Just three days after releasing iOS 10 beta 7, Apple is rolling its equivalent beta for macOS Sierra this Monday. The new Mac OS beta is the seventh version for developers and the sixth version for public beta testers. According to Apple Insider, there are still no specific details about what macOS Sierra beta 7 brings, but it is expected to clean up serious bugs and performance issues found in the previous betas to polish the new operating system ahead of its launch sometime this fall. Based on the previous betas, macOS Sierra is going to introduce new features to Apple's Mac devices. First and foremost, the new OS is going to bring the Cupertino firm's intelligent assistant for the iPhones and the iPad tablets, Siri, to Macs.

Welcome to Essential Politics, our daily feed on California government and politics news. We've also got a brand new bill tracking page for some of this month's biggest state Capitol debates. Assemblywoman Kristin Olsen (R-Modesto) trotted out a high-tech prop to speak against a bill on Monday: Siri, the electronic personal assistant on Apple iPhones. Speaking against a measure by Assemblyman Ian Calderon (D-Whittier) that requires online entertainment subscription services to remove actors' ages and birth dates upon request, Olsen used her iPhone to demonstrate such information was readily available. When prompted, Siri served up the ages of Clint Eastwood and Meryl Streep.

It's hard to imagine 2016 Presidential election candidates trying to figure out how to use an AI personal assistant, much less lead us into a new era of a digital solutions economy powered by AI. For the last 50 years, technology has been the fundamental driving force for the growth of our economy. My grandparents, who were born in Europe saw the advent of truly life altering technologies at that time such as automobiles, electricity and refrigeration. Over the years being a CTO and venture capitalist, I've recognized that the rate of change and innovation have been accelerating – in particular over the past decade it seems. Facebook, a social networking service was founded by Mark Zuckerberg with his Harvard roommates in 2004.

A user demonstrates the look and feel of Windows 10 operating system for smartphones and at the Microsoft stall at the CeBIT technology fair in Hanover, Germany. SAN FRANCISCO -- Microsoft has made yet another acquisition designed to retool the former software king into an enterprise solutions leader. The Redmond, Wash-based company announced Monday that it was buying virtual-assistant start-up Genee for an undisclosed sum, according to blog posts by Microsoft and Genee executives. The move comes on the heels of Microsoft's 26 billion purchase of professional networking site LinkedIn, a bold chess move by CEO Satya Nadella as he aims to make his company's cloud-based Office 365 platform ubiquitous in the business environment. Genee makes software that uses artificial intelligence to schedule appointments.

Singer Barbra Streisand doesn't have a great history when it comes to shaping her representation on new technology, but she has now scored at least one major victory. Streisand was irked at the fact that Siri, Apple's virtual assistant for iPhone and iPad users, was not pronouncing her name correctly. So she called Apple CEO Tim Cook directly, and he promised he would fix the problem. Siri will apparently soon say "Streisand" without pronouncing the second "s" hard, like a "z." "She pronounces my name wrong," Streisand told NPR. "'Streisand' with a soft's' like sand on a beach--I've been saying this for my whole career." "I called the head of Apple, Tim Cook, and he delightfully agreed to have Siri change the pronunciation of my name finally, with the next update on September 30. Let's see if that happens, because I will be thrilled."

An anonymous reader writes: During its Build conference, Microsoft demoed how Skype users would be able to book trips, shop, and plan their schedule, just by chatting with Cortana. "Cortana is brokering the conversation with a third-party bot," says Lilian Rincon, Skype's program manager. Essentially, Skype will know which company or service you want to talk to, bring a new bot into your chat to help out, and then get rid of the bot when you're done. Video bots may also be in the works as Rincon mentioned, "We will also be bringing intelligence into real-time video." The new features are very similar to Facebook's "Messenger Bot Store," which the company announced at F8. Facebook's AI-powered assistant, called M, would enable Messenger users to make purchases, restaurant reservations, and travel bookings within the messaging interface, similar to Cortana but with more human input.

Today, I spoke to a green, plastic dinosaur. In this post I'll discuss what this tells us about the future, and what the most important question will be for designers in the coming decade. More and more of the objects in our lives are going to have that ability to converse with us over the next decade. For most people, this phenomenon started with a bit of a whimper as we were exposed to smartphone services like Siri, Google Now, and Cortana. Over time these mostly disappointing voice-based personal assistants have got a bit better, but they still aren't good enough to make us all abandon apps and the keyboard, and their integration with other apps and services is only just beginning to happen.

The deal, announced Tuesday, will bring the Genee team into the Microsoft fold and put them to work on bringing intelligence into Office 365. Acquiring Genee is part of Microsoft's ongoing crusade to build intelligent productivity software and services using AI. It's unclear whether the functionality from the assistant will be making its way directly into Office 365, or if the team behind Genee will just be put to work improving a variety of Microsoft's products. This all plays into Satya Nadella's ongoing strategy of aggressively acquiring companies to shore up Microsoft's capabilities and growth areas.

Microsoft announced on Monday it acquired Genee, an artificial intelligence startup focused on scheduling. 'Building AI is like launching a rocket': Meet the man fighting to stop artificial intelligence destroying humanity Skype's co-founder wants to keep humankind safe from the existential threats of artificial intelligence. Terms of the deal weren't disclosed. Microsoft plans to shutter Genee on September 1, 2016 and fold the team into Office 365. Genee, launched by Ben Cheung and Charles Lee in 2014, integrates into cloud calendar services and allows users to automate the process of scheduling meetings, acting like your personal assistant to check schedules and select best times.

Apple's Siri, Microsoft Cortana, Amazon's Echo, Google's speech recognition tech is high on trends these days. Ever wondered how these software get to know what we are saying? Well Thanks to technology of Natural Language Processing due to which language miscommunication gap has been decayed. Humans are being at the topmost position on the food-chain because of their intelligence. Everything humanity has developed in the past 10,000 years is the result of a discovery.