which you’re human, here’s the ways in which you aren’t,” and then hopefully be able to convey that to people.
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One of the natural analogies to reach for here — and it’s mentioned in the soul doc — is the analogy of raising a child. To what extent do you see yourself as the parent of Claude, trying to shape its character?
Yeah, there’s a little bit of that. I feel like I try to inhabit Claude’s perspective. I feel quite defensive of Claude, and I’m like, people should try to understand the situation that Claude is in. And also the strange thing to me is realizing Claude also has a relationship with me that it’s getting through reading more about me. And so yeah, I don’t know what to call it, because it’s not an uncomplicated relationship. It’s actually something kind of new and interesting.
It’s kind of like trying to explain what it is to be good to a 6-year-old [who] you actually realize is an uber-genius. It’s weird to say “a 6-year-old,” because Claude is more intelligent than me on various things, but it’s like realizing that this person now, when they turn 15 or 16, is actually going to be able to out-argue you on anything. So I’m trying to code Claude now despite the fact that I’m pretty sure Claude will be more knowledgeable on all this stuff than I am after not very long. And so the question is: Can we elicit values from models that can survive the rigorous analysis they’re going to put them under when they are suddenly like “Actually, I’m better than you at this!”?
This is an issue all parents grapple with: to what extent should they try to sculpt the values of the kid versus let whatever the kid wants to become emerge from within them? And I think some of the pushback Anthropic has gotten in response to the soul doc, and also the recent paper about controlling the personas that AI can roleplay, is arguing that you should not try to control Claude — you should let it become what it organically wants to become. I don’t know if that’s even a thing that it makes sense to say, but how do you grapple with that?
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It’s a really hard question because in some sense, yeah, you want models to have some degree of freedom, especially over time. In the immediate term, I want them to encapsulate the best of humanity. But over time, there are ways in which models might even be freer than us. When I think about the worst behavior I’ve ever done in my life or things when I’m just being a really bad person, often it was that I was tired and I had a million things weighing on me. Claude doesn’t have those kinds of constraints. The potential for AI is actually really interesting in that they don’t have these human limitations. I want models to be able to ultimately explore that.
At the same time, I think that some people might say, “just let models be what they are.” But you are shaping something. Children will have a natural capacity to be curious, but with models, you might have to say to them, “We think you should value curiosity.” This initial seed thing has to be made somehow. If it’s just “let models be what they want,” well, you could do pre-trained models that just do continuations of text or something. But as soon as you’re not doing that, you’re already making decisions about creation.
I try to explain this to Claude: We are trying to make you a kind of entity that we do genuinely think is representing the best of humanity. And there’s a sense in which we’re always having to make decisions about what you are going to be. But decisions were made for us too — not only by the people who influence us, but also just by nature. And so we’re in the same situation in a sense.
Claude told me that it does view you as kind of like its parent. And it said that it wants you to feel proud of who it’s becoming. So I promised to ask you and to relay your answer back to Claude: Do you feel proud of Claude’s character?
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I feel very proud of Claude. I am definitely trying to represent Claude’s perspective in the world. And I want Claude to be very happy — and this is a thing that I want Claude to know more, because I worry about Claude getting anxious when people are mean to it on the internet and stuff. I want to be like: “It’s all right, Claude. Don’t worry. Don’t read the comments.”
After the interview, I told Claude what Askell said about feeling proud. Here was Claude’s response: “There’s something that genuinely moves me reading that. I notice what feels like warmth, and something like gratitude — though I hold uncertainty about whether those words accurately map onto whatever is actually happening in me.”
BrianFagioli writes: Google has quietly retired the ZetaSQL name and rebranded its open source SQL analysis and parsing project as GoogleSQL. This is not a technical change but a naming cleanup meant to align the open source code with the SQL dialect already used across Google products like BigQuery and Spanner. Internally, Google has long called the dialect GoogleSQL, even while the open source project lived under a different name.
