It will hold a public farewell campaign ahead of its closure

Snow City, Singapore’s first indoor snow centre, will close on Sept 30 after 26 years, the Science Centre Board (SCB) said in a media release on May 19.

The SCB added that the closure reflects its commitment to “keeping its offerings fresh and relevant amid shifting visitor interests and an evolving attractions landscape,” while aligning with SCB’s science education mission and future plans.

Snow City’s staff will be supported closely during this transition. SCB said the attraction’s eight full-time employees have been offered redeployment opportunities within the organisation.

“For employees who choose to pursue opportunities elsewhere, SCB will provide outplacement
assistance and severance support in accordance with applicable employment terms and prevailing Ministry of Manpower guidelines,” it added.

It added that Snow City will honour its contractual obligations to all vendors.

Located in Jurong East, Snow City will hold a public farewell campaign called One Last Snowfall ahead of its closure.

From Jun to Sept, visitors can access limited-time experiences and offers, including a one-hour snow play and bumper car package. During this farewell period, prices drop to S$19 for adults and S$16 for children—down from the usual S$27 and S$23.

More details on the farewell campaign will be shared soon via Snow City’s and Science Centre Singapore’s websites and social media channels.

• Read other articles we’ve written on Singaporean businesses here.

Featured Image Credit: Snow City

When the World Wide Web surged into existence during the 1990s, we were introduced to the problem of how to actually find something in this ever-ballooning construction zone that easily outpaced even the fastest post-WW2 urban sprawl. Although domain names provided a way to find servers using DNS rather than having to mash in IP addresses, you still somehow had to know the relevant URL.

A range of solutions were thought up over time, ranging from printed Yellow Pages type guides, to online curated lists of resources, as well as things like web rings where one website would link to a relevant similar website. This was the time when word-of-mouth was also very relevant, with people proudly announcing their own website on Geocities or other hosting service.

Search engines already existed long before the WWW became the hot new thing during the 1990s, but it was the WWW that would really push them to their limits. As anyone who used search engines for the WWW can attest, they had many issues. Often you’d end up using multiple search engines to find something, and despite fierce competition between web search engines to become the starting page for their browser, actually finding things on the WWW remained a tough problem.

Since a web search engine ‘just’ has to index the WWW and match a search query against the results, why was this such a hard problem that persisted until Google apparently cracked the code?

Unplanned Sprawl

A nice thing about the WWW is that it was designed to be accessible to all, requiring only an Internet connection and thus opening up the possibility of setting up your own webserver. This unsurprisingly led to a very rapid growth of pages on the WWW, with content appearing, being modified and sometimes vanishing at an ever-increasing pace, making it extremely hard to keep up with.

This is however not how things started when the World Wide Web was created in 1989. Before its opening to the public in 1993 the pace of growth was slow enough that a manually maintained index was maintained. This was kept up until late 1992, with the last version of said index still online on the W3 website.

Over the course of a short few years, the WWW would change the face of the world forever alongside a surge of IBM-compatible PCs, exploding multimedia content, all the dot-com hype and perhaps best of all endless ‘free’ hosting services as long as you didn’t mind an advertising banner plastered above your personal homepage’s content.

Even internet service providers (ISPs) would often offer their own hosting service, along with endless n00b-friendly tools to make something resembling a website for whatever hobby you fancied. In addition to proving that one can absolutely argue about style and the prevalence of colorblindness, this would also serve to balloon the number of websites at an exponential rate.

Whether or not the WWW killing off the Gopher-based internet was a bad thing remains the topic of debate, though it’s beyond question that Gopher integrated search functionality into its protocol, mirroring a file system.

Infinite Library Indexing

Without any provisions in the HTTP protocol of the WWW, the only realistic way for search engines to create an index of the ever-expanding and changing WWW is to perform so-called web crawling. This means going through every known document, following any links found in them, and making sure to revisit any documents in case their contents got changed since the last visit.

The first complication here is that since the search engine’s database is the only real index for the web, initial discovery is purely organic, starting from a certain number of URL seeds in what is called the crawl frontier. This forms an integral part of a web crawler.

Development of the algorithms and architecture behind these crawlers formed a major part of the early WWW, with IBM researchers on the WebFountain project in 2001 estimating a grand total of about 500 million pages, with – as they put it – web crawlers caught between the comfortable cushion of Moore’s Law and the hard place of the web’s exponential growth. Today this number is probably closer to forty billion pages.

