We’re just a couple days away from Amazon’s October Prime Day sale, which kicks off on Tuesday and goes through Wednesday. Prime Big Deal Days is the company’s second site-wide sale of 2023 and there are already plenty of early deals to be found. You’ll need a Prime membership for some, but other discounts are open to everyone. We’ll be rounding up the best of what’s out there on October 10 and 11, but in the meantime, you can get a jump on a few sales that are already live. This week’s best tech deals include lots of Amazon devices like Echo speakers, Echo Show smart displays, Blink cameras, Ring doorbells and the Kindle Kids ereader. As for non-Amazon gadgets, we’re seeing strong prices on JBL speakers, Samsung microSD cards and an Anker 5-in-1 USB-C hub.  

Apple AirPods Pro (USB-C)

pple recently released a new model of the AirPods Pro with a USB-C charging case, improved dust resistance and lossless audio support with the upcoming Vision Pro headset. They’re on sale for $199, which is $50 off their usual price and the same low we’ve seen for the Lightning version. We consider the AirPods Pros the best wireless earphones for those who use an iPhone or lots of Apple devices. They deliver excellent noise cancellation, a pleasingly warm sound profile, a variety of Apple-specific features such as hands-free Siri, quick pairing and switching between Apple devices, and Find My device tracking. With a recent update, they’ve also gained a useful “Adaptive Audio” mode that blends the pair’s ANC and transparency modes dynamically based on your surroundings. The AirPods Pro with the original Lightning charging case are also on sale for the same price. 

Amazon Echo Dot + Kasa Smart Plug Mini

As part of a big Echo speaker sale, the latest Echo Dot is down to $23, and you can get a bundle with the small smart speaker and a Kasa Smart Plug Mini for just $1 more. Considering the Echo Dot is one of our favorite smart speakers and the Kasa smart plug earned a spot on our list of best smart plugs, this is a great bundle for anyone who wants to smarten up their home while sticking to their budget. Also included in this sale are the Echo Pop for $18 and the full-sized Echo for $55.

If you’d like to add a little Star Wars whimsy to your Echo, you can get your speaker in a bundle that throws in Darth Vader, Stormtrooper or Grogu stands. The sets are between 30 and 49 percent off their full price.  

Amazon Echo Show 5

A number of Amazon’s smart displays are on sale ahead of October Prime Day, and that includes the Echo Show 5 for $40. It’s the smallest smart display in the company’s lineup at 5.5 inches, which helps it work well as a sort of smart alarm clock. It has strong audio quality and a sunrise alarm feature, and this updated model included a faster processor and an additional mic for improved Alexa responsiveness. The Echo Show 8 (previous-gen) and the Echo Show 10 are also included in this sale, and there’s a bundle that pairs the Echo Show 5 with a Philips Hue Smart Color Bulb for $42.

Amazon Echo Show 15

The Echo Show 15 is 33 percent off right now and down to a near record-low of $185. It’s the biggest smart display in Amazon’s lineup, with a 15.6-inch touchscreen that you can sit on a countertop or mount on a wall, and it supports both portrait and landscape orientation. In addition to showing widgets like sticky notes, calendar views and more, the Show 15 has Fire TV technology built in, so you can treat it like a mini TV and stream your favorite shows and movies. And when you’re not actively using the display, you can use it to display pictures using the Photo Frame feature.

EarFun Air Pro 3

EarFun’s Air Pro 3 noise-canceling earphones are down to $60 with a $20 on-page coupon. That’s not an all-time low but still $20 off the device’s typical selling price. This is the runner-up pick in our guide to the best budget earbuds. The EarFun Free 2S, our “best under $50” pick in that guide, are also on sale for $36 with a 10 percent coupon.

Amazon Echo Buds (2023)

Prime members can get the latest Amazon Echo Buds for $35, which is $15 off and an all-time low. This is another pick in our guide to the best budget wireless earbuds. Specifically, the Echo Buds should appeal to those who prefer a more open design, one that lets in outside noise but doesn’t insert directly into your ear canal. They can sound solid for the price with a bit of EQ tweaking, and they support features we don’t often see for less than $50, such as wear detection and multipoint connectivity. They also have Alexa baked in, natch. Their IPX2 sweat-resistance rating isn’t enough for workouts, and their five-ish hours of battery life is just average, but they’re worth a look if you’re on a tight budget and hate the feel of traditional in-ear headphones. We gave them a score of 77 earlier this year.

