Hasta La Gadget!

In this month’s issue of New Space, Elon Musk outlined his plan to colonize Mars. His article discusses how to bring down the cost of Mars flights as well as some of the specs of necessary equipment.

Wireless charging for the iPhone isn’t new, although users would have to resort to third-party solutions like wireless charging cases in order to give their iPhones the capability. However that is expected to change with the iPhone 8 where according to the rumors, will finally introduce native wireless charging.

Of course this is a rumor which means we have no way of knowing if it is real, but it seems that it might be. According to a report from Nikkei, Apple manufacturer Wistron seems to have confirmed not just one, but two upcoming iPhone features. Speaking to reporters after the company’s shareholders’ meeting, Wistron CEO Robert Hwang revealed that Apple’s upcoming iPhones will be waterproof and feature wireless charging technology.

Hwang was quoted as saying, “Assembly process for the previous generations of [iPhones] have not changed much, though new features like waterproof and wireless charging now require some different testing, and waterproof function will alter the assembly process a bit.” As it stands Apple’s current-gen iPhones are IP67 certified, meaning that they are water-resistant up to a certain degree.

We’re not sure if Hwang’s comments on the phones being “waterproof” means that Apple is upping their game, but he did say it was a new feature so perhaps Apple is improving on the protective features of the phone. It’s interesting that Hwang made these comments as Apple is notorious for guarding their secrets and making sure their supply chain does as well, but in any case this is as official as it is going to get for now, short of Apple confirming it themselves.

Apple Manufacturer Confirms iPhone 8’s Wireless Charging Feature , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.

Many have praised Nintendo’s E3 presentation this year because the company unveiled quite a few major titles that would be coming to the Switch. In fact many gamers appeared to celebrate when Capcom announced that Monster Hunter XX would be arriving on the Switch, but it looks like gamers are about to be disappointed.

In a report from GameSpot, Capcom has confirmed to the publication that there are no plans to bring a localized version of Monster Hunter XX for the Switch to the west. What this means is that while Monster Hunter fans in Japan will be able to celebrate with the game, that can’t be said for gamers who are living stateside or pretty much anywhere else that isn’t Japan.

Now there is a silver lining to this, and that is if you recall, the Nintendo Switch is not region-locked. This means that creating a Nintendo eShop account in Japan will only take gamers a couple of minutes to setup, and from there they’ll be able to get their hands on the game. The only downside is that the game will still be in Japanese, but if your command of the language is passable, or if you don’t mind relying on translations, then that’s one way of getting around this.

Capcom had also announced Monster Hunter World, but unfortunately that game is not destined for the Switch and instead will be launching on the PS4, Xbox One, and the PC. We’re hoping that Capcom will change their minds with regards to a localized version of Monster Hunter XX, but until then gamers shouldn’t hold their breath.

Nintendo Switch Version Of Monster Hunter XX Not Coming To The West , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.

To say that the Angry Birds franchise is getting a bit long in the tooth would be a pretty accurate statement. While the game was extremely popular back in the day where it helped demonstrate the capabilities of smartphones and gaming potential, these days it isn’t quite what it used to be, although that hasn’t stopped Rovio from churning out new titles and milking it.

In fact the company is back with yet another Angry Birds title, but this time in the form of “Angry Birds Evolution”. It’s a game where players are tasked with collecting over 100 different birds that you can then use to evolve your favorite birds to help fight against the pigs. The game itself appears to be free-to-play, and yes, you can also expect to find the usual in-app purchases that will help players advance through the game.

We have to admit that in terms of gameplay, judging from the video above it looks pretty fun and is a fresh take on the Angry Birds franchise, something that the company has been trying to do ever since they stopped making the Angry Birds games in the style of the original that made it so famous to begin with.

The game is available for download via the iTunes App Store and Google Play, so head on over to either store if you’d like to check it out.

Rovio Returns With ‘Angry Birds Evolution’ , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.

This month, American bard Bob Dylan finally delivered his Nobel lecture, many months after he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. The lecture, traditionally given days before the award ceremony in December, must be delivered by those who accept the award within six months. Dylan slipped in his assignment just under the deadline.

Now, however, another Nobel controversy has arisen for the singer-songwriter: Numerous outlets have reported that he may have plagiarized from SparkNotes during a long passage on Herman Melville’s Moby Dick in his long-awaited lecture. 