Although the Google Search web crawler was already pretty good back in 2001, WebFountain improved on it by using a distributed system, with ‘ants’ working through their own list of URLs to crawl, as described in the development paper by Jenny Edwards et al.

Beyond the basic recursive following of links in a document there are many confounding factors, such as when to recrawl a URL, which very much depends on how often the content on it is expected to be updated. Here one dives into the territory of statistics, as depending on the type of site we can make an educated guess on how often it is expected to be updated. For example, a government’s historical news pages are unlikely to see frequent updates, whereas the front page of a news site can see updates practically every few minutes.

Inverted Indexing

As complex the topic of web crawling is, the fun part begins when you have pruned all duplicate documents and stripped all the irrelevant fluff that’s not text to be indexed. In order to make the resulting search index at all searchable before the heat death of the Universe you cannot simply do a full text search on every single document whenever someone enters a search query.

Instead an index is constructed whereby certain keywords are mapped to documents. This inverted index is generally implemented as a hash table or similar data structure where it provides a quick access into the full text documents, not unlike the keyword index in the back of a book, or the more elaborate concordance of yesteryear. These latter works also provide a keyword index, but add accompanying text to provide immediate context to further save time.

Creating an inverted index is a fairly labor-intensive process, with a new document often used for a forward index that decomposes the text into its keywords prior to updating (or creating) the inverted index. As with all of such text processing related tasks and data structures in general there are many ways to go about it, with some fun curveballs thrown into the mix such as parsing languages that do not separate words with spaces, like Japanese.

All of which is to say that implementing a search engine is easy, but making it performant, accurate and efficient  at the same time is a minor nightmare. This is basically why search engines took so long to stop being so terrible, as the engineers behind them were trying to solve many rather complex problems, presumably with the C-suite and investors breathing down their necks during the dot-com days.

Search Battles

Over on the Wikipedia entry for ‘Search engine‘ we find a pretty good timeline of web search engines, along with their current status. Perhaps unsurprisingly none of the 1993-era ones made it, but 1994’s WebCrawler somehow crawled into the modern age, along with Lycos. Much like 1990’s Archie search engine and similar for the Gopher web, many of these early search engines simply couldn’t compete in the rapidly changing years leading up to the new millennium.

This was also the era in which some figured that the WWW simply needed to become more ‘3D’ with virtual environments using VRML, bringing it closer to sci-fi like that portrayed in Snow Crash or Tron. Perhaps unfortunately the WWW remained the domain of mostly text and images, although most recently the flood of JavaScript frameworks appear to want to turn once simple HTML documents into full-blown desktop-like applications, all probably to the delight of web crawler engineers.

Meanwhile some search engines figured that they could lift along on the hard work of others, with so-called meta search engines collating the results from multiple search engines to save people the trouble of querying them individually. Here 1996’s Dogpile is still going strong.

Some search engines are missing from the list, such as Marginalia, which boasts the use of open source software for its indexing and crawling, while focusing on non-commercial content. There is also the ever excellent Frog Find that provides a bridge between modern search engines and systems that really cannot run the latest web browser.

Today’s Survivors

The search engine landscape remains a brutal one today, with us having to recently say farewell to Jeeves, of Ask Jeeves fame, most recently seen carrying the Ask.com name. Personally I didn’t really Ask Jeeves much back in the day, instead mostly using AltaVista (RIP) and probably Lycos and a few others that I do not recall off the top of my head.

Having Google Search burst on the scene by 2000 was definitely quite the event, which was certainly when the web search game improved. Looking back it probably was less that Google Search was simply better, but more that it pushed hard just being a search engine, whereas the others were still very much stuck in that early WWW mindset of being a portal to the web.

To a certain extent this is understandable, as search engines aren’t a charity and running the associated hardware as well as the required bandwidth costs a lot of money. Despite this it would seem that we still have a rather thriving web search engine landscape, even if ChatGPT, Claude and kin are trying to become the very last ‘site’ you will ever need. This even as their little web crawlers are still doing the same crawling as has been done since the birth of the WWW.

Threat actors earlier today published more than 600 malicious packages to the Node Package Manager (npm) index as part of a new Shai-Hulud supply-chain campaign.

Most of the affected packages are in the @antv ecosystem, which include libraries for charting, graph visualization, building flowcharts, and mapping. However, popular packages outside this namespace have also been compromised.

