Here are a few of our favorite drum machines available now. The Roland TR-808 was a hugely influential drum synthesizer first introduced in 1980, and its sounds are now instantly recognizable and truly signature to the Roland name. The TR-08 is Roland’s fresh take on their beloved drum machine from way back when, sporting classic design elements including sturdy plastic knobs and colorful buttons. It also stays true to its predecessor in both sound and user functionality....

Leaked Black Friday ads have changed the shopping game for bargain hunters, says Stephen Baker, veteran tech industry analyst at market research firm NPD Group. Now, he says, people who queue up hours before store openings can be better informed about what they’re waiting in line for, and whether it’s worth their time (and shivering). A big part of being a savvy shopper, Baker says, is realizing that the items getting the deepest discounts this weekend might not be top-drawer loot....

Lead researcher Omar Yaghi discovered a way to make highly porous MOFs in 1999, and his team continues to update that work today–their most porous materials to date are called MOF-200 and MOF-210. The pore aperture measures of these materials is 32 by 24 angstroms (ten billionth of a meter). The internal diameter is 47 angstroms. We’re talking in pretty tiny terms here, but those are the largest reported MOF pore measurements we know of....

Naturalists have only recently worked out the mechanics of the sticky web—and of avoiding it. “It’s surprising how little attention the topic has gotten despite how many people wonder about it,” says Brent Opell, a biologist at Virginia Tech who has researched spiders’ capture threads. Opell has shown that when a bug tries to pull away from a web, the droplets divide the force across a length of stretchy silk, so that no single point bears all the strain....

Being away from your dog during the workday can be stressful, especially if your pup likes to make a run for it. With the Whistle Go Health & Location Tracker, you get a notification every time your pet leaves your designated safe zone. Whistle Go’s little box attaches to your dog’s collar and the connected app allows you to constantly monitor your pet’s whereabouts via live tracking. If you often get that gut-feeling that something is wrong with your pet at home, simply check in on them with the Whistle Go app....

AdGuard Family Plan: Lifetime Subscription AdGuard VPN protects your online presence with its ultimate solution for a safe internet browser without having to deal with pesky ads. Boasting a top-notch security reputation compatible with almost any device and named the world’s most advanced ad blocker, the service provides the ultimate security for the whole family. The easy-to-use subscription, rated 4.6 out of 5 stars on G2, comes with innovative software that hides your data from malware attacks and fraudulent activity and provides customized security that results in a faster and safer VPN connection....

To use it, make sure you enable QuikCapture, as on some models it’s off by default. Swipe down from the top of the touchscreen, then swipe left, and go to Preferences. Pick General, then QuikCapture to turn the feature on or off. These tips and tricks will work with every GoPro Hero model released since 2016, all the way back to the GoPro Hero 5. With the camera off, you can then tap the Shutter/Select button on the top of your GoPro to turn the camera on and start recording immediately....

Right now you can get yourself the refurbished Apple iPad Pro 9.7″ 128GB in space gray for just $249.99, which is our lowest price yet! Purchase one to experience just why over 400 million people have bought iPads to date. This Apple iPad Pro has a 9.7″ multi-touchscreen to enable you to enjoy browsing on a generously wide screen with multi-touch controls. It also comes with HD cameras to capture wonderful moments both in pictures and video....

Passive acoustic monitoring—leaving a hydrophone running in the water—allows researchers to learn about life in the oceans through the complex orchestrations of sounds they hear. “You can hear rain falling, waves breaking, seafloor volcanoes or earthquakes, the noise of ships or trawlers dragging nets along the seafloor. And of course you hear the animals themselves,” says Jesse Ausubel, an environmental researcher at Rockefeller University and a director of the IQOE....

HomePod We’ll get to our chronological recap of the keynote here in a minute, but we have to start with the new HomePod speaker, which was actually the “one more thing” at the end of the presentation. It seems very interesting that Apple has somewhat downplayed the Siri integration here and focused more on audio fidelity. No one even mentioned HomeKit until most of the way through the introduction. This feels less like a smart home hub at the moment and more of an accessory for Apple Music....

