Once again, Sam Altman wants to show you the future. The CEO of OpenAI is standing on a sparse stage in San Francisco, preparing to reveal his next move to an attentive crowd. “We needed some way for identifying, authenticating humans in the age of AGI,” Altman explains, referring to artificial general intelligence. “We wanted a way to make sure that humans stayed special and central.” The solution Altman came up with is looming behind him. It’s a white sphere about the size of a beach ball, with a camera at its center. The company that makes it, known as Tools for Humanity, calls this mysterious device the Orb. Stare into the heart of the plastic-and-silicon globe and it will map the unique furrows and ciliary zones of your iris. Seconds later, you’ll receive inviolable proof of your humanity: a 12,800-digit binary number, known as an iris code, sent to an app on your phone. At the same time, a packet of cryptocurrency called Worldcoin, worth approximately $42, will be transferred to your digital wallet—your reward for becoming a “verified human.” Altman co-founded Tools for Humanity in 2019 as part of a suite of companies he believed would reshape the world. Once the tech he was developing at OpenAI passed a certain level of intelligence, he reasoned, it would mark the end of one era on the Internet and the beginning of another, in which AI became so advanced, so human-like, that you would no longer be able to tell whether what you read, saw, or heard online came from a real person. When that happened, Altman imagined, we would need a new kind of online infrastructure: a human-verification layer for the Internet, to distinguish real people from the proliferating number of bots and AI “agents.”And so Tools for Humanity set out to build a global “proof-of-humanity” network. It aims to verify 50 million people by the end of 2025; ultimately its goal is to sign up every single human being on the planet. The free crypto serves as both an incentive for users to sign up, and also an entry point into what the company hopes will become the world’s largest financial network, through which it believes “double-digit percentages of the global economy” will eventually flow. Even for Altman, these missions are audacious. “If this really works, it’s like a fundamental piece of infrastructure for the world,” Altman tells TIME in a video interview from the passenger seat of a car a few days before his April 30 keynote address.Internal hardware of the Orb in mid-assembly in March. Davide Monteleone for TIMEThe project’s goal is to solve a problem partly of Altman’s own making. In the near future, he and other tech leaders say, advanced AIs will be imbued with agency: the ability to not just respond to human prompting, but to take actions independently in the world. This will enable the creation of AI coworkers that can drop into your company and begin solving problems; AI tutors that can adapt their teaching style to students’ preferences; even AI doctors that can diagnose routine cases and handle scheduling or logistics. The arrival of these virtual agents, their venture capitalist backers predict, will turbocharge our productivity and unleash an age of material abundance.But AI agents will also have cascading consequences for the human experience online. “As AI systems become harder to distinguish from people, websites may face difficult trade-offs,” says a recent paper by researchers from 25 different universities, nonprofits, and tech companies, including OpenAI. “There is a significant risk that digital institutions will be unprepared for a time when AI-powered agents, including those leveraged by malicious actors, overwhelm other activity online.” On social-media platforms like X and Facebook, bot-driven accounts are amassing billions of views on AI-generated content. In April, the foundation that runs Wikipedia disclosed that AI bots scraping their site were making the encyclopedia too costly to sustainably run. Later the same month, researchers from the University of Zurich found that AI-generated comments on the subreddit /r/ChangeMyView were up to six times more successful than human-written ones at persuading unknowing users to change their minds.  Photograph by Davide Monteleone for TIMEBuy a copy of the Orb issue hereThe arrival of agents won’t only threaten our ability to distinguish between authentic and AI content online. It will also challenge the Internet’s core business model, online advertising, which relies on the assumption that ads are being viewed by humans. “The Internet will change very drastically sometime in the next 12 to 24 months,” says Tools for Humanity CEO Alex Blania. “So we have to succeed, or I’m not sure what else would happen.”For four years, Blania’s team has been testing the Orb’s hardware abroad. Now the U.S. rollout has arrived. Over the next 12 months, 7,500 Orbs will be arriving in dozens of American cities, in locations like gas stations, bodegas, and flagship stores in Los Angeles, Austin, and Miami. The project’s founders and fans hope the Orb’s U.S. debut will kickstart a new phase of growth. The San Francisco keynote was titled: “At Last.” It’s not clear the public appetite matches the exultant branding. Tools for Humanity has “verified” just 12 million humans since mid 2023, a pace Blania concedes is well behind schedule. Few online platforms currently support the so-called “World ID” that the Orb bestows upon its visitors, leaving little to entice users to give up their biometrics beyond the lure of free crypto. Even Altman isn’t sure whether the whole thing can work. “I can see [how] this becomes a fairly mainstream thing in a few years,” he says. “Or I can see that it’s still only used by a small subset of people who think about the world in a certain way.” Blania (left) and Altman debut the Orb at World’s U.S. launch in San Francisco on April 30, 2025. Jason Henry—The New York Times/ReduxYet as the Internet becomes overrun with AI, the creators of this strange new piece of hardware are betting that everybody in the world will soon want—or need—to visit an Orb. The biometric code it creates, they predict, will become a new type of digital passport, without which you might be denied passage to the Internet of the future, from dating apps to government services. In a best-case scenario, World ID could be a privacy-preserving way to fortify the Internet against an AI-driven deluge of fake or deceptive content. It could also enable the distribution of universal basic income (UBI)—a policy that Altman has previously touted—as AI automation transforms the global economy. To examine what this new technology might mean, I reported from three continents, interviewed 10 Tools for Humanity executives and investors, reviewed hundreds of pages of company documents, and “verified” my own humanity. The Internet will inevitably need some kind of proof-of-humanity system in the near future, says Divya Siddarth, founder of the nonprofit Collective Intelligence Project. The real question, she argues, is whether such a system will be centralized—“a big security nightmare that enables a lot of surveillance”—or privacy-preserving, as the Orb claims to be. Questions remain about Tools for Humanity’s corporate structure, its yoking to an unstable cryptocurrency, and what power it would concentrate in the hands of its owners if successful. Yet it’s also one of the only attempts to solve what many see as an increasingly urgent problem. “There are some issues with it,” Siddarth says