2019 was 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit (0.98 degrees Celsius) warmer than the 1951 to 1980 mean, according to NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS). To collect the data, NASA took exhaustive readings from over 20,000 weather stations, sea surface buoys and ships and Antarctic research stations. The full dataset is available on the agency's website.…

Olive Union Smart Ear $249If you have mild hearing loss in just one ear, a pair of hearing aids might not make sense (or fit your budget). Olive's Smart Ear aims to bring consumer headphone style to an assisted hearing device. It's not a "hearing aid" instead it's an amplifier (think reading glasses, but for…

Supplied with a 95kWh battery pack, 204 miles would seem to be on the low side. But an EV is more than a range number and the E-Tron otherwise has a lot to offer. It's a tech-filled, luxurious machine that's a joy to drive even if you have to stop more often during road trips.Starting…

You'll notice plenty of similarities between the K860 and the Surface Ergonomic. They both feature a prominent empty space (shaped like an upside-down V) between their two sets of keys, and they have pillowy soft wrist pads. The K860 includes three layers of material to cushion your wrists: a dense foam core, memory foam that…

When photographer Jana Sophia Nolle moved to San Francisco three years ago, she met a lot of people. Some inhabited multi-million-dollar houses with pristine Victorian architecture and fancy furniture. Others lived in cardboard boxes.The contrast between their dwellings plagued Nolle, who hails from Kassel, Germany, where income inequality is less stark. While San Francisco boasts…

On the day Susan Gordon learned Venetucci Farm, in Colorado, was contaminated by toxins, the vegetables looked just as good as ever, the grass as green, and the cattle, hogs, chickens, and goats as healthy.The beauty of the community farm she and her husband managed made the revelation all the more tragic. Chemicals known as…

You walk into the office and greet a digital avatar that replaced the company receptionist a few years ago. After sliding your badge into a reader, you smile and nod, even though you know “Amy” is not a real person. You sit down at your cubicle and start browsing the web.Then the trouble starts.You receive…

Living through the first weeks of this decade has felt a bit like contracting the flu–it was way too hot, full of uncertainty, and the possibility of imminent death seemed ever-looming. If there was ever a time for a binge-watching experience to distract from all the queasy-making news, this is it. Netflix delivered such an…

One funny thing about Star Trek obsessives is that the rules of the fandom oblige them to understand and accept people who aren’t Star Trek obsessives. Infinite diversity in infinite combination is written into their bumpy-foreheaded, triple-stranded DNA. (Thanks a lot, Vulcans!) It’s also true, though, that on-ramping to Trek ain’t easy. With decades of…

Cats are scientifically, objectively, monumentally terrible for the planet. In the US alone, free-ranging domestic cats kill up to 3.7 billion birds and 20.7 billion mammals a year, to say nothing of reptiles and amphibians. They are a scourge of the highest order.Now felines are poised to exacerbate the ecological crisis unfolding in Australia as…