Senior Dog’s Friends Get Adopted — But He’s Still At The Shelter 2 Years Later

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“We would love it if someone would adopt him outright and take on his medical bills because then we could save more animals, but we know that that’s not likely,” McKelvey said. “So now we’d like to get him a lifetime foster … somebody who will give him security and shelter and love and attention, and bring him in for his vet appointments with us. Essentially, it would be their dog, and they would help make all the decisions with us and everything, but we would just pay for the medical bills.”

Henry actually has a foster mom right now — but she travels a lot, and Henry goes back to the shelter while she’s away.

People Hear Cries For Help Beneath Recently Poured Cement

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“He was afraid at first but eventually he came out after about 10 hours of waiting,” Vielsack said. “I was really scared that I would have to watch him die in there.”

Fortunately, Jimmy did make it out — and a trip to the vet confirmed that he’d survived the ordeal relatively unscathed; he had lost quite a bit of weight, however.

But he still looks regal as ever, as you can see.

Dog Discovers Best Way To Stay Cool During Summer Heat

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Baloo had dragged the sprinkler out of the backyard and through the doggy door. He had been playing with the sprinkler inside for at least a few minutes, and water was everywhere — soaking Wohr’s lamp, ceiling fan, TV, leather chair, coffee table and photo albums.

It took a combination of elbow grease and Mother Nature to get things back to normal in the household. “After about five big towels and leaving the back door open for an hour and a half with temperatures at 107 outside, things started drying up,” Wohr noted.

Baloo has been obsessed with sprinklers ever since temperatures started spiking in June, and since then Wohr has had trouble separating her playful dog from his favorite water toy.

Family Wakes Up To A Crash And Finds Surprising Intruder In Their Home

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The large kangaroo standing inside his house then provided an immediate explanation. “I haven’t even seen a kangaroo in my life,” Ahokavo told local news.

The kangaroo was, understandably, just as freaked out as Ahokavo. And the blood splattered around was actually the animal’s own, from some scratches he got when he hurled himself through the window.

At a loss, Ahokavo contacted the police, who then contacted Five Freedoms Animal Rescue, a local organization run by Manfred and Helen Zabinskas. They rushed over to help.

Guy Learns Why You Should Never Taunt A Wild Bison

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The park, known for its local elk, buffalo, grizzly bears and coyote, can be a dangerous place to visit if proper safety precautions are ignored — as can any area where wild animals are common.

“Never approach animals or block traffic to view them. The animals in Yellowstone are wild and unpredictable, no matter how calm they appear to be,” the National Park Service cautions. “Always stay at least 100 yards (91 m) away from bears and wolves, and at least 25 yards (23 m) away from all other animals, including bison and elk.”

Jones posted the tense video on her Facebook page, along with the caption, “#dontdrinkandbuffalo.” While it’s unknown if the shoeless man was actually inebriated or not, provoking a bison into a face-off certainly isn’t a decision made soberly.

This ‘Village’ Full Of Foxes Is Not As Cute As It Seems

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Some foxes followed the tourists around the enclosure, pulling at their clothes and begging for treats. These aggressive begging and fighting behaviors are a symptom of overcrowding, and living in a mid-to-high-stress environment, Rob Laidlaw, executive director of Zoocheck, a wildlife protection agency, told The Dodo.

In Japan, foxes primarily inhabit sparsely populated mountainous areas, or the outskirts of villages. They do not naturally come into contact with humans or, for the most part, other foxes, he said.

You Won’t Miss Brookstone, But You Should

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In singularly unsurprising news, Brookstone has filed for bankruptcy. The company will shutter its remaining 101 mall storefronts, officially closing out an era that began its fade years ago. Even if you won’t mourn its disappearance—even if you haven’t stepped inside a mall since the Mallrats era—it’s worth a moment of appreciation, and a full accounting of what’s been lost.

Brookstone debuted in 1965, a year after the Beatles first came to the United States, and a year before Star Trek boldly took it where no TV show had gone before. It was born as a catalog, a sort of proto-Amazon, promising “hard to find tools” within its pages. The stores came later, in the early 70s, eventually becoming as endemic to suburban shopping malls as Auntie Anne’s and Claire’s and that arcade with the double-screened X-Men game.

When you think of Brookstone now, you think of its massage chairs. How could you not? That’s what got you in the door, after an enervating hour of roaming the Borders aisles and soaking in the cologne at Abercrombie & Fitch. Brookstone offered a vibrating oasis with heated lumbar support.

It was more, though. During the height of the mall era, Brookstone carried gadgets that were both sublime and absurd, often at the same time. Before Bluetooth’s ubiquity, it sold wireless headphones with a range that barely encompassed a dorm room. In the aughts, you could nab a self-contained sea monkey habitat that looks like an orb from Labyrinth. And of course there were, and still are, the foot baths.

During the height of the mall era, Brookstone carried gadgets that were both sublime and absurd, often at the same time.

“Brookstone has always been a place of discovering new things,” says Brookstone public relations director Paul Donovan.

That includes some eventual mainstream hits as well; Brookstone was among the first to carry Parrot drones and iRobot vacuums, Tempur-Pedic beds and Fitbit wearables. But its main appeal was that sense of discovery, the joy of the inessential. What do you get the person who has everything? Something so niche from Brookstone—a “fermentation crock” designed specifically for sauerkraut, say—that it’s guaranteed to delight, or at the very least to surprise.

“Brookstone offers a number of unique and innovate products created by third parties who—prior to their relationship with Brookstone—do not have access to wide distribution channels,” the company wrote in its bankruptcy filing. In other words, the weird little gadgets and toys that remind you that tech doesn’t have to conform to perfectly chamfered rectangles. It can be janky and odd and unexpected, and all the more fun for it. “Brookstone has always been a place you go when you don’t know what you want,” says Donovan.