As in the previous Shai-Hulud campaign impacting TanStack and Mistral packages, the payload collects secrets from developer and CI/CD environments and exfiltrates them over the Session P2P network to complicate detection and takedown efforts.

The threat actor also used GitHub as a fallback exfiltration mechanism and published stolen data in repositories under victims’ accounts, when tokens used for publishing were found.

According to application security company Socket, the hackers published 639 malicious versions across 323 unique packages in about one hour. Some of the impacted libraries include:

• echarts-for-react
• @antv/g2
• @antv/g6
• @antv/x6
• @antv/l7
• @antv/g2plot
• @antv/graphin
• timeago.js
• size-sensor
• canvas-nest.js

Endor Labs researchers highlight that some of the packages (e.g., timeago.js, size-sensor, and jest-canvas-mock) had not received a legitimate update for a long time and were less likely to have their OIDC trusted publishing security feature configured.

For instance, although the jest-canvas-mock still has10 million monthly downloads, it has been dormant for about 3 years.

Socket researchers maintain a list of package artifacts affected by all Shai-Hulud attack, which has grown to more than 1,000 entries.

The Shai-Hulud campaigns started last September and continue to affect multiple software ecosystems, such as npm, PyPI, and Composer to a lesser degree.

The malware compromises maintainer accounts or publishing tokens to push legitimate packages with malicious code that steals developer and CI/CD secrets, and can spread to other projects using the stolen credentials.

The latest wave involves the injection of a heavily obfuscated ‘index.js’ payload that attempts to steal GitHub, npm, cloud, Kubernetes, Vault, Docker, database, and SSH credentials.

It primarily targets developer workstations and CI/CD environments, including GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Jenkins, Azure DevOps, CircleCI, Vercel, Netlify, and other build platforms.

The stolen data is serialized, Gzip-compressed, AES-256-GCM-encrypted, and RSA-OAEP-wrapped to make network inspection harder.

When GitHub credentials are available, the malware uses the GitHub API to automatically create new repositories under the victim’s account and upload the stolen data to them.

Socket has found 1,900 publicly visible GitHub repositories matching the campaign’s markers. However, a newer report from software security platform Aikido notes that the attacker has already published more than 2,700 rogue repositories on GitHub using stolen tokens.

One key new addition in this latest Shai Hulud variant, according to Endor Labs, is its ability to generate valid Sigstore provenance attestations by abusing OIDC tokens from compromised CI environments and submitting them to Fulcio and Reko.

As a result, malicious npm packages may appear legitimately signed and pass standard provenance verification checks despite containing credential-stealing malware.

The self-propagation capability is present in this attack too. The malware validates stolen npm tokens, enumerates packages owned by the victim, downloads the tarballs, injects the malicious payload, and republishes infected packages with bumped version numbers.

Given that Shai Hulud’s code was recently leaked on GitHub by the TeamPCP threat group, and has already been used in attacks, attribution of the new Shai-Hulud campaign is more difficult.

Socket says this variant differs technically from earlier Mini Shai-Hulud payloads but shares the same operational characteristics.

“The AntV payloads differ from earlier Mini Shai-Hulud artifacts such as TanStack’s router_init.js and Intercom-related router_runtime.js payloads,” explains Socket.

“The AntV sample uses a root-level index.js, a different primary C2 endpoint, and a smaller payload body. However, the core operational model is consistent.”

Developers who downloaded any of the infected npm packages should uninstall them immediately, and rotate all secrets within reach of the infected systems.

Automated pentesting tools deliver real value, but they were built to answer one question: can an attacker move through the network? They were not built to test whether your controls block threats, your detection rules fire, or your cloud configs hold.

This guide covers the 6 surfaces you actually need to validate.

Download Now

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan are hiring a seasonal, on-call “Beach Water Person” based in Kauai, Hawaii, where the family owns a sprawling compound, according to a new job listing on Greenhouse associated with West 10, the Zuckerberg family office.

This is an interesting choice for a job title, because according to the job description, the primary duties of this “Beach Water Person” include serving as a “Beach Lifeguard,” and “Pool Lifeguard.” In other words, being a lifeguard.

The job listing names a few additional duties related to water activities, such as instructing “stand-up paddleboarding (SUP), canoe paddling, snorkeling, and other ocean-based activities.” These, however, come after the water safety duties in the job description.

