JBL makes a mean Bluetooth speaker, and the brand’s Flip series has been my all-time favorite for multiple generations. The JBL Flip 7 is its best yet, with good sound, a travel-ready size, and subtle but effective upgrades over the previous two models in both sound and features. I love this speaker and its nearly indestructible design, and now it’s finally getting some good sales. Right now, you’ll find it for $50 off its $150 retail price, the lowest we’ve seen it yet.

I used the Flip 5 as my go-to audio companion at home and on the road for years. The Flip 7 is better, providing even clearer and more powerful sound to enhance everything from barbecue jams to dialog as I watch movies from my PC in the hot tub (what can I say, I like to multi-task!). The Flip’s design works great for the hot tub since it’s fully dunkable, and offers convenient controls for my slippery hands when I need to adjust the volume or pause the fun.

The Flip 7 offers some cool new features, including a new detachable loop that breaks away with the press of a button (just make sure you don’t lose it), upgraded IP68 dust and water resistance, and a new shockproof casing tested for three-foot drops. The Flip line has always been pretty drop-friendly, and I can personally attest to dropping this thing a lot with no ill effects.

JBL has also begun to add Auracast to its new speaker line, a future-looking feature that uses a new Bluetooth protocol for latency-free transmission of an infinite number of devices. Auracast is still new, but it’s an extremely promising technology, and currently lets you connect the Flip 7 with other JBL Auracast speakers in tandem. The only downside is that JBL has done away with its older PartyBoost feature, so you can only group the Flip 7 with newer speakers like the Charge 6 and Clip 5.

As far as sound quality goes, this is a more refined Flip, with minor upgrades to instrumental definition, noticeable in instruments like brass, strings, and vocals. It’s not a big change over the Flip 6, but it’s good to see improvement, and the speaker has lost some of the more aggressive touch that sometimes led to minor distortion in older models. Like virtually any Bluetooth speaker, it will still distort if you push it too hard, but I clocked it at over 75 dB in my review without any audible issues.

You’ll also get a bit more battery life this time around, going from 12 hours in previous models to 14 (depending on volume), so you can take it off the grid for a bit longer. You can even push that up to 16 hours with its new Playtime Boost mode, though that cuts out some bass.

It all adds up to a sweet little package. It’s my first recommendation when anyone asks me about a great portable speaker, offering the perfect compromise between size, sound, and durability. While it’s been bouncing up and down in price lately, now’s a great time to catch it at the lowest price we’ve seen yet.

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There is a corner of Antarctica that looks like something out of a David Cronenberg movie. It’s located in the dry valleys of McMurdo, an immense frozen desert where, periodically, a jet of crimson liquid suddenly gushes from the dazzling white of the Taylor Glacier. They’re called the Blood Falls, and since their discovery in 1911 by geologist Thomas Griffith Taylor, they’ve fueled a century of scientific speculation.

Recently, a series of observations conducted since 2018 have clarified several mysteries, such as the nature of their reddish color and what keeps them liquid at almost –20 degrees Celsius. New research published this week in the journal Antarctic Science adds the final piece to the puzzle, clarifying what phenomena drive the falls to gush from underground.

The Science Behind the Blood Falls

At the time of their discovery, Taylor attributed the color to the presence of red microalgae. More than a century later, scientists have determined that the red is due to iron particles trapped in nanospheres along with other elements such as silicon, calcium, aluminum, and sodium. These were likely produced by ancient bacteria trapped underground in the area: Once in contact with air, the iron oxidizes, giving the mixture its characteristic rust color.

As for the presence of liquid water, it is actually a hypersaline brine, formed about 2 million years ago when the waters of the Antarctic Ocean receded from the valleys. The very high salinity of this brine prevents the water from freezing, thus allowing it to gush out periodically.

