I’ve been coveringhearing aids for WIRED for nearly three years now, and I regularly talk to users and prospects about them when I wear them in public. Regardless of what I’m testing, one brand name has consistently and repeatedly popped up during that time: Jabra.
The Danish brand has a long history making a variety of audio gear, but I’ve always associated it mostly with the Bluetooth headset craze of the aughts. The brand made an early entrance into the over-the-counter hearing aid market (via an acquisition), and it hasn’t let up since, releasing new OTC models at a steady clip.
The latest of these is the Jabra Enhance Select 300, the brand’s smallest and most advanced model yet. You wouldn’t really know it just from the look of the aids. These are fairly standard behind-the-ear models that, while quite small (2.64 grams each), don’t offer any obvious surprises. The demure gray chassis sits close to the back of the ear and snakes a silver cable to the ear canal. Each aid carries a single button on its reverse.
Photograph: Jabra Enhance
Jabra front-loads a lot of the purchase process to ensure your aids arrive preconfigured. You can take an online hearing test or, as I did, upload a professional audiogram; either option allows Jabra’s audiologists to tune the product appropriately before it is shipped. The company also asks you to take a lengthy medical questionnaire to rule out any hearing-related medical problems before sending out the product. Eventually, the digital chatter can get a little tiresome: During the shopping process, Jabra even asks about your credit rating and suggests a monthly payment plan for its lowest-priced product if you say your credit is trash. Once you do place an order, Jabra barrages you with introductory emails and invites you to schedule an orientation with an audiologist to walk you through the hardware and the app. Admittedly, some of this is helpful—especially the Zoom orientation—but Jabra could stand to pump the breaks on the auto-mailer a bit.
There’s plenty to explore once your hearing aids arrive. For example, if you aren’t sure which type of ear tips are best for you, you’ll have ample room to experiment, because the company sends seven different baggies of them to try out, including open, closed, and tulip-style tips in a multitude of sizes. I counted 70 different tips in total, and I have no doubt that Jabra would happily send more if I asked.
With tips installed (I usually test with open tips), I found that getting the aids situated on my ears was made a bit easier thanks to a pinging sound that plays—Jabra calls it Smart Start—while you are guiding the receivers into your ear canal. Controls are as basic as they come: the button on the right aid turns the volume up for both aids, the one on the left turns volume down, and either one cycles through the programs—four in total—if you hold it down for a couple of seconds.
Naturally you’ll get a lot more out of the hearing aids if you connect your set to a mobile app, and Jabra actually has two apps to choose from. The Enhance Pro app comes up first in the app store, but the Enhance Select app is newer. They work about the same way, but since the Enhance Select is more recent I’ll write mostly about it. Primarily you’ll use the app to move among the four modes—All Around, Restaurant, Music, and Outdoor—all of which are self-explanatory. Each mode has extra options associated with it; for most you can select between “noise filter” to mute ambient sounds or “speech clarity” to boost conversational volume. These can be further customized thanks to three equalizer sliders corresponding to bass, middle, and treble frequencies. Volume can be set globally or individually per ear in the app as well. Of special note: Any customizations you make to programs aside from the All Around mode are reset to defaults once the hearing aids are put back into the charging case.
Think about the last time you saw a person lugging around a Bluetooth speaker and thought to yourself, “Dang, that person looks cool. I want to listen to whatever they’re listening to!” If you have no such memory, you’re not to blame, and you’re certainly not alone. Many portable speakers are dorky hunks of plastic that are aesthetically adjacent to pleather trench coats, mall swords and TJ Maxx hoverboards. And then there are the units that actually sound good, which—with a few exceptions—rank in the looks department between perfunctory and obnoxious.
Iconic guitar amp makers like Fender, Vox, and Marshall have noticed this hole in the market and have plugged it with their own offerings. Marketed as stylish sound cubes bursting with punchy midrange and timeless rocker swag, models like the Fender Indio ($379) and the Marshall Kilburn II ($399) promised to sound just as good as they looked. Now your cool uncle who sleeps on a waterbed can blast Metallica and make jokes about turning up his Marshall to 11 while you knock back a Leinenkugels and help him change the oil in his van! But do these diminutive faux amps have the cojones to make the infamous snares on St. Anger fill the garage with crisp and clangy treble? Can their woofers be trusted to ensure that what little low-end was left in the masters of …And Justice For All is evetrn remotely audible?
In the case of the Orange Box, the aptly named entry from the legendary London-based amplifier brand Orange, the answer is a resounding yes. Clocking in at 50 watts and weighing a little over 6 pounds, this workhorse of a speaker packs a massive punch for its size. After spending a month running the Orange Box through its paces in a variety of scenarios where Bluetooth speakers are essential—kitchen prep, yard work, household repairs, bothering fellow hikers with Top 40 music at a National Park—we’ve sussed out the good, the bad, and the bothersome of this impressive little box.
Dial-a-Tone
Photograph: Orange
Stark minimalism has been all the rage since the mid-aughts, but the stripping-away of essential knobs, jacks, and buttons is a sore spot for the aging demographic that know the Orange brand better than most. Thankfully Orange’s mimicry of their beloved amplifiers yields tactile, user-friendly results in the Orange Box. With the exception of a rather standard pairing workflow, the rest of the controls on the device have a satisfying analog feel to them. Turning the volume knob up controls the actual output of the amp rather than that of the paired device. This works wonders when you’re across the room and want to control the unit remotely with a maximum volume ceiling that’s mitigated by the volume controls on your phone.
Dedicated bass and treble knobs felt like nice extras at first but became essentials after daily use. The former can add or subtract a warm thump from the low end—around the 100-Hz mark, based on our tests—while the latter can be used to either add or remove presence that hovers around 8 KHz: the sweet spot for most spoken word and singing. Having a hard time hearing a podcast in the shower? Crank the treble to 10. Guests straining to hear over your music at a dinner party? Cut the treble to create a lane for casual conversation.
One minor flaw of the Orange Box is the way it handles the crowded high end of radio-friendly pop music at high volumes. If modern producers cease to brick-wall their mixes and cram every last sonic crevasse with ear candy, then the Orange Box may eventually be up to the challenge, but until then the last era of radio hits that really shine on this speaker is the post-grunge explosion of the late ’90s. Then again, what zoomer is spending $300 on a Bluetooth speaker that looks like the amp their grandpa used to play proto-metal on during the Carter administration? Master of Puppets sounds absolutely killer on the Orange Box, and (almost) nothing else matters.
Party Time
Photograph: Orange
The Orange Box is sexy as-is, but the included leather strap doesn’t do much in making it easier to carry around town on its own. For an extra $60 you can buy a gig bag made of sturdy gray denier fabric, which results in a potent totable that looks and feels more like a soft-side cooler full of ‘Kuges than a portable amp. The bag fits snugly around the box, and a piece of cream-colored cloth covers the grill of the speaker without muffling any of the output. The top snaps in place tidily via a pair of magnets, and it peels back quickly to offer easy access to the control knobs. Side pockets keep small essentials like aux cables, beef jerky, and weed safe from the elements, but the power supply does not fit conveniently in any of the compartments.
Each episode starts with a specific assignment and then goes deeper into the personal lives of the photographer. Mental health is a frequent topic. Love, too: love of family, the ocean, the thrill. Love for that exact moment when they know they got the shot, a feeling I’ve experienced vicariously often. Photographer’s mission, really, isn’t to show you beautiful photos; it’s to show you what it took to get them.
Insecurity also prevails. So does obsession with getting it perfect. They have a vision from the start. “Is it good enough?” asks Addy in reference to the results of any of his assignments.
Fashion photographer Campbell Addy is known for the way he captures Black and queer identities.Photograph: Courtesy of National Geographic
NatGeo’s new show also goes deep on just how wrong a photoshoot can go. In science photographer Anand Varma’s episode, he struggles with a time lapse of a hatching chick. Addy finds himself contending with his first solo exhibition. Despite this, they both emphasize they must get their client—usually someone, like me, sitting comfortably distant from the hassles—what they want.
There are so many similarities in these episodes, even though the genres of each photographer vary, from war to wildlife to celebrity portraits. These artists want perfection, and not just for their client but for their own sense of self, so they can move on to the next project in peace.
