Saturday's Best Deals: Alienware Gaming PCs, Tile Key Finder Bundles, J. Crew Office-Ready Styles, and More

An Alienware gaming desktop (and laptop), a Tile + Google Nest Mini bundle, and a J. Crew blazer sale lead Saturday’s most exciting deals of the day.

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We Need To Change Every Part of Our Food System to Fight the Climate Crisis

If the world’s population grows to 10 billion by 2050 as projected, the world will need to produce 70 percent more food. Without major changes to the food system, that would result in a catastrophic increase in greenhouse gas pollution due to increases in agriculture and deforestation. New research shows that there’s…

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Do phones need to fold?

As Samsung (re)unveiled its clamshell folding phone last week, I kept seeing the same question pop up amongst my social circles: why?

I was wondering the same thing myself, to be honest. I’m not sure even Samsung knows; they’d win me over by the end, but only somewhat. The halfway-folded, laptop-style “Flex Mode” allows you to place the phone on a table for hands-free video calling. That’s pretty neat, I guess. But… is that it?

The best answer to “why?” I’ve come up with so far isn’t a very satisfying one: Because they can (maybe). And because they sort of need to do something.

Let’s time-travel back to the early 2000s. Phones were weird, varied and no manufacturers really knew what was going to work. We had basic flip phones and Nokia’s indestructible bricks, but we also had phones that swiveled, slid and included chunky physical keyboards that seemed absolutely crucial. The Sidekick! LG Chocolate! BlackBerry Pearl! Most were pretty bad by today’s standards, but it was at least easy to tell one model from the next.

(Photo by Kim Kulish/Corbis via Getty Images)

Then came the iPhone in 2007; a rectangular glass slab defined less by physical buttons and switches and more by the software that powered it. The device itself, a silhouette. There was hesitation to this formula, initially; the first Android phones shipped with swiveling keyboards, trackballs and various sliding pads. As iPhone sales grew, everyone else’s buttons, sliders and keyboards were boiled away as designers emulated the iPhone’s form factor. The best answer, it seemed, was a simple one.

Twelve years later, everything has become the same. Phones have become… boring. When everyone is trying to build a better rectangle, the battle becomes one of hardware specs. Which one has the fastest CPU? The best camera?

Study finds eating a big breakfast may significantly boost calorie burning

Skipping breakfast may be harming your weight loss attempt, according to a new study. The research joins past studies that have associated eating in the morning with lowered obesity and other metabolic benefits, finding that in addition to burning more calories, eating a big meal in the morning also has less of an impact on blood sugar and insulin compared … Continue reading

Hitting the Books: A brief history of industrial espionage and corn

Welcome to Hitting the Books. With less than one in five Americans reading just for fun these days, we’ve done the hard work for you by scouring the internet for the most interesting, thought provoking books on science and technology we can find and…

The Morning After: Don't buy a Galaxy Z Flip

Hey, good morning! You look fabulous.

Last week Motorola’s Razr made its big comeback, then there was a rotary cellphone DIY kit, and this week we learned that the old Tiger Electronics handheld games are returning in 2020. I haven’t even mentioned…

'Minecraft Earth' gets a bit more physical thanks to new NFC-enabled minis

When the mobile-based Minecraft Earth was announced last year, it immediately drew comparisons to Pokémon Go because of its use of augmented reality and location-based activities. But it was very different (as senior editor Jess Conditt will a…

At Last, the Holy Grail: Pockets That Can Fit a Phone

A recurring question I’ve heard from coworkers, seen on Twitter, and been asked in the comments here at Gizmodo is: Who on earth wants a flip phone like the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip or Motorola Razr?

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Election-Year Trump Says He’s Ready To Float Farmers On Another River Of Taxpayer Cash

He again falsely claimed that the bill would be covered by tariffs “coming into the country.”

Dick Van Dyke Urges Fellow Way-Past-Boomers To Vote For Bernie Sanders

The 94-year-old screen legend quipped that “somebody younger, like Bernie, is just the perfect candidate.”