• Proofread text checks for spelling and grammar errors, including word choice and sentence structure. You can accept all suggestions with a tap or go through them one by one with explanations.


• Rewrite cleans up what you've written and shifts the tone without impacting your content. Options include Friendly, Professional, and Concise.


• You can select text and get a summary of it with Apple Intelligence. You can choose to create a paragraph, pull out key points, make a list, or create a table. Summaries are available in Mail, Messages, and more.


• As of iOS 18.2, there is an open-ended Writing Tools option that lets you describe a change you want to make to something you've written. You can choose any mood or writing style that you want, with varying degrees of success.


• Also in iOS 18.2, Writing Tools has a "Compose" feature that uses Siri ChatGPT integration. With this option, ‌Siri‌ can leverage ChatGPT to compose writing from scratch rather than just rewriting text.

• Apple Intelligence Writing Tools: All the Features

• There's a new glow around the edges of the display when ‌Siri‌ is activated, applicable to ‌iPhone‌, ‌iPad‌, and CarPlay. On Mac, the ‌Siri‌ window can be placed anywhere. The glow animates responsively to the sound of your voice so you can tell when ‌Siri‌ is listening without interrupting other things you're doing.


• A double tap at the bottom of the display brings up the Type to ‌Siri‌ interface so you can type requests instead of speaking them. On Mac, you need to press the Command key twice to bring up Type to ‌Siri‌. Type to ‌Siri‌ includes suggested requests so you can get your questions answered faster.


• ‌Siri‌ can maintain context between requests so you can ask a question and then reference it in a second reply. If you ask about the temperature in Raleigh, for example, and then follow up with "what's the humidity?" ‌Siri‌ should know you mean in Raleigh.


• If you stumble over your words when speaking to ‌Siri‌, or change what you're saying mid-sentence, ‌Siri‌ will follow along.


• ‌Siri‌ has Apple's product knowledge and support base for answering questions about your device's features and settings, and can even find settings when you don't know the exact name by using natural language search.

• There is a summarize button for summarizing any of your incoming emails, plus you will see a brief summary of an email in your inbox list rather than the first few lines of the email.


• Mail surfaces time sensitive messages first when applicable, putting them at the top of your inbox so you see what's important right away.


• Smart Reply provides quick-tap responses to emails that you've been sent, with contextual options based on what's in the email.


• Multiple notifications from Mail will be summarized on your Lock Screen so you can see what's in an email without opening the app.

• Messages has Smart Reply options for incoming texts, which analyze the content of messages to offer suggestions of what you might want to say.


• Multiple Messages notifications are summarized on your Lock Screen.


• You can use all of the Writing Tools features in the Messages app for proofreading and refining what you're planning to send.

• You can create a Memory Movie with just a description, such as "My cat in 2024," or "Orlando in the summer." The feature automatically picks relevant photos and chooses songs, but you can tweak through the Memory Mixes feature or choose a mood to guide the direction of the audio. You can also add in specific scenes and images you want to see throughout the memory when you're creating the prompt.


• Natural language search is available in Photos, so you can just describe what you're looking for, such as "Eric rollerskating while wearing green."


• Search can also find specific moments in video clips.


• Search offers up smart complete suggestions for narrowing down what you might want to find.

• Apple Intelligence: What to Know About Summaries and Smart Replies

• Everything You Should Know About Image Playground

• Apple Intelligence Image Wand: All the New Features in iOS 18.2

• Genmoji in iOS 18.2: Everything You Need to Know

• All ‌iPhone 16‌ models


• iPhone 15 Pro and ‌iPhone 15‌ Pro Max


• All Apple silicon iPads


• A17 Pro iPad mini


• All Apple silicon Macs

NASA is about to publish the world’s first off-world aircraft accident investigation. Aside from making history, the report will help the agency plan ahead for the next generation of flying vehicles that will help humanity explore Mars.

NASA engineers only intended the Mars Perseverance Rover’s Ingenuity helicopter to complete a maximum of five experimental test flights over 30 days in 2021. The experimental vehicle, however, proved much more durable than expected. Over nearly three more years, Ingenuity ultimately flew 72 more times, racking up more than two hours of aerial travel and traveling 30 times farther than planned.

[Related: RIP Mars Ingenuity, the ‘little helicopter that could’]

The rotorcraft’s flying career ended on January 18, 2024, however, when a botched landing appeared to fatally damage its blades. But what caused Ingenuity to miscalculate its 72nd flight remained a mystery to NASA. Since then, a collaborative research team from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and AeroVironment have spent months analyzing the available evidence and data.

“When running an accident investigation from 100 million miles away, you don’t have any black boxes or eyewitnesses,” Ingenuity’s first pilot, Håvard Grip, said in the JPL’s December 10th report announcement.

Grip explained that, while there are now multiple possible scenarios given the data, the team believes one explanation is the likeliest for Ingenuity’s landing failure: The aircraft navigation system couldn’t properly calculate its flight trajectory from the sparse information provided by its camera while traveling over relatively smooth Martian ground.

As JPL explains, the reviewed data indicates the helicopter’s navigation system began to lack enough trackable surface attributes roughly 20 seconds after takeoff.  Subsequent photographic analysis suggests Ingenuity’s computer errors generated a high horizontal velocity that exceeded the design limits of its rotor blades. This caused all four blades to snap at their weakest points, while the resulting vibrations tore the remainder of one blade from the copter. It then rolled across the sands after crashing on Mars as an excessive onboard power demand downed Ingenuity’s communications array for roughly six days.

In a sense, Ingenuity’s demise is also a testament to its resiliency. NASA never expected the helicopter to travel as far as that particular area in Jezero Crater on January 18th. Instead of traveling over a rocky terrain covered in plenty of visual coordinating cues as originally designed, Ingenuity was forced to attempt handling a region with steep and comparatively featureless sand ripples.

Despite all this, Ingenuity isn’t totally dead. Since engineers helped reestablish a link from Earth, the downed helicopter’s computer regularly transmits avionics and weather data to the Perseverance rover—information that may help human astronauts one day reach Mars.

In the meantime, NASA is using all this knowledge to plan for future Mars aerial vehicles, some of which may be as much as 20 times heavier than Ingenuity. On December 11th, team members previewed the Mars Chopper rotorcraft project, which would be capable of transporting several pounds of equipment while also autonomously exploring as much as 2 miles Mars per day. For comparison, Ingenuity traveled about 2,310 feet on its longest flight.

Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday.

By signing up you agree to our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.

But scaling up isn’t always necessary. Aside from the Mars Chopper, engineers are also working on designs for vehicles that are smaller and lighter craft than Ingenuity’s four-pound, 19-inch-tall frame. According to Ingenuity project manager Teddy Tzanetos, the aircraft’s lifespan and accomplishments shows just how tough tiny packages can be on Mars.

“We’re now approaching four years of continuous operations, suggesting that not everything needs to be bigger, heavier, and radiation-hardened to work in the harsh Martian environment,” he said.

The post NASA is finishing its first off-world accident report appeared first on Popular Science.

• Everything You Should Know About Image Playground

• Apple Intelligence Image Wand: All the New Features in iOS 18.2

• Genmoji in iOS 18.2: Everything You Need to Know

• Proofread text checks for spelling and grammar errors, including word choice and sentence structure. You can accept all suggestions with a tap or go through them one by one with explanations.


• Rewrite cleans up what you've written and shifts the tone without impacting your content. Options include Friendly, Professional, and Concise.


• You can select text and get a summary of it with Apple Intelligence. You can choose to create a paragraph, pull out key points, make a list, or create a table. Summaries are available in Mail, Messages, and more.


• As of iOS 18.2, there is an open-ended Writing Tools option that lets you describe a change you want to make to something you've written. You can choose any mood or writing style that you want, with varying degrees of success.


• Also in iOS 18.2, Writing Tools has a "Compose" feature that uses Siri ChatGPT integration. With this option, ‌Siri‌ can leverage ChatGPT to compose writing from scratch rather than just rewriting text.

• Apple Intelligence Writing Tools: All the Features

• There's a new glow around the edges of the display when ‌Siri‌ is activated, applicable to ‌iPhone‌, ‌iPad‌, and CarPlay. On Mac, the ‌Siri‌ window can be placed anywhere. The glow animates responsively to the sound of your voice so you can tell when ‌Siri‌ is listening without interrupting other things you're doing.


• A double tap at the bottom of the display brings up the Type to ‌Siri‌ interface so you can type requests instead of speaking them. On Mac, you need to press the Command key twice to bring up Type to ‌Siri‌. Type to ‌Siri‌ includes suggested requests so you can get your questions answered faster.


• ‌Siri‌ can maintain context between requests so you can ask a question and then reference it in a second reply. If you ask about the temperature in Raleigh, for example, and then follow up with "what's the humidity?" ‌Siri‌ should know you mean in Raleigh.


• If you stumble over your words when speaking to ‌Siri‌, or change what you're saying mid-sentence, ‌Siri‌ will follow along.


• ‌Siri‌ has Apple's product knowledge and support base for answering questions about your device's features and settings, and can even find settings when you don't know the exact name by using natural language search.

• There is a summarize button for summarizing any of your incoming emails, plus you will see a brief summary of an email in your inbox list rather than the first few lines of the email.


• Mail surfaces time sensitive messages first when applicable, putting them at the top of your inbox so you see what's important right away.


• Smart Reply provides quick-tap responses to emails that you've been sent, with contextual options based on what's in the email.


• Multiple notifications from Mail will be summarized on your Lock Screen so you can see what's in an email without opening the app.

• Messages has Smart Reply options for incoming texts, which analyze the content of messages to offer suggestions of what you might want to say.


• Multiple Messages notifications are summarized on your Lock Screen.


• You can use all of the Writing Tools features in the Messages app for proofreading and refining what you're planning to send.

• You can create a Memory Movie with just a description, such as "My cat in 2024," or "Orlando in the summer." The feature automatically picks relevant photos and chooses songs, but you can tweak through the Memory Mixes feature or choose a mood to guide the direction of the audio. You can also add in specific scenes and images you want to see throughout the memory when you're creating the prompt.


• Natural language search is available in ‌Photos‌, so you can just describe what you're looking for, such as "Eric rollerskating while wearing green."


• Search can also find specific moments in video clips.


• Search offers up smart complete suggestions for narrowing down what you might want to find.

• Apple Intelligence: What to Know About Summaries and Smart Replies

• All ‌iPhone 16‌ models


• iPhone 15 Pro and ‌iPhone 15‌ Pro Max


• All Apple silicon iPads


• A17 Pro iPad mini


• All Apple silicon Macs

As climate migration displaces more and more people around the world, building more resilient housing will become key to managing urban growth and shifts in population centers, writes Jonathan Reckford in Time. “According to the United Nations Environment Programme, the built environment accounts for 21% of global greenhouse gas emissions, with residential buildings responsible for 17% of the total emissions. As the planet warms and climate disasters intensify, housing’s role becomes even more critical—not only in reducing emissions but also providing stability and safety to those most affected.”

Housing-centric approaches that adapt communities and households to climate impacts, including comprehensive slum upgrading, are essential for climate actions and advancing sustainable development goals. These strategies not only address climate resilience but also provide pathways for improved health, education, and economic outcomes.

According to Habitat by Humanity research, “GDP and income per capita would increase by as much as 10.5% in some countries if housing in informal settlements were upgraded at a massive scale, and as many as 41.6 million additional children could be enrolled in school.” For Reckford, addressing the needs of people living in informal settlements — often without access to safe infrastructure or clean water — is a crucial part of building more sustainable and equitable communities.

• Climate Change
• Resilience
• Sustainability
• Climate Migration
• Informal Settlements
• informal housing
• Retrofits
• Energy Efficiency
• Displacement

• Everything You Need to Know About Apple Intelligence


• All of the Image Playground Features


• Genmoji in iOS 18.2: Everything You Need to Know


• Siri's Apple Intelligence Features


• Apple Intelligence Image Wand: All the New Features in iOS 18.2

It’s no secret that Los Angeles lacks a comprehensive network of protected bike lanes. According to an article by Amanda Del Cid Lugo in LA Public Press, the crisis is even more urgent in southeast Los Angeles County, where people who commute by bike or on foot often face dangerous road conditions on a daily basis.

“According to data from the University of California Berkeley’s Transportation Injury Mapping System, in the 10-year span from 2013 and 2023, 553 people were hit by cars in the city of Huntington Park alone, with the majority of accidents happening along Slauson Avenue, Gage Avenue, Pacific Boulevard, and Florence Avenue,” Del Cid Lugo explains. 

A Berkeley study found that the leading cause of collisions in Huntington Park was drivers failing to yield to pedestrians and people on bikes and that a lack of traffic safety infrastructure and lighting poses a barrier to walking and biking. 

• Los Angeles County
• Southeast Los Angeles
• Bike Lanes
• Road Safety
• Traffic Safety
• Complete Streets
• Vision Zero
• Biking
• Walking
• Pedestrian infrastructure
• Bike Infrastructure
• Pedestrian Safety

The lowest-income U.S. households shoulder the biggest burden, proportionally, when it comes to transportation costs, according to a report from the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Bureau of Transportation Statistics.

Dan Zukowski outlines the findings in Smart Cities Dive, noting that “Although households with incomes of $28,261 or less spent the least on transportation overall, those expenses consumed nearly 32% of their pre-tax income.” Meanwhile, households at the higher end of the income scale (above $148,682) spent 9.6 percent of their income on transportation, though they spent more overall. 

Transportation expenses were the second-largest average household cost for all income levels behind housing, and vehicle ownership and maintenance made up the largest purchases. “Average transportation costs for households in 10 U.S. cities jumped more than 41% over a 10-year period leading up to 2022-2023, according to a separate report from the New York State Comptroller in October.”

• Transportation Costs
• transportation equity
• Public Transit
• Car Ownership
• Driving

General Motors is officially ending its support for Crusie’s beleaguered fleet of self-driving “robotaxis.” In a surprise announcement this week, the US carmaker said it will “realign its autonomous driving strategy” to end robotaxis and instead focus on eventually creating an autonomous personal vehicle. Cruise, which previously operated as a subsidiary, will now be fully absorbed by GM. That’s all a major departure for the driverless car company which had its sights set on offering paid robotaxis rides in multiple cities next year. Cruise previously proclaimed it planned to have close to a million of its autonomous vehicles flooding US streets by the end of the decade. In the end, safety concerns and a bungled 2023 California rollout may have left the company with wounds too deep to ever fully heal. 

GM revealed the news via press release Tuesday afternoon. The carmaker cited growing costs and increased competition as the primary drivers for the change. The company said it would have required “considerable time and resources” needed to properly scale the robotaxi business up to make it viable. Cruise vehicles were still being tested in multiple cities this week. Now, as part of GM, Cruise will work on improving GM’s “Super Cruise” driver assist features in its lineup of vehicles. GM says the decision to end its robotaxi business could save the company $1 billion per year. 

Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday.

By signing up you agree to our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.

“You have to understand the cost of running a robo taxi fleet, which is not our core business and is very expensive,” GM CEO Mary Barra said during a conference call with Wall Street analysts first reported in The New York Times. 

Cruise, which maintained one of the largest robotaxi operations in the US, was primarily competing against Alphabet-owned Waymo, which already offers thousands of paid driverless rides in San Francisco, Los Angeles every day. Amazon-backed Zoox, currently testing in multiple cities, is also expected to launch its robo taxi operation in Las Vegas next year. Though Cruise’s robotaxi dreams are effectively dead, GM said it’s still holding out hope for a fully autonomous personal vehicle. The immediate focus, however, seems to be on more restrained (and less controversial) advanced driver assist systems (ADAS). 

“As the largest U.S. automotive manufacturer, we’re fully committed to autonomous driving and excited to bring GM customers its benefits–things like enhanced safety, improved traffic flow, increased accessibility, and reduced driver stress,” GM senior vice president of software and services engineering Dave Richardson said in the press release.

The news reportedly came as a shock to Cruise engineers, several of whom told TechCrunch they heard about the news at the same time as the media. Others told the outlet they were “blindsided” by the change of focus and are expecting layoffs as a result. Employees speaking with TechCrunch suspect the cuts could impact non-engineering roles like government affairs and remote assistance teams that were operating in Houston, Phoenix, and other test cities. GM did not immediately respond to our request for comment but noted in its press release that it was working with Crusie to “restructure and refocus” the unit’s operations. A spokesperson from GM said it was “too early to provide specifics” regarding layoffs. The company expects the restructuring to be complete by mid 2025.

[ Related: Why are ‘driverless’ cars still hitting things? ]

The surprise decision comes after Cruise has spent the better part of a year trying to repair a damaged reputation. After years of research and development, Cruise was finally granted approval to begin operating its robotaxis in San Francisco in August 2023. But within days, reports surfaced of Crusie vehicles blocking traffic, running through stop signs, and swerving to avoid people on the road. That rough rollout inspired immediate push-back and criticism from activists, some of which attached traffic cones to the hoods of cars to fool Cruise sensors and immobilize them. All of the pressure reached a boiling point  in October 2023, when a pedestrian was hit by a vehicle and flung underneath a nearby Cruise vehicle. The robotaxi dragged the pedestrian for 20 feet before finally pulling over. University of San Francisco Professor and autonomous vehicle expert William Riggs previously told Popular Science that tragic mistake was likely the result of Crusie failing to consider placing sensors capable of detecting humans underneath their vehicles.

“There wasn’t a camera underneath the vehicle, the engineers couldn’t see somebody was there,” Riggs said. “It was truly something that no one had ever thought of.”

The California DMV revoked Curise’s license to operate in the state following the dragging  incident. That led to the swift resignation of then CEO Kyle Vogt. Not long after that, the company laid off 900 employees, or around 24% of its workforce. After months in the dark, Cruise attempted to begin to bounce back this year. The company reportedly received $850 million in support from GM over the summer to help relaunch testing operations in Phoenix, Dallas, and Houston. Just three months ago Cruise announced a partnership with Uber that would have reportedly let ride hailers access its robotaxis through the Uber app in several cities next year. That’s no longer on the table. 

Ultimately, Cruise was never able to fully recover from its botched San Francisco rollout. Polling shows drivers are still concerned about driverless vehicle safety and the repeated missteps did little to alleviate those worries. Cruise also backtracked and ceded ground to Waymo, its primary competitor, at precisely the wrong time. Waymo is already offering thousands of paid trips every day and expanding operations to more cities next. In hindsight, it’s unclear whether or not Cruise would ever be able to close that distance and release a taxi that could meaningfully compete with Waymo and other deep-pocketed rivals.

The post GM is killing Cruise robotaxis appeared first on Popular Science.

The city of Minneapolis announced a nearly $18-million investment in affordable housing programs aimed at assisting renters. “Proposals were evaluated based on underwriting standards, financial feasibility, location, project readiness, design guidelines and more. The funds are provided as a deferred loan with a 30- to 40-year term.”

According to a press release from the city, the funding was made available through a request-for-proposal process to organizations building affordable rental housing.

The funding, which was awarded to 11 projects across the city, comes in part from the Affordable Housing Trust Fund Program (AHTF) and the Federal Low Income Housing Tax Credit Program.

• Minneapolis
• Affordable Housing
• Affordable Housing Trust Fund Program
• Low Income Housing Tax Credit
• Housing Assistance

When coffee fans debate the optimal brew, the argument often centers on the relationship between roast strategies and caffeine levels. But after a recent gauntlet of laboratory tests, researchers believe they identified the blend of factors comprising the perfect cup balancing flavor and zing—and dark roast diehards may want to finish taking a sip before finding out the results.

“Over 20 years ago, I heard a barista claim that dark roasts have more caffeine, but a decade later, I was exposed to the contrasting idea that light roasts were the king of caffeine. Yet, I couldn’t find any convincing data,” Zachary Lindsey, an assistant professor of physics at Georgia’s Berry College, said in a statement.

Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday.

By signing up you agree to our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.

Lindsey’s team recently analyzed the relationship between coffee beans’ chemical and physical attributes through various roasting and brewing scenarios. While their trial focused on only natural and washed processed Ethiopian beans, researchers examined five varieties of roasts across brew times of one, two, and ten minutes using a machine with a 15:1 water-to-coffee ratio.

“When selecting a brew method, the main goal was to implement a procedure that could consistently produce brews within a wide range of extraction yields by only varying the brew time,” said Lindsey.

The results, published in the journal Scientific Reports, offer a detailed look at 30 unique coffee combinations on microscopic and chemical levels. Lindsey and colleagues used high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) to assess molecular makeup of soluble compounds like caffeine and chlorogenic acids. In this process, a brew’s compounds are separated according to their interactions with a standard material to measure concentration. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) imaged whole and ground beans to provide observers with a close look at porosity and grain size, thereby better highlighting how roasting physically affects coffee.

For the third and final tool, the team turned to refractometry—the measurement of light bending—to learn brewing extraction yields. According to the study, attributes such as caffeine content are the result of intricate relationships between how coffee is roasted, and how well its organic compounds can dissolve into water.

As Lindsey explained, “During roasting, the volume and porosity of the coffee seeds increase as the roast progresses, which makes it easier for compounds to move in or out of the system.”

For example, porosity, or the measure of a coffee ground’s void spaces, grows due to longer grinding times. This means that a larger amount of each coffee ground’s internal surface area is exposed to water. But when it comes to caffeine, light and medium roasts on average measured higher levels than darker variants across the roasting spectrum samples. Lindsey’s team explained that this is due to the amount of caffeine that is lost during the process. Darker roasts, however, maintained higher caffeine levels than lighter roasts when porosity and extraction yields were uniform across all varieties.

“Although the interplay between roast degree and caffeine content has been addressed over 20 times in the literature, the prevailing theory is that caffeine remains stable during the roasting process,” Lindsey argues. “However, we establish a clear relationship between roast degree, caffeine content, and extraction yield.”

Like most preferences, your ideal coffee brew is ultimately a matter of personal taste (or access to ultrasonic frequencies). But if your main goal at the end of the day is to get a much-needed energy boost, Lindsey suggests a medium roast blend for the most caffeine per cup.

The post Scientists figured out the optimal cup of coffee appeared first on Popular Science.