Science photographer Anand Varma works in his lab and photo studio Berkeley, California.Photograph: Courtesy of National Geographic
Every Google account comes with 15 gigabytes of free cloud storage shared across Google Drive, Google Photos, and Gmail. But with videos of your kids, hi-res photos of your pets, and work files, that space doesn’t stretch far these days. Google One is the company’s subscription service, with several tiers to expand your cloud storage for a monthly fee. Storage can be shared with your family, but it’s just the start—there are other benefits to subscribing.
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100-GB Plan: For $2 per month or $20 per year, you get 100 gigabytes you can share with up to five family members, plus access to Google experts, Play Store credits, special editing features in Google Photos, discounts on Google hardware, and deals on select hotels.
200-GB Plan: For $3 per month or $30 per year, you get 200 GB with the same perks as above, plus 3 percent back on purchases from the Google Store.
2-TB Plan: For $10 per month or $100 per year, you get 2 terabytes with family sharing, the same perks as the first tier, 10 percent back on purchases from the Google Store, and a VPN for Android and iOS.
In the unlikely event that 2 TB is not enough, you can increase your storage, but the option to upgrade to an even larger plan is available only for current subscribers and in select countries. Here are the plans (no annual discount on the 10-, 20-, or 30-TB plans):
Of all thefitness trackers that I’ve tested, none has made a bigger leap in hardware development than Amazfit. The first iterations that I tried in 2018 were plasticky and horrible. Every year, the wearable has gotten steadily, well, more wearable. A coworker recently asked if my tester Balance was a Samsung Galaxy Watch6 (7/10, WIRED Recommends). That’s high praise!
The Balance is Amazfit’s general purpose fitness tracker, aimed at promoting “wellness of body and mind.” It looks … well, it looks like a Galaxy Watch6, with a slightly different top button, and ideally it would work in the same way by tracking your sleep, heart rate, and activities, as well as taking your calls. It also comes with a bevy of optional AI-powered tools to help you sleep, meditate, and exercise. Right now, though, it’s just still too buggy, which is especially obvious with a seamlessly functioning tester Garmin on my opposite wrist.
Red Flag
As with most fitness trackers, I check the company’s privacy policy to see how it will use such intimate information. It’s usually easy to find, and it usually looks similar to Google’s—no data used for ads, et cetera. The Balance’s privacy policy is unusually hard to find. According to Amazfit’s website, the privacy policy explicitly does not apply to Amazfit trackers, nor does Zepp Health’s policy. There’s no privacy policy in the product manual, either. I asked Amazfit for a link to the privacy policy that applies to this tracker and got no response.
Even if everything is aboveboard, the company has made it very difficult to find out what’s happening to your data. If that matters to you, you should probably stop reading here.
With that said, the Balance is a very light, good-looking, and low-profile fitness tracker. Despite having such a big case—46 mm across, 10.6 mm deep—it didn’t feel large or obtrusive on my 150-mm wrist. The bezel is sleek gray aluminum, and it has two buttons on the left hand side to control it, as well as a tempered glass AMOLED touchscreen.
Photograph: Adrienne So
The screen is clear, bright, and responsive—maybe a little too responsive. It started and stopped workouts accidentally whenever I fidgeted with my jacket cuffs in Oregon’s cold, gray weather. The battery life theoretically lasts 14 days, but with a few tracked activities per day (walking my dog, running, indoor workouts), I did have to charge it once in the past two weeks. It charged relatively quickly, though—it went from 15 to 65 percent capacity in the 45 minutes that I was waiting for a plane at the airport.
It has a water resistance rating of 5 ATM, which means that you can use it while swimming (if not while taking a shower, weirdly). (By way of contrast, my favorite Garmin Instinct 2 is rated to 10 ATM, and I have used it snorkeling and surfing without issue.)
Like most higher-end fitness trackers these days, it comes with a bevy of sensors and tools. These include onboard GPS with dual-band positioning that helps the tracker filter out environmental noise; an acceleration sensor, gyroscope, ambient light sensor, temperature sensor, and a couple of biometric sensors for measuring your heart rate and blood oxygen and so forth. It also has a microphone and an incredibly loud speaker, and my favorite, most comfortable nylon strap.