The New Discovery

With the temperature puzzle solved, the question remained as to what physically drove the fluid to erupt. The answer came from cross-referencing GPS data, thermal sensors, and high-resolution images collected in 2018 during an eruption. The analysis demonstrated that the Blood Falls are the result of pressure variations affecting the brine deposits beneath the glacier.

As Taylor Glacier slides downstream, the overlying ice mass compresses the subglacial channels, building up tremendous pressure. When the strain becomes unbearable, the ice gives way: Pressurized brine seeps into the crevices and is shot out in short bursts. Curiously, this release acts as a hydraulic brake, temporarily slowing the glacier’s march. With this discovery, the mysteries of the Blood Falls should finally have been solved, at least for now. The impact of global warming on this complex system in the coming decades remains unknown.

This story originally appeared on WIRED Italia and has been translated from Italian.

Laundry is a $100 billion business. It can also be a real time suck, what with all the washing, drying, and folding. Detergent company Tide has found great success with its Pods that let you pop detergent right into a washing machine without having to measure and pour liquid or powder. Now, the next evolution is an exhaustively engineered single-use detergent called Tide Evo Tiles—a dry, fibery, single-use tile that can dissolve in cold water. It looks a lot less tasty than the bright, colorful Tide Pods, so hopefully, fewer people will try to eat this one.

Tide Evo Tiles have been in product development for over a decade. After spending a year in test markets, Tide and its parent company, Procter & Gamble, announced last week that Evo Tiles are now rolling out more broadly across the US. Prices range from $5 to $20 per box, depending on the retailer, with the price roughly 50 cents per tile.

“This is really a feat of engineering,” says Marcello Puddu, senior director of research and development at Tide. “There is a lot of very complicated engineering and formulation work that has gone to create that one single sleek tile that looks relatively simple.”

The primary hope for Tide Evo is simplicity. Single-use detergent pods are lauded for being more accessible to people who may struggle with the motor skills required to pour liquid soap or powders. Evo Tiles have a small ridge around the edges that makes them easier to pull out of the box. Deploying them is easy—just plop them (one tile for regular loads, two for heavy) into the washer as close to where the water comes out as possible, then toss the fabrics on top.

After the tile breaks apart, the ingredients work together to create a very high pH level in the water that cleans the fabrics. (Because of the high pH, Tide Evo does not use lipase, an enzyme that breaks down stains and is a popular ingredient in other detergents.)

Evo Tiles look like white, diamond-shaped Uncrustables. Instead of a Tide Pod’s colorful liquid pouches, these tiles are made of dry layers of interwoven detergent fibers—about 10,000 of them, which Tide says is enough to stretch for 15 miles, if you were inclined to do such a thing. The result is a looping, webbed lattice of tiny fibers, woven together into six layers that stay in place while on the shelf but break down quickly when they get wet, allowing separate releases of stain and odor fighters, brighteners, and fresheners.

“The structure of an assembled product allows us to do that, because we can separate things that don’t like to be together,” Puddu says. “We can put an enzyme between two layers so the two don’t attack each other. You can’t really do that as easily in other matrices.”

The goal is to combine the benefits of Tide Pods and laundry sheets and make something that packs in enough detergent to sufficiently clean a load of wash while also being lightweight and able to dissolve quickly. And, as Tide is eager to point out, it also makes things more eco-friendly.

Tide Evo tiles are specifically designed to dissolve in cold water, the idea being that washing fabrics without having to heat up water helps save energy. Packaging is also part of Tide’s ecological efforts. Unlike the plastic boxes Pods tend to come in, Tide Evo tiles are packaged in a recyclable cardboard box that is certified by the Forest Stewardship Council.

Still, Tide Evo does use polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) plastics to help the fibrous structure hold together. These are the same kind of plastics used to form the casing around Tide Pods. PVA plastics have been the subject of much debate about whether the polymers used in detergent casing can create microplastics when dissolved. They likely do not, but the products are still created within the broader plastics ecosystem and can lead to clogging of waterways if not treated properly.