For most people, family gatherings during the holidays are rarely stress-free. Maybe you have that cousin who ruins dinner by igniting political debates, or the turkey is burnt, or your relatives won’t stop asking you about what you’ll do after you finish school. Sometimes these situations are small, unpleasant blips in otherwise enjoyable celebrations. But for some, the feelings go deeper—many people dread the holidays, becoming stressed or anxious in the weeks leading up to a family get-together....

For a long time, humans thought this archaic living bicycle helmet synced up with the moon’s schedule, swarming to coastlines when the tide is high during the full and new moons. Recent research, however, indicates the crabs actually mate according to water temperature. They may be like a primordial Goldilocks—too hot or too cold, and the crabs recede to the depths of the ocean. But when the water is just right, the breeding pairs appear....

Detecting a cellphone’s location during a 911 call is more complex than when it comes from a landline, but last week, AT&T announced that they were set to boost the specificity of their location-detection tech for mobile phones considerably. Here’s how it works now, how it’s changing, and how it stacks up against the competition. From landlines to cell phones Determining a location that’s coming in via a landline is “easy,” says Chris Sambar, the executive vice president and head of AT&T’s Network division....

Forgive yourself for feeling some deja vu. The first strains of Omicron, including BA.1 and BA.2, were discovered in southern Africa in late November 2021. BA.1 had a slight head start in its global spread, and drove the winter wave in the United States; BA.1 drove a minor bump; and BA.2.12.1 followed shortly after that. Although 73 percent of Americans ended up protected against the OG Omicron after the first wave, those following Omicron strains carried slightly different spikes that antibodies, the body’s first-line immune response couldn’t always recognize....

The attacks consisted of hacking into the email accounts of 53 Times employees, and the information accessed was apparently limited to information related to the Wen Jiabao story. The Times stresses that no customer information (credit cards, that kind of thing) was accessed. An outside firm hired by the Times found that the technique used to gain this access was consistent with other attacks from China: a method called “spearphishing,” an essentially simple way to gain access that involves sending malicious links that, when opened, install malware on the victim’s computer....

New Thinking: Conventional wisdom has long warned against young pitchers throwing curveballs for fear that the extreme stress it puts on the elbow can tear the ulnar collateral ligament [see below] or even break their growing bones. A new study published by Fleisig earlier this year in the American Journal of Sports Medicine showed that the fastball actually puts slightly more stress on the player’s arm than a curveball. The bigger risk factor, the study concluded, is how many pitches are thrown....

Who can resist a pun-based holiday? Star Wars fans have adopted May 4 (or “May the Fourth…”) as “Star Wars Day.” The idea has taken hold enough to have even branched into purist factions who honor the day as a celebration of all things Star Wars, and stricter, more orthodox sects who choose to only acknowledge the Light Side on May the Fourth and all then dedicate a day to all things Dark Side on “Revenge of the Fifth....

If you feel out of the loop on what’s been happening with this strange new problem-plagued gadget, let’s catch you up on how the story has unfolded. The company first officially teased the concept for the device now known as the Galaxy Fold in early November of last year at the Samsung Developers Conference. At the time, we wondered how it would hold up physically—and we also explored how, like a newspaper, a folding device pulls off the neat trick of containing a screen that’s bigger than its folded-up footprint....

But, as today’s infographic demonstrates, the WWW has become significantly more worldwide over the past two decades. By 2010, more than 2 billion people–or about one-third of the global population–had access to the internet, up from something like .05 percent in 1990, and less than 10 percent of users worldwide now reside in the U.S: by jkan. Check out our data visualization blog. This infographic does an excellent job of showing two big trends: the geographical diversification of the web, and China’s sudden expansion and global dominance as an internet presence....