Add It Up
Amazfit is owned by Zepp, formerly known as Huami, and the app that the Balance uses is Zepp Health. Zepp Health used to be almost unusably annoying, but the app’s homepage has been cleaned up quite a bit. Zepp Health now features a Readiness score, which is similar to that of Fitbit’s Daily Readiness or Garmin’s Body Battery, but you can still check the company’s previous general purpose metric, which was PAI. The company developed its PAI score using the research of Ulrik Wisløff, a professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. It uses your age, sex, resting heart rate, and past seven days of heart rate data to calculate just how much activity you should be getting.
as march flies by, you might be itching to get started on spring cleaning—especially with the start of the season only a few days away. Whether you’re looking forward to deep-cleaning your home or not, it’s a great excuse to upgrade your vacuum or add a new air purifier to your space. Below, we found a variety of great deals on a bunch of our favorite air purifiers and a variety of Dyson cordless vacuums. We also threw in some solid discounts on our top-rated Bluetooth speakers, so you can blast your favorite tunes or podcasts to help you get through those chores.
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Bluetooth Speaker Deals
Sonos Beam (Gen 2) Soundbar
Photograph: Sonos
The Beam (Gen 2) has a lot of upgrades from the first-gen version, including enhanced sound with support for Dolby Atmos (with compatible TVs and streaming apps), a faster processor, and an HDMI eARC port for higher-definition audio. On the front is also a polycarbonate grille instead of a fabric cover. It also comes with support for Google Assistant, Alexa, and AirPlay 2. It dipped this low back in December, but we still think this is a great deal.
This is our favorite micro speaker in our Best Bluetooth Speakers guide. Equipped with a built-in strap, it sits flat in a bike basket, making it a great speaker for riding. It also has up to 16 hours of battery life, an IP67-rating for dust and water resistance, and the option to link two speakers together for stereo sound. It dipped as low as $37 back in November, but this is still a solid deal.
If you’re looking for a soundbar that won’t take up too much space, we recommend the Sonos Ray (9/10, WIRED Recommends). It’s compact, so you can easily place it on your dresser or entertainment center, but you can also mount it if you want to free up space. It delivers crisp, clear sound that will easily fill up your space. You can also adjust the audio settings using Sonos’ companion app.
Photograph: Ultimate Ears
If you’re looking for an excellent medium-size speaker, the EpicBoom is our go-to pick. The pill-shaped, curvy body is easy to haul, and it projects sound well in medium-sized outdoor areas. You can also pair it to other Ultimate Ears speakers using the companion Boom app.
The Sub Mini (8/10, WIRED Review) is small, but you can rely on it to deliver a clear sound and thumping bass. It’s wireless—aside from plugging it into a power source. It pairs with your system through the Sonos app, where you can also fine-tune the subwoofer. You’ll be able to adjust sub and height audio, as well as set volume limits and bass and treble levels. You can add surround-sound speakers too.
Sonos Move 2 Portable Speaker
Photograph: Sonos
The second-generation Move (8/10, WIRED Review) comes with a variety of notable upgrades, including 24-hour battery life (a huge increase from 11 hours the last-gen delivered), a touch interface for media controls (instead of physical buttons), and the option to connect via Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 5.0 (instead of having to choose between the two). In terms of sound quality, it comes with a second tweeter and third digital amplifier, which delivers punchy, detailed sound.
Air Purifier Deals
Coway Airmega 200M
Photograph: Conway
The Airmega 200M is effective in spaces up to 361 feet, making this our top recommendation for small rooms. It’s compact and attractive, so it’s easy to find a space for it in your home. It’ll also save you energy—the built-in air quality monitor increases the fan speed whenever it detects particles and turns the device off when it doesn’t impact pollution.
If you’re looking for an air purifier more suitable for a larger space, the Coway Airmega 250 is a great option. It captures 99.99 percent of particulates down to 0.1 microns (making it capable of tackling wildfire smoke and big-city pollution), and the washable prefilter allows the replaceable HEPA filter to last longer. It’s also on sale at Coway for $300 ($99 off).
