This desktop ornament tracks the value of cryptocurrency using a … seesaw?

OK, so people who trade in currencies can check their market fluctuations online, but where is the fun in that? If you want a more original — and, to be honest, attractive — way of keeping tabs on the market then, boy, have we got the thing for you! Called The Market, it’s a kinetic smart sculpture of a bull and a bear on a seesaw, which tilts in real time to reflect actual day-over-day changes in capital markets.

By combining internet connectivity with old-world materials like copper, zinc, brass and natural woods, it’s the perfect mix of past and present. Users can set The Market to track any one of 11 global stock indexes or four major cryptocurrencies via an accompanying iOS or Android mobile app — although once it has been set, it will continue to function independently.

“I wanted to take the type of wonder people experience with installations and make that experience accessible for people to have in their homes and everyday life,” August and Wonder founder Steve August told Digital Trends. “With The Market, I feel like I’ve found the formula to make that happen: To fuse art and the Internet of Things to create [a] sense of poetic connection to the world.”

Only 300 pieces of The Market Series A will ever be created. While we have yet to get our hands on a unit, it looks to be a stunning object that deserves to have pride of place on your desktop or mantelpiece. It is currently available for pre-order in two versions. One is a plug-in version that will set you back $495, while a slightly more expensive $525 version is a cordless battery-powered variant. August also notes that customers can pay using Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin, and Dash. Production is currently in progress and shipping is estimated to start in late June or early July.

“How we experience tech has been defined by the big tech companies: Hyper-functional, hyper-intrusive, sleek, but cold and transactional,” August explained. “August and Wonder is asking if tech can be fused with art to create things that are warm and organic, non-intrusive, yet still connective.”

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For these researchers, building a ‘smart cockpit’ means reading a pilot’s mind

It takes grit to be a pilot. One glance at all the buttons, gauges, and toggles in an airplane cockpit is evidence of that. Even though automated systems are increasingly taking over tasks on commercial flights, as long as there are pilots in the plane, they will wear the weight of responsibility for all its passengers.

That is to say, flying planes can be stressful. In cases where something goes wrong, coordination between the human and the automated systems can be strained.

In a bid to develop a “smart cockpit,” where pilot and plane become one, a team of researchers from Drexel University and a French aerospace engineering institute, ISAE-SUPAERO, have demonstrated that they can measure a pilot’s brain activity in real time. Using this study as a launching pad, they hope to design advanced technologies and training plans to help pilots overcome challenging mid-flight situations.

Using a portable fNIRS (functional near-infrared spectroscopy, which differs from the more familiar fMRI and can be worn like a headband), the researchers studied two groups of pilots — one flying a plane and one using a simulator. The device measures blood oxygenation changes in the prefrontal cortex, just beneath the forehead, where things like problem-solving and judgment are controlled, and is often used as a location to study the “brain at work.”

“This study is the very first to demonstrate that it is possible to monitor pilot’s brainwave in real time with fNIRS in highly realistic settings such as motion flight simulator and real flight condition,” Frédéric Dehais, a professor at ISAE-SUPAERO and expert in flight safety, told Digital Trends. The researchers also found that actually being in the cockpit — as opposed to a simulation — caused pilots to make more errors, which Dehais said, “suggests that the simulators may need to be calibrated against real flying conditions to be more engaging.”

Along with Hasan Ayaz, a research professor at Drexel, Dehais aims to develop a brain-computer interface based on fNIRS to improve training through a sort of neurological feedback. They then plan to use this system to monitor brain activity during operational flight, to better understand the pilot’s cognitive processes.

“These daily measures can be used to assess pilot’s cognitive workload state and mental fatigue thus providing airlines with analyses tools for crew rostering and flight safety officers,” Dehais said. “A last step is to adapt the flight deck depending on the crew’s workload to overcome cognitive bottleneck. The objective is to optimize task allocation between the pilots, the copilots and automation in order to enable better task switching, interruption management, and multi-tasking.”

The end result would be a futuristic cockpit, where pilot and plane become one. A paper detailing the research was published this month in the journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience.

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Apple is launching a pride Apple Watch face on June 4 — but you can get it now

It looks like Apple is preparing to launch yet another watch face for the Apple Watch. A beta version of iOS 11.3 suggested that Apple would launch a special pride watch, and now with the release of iOS 11.4, the release of that face has been confirmed, according to a report from 9to5Mac.

The new version of iOS notes that the watch face is “inspired by the rainbow flag,” and it basically shows threads of color that move across the screen when you tap it. As you would expect, there is also a placeholder image for the face, which you will see when you scroll through the different watch faces you can choose from. 9to5Mac was also able to find videos showing off what happens when you touch the watch face.