of World ID. “But you can’t preserve the Internet in amber. Something in this direction is necessary.”In March, I met Blania at Tools for Humanity’s San Francisco headquarters, where a large screen displays the number of weekly “Orb verifications” by country. A few days earlier, the CEO had attended a $1 million-per-head dinner at Mar-a-Lago with President Donald Trump, whom he credits with clearing the way for the company’s U.S. launch by relaxing crypto regulations. “Given Sam is a very high profile target,” Blania says, “we just decided that we would let other companies fight that fight, and enter the U.S. once the air is clear.” As a kid growing up in Germany, Blania was a little different than his peers. “Other kids were, like, drinking a lot, or doing a lot of parties, and I was just building a lot of things that could potentially blow up,” he recalls. At the California Institute of Technology, where he was pursuing research for a masters degree, he spent many evenings reading the blogs of startup gurus like Paul Graham and Altman. Then, in 2019, Blania received an email from Max Novendstern, an entrepreneur who had been kicking around a concept with Altman to build a global cryptocurrency network. They were looking for technical minds to help with the project. Over cappuccinos, Altman told Blania he was certain about three things. First, smarter-than-human AI was not only possible, but inevitable—and it would soon mean you could no longer assume that anything you read, saw, or heard on the Internet was human-created. Second, cryptocurrency and other decentralized technologies would be a massive force for change in the world. And third, scale was essential to any crypto network’s value. The Orb is tested on a calibration rig, surrounded by checkerboard targets to ensure precision in iris detection. Davide Monteleone for TIMEThe goal of Worldcoin, as the project was initially called, was to combine those three insights. Altman took a lesson from PayPal, the company co-founded by his mentor Peter Thiel. Of its initial funding, PayPal spent less than $10 million actually building its app—but pumped an additional $70 million or so into a referral program, whereby new users and the person who invited them would each receive $10 in credit. The referral program helped make PayPal a leading payment platform. Altman thought a version of that strategy would propel Worldcoin to similar heights. He wanted to create a new cryptocurrency and give it to users as a reward for signing up. The more people who joined the system, the higher the token’s value would theoretically rise. Since 2019, the project has raised $244 million from investors like Coinbase and the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. That money paid for the $50 million cost of designing the Orb, plus maintaining the software it runs on. The total market value of all Worldcoins in existence, however, is far higher—around $12 billion. That number is a bit misleading: most of those coins are not in circulation and Worldcoin’s price has fluctuated wildly. Still, it allows the company to reward users for signing up at no cost to itself. The main lure for investors is the crypto upside. Some 75% of all Worldcoins are set aside for humans to claim when they sign up, or as referral bonuses. The remaining 25% are split between Tools for Humanity’s backers and staff, including Blania and Altman. “I’m really excited to make a lot of money,” ” Blania says.From the beginning, Altman was thinking about the consequences of the AI revolution he intended to unleash. (On May 21, he announced plans to team up with famed former Apple designer Jony Ive on a new AI personal device.) A future in which advanced AI could perform most tasks more effectively than humans would bring a wave of unemployment and economic dislocation, he reasoned. Some kind of wealth redistribution might be necessary. In 2016, he partially funded a study of basic income, which gave $1,000 per-month handouts to low-income individuals in Illinois and Texas. But there was no single financial system that would allow money to be sent to everybody in the world. Nor was there a way to stop an individual human from claiming their share twice—or to identify a sophisticated AI pretending to be human and pocketing some cash of its own. In 2023, Tools for Humanity raised the possibility of using the network to redistribute the profits of AI labs that were able to automate human labor. “As AI advances,” it said, “fairly distributing access and some of the created value through UBI will play an increasingly vital role in counteracting the concentration of economic power.”Blania was taken by the pitch, and agreed to join the project as a co-founder. “Most people told us we were very stupid or crazy or insane, including Silicon Valley investors,” Blania says. At least until ChatGPT came out in 2022, transforming OpenAI into one of the world’s most famous tech companies and kickstarting a market bull-run. “Things suddenly started to make more and more sense to the external world,” Blania says of the vision to develop a global “proof-of-humanity” network. “You have to imagine a world in which you will have very smart and competent systems somehow flying through the Internet with different goals and ideas of what they want to do, and us having no idea anymore what we’re dealing with.”After our interview, Blania’s head of communications ushers me over to a circular wooden structure where eight Orbs face one another. The scene feels like a cross between an Apple Store and a ceremonial altar. “Do you want to get verified?” she asks. Putting aside my reservations for the purposes of research, I download the World App and follow its prompts. I flash a QR code at the Orb, then gaze into it. A minute or so later, my phone buzzes with confirmation: I’ve been issued my own personal World ID and some Worldcoin.The first thing the Orb does is check if you’re human, using a neural network that takes input from various sensors, including an infrared camera and a thermometer. Davide Monteleone for TIMEWhile I stared into the Orb, several complex procedures had taken place at once. A neural network took inputs from multiple sensors—an infrared camera, a thermometer—to confirm I was a living human. Simultaneously, a telephoto lens zoomed in on my iris, capturing the physical traits within that distinguish me from every other human on Earth. It then converted that image into an iris code: a numerical abstraction of my unique biometric data. Then the Orb checked to see if my iris code matched any it had seen before, using a technique allowing encrypted data to be compared without revealing the underlying information. Before the Orb deleted my data, it turned my iris code into several derivative codes—none of which on its own can be linked back to the original—encrypted them, deleted the only copies of the decryption keys, and sent each one to a different secure server, so that future users’ iris codes can be checked for uniqueness against mine. If I were to use my World ID to access a website, that site would learn nothing about me except that I’m human. The Orb is open-source, so outside experts can examine its code and verify the company’s privacy claims. “I did a colonoscopy on this company and these technologies before I agreed to join,” says Trevor Traina, a Trump donor and former U.S. ambassador to Austria who now serves as Tools for Humanity’s chief business officer. “It is the most privacy-preserving technology on the planet.”Only weeks later, when researching what would happen if I wanted to delete my data, do I discover that Tools for Humanity’s privacy claims rest on what feels like a sleight of hand. The company argues that in modifying your iris code, it has “effectively anonymized” your biometric data. If you ask Tools for Humanity to delete your iris codes, they will delete the one stored on your phone, but not the derivatives. Those, they argue, are no longer your personal data at all. But if I were to return to an Orb after deleting my data, it would still recognize those codes as uniquely mine. Once you look into the Orb, a piece of your identity remains in the system forever. If users could truly delete that data, the premise of one ID per human would collapse, Tools for Humanity’s chief privacy officer Damien Kieran tells me when I call seeking an explanation. People could delete and sign up for new World IDs after being suspended from a platform. Or claim their Worldcoin tokens, sell them, delete their data, and cash in again. This argument fell flat with European Union regulators in Germany, who recently declared that the Orb posed “fundamental data protection issues” and ordered the company to allow European users to fully delete even their anonymized data. (Tools for Humanity has appealed; the regulator is now reassessing the decision.) “Just like any other technology service, users cannot delete data that is not personal data,” Kieran said in a statement. “If a person could delete anonymized data that can’t be linked to them by World or any third party, it would allow bad actors to circumvent the security and safety that World ID is working to bring to every human.”On a balmy afternoon this spring, I climb a flight of stairs up to a room above a restaurant in an outer suburb of Seoul. Five elderly South Koreans tap on their phones as they wait to be “verified” by the two Orbs in the center of the room. “We don’t really know how to distinguish between AI and humans anymore,” an attendant in a company t-shirt explains in Korean, gesturing toward the spheres. “We need a way to verify that we’re human and not AI. So how do we do that? Well, humans have irises, but AI doesn’t.”The attendant ushers an elderly woman over to an Orb. It bleeps. “Open your eyes,” a disembodied voice says in English. The woman stares into the camera. Seconds later, she checks her phone and sees that a packet of Worldcoin worth 75,000 Korean won (about $54) has landed in her digital wallet. Congratulations, the app tells her. You are now a verified human.A visitor views the Orbs in Seoul on April 14, 2025. Taemin Ha for TIMETools for Humanity aims to “verify” 1 million Koreans over the next year. Taemin Ha for TIMEA couple dozen Orbs have been available in South Korea since 2023, verifying roughly 55,000 people. Now Tools for Humanity is redoubling its efforts there. At an event in a traditional wooden hanok house in central Seoul, an executive announces that 250 Orbs will soon be dispersed around the country—with the aim of verifying 1 million Koreans in the next 12 months. South Korea has high levels of smartphone usage, crypto and AI adoption, and Internet access, while average wages are modest enough for the free Worldcoin on offer to still be an enticing draw—all of which makes it fertile testing ground for the company’s ambitious global expansion. Yet things seem off to a slow start. In a retail space I visited in central Seoul, Tools for Humanity had constructed a wooden structure with eight Orbs facing each other. Locals and tourists wander past looking bemused; few volunteer themselves up. Most who do tell me they are crypto enthusiasts who came intentionally, driven more by the spirit of early adoption than the free coins. The next day, I visit a coffee shop in central Seoul where a chrome Orb sits unassumingly in one corner. Wu Ruijun, a 20-year-old student from China, strikes up a conversation with the barista, who doubles as the Orb’s operator. Wu was invited here by a friend who said both could claim free cryptocurrency if he signed up. The barista speeds him through the process. Wu accepts the privacy disclosure without reading it, and widens his eyes for the Orb. Soon he’s verified. “I wasn’t told anything about the privacy policy,” he says on his way out. “I just came for the money.”As Altman’s car winds through San Francisco, I ask about the vision he laid out in 2019: that AI would make it harder for us to trust each other online. To my surprise, he rejects the framing. “I’m much more [about] like: what is the good we can create, rather than the bad we can stop?” he says. “It’s not like, ‘Oh, we’ve got to avoid the bot overrun’ or whatever. It’s just that we can do a lot of special things for humans.” It’s an answer that may reflect how his role has changed over the years. Altman is now the chief public cheerleader of a $300 billion company that’s touting the transformative utility of AI agents. The rise of agents, he and others say, will be a boon for our quality of life—like having an assistant on hand who can answer your most pressing questions, carry out mundane tasks, and help you develop new skills. It’s an optimistic vision that may well pan out. But it doesn’t quite fit with the prophecies of AI-enabled infopocalypse that Tools for Humanity was founded upon.Altman waves away a question about the influence he and other investors stand to gain if their vision is realized. Most holders, he assumes, will have already started selling their tokens—too early, he adds. “What I think would be bad is if an early crew had a lot of control over the protocol,” he says, “and that’s where I think the commitment to decentralization is so cool.” Altman is referring to the World Protocol, the underlying technology upon which the Orb, Worldcoin, and World ID all rely. Tools for Humanity is developing it, but has committed to giving control to its users over time—a process they say will prevent power from being concentrated in the hands of a few executives or investors. Tools for Humanity would remain a for-profit company, and could levy fees on platforms that use World ID, but other companies would be able to compete for customers by building alternative apps—or even alternative Orbs. The plan draws on ideas that animated the crypto ecosystem in the late 2010s and early 2020s, when evangelists for emerging blockchain technologies argued that the centralization of power—especially in large so-called “Web 2.0” tech companies—was responsible for many of the problems plaguing the modern Internet. Just as decentralized cryptocurrencies could reform a financial system controlled by economic elites, so too would it be possible to create decentralized organizations, run by their members instead of CEOs. How such a system might work in practice remains unclear. “Building a community-based governance system,” Tools for Humanity says in a 2023 white paper, “represents perhaps the most formidable challenge of the entire project.”Altman has a pattern of making idealistic promises that shift over time. He founded OpenAI as a nonprofit in 2015, with a mission to develop AGI safely and for the benefit of all humanity. To raise money, OpenAI restructured itself as a for-profit company in 2019, but with overall control still in the hands of its nonprofit board. Last year, Altman proposed yet another restructure—one which would dilute the board’s control and allow more profits to flow to shareholders. Why, I