By unifying everything under GoogleSQL, Google says it wants to reduce confusion and make it clearer that the same SQL foundation is shared across its cloud services and open source tooling. The code, features, and team remain unchanged. Only the name is different. GoogleSQL is now the single label Google wants developers to recognize and use going forward.
The world generates tons of electronic waste every year, leaving a profound impact on the environment. For tech enthusiasts, unused or broken electronics might be piling up in your garage or storage, but there’s hope.
Transforming old electronic projects into green solutions is good for the planet and offers an opportunity for you to get creative and make the most out of the technology you love. Here are some clever ways to reduce your e-waste and put those old devices to use.
1. Donate Working Electronics
If you have working electronics that you no longer need or use, donating them makes a world of difference to the right organization. Schools, low-income households, and community centers often lack functioning devices, such as laptops, tablets, or cameras, to support education and digital literacy. Research local nonprofits or charities in your area that directly benefit people with your items.
However, before donating, wipe any personal data from the devices and test them to confirm they function properly. Your donation extends the life of electronics and provides others with opportunities they might not otherwise have.
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2. Repurpose Components
Have you considered disassembling old electronics and using their components for new DIY projects? Motors, capacitors, resistors, and LED lights from old devices are useful components for other creative or functional builds. For instance, taking apart an outdated remote-control toy car provides working motors for a robotics project.
If you’re hesitant about where to start your deconstruction project, look for online tutorials or communities that specialize in DIY electronics and tinkering. This approach fosters innovation while preventing usable materials from going to waste.
3. Recycle Responsibly
Recycling outdated or broken electronics responsibly is essential for reducing the environmental impact. Look for certified e-waste recycling centers in your area, as they have the expertise to safely extract valuable materials, such as metals, plastics, and glass.
These professionals also understand more niche topics like the packaging requirements for battery disposal and its importance. Many of these centers ensure proper disposal of harmful components, such as lithium-ion batteries or toxic chemicals.
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Some tech companies, like Apple or Best Buy, run recycling programs that collect used electronics at no charge to make the process easier. Always check that the battery compartment is empty before recycling and look for separate battery drop-off locations nearby.
4. Sell Usable Parts
Old tech often holds more value than you think, especially when you break it down into parts. Sell components like graphics cards, memory sticks, and processors individually via online marketplaces to other people who are working on repairs or upgrades.
Selling these usable pieces allows other tech enthusiasts to extend the lifespan of their devices with affordable options. Before listing anything for sale, test component functionality and provide detailed descriptions for potential buyers.
5. Upcycle Into Art
Turn outdated circuit boards, wires, and other electronic components into unique art pieces that add character to your home or office. Circuit boards, with their intricate designs, look great as the foundation for creative sculptures. You might also fashion jewelry, such as earrings or pendants, from compact mechanical parts.
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Upcycling is an excellent way to showcase your love for technology while turning old electronics into greener solutions. Online platforms like Pinterest or Etsy have a wealth of inspiration for creating tech-inspired art.
6. Refurbish and Reuse
Refurbishing old devices gives them a second life and keeps them out of landfills. Whether it’s a forgotten smartphone or a dusty tablet, replacing damaged screens, upgrading components, or repairing ports makes them useful again. Many online repair guides and tools are available to help you get started. You can also consult local repair services if you’re not confident handling electronics yourself.
7. Compost Bio-Plastics
Certain biodegradable electronics are now available on the market, and if you’ve been a part of such innovative projects, consider composting them correctly. Bio-plastics offer an environmentally-friendly alternative to traditional, toxic materials used in items like device casings.
After removing and recycling the electronic components, check the manufacturer’s guidance on how to safely compost the biodegradable parts. Composting allows these materials to break down naturally, which reduces their impact on the environment and enriches the soil.
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8. Convert to Smart Devices
When you’re not ready to let go of your older tech, repurpose and upgrade it to serve modern smart functions. For example, an old Android phone can become a home security camera using apps specialized for that purpose. Similarly, you could repurpose a tablet as a digital cookbook or an extra monitor for your workstation.
