A New Star Trek Novel Will Explore What the Enterprise Was Up to in Discovery's First Season

The rapidly approaching second season of Discovery will re-introduce us to the U.S.S. Enterprise, before Jim Kirk ever sat in its Captain’s chair and boldly took it on its five year mission. But later this year, a new novel will show us what the ship was actually up to at the height of the Klingon War that broke out…

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E-Scooter Startup Bird: We're Sorry for Sending Wild Legal Threats to Media Over Scooter Hacks

On-demand electric scooter startup Bird has backed down from its legal threats against Boing Boing editor Cory Doctorow for publishing a piece detailing how a $30 kit from China could be used to rewire the hoards of abandoned Bird scooters sitting around city impound lots, the BBC reported on Monday.

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Laura Loomer Is at It Again

Alt-right provocateur and free speech martyr Laura Loomer is not content to rest on her laurels as the woman who locked herself to (one of) the doors at Twitter headquarters and demanded to be given back her God-given right to post. But Loomer wants more. She wants fame. She wants fortune. She wants, it seems… to…

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YouTube adds swipe-based navigation on mobile

Mobile navigation is all about the swipe these days, and now even YouTube is joining in. The platform has started rolling out an update for iOS devices, giving users a way to view the next video in the list by swiping left or right. Swipe forward to…

UMindSleep mini EEG sleep monitor

It is not only imperative that one obtains the right amount of sleep each night, but also one that is of good quality. CES 2019 saw EEGSmart reveal their very first Mini Electroencephalogram (EEG) Sleep Monitor, known as UMindSleep. With Artificial intelligence (AI) in the realm of healthcare making waves this year, the UMindSleep carries the distinction of bringing together both hardware and software in a Brain-Machine Interface system which will help collect EEG data in real-time, while working behind the scenes to analyze people’s mental states via its AI technology.

The UMindSleep has certainly picked up its fair share of admirers, sporting a wearable sleep tracer and monitor which will be able to keep track of relevant sleep data such as EEG, heart rate, blood oxygen, forehead temperature, body movement, position, and snoring, all the while being able to quantify people’s sleep processes accurately. This comprises of analyzing sleep disorders and symptoms, which will in turn be able to provide far more practical and effective methods to improve users’ sleep quality. The EEG analysis results will be available at the user’s fingertips courtesy of professional sleep-monitoring standards that do qualify for use by medical institutions and health management agencies.

According to an expert in sleep medicine after testing out the UMindSleep, “The real-time signal waveforms produced by EEGSmart are very impressive, and the comprehensive analysis results are also very professional.” If you feel that you need to have a little something extra in the bedroom that will help you eke out additional performance in other areas of your life during your waking hours, then making sure that your sleep quality is beneficial using the UMindSleep would make plenty of sense. Not only does the UMindSleep work great, it also does not look out of place with its clean design and aesthetically pleasing look.

Press Release
[ UMindSleep mini EEG sleep monitor copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]

Spider-Man: Far From Home Trailer Could Be Released This Week

There will be several Marvel movies released this year, one of them being the sequel to Spider-Man: Homecoming, also known as Spider-Man: Far From Home. For those who can’t wait to see what the movie might have in store for us, you’ll be pleased to learn that there is a good chance that the trailer could drop this week.

This is according to a recent video uploaded by Kirk Deveyck in which he tweeted at actor Tom Holland asking for a release for the movie’s trailer, in which the actor reportedly responded by saying he’ll see what he can do. Holland then followed up with a new tweet in which he said, “So I spoke to Sony…” which many have taken to mean that the trailer will indeed be released soon, possibly even this week.

Safe to say that if true this will be huge as many are looking forward to seeing what Spider-Man gets up to in the sequel. More importantly the sequel also confirms that Spider-Man did not truly die in Avengers: Infinity War which left fans with more questions than answers. The sequel to Spider-Man will also star Jake Gyllenhaal as Mysterio, one of the Sinister Six that the various Spider-Man movies have been fighting against so far (this leaves Kraven the Hunter as the last member of the Sinister Six that has yet to make his big screen debut).

Spider-Man: Far From Home Trailer Could Be Released This Week , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.

David Bowie’s Chilling 1999 Prediction About The Internet Has Come True

“I think we’re actually on the cusp of something exhilarating and terrifying.”

