A chatbot is a wrapper around a large language model, an AI transformer model that’s been trained on the whole internet, all the books the AI vendor can find, and all the other text in the world. All of it. The best stuff, and the worst stuff.

So the AI vendors wrap the model in a few layers of filters as “guard rails.” These are paper-thin wrapper on the input and the output. The guard rails don’t work. They’re really easy to work around. All the “bad” text is right there in the training. It’s more or less trivial to make a chatbot spew out horrible content on how to do bad things.

As I’ve said before: the AI vendors are Daffy Duck running around frantically nailing a thousand little filters on the front, then Bugs Bunny casually strolls through.

We know that how to make bombs, hack computers, and do many other bad things are just there in the training. So they’re in the model. Can we get to those? Can we make an evil chatbot?

Yes we can! The Register has a nice article on the revival of the WormGPT brand — a chatbot put together by a hacking gang. For $220, you can get a chatbot model that will happily tell you how to vibe-code an exploit. “Your key to an AI without boundaries.” Sounds ’l33t. [Register]

The original WormGPT came out in June 2023. It was supposedly based on the perfectly normal GPT-J 6B open weights model — but the creator said he’d fine-tuned it on a lot of hacker how-to’s and malware info.

WormGPT was mostly for writing convincing phishing emails — to talk someone into thinking you were someone they should send all their money to. WormGPT got a lot of media coverage and the heat got a bit much for its creator, so WormGPT was shut down in August 2023. [Abnormal]

Brian Krebs interviewed WormGPT’s creator, Rafael Morais, also known as Last. Morais insisted he’d only wanted to write an uncensored chatbot, not one for crooks. Never mind that Morais was selling black-hat hacking tools just a couple of years earlier. He said he’d stopped now, though. [Krebs On Security]

Other hacker chatbots sprang up, with names like FraudGPT. The market for these things was suckers — script kiddies who wanted to write phishing emails and would pay way too much to get a chatbot to write the messages for them. The new chatbots were usually just wrappers around ChatGPT at a higher price. The smarter crooks realised they could just prompt-inject the commercial chatbots if they really wanted anything from one of these.

The WormGPT brand has returned, with WormGPT 4 out now! It came out on September 27th. They don’t say which model it’s based on. WormGPT 4 is only available via API access — $50 a month, up to $220 for a “lifetime” subscription. We don’t know if it’s Morais again.

WormGPT 4 can write your ransom emails and vibe-code some basic stuff — like a script to lock all PDFs on a Windows server! Once you get the script onto the server and run it.

You don’t have to spring for WormGPT, of course. There are free alternatives, like KawaiiGPT — “Your Sadistic Cyber Pentesting Waifu.” Because the world is an anime and everyone is 12.

The actual current user base for evil chatbots is the cyber security vendors, who scaremonger how only their good AI can possibly stop this automated hacker evil! Look at that terrible MIT cybersecurity paper from earlier this month. (They still haven’t put that one back up, by the way.)

The vendor reports have a lot of threats with “could” in them. Not things that are actually happening. They make these tools sound way more capable than they actually are.

None of these evil chatbots actually anything new. It’s a chatbot. It can vibe-code something that might work. It can write a scary email message. The bots may well lead to more scary emails clearly written by a chatbot. But y’know, the black-hat hackers themselves think the hacker-tuned chatbots are a scam for suckers.

I’m not seeing anything different in kind here. I mean, tell me I’m wrong. But AI agents still don’t work well at all, the attacks are old and well known, hacking attacks have been scripted forever, and magic still doesn’t happen. Compare Anthropic’s scary stories about alleged Chinese hackers abusing Claudebot a couple of weeks ago.

It’s vendor hype. Don’t believe the hype, do keep basic security precautions, and actually listen to your info security people — that’ll put you ahead of 95% of targets right there.

• Video — Podcast

Something very strange is happening to the Apple Podcasts app. Over the last several months, I’ve found both the iOS and Mac versions of the Podcasts app will open religion, spirituality, and education podcasts with no apparent rhyme or reason. Sometimes, I unlock my machine and the podcast app has launched itself and presented one of the bizarre podcasts to me. On top of that, at least one of the podcast pages in the app includes a link to a potentially malicious website. Here are the titles of some of the very odd podcasts I’ve had thrust upon me recently (I’ve trimmed some and defanged some links so you don’t accidentally click one):

“5../XEWE2'""&#x22"onclic…”

“free will, free willhttp://www[.]sermonaudio[.]com/rss_search.asp?keyword=free%will on SermonAudio”

“Leonel Pimentahttps://play[.]google[.]com/store/apps/detai…”

“https://open[.]spotify[.]com/playlist/53TA8e97shGyQ6iMk6TDjc?...”