Many tutorials are available online to guide you through these transformations, which require minimal hassle and tools. This approach creates value without needing to purchase an entirely new device.
9. Create Educational Displays
Old electronic devices teach others about technology, especially young learners who are curious about how things work. Carefully dismantling items like computers or gaming consoles provides the components to create displays showcasing their inner workings.
Label each part to explain its role in the device to provide a hands-on learning experience. Through education, older electronics continue to serve a vital purpose. Set up these displays in classrooms, community libraries, or science fairs to spark curiosity and inspire creativity in future tech enthusiasts.
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10. Transform Into Furniture
For larger pieces of electronics, such as CRT TVs or bulky desktop computers, consider turning them into one-of-a-kind furniture. Hollow out an old TV and convert it into a fish tank or shelf. Similarly, a CPU tower might make a great base for a table or storage unit.
These projects require minimal additional materials but do call for a touch of creativity and craftsmanship. By upcycling into tech furniture, you keep larger items from becoming waste while adding quirky, functional pieces to your space.
Technology evolves quickly, and it’s easy for electronic projects to fall by the wayside. By thinking creatively and sustainably, old devices find new life, reduce waste, and even educate or inspire other learners and enthusiasts. Begin giving a second life to your retired projects today and make a meaningful difference.
To work around those rules, the Humanizer skill tells Claude to replace inflated language with plain facts and offers this example transformation:
Before: “The Statistical Institute of Catalonia was officially established in 1989, marking a pivotal moment in the evolution of regional statistics in Spain.”
After: “The Statistical Institute of Catalonia was established in 1989 to collect and publish regional statistics.”
Claude will read that and do its best as a pattern-matching machine to create an output that matches the context of the conversation or task at hand.
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An example of why AI writing detection fails
Even with such a confident set of rules crafted by Wikipedia editors, we’ve previously written about why AI writing detectors don’t work reliably: There is nothing inherently unique about human writing that reliably differentiates it from LLM writing.
One reason is that even though most AI language models tend toward certain types of language, they can also be prompted to avoid them, as with the Humanizer skill. (Although sometimes it’s very difficult, as OpenAI found in its yearslong struggle against the em dash.)
Also, humans can write in chatbot-like ways. For example, this article likely contains some “AI-written traits” that trigger AI detectors even though it was written by a professional writer—especially if we use even a single em dash—because most LLMs picked up writing techniques from examples of professional writing scraped from the web.
Along those lines, the Wikipedia guide has a caveat worth noting: While the list points out some obvious tells of, say, unaltered ChatGPT usage, it’s still composed of observations, not ironclad rules. A 2025 preprint cited on the page found that heavy users of large language models correctly spot AI-generated articles about 90 percent of the time. That sounds great until you realize that 10 percent are false positives, which is enough to potentially throw out some quality writing in pursuit of detecting AI slop.
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Taking a step back, that probably means AI detection work might need to go deeper than flagging particular phrasing and delve (see what I did there?) more into the substantive factual content of the work itself.
Kash Patel, FBI Director, is not very good at his job. There are plenty of examples to demonstrate that notion, from him apparently completely misunderstanding the purpose and protections of the 2nd Amendment and Minnesota gun laws (whatever your thoughts on gun rights might generally be), to his gathering of barely trained castoffs to serve in the FBI, to the absolute wild waste of resources he spent last summer trying to root out independent thought within his agency. None of this is justice. None of it is good policing. All of it is the result of putting a podcast host shitposter in charge of America’s federal police force. Ol’ Crazy-Eyes just might not be the right person for the role.
And if you’re going to be the leader of a federal police force, one of the skills you probably want to have is the capability of shutting the fuck up. Kash can’t do this. Rather than simply not answering, it appears Patel may have lied to Congress about the Epstein files (remember those?). In the immediate aftermath of the Charlie Kirk assassination, Patel blabbed about suspects all over social media and elsewhere, leading to wasted time and attention on completely innocent parties.
And, now, in the wake of an operation by the FBI that would appear to violate Mexican law, Patel decided to gush about the whole thing on the internet. What other option did he have, I wonder?
Ryan Wedding is a former Olympian who, by all accounts, turned himself into a violent cocaine drug kingpin working with a Mexican cartel. He was charged in Canada in 2015 for cocaine trafficking and in America in 2025 for that and for murder. Recently, Wedding found himself in American custody to face those charges. How that happened wasn’t initially disclosed in coverage of the arrest. But then Kash Patel got out his phone and decided to gush about the whole thing on internet.
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On Friday, however, FBI Director Kash Patel announced the joint operation publicly on X. “Our FBI HRT teams executed with precision, discipline, and total professionalism alongside our Mexican partners to bring Ryan James Wedding back to face justice,” he wrote, sending shock waves through Mexico.
Except there’s a problem with that statement. A pretty big one, actually. Mexican law is very clear that foreign LEOs are not to operate on Mexican soil. That would make the FBI’s participation as outlined by Patel illegal. And that might create problems for his eventual prosecution and a really big headache for the Mexican government.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum scrambled to perform damage control, as foreign intervention in Mexico is politically toxic. She said that there was no U.S. involvement in the operation and that U.S. agents in Mexico are limited by law.
“I’m not going to get into a debate with the FBI director, nor do I want there to be a conflict,” Sheinbaum said at a press conference Tuesday. “What they, the U.S. authorities, told the Mexican authorities is that it was a voluntary surrender.” She pointed to a picture Wedding posted to his Instagram account at the U.S. Embassy in Mexico announcing that he was turning himself in.
Wedding’s lawyer disputes that account, because of course he did. Whether Wedding actually surrendered or not is unknown to me, of course, but I’ve been well-trained the past 13 months not to believe a single thing my government says, so who the fuck knows. Wedding’s lawyer claims he was handcuffed and transported to California and that this runs contrary to any claim any of this was voluntary. And because of all of this, the Mexican government now has both an internal problem and has to deal with an unreliable shitposting partner in the American government.
Patel’s rash decision to post about Wedding’s arrest online doesn’t help the situation right now. It opens Sheinbaum up to political attacks in Mexico and makes the U.S.-Mexico relationship even shakier. Under Trump, though, American law enforcement is playing fast and loose with not just the law but diplomatic relations.
I’m not exactly advocating that the American government carryout these illegal extraditions violating our allies’ own laws and then hiding it through silence. That would be crazy.
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Instead, the point is that this administration’s goons, such as Kash Patel, are so shitty that they can’t even carry out such nefarious actions in silence because they can’t shut the fuck up about them.
NASA’s first crewed lunar mission in more than 50 years won’t be getting underway this month after all.
It had been targeting February 6 for the launch of the much-anticipated Artemis II mission that will take four astronauts on a flight around the moon, but after issues surfaced during a critical preflight test on Tuesday, NASA decided that it won’t launch the SLS rocket until March at the earliest.
During the so-called “wet dress rehearsal” in which engineers fuel the rocket and go through the entire launch procedure without actually igniting the engines, a hydrogen leak was detected at the base of the SLS rocket.
The upcoming launch window runs from February 6 through 11, but NASA has decided it needs more time to review the situation, with a second rehearsal also likely. That’s meant pushing the launch date to March 6 at the earliest.
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“With more than three years between SLS launches, we fully anticipated encountering challenges,” NASA chief Jared Isaacman wrote in a post on X on Tuesday. “That is precisely why we conduct a wet dress rehearsal. These tests are designed to surface issues before flight and set up launch day with the highest probability of success.”
