Apple this week announced Swift 2 and said it would open-source it later this year. Swift 2 is a programming language for iOS, OS X and watchOS. It has a new error handling model that works with Apple SDKs and NSError. Two new features in Objective-C -- nullability annotations and generics -- make Swift 2 work better with Apple SDKs. "Generating higher-quality code...

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Chrome developers have announced that an upcoming version of Chrome will prevent video ads from automatically playing when a website loads. The new feature has already been pushed out to beta builds and can be manually enabled by opening Chrome’s content settings and adjusting the plugin content options. This push comes as part of an overall effort to improve Chrome’s performance on modern...

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Despite the isolated success of deep brain stimulation for Parkinson’s disease, and a few other impressive parlor tricks with BCIs, running massive networks of wire electrodes through the brain is probably not going to be a long-term solution to any brain problem. Recognizing this truth, many researchers have turned to nanoparticle-based approaches for remote, non-invasive stimulation of the brain. A single 10 ug...

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Researchers at Linz University in Austria has developed the world’s first artificial leg capable of simulating some of the “feeling” in a normal leg. Professor Hubert Egger led a live demonstration during a Vienna press conference, detailing how the Austrian researchers have fitted a human being with a leg prosthesis that sends feelings to its wearer. Here’s how it works: Doctors surgically move the...

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Depending on how you look at it, the new crop of Intel Bay Trail quad core Atom convertible Windows 8.1 tablets are an amazing value or they're just netbooks with detachable screens. In fact both are true, as we learned with the Asus Transformer Book T100, one of the first Windows 8.1 Bay Trail tablets with detachable keyboard that sells for just $349-...

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