ask, should the public trust Tools for Humanity’s commitment to freely surrender influence and power? “I think you will just see the continued decentralization via the protocol,” he says. “The value here is going to live in the network, and the network will be owned and governed by a lot of people.” Altman talks less about universal basic income these days. He recently mused about an alternative, which he called “universal basic compute.” Instead of AI companies redistributing their profits, he seemed to suggest, they could instead give everyone in the world fair access to super-powerful AI. Blania tells me he recently “made the decision to stop talking” about UBI at Tools for Humanity. “UBI is one potential answer,” he says. “Just giving [people] access to the latest [AI] models and having them learn faster and better is another.” Says Altman: “I still don’t know what the right answer is. I believe we should do a better job of distribution of resources than we currently do.” When I probe the question of why people should trust him, Altman gets irritated. “I understand that you hate AI, and that’s fine,” he says. “If you want to frame it as the downside of AI is that there’s going to be a proliferation of very convincing AI systems that are pretending to be human, and we need ways to know what is really human-authorized versus not, then yeah, I think you can call that a downside of AI. It’s not how I would naturally frame it.” The phrase human-authorized hints at a tension between World ID and OpenAI’s plans for AI agents. An Internet where a World ID is required to access most services might impede the usefulness of the agents that OpenAI and others are developing. So Tools for Humanity is building a system that would allow users to delegate their World ID to an agent, allowing the bot to take actions online on their behalf, according to Tiago Sada, the company’s chief product officer. “We’ve built everything in a way that can be very easily delegatable to an agent,” Sada says. It’s a measure that would allow humans to be held accountable for the actions of their AIs. But it suggests that Tools for Humanity’s mission may be shifting beyond simply proving humanity, and toward becoming the infrastructure that enables AI agents to proliferate with human authorization. World ID doesn’t tell you whether a piece of content is AI-generated or human-generated; all it tells you is whether the account that posted it is a human or a bot. Even in a world where everybody had a World ID, our online spaces might still be filled with AI-generated text, images, and videos.As I say goodbye to Altman, I’m left feeling conflicted about his project. If the Internet is going to be transformed by AI agents, then some kind of proof-of-humanity system will almost certainly be necessary. Yet if the Orb becomes a piece of Internet infrastructure, it could give Altman—a beneficiary of the proliferation of AI content—significant influence over a leading defense mechanism against it. People might have no choice but to participate in the network in order to access social media or online services.I thought of an encounter I witnessed in Seoul. In the room above the restaurant, Cho Jeong-yeon, 75, watched her friend get verified by an Orb. Cho had been invited to do the same, but demurred. The reward wasn’t enough for her to surrender a part of her identity. “Your iris is uniquely yours, and we don’t really know how it might be used,” she says. “Seeing the machine made me think: are we becoming machines instead of humans now? Everything is changing, and we don’t know how it’ll all turn out.”—With reporting by Stephen Kim/Seoul. This story was supported by Tarbell Grants.Correction, May 30The original version of this story misstated the market capitalization of Worldcoin if all coins were in circulation. It is $12 billion, not $1.2 billion.

From soft yellows to heirloom-worthy teacups, vintage kitchen pieces add a sense of charm and comfort. These pieces can contribute to a cozy nook in your kitchen or simply make your countertops feel a little more timeless. Read on for some of the best nostalgic buys! Lily’s Home Retro Kitchen Wall Clock Buy on Amazon Equal parts retro and practical, this sunny yellow wall clock includes a thermometer and timer, bringing cheerful utility to your cooking space. A bestseller for a reason; it’s cute, clear, and accurate. VIYYIEA Vintage Framed Canvas Art Buy on Amazon A gentle still life of florals and lemons, this 9”x11” framed canvas painting has farmhouse written all over it. It’s graceful and adds just the right touch of old-world elegance. You can also find this artwork in other prints and sizes. Vanselia Ceramic Flower Vase (Retro) Buy on Amazon Rough-hewn and beautifully aged, this ceramic vase is the perfect home for fresh stems or faux greenery. Its earthen finish makes it look like it was plucked out of a vintage countryside kitchen. CHILDIKE European Porcelain Tea for One Set Buy on Amazon Nothing says quiet indulgence like a solo tea moment with this gold-rimmed, floral porcelain teapot and saucer set. Stackable, dainty, and dishwasher-safe: it’s the kind of piece that feels like a little ceremony in your day.

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication.Just in time for Memorial Day grilling, barbecuing, and smoking, the thoughtful folks over at ThermoWorks have put together a sale that you won’t want to miss. Starting today, you can get my favorite meat thermometer 30% off. It’s the Thermapen One, and I like it so much, I even bought one for my dad.  Thermapen ONE $76.30 at ThermoWorks $100.00 Save $23.70 Shop Now Shop Now $76.30 at ThermoWorks $100.00 Save $23.70 I’ve been using the Thermapen One for about eight months now, and I don’t know how I ever hosted a Friendsgiving without it. I’d rather forget those days when I nearly roasted my own arm because some other crummy meat thermometer took forever to measure the temperature of my oven-roasted turkey. Though I primarily use the Thermapen One for meat, don’t limit yourself—this handy probe thermometer can be used to check the doneness of breads, cakes, and casseroles too. The Thermapen One gives you an accurate reading in one second (hence the name). While that is absolutely fantastic, it’s the other features that set it apart. It has a hinged probe, so you can collapse it when it’s not in use. (It automatically shuts off when you fold the end in.) When you open it up, the digital display is backlit so you can easily see the reading. Best of all, the numbers rotate with the screen orientation. This sounds like an “okay, who cares” feature, but you’d be surprised how many weird angles you have to use to get to the center of a thigh or avoid hitting a turkey bone while trying to keep your knuckles from getting burned on a grill grate. A temperature reading that orients automatically right-side-up is extremely helpful. My dad’s the grill guy in our family, and the quick reading is the main feature that drew him to this thermometer in the first place: No more waiting around for the temperature to finish climbing while you lose heat from your grill with the lid open. In fact, if you want to get ahead of Father’s Day shopping, this is a great opportunity to grab a deal, and you'll feel proud of yourself for being so organized and thoughtful.The Thermapen One is on sale through May 27, so if shipping times won't get it to you by this weekend, at least you'll have it to get you through the rest of grilling season.