Rated to clean up to 1,560 square feet, this air purifier is suitable for very big rooms. It cycles all the air in that space twice per hour, but in a room half the size, the HEPA filters cycle the air four times per hour. Changing the filters is also a simple process—the magnetic covers are easy to take off, and the filters conveniently snap in and out. The air purifier feels intuitive to use too, thanks to the touch controls and color-coded air quality monitor ring. This discount only applies to the white colorway. Both the white and black versions are also on sale through Coway’s site for $441 and $457, respectively.
Levoit Core 300S
Photograph: Levoit
This is our favorite smart air purifier. It can cycle air five times per hour in spaces up to 219 square feet, making it ideal for bedrooms, living rooms, and kitchens. It also comes with a prefilter, an activated carbon filter, and an H13 True HEPA filter that captures 99.99 percent of bacteria and mold. Although it’s technically a tabletop air purifier, it’s on the larger side (we’ve been keeping it on our living room floor), but it’s easy to carry from room to room. While you can control it using the touch controls on top, you can also use the VeSync companion app to adjust the settings and check the air quality indoors.
This air purifier looks like an end table, so it’ll easily blend in with your furniture. It doubles as a Qi wireless charger too—set your phone right on top of it and it’ll start charging. It should work with any phone that has support for wireless charging, but you might need to take the case off. It’s also powerful (with the ability to clean up to 649 square feet) as well as easy to control and clean. This discount only applies to the white colorway.
The Airmega Aim is advertised as an air purifier that’s small enough to sit on your desk, but it’s bigger than it looks in photos (coming in at 18.5 x 19.7 x 8.03 inches). It’s still pretty compact compared to other air purifiers we’ve tested. Rated for rooms between 246 and 492 square feet, it works well in smaller spaces. It doubles as a fan too, which auto-oscillates up to 80 degrees and tilts to 90 degrees—so it’ll come in handy once the weather gets even warmer.
Robot Vacuum Deals
Roborock Q5 Pro+
Photograph: Roborock
We’re fans of the Roborock Q5+ (9/10, WIRED Recommends), and the Pro model is basically the same vacuum for the same price. But it does come with a few additional features, including a detachable mop pad, a larger dustbin (770 milliliters instead of 470 ml as seen on the previous version). It has slightly stronger suction and a bit more run time too. You’ll also get lidar detection and software features like automatic cliff detection, the ability to create multiple maps and set different cleaning zones via a companion app, and more.
This is our favorite vac-mop combo in our Best Robot Vacuums guide. Shark’s AI Ultra 2-in-1 (8/10, WIRED Recommends) is much more affordable than its competitors and packs about 90 percent of the functionality. It does a good job vacuuming and scrubbing your floors with the included mopping bin (we used Shark’s proprietary cleaning solution that’s sold separately, but you can also use water). We also like that it uses laser navigation instead of cameras. Once it maps your home, you can use the companion app to set vacuum and mopping zones.
The Roomba j7+ has powerful suction, a bin that automatically empties itself when it’s full, and a feature called Genius that teaches your Roomba about your cleaning schedules and personal preferences—rather than manually programming the information yourself. It’s worth noting that Amazon acquired iRobot back in 2022, but iRobot has assured WIRED that there is no way Amazon can use the data gathered from inside your home. The price dipped slightly lower to $440 earlier this month, but we still think this is a good deal.
Eufy RoboVac X8 Hybrid
Photograph: Eufy
Eufy’s RoboVac X8 Hybrid is a great option if you have pets. It has twin turbines—each of which generate up to 2,000 Pa of suction energy—so it can suck up twice as much in just one pass. WIRED reviews editor Adrienne So said that the X8 Hybrid’s maps were too wonky for her to trust it to lug a full 250-milliliter tank of water around her house, but it was the perfect vacuum to deep-clean debris and dog hair. It’s ideal if you have an enclosed area that regularly needs deep cleaning.
Dyson Vacuum Deals
Dyson Gen5detect Cordless Vacuum
Photograph: Best Buy
This is Dyson’s latest top-of-the-line cordless vacuum. It has a single power button instead of a trigger, a brighter Laser Slim Fluffy cleaner head (which shoots out a green laser to illuminate dust particles), and the company’s fastest motor yet—spinning at 135,000 revolutions per minute with a suction power of 262 AW. Dyson also added a HEPA filter that it claims traps 99.99 percent of particles down to 0.1 microns. If you don’t want to shop at Amazon, it’s also on sale at Best Buy and Dyson for $800 ($150 off).
