Foldable devices are coming later this year, and Microsoft is preparing for their arrival.

The company is already working on a foldable-device version of Windows 10, according to a new report from The Verge. 

The Redmond, Wash.-based software giant is heavily investing in making Windows and Surface ready for foldable devices as well as dual-screen hardware, according to the story. The operating system software and many of its built-in applications need to be optimized to work across foldable dual-screen technology and the midst of doing so.

SEE ALSO: Microsoft was the real MVP of the tech world in 2018

Further proof that Microsoft is the midst of working on software for foldable devices comes to us from the Twitter account, @BuildFeed, which tracks the latest Windows build releases. On Monday, BuildFeed spotted the first Windows 10 build for foldable devices.

Along with its software, Microsoft has also been experimenting with their own foldable hardware. Rumors have long swirled about a foldable tablet device. In 2017, a patent granted to Microsoft for a foldable surface phone was uncovered. In 2018, an internal leak from Microsoft detailed plans for a dual-screen foldable Surface device, codenamed Andromeda.

Foldable devices have been a long time coming. Samsung had previously promised that its foldable smartphone would arrive by 2018. Obviously, that didn’t happen. Even Apple is rumored to have a foldable iPhone under development. 

As the technology has continued to develop, it’s looking more and more like 2019 is the year we’ll see the first foldable device available for purchase in the U.S. Microsoft is smartly preparing now for the inevitable, whether or not foldable devices are a hit with consumers. 

[incoherent screaming] The first Spider-Man: Far From Home trailer is here!

We’ve all been on the edge of our seats since April 2018, when Peter Parker first mentioned he wasn’t feeling so well in the waning moments of Avengers: Infinity War. What happened? Where did Peter and all his friends go? Will they ever come back?

All of those questions will be answered when Avengers: Endgame hits theaters in April. Far From Home is coming later, over the summer. It’ll likely be a very different Marvel Cinematic Universe by then. But one thing we can count on: Tom Holland’s Peter Parker will remain a reliable constant of thwips, wisecracks, and teenage innocence.

Far From Home finds him facing off against a new threat in Mysterio (Jake Gyllenhaal), a villainous master of illusion who wears a giant fishbowl on his head. He’s always been a joke in the comics. Will we be expected to take him seriously in the movie? Or is this another bait-and-switch a la Ben Kingsley’s “Mandarin” in Iron Man 3?

Also (seemingly) spotted in the trailer: Spidey villains Sandman and Hydro Man. That’s what it looks like anyway! It could also just be Mysterio doing his master of illusion thing.

Time will tell what the truth is. Spider-Man: Far From Home hits theaters on July 5.

Afraid a machine will take over your job? Ever thought it might take over your boss’ job instead, turning you into a servant of an AI whose inner workings you cannot comprehend?

A new video short by designer and film-maker Keiichi Matsuda shows what that might look like — and how it might end. 

https://player.vimeo.com/video/302028562

In the video, titled “Merger,” Matsuda envisions a futuristic work environment that might feel alien to us now, but a lot of it was actually based on today’s real life. In an email, Matsuda told me the interface was built around principles he’d developed in his concept UX design work for commercial clients. 

“It kind of works,” he wrote. “The script for the video was built around real advice I found in productivity blogs.”

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The four-minute video asks an important question: When (if) artificial intelligence starts giving us tasks instead of the other way around, will be able to cope with the demands? And, if not, how much will we have to change to keep up?

Matsuda’s work went viral in 2016, when he published a video called Hyper-Reality,  imagining a near-unbearable, AR/VR-infested future. Even though it’s now nearly three years old, that video still looks incredibly fresh and hits home better than any movie I’ve seen — and that includes expensive Hollywood productions. 

https://player.vimeo.com/video/166807261

Check out more of Matsuda’s visual work on Instagram and Facebook. 

Welcome to Small Humans, an ongoing series at Mashable that looks at how to take care of – and deal with – the kids in your life. Because Dr. Spock is nice and all, but it’s 2019 and we have the entire internet to contend with.

Raising children is both blandly universal and maddeningly specific. Sure, lots of kids are picky eaters, but there’s no way to know why the texture of grape skin is repulsive to your child in particular. 

The antidote to this, if there can be one, is creativity. This is where a new book – Weird Parenting Wins, by noted podcaster Hillary Frank – comes in. The book is a careful accounting of the weird proclivities, fears, and eating habits children have, and how parents have worked around and through them with their kids. 

It’s the off-registry gift you bring to a baby shower, or the present for your long-distance friend with a rage-y toddler. 

The book, less of an advice manual than a collection of “this worked for me and my kid at least one time” bons mots, was written by Frank, the creator of the wildly successful parenting and family podcast The Longest Shortest Time. The format is easily digestible. Organized by categories such as sleep and eating, the text is largely made up of vignettes from parents themselves about the weird and wonderful “hacks” they used on their children. Frank came around to the format after feeling frustrated with traditional advice books. 

“The things that were working were things I’d made up or things my friends had made up and shared with me,” Frank explained. 

The value of the book lies not in the hacks themselves, though by all means, steal any that look promising, but in the simple fact of page after page of other people going through similar trials. Reading the book feels like the best parts of an internet forum, with none of the acrimony. 

Weird Parenting Wins celebrates the multiplicity of approaches to raising children. Where advice books are generally prescriptive and linear, i.e. follow this method and you’ll get this result, this book glories in options. If at first you don’t succeed, try again, because really you have no choice anyway. It’s a book that’s firmly situated in the lived experience of families. 

“The whole mission of the Longest Shortest Time is to be inclusive of all ways of parenting. We really feel there are a million different ways to be a parent,” Frank said.

As a catalogue of parental creativity, it’s a joy to read. While classic parenting advice is predicated on changing the child through parental action, Weird Parenting Wins is full of parents accepting that their children are people too, and outthinking them. For any parent who has learned the hard way that their child will not sleep, or eat, or poop, as they “should,” the next step is how to manipulate them into doing it anyways. And delightfully, some of the stories are from adults detailing strategies their own parents used on them that they’ve not employed again (a good reminder that being accepting of their quirks won’t ruin your children for life). 

The title of the podcast applies over and over again, says Frank: “Parenting is just one longest shortest time after another.” While the relentless pressure of modern parenting makes it feel as if every decision has high stakes, “most of these things are just phases. You’re just going to be hit with another one soon,” Frank says.

“Parenting is just one longest shortest time after another.” 

Frank’s favorite weird parenting win is one that encapsulates the spirit of the book. The “What’s on my butt?” game is an activity for those times when you just need to chill but your kid wants to play. As Frank describes it: “You lie face down on the couch and you tell your kid to find some random object and place it on your butt and you have to guess what it is. It takes a good long time.” 

The image of the tired parent, facedown on the couch like this makes me chuckle every time I think about it. But the heart of the game – here’s a way for me to rest and you to play, for us both to get what we need – is itself a valuable lesson in family compromise.

Frank’s approach, her insistence on the transmission of shared knowledge passed around through a community, feels simultaneously old-fashioned and novel. There’s no campaign for special techniques or equipment, but as you read between the lines you can sense the frustration and difficulty in the situations being described. 

Creativity and patience won’t erase the effort, but they will make it easier for everyone to bear. And that’s a lesson that’s worth passing along. 

Read more great stories from Small Humans:

• When surprising your kid goes horribly awry

• Blippi is the YouTube star you need to know because your kids already do

• Pregnancy apps don’t know how to handle miscarriages

• A subscription for baby food? It’s not as crazy as it sounds.