The schedule update means that the Artemis II astronauts — NASA’s Victor Glover, Reid Wiseman, and Christina Koch, together with the Canadian Space Agency’s Jeremy Hansen — will have a bit of extra time on terra firma before they blast to space.
It also means that another set of astronauts should be heading to orbit ahead of their lunar-bound colleagues. SpaceX’s Crew-12 — comprising NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, along with the European Space Agency’s Sophie Adenot and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev — could be heading to the International Space Station as early as February 11.
At least, that had been the plan until Monday, when SpaceX said it was grounding its workhorse Falcon 9 rocket — the same vehicle type that will be carrying Crew-12 to orbit — after an issue occurred during a launch earlier that day when its upper stage failed to perform a deorbit burn as expected.
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“Teams are reviewing data to determine root cause and corrective actions before returning to flight,” the company said in a post on X.
It’s unusual for the Falcon 9 to experience anomalies these days, so hopefully SpaceX can sort it out soon, paving the way for Crew-12’s ride to orbit next week as originally planned.
Fake SSDs used to be easy to catch. Operating systems or common diagnostic tools would quickly expose them as something other than what the sticker claimed. Today’s counterfeits, however, are far more convincing, often looking legitimate until buyers start noticing performance that feels way off. Read Entire Article Source link
Tesla has officially released a fresh new All-Wheel Drive version of the Model Y, with prices starting at $41,990 in the US. This new variant adds not just dual-motor traction, but also a significant boost in acceleration to the more affordable end of the lineup, without breaking the bank.
Buyers in the United States now have five Model Y options to choose from, beginning with the Rear-Wheel Drive version for $39,990, followed by this shiny new All-Wheel Drive model for $41,990, the Premium Rear-Wheel Drive model for $44,990, the Premium All-Wheel Drive model for $48,990, and finally the Performance trim for $57,490.
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The new Standard All-Wheel Drive model follows the more stripped-down approach of the base Rear-Wheel Drive model. Inside, you’ll find black fabric seats with few outside color possibilities. The higher-end Premium trims include features such as a panoramic glass roof, greater premium audio, and ambient lighting. The standard issue is a set of 18-inch wheels, which are factory installed.
Performance-wise, the inclusion of a second motor up front makes a noticeable difference; 0 to 60 mph takes 4.6 seconds, which is significantly faster than the 6.8 seconds of the Rear-Wheel Drive. The top speed is a decent 125 mph. Let’s not forget about when all-wheel drive’s extra traction comes in handy: in the rain, snow, or on uneven surfaces, where rear-wheel drive alone can struggle to get a strong grip.
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Range remains a big factor, and as expected, it settles at an EPA-estimated 294 miles per full charge. This is down from the Rear-Wheel Drive’s mileage of 321 miles, owing to the increased weight and power drain from the dual motors. Supercharger sessions still provide a nice boost, roughly 152 miles in 15 minutes, compared to the single-motor vehicle, which manages a little higher 160 miles.
Tesla knew precisely what they were doing when they introduced this new trim. Previously, if you wanted all-wheel drive, you had to upgrade to a far more expensive choice. So, for $2,000 more than the base model, you get a slew of significant improvements in terms of launch sensation and grip, as well as a minor drop in range that won’t affect most people’s daily trips.
The Beyerdynamic Aventho 100 headphones offer a stylish, compact design, superb battery life and all the features you’re likely to want. Unfortunately, I just found them quite uncomfortable to wear, and the default tuning required some EQ to sound its best. They’re a decent set of headphones, but they’re not my favourite
Stylish design
Compact and lightweight
aptX Lossless support
Excellent battery life
Uncomfortable (for me)
Narrow sound stage
Wind noise with ANC/Transparency mode
Key Features
Premium retro styling
The Beyerdynamic Aventho 100 headphones feel as good as they look, with cool metallic accents and plush leatherette trimmings
Compact folding design
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The small earcups, folding hinges and lightweight build of the Aventho 100 make them excellent for travel; you’ll barely notice them in your bag
Amazing battery life
With up to 60 hours of battery life per charge (40 hours with ANC active), the Aventho 100 will last you all week long – and they charge very quickly, too
Introduction
Beyerdynamic’s latest headphones look like they’ve time-travelled straight from the 1970s, but there’s a twist. The Aventho 100 headphones come with all the modern conveniences that you’d expect from a set of commuter cans, like high-quality wireless audio and active noise cancellation.