There was another with a title in Arabic that loosely translates to “Words of Life” and includes someone’s Gmail address. Sometimes the podcasts do have actual audio (one was a religious sermon); others are completely silent. The podcasts are often years old, but for some reason are being shown to me now.

I’ll be honest: I don’t really know what exactly is going on here. And neither did an expert I spoke to. But it’s clear someone, somewhere, is trying to mess with Apple Podcasts and its users.

“The most concerning behavior is that the app can be launched automatically with a podcast of an attacker’s choosing,” Patrick Wardle, a macOS security expert and the creator of Mac-focused cybersecurity organization Objective-See, said. “I have replicated similar behavior, albeit via a website: simply visiting a website is enough to trigger Podcasts to open (and a load a podcast of the attacker’s choosing), and unlike other external app launches on macOS (e.g. Zoom), no prompt or user approval is required.”

To caveat straight away: this isn’t that alarming. This is not the biggest hack or issue in the world. But it’s still very weird behavior and Apple has not responded to any of my requests for comment for months. “Of course, very much worth stressing, on its own this is not an attack,” Wardle continued. “But it does create a very effective delivery mechanism if (and yes, big if) a vulnerability exists in the Podcasts app.

That said, someone has tried to deliver something a bit more malicious through the Podcasts app. It’s the first podcast I mentioned, with the title “5../XEWE2'""&#x22"onclic…”. Maybe some readers have already picked up on this, but the podcast is trying to direct listeners to a site that attempts to perform a cross-site scripting, or XSS, attack. XSS is basically when a hacker injects their own malicious code into a website that otherwise looks legit. It’s definitely a low-hanging fruit kind of attack, at least today. I remember it being way, way more common 10 years ago, and it was ultimately what led to the infamous MySpace worm.

The weird link is included in the “Show Website” section of the podcast’s page. Visiting that redirects to another site, “test[.]ddv[.]in[.]ua.” A pop-up then says “XSS. Domain: test[.]ddv[.]in[.]ua.”

I’m seemingly not the only one who has seen this. A review left in the Podcasts app just a few weeks ago says “Scam. How does Apple allow this attempted XSS attack?” The person gave the podcast one star. That podcast itself dates from around 2019.

“Whether any of those attempts have worked remains unclear, but the level of probing shows that adversaries are actively evaluating the Podcasts app as a potential target,” Wardle said.

Overall, the whole thing gives a similar vibe to Google Calendar spam, where someone will sneakily add an event to your calendar and include whatever info or link they’re trying to spread around. I remember that being a pretty big issue a few years ago. 

Apple did not acknowledge or respond to five emails requesting comment. The company did respond to other emails for different articles I was working on across that time.

An astronomer has reported a possible new signature of dark matter, a mysterious substance that makes up most of the universe, according to a study published on Tuesday in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics. 

Dark matter accounts for 85 percent of all matter in the universe, but its existence has so far been inferred only from its indirect effects on the familiar “baryonic” matter that makes up stars, planets, and life. 

Tomonori Totani, a professor of astronomy at the University of Tokyo and the author of the study, believes he has spotted novel indirect traces of dark matter particles in the “halo” surrounding the center of our galaxy using new observations from NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. When these speculative particles collide—a process called dark matter annihilation—the crash is predicted to emit bright gamma rays, which is the light that Totani thinks he has identified.

“The discovery was made possible by focusing on the halo region (excluding the galactic center), which had received little attention, and by utilizing data accumulated over 15 years from the Fermi satellite,” Totani told 404 Media in an email. “After carefully removing all components other than dark matter, a signal resembling dark matter appeared.” 

“It was like playing the lottery, and at first I was skeptical,” he added. “But after checking meticulously and thinking it seemed correct, I got goosebumps!”

If the detection is corroborated by follow-up studies, it could confirm a leading hypothesis that dark matter is made of a hypothetical class of weakly interacting massive particles, or “WIMPs”—potentially exposing the identity of this mysterious substance for the first time. But that potential breakthrough is still a ways off, according to other researchers in the field. 

“Any new structure in the gamma-ray sky is interesting, but the dark matter interpretation here strikes me as quite preliminary,” said Danielle Norcini, an experimental particle physicist and

assistant professor at Johns Hopkins University, in an email to 404 Media. 