To be clear, not all of that is going away. This isn’t even Brookstone’s first bankruptcy. It’ll retain its online presence, and its 35 airport stores will remain open. It’s not the same, though. You go to a Brookstone at the airport out of necessity; it just happens to sell the nearest pair of headphones or two-tone neck pillow. It was discovery that brought you to the Brookstone at the mall.

That will hold true until the remaining locations shutter. But the long collapse of the shopping mall in the US is well-documented. Brookstone isn’t its first victim, and won’t be its last. If anything, it’s remarkable that it held on so long. Its contemporary, Sharper Image, shut down its last 86 stores in the summer of 2008.

‘Brookstone has always been a place you go when you don’t know what you want.’

Brookstone PR director Paul Donovan

Something else may be at work in Brookstone’s retreat as well. Losing foot traffic surely was the knockout blow, but its online and airport sales dropped steadily from 2015 to 2017 as well. It might be this: When Brookstone reigned, all gadgets were a little weird, a little risky. Not everything had a chip in it. But over the last decade, increasingly commoditized hardware has ceded the spotlight to software, to systems. In a world like that, Brookstone’s oddities and innovations have a hard time breaking through.

Still, Donovan sees opportunities ahead. The company has an airport store redesign on the way, and traditional retail operations still active in China.

Meanwhile, online, Brookstone recently instituted a “Makers Showcase” that gives promising crowdfunding projects a platform. Donovan touts the Royole RoWrite Smart Writing Pad, a digital slab you can draw on, and zap the file to your iPad or Android device over a Bluetooth connection. He likes the GeoOrbital Pavement Electric Bike Wheel, which promises to “Convert your manual bicycle into an e-bike with a 20mph top speed.” Scrolling through the page, you’ll also find a “smart pillow,” and a Google Assistant shower speaker. And pretty quickly you realize that it’s true: Brookstone stores are closing, but its spirit lives on in these affable oddities.

“There’s been a democratization of innovation; more people can invent stuff. But somebody’s got to be there to put it all together, to find the good stuff and present it to you in a place that you trust and understand, and that’s always been Brookstone’s job,” says Donovan.

Getting people there will remain a challenge. The internet’s a lot bigger than a mall. And while Brookstone will carry on as an online source of last-minute Father’s Day and graduation gifts, there was nothing quite like walking into the store, knowing the unexpected was waiting for you on its shelves.

More Great WIRED Stories

Arm acquires data management service Treasure Data to bolster its IoT platform

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Arm, the semiconductor firm you probably still remember as ARM, today announced that it has acquired Treasure Data, a data management platform for large enterprise customers. The companies didn’t announce the financial details of the transaction, but earlier reporting by Bloomberg pegged the price at $600 million. This move strengthens Arm’s IoT nascent play, given that […]

These Headphones Make the Perfect Running Buds

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These headphones won’t fail—or fall out—when you’re dripping with sweat on the final sprint.

Plantronics Backbeat Fit 305

Plantronics’ reflective woven cable stands out with a stylish pop of color and a dab of safety. But we really love these buds for their toughness and clear sound. The IPX5 rating means they’re impervious to perspiration, and their stiff, loop-shaped wings mean the buds will stay wedged in your ears.

$64

RHA MA650

The velvet-smooth flexible band on this headset rests gently on the back of your neck to keep your buds in place during any sweat-making activity. They sound great, and their IPX4-rated skin shields them against moisture. Plus, the battery lasts far beyond the quoted 12 hours, so they’re perfect for an ultramarathon (or just an extra-long day at the beach).

$100

Jaybird Freedom 2 Wireless

The latest version of Jaybird’s beloved wireless, sweatproof buds still provide four hours of rich, natural sound, but now they have even more-­secure stay-put wings for anchoring them in your ears. Also improved is the cord-­management system, which keeps the cable from flopping against your skull—pretty annoying by mile 17.

$150

This article appears in the July issue. Subscribe now.

More Great WIRED Stories

Surface Go Review: Welcome to the Tiny-Computer Future

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Taking a premium product and making it more affordable is a dangerous game. In the worst case, you end up with the notorious Cadillac Cimarron—a frumpy sedan that was barely different from its cheap Chevrolet and Pontiac stablemates. You can’t just take any old widget, apply an expensive brand, and call it a day.

That’s why I think the new Microsoft Surface Go is an impressive device. It’s a cheaper Surface Pro-style tablet, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll miss out on important features. While you can find cut corners, most folks who need a super portable basic computer won’t feel like they’ve been swindled.

The teeny-tiny Go, focused on portability and starting at $399, might not be powerful enough to replace a brawny laptop. But if you’ve got a desktop that could benefit from a companion device, or you’re a student whose needs are limited to Google Docs, web browsing, and the occasional Netflix binge, Surface Go could be enough to win you over.

A Slice of Fried Pentium Gold

On the outside, Surface Go looks like you’d expect. It’s the same design that previous Surface Pro devices have sported in prior years: a rectangular tablet with a flip-out metal kickstand and a keyboard that magnetically attaches to the bottom. Unlike the latest Surface Pro, the Go is a smaller, cuter version of the successful recipe.

So, cut two inches off a Pro’s 12-inch screen to make it a 10-inch one. What else was cut out? Surprisingly, not much. The screen is sharp (with an 1800 x 1200 resolution) and looked great when I watched Raiders of the Lost Ark on it. It uses the same magnetic charging connector as other Surfaces. You get a Windows Hello facial recognition camera for impressively fast, secure biometric logins. The kickstand even has the same trick hinges as the pricier Pro, folding back underneath the device at a reflex angle, propping it up for typing, movie watching, drawing, or notetaking.

