What's New

We're starting to get close to July 4th, which makes it an oddly fruitful weekend for tech deals. There are still a few E3 Game and Console Deals going on, and Best Buy's Massive Apple Sale is still happening. Microsoft has already tried to get a head start on competitors with an early Microsoft Store Independence Day Sale, with discounts on Surfaces, Xboxes, and other Microsoft products. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Google’s clever new AI-powered camera is designed to capture stellar 7-second snippets of family shenanigans. Here’s how to get started. There’s a chip inside the Clips loaded with a version of ­Google’s ­computer vision code. It can learn to recognize faces, so train it to know yours. When you first get the camera, wave and smile at it, and take a lot of selfies and ussies. It can also recognize pets—give your cat plenty of screen time too. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

I'm going to tell you a secret. It's something almost no one in my professional life knows. I'm dyslexic. Given that knowledge, my chosen career—writer—might seem odd. But while I was cursed with poor spelling skills, I’ve always been drawn to storytelling. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

In 1805, Zebulon Pike, a US Army officer and explorer, explored the Louisiana territory his young country had just bought on the cheap, hunting for the source of the mighty Mississippi River. A year later, he led expeditions through the Spanish settlements of New Mexico and Texas. But in November of 1806, he and his men met their match in Colorado, while trying to scale a mountain that towers 8,000 feet above the surrounding region. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

You’ve seen the scene a thousand times: a cop, probably in a trench coat, shows up at the site of a brutal murder or some other crime and starts poking around, trying to figure out what went wrong. It might look like standard gumshoe stuff on TV or in the movies, but crime scene investigation is actually a science—one that Hollywood adaptations often get wrong. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

This Amazon Echo doesn't seem to understand that all I want is a whiskey. I'm seated in the Tribeca offices of marketing firm 360i and the haunting voice coming out of its little speaker just says, "Never heard of it." The problem is that me and 360i's creative director Andrew Hunter both gave the order at the same time and "Rose," our guide at the Mariposa Saloon in this audio play, couldn't make it out. Nevermind, then. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Testing workout earbuds requires an entirely different set of metrics than regular in-ear headphones. More than anything else, workout earbuds need to stay put. Running is hard enough without constantly flibberting with something in your ear canal. Other factors that might be big pluses when you're sitting at your desk are not so great when you're in motion. Excellent noise filtering is less attractive when you might get mowed down by a cyclist. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

In Ann Arbor, Michigan, last week, 125 mostly white, mostly male, business-card-bearing attendees crowded into a brightly lit ballroom to consider "mobility." That’s the buzzword for a hazy vision of how tech in all forms—including smartphones, credit cards, and autonomous vehicles— will combine with the remains of traditional public transit to get urbanites where they need to go. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

This storyoriginally appeared on The Guardianand is part of theClimate Deskcollaboration. Sea level rise driven by climate change is set to pose an existential crisis to many US coastal communities, with new research finding that as many as 311,000 homes face being flooded every two weeks within the next 30 years. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Former Mythbusters host Kari Byron says that her young daughter was enthralled by the character Rey in Star Wars: The Force Awakens. “She was just done with princesses when she saw Rey,” Byron says in Episode 313 of the Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast. “Because it was like, OK, this is a smart badass, and I could see that it was so much more interesting to her than a helpless princess that’s locked in a tower. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices