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Microsoft continues distancing Cortana from Windows

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This move suggests that Microsoft will choose to update the voice assistant separately from Windows in future. It could make Cortana more agile, giving developers the chance to update without having to push wider updates. A separate app may also one day give users more control over its usage, allowing them to uninstall it if they don’t want it on their machines.

Microsoft has been tweaking Cortana’s placement for some time. It split the voice assistant function from the search in Windows 10, saying it made the change to “enable each experience to innovate independently to best serve their target audiences and use cases.”

It has also been working on other improvements for Cortana like more natural-sounding conversations which make conversing with the assistant feel more like interacting with a real person.

Cortana began its life as an OS assistant, but has since launched on different platforms including iOS devices, thermostats and smart speakers. This latest iteration could be one way to promote Cortana as its own entity.

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Jony Ive is leaving Apple

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LoveFrom’s first customer is… Apple?
Jony Ive is leaving Apple to start his own design firm

In an interview with the Financial Times, Apple design chief Jony Ive announced that, after more than two decades of making its products look and feel the way they do, he’s leaving the company. His new venture is called LoveFrom, and it will have Apple as its first client. Ive felt that it was time given the completion of projects like the new Apple Park headquarters.

In a statement, CEO Tim Cook said “Apple will continue to benefit from Jony’s talents by working directly with him on exclusive projects, and through the ongoing work of the brilliant and passionate design team he has built.” Once Ive’s transition is complete later this year, VP of industrial design Evans Hankey and VP of Human Interface design Alan Dye will report directly to Apple COO Jeff Williams.

A vast majority of teenagers buy vape supplies online, not in stores.
San Francisco’s grand plan to ban online e-cigarette sales

Nearly 90 percent of all San Francisco high school students who vape get their fix by shopping online or through friends. Just 13.6 percent actually buy their pods at a physical store. So how will the city confront these sales, after announcing that it will ban the sale of e-cigarette products at stores based in the area? Jessica Conditt reports.

Taking a nine-year road trip to Saturn’s largest moon that starts in 2026.
NASA’s Dragonfly mission is sending an eight-rotor drone to Titan

Dragonfly, the latest mission from NASA’s New Frontiers program, was selected because of Titan’s unique makeup, which makes its one of the more promising candidates for discovering signs of microbial life. It will spend nine years in flight, covering 840 million miles before finally making a two-hour descent to the surface of Titan. Once it lands, the dual-quadcopter will spend 2.7 years making short flights of up to 5 miles around the moon.

These Bluetooth lightbulbs make setting up smart lighting easier.
New Philips Hue smart bulbs don’t need a hub

So I’m probably going to buy some now. The new Hue bulbs connect through Bluetooth, meaning the Hue hub bridge is no longer needed — and they will work with both Alexa and Google Assistant. If you want your lighting to work with Siri, however, you’ll still need that hub.

There’s a standard white light for $14.99, a white ambience light that lets you adjust its color temperature for $24.99 and a white and colored option for $49.99.

You can’t disguise your heartbeat.
The Pentagon has a laser that identifies people by their heartbeat

The Pentagon has developed a laser that can identify people — from a distance — by their heartbeat. The technology, known as Jetson, uses laser vibrometry to identify surface movement on the skin caused by a heartbeat. It can work from 200 meters away.

Everyone’s cardiac signature is unique, and unlike faces and fingerprints, it can’t be altered in any way. As with facial recognition and other biometrics which rely on optimal conditions, though, Jetson does have a few challenges. It works through regular clothing, such as a shirt, but not thicker garments, such as a winter coat. It also takes about 30 seconds to collect the necessary information,

Shenmue! Sonic Adventure! Bass Fishing!
How much did you love your Sega Dreamcast?

As the 20th anniversary of the Dreamcast’s release in the United States and Europe approaches this fall, we’re asking you, reader, to reflect upon the things you miss and appreciated about the console. What game would you love to be able to play again? Tell us how you feel about the Dreamcast, past or present, with a user review.

#SaveODAAT did it.
This time a canceled Netflix show got saved by one of the TV networks

The fourth season of the rebooted series One Day at a Time will run on CBS-owned Pop TV for 13 episodes next year, with the whole core cast returning. The first three seasons will stay on Netflix for the foreseeable future, though Pop will be able to air them, too. Sony Pictures Television, which produces the show, was prohibited from taking it to another streaming service for several years under its Netflix deal, though there was no such clause preventing it from selling the series to a broadcast network.

But wait, there’s more…

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Lyft expands bike rentals to Washington DC

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Lyft acquired Motivate, the company behind Citi Bike, Capital Bikeshare and Ford GoBike last year, and has aggressively pushed into the bike-sharing market. But there have been problems along the way, like unexpectedly strong brakes which required a recall of 1,000 electric bikes in April.

In the DC area, the Capital Bikeshare service offers 4,300 non-electric bicycles that can be rented for short trips between the more than 500 stations. The latest expansion was to the city of Falls Church, the seventh jurisdiction to be included in the bike-share program.

The new Lyft app will make DC the first city where residents can get a scooter, a bicycle, a rideshare, or public transit directions within a single app. Lyft also has plans to further integrate public transit information about local transit options like WMATA, the DC Circulator, the Fairfax Connector, Prince George’s The Bus and Alexandria DASH.

In densely packed cities, people don’t always want or need a car, so offering bikes as a sustainable and healthy alternative makes sense. But the bike-sharing market is already crowded and has problems of its own, including concerns over bikes being abandoned in the street, docks taking up parking spaces and the safety of novice cyclists on the road.

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Scientists trace a cosmic radio burst to a galaxy 3.6 billion light-years away

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According to New Scientist, it was only by pure luck that all 36 Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) antennas were pointed in the same direction when it flashed. That gave the researchers involved a way to combine data from all of them and to figure out that the burst, called FRB 180924, came from a galaxy 3.6 billion light-years away from us. They even determined a more specific point of origin, which is around 13,000 light-years away from that galaxy’s center.

“If we were to stand on the Moon and look down at the Earth with this precision” Keith Bannister, the study’s lead author explained, “we would be able to tell not only which city the burst came from, but which postcode — and even which city block.”

Fast radio bursts are a fairly new discovery. We only found out about their existence in 2007, so we still barely know anything about them — some even believe that they’re from an intelligent extraterrestrial civilization. By knowing where they come from, we get nearer to figuring out how and why they happen. The burst scientists traced two years ago was from a small galaxy with rapid star formation, but 180924 came from a much larger one that mostly has older stars.

We still don’t know what that means exactly, but as Adam Deller (team member and one of the study’s authors) said: “This suggests that fast radio bursts can be produced in a variety of environments, or that seemingly one-off bursts detected so far by ASKAP are generated by a different mechanism to the repeater.” It may take a long time, but we’re bound to find out more about cosmic bursts as scientists look more closely into them. They believe that fast radio bursts could ultimately help us learn what’s in between galaxies, after all, and that they could give us a more complete picture of our universe.

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‘Pokémon Masters’ is pitting old trainers against each other this summer

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Each trainer travels with one companion Pokémon, and together, they’re known as sync pairs. You need to go on a journey with the trainers you team up with and earn badges to qualify for the Pokémon Masters League. When you do fight, you’ll find yourself in 3-vs-3 real-time battles. The Pokémon Company is working with DeNA, the mobile developer behind Super Mario Run and Fire Emblem Heroes, for this particular project. They’re bound to reveal a more specific date in the near future, barring any delays to the game’s rollout.

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Korg’s Minilogue and Monologue synths are getting a major update

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The Minilogue and Monologue are a few years old at this point, and approaching modern classic status in the synth world. But that doesn’t mean that Korg is content to simply let them coast through life the same way they left the factory. Today the company is releasing a major update to the firmware for both that in a lot of ways is about making them a little closer to each other in terms of features.

For one, Minilogue users are getting micro tuning capability. That means they’ll no longer be bound by the constraints of the Western 12-tone equal temperament, and it’s particularly great if your goal is to be the next Aphex Twin. The sequencer is also getting a much needed refresh, especially on the “motion” side which controls the parameters and settings rather than notes. A new view lets you dig a bit deeper and makes it clearer what you’re working on.

Monologue is getting some tweaks too, including to the MIDI filter, which will be a huge boon to anyone that likes to control it with an external sequencer. There have also been changes to the active step programming features, though we’ve been unable to test them out, so we can’t tell you exactly how useful they are. Lastly, both synths are getting original value indicators. That will make finding your way back to where a patch started much easier after you’re done twiddling the knobs.

Version 2.0 of the Minilogue and Monologue firmware is available today for free at Korg.com.

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Microsoft brings tracking prevention to its Edge browser

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Edge

Once it’s on, there are three different levels of blocking, with intentions to filter out only known malicious trackers, some third-party trackers that are used for ad targeting or all third-party tracking entirely. Microsoft demonstrated the feature at its Build 2019 event earlier this year, so even if you’re not in that test group you can get a peek at it right here.