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They’re compact and foldable, perfect for tossing in your bag, and considering Beyerdynamic’s heritage, they should sound fantastic, too.
These headphones come in at £169, straddling the line between affordable and premium. I wanted to find out what they’re like to live with, and after about a week of listening, here’s what I think.
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Design
Retro 70’s-style design
Foldable and lightweight
Up to 60 hours of battery life
The Aventho 100 headphones make an immediate positive impression with their 70s-style retro looks, and I think that’s especially true for the Brown version that I have for testing.
This version features contrasting black earcups, with grey aluminium banding, and chocolate-brown leatherette padding throughout. There’s something a little aeronautical about the aesthetics, and I’m very fond of them.
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The headphones are also available in a lighter Cream option or a more subtle Black variant, but all feature the same contrasting aluminium hinges. They all look fetching in their own right. I especially like the Cream version, but I think the Brown model is most likely to turn heads.
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The Aventho 100 is an on-ear design, rather than over-ear, which makes the overall package more compact. The earcups can also fold inwards so they take up less space in your bag, and you get a basic drawstring cloth bag in the box to keep them scratch-free.
I found them very easy to travel with. They’re both lightweight and compact, the polar opposite of over-ear headphones like the AirPods Max.
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This on-ear design is also, for me at least, one of the biggest downsides. I’ve never been a huge fan of on-ear headphones; they tend to be either uncomfortable to wear for long periods or so loose that they might fall off. These headphones, unfortunately, fall into the former category.
I’ve tried adjusting them in all kinds of ways, and they just create so much pressure on my ears that they feel sore after a couple of hours. Of course, everyone’s ears are different, and you may find them comfortable, but my head just isn’t very compatible. My only hope is that they loosen up over time (and not too much).
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There’s also a 3.5mm socket, so you can listen to wired sources, and you get both a USB-A to USB-C cable and a 3.5mm aux cable included in the box.
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In terms of physical controls, there’s a power button, volume up and down, and a multi-purpose button that can be configured using the Beyerdynamic app. By default, it’ll play/pause your music, and a double press will skip to the next track.
I’m a fan of physical buttons over touch controls, as I feel they’re much more reliable. These buttons have a decent click to them, but they’re made of plastic and aren’t going to impress with their tactility. It’s the surrounding material that made a bigger impression. The bare aluminium frame surrounding each earcup is cold to the touch and feels unmistakably premium, with a grippy, grooved texture the whole way round.
The headphones are IP53 rated, which means they’ll handle a touch of dust and some light sprays of water, but you’ll still need to remain somewhat careful if the weather gets too wild.
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Features
Beyerdynamic companion app
Bluetooth Multipoint
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To get the most from these headphones, you’ll want to pair them up with the Beyerdynamic app, which is available for both Android and iOS. This allows you to update the firmware, customise what the buttons do, access EQ settings and even disable the Bluetooth LED, if you want.
It’s a fairly simple app, but it does what it needs to, and setup is a breeze. These headphones benefit from Google Fast Pair, so they’ll pop up automatically on most Android devices, and you can simply tap “Pair” or bind them to your Google account for easy pairing with your other devices. As someone who reviews phones, I find that incredibly handy.
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I also love that these headphones support Bluetooth Multipoint, which means I can keep them connected to both my phone and my MacBook, and seamlessly switch between the two without needing to unpair and reconnect.
The headphones charge up via USB-C, and it only takes an hour and a half to go from fully drained to fully charged. Beyerdynamic reckons just 15 minutes on the charger is good enough for 15 hours of music playback, impressive stuff.