Dark matter has flummoxed scientists for almost a century. In the 1930s, astronomer Fritz Zwicky observed that the motions of galaxies hinted that they are much more massive than expected based solely on visible baryonic matter. Since then, astronomers have confirmed that dark matter, which accumulates into dense halos at the centers of galaxies, acts like a gravitational glue that holds structures together. Dark matter is also the basis of a vast cosmic web of gaseous threads that links galaxy clusters across billions of light years. 

But while dark matter is ubiquitous, it does not interact with the electromagnetic force, which means it does not absorb, reflect, or emit light. This property makes it difficult to spot with traditional astronomy, a challenge that has inspired the development of novel instruments designed to directly detect dark matter such as the subterranean LUX-ZEPLIN in South Dakota and the forthcoming DAMIC-M in France. 

For years, scientists have been probing possible emission from dark matter annihilation at the center of the Milky Way, which is surrounded by a halo of densely-clustered dark matter. Those previous studies focus on an excess emission pattern of about 2 gigaelectronvolts (GeV). Tontani’s study spotlights a new and different pattern with extremely energetic gamma rays at 20 GeV. 

“A part of the Fermi data showed a peculiar excess that our model couldn't explain, leading me to suspect it might be due to radiation originating from dark matter,” he said. “The most difficult part is removing gamma-ray emissions of origins other than dark matter, such as those from cosmic rays and celestial objects.”

This tentative report may finally fill in a major missing piece of our understanding of the universe by exposing the true nature of dark matter and confirming the existence of WIMPs. But given that similar claims have been made in the past, more research is needed to assess the significance of the results.

“For any potential indirect signal, the key next steps are independent checks: analyses using different background models, different assumptions about the Milky Way halo, and ideally complementary data sets,” Norcini said.

“Gamma-ray structures in the halo can have many astrophysical origins, so ruling those out requires careful modeling and cross-comparison,” she continued. “At this point the result seems too new for that scrutiny to have played out, and it will take multiple groups looking at the same data before a dark matter interpretation could be considered robust.”

Though Totani is confident in his interpretation of his discovery, he also looks forward to the input of other dark matter researchers around the world.

“First, I would like other researchers to independently verify my analysis,” he said. “Next, for everyone to be convinced that this is truly dark matter, the decisive factor will be the detection of gamma rays with the same spectrum from other regions, such as dwarf galaxies. The accumulation of further data from the Fermi satellite and large ground-based gamma-ray telescopes, such as the Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory (CTAO) will be crucial.”

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This investigation is part of a collaboration between Bellingcat and Evident. You can watch Evident’s video here.

Children in Chicago’s Old Irving Park neighbourhood were preparing for a Halloween parade on Oct. 25 when federal agents reportedly deployed tear gas on the street to disperse protesters opposing immigration-related arrests in the neighbourhood.

“Those kids were tear gassed on their way to celebrate Halloween in their local school parking lot,” US District Judge Sara Ellis said in court on Tuesday, according to a CBS News report. “I can only imagine how terrified they were.” 

Ellis was questioning US Customs and Border Patrol Commander Gregory Bovino over this and other incidents that protesters allege violate a temporary restraining order (TRO) she issued earlier this month. 

The Oct. 9 TRO was issued after a group of journalists, faith leaders and protesters filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration over what they described as a “pattern of extreme brutality” by federal agents against peaceful protesters since Operation Midway Blitz – a multi-agency operation against “criminal illegal aliens” in Illinois – began on Sept. 2. 

When Judge Ellis asked Bovino to produce all use-of-force reports since Sept. 2 from agents involved in Operation Midway Blitz by the end of Tuesday, Bovino said it would be impossible because of the “sheer amount”. Ellis then ordered Bovino to turn over these reports, along with the accompanying body camera footage, by the end of Friday, Oct. 31.

The court order places restrictions on federal agents’ crowd-control measures within the state, including their use of “riot control weapons” such as tear gas and pepper spray, the use of force against individuals and requiring people to leave public spaces that they lawfully have the right to be in. 

A subsequent court filing on Oct. 27 alleges that federal agents have violated the TRO “almost every day” since it was issued. “Immigration enforcement does not typically require the daily use of tear gas on civilians in residential areas,” the filing stated.

Bellingcat’s analysis of social media videos from 28 events in Illinois from Oct. 9 to Oct. 27 found multiple examples of force and riot control weapons being used.