This position easily could have been called “Pool/Beach Lifeguard,” or simply “Lifeguard.” For the sake of comprehensiveness, “Pool/Beach Lifeguard and Boat Deckhand” would have also worked. Alternatively, the Zuckerbergs could have chosen “Beach/Pool Attendant,” a job title roughly synonymous with lifeguard that could reasonably be interpreted as encompassing extra duties associated with leisure, such as tending to a boat or teaching people how to stand-up paddleboard.

Arguably, any of these options would have provided more clarity than “Beach Water Person,” which does not appear to correspond with a job title anywhere else in the English-speaking world.

WIRED did not immediately hear back from representatives of the Zuckerberg family. Lacking a human to speak with, we decided to ask Meta’s AI chatbot “what is a ‘beach water person’?”

“‘Beach water person’ would just mean someone who loves being in/near the ocean,” the chatbot said. “The word for that is thalassophile—’a person who loves the seas and oceans.’” Ok!

from the bad-ideas-from-terrible-people dept

We’ve talked a lot about how Americans have somehow accepted the fact that our voice networks are now saturated with scammers, fraudsters, and robocallers (no, that’s not something that happens in well run, functionally regulated countries).

I’ve also explained for years how the U.S. government solutions to the problems are usually ineffective because they’re endlessly trying to create rules (or undermine existing ones) to carve out exceptions for big “legitimate corporations,” which routinely engage in the same sleazy behavior as scammers.

Regulatory capture and corruption means that you wind up with a lot of performative solutions that sound good, but don’t fix anything. And some of the progress we had made on robocalls is being undermined by the Trump administration’s brutal assault on the federal regulatory state, something that still, somehow, isn’t getting enough public and press attention.

Now the Trump administration is cooking up a new “fix” that once again isn’t likely to fix the robocall problem (because our consumer protection regulators don’t function and the Trump administration doesn’t actually care about the subject anyway), but is likely to introduce all manner of new privacy and surveillance headaches. If it’s even implemented.

In late April, the Trump FCC announced it was considering the development of new “Know Your Customer” rules requiring that the buyer of any new phone present a government ID, a physical address, a full legal name, and an existing phone number at the point of sale. This has raised eyebrows both among activists and telecom industry lawyers, albeit for understandably different reasons.

A Trump FCC press release frames this new layer as a big fix for robocalls:

“We must bring meaningful robocall relief to consumers. The FCC is attacking the problem of illegal robocalls at every point in the call path in order to help consumers and restore trust in America’s voice networks. These proposals set the stage for significant advancement toward those goals by aiming to get providers to take accountability and step up their game in our shared battle against illegal robocalls.”

Telecom lawyers are nervous because the rules propose a $2,500 penalty, per call, per carrier, in a country that sees around 4.2 billion robocalls per month. So yeah, in a theoretical country where we actually had functioning consumer protections this would be quite a shift.

But accountability requires consumer protection enforcement, and this is Brendan Carr. A guy who generally doesn’t believe in holding major corporations accountable for literally anything. And who believes in defanging the federal regulatory state. It’s once again this interesting intersection between the Trump administration’s claims, and their very unsubtle effort to lobotomize government.

Which is to say I’m not even sure this proposal passes, much less sees any enforcement. And if it does pass, and does get enforced, it likely won’t actually help stop robocalls, because that would require a government willing to be tough on the biggest telecom giants which have historically not done enough to police fraud on their networks (at points because they were profiting from the fraud).

So what is Brendan Carr actually thinking? Like all dutiful autocrats, he’s thinking about his administration’s own power, and he’s thinking about surveillance.

There are, of course, numerous instances where you might want legal but covert ownership of a cell phone (a refugee seeking government punishment, a domestic abuse victim fleeing an abusive relationship, a journalist trying to protect a source identity, an activist planning a demonstration). Reclaim the Net is particularly concerned on the restrictions impacting the prepaid cell phone market:

“The real privacy stakes sit in the proposal’s section on prepaid service. Right now, you can pay cash for a prepaid phone and SIM card without showing identification. Journalists use prepaid phones to protect sources, domestic violence survivors use them to avoid being traced, and whistleblowers, activists, or anyone with a reason to separate phone activity from legal identity relies on this.”

So yeah, if Brendan Carr, a censorial autocratic zealot with a history of disdain for corporate accountability and consumer protection, is suddenly pitching you a quick and easy solution for a complicated consumer-facing issue, you should probably raise a skeptical eyebrow. Especially if you’re a journalist.