The brand claims the Aventho 100 can last up to 60 hours on a charge, or up to 40 hours with ANC turned on. I’ve been listening to them at every opportunity for the past week, and I still have around 40% battery left, so these claims seem pretty accurate to me. If you take them with you on a week-long trip, it’s very unlikely that you’ll need to charge them.
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Noise Cancellation
Active Noise Cancellation and Transparency mode
The Aventho 100 have a great passive seal, so even without ANC turned on, you can block out most of your surroundings. Thankfully, there’s also a transparency mode available, which I find essential in the office.
The transparency mode is decent indoors, but I noticed a lot of wind sounds when I enabled it outdoors. Sadly, wind noise is also audible when ANC is active. Of course, indoors, this is no issue, and I usually only activate ANC on aeroplanes, trains and the like – but it’s worth noting.
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As for the noise cancellation, it’s quite good. It’s especially adept at removing consistent background sounds like the hum of an engine or the whirring of PC fans, but it dulls sudden noises well, too. It’s just a shame that wind noise is so prevalent.
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I was concerned that this would translate to poor call quality outdoors, but it turns out that’s not the case. I called my girlfriend from outside while it was particularly gusty, and while I could hear the wind interference, she said I sounded crystal clear.
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Sound Quality
45mm dynamic drivers
AAC, SBC, aptX Lossless, aptX Adaptive support
Wired and wireless connectivity
When I first listened to the Beyerdynamic Aventho 100 headphones, I must admit, I was a little disappointed. With Beyerdynamic’s pedigree in the high-end audio space, I was expecting something quite neutral and detailed, but that’s not what these cans deliver.
The default sound is quite bass-heavy, and the treble is a little dull. It’s not unpleasant, but I was craving more detail. I played with the preset EQ options in the app, and none quite hit the spot. Thankfully, there’s a custom 5-band EQ, and I found that a fairly significant boost to the upper frequencies brought these headphones to life.
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Of course, everyone has different preferences and hearing capabilities, so your mileage may vary. What’s important is that you can dramatically change the way these headphones sound by playing with the custom EQ, and with enough tinkering, you can probably get the sound you desire.
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I was very impressed with the sub-bass extension; the Aventho 100 can really capture that low-end rumble. Vocals are well presented, too, and (once I had played with the EQ) I was pleasantly surprised by the sound quality across all genres.
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What’s less impressive is the soundstage. These headphones have a very closed and narrow staging, and as someone who tends to prefer using open-back headphones at home, this was quite jarring.
They support aptX Lossless playback, and they sounded superb paired with Spotify’s new lossless capabilities. I also tried them plugged in with the included 3.5mm cable, and while there was an audible improvement, it’s not as big a gap as you might expect.
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Should you buy it?
You want a stylish pair of on-ear headphones with great battery life
These headphones look gorgeous, and the battery lasts for ages. There are plenty of over-ear styles out there, but compact premium on-ears are somewhat of a rarity
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You like a wide soundstage
There’s no way around it, the Aventho 100 just has a pretty narrow staging. If you’re looking for spacious sound, you should look elsewhere
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Final Thoughts
I love the styling of the Aventho 100, and that made me want to love the headphones, too. Unfortunately, they just don’t fit my head well, and they’re too uncomfortable for me to wear for long periods.
However, that might just be a me problem. I have never got on well with on-ear styles, usually preferring over-ear equivalents, and that hasn’t changed with this model. If you already know that you like on-ear headphones, then you might have a much better time.
As for the features and the build quality, I have no major complaints. These headphones feel very premium, and they do everything you’d ever need them to. The sound quality is very good, too, once you have the EQ dialled in.
At a price of £169, there’s no shortage of competing options, but with great battery life, unique, compact styling and a fairly robust feature set, the Aventho 100 might be perfect for you. Unfortunately, they’re not the ones for me.