Aladdin Magic Carpet Rug Flies into Your Wallet and Grabs $70

If you have kids or a fondness for Disney films you probably know that a live-action version of Aladdin is coming later this year. That means kids will be wanting to fly around on magic carpets, and who can blame them. Now they can have a rug that looks just like the magic carpet from the original animated film.

The rug measures 39″ x 70″ and is made from 100% polyester. It has 4-inch yarn tassels on each corner, certain to get slurped up by your vacuum.

The Aladdin Magic Carpet Rug is available to purchase right now at ThinkGeek. It’s not cheap at $69.99, and you should know it doesn’t fly unless your UPS driver goes really fast on his way to deliver it.

This extra-large handheld Nintendo works (and feels) like the real thing

Handheld retro gaming machines come and go, but few go so simply and effectively to the point as My Arcade’s Retro Champ. You stick in your NES cartridge, hit the power button and, assuming you blew on it beforehand, it powers up. This one sets itself apart with a big ol’ screen, Famicom compatibility and a whopping 35-hour battery life. Update: Nope! It’s 3 to 5 hours, not 35 as the company originally stated. I thought that was suspiciously high.

I played with the Retro Champ at CES, where they had one under lock and key — it’s not the production version, but that’s coming in the Spring. But it works just like you’d expect, and I was pleased to find it responsive, comfortable and pleasantly ridiculous. It’s really quite big, but not nearly as heavy as it looks.

The 7-inch screen is bright and the color looked good; it was responsive and the device felt well-balanced. The controls are where you’d expect, with big scoops in the back of the case to help you grip it. NES cartridges go in the top (and stick out as you see) and Famicom cartridges tuck in the bottom.

There’s a stand so you can prop it up and use wireless controllers with it (not included; they’re trying to keep the price low), and you can also plug it straight into your TV via HDMI, which basically makes this thing a spare NES home console. The screen is low-resolution, but that’s fine for NES; and its 480p output won’t wow anyone, but again, this is a Nintendo we’re talking about. The original outputs via RF adapter.

Lastly (and hilariously), there’s a hidden cleaning kit with space for a few Q-tips and a small bottle of solvent, for getting those really grimed-up games working.

My questions went to the usual pain points for scrupulous retro-loving gamers like myself:

Yes, it’s a 16:9 screen, and of course NES games were 4:3. So yes, you’ll be able to change that.

And no, it’s not just loading the ROM data into an emulator. This is the common way of doing it, and it produces artifacts and incompatibility with some games, not to mention control lag and other issues. Things have gotten better, but it’s definitely corner-cutting.

I chatted with Amir Navid, the creative director and one of the developers of the device. Though he couldn’t get into the technical details (patents pending), he said that they had developed their own chip that runs the game the same way an actual NES would.

So any cartridge that works on the NES, including homebrew and hacked games, will load right up no problem. That means you can also use a cartridge with an SD card loader, like an Everdrive, for those hard-to-get and hacked titles.

Some features are up in the air, for instance save states. It’s possible, but because this is in effect just a small Nintendo and not a virtual one, it’s also tricky. We’ll see.

I was also curious why there were four round buttons instead of the traditional NES D-pad. Navid said they were still waiting on feedback from players about which worked best; for an actual controller, the original D-pad might be good, but perhaps not for the handheld style. So they’re considering a few configurations; likewise the buttons on the right — they could get some tweaking before release.

The device goes for $80, which seems fair to me. If you want absolute fidelity for a home console, you can spend five to 10 times that amount, while for handhelds there are cheaper and smaller devices out there, most of which use emulators. They’re aiming for enthusiasts who want an easy but uncompromised way of playing their cartridges — lots of us have consoles sitting in boxes, but it’s a pain to get them set up. The Retro Champ could be one of the easiest ways to get back in the game. It ships in June.

CES 2019 coverage - TechCrunch

Bonkers Post Making Up Stuff About Female Microsoft Developer Advocate Backfires Big Time

The tables turned big time on a supposed software developer posting under the identity “Tee Medlin” on Friday after he sent an Instagram post accusing Microsoft senior cloud developer advocate Chloe Condon of stalking him at a conference—something that never occurred—and other social media users quickly discovered…

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