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House passes bill to protect election systems, but Senate passage is unlikely

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The SAFE Act is the most recent attempt by Congress to respond to Russia’s hacking of US election systems outlined in the Mueller report. If passed, the bill would mandate the use of paper ballots and require all voting machines be made in the US. The bill would also authorize $600 million for states to update their voting security systems and $175 million biannually. “I know that other Members have spoken about the provisions of the bill, but I just would really like to know from my Republican friends, what’s wrong with replacing outdated, vulnerable voting equipment? What is wrong with requiring paper ballot voting systems to ensure the integrity of our elections?,” said Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) on the House floor prior to Thursday’s vote.

Election security experts have long warned that paperless ballot systems are vulnerable to hacking. States began introducing paperless voting machines following the 2000 presidential election, during which Florida’s “hanging chad” paper ballots prompted a recount. But after states shifted to electronic voting machines, it became obvious that they were easy to hack and their lack of a paper trail would make it difficult to prove that tampering took place. Earlier this month, a top elections-equipment provider vowed to stop making paperless voting machines altogether.

But proposals from Congress to update the nation’s voting infrastructure have gotten a chilly reception from Republicans and the White House. “I don’t think there is any likelihood that we are going to move a bill that federalizes more of the election process,” Senator Roy Blunt (R-MO) told Wired last week. But when it comes to paperless voting machines, the problem isn’t nationwide. In reaction to concerns over Russian hacking, nearly two dozen states and the District of Columbia switched to paper-only ballots in the 2018 midterm elections. In fact, just three states (Pennsylvania, Texas and Georgia) account for half of the paperless voting machines used in the nation, according to a recent Election Assistance Commission survey. Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolfe has already ordered all counties to buy new voting machines that leave a paper trail. But neither Texas nor Georgia have responded to demands that they update their voting infrastructure.

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Native Instruments’ Massive X software synth is finally here

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The new plug-in isn’t meant to be an update to Massive — instead it’s a complete redesign of the original. There’s no cross-compatibility between the two synths, meaning there’s no way to open any of Massive’s presets on the newer instrument. According to the description on the Native Instruments website, Massive X is “built for a new decade and designed to evolve.” While Massive has 80 wavetables, Massive X has over 170 wavetables. The latter has two primary wavetable oscillators (the original has three), though you can add up to five by using the insert oscillators. A dedicated “Noise” section lets producers choose from more than 100 different sounds.

So far, initial impressions of Massive X on social media and by industry media have been pretty positive. Users raved about the eclectic group of presets, including “Zaddy,” “Wonky Comb” and “Wob You.” Music Radar noted that the interface for Massive X “is a big departure from the original Massive and, arguably, much clearer.” Users can download a free demo of Massive X that unlocks each section for 30 minutes at a time. The system requirements are Windows 7 and higher or macOS 10.12 and higher. The complete edition of Massive X is available for $199, though existing owners of Massive can upgrade for $149. If you already own Komplete 12, you’ll be able to download Massive X for free through Native Access.



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NASA’s Dragonfly mission is sending an eight-rotor drone to Titan

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Dragonfly is scheduled to launch in 2026, a slight delay in the originally planned launch window of 2025. It will spend nine years in flight, covering 840 million miles before finally making a two-hour decent to the surface of Titan. Once it lands, the dual-quadcopter will spend 2.7 years making short flights of up to 5 miles around the moon. Those flights will occur about once every Titan day, which is about 16 Earth days. The drone will be able to travel at about 20 miles per hour and reach altitudes as high as two miles. By the time its baseline mission is complete, the drone will have covered 108 miles, nearly double the distance traveled by all Mars rovers combined.

During its travels, Dragonfly will make stops to collect samples from compelling regions of Titan. Elizabeth Turtle of Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, said dune fields on the moon are particularly attractive areas for an explanation because “The material in the sand particles may be widely sourced,” meaning the drone could pick up materials from across the moon beyond where it will be able to explore.

Dragonfly’s baseline mission will conclude when it reaches an impact crater known as Selk. According to Turtle, the crater is at a low-latitude and should be accessible to the drone. “We know this area quite well, there’s a lot of data from different instruments in this region,” she said. Turtle called the crater a “high-priority target” because it’s a place where “organics and liquid water may have mixed in the past.” It’s believed that liquid water and complex organic materials including hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen — the building blocks of life — may have existed together for tens of thousands of years.

Dragonfly is the fourth mission launched through the New Frontiers program, which NASA uses to fund particularly ambitious space exploration missions throughout the Solar System. Prior missions include New Horizons, which flew by Pluto in 2015 and continues to explore the Kuiper Belt beyond it; Juno, which ventured to Jupiter and is currently continuing its mission to collect data from the gas giant; and OSIRIS-REx, which began orbiting the near-Earth asteroid Bennu earlier this year.



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