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication.There are certain limitations that I tolerate with apartment living. One of these that I begrudgingly accept is the lack of an outdoor grill set up. Apparently building owners don’t want flames spitting and embers glowing within 10 feet of their precious buildings—fine. But what if I could smoke meat with real wood pellets and also not set my apartment on fire? Well the Ninja Woodfire Outdoor Grill and Smoker is offering this opportunity. I’ve had my eye on it for a while now, and it’s finally on sale for Memorial Day.  Ninja Woodfire Outdoor 7-in-1 Grill & Smoker $249.99 at Amazon $369.99 Save $120.00 Get Deal Get Deal $249.99 at Amazon $369.99 Save $120.00 The Ninja Woodfire Grill and Smoker is an electric grill. I know, I know, many electric grills are basically glorified waffle irons, but the Ninja uses a combination of convection fan heating and an attached pellet smoke box to give you a lot more flavor than what a Foreman might. Unlike other air fryers masquerading as grills or smokers, the Woodfire Grill and Smoker is made to be used outdoors. It’s weather resistant, so you can build a permanent grill set-up with a stand and cover to keep it in tip-top shape. The regular Ninja Woodfire Grill and Smoker is on sale for $249.99, 32% off of its normal retail price of $369.99—this is the one I’ve been looking at because it has the smoke box, and that’s all I’ve coveted this whole time. However, the Ninja Woodfire Pro Connect Premium XL is also on sale right now for $399.99, 20% off its usual retail price of $499.99. This one has two attached probe thermometers and Bluetooth connectivity so you can monitor your smoked duck from the living room with the Ninja Woodfire Pro Connect app. It’s a question of whether you’d like a few more inches of real estate and app monitoring. If you are cooking for a smaller household and you don’t mind checking the temperature yourself, go for the original. Bigger households or those hosting frequent backyard barbecue parties might get better usage out of the Pro Connect Premium XL model. Either choice is a great one for this weekend's festivities, not to mention the entire summer ahead. 

May 19: Commemoration of Atatürk, Youth and Sports Day in Turkey (1919); Victoria Day in Canada (2025) Prince Harry and Meghan Markle 1655 – Anglo-Spanish War: England invaded Spanish Jamaica, capturing it a week later. 1743 – French physicist Jean-Pierre Christin published the design of a mercury thermometer using the centigrade scale, with 0 representing the melting point of water and 100 its boiling point. 1828 – The United States Congress passed the largest tariff in the nation's history, which resulted in severe economic hardship in the American South. 1915 – First World War: Australian and New Zealand troops repelled the third attack on Anzac Cove, inflicting heavy casualties on the attacking Ottoman forces. 2018 – The wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle (both pictured) took place at St George's Chapel in Windsor Castle, England. Alcuin (d. 804)Claude Vignon (b. 1593)Nora Ephron (b. 1941)John Gorton (d. 2002) More anniversaries: May 18 May 19 May 20 Archive By email List of days of the year About

Memorial Day has long been the unofficial kickoff to summer, but recently it’s also been a good time to grab some tech on sale. In the past few years, Memorial Day sales have brought solid discounts on some of our favorite tech, from affordable portable chargers to expensive tablets and robot vacuums. That’s on top of all the seasonal items that usually go on sale this time of year like grilling gear, pizza ovens and other outdoor tech.Now’s a great time to look for any of those items you may have on your wish list. And like most seasonal holidays as of late, you don't have to rush to make your purchase. Memorial Day deals are live now, and there's a good chance they'll be available until the holiday weekend has passed. We’ve collected the best Memorial Day sales on tech below, and we’ll continue to update this post as more offers become available.We'd be remiss if we didn't mention Amazon Prime Day, though. The biggest iteration of the online retailer's annual shopping event typically happens in July, and Amazon confirmed it will be back again this year (although official dates remain unknown). Tech is usually heavily discounted on Prime Day for Prime members, so if you're unsure about a purchase, you could take the chance and wait a little while longer to see if that pair of earbuds you've been eyeing drops even further in price during Prime Day. If not, Memorial Day offers the next best opportunity this time of year to save on gadgets and gear. Best Memorial Day tech sales: Top deals Best Memorial Day tech deals Peacock Premium (one year) for $25 ($55 off): The latest Peacock deal gives you one year of the Premium membership for only $25 when you use the code SPRINGSAVINGS at checkout. This ad-supported tier gives you access to some live sports content and more than 50 always-on channels, as well as the whole library of on-demand TV shows and movies Peacock has to offer. The deal runs through May 30. ProtonVPN (two years) for $81 (66 percent off): ProtonVPN two-year plans are 66 percent off and down to only $81 right now. You'll save more than $150 on the total cost of the subscription with this deal, and in addition to VPN coverage for all your devices, you also get access to features that let you block ads, malware and other trackers. Dyson V8 Plus cordless vacuum for $350 (26 percent off): The V8 is a great entry-level Dyson that boasts 40 minutes of runtime, two power modes, a motorbar cleaner head that works on all kinds of flooring and four additional cleaning attachments. Also available at Dyson in the Absolute model. Beats Powerbeats Pro 2 for $200 (20 percent off): The new Powerbeats Pro 2 have a comfortable design, improved sound quality and bass performance and heart rate sensors on board that make them good workout companions. However, you'll only be able to get that heart rate data if you have these buds paired to an iOS device. Beats Pill for $100 ($50 off): This IP67-rated Bluetooth speaker is one of our favorites thanks to its improved bass performance, over 24 hours of battery life and lossless audio via USB-C. Plus, if you have two Pills, you can pair them together for stereo sound. Blink Mini 2 (two-pack) for $38 (46 percent off): These are some of the best security cameras if you're looking for something cheap and only need basic functionality. They record 1080p video and send motion alerts to your phone, plus they work with Alexa voice commands. Blink Mini 2 cams are wired, but they can be placed outside with the right weather-resistant power adapter. Blink Outdoor 4 security cameras, 5 camera system for $200 (50 percent off): This pack-up includes give weather-resistant Blink Outdoor 4 cameras plus a