The first sign that something’s a little different is when you run your eyes down the spec sheet. Surface Go has a significantly slower processor than other Microsoft computers—an Intel Pentium Gold 4415Y chip. It feels more responsive than Intel’s past mobile chips (called Atom), but think of it as a cousin of Intel’s Core-branded Y-series chips, found in thin laptops like the Apple MacBook.

Designed to work without a fan, this dual-core Pentium has a surprisingly low top speed: 1.6 GHz. For context, I used to own a 2010 MacBook Air. For its time, it was a zippy computer that handled my daily tasks and lasted me a few years (until I started dabbling in graphic design and needed more reliable power). The Surface Go has almost twice the performance of that laptop.

OK, but is it fast? Absolutely not. Apps open noticeably slower than they would on a Surface Pro. That said, I kept a lot of tabs open, wrote in OneNote, ran Slack, and even rocked out to some streaming tunes—Surface Go barely buckled. Would I want to run full-blown Adobe Lightroom Classic CC on this thing? Or edit 4K videos? Heck no.

Want Anything From the Shops?

Because Surface Go is based on an Intel chip, you can run basically anything Windows 10 can handle. Out of the box, Go comes pre-set in what’s called Windows 10 S-mode, which basically means you can only install apps from the Microsoft Store, and you’re limited to one internet browser: Microsoft Edge. For a lot of people, that won’t be enough. But, for the heck of it, I tried getting by with only grabbing apps from the store.

You know what? I was pleasantly surprised at how far the app selection has come.

I was able to grab Twitter, Slack, OneNote, and even Plex for playing back media from my home server. And all told, Edge has come a long way since it debuted three years ago, letting me add my password manager and handling my typical sites without issue. Even Xbox Play Anywhere titles were available, and I was able to download and pick up Thimbleweed Park where I left off at home. You won’t be playing Forza 7 on Surface Go, but for less demanding games, and especially indie titles, it’ll do the trick.

The keys are precise without feeling too flat, and Microsoft’s designers did a bang-up job minimizing some keys to keep the letters in the center big and usable.

But, then again, for every good app like Netflix, Spotify, or iTunes, you’ll find another piece of must-have software missing from the Microsoft Store. For instance, when it came time to hop on a video call, I found that there was no way to add Zoom to the browser and I had to use a different device to join the meeting. Amazon’s software is also incomplete, so there was no way for me to read my Kindle books.

Thankfully, S-mode is easily bypassed, so you can install any Windows app you need. But the Store is better than many people think—and especially if you have family members prone to installing anything that’s placed in front of them, S-mode could keep them just a bit safer from malware.

Three Flavors Alcantara

The signature accessory for a Surface tablet like this is a Type Cover. These backlit covers have keyboards built-in, and they’re a must-buy if you hope to use a Surface Go like an itty-bitty laptop. Microsoft offers up the Go keyboard in four finishes: one plain black and three colored, Alcantara-adorned deluxe ones. Naturally, you’ll also be able to use a Surface Pen with this device, and they’re now available in color-coordinated tones to match your Type Cover, if you’re a stickler for stuff like that.

Ian C. Bates

Because the display is smaller on this Lilliputian Surface, my biggest fear was that the shrunken keyboard would make the typing experience worse. Smaller cover means a smaller keyboard and trackpad, right? Well, yes. But I didn’t feel like it was a noticeable downgrade. The keys are precise without feeling too flat, and Microsoft’s designers did a bang-up job minimizing some keys to keep the letters in the center big and usable. Even the trackpad keeps pace with its Surface brothers and sisters, offering up a slick, responsive experience.

Speaking of input, Surface Go relies on one USB-C port for plugging in devices. There’s also a Surface Connect charging port, so unlike the Apple MacBook, you can at least use an external device while you charge without having to get an expensive dongle. While I can’t stand USB-C in some instances, on a lightweight device like this it’s par for the course.

At least it’s a standard port that works with tons of accessories you already own, admittedly with an adapter. The USB-C port can also be used to charge Surface Go, but in my experience it should be used when the tablet is asleep. While plugged in to a big external USB battery, Surface Go started to slowly lose charge as I played a YouTube video. But, if you already have USB-C devices in your arsenal, you might be able to bring one fewer charger on your next trip, and I’m in favor of that.

Skip to the End

The weakest aspect of the device, no matter what you’ll want to use it for, is battery life. I was able to get between 4 and 5 hours comfortably from the Surface Go. That sounds pretty good, but compared to the competition it’s actually fairly middling. An iPad can legit last you all day. The new Qualcomm Snapdragon-based Windows PCs are reportedly getting 10+ hours on a single charge.

But my biggest reservation comes down to pricing: The base model is $399, but like in the past, you won’t get a cover or a pen included. The cheaper Go also has a measly 4 GB RAM, and a puny, slow 64 GB eMMC flash drive. The model I tried was way more capable, rocking a faster 128 GB NVMe SSD and 8 GB RAM. I’d say if you have the means, spring for this $549 config—it’ll multitask way more effectively.

Then again, that’ll put you at around $780 for the whole kit and caboodle and that’s a lot of dough. That’s almost iPad Pro money. That’s solid mid-range laptop money. That’s Chromebook-and-a-new-smartphone money. That’s almost Surface Pro money, for pete’s sake!

So, it’s imperfect and expensive and a little poky in the configuration I think you should buy. But, here’s the thing—I like using Surface Go a lot. I would have killed for a computer like this when I was in college. I’m so envious of today’s students! And I can’t stress this enough: Its reduced footprint makes it an ideal size for tossing in a backpack or messenger bag. No, it might not be the best computer for the money, but what it lacks in speeds and feeds it makes up for with pure charm.

