The new OS was officially revealed this June, with the public beta coming out later the same month. Today it rolls out, a little later than is usual for Mac updates (which typically come out in late September), but still welcome all the same. Catalina brings a few new features, with one of the biggest being Catalyst. This initiative allows developers to build versions of iPad apps compatible with Mac, effectively allowing them to create apps for two platforms....

The big difference with this new generation of robots is that they don’t have to operate in closed-off areas. Instead they can safely operate alongside and even collaborate with human workers. For this reason, these machines are often called collaborative robots or “cobots.” Fully automating a factory isn’t always desirable because modern manufacturing companies need flexibility to quickly alter their processes for a variety of products and customization. Instead, manufacturers in such contexts are increasingly looking for automation with a human touch....

Today, Thompson (53) told Melbourne Magistrates Court that cryptocurrency was something he’d “been looking for” since the end of his career, and that he’d been consumed by watching YouTube tutorials. This, combined with methamphetamine intake, is said to have led the renowned footballer to trade up to $2.1 million (AU$3 million) worth of Bitcoin. In 2015, Thompson was fined $30,000 for his role in the epic Essendon football club “doping” scandal, which involved team management encourage the use of performance-enhancing drugs for a competitive edge over several years....

In an announcement from yesterday, Blender revealed the Windows-maker has joined the foundation’s Development Fund as a Corporate Gold member in order to help the company continue to provide its software for free. Unlike other popular alternatives like Cinema4D and Maya, Blender’s apps are entirely free and open-source. In all fairness, Microsoft’s contribution — which will be in the ballpark of €30,000 according to Blender’s membership page — won’t be a huge boost to the company’s revenue, but the move could go a long way to lending more industry credibility to Blender....

While Microsoft has had spelling and grammar correction in Word and other Office apps for as long as I can remember, Microsoft Editor doubles down on the feature by offering up AI-powered writing suggestions that go well beyond the usual fare. Moreover, it is available outside of Office apps, as an extension for both Chrome and the new Edge. The new Editor expands on basic spellcheck in several ways:...

The system, called RF-Grasp, uses radio waves to locate items beyond the line-of-sight of a robot’s cameras. It could help warehouse robots grab customer orders or tools that are occluded behind obstacles. Existing mechanical search systems struggle with these tasks due to the constraints of their sensors. If an object is concealed, they typically need to explore the environment and search for the item. Unlike visible light and infrared, RF (radio frequency) signals can traverse cardboard boxes, wooden walls, plastic covers, and colored glass to perceive objects fitted with RFID tags....

Here’s Hard Fork’s selection of last weekend’s top stories: In a progressive move, Singapore’s tax agency wants to remove goods and services tax (GST) from cryptocurrency transactions that function as a medium of exchange, CoinDesk reports. In an interview with Tasnim News Agency, Nasser Hakimi, the Central Bank of Iran’s deputy governor for new technologies, said Bitcoin trading was illegal. Hakimi also issued a warning about pyramid style network companies which promote the cryptocurrency....

Take a look. 1. New cryptocurrency tax form from IRS According to CNBC, the US Internal Revenue Service has released a new tax form, asking cryptocurrency traders to declare their holdings. The IRS’ new “Schedule 1 for the 2019 tax season,” asks tax payers if they received, sold, sent, exchanged, or acquired virtual currency by any other means over the past year. Earlier this year, the IRS started sending letters to known cryptocurrency traders telling them to fess up about their trading habits....

In his latest step, Musk has removed Tesla shares as collateral to secure financing for his acquisition of Twitter. He declared the expiry of margin loans in a new filing with the Security and Exchanges Commission (SEC). When Musk first penned the offer to buy Twitter, he committed $21 billion of his own money, and the rest was acquired through loans. He used Tesla shares as collateral to get $12....

The purpose of the platform would have been to allow data scientists to train deep learning models on highly sensitive healthcare data without that data ever leaving the hospitals. At the same time, thanks to a novel data monetization strategy and marketplace component, hospitals would have been empowered to make money from the data they are generating. We received pre-seed funding, valued at $1 million. Then the race for demo day began with frantic product building and non-stop business development....

