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Get a 2018 Microsoft Surface Laptop 2 on sale today for $800. It’s got a 13.5-inch display and comes 8GB of RAM and a 128GB solid-state drive. The 2.76-pound computer also features facial recognition, a one-day battery life, and omnidirectional speakers. If you purchase the Surface Pen, you’re able to use the screen as a tablet and take notes or draw. $800. Today you can save $80 on these beautiful Edifier S2000pro bookshelf speakers, which are now available for $320....

Deforestation leads to an enormous amount of carbon emissions. Lumber rots, and the organic matter stored in the forest floor begins to break down. Stopping that process would reduce global emissions, and reforestation could begin to soak up atmospheric carbon. The IPCC estimates that better forest-management practices could reduce emissions by 14 gigatons of carbon a year in 2030—nearly twice the annual carbon emissions of the United States. Given that decarbonizing the US economy is projected to cost trillions of dollars, a global commitment of $20 billion for forests doesn’t seem like a lot, says Jason Schatz, science lead at Descartes Labs, a company that builds deforestation models based on satellite data....

KitchenAid’s professional six-quart mixer can make up to 13 dozen cookies at a time. Today, you can get it on sale for 25 percent off—now just $209. This is one of the lowest prices I’ve seen. The mixer comes with three head attachments: a flat beater, a dough hook, and a stainless steel six-wire whisk. As the beater rotates around the stainless steel bowl, it has 67 points of contact....

BlackBerry is now called BlackBerry. The company used to be called Research in Motion, or RIM, which most people did not know and was confusing. Now it’s BlackBerry. There are two new phones, running one new operating system. The operating system is called BlackBerry 10, and it’s completely new–has basically nothing in common with any old BlackBerry system besides a few features (BBM is still around). The first phone, probably the flagship, is the Z10, an all-touchscreen device with a 4....

_ Click to launch the photo gallery_ Grand Challenges are ambitious but achievable, imagination-inspiring but believable, and they have to have results that are measurable–like sequencing the human genome, or landing a couple of people on the moon and returning them safely home. Past DARPA Grand Challenges have led to self-driving cars, translating messages on shredded paper, and more–soon, even humanoid robots that can work alongside human warfighters. DARPA wants some help picking a new one, and there’s a formal request for proposals....

One of these flying taxi prototypes took off for the first time in January. The machine, called the PAV—passenger air vehicle—is a project of Boeing and its subsidiary, Aurora Flight Sciences. On June 4, during an uncrewed test, the vehicle crashed, and an investigation by the NTSB is ongoing. The news was first reported by aviation-focused outlets such as Aviation Week following an Uber Elevate conference in June. During a test flight, one of the propellers, which give the craft the ability to take off and land vertically, failed....

At Ranney Ranch in central New Mexico, the cattle herd moves between about 33 smaller pastures within a larger 18,000-acre ranch on rocky mesa grassland. The cows graze down one pasture at a time for a period of a few days to three weeks in what’s called adaptive multi-paddock (AMP) grazing. Then, the ranchers move the ruminants to the next patch, and the just-grazed area has at least six months to rest....

Clothes shopping can be an overwhelming experience. Between inconsistent sizes and ever-shifting trends, picking out a pair of jeans can feel like an uphill battle. One extra decision for consumers is the fabric. Garment tags boasting organic cotton lay on a rack next to 100 percent rayon, and each new blend of fibers promises better softness, durability, or sweat-wicking ability. If consumers hope to pursue sustainable shopping practices, finding pieces made from high-quality, long-lasting fabric is a good start to keeping their fashionable finds out of the landfill....

To create it, Chacin embedded the electronics from an MP3 player, an amplifier circuit, and a motor into a wax mold of her upper mouth. The motor drives vibrations from the MP3 player, controlled with the tongue, into the cochlea, where they’re translated as sound.

Canadian geologist Dominic Papineau schemed for years to ­visit this lonely place, known as the Nuvvuagittuq Supracrustal Belt. In 2008, he finally rounded up a couple thousand dollars in funding and set out from the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, D.C., journeying through three layovers and a final leg on a bush plane. If you like rocks—and don’t mind mosquitoes—it’s a great place to ­ramble for a couple of weeks in the summer....

