Hasta La Gadget!

A newly discovered strain of HIV is spreading across West Africa. What’s worse is that it’s particularly aggressive—and causes significantly faster progression to AIDS than other strains.

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Trying to find the perfect gift idea? Over the years Amazon has grown to become the go-to place for just about anything you’re looking to buy online. Tube socks?  Turtlenecks?  Turtle food? Amazon has got you covered! Amazon is also home to a plethora of downright gag-worthy products. If you feel like taking a break from the pursuit of the perfect gift and getting grossed out sounds like fun, dig in to this selection of one dozen fresh-from-the-oven batch of nasty. Here’s what you definitely don’t want to be getting or giving as a gift this year:

Some shipwrecks are too costly or dangerous for humans to explore, but many underwater robots are too disruptive and unwieldy to serve as substitutes. The Tallinn Institute of Technology’s new U-CAT mapping robot solves that dilemma by imitating one of the ocean’s more graceful creatures: the sea turtle. The small machine uses flippers to get around instead of propellers, preventing it from kicking up silt (which would obscure its camera) and letting it turn on a dime. It’s also autonomous, which helps it venture deep into a wreck without worrying about cables. It’s sure to have a big impact on underwater archaeology, and you can see it in person if you swing by the London Science Museum between November 28th and December 1st. However, It will eventually map shipwrecks in the Baltic and Mediterranean Seas as part of the EU’s ARROWS Project, providing more detail than any diver could manage.

[Image credit: Tallin University of Technology, Flickr]

Filed under: Robots, Science

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Via: Gizmag

Source: Tallinn University of Technology, ARROWS Project

When it comes to gaming peripherals, you know for sure that one name has ended up as a household recommendation to many gamers, and that would be Razer. Keyboards, mice, crazy claw-like controls, mouse mats and heck, even headphones, have become quite the area of specialty for Razer, and this time around, we have something which has been named after a famed underwater monster – the Kraken. We are talking about the Razer Kraken Forged Edition headphones that will be able to bring a careful balance between the aesthetics as well as performance.

For starters, the Razer Kraken Forged Edition will arrive crafted with ear cups that have been machined out of aircraft-grade aluminum, followed by a finishing of a matte texture. In fact, just like those extremely precise Swiss timepieces, the Razer Kraken Forged Edition too, has been specially hand-assembled to make sure that every single one of these headphones would arrive right out of the box with premium build quality, looks and guts.

Thanks to Razer’s bunch of dedicated audio engineers who have spent countless hours fine-tuning the Kraken Forged Edition’s 40 mm bass-heavy drivers, you can more or less say that perfection has been achieved, or it ranks pretty much high up there. This would mean the neodymium pair will play nice together with the headphone’s acoustic chambers and isolated closed ear cup design that helps to deliver booming bass, accompanied by clear mids and crisp highs. It does not matter whether you are gaming or listening to your favorite tunes, the Razer Kraken Forged Edition will still be able to deliver.

Apart from that, the Razer Kraken Forged Edition would also feature a swappable cable with an in-line microphone, letting users convert it easily into a headset for gaming or telephony. If you happen to reside Stateside, it will cost you $299.99 a pop, while our friends living across the pond will have to pay €299.99 as usual. The Razer Kraken Forged Edition would be available worldwide from next month onward.

Press Release
[ Razer says, “Release the Kraken!” copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]

Today I found out that during the height of the Cold War, the US military put such an emphasis on a rapid response to an attack on American soil, that to minimize any foreseeable delay in launching a nuclear missile, for nearly two decades they intentionally set the launch codes at every silo in the US to 8 zeroes.

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