Month: November 2021

Enlarge / Plenty of worthwhile tech deals are still kicking for Cyber Monday. (credit: Ars Technica)

(Update 11/29/2021 6:45 pm EST): Cyber Monday is nearing its end, and the pace of new deals has just about come to a halt. Nevertheless, we've gone through and updated our roundup of every good Cyber Monday deal we can find to account for pricing and stock changes.

Original post (11/28/2021 10:00 pm EST): To help those looking to get a good price on worthwhile gadgets and tech gear this holiday season, we've put together a comprehensive roundup of the best Cyber Monday deals we can find. And though Black Friday is over, many of its better offers are still rolling, and represented here.

As always, each deal in our list is handpicked by us. We've spent days poring over as many sales events as possible, consulting our own testing, researching reviews, and checking price histories to ensure each highlighted product is both cheaper than its typical street price online and actually worth your attention.

Enlarge / This glass fish was found in a fairly modest private house in Amarna, buried under a plaster floor along with a few other objects. It may once have contained ointment. (credit: Trustees of the British Museum)

Today, glass is ordinary, on-the-kitchen-shelf stuff. But early in its history, glass was bling for kings.

Thousands of years ago, the pharaohs of ancient Egypt surrounded themselves with the stuff, even in death, leaving stunning specimens for archaeologists to uncover. King Tutankhamen's tomb housed a decorative writing palette and two blue-hued headrests made of solid glass that may once have supported the head of sleeping royals. His funerary mask sports blue glass inlays that alternate with gold to frame the king's face.

In a world filled with the buff, brown, and sand hues of more utilitarian Late Bronze Age materials, glass—saturated with blue, purple, turquoise, yellow, red, and white—would have afforded the most striking colors other than gemstones, says Andrew Shortland, an archaeological scientist at Cranfield University in Shrivenham, England. In a hierarchy of materials, glass would have sat slightly beneath silver and gold and would have been valued as much as precious stones were.

Enlarge (credit: Jacqui Brown / Flickr)

In England, only 37 percent of adults aged 16 or over travel actively (walk, cycle, scoot, or wheel to get from place to place) at least twice a month. We need to find exciting ways to encourage more people to travel actively for the sake of population and planetary health.

Active travel can help reduce congestion, air pollution, and climate change. However, in the UK—as in many countries across the world—traveling by car remains the dominant social norm.

Our research shows that gamification—offering points, badges, prizes, or spots on a leaderboard in exchange for participating in specific, non-game-related activities—can encourage people to travel actively to school or work.

Enlarge / The only constant is change in Apple TV's adaptation of Isaac Asimov's Foundation (credit: YouTube/Apple TV+)

When showrunner David S. Goyer took on the monumental task of adapting Isaac Asimov's hugely influential Foundation series of science fiction novels for Apple TV+, he knew it would not be a straightforward matter. As I've written previously, the author himself admitted that he wrote strictly for the printed page, and he always refused invitations to adapt his work for film or TV.

But Asimov was more than happy to let others adapt his work to a new medium, and he was wise enough to expect that there would—and should—be significant departures from the print version. In doing so, Goyer had to strike a balance between respecting Asimov's sweeping visionary ideas without lapsing into slavish reverence and over-pontification. To my mind, he did it beautifully, producing more of a remix than a straight adaptation that is compelling and powerful in its own right.

Another challenge was figuring out how to incorporate science and technology that was reasonably accurate. An astrobiologist and planetary scientist at Jet Propulsion Lab, Kevin Hand had worked with Goyer years before on Krypton, and the two had stayed in touch. So when Goyer needed a scientist with expertise in space, interstellar travel, and planetary dynamics, among other topics, naturally he turned to Hand.