The Nike-like advertisement, titled “Train On,” depicts Pokémon as though it were a real sport. Shots of various competitive scenes appear initially: a young boy running, a young girl dominating multiple people in chess and a football captain getting his teammates excited. Each scene is followed by the refrain, “I can do that,” in both English and once in Japanese—a nod to Pokémon’s country of origin. Only after the inspired football players do we see an actual trainer take to the arena in hopes of conducting a Pokémon battle....

The researchers tested pet border collies on their logical reasoning, ability to learn new visual associations, and memory, and found that dogs’ learning abilities do decline as they get older. But the researchers also found that older dogs outperformed younger dogs on reasoning tests, and maintained their long-term memory into old age. They tested 95 border collies, ranging in age from five months to nearly 14 years old. They divided the dogs into five age groups intended to reflect the developmental periods of a border collie’s life (late puppyhood, adolescence, early adulthood, middle age, and late adulthood)....

Light in the visible spectrum, similar to an FM radio, consists of many different frequencies. Both light and radio are part of the electromagnetic spectrum. But light, unlike radio waves, is measured in nanometers (characterizing its wavelength) instead of megahertz (characterizing its wave frequency). Light that the average human eye can perceive ranges from 400 to 700 nanometers in wavelength. The typical security camera equipped with night vision makes use of a single color and wavelength of infrared light, which is longer than 700 nanometers, to create a scene....

However, since Russia’s annexation of Crimea and continued support for armed separatists fighting in Eastern Ukraine, reusing these old engines became somewhat politically toxic. To get American military satellites on American-made rockets, the United States Air Force just awarded contracts to Orbital ATK and SpaceX to build them. SpaceX’s $33.6 million share of the contract is aimed at further developing the “Raptor” rocket engine, which will be six times more powerful than the engine the company will use to launch a satellite on Sunday....

I originally reviewed the iPad Air when it came out and found it to be the best iPad for most people who could afford the extra cost over the standard $329 iPad. On paper, the refreshed 2022 version of the iPad Air doesn’t take any massive leaps that make it a must-buy compared to its predecessor. The 2020 iPad Air offers the A14 Bionic chip, a 10.9-inch liquid retina display, and full compatibility with the current Apple Pencil....

Jackery Portable Power Station Explorer 300 $209 (was $349) Jackery’s super-portable power station is probably smaller than your current toaster. But, it stores enough juice inside to power a flagship smartphone up to 10 times or even more depending on the device. It has a pair of standard outlets, as well as USB-A and USB-C connectivity, so you can plug in your router and your laptop and keep right on shopping for deals in case the power goes out during the Prime Early Access sale....

The show came back in 2014, produced by Druyan and Seth MacFarlane and starring astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, to much acclaim. Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey covered much of the same ground as the original show, with updated information and visuals. The second season of the show was briefly delayed due to investigations into sexual harassment and assault allegations against Tyson, which were conducted by both Fox and National Geographic and the American Museum of Natural History, where Tyson leads the Hayden Planetarium....

After roughly a week with the third-gen AirPods, the seemingly samey design stands apart. The redesigned ’buds have clearly carved out their own spot in the hierarchy with revamped internal components and a new shape that should fit more ears than their predecessors. The old AirPods were excellent. The new ones are even better. Setting up the new AirPods 3 The big jump from first-gen to second-gen AirPods centered around a move from the older W1 chip to Apple’s newer H1....

As tech giants like Google, Microsoft, and Sony eye the water, Apple stands well behind, the diver reluctant to make the plunge. Apple, known for its practice of releasing refined ideas once others bring them to market, has slowly been amassing the means to build a virtual reality device, as shown by reports and recent acquisitions. Most recently, Apple has acquired Flyby, an augmented reality company that looks to give smartphones and tablets the ability to be “aware” of their surroundings, according to the Financial Times (the company had previously been working with Google, one of Apple’s chief rivals, on augmented reality devices in Google’s “Project Tango” family)....