Samsung Galaxy Watch 6 Classic 

Samsung unveiled the new Galaxy Watch 6 Classic alongside the standard Galaxy Watch 6 during its Unpacked event in July. We were particularly delighted by its rotating bezel mechanism, which makes navigating Samsung’s One UI a bit more convenient. We call the Watch 6 series the best Android options for most people in our smartwatch buying guide; compared to the standard model, the Classic is pricier and heavier, but it has a larger display and a more premium stainless steel frame along with that rotating bezel. Right now the watch is seeing a modest eight percent discount, bringing it down to $369 instead of its usual $400. It’s not a huge dip, but it’s still the biggest price drop we’ve seen for the wearable to date.

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 5

The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 5 is $300 off ahead of Amazon’s October Prime Day sale at $1,500. This matches the price it hit a few weeks back for Labor Day. This deal applies to the base model with 256GB of storage; the 512GB model, meanwhile, is down to $1,620 from its usual $1,920. We gave the 7.6-inch Z Fold 5 a score of 86 in our review and named it the best foldable for multitasking in our smartphone buying guide. Overall we were impressed by its speedy performance, handy multitasking gestures and improved hinge, which helps eliminates any air gap when the phone is folded. Our biggest concern is its sky-high price, which this discount makes a little less of an issue.  

The Galaxy Z Flip 5 is on sale as well, with the base 256GB model $100 off at $900. That phone got an Engadget review score of 88 and is currently the top flip-style foldable pick in our guide to the best smartphones. 

Amazon Kindle Scribe

Amazon’s Kindle Scribe is 22 percent off right now and down to $265. Unlike the deal we saw last month, you don’t have to be a Prime member to get this sale price. The Scribe is one of the best e-ink tablets on the market right now, and it’ll be best for those that want an easy-to-use ereader that also lets you jot down notes as you read. Users can create notebooks on the Scribe to organize their handwritten musings, though only a handful of titles in the Kindle store are considered “write-on” books that allow you to take notes directly in the margins. We gave the Kindle Scribe a review score of 85 last year. 

Amazon Kindle Kids

Amazon’s Kindle Kids is now on sale for $80, which is five dollars more than it went for during July’s Prime sale. As far as the device goes, it’s the same as the standard Kindle but comes with a cover, a two-year warranty and a year-long subscription to Amazon Kids+, which gives access to kid-appropriate ebooks. With that subscription, you can also use the parent dashboard to check up on your kid’s reading progress, add books or set bedtimes. 

Amazon Fire TV Stick Lite

A handful of Fire TV devices have been discounted before Amazon’s upcoming sale, including the Fire TV Stick Lite down to $18. It may be the most limited streaming dongle in Amazon’s lineup, but for smaller or secondary TVs, it offers 1080p streaming and a useful voice remote. If you’re willing to spend more for a Fire TV streamer that doubles as an Alexa speaker, you can also snag the Fire TV Cube for a low of $110.

JBL Charge 5 speaker

Two models of JBL Bluetooth speakers are on sale ahead of the October Prime sale, including the Charge 5, which is down to $130 instead of $180. That’s about $10 more than the lowest it’s gone for, but still a $50 discount on one of our recommended mid-range speakers. It has a separate tweeter and dual bass radiators plus it’s water-resistant and has a 20-hour battery life. You can also use it to recharge your phone via USB-C in a pinch.

Anker 332 USB-C Hub

Anker’s 332 USB-C Hub is down to $16 with a $2 on-page coupon, which is roughly $9 off its typical street price. As laptops get sleeker, ports disappear, but this 5-in-1 hub can add a 4K HDMI port, two USB-A ports, and either one or two additional USB-C ports (depending on whether you need one for power delivery) back to your device. That means you’ll have more space to connect a mouse, keyboard, flash drive, webcam or what have you.

Amazon Smart Thermostat

Amazon’s Smart Thermostat has dropped to its best price of the year at $56. Note that this sale price is for the model without a C-wire adapter, so you’ll have to make sure your system has a C-wire in order for the thermostat to work. Smart thermostats like this can help you save on energy costs by giving you more granular control over your heating and cooling system. You can use Amazon’s companion app to control your home’s temperature from anywhere, or ask Alexa to turn the temperature up or down as you please.