Of course, the Monday, June 4, release date is notable. Why? Well, it happens to be the same day of the keynote for Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference. In other words, we’re expecting that the watch face will be announced on stage at the show. As 9to5Mac notes, the watch face can be enabled before the show by heading to Settings, General, then Date & Time. Then, turn off the option to automatically set the date and time and change the date to any day after June 4. You may want to simply wait though — changing the date and time can result in lost health data.

WWDC is set to be home to a ton more than just an Apple Watch watch face. We’re almost certain that Apple will launch refreshed versions of its software for Mac, iPhone, and Apple Watch. Apart from that, we’re also expecting to see a refreshed MacBook Pro, and Apple may end up using the event to refresh other Mac computers too.

The timing of the watch face also makes sense considering the fact that June is Pride Month.

The face will join a host of watch faces on the Apple Watch, and the selection is only growing. Perhaps most notable is Apple’s partnership with Disney, which has given rise to a pretty large selection of Disney-related watch faces, including Mickey and Minnie Mouse.

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The first cross-platform AR app for iPhone and Android just launched

Finally, you and your friends can escape into augmented reality together even if you’re using Android and iPhone!

Google has been talking about ARCore on Android for a while now. Apple’s been championing ARKit for iPhone for about as long. Today, the first cross-platform ARKit/ARCore app has launched on both app stores respectively. It’s called Just a Line and you and your friends can make drawings in the air, and even draw on top of each other’s art, using augmented reality.

It’s just a simple app. One person draws in the air using their phone. Another person draws in the air using their phone. Both air drawings show up on both phones, in real time. You can also record video of your AR doodles to share on your sosh meeds.

It uses Google’s Cloud Anchor system, which allows one person to “host” and AR session that others can join. The information is sent to Google’s cloud servers and directed back to each device, which makes it possible to play games and share experiences on Android and iOS devices.

This is just the first of what’s sure to be a lot of cross-platform apps and games that will make use of both ARKit and ARCore.

I can’t wait to play a rematch of that battle game I played with Russell Holly. You won’t beat me next time!

Download Just a Line (Free)

Samsung Galaxy Tab S3 now receiving Android 8.0 Oreo update in the U.S.

The best Android tablet available today gets the latest software.

It’s been a long time coming, but the Samsung Galaxy Tab S3 is finally getting its Android 8.0 Oreo update in the U.S. Months after the Galaxy S9 launched on Oreo and the last-gen phones also received the update, Samsung’s near-forgotten big tablet now has the latest software the company has to offer.

The update clocks in at 1.23GB, which is pretty large, and includes both Android 8.0 Oreo as a base and of course the latest Samsung Experience 9.0 updates on top to fall in line with the Galaxy S9 and Note 8. I’m currently installing the update and will relay any notable changes to the experience, but considering how the previous software was basically a scaled-up version of what the Note 8’s launch software offered, I expect the same to be true here again.

The Galaxy Tab S3 may be getting a little old at this point, but given the relative stagnation of the Android tablet market it’s still our top pick for the segment. If you need to have a large-screened tablet that can handle keyboard input, take a look around and see if you can find one on a discount.

First WWDC 2018 Decorations Start Going Up at McEnery Convention Center in San Jose

The 2018 Worldwide Developers Conference is set to kick off in five days, and ahead of the event, Apple has started decorating the McEnery Convention Center in San Jose, California, which is where the conference will take place.

Apple’s WWDC 2018 convention center decorations feature the same design as the rest of Apple’s WWDC imagery used for the WWDC site, invitations, and app, featuring 3D buttons, toggles, and text on a white background.

#WWDC banners are going up on the convention center! pic.twitter.com/po7P361IwF

— Aaron Stephenson (@iosaaron) May 30, 2018

Apple has taken over the entire front entrance of the convention center, as it did with last year’s decorations. Additional banners and decorations will be added over the course of the weekend.

Since last year, Apple has been hosting WWDC in San Jose, a departure from the many years where the event was held at Moscone West in San Francisco.

The San Jose location is closer to Apple’s campuses and office spaces in Cupertino and the rest of the South Bay, and it is also more affordable for developers due to cheaper hotel options in the area.

It’s happening!! #wwdc2018

A post shared by App Developer For Startups (@azzoor) on May 30, 2018 at 12:24pm PDT

Apple’s 2018 Worldwide Developers Conference will begin on at 10:00 a.m. Pacific Time on June 4 with a keynote event where Apple is expected to debut new versions of iOS, macOS, tvOS, and watchOS, perhaps alongside a few hardware surprises that could include refreshed Macs and iPads.

We’ll have live coverage of the keynote event both here on MacRumors.com and on our MacRumorsLive Twitter account. Make sure to tune in after the keynote too, as we’ll have ongoing coverage of Apple’s announcements and new software features throughout the week.