Playful Wild Orca Steals An Entire Boat

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Earlier this week, newlyweds Kendra Campbell and her husband Dan drove to the marina in Comox Valley, in British Columbia, Canada, to check on their sailboat. When they gazed out into the harbor, Dan told his wife he couldn’t see their mast over the breakwater.

“I told him he was nuts as of course it’s there,” Kendra Campbell told The Dodo. “We then got into our tender [small boat] … and headed out into the harbour. Our boat was not where we left it anchored. We both looked at each other … and did not know what to think. I covered my mouth with my hand as I was so confused, and we kept looking at each other.”

The Campbells have only had their boat for about a year, and they both started to panic.

Altru raises $1.3M to improve recruiting with employee videos

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Marketers are increasingly looking for social media celebrities and influencers who can promote their products with more authenticity (or at least, the appearance of authenticity) than a traditional ad. So Altru CEO Alykhan Rehmatullah wondered: Why can’t businesses do something similar with recruiting? And that’s what Altru is trying to accomplish, powering a page on […]

WhatsApp finally earns money by charging businesses for slow replies

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Today WhatsApp launches its first revenue-generating enterprise product and the only way it currently makes money directly from its app. The WhatsApp Business API is launching to let businesses respond to messages from users for free for up to 24 hours, but will charge them a fixed rate by country per message sent after that. […]

Best Sonos Setup: Which Sonos Speakers, Soundbars Should You Buy?

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Here at WIRED, we like Sonos speakers. Throughout the last six years, we’ve reviewed everything from its small Play:1 speaker to its new Beam and recommended every one of them. But it’s not cheap to turn your home into a Sonos-powered shrine to sound. Like Apple products, Sonos speakers are built to work with other Sonos speakers, and don’t come cheap, starting at $200 for the least expensive, smallest model. But which ones should you buy? Read on for our recommendations.

Updated August 1, 2018: We’ve added the Sonos Beam soundbar to our recommendations and updated the guide for Late 2018.

1. Best Sonos Speaker

Sonos One

sonos

The Sonos One (8/10, WIRED Recommends) is just about the smallest Sonos speaker, but it still packs enough oomph to fill most rooms and its hands-free Alexa integration is a lot of fun. Sonos took the time to make Alexa sound great, and thanks to its voice commands, the Sonos One has become my go-to speaker. It holds the premiere spot in my kitchen, where I like to listen to tunes the most each day. Alexa works like normal, and can play music, tell you the weather, find a recipe, and answer simple questions. Amazon keeps adding Skills to Alexa, making it more useful all the time. Support for Google Assistant is promised for 2018. The Sonos One is also the first third-party Alexa device that lets you use voice control to stream Spotify.

I’ll recommend other Sonos speakers in this guide, but you also can’t go wrong just buying 2-4 Sonos Ones to fill your house up. You get a discount on orders of 2 or more. They’re much more affordable and their small size means you can hide them in any room.

Buy the Sonos One for $199 on Amazon or Sonos.com

Play:1 is a Good Alternative: The Play:1 is $150 on Amazon and Sonos.com. It sounds about as good as the Sonos One, but doesn’t have touch controls or microphones for Alexa. If you already own a One, it’s a good way to add more satellite speakers to your home.

2. Best Party Speaker

Sonos Play:5

sonos

If you really like to party, I recommend adding a Sonos Play:5 (8/10, WIRED Recommends) to your setup. It has enough of a kick to dial a party up to 11, or really annoy your neighbors. I placed mine in the largest room of my apartment and it’s honestly more power than I need. Sonos boasts that this model has six Class-D digital amplifiers: three tweeters, three mid-woofers, and a phased speaker array. In practical terms, it will fill a very large room, or basement with ease.

Out of the four standard Sonos speakers I tested, this one delivered the largest range of sound, with enough thump to satisfy fans of any genre.

Buy the Play:5 for $499 on Amazon or Sonos.com

Avoid the Play:3: The medium-sized Play:3 is an older model that hasn’t gotten an physical update since 2011. It still sounds decent, but it doesn’t have the depth of the cheaper Sonos One.

3. Best Sonos Soundbar

Sonos Beam

Sonos

The Beam (8/10, WIRED Recommends) is one of three soundbars Sonos offers. It doesn’t sound quite as impressive as the older, larger Playbar, but it still sounds fantastic and its smaller size and extra features are worth the tradeoff. It’s $300 less expensive, too.

Unlike the Playbar, it can connect to your TV via HDMI ARC, letting you turn your tube on and off with your own voice…because yes, it also has Alexa built-in, and Apple Airplay 2. Later this year, it’s getting an update to unlock Google Assistant. Even if you don’t particularly need a voice assistant today, you may change your tune in a few years. If you own a Fire TV Stick, it’s already possible to use basic Alexa commands on the Beam to watch any TV show or movie. No voice assistant is perfect, but they’re always improving.

Buy the Sonos Beam for $399 on Amazon or Sonos.com

Save Up for the Subwoofer: Sonos hasn’t yet released a more affordable Sub to match the cheaper Beam. The standard Sub is superb, but it will cost you $699 on Sonos or Amazon. Don’t bother buying surround speakers until you own a Sub—it’s a far bigger upgrade.

4. Best for Big Home Theaters

Sonos Playbar

SOnos

A soundbar can make all the difference in a home theater, and costs a lot less than a full surround sound setup. The Sonos Beam is great for apartments, but if you really want a powerful soundbar, the Sonos Playbar (8/10, WIRED Recommends) is still the best. With more mid-woofers, it delivers deep bass and has more balance and depth than the Beam or Playbase. It’s also built to hang on a wall, but at just over 3-inches tall and 5-inches thick, it can also sit in front of most TVs without hassle.