Amazon Fire HD 8

Amazon’s Fire HD 8 tablet has dropped to $60 as part of a larger tablet sale ahead of Prime Big Deal Days. That’s only $5 more than it was during Prime Day in July. We recommend this slab for those who want a cheap tablet they can give to their kids or use for basic media consumption. This model comes with 32GB of storage, but you can expand that space up to 1TB using a microSD card. Performance isn’t especially fast, and Amazon’s Fire OS is relatively limited — it lacks Google apps, for one — but the whole thing is comfortable and can last more than 10 hours on a charge. If you want a higher-end Fire tablet, the Fire Max 11 is on sale for a low of $150, though that’s a good chunk of change to spend on a Fire OS device. 

Blink security cameras

A range of Blink 3rd- and 4th-gen security cameras are also on sale. These deals are particularly noteworthy for including the 4th-gen Outdoor cameras, as those were just announced at the end of August. A three-pack of those new cameras is half off at $135, and there are a bunch of bundles available as well: a two-pack with a Blink Mini for $100, a three-pack with a Blink Video Doorbell for $165, a whole home bundle for $102 and many more. These wireless security cameras aren’t the most advanced things around, but they still offer two years of rated battery life, motion and audio alerts, two-way talk and night vision.

Google Nest Cam (Battery)

A slew of Google Nest home security devices are on sale at Amazon right now, including the Nest Cam with batteries that can go inside or outside your home. The list price is $180 but it’s down to $120 ahead of October’s Prime Day. It works with smart speakers and displays enabled with Alexa or the Google Assistant and the rechargeable unit can go for up to seven months, depending on the level of activity it picks up. The weather-resistant build and magnetic mount should let you install it on most surfaces. It sends live alerts to your phone and will even allow for on-demand check-ins without a subscription, though it only stores the last three hours for free. For six months of stored footage, you’ll need a Nest Aware membership.  

October’s Prime sale is looking like a good time to save on smart home security as a bunch of cameras and doorbells from Arlo are also on sale right now. We’ve had good experiences with Arlo’s equipment in the past. 

Ring Video Doorbells

There’s a massive Ring sale going on now, which includes the wired Ring Video Doorbell on sale for $35. As the name suggests, you’ll have to hardwire it to your home during installation. If you’d prefer a model that runs on a rechargeable battery, consider the standard Ring Video Doorbell, which is down to $55. The sale also includes Ring Stick Up cameras for inside the home, as well as various Ring Alarm bundles.

Amazon Kindle Paperwhite Kids

A few Kindle Essentials Bundles have been discounted for Prime members ahead of the October Prime sale, including this Kids model on sale for $143. It contains a Kindle Paperwhite Kids ereader with a cover, screen protector, power adapter, two-year warranty and one-year subscription to Amazon’s Kids+ content service. The Kids+ subscription gives access to a selection of child-appropriate ebooks and audiobooks; just remember that the membership will automatically renew after the first year.

Amazon Fire HD 10 Kids Pro

Amazon’s Fire HD 10 Kids Pro is the top recommendation for kids in our tablet buying guide. It has a list price of $200 and often sells for $140, but this early Prime Big Deal Days offer drops it down to an all-time low of $120. The tablet comes with a protective case that also serves as a stand and handle, plus a two-year warranty and a year’s subscription to Amazon Kids+ service. It comes with a fairly robust selection of parental controls as well.

iRobot Roomba j7+ Combo

As part of an Amazon Early Prime Deal iRobot promotion, the iRobot Roomba j7+ Combo is on sale for $799, which is a $300 savings. This is the vac we named the best robot vacuum and mop combo in our guide. It’s an expensive unit for sure, but we found it automatically knows where to mop versus where to vacuum, which other combo units make you dictate manually. It’ll also automatically empty its dry debris, though you’ll still need to fill and empty the water tank. As with many iRobots we’ve tested, we appreciate the obstacle avoidance and strong suction power.   

Amazon Music Unlimited

If you’ve never subscribed to Amazon Music Unlimited, you can now get three months of the music streaming service for free. If you’re an Amazon Prime member who has never subscribed, that jumps to four months. Music Unlimited usually comes with a one-month free trial and goes for $11 a month — or $10 if you use Prime — so this deal saves you either $22 or $30. We highlight Music Unlimited in our guide to the best music streaming services: Its UI and music discovery features aren’t as robust as Apple Music or Spotify, but it offers a large library in CD streaming quality and a wide podcast selection. Naturally, it also works well with Echo speakers and other Amazon devices. Note that your subscription will be set to auto-renew by default, so you’ll have to manually cancel if you’re just looking to snag a few months of music streaming at no cost.