Sync Module 2 to connect them all. These are some of our favorite security cameras thanks to their wireless design, accurate and speedy motion alerts and the ability to save footage locally when you use a thumb drive with the Sync Module 2. Ooni Memorial Day sale — 20 percent off almost everything: Most of Ooni's pizza ovens are on sale for Memorial Day, including the recently launched Koda 2 in its Essential bundle, which has been discounted from $489 to $391. The company's indoor electric pizza oven, the Volt 12, is also included in the sale: you can grab it for $629 instead of the usual $899. Ninja Artisan 5-in-1 outdoor electric pizza oven for $230 (23 percent off): This model from Ninja can create 12-inch pies in as little as three minutes, and it also has other cooking modes like bake, proof, broil and warm. You can choose from five unique pizza settings (Neapolitan, Thin Crust, Pan, New York, and Custom) and you can take control of cooking by adjusting the temperature from 90 to 700 degrees Fahrenheit. Also available at Amazon. Anker 321 MagGo battery pack for $22 (15 percent off): This 5K magnetic charging brick can attach magnetically to the backs of compatible smartphones, including iPhones, and includes built-in technology that monitors temperatures for a safer charge. It'll work with MagSafe cases as well. Anker Soundcore Space A40 earbuds for $45 ($35 off, Prime exclusive): Our top pick for the best budget wireless earbuds, the Space A40 punch above their weight in almost every way. They have excellent ANC, a good sound profile overall, a comfortable fit, multi-device connectivity and wireless charging support. Google Nest (wired) security camera for $70 (30 percent off): One of our favorite security cameras, the wired Nest cam has an attractive design and a super simple setup process — both experienced and new security camera owners will be able to get it up and running in minutes. It'll send motion alerts to your phone, and pet/person detection is a standard feature — most other security cams make you pay for that.  Samsung 24-inch Essential monitor S30GD for $100 (23 percent off): This 1080p IPS display has a 100Hz refresh rate and can be adjusted via tilting. Its design is pretty slim with thin bezels, and it connect to your computer via HDMI port. Lenovo ThinkVision 23.8-inch Monitor T24i-30 for $183 (46 percent off): This FHD IPS panel has a three-side, NearEdgeless bezel design and can be adjusted via tilt, lift, swivel and pivot. In addition to four USB-A ports for connecting peripherals, it also supports a number of display connections including HDMI, DP and VGA. Dyson Supersonic hair dryer for $330 ($100 off): This is the original Dyson Supersonic hair dryer that has been super popular since its debut. It includes five attachments for drying and styling, and it's billed as a fast dryer that protects hair from heat damage. iRobot Combo Essential robot vacuum for $150 ($125 off): This is a great entry-level robot vacuum that has the added convenience of being a mopping machine, too. It'll suck up dirt, debris and pet hair while it vacuums, and you can use the included water reservoir when you want to mop hard floors. Tineco Pure ONE S11 Cordless Vacuum Cleaner for $140 ($60 off with coupon): Our top budget pick among the best cordless vacuums, this Tineco machine offers good suction and a relatively lightweight design at a great price. It also includes the company's iLoop smart sensor, which will auto-adjust suction power as you clean. Shark Clean & Empty Cordless Stick Vacuum for $280 (20 percent off): This is a slightly cheaper version of one of our favorite cordless stick vacuums and it comes with a self-emptying base. This Shark stick vacuum has good suction power, can easily convert to a hand vacuum and it docks neatly on its auto-empty base station that traps over 99 percent of dust and allergens. Shark PowerDetect NeverTouch Robot Vacuum and Mop for $700 (30 percent off): A version of one of our favorite robot vacuums, this Shark machine can vacuum and mop floors for you. Its self-emptying base station holds up to 30 days worth of debris, and it has a refill tank for the mopping reservoir as well. EcoFlow Delta 2 1024Wh power station with waterproof bag for $449 (36 percent off): This EcoFlow power station provides 15 connectors to power up multiple devices at once — those include six AC outlets, two USB-C ports and four USB-A ports. It's versatile enough to take it camping or on a road trip, but it can also act as a home backup battery, powering a refrigerator, lights, CPAP machines and more. EcoFlow Delta 2 Max 2048Wh power station for $999 (41 percent off): This is a higher-capacity version of the Delta 2, so it'll last longer and power gadgets and appliances for a longer period of time on a full charge. It also has 15 connectors and you can optionally add on solar panels for easy powering-up on the go. Expired deals Amazon Kindle Paperwhite Kids for $140 (22 percent off): This is the same, latest Kindle Paperwhite, just customized a bit for kids. You'll get the waterproof ereader in this bundle along with a protective case, a two-year warranty and six months of Amazon Kids+ for free. Withings Thermo smart thermometer for $86 ($14 off): This FDA cleared, FSA/HSA/HRA eligible thermometer can take no-contact temperature readings in just a few seconds with a simple swipe across the forehead. It uses 16 infrared sensors to take over 4,000 measurements for the most accurate readings, and the built-in LED screen will show you color-coded results. Follow @EngadgetDeals on X for the latest tech deals and buying advice.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/the-best-memorial-day-tech-deals-on-gear-from-apple-amazon-dyson-and-others-144526041.html?src=rss

On a crisp morning in early April, Dan McEvoy and Bjoern Bingham cut clean lines down a wide run at the Heavenly Ski Resort in South Lake Tahoe, then ducked under a rope line cordoning off a patch of untouched snow.  They side-stepped up a small incline, poled past a row of Jeffrey pines, then dropped their packs.  The pair of climate researchers from the Desert Research Institute (DRI) in Reno, Nevada, skied down to this research plot in the middle of the resort to test out a new way to take the temperature of the Sierra Nevada snowpack. They were equipped with an experimental infrared device that can take readings as it’s lowered down a hole in the snow to the ground. The Sierra’s frozen reservoir provides about a third of California’s water and most of what comes out of the faucets, shower heads, and sprinklers in the towns and cities of northwestern Nevada. As it melts through the spring and summer, dam operators, water agencies, and communities have to manage the flow of billions of gallons of runoff, storing up enough to get through the inevitable dry summer months without allowing reservoirs and canals to flood. The need for better snowpack temperature data has become increasingly critical for predicting when the water will flow down the mountains, as climate change fuels hotter weather, melts snow faster, and drives rapid swings between very wet and very dry periods.  