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A.I. detects skin cancer better than dermatologists in international study

Skin cancer detection won’t be turned over to machines anytime soon, but artificial intelligence detected skin cancer more accurately than a large group of international dermatologists in controlled testing, Agence France Presse reports.

In an academic study and clinical trial published in Annals of Oncology, the study’s lead author, Professor Holger A. Haenssle, of the University of Heidelberg Department of Dermatology, wrote, “Most dermatologists were outperformed by the CNN. Regardless of any physician’s level of experience, they may benefit from assistance by a CNN’s image classification.”

Man versus machine

The study pitted 58 dermatologists from 17 countries against a deep learning convolutional neural network (CNN).

Prior to the test, researchers from Germany, France, and the U.S.  taught the CNN to differentiate benign skin lesions from dangerous melanomas. In the process, the team showed more than 100,000 images of correctly identified skin cancers to the neural network, which was designed with Google’s Inception v4 CNN architecture.

The 58 dermatologists were divided into three self-identified groups: beginners with less than two years of experience, skilled with two to five years, and experts with more than five years of experience. There were 19 beginners, 11 skilled, and 30 experts among the group.

Two tests were run. In one test the dermatologists were shown 100 dermoscopic images with no other information. They were asked to indicate whether the cancer was a melanoma or benign. In addition, the doctors were asked whether they would recommend excision, short-term follow-up, or no action. Four weeks later the dermatologists were shown the same images again, this time with additional clinical information about the patients plus close-up images.

The results

The CNN scored higher than the overall group of dermatologists on both tests, with and without extra information. The dermatologists accurately identified an average of 86.5 percent of the skin cancers on the image-only test. In the second test, with more information, the doctors averaged 88.9 percent accuracy.  The CNN, however, correctly detected the types of cancers 95 percent of the time based on images only.

Rated by experience group, none of the three groups of dermatologists was as accurate as the neural network. The team did report, however, that 18 of the dermatologists scored higher than the CNN.

“The CNN missed fewer melanomas, meaning it had a higher sensitivity than the dermatologists,” Haenssle said. It also “misdiagnosed fewer benign moles as malignant melanoma … this would result in less unnecessary surgery.”

According to the authors of the study, the test does not mean machines will replace doctors. One issue is that melanomas can be difficult to recognize or image in some parts of the body such as the toes and scalp. The study calls for repeated, large-sized clinical tests.

The test does show, however, that dermatologists at all skill levels could benefit from A.I. assistance in skin cancer classification.

Tummy ache? Swallow this sensor-studded pill to get a diagnosis on your phone

Imagine popping a pill which can then monitor your insides for potential signs of poor health. That is what a team of researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has been working on — only instead of being the kind of soluble pill your doctor may prescribe, this one is a pill-sized ingestible capsule designed to monitor blood in the gastrointestinal tract. About the size of a pen cap, the prototype sensor combines electronics with useful bacteria. With this fearsome combination, it can detect signs of excessive bleeding in the gut, and then transmit the results to your smartphone.

“We’ve developed a new type of ingestible sensor by packaging living bacterial sensor cells together with readout electronics into a small capsule,” Phillip Nadeau, a former postdoctoral associate at MIT, told Digital Trends. “The cells were genetically engineered to start glowing when they detected heme molecules released during a stomach bleed. This low level of light given off by the cells was detected by the electronics in the capsule, and a signal representing the light level of the cells transmitted outside the body to a user’s cellphone. The advantage of using cells is that they are able to perform detection in harsh environments like the GI tract, and in principle they can be engineered to sense many different types of molecules.”

Lillie Paquette/MIT School of Engineering

Long term, the team envisions the device being swallowed by patients at home to provide a biochemical picture of their gut. Doing so would allow them to more easily diagnose or manage a range of diseases, including gastric ulcers, inflammatory bowel disease, and colorectal cancer. It could potentially do this, while also lowering the need to perform invasive procedures such as colonoscopies and biopsies for these conditions.

The project is still in prototype phase and none of the sensors have actually been ingested by a human. They have, however, been successfully tested on the guts of a pig, and the team hopes that human trials could be a possibility going forward. To do this, they will have to find a way to further miniaturize the sensor — which comprises a microprocessor, button-cell battery, and wireless transmitter — without reducing its abilities.

“We teamed up with Dr. Giovanni Traverso and his group at MIT to validate the prototype device in a pig model of gastric bleeding, and showed that it worked there,” Mark Mimee, a Ph.D. student at MIT, told us. “In the future, we’re interested in expanding the functionality of the device to other markers of gastrointestinal disease, with a focus on markers of inflammation. Additionally, we’re working on further miniaturizing the electronic components of the device and shrinking the power consumption and battery size to lower the overall footprint, and mitigate the risk of complications.”