If you plan to spend the extra money to buy the Playbar, you should save up $699 more to get a Sonos Sub.

Buy the Playbar for $699 on Amazon or Sonos.com

Playbase is Best for Pedestal TVs: The Playbase (Playbase sounds a little sharper than the Playbar on high treble sounds, like cymbals, but it’s still one of the best soundbars you can buy. It’s made to sit under a standing TV and costs $699 on Amazon or Sonos.com.

5. Best Sonos Surround Sound Setup

Sonos Playbar, Sub, and 2 Sonos Ones

sonos

To enable surround sound with one of its soundbars, Sonos requires two rear speakers, one for the left and one for the right. I’ve used two Play:5 speakers, but it’s overkill. Two Sonos One speakers are a better match. You simply place them to the left and right of your couch. They don’t add as much benefit as you get from the Playbar soundbar and Sub combo, but if you watch a lot of movies and want to hear things like TIE Fighters flying over your head in Star Wars, you’ll like the extra juice a couple of Ones provide. You can buy the speaker combo piecemeal or in a bundle.

Sonos speakers can be configured to output 5.1 surround, but the company’s products are not currently equipped to deliver Dolby Atmos. Still, this is one of the easiest surround sound systems to set up. You just open up the Sonos app, add a surround speaker, and follow the instructions while the software does the rest.

If you don’t have a table on each side of your couch to set these speakers on, Sonos sells Sanus Speaker Stands for $100 and Wall Mounts for $60. I have not tested these, but I don’t see any red flags.

Buy the Playbar bundle for $1,678 on Amazon or Sonos.com

Or Try a Beam Bundle: The Playbar still sounds better, but the Sonos Beam works great as the center of a home theater, too. You can buy a Beam, Sub, and two Play:1s for $1,396 on Amazon. The bundle isn’t available on Sonos.com.

Burley Solstice Review: Rugged and Comfortable

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When you have two toddlers, grocery shopping is a feat requiring the strength, courage, and dexterity of an Olympian. Can you push a shopping cart and a stroller at the same time? Can you tie a child on your back, or will he start screaming at the injustice? What if one of them rams a tiny kid’s cart into a display of stacked wine bottles? Do I really need to pick out bananas myself? Should we all just starve?

However, I have found the solution. The Burley Solstice is agile enough to steer with one hand around precarious piles of peaches. It’s so comfortable that my children fight over who gets to ride in it, which means that they’re not walking around and snatching items off the shelves. And it has an awe-inspiring amount of storage. The 55-liter cargo basket is large enough to fit an enormous Yeti bag, even if it didn’t have three additional mesh pockets for jackets, water bottles, and sunglasses.

At 29 pounds, it’s not particularly light, nor does it fold down into a very compact package for storage or transport. But those are easy for me to overlook when it comes to its maneuverability, ease of use, and comfort.

Safety Dance

Nearly 40 years ago, Burley founder Alan Scholz started a bike-bag company and named it after his wife, a bike racer known as “Burley Bev.” He soon branched out into making bike trailers and strollers for hauling his bags and young daughter around town.

Today, Burley is known for making bike trailers and jogging strollers that prioritize the safety of the kids and pets inside. All Burley products have been tested to exceed American Society for Testing and Materials safety standards, with UPF 50 fabric that also conforms to regulations on phthalates, lead, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons.

Putting your child in a Burley jogging stroller means that they’ll be safe, even from lead poisoning, should they choose to gnaw on the sunshade. But it’s also important to note that no matter how safe a jogging stroller is, you shouldn’t be taking your kid at high speeds over rough terrain unless they have adequate head and neck control—around 6 months or so. If you’re just itching to get out with a newborn, the Solstice also has an optional car-seat adapter as well as a clear weather shield if you’re often out and about in rain or snow.

As I write this, the Solstice is drying out on the sunny deck beside me, after I hosed cracker crumbs and sand out of the seat. The fabric is made from an attractive, durable, water-repellent polyester weave that is smooth and plush, and easy to clean. It also has a removable, washable Spring Integrated Technology seat pad, which Velcros into place under the five-point harness.

It’s easy to figure out how to use the stroller. All the parts that are manipulable are in a bright canary yellow that stands out against the dark fabric and black fittings, so you’re not fumbling around trying to find the brake or the side-lock that automatically holds the stroller in place when it’s folded.

Burley

A strap on the back of the stroller reclines the seat if your child falls asleep, with a hidden mesh panel for additional airflow. The retractable sunshade has a clear panel to watch your kid. (I’d suggest bringing a light blanket, however, if you want to make sure that your child’s legs are protected from the sun.)

A simple knob on the front wheel lets you choose to either lock it or let it swivel freely, which makes it easier to maneuver through our front gate or lock it into place for running on straightaways. Coil spring suspension and enormous, air-filled tires make for easy, smooth travel on the roughest and bumpiest of trails and on the beach.

It’s hard to test for durability when you have a product for only a few weeks. But we bumped it around single track trails and on the beach, running errands, and walking to the park. Even tossing it in and out of the back of my car, the Solstice hasn’t shown any discernible wear.

By far, the two best attributes of the Solstice are how comfortable it is and how much stuff it can store. The seat pad is plush, and my tester model came with the optional drink holder and snack cup that easily click into the stroller frame. The seat is 16 inches wide, so my 1-year-old was able to fit his entire lap keyboard in the seat with him.

You’ve never seen true luxury until you’ve seen a 1-year-old cruising along at a cool 8 miles per hour, waving at passersby, nibbling on cheese crackers, bopping and singing along to tinny Elmo jingles like a miniature Stevie Wonder. The seat also fit my 3-year-old and has a capacity for children of up to 75 pounds and 42 inches tall. In my family, that probably means that my children will be able to ride in it until they’re 23 years old.