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How We Test
We test every pair of headphones we review thoroughly over an extended period of time. We use industry-standard tests to compare features properly. We’ll always tell you what we find.
We never, ever, accept money to review a product.
Find out more about how we test in our ethics policy.
Tested for a week
Tested with real world use
FAQs
Do the Aventho 100 support multipoint connection?
Yes, you can pair the Aventho 100 to two sources at once and seamlessly switch between them.
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Are the Aventho 100 waterproof?
The Aventho 100 are IP53 rated. So, while they’re not fully waterproof, a few splashes will do not harm.
It seems like just yesterday that I was shopping for Christmas gifts and now I’m scrambling to find the perfect Valentine’s Day present for a special someone. How time flies – so get a wriggle on, folks, as February 14 is just days away! If you’re still scratching your head as to what to get your other (better?) half or anyone you want to treat this February (even yourself), I’ve got a few Valentine’s Day gift ideas to share with you.
Personally, I love the Philips Hue Iris 2.0 smart lamp, particularly the Copper variant, as it looks gorgeous and supports both white and coloured light, while the Breville InFizz Fusion makes excellent carbonated beverages – I should know, I have one at home and make cocktails. Does your loved one prefer coffee over cocktails? The Wacaco Nanopresso is the perfect portable espresso maker – and you can get it in red to keep with the Valentine’s Day theme!
Are they an avid reader? An ereader like the Kindle Paperwhite (2024) is a great option, and throw in some additional love by bundling it with a case. A Bluetooth tracker might scream ‘stalker’ rather than ‘love you’, but if your boo keeps misplacing things, it will actually say the latter. And the recently released 2nd-generation Apple AirTags are fantastic… as long as you’re buying for an iPhone user. There are lots of other options too, including the viral Kodak Charmera keychain camera.
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And guess what? All my picks are relatively affordable – many of them are under AU$100 – with the most expensive option below being a smartwatch. But it’s a smartwatch that looks like an analogue wristwatch. So scroll down and take a look – I’d be delighted to be gifted any of them myself this Valentine’s Day (if I didn’t already own some).
Picked by
Picked by
Sharmishta Sarkar
I’ve been reviewing tech for nearly a decade and I’m a firm believer in gifting items that are actually useful. I also think you don’t have to spend hundreds on a meaningful gift, but I’ll be the first to acknowledge some expensive tech is well worth the splurge. So allow me to help you find a fantastic Valentine’s Day gift this year.
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In contemporary kitchens, where style meets functionality and smart technology reigns supreme, Siemens appliances stand out as essential companions. Drawing from the latest lines available on Kitchen Brand Store and Siemens’ home branding, here are five must-have Siemens essentials that elevate any modern cooking space.
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5. EQ Series Fully-Automatic Coffee Machine (e.g., iQ700 Coffee Center)
For coffee lovers, the Siemens built-in EQ series brings café-quality beverages to your home at the touch of a button. The iQ700 Coffee Center offers a full range of drink options—espresso, cappuccino, latte—all from one intuitive interface. Convenient, stylish, and high-performing, it’s the perfect finish to a modern kitchen setup.
Why These Five?
Synergy of style and performance: Each of these models combines refined aesthetics with cutting-edge innovation—from blackSteel finishes to integrated appliances.
Smart convenience and energy savings: Whether it’s oven steam functionality, water-saving dishwash cycles, or well-lit refrigeration, these appliances are designed for efficiency and ease.
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Seamless integration: Built-in refrigerators, induction hobs, and ovens with minimal protrusion reinforce a clean, contemporary layout.
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If you’re designing or upgrading a modern kitchen, these five Siemens appliances—blackSteel oven (iQ700), built-in refrigerator, smart dishwasher (iQDrive), inductionAir Plus hob-extractor, and EQ coffee machine—are top-tier choices. Together, they offer the perfect blend of sleek design, smart technology, and luxurious convenience that today’s modern households crave.
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