Eero Pro 6E mesh Wi-Fi system

Amazon has discounted most of its Eero 6 Wi-Fi systems as an early Prime Big Deal Days deal, including the most powerful of the bunch, the Eero Pro 6E. You can pick up one router for $180, or spring for a three-pack for $400, both of which are down to record-low prices. Devices with support for Wi-Fi 6E can connect directly to the Eero’s 6 GHz radio band, and if you get the three-pack, you’ll get up to 6,000 square feet of coverage — more than enough for most homes. These Eeros have a built-in smart home hub as well, so you don’t need to have an extra device if you want to build out an IoT ecosystem in your house.

Samsung Pro Plus

If you need more storage for your Nintendo Switch, GoPro or anything else that accepts microSD cards, the 256GB version of the Samsung Pro Plus with Samsung’s USB reader is on sale for $23. We’ve seen the card alone fall as low as $20, but this is just a dollar above the all-time low for the bundle with the reader, which helps the card get closer to its advertised read and write speeds — up to 180 MB/s and 130 MB/s for reading and writing, respectively — on devices that allow them. Normally, this SKU retails for $25. The Pro Plus is the top pick in our guide to the best microSD cards, as it delivered the fastest sequential write speeds and random performance of any card we tested and comes with a 10-year warranty.

Amazon Fire Omni QLED Series TVs

All sizes of Amazon’s Fire TV Omni QLED Series are on sale ahead of October’s sale. The 43-, 50-, 55- and 65-inch models are down to $380, $400, $440 and $590, respectively. Those match or beat the prices we saw for July’s Prime Day. The Fire TV Omni QLED sets are best for people who like Amazon’s Fire interface, which is easy enough to figure out, though the OS tends to push you towards Amazon’s own content. Beyond that, Fire TVs do well to integrate Alexa with a useful voice remote and hands-free smart home support. If you don’t feel like having Alexa listening in, you can turn off the mics with a built-in switch.

Your Fall Prime Day Shopping Guide: See all of our Prime Day coverage. Shop the best Prime Day deals on Yahoo Life. Follow Engadget for Prime Day tech deals. Learn about Prime Day trends on In The Know. Hear from Autoblog’s car experts on must-shop auto-related Prime Day deals and find Prime Day sales to shop on AOL, handpicked just for you.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/shop-the-best-early-deals-for-october-prime-day-2023-162140872.html?src=rss

Source: Engadget – Shop the best early deals for October Prime Day 2023

For the first couple decades of its existence, NASA was the epitome of an Old Boys Club; its astronaut ranks pulled exclusively from the Armed Services’ test pilot programs which, at that time, were exclusively staffed by men. Glass ceilings weren’t the only things broken when Sally Ride, Judy Resnik, Kathy Sullivan, Anna Fisher, Margaret “Rhea” Seddon and Shannon Lucid were admitted to the program in 1978 — numerous spaceflight systems had to be reassessed to accommodate a more diverse workforce. In The Six: The Untold Story of America’s First Women Astronauts, journalist Loren Grush chronicles the numerous trials and challenges these women faced — from institutional sexism to enduring survival training to navigating the personal pressures that the public life of an astronaut entails — in their efforts to reach orbit.

Adapted from The Six: The Untold Story of America’s First Women Astronauts by Loren Grush. Copyright © 2023 by Loren Grush. Excerpted with permission by Scribner, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

Above the Chisos Mountains sprawling across Big Bend National Park in West Texas, Kathy [Sullivan, PhD, third woman to fly in space and future head of the NOAA] sat in the back seat of NASA’s WB-57F reconnaissance aircraft as it climbed higher into the sky. The pilot, Jim Korkowski, kept his eye on the jet’s altimeter as they ascended. They’d just passed sixty thousand feet, and they weren’t done rising. It was a dizzyingly high altitude, but the plane was made to handle such extremes.

Inside the cockpit, both Kathy and Jim were prepared. They were fully outfitted in the air force’s high-altitude pressure suits. To the untrained observer, the gear looked almost like actual space suits. Each ensemble consisted of a bulky dark onesie, with thick gloves and a thick helmet. The combination was designed to apply pressure to the body as the high-altitude air thinned away and made it almost impossible for the human body to function.