In the past, it has been arduous work to gather such snowpack observations. Now, a new generation of tools, techniques, and models promises to ease that process, improve water forecasts, and help California and other states safely manage one of their largest sources of water in the face of increasingly severe droughts and flooding.Observers, however, fear that any such advances could be undercut by the Trump administration’s cutbacks across federal agencies, including the one that oversees federal snowpack monitoring and survey work. That could jeopardize ongoing efforts to produce the water data and forecasts on which Western communities rely. “If we don’t have those measurements, it’s like driving your car around without a fuel gauge,” says Larry O’Neill, Oregon’s state climatologist. “We won’t know how much water is up in the mountains, and whether there’s enough to last through the summer.” The birth of snow surveys The snow survey program in the US was born near Lake Tahoe, the largest alpine lake in North America, around the turn of the 20th century.  Without any reliable way of knowing how much water would flow down the mountain each spring, lakefront home and business owners, fearing floods, implored dam operators to release water early in the spring. Downstream communities and farmers pushed back, however, demanding that the dam was used to hold onto as much water as possible to avoid shortages later in the year.  In 1908, James Church, a classics professor at the University of Nevada, Reno, whose passion for hiking around the mountains sparked an interest in the science of snow, invented a device that helped resolve the so-called Lake Tahoe Water Wars: the Mt. Rose snow sampler, named after the peak of a Sierra spur that juts into Nevada. James Church, a professor of classics at the University of Nevada, Reno, became a pioneer in the field of snow surveys.COURTESY OF UNIVERSITY OF NEVADA, RENO It’s a simple enough device, with sections of tube that screw together, a sharpened end, and measurement ticks along the side. Snow surveyors measure the depth of the snow by plunging the sampler down to the ground. They then weigh the filled tube on a specialized scale to calculate the water content of the snow.  Church used the device to take measurements at various points across the range, and calibrated his water forecasts by comparing his readings against the rising and falling levels of Lake Tahoe.  It worked so well that the US began a federal snow survey program in the mid-1930s, which evolved into the one carried on today by the Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS). Throughout the winter, hundreds of snow surveyors across the American West head up to established locations on snowshoes, backcountry skis, or snowmobiles to deploy their Mt. Rose samplers, which have barely changed over more than a century.  In the 1960s, the US government also began setting up a network of permanent monitoring sites across the mountains, now known as the SNOTEL network. There are more than 900 stations continuously transmitting readings from across Western states and Alaska. They’re equipped with sensors that measure air temperature, snow depth, and soil moisture, and include pressure-sensitive “snow pillows” that weigh the snow to determine the water content.  The data from the snow surveys and SNOTEL sites all flows into snow depth and snow water content reports that the NRCS publishes, along with forecasts of the amount of water that will fill the streams and reservoirs through the spring and summer. Taking the temperature None of these survey and monitoring programs, however, provide the temperature throughout the snowpack.  The Sierra Nevada snowpack can reach more than 6 meters (20 feet), and the temperature within it may vary widely, especially toward the top. Readings taken at increments throughout can determine what’s known as the cold content, or the amount of energy required to shift the snowpack to a uniform temperature of 32˚F.  Knowing the cold content of the snowpack helps researchers understand the conditions under which it will begin to rapidly melt, particularly as it warms up in the spring or after rain falls on top of the snow. If the temperature of the snow, for example, is close to 32˚F even at several feet deep, a few warm days could easily set it melting. If, on the other hand, the temperature measurements show a colder profile throughout the middle, the snowpack is more stable and will hold up longer as the weather warms. Bjoern Bingham, a research scientist at the Desert Research Institute, digs at snowpit at a research plot within the Heavenly Ski Resort, near South Lake Tahoe, California. JAMES TEMPLE The problem is that taking the temperature of the entire snowpack has been, until now, tough and time-consuming work. When researchers do it at all, they mainly do so by digging snow pits down to the ground and then taking readings with probe thermometers along an inside wall.There have been a variety of efforts to take continuous remote readings from sensors attached to fences, wires, or towers, which the snowpack eventually buries. But the movement and weight of the dense shifting snow tends to break the devices or snap the structures they’re assembled upon. “They rarely last a season,” McAvoy says. Anne Heggli, a professor of mountain hydrometeorology at DRI, happened upon the idea of using an infrared device to solve this problem during a tour of the institute’s campus in 2019, when she learned that researchers there were using an infrared meat thermometer to take contactless readings of the snow surface. In 2021, Heggli began collaborating with RPM Systems, a gadget manufacturing company, to design an infrared device optimized for snowpack field conditions. The resulting snow temperature profiler is skinny enough to fit down a hole dug by snow surveyors and dangles on a cord marked off at 10-centimeter (4-inch) increments. Bingham and Daniel McEvoy, an associate research professor at the Desert Research Institute, work together to take temperature readings from inside the snowpit as well as from within the hole left behind by a snow sampler.JAMES TEMPLE At Heavenly on that April morning, Bingham, a staff scientist at DRI, slowly fed the device down a snow sampler hole, calling out temperature readings at each marking. McEvoy scribbled them down on a worksheet fastened to his clipboard as he used a probe thermometer to take readings of his own from within a snow pit the pair had dug down to the ground. They were comparing the measurements to assess the reliability of the infrared device in the field, but the eventual aim is to eliminate the need to dig