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Tummy ache? Swallow this sensor-studded pill to get a diagnosis on your phone

Imagine popping a pill which can then monitor your insides for potential signs of poor health. That is what a team of researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has been working on — only instead of being the kind of soluble pill your doctor may prescribe, this one is a pill-sized ingestible capsule designed to monitor blood in the gastrointestinal tract. About the size of a pen cap, the prototype sensor combines electronics with useful bacteria. With this fearsome combination, it can detect signs of excessive bleeding in the gut, and then transmit the results to your smartphone.

“We’ve developed a new type of ingestible sensor by packaging living bacterial sensor cells together with readout electronics into a small capsule,” Phillip Nadeau, a former postdoctoral associate at MIT, told Digital Trends. “The cells were genetically engineered to start glowing when they detected heme molecules released during a stomach bleed. This low level of light given off by the cells was detected by the electronics in the capsule, and a signal representing the light level of the cells transmitted outside the body to a user’s cellphone. The advantage of using cells is that they are able to perform detection in harsh environments like the GI tract, and in principle they can be engineered to sense many different types of molecules.”

Lillie Paquette/MIT School of Engineering

Long term, the team envisions the device being swallowed by patients at home to provide a biochemical picture of their gut. Doing so would allow them to more easily diagnose or manage a range of diseases, including gastric ulcers, inflammatory bowel disease, and colorectal cancer. It could potentially do this, while also lowering the need to perform invasive procedures such as colonoscopies and biopsies for these conditions.

The project is still in prototype phase and none of the sensors have actually been ingested by a human. They have, however, been successfully tested on the guts of a pig, and the team hopes that human trials could be a possibility going forward. To do this, they will have to find a way to further miniaturize the sensor — which comprises a microprocessor, button-cell battery, and wireless transmitter — without reducing its abilities.

“We teamed up with Dr. Giovanni Traverso and his group at MIT to validate the prototype device in a pig model of gastric bleeding, and showed that it worked there,” Mark Mimee, a Ph.D. student at MIT, told us. “In the future, we’re interested in expanding the functionality of the device to other markers of gastrointestinal disease, with a focus on markers of inflammation. Additionally, we’re working on further miniaturizing the electronic components of the device and shrinking the power consumption and battery size to lower the overall footprint, and mitigate the risk of complications.”

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With software ‘magic,’ Insta360 will soon allow 8K playback on smartphones

Insta360

Viewing immersive content hasn’t yet caught up to the increasing resolution of 360 cameras — but 360 camera manufacturer Insta360 has developed a solution that will allow viewers to watch 8K immersive content, even if the only thing they have is a smartphone. On Wednesday, May 30, Insta360 announced CrystalView, a tech that will allow 8K playback even on mobile devices that don’t yet support 8K by using different algorithms to prioritize only the content currently being viewed. The announcement also comes with FarSight, a new remote system that allows videographers to hide the crew by operating the camera from up to 1.86 miles away.

CrystalView aims to help bring high-resolution content to headsets and smartphones that only support a 4K resolution. How? The software downsamples the portions of the video that the viewer isn’t looking at. That reduced resolution allows the program to prioritize the view that is actually being watched. 

By sectioning out the video and prioritizing what is actually on the screen at the time, CrystalView allows the 8K resolution 360 videos to be not quite so taxing on the hardware that is trying to manage such a large file. An 8K 360 video has 8,000 pixels stretched across the entire 360 view, which means, in many cases, it’s the file size and not the screen resolution that limits the playback quality.

CrystalView’s less demanding format will help when streaming on demand, as well as for reviewing videos stored on the device, Insta360 says. The concept is first coming to Insta360 Player this summer, but the company also plans to make a software development kit that will allow other companies to add the feature to their playback programs. The update is coming to Insta360 Player sometime this summer, the company says.

Insta360

For 360 creators, one of the challenges of shooting in every direction is hiding the crew from the footage. Insta360 is working to make that a simpler task to tackle with the new FarSight system for the Insta360 Pro. FarSight uses a pair of transmitters and receivers to send the video a wider range than built-in Wi-Fi allows.

The receiver can display 1080p video, allowing a real-time preview and control of the camera. The system works up to 0.31 miles away ground-to-ground, or 1.86 miles air-to-ground. The system is slated for a summer release, with compatibility with Mac, Windows, iOS, and Android, as well as tablets and routers.

On Wednesday, May 30, Insta360 also announced that an Adobe Premiere Pro extension is coming this week. The previously announced plug-in saves stitching as the last step while still allowing for stitched previews, which helps save time by giving the computer a smaller file to work with until the edits are completed. The Insta360 Stitcher 1.7.0 will export a fully stitched version at the end. The beta version is coming in the next few days, the company says.