Most of us aren’t humans anyway. So, the idea that our few remaining homo-sapien ancestors will be the last of their kind shouldn’t surprise anyone. Let me backtrack a bit before anyone confuses this with a conspiracy theory manifesto. If you’ve followed our newsletter (click here), you’ll know that here at Neural we like to call ourselves “cyborgs.” This isn’t a vanity or marketing thing, it’s a statement of reality....

This personality type also includes less palatable traits such as entitlement, hostility when challenged, and a willingness to manipulate (all of which you could argue are also present in both Kalanik and Jobs — and others like them). Despite this, the uncompromising vision these individuals have for businesses can establish them as market leaders, and the success of the companies run by these individuals testifies to that. While it’s easy to correlate success with personality type, let’s say we only see the 10% of narcissists that succeeded — then we call them visionaries....

This is the first change of the rating system since 2017, when the company moved from a star system (ergo, one to five), to the like or dislike model (thumbs up and thumbs down) that we’re all familiar with. Now, Netflix is shaking this up again with the launch of a third option — the super like (or, if you want, double thumbs up). The explanation for this is straightforward: the streaming giant wants to improve its algorithm and, with it, the content it serves you....

The adhesive patch — which is yet to be named — is equipped with a sensor that monitors the user’s heart rate and rhythm, breathing patterns, sleep quality, body posture, and physical activity. It sends the information via Bluetooth to a smartphone app that uses AI to turn this data into a normal baseline for each patient. Their condition is then continuously tracked for signs of deterioration. Researchers from the University of Utah Health and VA Salt Lake City Health Care System fit the patch to the chests of 100 heart failure patients with an average age of 68....

As these dense clouds are the seeds of planets that form over the course of millions of years, thus, planet formation is stunted in these regions. The astronomers believe that this dearth of dense dust and gas discs is a result of the cluster’s most massive and powerful stars eroding and dispersing them from around their smaller neighbouring stars. The study, published in The Astrophysical Journal, marks the first time that scientists have studied the conditions in dense star clusters to assess how suitable they are for planet-formation....

As most people could probably have guessed from the teaser video, the purpose of this new peripheral is fitness. That’s not a surprise — in fact, I’d wager it’s a surprise to some it’s taken Nintendo this long to produce a fitness game for its new console. Wii Fit and Wii Fit U came out about a year after the release of their respective consoles. But hey, better late than not at all, right?...

Among them, labeled by Anna as WTF?, was a picture of a ghostly circle of radio emission, hanging out in space like a cosmic smoke-ring. None of us had ever seen anything like it before, and we had no idea what it was. A few days later, our colleague Emil Lenc found a second one, even more spooky than Anna’s. Anna and Emil had been examining the new images from our pilot observations for the Evolutionary Map of the Universe (EMU) project, made with CSIRO’s revolutionary new Australian Square Kilometer Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) telescope....

New figures show that 3,323 electric vehicles (EVs) were sold in Columbus, Ohio over the last three years, exceeding the target of 3,200. Consumer likelihood to purchase an EV also grew by more than 20 percent. The Electrification Program was developed after Smart Columbus, a public-private smart city initiative led by the City of Columbus and regional business coalition Columbus Partnership, was awarded a US$10 million grant as part of the innovation grants it received as the winner of the US Department of Transportation’s first-ever Smart City Challenge in 2016....

Well, that car has been officially unveiled at Auto Shanghai, and it’s great. It’s a four-door electric hatchback from Chinese EV brand Ora. It has a name now too: it’s called the Punk Cat. Maybe they should have called it the Copy Cat — oh meow! The name was chosen following an internet consultation. Other options included Elf Cat, Noble Cat, Royal Cat, Big Orange Cat, and Persian Cat. Yeah, if you didn’t realize, Ora likes naming its cars as different types of cat....

The final season for one of the most popular shows on the planet is its worst rated season on IMDb by a considerable margin. At the time of writing, episodes 3, 4, and 5, are the three worst rated episodes in the show’s history. Perhaps that’s just the combination of reactionary reviews and unreasonable expectations, but many fans feel the show has lost its grasp on its narrative and characters....