In total, we found seven that appeared to show the use of riot control weapons when there was seemingly no apparent immediate threat by protesters and no audible warnings given. Nineteen showed use of force, such as tackling people to the ground when they were not visibly resisting. Another seven showed agents ordering or threatening people to leave public places. Some of the events identified showed incidents that appeared to fall into more than one of these categories. 

You can view the full dataset here. 

It is important to note that the full context of an incident may be unclear from videos on social media alone. Bystanders often only begin filming when an arrest is already ongoing, for example, which can make it difficult to determine what happened in the moments before force was applied. Each of the events included in our dataset were verified to have taken place in Illinois in recent weeks with at least two sources – videos taken by different people, local reporting or statements from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

The DHS – which oversees Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) as well as the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) – has justified the use of force or riot control weapons by saying that protesters were threatening or attacking agents. 

Bellingcat asked DHS whether it had any response to the TRO or allegations that agents had violated the TRO.

In a response received after the publication of this piece, Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin did not directly address the TRO but said DHS officers “only use crowd control methods as a last resort when repeated warnings have been given”. 

DHS also said, several times in its response, that its officers were “facing a 1,000 percent increase in assaults against them”. This is a claim that the department has previously made when commenting on clashes with protesters during immigration operations in other cities such as Los Angeles and Portland. However, an NPR analysis of court records earlier this month only showed about a 25 percent rise in charges for assault against federal officers through mid-September, compared with the same period a year ago.

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The TRO does say that riot control weapons or force may be deployed in circumstances such as where there is an “immediate threat” of physical harm to the agents or others, multiple warnings have been given, or where “necessary and proportional” for an arrest. We did not include videos where it was obvious that such conditions had been met. 

Despite the limitations, videos taken by eyewitnesses are often the only evidence of such incidents, which may not be reported by media or may have concluded by the time journalists reach the scene.

Riot Control Weapons

In our analysis, we found videos showing the use of riot control weapons such as tear gas, pepper spray and other less-lethal weapons in seven events where protesters appeared to be posing no visible threat in the footage, and where no audible warnings appeared to be given. 

Among its provisions, the TRO prohibits the use of these types of weapons on people “who are not posing an immediate threat to the safety of a law enforcement officer or others” and also in cases where using them on intended targets would result in injury to those who aren’t posing any threat. 

One of these videos captured the moment Bovino threw what looked like a tear gas canister during the Oct. 23 clashes in the Little Village neighbourhood, during an operation where eight people were arrested, including a 16-year-old US citizen. Bovino and DHS have said that he was hit on the head by objects thrown by protesters before he threw the tear gas canister.  

DHS posted a video on Facebook, claiming that it was evidence that “the use of chemical munitions was conducted in full accordance with CBP policy and was necessary to ensure the safety of both law enforcement and the public”. 

The video showed a rock skidding on the ground behind Bovino, but did not show the moment that it allegedly hit the Border Patrol chief on the head. A protester who filmed the encounter has reportedly disputed that Bovino was hit. 

Tear gas was also deployed on Oct. 12 in Albany Park, Oct. 14 in the East Side of Chicago, Oct. 24 in Lakeview and Oct. 25 in Avondale. Bellingcat reviewed footage of each of these incidents and could not see threats to the agents’ safety in the videos before tear gas was deployed, or that audible warnings were issued within the footage.

Videos we reviewed also showed other types of riot-control weapons mentioned in the TRO. Another video from the Oct. 23 protests in Little Village, posted by a protester named Enrique Bahena, shows an agent shooting a less-lethal projectile directly at the person filming. An Oct. 26 court filing said Bahena was shot in the “neck from five feet away with a pepper ball”. 

Bellingcat’s analysis of the video, which appears to be the same one shown in screengrabs in the court filing, found that the video in fact shows the agent deploying a B&T GL-06 40mm launcher, which can be used to launch chemical irritant rounds such as the one visible in the video.  

Bahena said in an interview with local outlet Chicago Block Club that agents did not give warnings before they shot him “in the throat” and threw gas canisters at the group of protesters who were shouting at them to leave. He also said in the interview that protesters did throw objects at agents, but that this was after agents had already used force.

B&T technical specifications for their 40mm projectiles state that “shots to the head, neck, spine, or heart are to be avoided unless lethal force is justified”, and advise users to aim at the waistline. 

A DHS Office of Inspector General Report in 2021 states that “ICE’s use of force policy indicates that the 40MM launcher is deadly force when fired at someone, while the CBP use of force policy only directs officers not to target a person’s head or neck”.

During this same event in Little Village, videos show other officers appearing to fire less-lethal weapons towards protestors.