The Omni-Glide is best for hard floors. The head has two soft rollers and four swiveling casters, allowing you to push it in any direction. Weighing in at only 4 pounds, it’s also lightweight and easy to maneuver. It has a small dust bin that fills up quickly and isn’t powerful enough to work well on carpets, so we only recommend it if you’re using it for a small space that’s free of carpet. It’s also worth noting that if you’re purchasing this vacuum from Target, you’ll see the discount at checkout.
Dyson Ball Animal 3 Extra
Photograph: Dyson
If you prefer a corded vacuum over a stick vacuum, the Ball Animal 3 Extra (9/10, WIRED Recommends) is an excellent choice—especially for unruly pet hair. As the successor to the Animal Ball 2, it has a bigger bin, a Motorbar cleaner head, and three different power modes—one for deep- and medium-pile carpets, another for low-pile carpets, and a third for hardwood floors. This model also comes with a tangle-free turbine tool (for removing dirt and pet hair from upholstery) and a grooming tool for pets with medium or long hair.
The Ball Animal 2 is older and more expensive than the third-generation version. It offers the same powerful suction (at 290 AW) and some of the same accessories (like the tangle-free turbine tool). But it also comes with a self-adjusting cleaner head that automatically raises and lowers the base plate to seal in suction on all floor types. The Motorbar cleaning head on the Ball Animal 3 requires you to switch floor types manually via a switch.
Medisafe offers short videos for most medications where a doctor describes the medication and explains possible side effects and other useful information. The app will even flag possible interactions if you are taking multiple medications. The free version is excellent, but you can get rid of ads and unlock some extra customization options with a subscription ($5/month or $40/year).
How to Set Reminders on an Android Phone
There are various ways you might set a medication reminder on an Android phone.
Use Google Assistant
Google via Simon Hill
The quickest and easiest way to set a reminder on your Android phone is to use Google Assistant. For example, you can say, “Hey Google, remind me to take my pill every day at 9 am.”
If you have a family group set up, you can also set reminders for other folks in your family by saying something like, “Hey Google, remind Jenny to take her pill every day at 8 pm.”
To review and tweak any reminders you have set, say, “Hey Google, show my reminders.”
Use Google Calendar
You could also set up medication reminders in Google Calendar. Open the Calendar app, select a day, tap the Plus icon, and choose Reminder. You can specify a time and tap where it says Does not repeat, then change to Every day or set another interval. When you are happy with the details, tap Save.
Use a Medication App
As we said above, of the many medication apps available for Android, our top pick is Medisafe’s Pill Reminder and Med Tracker. This slick app is the Android version of the iPhone app we recommend above, and it’s easy to set up and offers the same wealth of features. You can set reminders for multiple medications, track your consumption, set up refill alerts, track symptoms, and get warnings about possible interactions.
How to Set Reminders on a Samsung Phone
As well as the methods listed above for Android phones, Samsung offers excellent medication reminders in its Health app on Samsung phones. Here’s how to set them up:
Open the Health app, scroll down to the Medications section and tap on it.
Tap Add medication and start typing the name of your medication. You should see a list of suggestions pop up. If you can’t find yours, tap Add custom medication at the bottom.
Once you have selected your medication, you can select the type and strength. You can also identify the pill shape on the next screen.
Now it’s time to set your schedule. You can select the time and dosage required and the period to complete the course (if applicable).
The last screen allows you to review the schedule you have created and set a medication nickname and notes, if you want to. Hit Save if it all looks good.
The final screen warns you about potential interactions with other drugs or substances, such as alcohol. You can tap on possible interactions for further information on the risks.
Once added, you will see medications listed in the Health app via the Medications section with a timeline along the top and a log of what you must take each day. You can mark it off for that day by tapping Take.
Tap on any medication in the Your medications section to edit that record. You can also add your number of remaining pills and toggle on a Refill reminder.
When you’re done with a medication, tap on it under Your medications and tap the three vertical dots at the top right to Archive or Delete. You should use Archive if you want to retain a record of that medication and when you took it.
