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There’s nothing like skiing under dazzling blue skies. Don’t ruin it by dressing for a blizzard. 1. Trew Men’s Wander Jacket A simple wind-blocking shell is all you need in epic weather. The trim cut of this one means it doesn’t feel like you are wearing a tent, and the lightweight construction makes it easy to pack or stuff in a backpack. If wind and clouds suddenly appear, no prob: You’re still protected. $419 2. Faction Dictator 2. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Whether on Android or iOS, you likely already use Google Maps for navigation. You use Gmail for email. You use YouTube to watch videos. And you’re right to do so. You’d be even more right to ditch whatever junk keyboard your smartphone shipped with for Gboard, another Google staple that works like a dream. Lots of Android devices—including the Pixel line of premium phones—already use Gboard by default. It's been widely available to download for a year and a half. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Robots can walk, talk, run a hotel … and are entirely stumped by a doorknob. Or a mailbox. Or a dirty bathtub—zzzzt, dead. Sure, the SpotMini, a doglike domestic helper from Boston Dynamics, can climb stairs, but it struggles to reliably hand over a can of soda. That’s why some roboticists think the field needs to flip its perspective. “There are two approaches to building robots,” says Maya Cakmak, a researcher at the University of Washington. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

My sister Gina is a fantastic cook who does not suffer crappy cookware gladly. Her pans are battle-tested All Clads that have been roughed up over the years, but they take the abuse she dishes out with a shrug. Once, though, I noticed damage to a T-Fal pan of hers that wasn't up to the task; the bottom of the pan had a bit of a dome shape to it, meaning hot oil within the pan pooled around the outer rim but did not cover the higher center. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

The Super Bowl is upon us, and this year we get to watch The New England Patriots face off against the Philadelphia Eagles. If that sounds familiar, it’s because they both faced off in the 2005 Super Bowl. The Patriots won then, but that doesn’t mean they’ll win again. With fans so dedicated that they’ll climb up Crisco’d light poles to celebrate, Philly may just have the spirit to overcome. The big game kicks off at 6:30 p.m. Sunday, February 4 on NBC. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

The worst part of breast pumping? The logistics. Ask any working, breastfeeding mom and she'll describe the hassle of finding a private room, disrobing, and hooking up to a machine to pump every three to four hours. And then, after she's sat there for 20 minutes, she still needs to store the milk, wash everything, and put it all away. As an ER doctor and mom of preemie twins, Stella Dao had to pump four to six times a day. She had a big incentive to improve the existing technology. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Let’s face it. Phones cost too much money. Yes, the $1,000 iPhone X is awesome, but for those who don’t need to keep a status symbol in their pocket, $350 feels much more reasonable, and that’s what the HTC U11 Life offers. You can buy two or three of these for the price of a top-tier Android phone, like the Pixel 2, and that’s the point. It’s an unabashed value version of HTC’s fancier U11. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Ursula Le Guin imagined the future for a living, but her most prescient statement may have come in a speech. "I think hard times are coming," the writer said at the National Book Awards in November 2014, "when we will be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, and can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine some real grounds for hope." Three years and change. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

You can get a drone in a wide range of sizes. Some of them fit in your palm (like the Syma X20) while others are quite large. But have you noticed anything about the flying time? Many of the super small drones have flight times that are less than five minutes. The larger drones (like the DJI Phantom 4) have a maximum flight time of closer to a half hour. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

When Randal Miles woke up from a nap during his flight from Paris to Los Angeles last week, he opened the interactive map on his seat-back screen to see how much longer he'd be in the air. But the number that caught his eye was the jet's speed. The Norwegian jet was flying at 770 mph—about 200 mph faster than its standard cruising velocity. “I thought, ‘Damn, this thing is hauling ass,’” Miles says. “I thought I was either sleepy or it was reading wrong. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices