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The Morning After: Wednesday, April 26th 2017

Revenge is best served by mascots.

NBA/ Twitter

In case you missed it yesterday, one Google cofounder is making a flying (kinda) car, while the other has a secret blimp, Uber is having a pretty awful year (already), and there's a for-real tricorder. The makers of it reckon it's better than the Star Trek one. Bold claims.


It's not even May.
Uber's terrible, horrible, no good, very bad 2017

Uber could be the world's most valuable startup, with estimates pegging the company as being worth around $70 billion. Its business, and its CEO, have always garnered controversy, but Uber has been able to survive whatever slings and arrows were thrown its way. So far. This year, however, has been, well, tough.


Wouldn't you?
Of course Sergey Brin has a secret zeppelin

Since his Google co-founder Larry Page is working on a "flying car," it only makes sense that Sergey Brin has an aerial hobby project too. In this case, Bloomberg reports that the mission is a dirigible, with an ex-NASA director leading the project. Even if it flies, however, the biggest hurdle could be explaining the difference between helium and hydrogen.


The X keeps it fresh
LG has OLED, Samsung has QLED and so Vizio has XLED

Vizio has finally unveiled its new for 2017 4K sets, and like Samsung, it's rebranding LCDs to compete with OLED. Whatever you call it, the new P- and M- series televisions should bring high picture quality at value prices, but without that tracking scheme the FTC fined it for.


The XPrize Tricorder winner is half real medical device, half Dr. McCoy.
XPrize winner says its Tricorder is better than 'Star Trek'

The Tricorder XPrize finally has a winner. The Final Frontier Medical Devices' DxtER isn't so much an all-in-one scanner as collection of noninvasive medical-diagnosis gadgets. Even so, its creators claim the DxtER package is better than Star Trek's fictional tricorder. Unlike the fictional tricorder, the winning XPrize entry is actually a small collection of specialized and smart medical devices that interact with the user's tablet. This includes a compact spirometer that can measure the strength of a patient's lungs, a Mono test kit, medical-grade heart-rate and respiration monitors, and devices like the DxtER Orb, which doubles as a thermometer and stethoscope. Perhaps most importantly, it's designed for patients to use themselves.


Fight as Rocket Racoon, Chun Li, Hulk and more this September.
The Avengers take on gaming icons in 'Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite'

After a year of silence, Capcom has announced eight new characters for its crossover fighter -- Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite. Doubling down on Marvel's Cinematic Universe, Hulk, Thor, Hawkeye, Ultron and Rocket Racoon join the playable roster. On the Capcom side, you'll be able to duke it out as Street Fighter's Chun Li, Resident Evil's Chris Redfield, and Strider's Strider Hiryu. It launches on PS4, Xbox One and PC on September 19th for $59.99.


An artificial womb could transform care for extremely premature infants.
Scientists successfully grew fetal lambs inside 'uterus-like' bags

Doctors at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia have developed a new artificial womb that could benefit the tens of thousands of critically preterm (younger than 26 weeks) births in the US each year. According to a new paper published in the journal Nature Communications, the research physicians successfully kept fetal lambs alive inside a "uterus-like" plastic sack for up to four weeks -- longer than any similar device before it.


It didn't take long for the supercomputer to figure out how anxious I am.
IBM's Watson looked into my soul and 'drew' my portrait

IBM's "Art with Watson: Hidden Portraits," is an exhibit featuring portraits of historic personalities like Marie Curie and Nikola Tesla, which Watson helped artists create by feeding them data collected using its natural language and personality insights APIs. IBM also had a Watson cognitive photo booth, where the supercomputer made portraits of visitors based on five different aspects of their personality: anxiousness, openness, agreeableness, extraversion and conscientiousness. Watson asks a set of personality trait questions, then draws a cognitive portrait represented by tiny icons of each of those aforementioned traits.


Come spend some time in the Genius Grove.Apple sees its redesigned retail stores as community spaces

Apple is banking on the (vaguely) social aspect of its stores. It's both redesigning its 100 largest stores and launching new workshops to turn its stores into community spaces of sorts. The shops are still very much geared toward sales, but you'll have more reasons to swing by on a frequent basis. The workshops revolve around new in-store Creative Pros who host free sessions based around Apple tools and Apple-friendly devices.

But wait, there's more...