You can also share medication data by opening the Health app, tapping the Medications section, tapping the three vertical dots at the top right, and selecting Share medication list.
When Michael Seibel lost his position at the startup incubator Y Combinator, he didn’t find out in typical tech industry fashion, which might entail an email calling him to a Zoom meeting where the bad news would be delivered. He did it to himself. Today Seibel is announcing that he’s stepping down as YC’s managing director, a job that entailed running the heart of the business: selecting startup founders for the three-month program and running the boot-camp-style operation that hones the vision and execution of their ideas so they can raise money, release products, and attempt to become the next Airbnb or Stripe (both YC alumni).
Considering how important YC has been to the tech startup ecosystem, Seibel’s exit will have more resonance than your average corporate reshuffle. For one thing, the person who runs YC’s blue-chip accelerator has a significant hand in shaping the next generation of tech companies. And in recent months, YC has found itself in the crossfire of a war between tech and progressives. Whether intentional or not, Seibel, a well-liked entrepreneur and investor himself, is deftly stepping out of the line of fire.
Seibel explains the move as a more personal decision. Sometime last year he began to take stock, spurred in part by reading Strength to Strength, a book about career arcs, particularly pivots made late in life. He’s only 41, but precociousness is part of the founder mindset, and he’d been a startup CEO at 23. “I do everything early,” he says.
Michael SeibelCourtesy of Y Combinator
He realized that he had been running batches for as long as the person who first imagined YC into being, Paul Graham. After Covid waned, YC had returned to an in-person experience, and the software that it had developed to smooth the remote Covid-era program made an IRL operation easier to manage. Now the program works by splitting each batch of new startups into four groups, none larger than Dunbar’s Number of 150, estimated to be the maximum number of relationship’s a human brain can properly maintain. Each group has its own leader, so YC had less need for someone to oversee each cohort as a whole. And though Seibel enjoyed managing the overall program, he much preferred direct contact with company founders. So he will now become one of those four group leaders, who each mentor a quarter of the batch. It’s a particularly exciting time to do that, Seibel says, as many of the companies hinge on the AI boom.
Close observers of YC—and many in the startup ecosystem monitor the accelerator with the diligence of a behavior-tracking ad network—might wonder whether Seibel’s move might have something to do with his being passed over for the leadership of the entire operation. Forbes has reported that he was disappointed not to be tapped as CEO after the incubator’s president, Geoff Ralston, who had taken over when Sam Altman went full time leading OpenAI, left at the end of 2022. Ralston was replaced by YC’s former design guru, Garry Tan. Seibel tells me he did not feel dissed, though he would have accepted the job if offered. “If it was something that people thought was going to be the right thing, I was happy to do it. If not, I was more than happy to not,” he says. “My whole goal was to do whatever YC needed for me.”
Seibel’s self-demotion seems to be in keeping with a recent rethinking at Y Combinator: a refocusing toward a scrappy, boots-on-the-ground startup accelerator as it was under its initial leader and cofounder Graham. His successor, Altman, started a sprawling research operation that, among other things, launched OpenAI. Ralston had his own dreams, and YC started a continuity fund to enable it to make later-stage investments into maturing startups. Ralston was also enamored with scale. The Winter 2022 batch included 412 companies, each funded by the traditional seed investment from YC. Ralston boosted that initial slug of capital from $125,000 to $500,000 per company, for a 7 percent stake. When I last asked him whether there was a limit to how many startups YC could accommodate in each batch, Ralston said there wasn’t. It was possible, he believed, for a batch to number “thousands” of startups.
Under Tan, who took over in January 2023, there’s been a refocus on the founders themselves. Tan says YC had become kind of an umbrella company saying yes to a lot of things. “I asked, ‘How do we focus on what made YC awesome in the first place?’” The answer was mentoring cool founders, chosen through an exacting application process. The continuity fund was discontinued. YC had already separated itselffrom Altman’s research division, which is now called Open Research. The only remaining trace of Altman’s research operation within the company now is a financial stake in OpenAI. Most notably, batch sizes have been cut almost in half. Beginning Summer 2022, they numbered in the mid 200’s, with the current batch inching up to 260. This isn’t due to demand—27,000 companies applied for those slots.