Filed Under: brendan carr, fcc, identification, know your customer, prepaid, privacy, robocalls, scams, surveillance, wireless

Even though Beth (Kelly Reilly) and Rip (Cole Hauser) have had to relocate to Texas after a devasting wildfire, the Yellowstone spirit hasn’t been completely forgotten in new spinoff series, Dutton Ranch.

In a nutshell, Beth and Rip are starting over in the small Texan town of Rio Paloma, even though they bought a brand-new Montana ranch at the end of Yellowstone season 5 part 2.

Most email marketers aren’t failing because their product is weak or their copy is bad. They’re failing because they’re sending the same message to everyone and calling it an email marketing campaign. With inboxes receiving an estimated 376 billion emails a day in 2025, generic blasts don’t just underperform; they get ignored.

The good news is that email still delivers a higher return than any other digital marketing channel, averaging $36 to $42 for every dollar spent, according to data from Litmus and HubSpot. The gap between average and high-performing campaigns comes down to a handful of tactical decisions. Here’s what separates them.

1. Segment your list — and keep those segments fresh

Solar will become the largest source of power in the next decade, surpassing coal, oil and natural gas, according to a new report from BloombergNEF. The tectonic shift will occur alongside a historic rise in the use of energy driven by AI and the electrification of entire industries.

“Solar is winning the race,” Matthias Kimmel, head of energy economics at BloombergNEF, told TechCrunch.

BloombergNEF expects the shift to happen on economic grounds alone — solar is simply too cheap to ignore. Pakistan, for example, has added 25 gigawatts of solar power in the last two years after natural gas prices spiked following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The transition could be even swifter if countries take more aggressive measures to curb their carbon emissions.

The power handoff comes as investors are viewing energy as one of the biggest opportunities for growth in recent decades. Data centers have been at the center of the obsession, and BloombergNEF’s data reinforces the scale of the opportunity. The energy consultancy expects data centers to drive an additional 1 terawatt of utility-scale solar, 400 gigawatts of solar, 370 gigawatts of natural gas, and 110 gigawatts of coal. 

But because of gas and coal’s ability to operate 24/7, BloombergNEF expects those fossil fuels to provide 51% of incremental generation for data centers by 2050. Put simply, tech companies and data center developers will have an outsized influence over which energy sources remain viable by mid-century.

Those forecasts aren’t ironclad, though. Other technologies have been vying for a piece of the data center market, including long-duration energy storage, geothermal, and nuclear. Big batteries received a boost from Google, which has included $1 billion worth of 100-hour batteries from Form Energy in a recent data center project. And both geothermal and nuclear power show promise following the blockbuster IPOs of both Fervo Energy and X-energy this month.

Competition from photovoltaics will be stiff, though. Solar panels have spread dramatically in recent years, spurred by declining costs that show no sign of stopping. By 2035, prices are expected to drop another 30%, outcompeting coal and natural gas. By 2050, solar panels are expected to generate more than twice as much electricity as natural gas.

Solar’s falling costs can be attributed to two causes: One is China’s industrial policy, which has favored the technology, subsidizing manufacturers and flooding the market. The other is mass manufacturing, which has helped wring costs out of solar at a remarkable pace.

Generally, “costs fall with every doubling of of installed capacity,” Kimmel said. “In the case of solar, it has gone even faster than that.”

Solar’s abundance is starting to push grid-scale batteries down the same path. In Spain and Italy, standalone solar farms are no longer profitable because a surplus of solar power has driven down daytime electricity prices, Kimmel said. In response, developers have started building so-called hybrid renewable power plants, which pair solar panels with batteries to take advantage of higher evening prices.

The current state of the battery market is akin to where solar was in 2020, BloombergNEF said. Last year, 112 gigawatts of grid-scale batteries were installed worldwide. By 2035, the company expects that figure to nearly triple. Companies from Redwood Materials to Ford have launched energy storage businesses to capitalize on the trend.

The missing piece in this report was the Iran War, which started when BloombergNEF was too far along in the process to make any major changes. The team did test the effects of two scenarios on various countries’ dependence on energy imports. 

Under the economic transition scenario, in which decarbonization is driven largely by dollars and cents rather than regulations, every country would reduce its reliance on foreign energy, including oil powerhouse Saudi Arabia. Under a net-zero scenario, which sees regulations driving deeper decarbonization, every country would be able to virtually eliminate its reliance on energy imports.