The discovery stems from a line in which Dylan appears to directly quote Moby Dick. “A Quaker pacifist priest, who is actually a bloodthirsty businessman, tells Flask, ‘Some men who receive injuries are led to God, others are led to bitterness,’” said Dylan. One problem: that line never appears in the actual novel.

Writer Ben Greenman noted in a blog that the quote appeared to have been fabricated. Then, Andrea Pitzer tracked down a similar quote, not in the book itself but on an entry about Moby Dick on the website SparkNotes ― a website that, like the iconic CliffsNotes, provides summaries, character descriptions and thematic breakdowns of books for students to use during study (or use to skip the reading altogether). In a Slate piece, Pitzer documents over a dozen other instances in which Dylan’s discussion of the classic book closely mirrors language found in SparkNotes.

This may seem to fall in a gray area of plagiarism ― most of the matching snippets Pitzer lists consist of phrases or pacing choices in Dylan’s summary of the book, not full sentences or passages. There’s a good chance that it was at least inadvertent: In preparing his speech, he consulted SparkNotes to brush up on his Melville, then had their framing and word choices floating in his head when he sat down to write. 

Some scholars defended his cribbing from SparkNotes to the Minnesota Star-Tribune, suggesting that it was simply an artistic allusion and even a mocking wink at the Nobel committee. “His lecture is … meant to be a post-modern work of art,” said Alex Lubet, a music professor at the University of Minnesota. 

Maybe it was simple plagiarism. Maybe it was a brilliant, paradigm-shifting artistic web of allusion. Or maybe, and perhaps most disappointingly, Dylan was just being lazy. “He’s on the road all the time. He just turned 76,” pointed out David Yaffe, a Syracuse University professor of humanities, to the Star-Tribune. “You could see him wanting to take a few shortcuts.”

Sure, sure ― except Dylan took an extra six months on his assignment only to turn in one that was hastily cobbled together with the aid of SparkNotes. Would the professors defending the musical icon for taking such “shortcuts” have similar patience for a student who cited SparkNotes instead of the assigned text because they were overwhelmed with classwork? Perhaps ― none of my literature professors were ever impressed by such an excuse.

Stephen Fallon, John J. Cavanaugh Professor of the Humanities at the University of Notre Dame, told HuffPost, “If a student borrowed [from SparkNotes] as Dylan does here, I’d be concerned about plagiarism, but I might give Dylan a pass as he’s not implicitly claiming as his own the ideas of someone else.” Still, “the fact that he clearly turned to SparkNotes raises doubts and also the question of why he didn’t at least skim the novel again before devoting a good chunk of a Nobel lecture to it.” (Editor’s Note: Stephen Fallon is the father of this post’s author.)

Any use of SparkNotes’s interpretations, as opposed to simple plot summary, would be more troubling, he added.

The Nobel Prize in Literature often goes to writers with many decades under their belt and a host of obligations, but this typically does not preclude them from crafting an original, erudite lecture. If Dylan was incapable of doing so ― even while taking advantage of his full six-month window to compose it ― he had the option of turning down the prize. Others, such as Jean-Paul Sartre, have done so in the past. 

Instead, it seems Dylan relied on sloppy shortcuts and the work of others to turn in a musically worded but less than original piece. He’s been accused of outright plagiarism before, but more meaningfully perhaps is that he’s been accused before of creating art that simply echoes or copies others’ work without acknowledging where his originality begins and ends. In 2011, questions were raised about an exhibition of his paintings at Gagosian Gallery, which were presented as “firsthand depictions of people, street scenes, architecture and landscape.” According to The New York Times, some critics pointed out that several of the paintings seemed to be copied from photo, reproducing the work of photographers in paint without altering the framing, perspective or composition.

Dylan typically gets out of these dust-ups easily enough, as scholars and fans are willing to assume that his every move was a conscious artistic choice ― a work of collage or allusion, rather than simply a borrowed piece of work passed off as original. Reading SparkNotes for a work rather than referencing the book itself points to something else, though. Dylan may be a great songwriter, a brilliant artist, and a cultural icon, but his Nobel lecture shows signs of an intellectual laziness that wouldn’t be accepted from a freshman English literature student. What a shame.

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