Happy Pi Day! Solo Stove is celebrating with up to $160 off sitewide when you use coupon code PIZZA during checkout. The company’s pizza ovens are on sale, but so are some great smokeless firepits and other accessories. We’ve rounded up our favorite deals below. The sale is scheduled to end on March 18, so you have some time to take advantage of the discounts.
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Pi Day Deals
Solo Stove Pi
Photograph: Solo Stove
The Solo Stove Pi (8/10, WIRED Recommends) is our favorite pizza oven. This bundle includes three accessories—a pizza peel, a cutter, and a thermometer—yet the price ends up the same as the oven alone thanks to the coupon code. The design is compact, with a large cooking surface and a nice flat top for extra cooking space (and storage). We think it works best with a good cast-iron pan, especially since the handle will stick out to minimize burn risk. This oven is pricey, so this sale is a good opportunity to snag one. You can also opt for the wood-burning model with no gas attachments for less.
The Solo Stove Yukon (7/10, WIRED Review) is awesome but not portable at 27 inches. It’s gorgeous and made from stainless steel, plus it burns hot and lights easily. Sure, you can build a firepit for far less money, but if you want to invest in your backyard, this is a gorgeous way to do it.
This is one of the best deals we’ve tracked for the Bonfire. It’s similar to the Yukon but with a much smaller diameter, which makes it easier to tote to the beach or (safely) into the woods. It’s durable, and the fire burns hot without all that gross smoke blowing around your camp chairs.
The team has also developed a separate app that remotely scans a customer’s body to design a custom-fit pair of pants. You can use it today to order custom jeans, though they are cut and sewn in the traditional way—Unspun hasn’t yet bolted the software onto the machines. Right now, machine operators choose Vega’s settings to create the product. Unspun is working on software that would translate a design into direct commands to Vega, so retailers or fashion brands could feed their virtual creations into the machine and then get a wearable prototype in minutes.
Unspun’s vision is to one day have hundreds of Vega machines across the US. A customer of one of Unspun’s retail clients would get a body scan, choose the type of garment they want, and as soon as they click purchase, send the design to the nearest Vega machine, which would output their order the same day. A custom fit means fewer returns, and because many returns are sent to the landfill or incinerated, that means waste and emissions are reduced even more.
Walmart does have a successful program to curb its suppliers’ emissions that involves energy efficiency and renewable energy projects at factories. But when Walmart VP of sourcing Kyle Carlyle visited Unspun’s micro-factory last year, he was struck first by the giant American flag hanging above the machines. In 2021 Walmart announced that it was committing $350 billion (in addition to a 2013 $250 billion commitment) to support US suppliers. The move wasn’t just good marketing—in a 2019 survey, 85 percent of its customers said it was important that Walmart carry American-made products—but also one that would help future-proof Walmart’s business.
“My team takes care of what Walmart calls surety of supply—essentially, building in resilience to how we source,” he says. He’s talking about a supply chain that can absorb shocks from natural disasters, pandemics, political unrest, and the like, and still deliver goods quickly enough to keep up with trends.
3D Thinking
Photograph: Unspun
The first step to making 3D woven chinos is completely rethinking how they’re designed. Typically, a designer will create a 2D tech pack with the cut shapes, and then select the fabric for look, feel, and performance based on swatches. But the machines require the selection of the individual threads going into the machine, plus envisioning the whole design as a series of 3D tubes. Knitwear designers are used to this mode of thinking. Designers of woven products—T-shirts, jeans, and pants—are not. “The designers are often getting to think about designing the fabric for the first time, rather than just the product made for that fabric,” Unspun’s Martin says.
The possibilities afforded by 3D weaving are expansive. In September, Unspun worked with the designer label Ekhaus Latta to create several looks for New York Fashion Week, including shimmery plastic-tape-and-cotton pants. In the glass-walled showroom, Martin pulls another example off the rack: pants that looked like Chanel bouclé, but on acid, with a psychedelic pattern you could fall right into. Someday, a designer could upload an image and have it woven right into the fabric.
But for now, the goal is more mundane: ensuring that when Average Joe walks into his local Walmart, he can find a pair of work pants in his favorite style and the right size. If it has a little American flag label, well, that’s just a bonus.