And finally, the cargo basket is enormous. When I was running, handy interior mesh pockets were a convenient place to stow small water bottles and sunglasses. After years of trying to fit a single stuffed animal into a cargo basket without dislodging my child, it was a revelation to not worry about having enough space. I could walk to the farmer’s market and actually shop while I was there! And bring vegetables home!

Big and Tall

The Solstice has a few drawbacks. Both my 6-foot spouse and I (much shorter) found the telescoping handle to suit our height and stride length. But the handle travels a mere three inches up and back and was not able to accommodate a 6-foot-6 dad acquaintance of ours. So, LeBron, this isn’t the stroller for you.

And then there’s the weight. Twenty-nine pounds is really heavy. You can close the stroller one-handed and it will lock automatically, but personally, I can’t haul both the stroller and a squirmy toddler up a flight of stairs simultaneously. Folded, it’s 40.5 inches long and 16 inches high. Even if the wheels do pop off very easily, it might not be the best choice if your family goes on a lot of road trips where trunk space is at a premium.

Still, if you have the room to store it, the Solstice is a great jogging stroller that converts pretty easily to an everyday one, especially if you live in a first-floor building and don’t drive very often. It’s easy to use and accessorize, and my kids have been enjoying our daily trips to the park, beach, and neighborhood splash pad. Most important, I’m able to grocery shop with the Solstice, so we’re all able to eat after we get home.

Naked Labs’ $1,395 3-D Body Scanner Shows You the Naked Truth

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I ate a big breakfast. So if my scans are off, don’t sweat it, I tell myself. And this was immediately following a long, unhealthy weekend (a friend’s wedding). All of the excuses of the first world were available to me as I walked up the stairs in The Assembly, a women’s club in San Francisco, one that looks like it was once a place of worship but now hosts accomplished-looking laptop-clackers and has bottles of sweet-smelling face mist in the bathroom. This is where I would get my body shape and fat percentage measured by a company that has named itself Naked.

Naked Labs makes a full-length mirror lined with 3-D cameras that capture a 360-degree image of your body. There’s also a weight scale involved, something that the company’s cofounder and CEO, Farhad Farahbakhshian, calls the turntable (more on that later). Farahbakhshian, a former electrical engineer and certified Spin instructor, first introduced the Naked 3-D Fitness Tracker to the world two years ago and crowdfunded it through the company’s website. The initial launch was set for March 2017. Naked Labs missed that deadline by a great many months.

Now, several product iterations and more than $14 million in funding later, the Naked 3-D Fitness Tracker is shipping. The company’s funding round was led by Founders Fund, Peter Thiel’s firm, and included NEA and Lumia Capital. (Cyan Banister, another partner at Founders Fund, personally invested in Naked Labs.) “The product took much more capital, manpower, and time than we expected,” Farahbakhshian told me over the phone the day before I got my scans done. During that time, Intel’s RealSense cameras—which is what the Naked scanner relies on—were upgraded, which put the company in a holding pattern until it could build the product with the latest tech, he said.

The scanner now costs $1,395, a significant hike from the $499 the company listed it for at launch. But Naked Labs is wagering that (a) fitness freaks, (b) people looking for motivation to lose weight, and (c) customers who aren’t unnerved by daily 3-D scans of themselves will all pay to own the product. Its target customer has changed, Farahbakhshian said, from “people with a six-pack who want to get an eight-pack to people in the earlier stages of their fitness journey … Sure, there are power athletes who want to get that extra 1 percent, but we also see people who have felt powerless about their bodies for most of their lives.”

Farahbakhshian and Sam Winter, Naked Labs’ head research scientist, were waiting for me when I entered the room at the Assembly. Winter is a cognitive neuroscientist and sometimes triathlete who took the lead during the demo. She and Farahbakhshian suggested, both over the phone and in person, that the scan would work better if I stripped down to my underwear. I wore stretch pants and a long-sleeved shirt.

The mirror is nicely constructed—something I never thought I’d say about a mirror but feel obligated to note since it costs $1,395. It weighs 30 pounds, and with its frame measures 62.5 inches high and 12 inches wide. The back panel is plastic; its sides are powder-coated extruded aluminum. Three Intel RealSense 410 series cameras line the left side of the frame, along with a laser pointer (A laser pointer! In a mirror!) and a round indicator light.

Without warning, it began to spin me around, like a cat on a Roomba.

Winter fired up the 3-D Fitness Scanner, and the laser pointer shined a light onto the hardwood floor. She pulled the scale out from under the mirror and lined up the center of the scale with the laser’s red dot. The scale, which charges via USB-C, is a disc of injection-molded plastic with a glass top. It wobbled slightly on the smooth hardwood when I stepped on it and widened my stance. The company says it also works well on carpet.

I tried to stand exactly as Naked Labs’ mobile app instructed me to: straight back, arms extended slightly from my sides, hands curled into fists. My hair was pulled up; Farahbakhshian and Winter said it’s a good idea to capture the neck and trapezius muscles as part of your body scan. And then I discovered why Farahbakhshian had been calling the scale the “turntable”: Without warning, it began to spin me around, like a cat on a Roomba. I laughed, which blurred my face on the first scan. By the third try, I had stopped moving and laughing. Maybe.

Being scanned and looking at the results are entirely different experiences. The scan itself takes only 15 seconds. Crunching the 2 gigabytes of visual data into a 2-megabyte file takes a few minutes. The processed image files are then shared from the mirror to the cloud, and then to the Naked Labs mobile app.

Animation by Naked Labs

All of the scans appear in grayscale in the app, making your body look as though it is made of liquid metal. Naked Labs also uses a “smoothing” technique on each body scan, which sounds like a culturally correct way of saying the images are Photoshopped. “Our goal in using grayscale was to take away any form of emotional attachment to the body model and make it as objective as possible,” Farahbakhshian told me. As T-1000 as the image may be, it was still undoubtedly me.

The extra data that appears onscreen beside your portrait, though, is what jumps out. Your weight is shown, but Farahbakhshian and Winter say they’re really trying to de-emphasize weight. At the top of the Key Stats pile is your body fat percentage, followed by your weight, your lean mass, and your fat mass. You can swipe through different parts of your body and get measurements for your waist, chest, each thigh, each calf. Do this day after day and you can look at comparative charts illustrating the changes to your body over time.

What’s interesting is that Naked Labs isn’t calculating body fat percentage using bioelectric impedance analysis, which many scales or other body composition devices do. And it’s obviously not doing hydrostatic testing, which would require you to be in water. It’s doing all of this algorithmically by comparing your images against a database of body shapes and DEXA scan data (DEXA stands for dual energy x-ray absorptiometry, and it measures bone density as well as body fat estimates). The Naked Labs approach is supposed to get better over time, which is the promise of a lot of quantified-self products: Feed us more data and we will, in turn, feed you the information you need to be a better you.

For Naked Labs, this ideally means getting you into better shape. The scanner is a consumer product, after all, which means the company isn’t attaching any medical claims to the device. It also hasn’t published any white papers or had its work peer-reviewed. But there are broader applications for 3-D body scans, ranging from less essential—retailers using the tech to sell you clothing suited to your shape—to the more critical, like tracking disease.

“If you look at all of the quantified-self technologies, a lot of it provides information that you have no idea what to do with. ‘Walk 10,000 steps …’ Well, what happens if it’s 9,000 or 11,000? There’s not a lot of information available around that,” says John Shepherd, an epidemiologist at the University of Hawaii who has spent 30 years researching quantitative imaging. “Body shape is so different in that if you can quantify it yourself at home with home-based systems, you can learn about risk factors for disease.”

Shepherd and his research team have been leading an NIH-funded study called Shape Up since 2015. The study is based on two premises: that that body shape is an important biomarker for overall health and that closely monitoring body shape could be more useful to people than just looking at numbers on a scale. They’ve used Naked Labs’ technology in their research, as well as 3-D scanners from Fit3D, Styku, TC Squared, and SciStream.

The Shape Up cohort currently includes 1,500 people, ranging from age 5 to 85, both male and female. Perhaps most interestingly, it also includes participants from five different ethnic backgrounds. Both Shepherd and the team at Naked Labs point out that most of the prediction algorithms for body fat and body muscle currently derive from data from white males.

But there could also be serious psychological pitfalls along the path to self-betterment and optimal health. Earlier this year, a researcher at Florida State University reported that participants in a 3-D body scanner study reported feeling dejected and dissatisfied with their body image after seeing their scans. The researcher, Jessica Ridgway, suggested that this might be explained by “self-discrepancy theory”—when there’s a dissonance between our actual selves and our ideal selves. 3-D scanners, essentially, magnify this.

Winter, Naked Labs’ neuroscientist, said she could think of one person in the company’s 25-person beta test group who she believed had a negative emotional reaction to her body scans. This person had “fallen off the wagon, hadn’t had a scan in a long time, and when she did look at it again, she said ‘Yeah, this does show what has happened the past couple months.’ It made her feel like she had been hiding what had happened in her body,” Winter said. But the overwhelming majority of the group found the scans to be productive, she insisted.

Shepherd said his team at the University of Hawaii has not yet partnered with any other researchers to examine the psychology aspect of body scans. “The primary reason is that we’re studying the utility right now, and we want to know if the utility is there before we recommend people using it in general,” he said.

Back at WIRED’s offices, I showed three colleagues the body scans that the Naked Labs team had emailed me. Two of my coworkers were horrified—not by my results (I don’t think) but by the whole concept of daily body scans. One was intrigued: “As someone who spends an inordinate amount of time comparing his body to sizing charts, this is kinda cool,” he wrote via Slack. Anecdata, no doubt. For some reason, I can’t seem to get my grayscale image out of my head.

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Instagram and Facebook Add New Screen-Time Management Tools

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Mark Zuckerberg is a man of year-long resolutions. In 2009, he wore a tie every day. In 2010, he learned Mandarin. In 2015, he read two books a month. But this year, Zuckerberg’s resolution looked a little different: He vowed to spend the year making less bad stuff happen on Facebook, and working to ensure that “the time we all spend on Facebook is time well spent.”

It’s useful to remember this after the year Facebook’s had, which includes: the Cambridge Analytica scandal, a two-day Congressional hearing, news of a compromised election, admitted influence from Russian trolls, repeated problems with fake news and fake accounts, a 20 percent plummet in stock, and, you know, accusations of inciting genocide.

But the year isn’t over yet! And Zuckerberg is still serious about promoting quality time on his platforms—which is why today, Facebook and Instagram are each rolling out a set of tools designed to give users more control of how they spend their time on the apps.

Users can now set reminders to get off the app after a certain amount of time, and can temporarily disable notifications for anywhere between 15 minutes and eight hours.

“When people use Facebook and Instagram, we want to make sure that they feel good about the time they’ve spent on the platform,” said Ameet Ranadive, Instagram’s Product Director of Well-Being, at a press briefing on Tuesday. “A big part of that is making sure that people are in control of their experiences and they can be mindful and intentional about how they’re spending their time, how much time they’re spending, when they engage, how they engage.”

Facebook/Instagram

The new features roll out jointly to Instagram and Facebook users starting today. There’s a new activity dashboard that shows users the average time they spend on the platform each day, as well as a day-by-day breakdown of time spent during the past week. Users can set reminders to get off the app after a certain amount of time, and can temporarily disable push notifications for anywhere between 15 minutes and eight hours. Ranadive described them as tools for more “intentional” and “mindful” use of the platforms.

It’s hard not to see this as bandwagon-jumping on the part of Facebook. Earlier this summer, Google and Apple each introduced a similar suite of tools, which give users more granular control of notifications and screen time. Those initiatives seemed to remind people that it’s not your phone that’s the problem—it’s all the junk on it that continually distracts you and wastes your time. Google’s Digital Wellness initiative and Apple’s Screen Time tools both aim to neuter apps like Facebook and Instagram, which stand in the center of the dopamine vortex on our phones. Now, Facebook and Instagram want to position themselves as allies—not enemies—in that pursuit.

“We have a whole team of experts who are working on wellbeing and thinking about how do we learn more, how do we understand more about the relationship between social media and wellbeing,” said David Ginsberg, Facebook’s Director of Research, at Tuesday’s press briefing.

How can you find JOMO on the app that practically invented FOMO?

In January, Facebook rejiggered its News Feed algorithm to prioritize posts from friends and family over viral videos, news, and other content. That move, Ginsberg said, was a first step in promoting time well spent on Facebook. “Giving people a sense of their time so that they’re more mindful is a second part of that.”

But there are still hard questions: You can use the activity tracker to show how much time you’re spending on Facebook or Instagram, but how does a user measure the quality of time on those apps? What does “time well spent” even look like on a platform so often riddled with toxicity? How can you find JOMO on the app that practically invented FOMO?

“It’s really hard to cut down, even after having somebody tell you, ‘You’re on for four hours a day,’” says Larry Rosen, a research psychologist at California State University, Dominguez Hills, who studies the psychological impact of obsessive tech use. Rosen uses an app called Moment in his research, which tracks phone activity much like Facebook and Instagram’s new activity dashboard. He’s found that people don’t use their phones significantly less after tracking the (often shocking) number of hours they spend scrolling.

Rosen calls the new Facebook and Instagram tools a “good first step” in helping people understand how much time they’re spending on Facebook or Instagram. But those features alone don’t go far enough to unglue users from the apps or change unhealthy behavior. “Facebook and Instagram are going to give us the ‘what,’” says Rosen. “Now we have to figure out the ‘why,’ and the ‘how.’ How do you deal with it?”

More than that, these new tools send a message about who’s liable for the time they’re spending on these platforms. By “empowering” users to “control” their time spent on screen, tech companies distance themselves from the responsibility of addiction, social anxiety, distractibility, and wasted time. A suite of time management tools puts the onus on users to make the experience what they want. Hey, it’s not our problem that you can’t control yourself, the tech companies seem to say. We gave you the tools to control how you’re spending your time.

At Tuesday’s briefing, Ranadive emphasized that these tools are just a starting point. Instagram and Facebook will continue expanding and evolving these features over time, including “more insights, more context, and more controls.” For some users, it might be enough to make social media feel nice again. But for most of us, it won’t do much to slow the scroll.

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The Istio service mesh hits version 1.0

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Istio, the service mesh for microservices from Google, IBM, Lyft, Red Hat and many other players in the open-source community, launched version 1.0 of its tools today. If you’re not into service meshes, that’s understandable. Few people are. But Istio is probably one of the most important new open-source projects out there right now. It […]

Edge of Belgravia Shiroi Hana Knife Set: Price, Specs, Release Date

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Glimpse your reflection on the mirror-like surface of a Shiroi Hana knife, and you’ll see your most glamorous culinary aspirations glittering back at you. The newest collection from Edge of Belgravia is a $299 set of six steel slicers inspired by Japanese swords. Never mind that your countertops are encrusted under spills, or that you only pretend to know what “chiffonade” is. The sight of these knives—sophisticated, luminous—are meant to evoke the possibility of all that your kitchen could be.

Included in the set—which goes on sale today through Kickstarter—are a full-size 7.5-inch chef’s knife, a shorter 6-inch chef’s knife, a smaller utility knife, a paring knife, a 7.5-inch serrated bread knife, and a 7.5-inch slicer with a rectangular blade. All of the knives have Edge of Belgravia’s signature, soft-angled handle. I was sent a set to test out, and even the large chef knife feels startlingly light and balanced.

The core of each knife in the Shiroi Hana collection is made of AUS-10 steel, produced exclusively in Japan, and is fortified by outer layers of steel that help maintain its sharp edges over repeated wear. The specialized blades glide into ingredients with precision—so you can feel just as elegant carving leftover deli ham as you would preparing sustainably farmed Kanpachi sashimi.

The hallmark of the Shiroi Hana collection is the striking Damascene pattern that whirls across the surface in metallic rivulets. The intricate floral design complements Edge of Belgravia’s Black Diamond knife block, which safely encloses your knives in a free-floating display.

After all, the Shiroi Hana collection is meant to be seen. The knives will almost certainly attract the admiring gazes of dinner guests. But extrinsic validation is far less important than the private, extravagant culinary ambitions that beautiful kitchen tools such as these excite in you. No matter your level of expertise, cooking in real life is frequently messy and mundane. But when you spy graceful knives, glinting in the corner like a promise, they are an assurance that those fantasies of Michelin stardom may be a little closer within reach than you think.

One last note: The knives are for sale through a crowdfunding platform, but London-based Edge of Belgravia is an established brand with a track record of well-funded releases. Last year, the company held a Kickstarter sale for a similar knife set called Kuroi Hana.

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