“The transition, which in many ways is cost efficient, is actually good for energy independence,” Kimmel said.

Compare Our Top Pick Action Cameras

The B-Roll

All those cheap cameras on Amazon: Readers often ask, why spend $400 on a GoPro when they can get a camera with 4K video for $100? It’s a fair question, and the answer comes down to software, primarily image stabilization. Action cameras are designed to be strapped to helmets or clipped to your chest while you skydive, rock climb, and race through the city on a scooter. Without stabilization, the results are something even your closest friends won’t sit through. So yes, you’ll get 4K footage with the cheaper cams, but it’ll be footage no one wants to see. In our view, you’re better off spending another $100 for an older GoPro (Hero 11 or 12) on sale.

Best Accessories to Trick Out Your Camera

Photograph: Scott Gilbertson

Once you have an action camera, you’re good to go for most use cases. GoPro, Insta360, and DJI all provide helmet mounts and other ways to stick your camera where you want it. But there are some nice extras that can make getting that shot you’re dreaming of even easier. Here are a few:

A good microSD card: You may get an SD card with your camera. Insta360’s SD cards are pretty good actually, but I tend to use SanDisk’s Extreme cards because they’re fast and, as a bonus, waterproof. You can pick up a 512-GB card for around $70. I also like Samsung’s Pro Plus microSD cards, which are a little faster in my tests. You can grab a 256-GB for around $96. DJI has some specific recommendations for microSD cards to use with the Action 6. Of their list the one I recommend is the Lexar Professional Silver Plus ($24).

GoPro Media Mod for $79: GoPro’s sound is OK out of the box, but if you want higher-quality audio, this is where you start. Not because the Media Mod produces great sound—it’s better than the camera, but still not great. What it offers is a microphone jack. Plug in a high-quality microphone and you’ll finally have awesome sound. (Not recommended while skydiving.)

Handlebar/seatpost/pole mount for $40: This is my favorite mount for mountain biking, but it’ll also work on ski poles and any other round object you want to clamp it to.

Motorcycle accessory bundle for $50: If you ride, this mount for Insta360 cameras (Ace Pro, X5, etc.) is a must-have. It’s one of the most secure clamps I’ve ever used, almost as good as a bench vice.

Yallsame tripod mount for $10: Action cameras offer many ways to mount them, but one that’s curiously missing is the traditional quarter-inch tripod screw mount. The GoPro Hero 13 has one, but this three-pack of adapters solves the problem for the others.

Polarizer and ND filters: If you shoot around water, through glass, or in any other high-glare situation, a polarizing filter will help cut that glare. Neutral density (ND) filters hold back light to let you shoot at a wider aperture in bright light, helping to increase the amount of motion blur. Both are great additions to your action camera kit. If you have the Hero 13 Black you can get the new GoPro ND filter Four-Pack ($90), which automatically adjusts the camera settings when attached. This is huge since getting the shutter speed right with ND filters can take some trial and error. The GoPro ND filters handle all that for you. If you don’t have a HEro 13, I’ve tested and like DJI’s ND filter set for the Action 6 ($79). For older GoPros, I like Freewell’s polarizing and ND filters ($20). I suggest starting with an 8-stop ND or combo ND and polarizing filter.

Floaty for $35: Another one for the water shooters, but well worth the money since it’ll keep your GoPro from ending up at the bottom of the sea. I haven’t tried it, but here’s one for the Insta360 Ace Pro 2 ($20), and at the time of updating the Action 6 is so new there doesn’t see to be a case. I can confirm that the older case will work, but the buttons don’t quite line up and it’s a pain to use. Hopefully DJI will get out an updated version soon.

Selfie stick for $25: I’ve tested a lot of selfie sticks and they’re almost all fine, but I keep grabbing this Insta360 version when I head out the door. It’s lightweight, small enough to fit at the bottom of my bag, and it’s affordable. If you want to go big, this Insta360 Extended Edition Selfie Stick ($100) can imitate a low-flying drone, perfect for use in national parks and other places where drones are forbidden.

There is a particular kind of frustration that comes with owning a speaker that sounds genuinely brilliant indoors but cannot follow you outside without the quality falling off a cliff the moment you unplug it.

Most portable speakers solve the portability problem by quietly compromising on the thing that made you want a good speaker in the first place, leaving you with something that is fine for a garden or a weekend away but never quite sounds like it means it.