The duo eventually reached their target height: 63,300 feet. At that altitude, their pressure suits were a matter of life and death. The surrounding air pressure was so low that their blood could start to boil if their bodies were left unprotected. But with the suits on, it was an uneventful research expedition. Kathy took images with a specialized infrared camera that could produce color photos, and she also scanned the distant terrain in various wavelengths of light.

They spent just an hour and a half over Big Bend, and the flight lasted just four hours in total. While it may have seemed a quick and easy flight, Kathy made history when she reached that final altitude above West Texas on July 1, 1979. In that moment, she flew higher than any woman ever had, setting an unofficial world aviation record.

The assignment to train with the WB-57 had scared her at first, but Kathy wound up loving those high-flying planes. “That was very fun, other than this little bit of vague concern that, ‘Hope this doesn’t mean I’m falling off the face of the Earth,’” Kathy said. The assignment took her on flights up north to Alaska and down south to Peru. As she’d hoped, she received full qualification to wear the air force’s pressure suits, becoming the first woman to do so. Soon, donning a full-body suit designed to keep her alive became second nature to her.

NASA officials had also sought her out to test a new piece of equipment they were developing for future Shuttle astronauts, one that would let people relieve themselves while in space. During the Apollo and Gemini eras, NASA developed a relatively complex apparatus for astronauts to pee in their flight suits. It was, in essence, a flexible rubber cuff that fit around the penis, which then attached to a collection bag. The condom-like cuffs came in “small,” “medium,” and “large” (though Michael Collins claimed the astronauts gave them their own terms: “extra large,” “immense,” and “unbelievable”). It was certainly not a foolproof system. Urine often escaped from beneath the sheath.

Cuffs certainly weren’t going to work once women entered the astronaut corps. While the Space Shuttle had a fancy new toilet for both men and women to use, the astronauts still needed some outlet for when they were strapped to their seats for hours, awaiting launch or reentry. And if one of the women was to do a spacewalk, she’d need some kind of device during those hours afloat. So, NASA engineers created the Disposable Absorption Containment Trunk (DACT). In its most basic form it was . . . a diaper. It was an easy fix in case astronauts needed to urinate while out of reach of the toilet. It was designed to absorb fecal matter, too, though the women probably opted to wait until they reached orbit for that.

Kathy was the best person to test it out. Often during her high-altitude flights, she’d be trapped in her pressure suit for hours on end, creating the perfect testing conditions to analyze the DACT’s durability. It worked like a charm. And although the first male Shuttle fliers stuck to the cuffs, eventually the DACT became standard equipment for everyone.

After accumulating hundreds of hours in these pressure suits, Kathy hoped to leverage her experience into a flight assignment, one that might let her take a walk outside the Space Shuttle one day. As luck would have it, she ran into Bruce McCandless II in the JSC gym one afternoon. He was the guy to know when it came to spacewalks. NASA officials had put him in charge of developing all the spacewalk procedures and protocols, and at times he seemed to live in the NASA pools. Plus, he was always conscripting one of Kathy’s classmates to do simulated runs with him in the tanks. Kathy wanted to be next. Projecting as much confidence as she could, she asked him to consider her for his next training run.

It worked. Bruce invited Kathy to accompany him to Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama to take a dive in the tank there. The two would be working on spacewalk techniques that might be used one day to assemble a space station. However, the Space Shuttle suits still weren’t ready to use yet. Kathy had to wear Apollo moonwalker Pete Conrad’s suit, just like Anna had done during her spacewalk simulations. But while the suit swallowed tiny Anna, it was just slightly too small for Kathy, by about an inch. When she put it on, the suit stabbed her shoulders, while parts of it seemed to dig into her chest and back. She tried to stand up and nearly passed out. It took all her strength to walk over to the pool before she flopped into the tank. In the simulated weightless environment, the pain immediately evaporated. But it was still a crucial lesson in space-suit sizes. The suits have to fit their wearers perfectly if the spacewalk is going to work. 

The session may have started off painfully, but once she began tinkering with tools and understanding how to maneuver her arms to shift the rest of her body, she was hooked. She loved spacewalking so much that she’d go on to do dozens more practice dives throughout training.

But it wasn’t enough to practice in the pool. She wanted to go orbital. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/hitting-the-books-the-six-loren-grush-scribner-143032524.html?src=rss

Source: Engadget – Hitting the Books: NASA’s Kathy Sullivan and advances in orbital personal hygiene