snow pits. The hope is that state and federal surveyors could simply carry along a snow temperature profiler and drop it into the snowpack survey holes they’re creating anyway, to gather regular snowpack temperature readings from across the mountains. In 2023, the US Bureau of Reclamation, the federal agency that operates many of the nation’s dams, funded a three-year research project to explore the use of the infrared gadgets in determining snowpack temperatures. Through it, the DRI research team has now handed devices out to 20 snow survey teams across California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, and Utah to test their use in the field and supplement the snowpack data they’re collecting. The Snow Lab The DRI research project is one piece of a wider effort to obtain snowpack temperature data across the mountains of the West. By early May, the snow depth had dropped from an April peak of 114 inches to 24 inches (2.9 meters to 0.6 meters) at the UC Berkeley Central Sierra Snow Lab, an aging wooden structure perched in the high mountains northwest of Lake Tahoe.Megan Mason, a research scientist at the lab, used a backcountry ski shovel to dig out a trio of instruments from what was left of the pitted snowpack behind the building. Each one featured different types of temperature sensors, arrayed along a strong polymer beam meant to hold up under the weight and movement of the Sierra snowpack.   She was pulling up the devices after running the last set of observations for the season, as part of an effort to develop a resilient system that can survive the winter and transmit hourly temperature readings. The lab is working on the project, dubbed the California Cold Content Initiative, in collaboration with the state’s Department of Water Resources. California is the only western state that opted to maintain its own snow survey program and run its own permanent monitoring stations, all of which are managed by the water department.  The plan is to determine which instruments held up and functioned best this winter. Then, they can begin testing the most promising approaches at several additional sites next season. Eventually, the goal is to attach the devices at more than 100 of California’s snow monitoring stations, says Andrew Schwartz, the director of the lab.The NRCS is conducting a similar research effort at select SNOTEL sites equipped with a beaded temperature cable. One such cable is visible at the Heavenly SNOTEL station, next to where McEvoy and Bingham dug their snow pit, strung vertically between an arm extended from the main tower and the snow-covered ground.  DRI’s Bjoern Bingham feeds the snow temperature profiler, an infrared device, down a hole in the Sierra snowpack.JAMES TEMPLE Schwartz said that the different research groups are communicating and collaborating openly on the projects, all of which promise to provide complementary information, expanding the database of snowpack temperature readings across the West. For decades, agencies and researchers generally produced water forecasts using relatively simple regression models that translated the amount of water in the snowpack into the amount of water that will flow down the mountain, based largely on the historic relationships between those variables.  But these models are becoming less reliable as climate change alters temperatures, snow levels, melt rates, and evaporation, and otherwise drives alpine weather patterns outside of historic patterns. “As we have years that scatter further and more frequently from the norm, our models aren’t prepared,” Heggli says. Plugging direct temperature observations into more sophisticated models that have emerged in recent years, Schwartz says, promises to significantly improve the accuracy of water forecasts. That, in turn, should help communities manage through droughts and prevent dams from overtopping even as climate change fuels alternately wetter, drier, warmer, and weirder weather. About a quarter of the world’s population relies on water stored in mountain snow and glaciers, and climate change is disrupting the hydrological cycles that sustain these natural frozen reservoirs in many parts of the world. So any advances in observations and modeling could deliver broader global benefits. Ominous weather There’s an obvious threat to this progress, though. Even if these projects work as well as hoped, it’s not clear how widely these tools and techniques will be deployed at a time when the White House is gutting staff across federal agencies, terminating thousands of scientific grants, and striving to eliminate tens of billions of dollars in funding at research departments.  The Trump administration has fired or put on administrative leave nearly 6,000 employees across the USDA, or 6% of the department’s workforce. Those cutbacks have reached regional NRCS offices, according to reporting by local and trade outlets. That includes more than half of the roles at the Portland office, according to O’Neill, the state climatologist. Those reductions prompted a bipartisan group of legislators to call on the Secretary of Agriculture to restore the positions, warning the losses could impair water data and analyses that are crucial for the state’s “agriculture, wildland fire, hydropower, timber, and tourism sectors,” as the Statesman Journal reported. There are more than 80 active SNOTEL stations in Oregon. The fear is there won’t be enough people left to reach all the sites this summer to replace batteries, solar panels, and drifting or broken sensors, which could quickly undermine the reliability of the data or cut off the flow of information.  “Staff and budget reductions at NRCS will make it impossible to maintain SNOTEL instruments and conduct routine manual observations, leading to inoperability of the network within a year,” the lawmakers warned. The USDA and NRCS didn’t respond to inquiries from MIT Technology Review.  DRI’s Daniel McEvoy scribbles down temperature readings at the Heavenly site.JAMES TEMPLE If the federal cutbacks deplete the data coming back from SNOTEL stations or federal snow survey work, the DRI infrared method could at least “still offer a simplistic way of measuring the snowpack temperatures” in places where state and regional agencies continue to carry out surveys, McAvoy says. But most researchers stress the field needs more surveys, stations, sensors, and readings to understand how the climate and water cycles are changing from month to month and season to season. Heggli stresses that there should be broad bipartisan support for programs that collect snowpack data and provide the water forecasts that farmers and communities rely on.  “This is how we account for one of, if not the, most valuable resource we have,” she says. “In the West, we go into a seasonal drought every summer; our snowpack is what trickles down and gets us through that drought. We need to know how much we have.”