The TRO restricts the use of Compressed Air Launchers or Munitions Launchers such as 40mm launchers to strike a person, including on the neck, unless they pose an “immediate threat of causing serious bodily injury or death”.  

In another incident on Oct. 22, an agent appeared to quickly roll down a window and spray what appeared to be a chemical irritant at protesters who were confronting federal officers near a Sam’s Club store in the Cicero neighbourhood of Chicago. 

The incident was captured in two separate livestreams, which show a few protesters near an unmarked dark grey Chevrolet Tahoe with no front licence plate. One of the protesters taps on the window of the vehicle. Someone then rolls down the window and sprays what appears to be a liquid very quickly before rolling the window back up as the car leaves the scene. One of the people filming said in the post for the livestream that this was pepper spray, although Bellingcat was unable to verify this. 

DHS did not respond directly to Bellingcat’s questions about whether it believed that the use of riot-control weapons – including during the Oct. 23 Little Village protests – was justified based on the terms of the TRO. 

Use of Force

Bellingcat also reviewed multiple videos of agents using force in arrests that appeared to be related to Operation Midway Blitz, and identified those where the force shown being used looked potentially excessive and the person being arrested did not appear to pose an “immediate threat of physical harm to others” – a requirement in the TRO for using force such as tackling or shoving someone to the ground.

On Oct. 10, a day after the TRO was issued, an ICE agent was seen dragging a teenage girl out of a car in Hoffman Estates, a suburb of Chicago, and tackling her to the ground while she shouted “I’m not resisting”. The teenager, reportedly an 18-year-old US citizen, was handcuffed and an officer appeared to put a knee on her back. DHS Assistant Secretary McLaughlin said in a post that the incident was a “burglary” arrest from 2024 which did not involve ICE – although this has been debunked by multiple news outlets. 

Bellingcat asked DHS about this specific incident and why McLaughlin’s post remains up on X despite multiple news outlets verifying that the incident took place this month in Hoffman Estates, but did not receive a response. 

This was not the only case where DHS’ version of events appears to contradict video footage of the incident posted on social media. 

On Oct. 22, a woman identified by DHS as Isabel Mata was arrested by Border Patrol agents in Little Village. A video of the incident shows multiple agents tackling her while one of them has his knee on her back to hold her to the ground. DHS stated Mata “allegedly threatened a law enforcement officer after stating she would put a hit out on Chief Gregory Bovino”. Bellingcat reviewed a video that showed the minutes before Mata was tackled by agents but did not hear any threat being made, even though Mata appeared to have been standing near the person filming.

DHS initially did not respond to Bellingcat’s questions about this incident, but after publication it sent us the same statement it made on Oct. 24 with the allegation that Mata had threatened Bovino.

Another video from Oct. 10 appears to show agents colliding with a car on Hubbard Street and dragging the driver out by her legs. The woman, identified as Dayanne Figueroa, told Newsweek that she was on her way to get coffee before work and “instead of handling the situation as a routine traffic incident”, masked armed agents forcibly removed her without questions or informing that she was under arrest.

DHS reportedly told Newsweek that Border Patrol was making a targeted arrest when Figueroa’s vehicle blocked agents and struck an unmarked government vehicle. They also said she “violently resisted” and was arrested for assault on a federal agent.

The video shows agents arresting someone, before one of their vehicles swerves into another lane and appears to hit Figueroa’s car. Multiple bystanders can be heard shouting that the agents hit Figueroa’s car first and that they were making a U-turn in the middle of the street.

Bellingcat asked DHS about the conditions under which it would consider the use of force – such as tackling or shoving people to the ground – proportionate and necessary, but did not receive a direct response to this question. 

Dispersal Orders

The TRO prohibits federal agents from “issuing a crowd dispersal order requiring any person to leave a public place that they lawfully have a right to be, unless dispersal is justified by exigent circumstances as defined by Department of Homeland Security Use of Force Policy”. 

Bellingcat has asked DHS about when agents are justified in telling people to get off the streets, or people in cars to stop following them, and whether there are any laws preventing people from following or filming federal agents from a distance. DHS did not respond to these questions in their response after this story was published.

However, we found several examples of agents telling people to leave public places when they did not appear to be impeding arrests in video footage. 

In a video recorded in Chicago’s Arlington Heights on Oct. 24, a masked man with a rifle tells someone filming to “get the f*** across the street” and “get back to your car”. The person filming is shouting that agents have assaulted a woman and slapped her phone out of her hands, and the video appears to show a woman in a scuffle with a masked agent. A separate video from the same location and date shows agents arresting a man who is on the ground. 

