In addition to the rubber balls, there’s a nice physical interface on the side for adjusting volume and pairing multiple Mix speakers together if you have multiple on hand (I was only sent the single mono speaker). Setup involves installing the Soundboks app, pairing to the speaker via Bluetooth on your phone, and picking whatever you want to play. It’s all quick and painless, especially for my first-time pairing with a Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra.

Otherwise, it’s all very pro audio. Everything reminds me very much of the Peavey PA system I have in my music rehearsal space. The top of the speaker features a built-in carrying handle and a place for a strap (an accessory you have to buy aftermarket, or you can fasten it with any strap you have that fits through the hole). There are also top-hat mounts for the speakers to slide onto traditional PA pole stands, if you wanted to use them in that way at a party or event.

The grill is replaceable, as is the massive internal battery, which means that these things are pretty much indestructible as long as the amp and speakers themselves still work—the battery is the weak point of most portable speakers in 2026.

I bounced it around my yard, dropped it off my patio, and generally beat the crap out of it during my two-week testing period, and the thing just needed a little wipe down and a charge when it ran out of juice. The claimed 40 hours of battery at reasonable volume is accurate, but you’ll get about eight hours at max volume (which is very good for the category). If you need to bring some walk-out music to your kid’s all-day Little League tournament, this a great way to go.

Big Sound

Soundboks calls this speaker midsize, but at 21.4 pounds and the size of a medium-size cooler, I’d still call it a large speaker. That said, the size doesn’t make it any less portable than competitors from JBL and others; you still need a car or cargo ebike to take one of these with you, so what’s a couple inches here or there? The fact that this is a rectangle actually makes it easier to strap down than many others, especially with the holes for the strap and the built-in handle to tie down through.

Lisa Ann technically quit the porn business in 2019, but for $30 a month you can now dream up any X-rated scenario of her on your computer.

Ann, 53, was an adult performer for three decades starting in the mid 1990s and retired because she had reached her savings goal.

But last year she had a change of heart. Ann, who considers herself an AI fanatic, signed a contract with OhChat, a London-based AI companion company, to license her likeness on its platform, essentially creating an AI version of her in every way that can be used to make sex scenes for paying customers: same voice, same physique, and same pillowy brown hair.

As issues around deepfakes intensify and questions about the future of the adult industry become more dire with the passing of age-verification laws, several AI companion platforms want to create a new standard for consent-driven AI porn. More than sexting a faceless chatbot, digital twins—also called duplicates, doubles, clones, or replicas—draw on the exact likeness, including speech and mannerisms, of your favorite performers and creators.

Ann, now a self-help author and sports radio host, represents a growing faction in adult entertainment who not only believe AI is going to reshape the sex industry but who want a say in how that change materializes. She sees the decision to partner with OhChat as a way to tap into a fountain of youth—and stay at her peak forever.

“This keeps my name alive,” she says of her digital twin. “She’s never going to age.”

For Cherie Deville, a 47-year-old performer known for shooting MILF content, digital twins are just a smart business strategy to earn passive income while the opportunity is hot. “We can either let the makers of AI take the lion’s share of the money in the sex-work space, or creators and businesses can get on board and start creating their own revenue sources through AI.”

OhChat creators, who must submit 30 images and undergo voice training with a bot, sign an agreement stating the level of sexual content allowed for their digital twin. Ann is considered a “Level 4”—the highest on the platform—which means paying members can create scenarios and chats of her that include full nudity and sex. Per the company’s guidelines, clones can be deleted at any time.

“For guys that like to say good morning or good night, they now have that access. The fact that I’m not shooting scenes anymore also allows new scenes to be created,” Ann says.

Once described by CEO Nic Young as the “love child between OnlyFans and OpenAI,” OhChat launched in 2024 and has since scaled to over 400,000 users. According to data shared with WIRED, OhChat has 250 creators, 90 percent of which are female, and has contracts with celebrities Carmen Elektra and Joe Exotic. The platform runs on a tiered subscription model—$5 a month for on-demand texts or up to $30 for unlimited adult content—and the company, like OnlyFans, takes a 20 percent cut.

Other competitors in the space include My.Club, Joi AI and SinfulX AI, the platform that adult film actress Georgia Koneva partnered with this month, saying, in a press statement, that her avatar gave her a “new way to share my voice and personality with the people who follow me.” According to SinfulX AI, it also develops “original” synthetic characters using licensed source imagery from adult performers whose content it has the rights to use. In the same statement, the company said that those AI-generated “characters” are “designed not to replicate any single individual while still maintaining the realism for which its content is known.”

Even as advanced mobile networks are being rapidly rolled out across the UK in towns and cities, reliable mobile connectivity is still a major blind spot inside modern office buildings – particularly as energy-efficient materials block signal and hybrid working raises expectations for coverage. To solve these issues, Telehouse Europe is partnering with Proptivity to enable high-performance indoor 4G and 5G connectivity across London workplaces.

The coming together of the global datacentre service firm and provider of shared mobile infrastructure for commercial buildings hopes to enable scalable indoor 4G and 5G across London workplaces via a neutral host model.

The firms said that at the heart of their mission is the drive for commercial buildings to become more energy-efficient, which has seen mobile signals often struggle to penetrate internal spaces, leading to inconsistent coverage. The result can be dropped calls, patchy data and the familiar experience of having to move around a building to find signal.

Proptivity said that it can address this by building and operating shared in-building mobile infrastructure under a neutral host model, enabling multiple mobile network operators (MNOs) to deliver coverage through a single deployment.

The partnership will see Proptivity using Telehouse’s London Docklands campus as its UK interconnection hub, enabling direct connectivity with UK mobile network operators and supporting the scalable deployment of indoor mobile infrastructure across commercial properties. This is said to already be helping building owners and occupiers across the capital deliver the reliable mobile connectivity that shared office tenants and visitors expect inside modern workplaces.

By establishing its UK hub at Telehouse’s London Docklands campus, Proptivity said that it has been able to interconnect with UK MNOs and extend services to enterprise buildings across the city in a consistent and scalable way, which it said is increasingly important as organisations balance hybrid working and as property owners look to make workplaces more connected, productive and attractive to tenants.

In addition to interconnection, Telehouse is offering Proptivity fibre-delivered, highly accurate timing sourced from the UK’s National Physical Laboratory (NPL) to ensure precise synchronisation for indoor 5G deployments where accurate timing is essential to high-performance connectivity. In commercial buildings, where rooftop satellite antenna installations can be complex or impractical, fibre-based timing provides a resilient and scalable alternative.

“NPL maintains the UK national timescale and makes highly accurate, traceable time available to industry,” said Elena Parsons, commercial manager for timing services at NPL. “For indoor 5G sites where rooftop GNSS is difficult, fibre-delivered timing provides a practical alternative and an additional layer of resilience, helping networks to remain stable even if satellite timing is disrupted.”

Commenting on the partnership, Proptivity director Magnus Kelly said: “With Telehouse’s support, we are delivering highly accurate timing to our indoor 5G systems in London. This precision is critical to ensuring consistent, high-quality mobile performance inside buildings, allowing people to use their phones seamlessly when they are in the office.”

Will Scott, vice-president of sales for Telehouse Europe, added: “Telehouse’s London Docklands campus sits at the heart of the UK connectivity ecosystem, and we are pleased to support Proptivity’s roll-out. By providing a resilient interconnection environment with secure facilities and on-site support, we are helping deliver reliable mobile service across commercial buildings for the people who use them every day. That matters because businesses now see dependable mobile coverage as a basic requirement of office space.”