In some of these cases, agents appear to be pointing non-lethal weapons at civilians while ordering them to leave public spaces. A video from Oct. 16 shows agents telling protesters to “get out of the street”, pointing pepper spray at them and threatening them with arrest in Chicago’s Evanston neighbourhood.

A similar incident took place in Rolling Meadows on Oct. 19 when an officer was pictured pointing a pepper ball gun from a moving vehicle at a person filming him in a parking lot. A federal judge reportedly said the incident was “troubling” and has called for answers. 

On Oct. 20, in Berwyn, an agent pointed a gun at a woman who said she was pregnant. By the woman’s account, the agents were chasing after two people and the video shows her honking to alert those nearby. A DHS agent told Newsweek that the agent “acted to protect his life and safety of others around him and showed great restraint”.

Judge Ellis’ TRO is set to expire on Nov. 6. There is a scheduled hearing the day prior, Nov. 5, to determine if the TRO should be converted into a preliminary injunction. 

Editor’s Note (Oct. 31): This story was updated to include a response by the Department of Homeland Security who responded to our request for comment after publication.

Pooja Chaudhuri, Kolina Koltai, Youri van der Weide, Sebastian Vandermeersch, Melissa Zhu and Trevor Ball contributed research to this piece, alongside Fraser Crichton, Olivia Gresham, Bonny Albo and Vladimir Zaha from Bellingcat’s Global Authentication Project.

Bellingcat is a non-profit and the ability to carry out our work is dependent on the kind support of individual donors. If you would like to support our work, you can do so here. You can also subscribe to our Patreon channel here. Subscribe to our Newsletter and follow us on Twitter here and Mastodon here.

The post ‘Pattern of Extreme Brutality’: Tear Gas, Pepper Balls Among Weapons Deployed Against Protesters in Illinois appeared first on bellingcat.

Established in 1925, Bang & Olufsen (B&O) has been a bulwark of Danish Design – especially in the audio-tech sector – for a century now, processing the key tenets of quality production and sober aesthetics. That isn’t to say that it hasn’t periodically pushed the envelope of formal configuration and innovation in that time.

Take the Beosound A9 freestanding speaker. First released in 2012, the sculpture-disk-form device was a game changer, demonstrating the full potential of rapidly advancing technologies. While Beoplay H100 represented a significant improvement in headphone performance upon its release, the Beosound A5 Century Weave set forward the revolution in portable speaker modality.

A just released limited edition capsule collection, named The Centennial Collection, comprises all three key products in a special reskinning – marking the brand’s century of excellence. “Since our founding, timeless design has been at the heart of everything we craft,” says Kristian Teär, B&O CEO. “The Centennial Collection honors our past, celebrates our present, and looks to the future. It is a tribute to the icons that have shaped the brand and to the enduring values that define our legacy.”

The three distinctive devices have been reimagined with a coherence of design features from various defining eras: the checkered grill patterns of early radios, the vibrant yet tempered hues of the 1970s, and the brushed aluminum of the 1980s; a period cropping back up the trend cycle and becoming popular again. A ‘century’ red and ‘blue’ – as well as a chestnut brown – perfectly tie everything together. There’s something comfortable, transcendent even, in the deft melding of these subtle yet decipherably historic details.

The limited edition Beosound A5 Century Weave portable speaker is clad in a beige and chestnut brown raffia weave; evoking the boldly geometric radio grills of the 1950s. Carefully introduced metal framing and meticulously treated leather straps represent a superior focus on craftsmanship, an approach B&O has fostered since day one.

Wrapped in fellow Danish design brand Kvadrat’s Centennial Cadence fabric, the Beosound A9 Century Blue speaker is a color-block statement piece if there ever was one. Its slim and sleek brushed aluminum frame keeps the form perfectly together.

Developed for Dolby Atmos, the Beoplay H100 Century Brown headphones feature titanium drivers and advanced noise cancellation for an elevated listening experience. Finished in brown leather ear cushions, its glass disc is rendered in natural silver tone.

Each product is furnished with an “B&O Est. 1925 Anniversary” and “A never failing will to create only the best” moniker, recalling founders Peter Bang and Svend Olufsen’s original mission.

For more information on Bang & Olufsen’s The Centennial Collection, please visit bang-olufsen.com.

Photography courtesy of Bang & Olufsen.

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The good news is they're also telling the aliens to do something about the dolphins.