Apple has retired the Mac's Launchpad, a feature that displayed all your apps and let you quickly pick the one you want to open. You can recreate the app launcher using these alternatives. The latest version of macOS, named Tahoe, added all kinds of new features to the Mac desktop. It also removed one: Launchpad. The feature, which gave Mac users an iPhone-like grid of applications complete with support for folders, is missing from macOS 26.

Ukrainian forces have killed or wounded more than 1,000 North Korean troops Russia has sent to fight them, according to Kyiv and officials in South Korea. "According to preliminary data, the number of killed and wounded North Korean soldiers in the Kursk region already exceeds 3,000 people," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his evening address on December 23. South Korean intelligence put the North Korean dead and wounded at 1,100, and said the North was preparing to send more troops. North Korea sent 11,000 troops to fight in the Russian region of Kursk, which Ukraine counter-invaded in August. North Korean troops were evidently untrained in dealing with Ukrainian drones, which took a high toll.

Robots in dynamic environments need fast, accurate models of how objects move in their environments to support agile planning. In sports such as ping pong, analytical models often struggle to accurately predict ball trajectories with spins due to complex aerodynamics, elastic behaviors, and the challenges of modeling sliding and rolling friction. On the other hand, despite the promise of data-driven methods, machine learning struggles to make accurate, consistent predictions without precise input. In this paper, we propose an end-to-end learning framework that can jointly train a dynamics model and a factor graph estimator. Our approach leverages a Gram-Schmidt (GS) process to extract roto-translational invariant representations to improve the model performance, which can further reduce the validation error compared to data augmentation method. Additionally, we propose a network architecture that enhances nonlinearity by using self-multiplicative bypasses in the layer connections. By leveraging these novel methods, our proposed approach predicts the ball's position with an RMSE of 37.2 mm of the paddle radius at the apex after the first bounce, and 71.5 mm after the second bounce.

The U.S. military conducted "self-defense strikes" against Houthi missiles and a launcher prepared to fire from Yemen toward the Red Sea on Wednesday, U.S. Central Command announced. Between 12 a.m. and 6:45 p.m. local time on Wednesday, four self-defense strikes were launched in response to seven mobile Houthi anti-ship cruise missiles and one mobile anti-ship ballistic missile launcher aimed at the Red Sea, the agency said. Also, in an act of self-defense, CENTCOM said its forces shot down a one-way attack unmanned aircraft system. U.S. Central Command announced more "self-defense strikes" against Houthi terrorists in Yemen after American forces located missiles and a launcher prepared to fire toward the Red Sea. The missiles, launchers and the unmanned aircraft system were all determined to have originated from Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen.

In this paper, we present a method for table tennis ball trajectory filtering and prediction. Our gray-box approach builds on a physical model. At the same time, we use data to learn parameters of the dynamics model, of an extended Kalman filter, and of a neural model that infers the ball's initial condition. We demonstrate superior prediction performance of our approach over two black-box approaches, which are not supplied with physical prior knowledge. We demonstrate that initializing the spin from parameters of the ball launcher using a neural network drastically improves long-time prediction performance over estimating the spin purely from measured ball positions. An accurate prediction of the ball trajectory is crucial for successful returns. We therefore evaluate the return performance with a pneumatic artificial muscular robot and achieve a return rate of 29/30 (97.7%).

We tasked Launcher's staff and freelancers to report striking stories that provided a window into gaming culture, while holding to account the industry's most powerful figures. Launcher debuted on Oct. 15, 2019, and served as the hub for The Post's gaming coverage. It was not, however, a silo. Our daily collaborations spread to every department of the newsroom -- Features, Tech, Financial, Politics, Sports, Foreign, National -- providing context around stories they were working on and fielding pitches from them when gaming intersected with their coverage areas. In the process, we were able to share our knowledge and experiences with writers and editors throughout the newsroom, showing what games coverage should look like at The Post and why this coverage is vital.

A new $2.2 billion US arms package for Ukraine includes a new rocket-propelled precision bomb that could nearly double Kyiv's strike range against the Russians, the Pentagon said Friday. Pentagon spokesman Pat Ryder said the new package includes the ground-launched small-diameter bombs (GLSDB), a munition that can fly up to 150 kilometers (93 miles), which would threaten Russian positions and depots far behind the front lines. "This gives them a longer-range capability... that will enable them to conduct operations in defense of their country and to take back their sovereign territory," Ryder said. Ukraine had been asking the United States for munitions that can fly farther than the HIMARS rockets with an 80-kilometer (50-mile) range. The GLSDB potentially gives Ukraine forces an ability to strike anywhere in the Russian-occupied Donbas, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, and the northern part of occupied Crimea.

A few weeks ago we got some solid indications that international mega-publisher Ubisoft would be slinking back to Steam, the de facto default for PC game stores. Lo and behold, le fils prodigue revient: as of yesterday, Ubisoft has posted Assassin's Creed Valhalla to Valve's ubiquitous storefront with a December 6th release date. It will follow with Anno 1800 and Roller Champions at some point. Ubisoft is the latest huge publisher to venture out on its own with its a PC-based game launcher, then return to Steam's profitable fold. Ubisoft's brand of bloatware was called Uplay, which became the exclusive home of the publisher's major franchises in 2019, and was rechristened Ubisoft Connect in 2020.

There's a particular kind of story that stands out to us: We want reported stories that reveal some kind of tension. How is the subject of your story changing the industry? Who are the stakeholders who will have to adapt? What's something or someone people have been overlooking, and why is that an issue? Pitches that demonstrate that you've homed in on a source of tension and that you're well versed in the answers to the crucial questions surrounding it jump to the top of our list.

Nine technologies developed at MIT Lincoln Laboratory have been selected as R&D 100 Award winners for 2021. Since 1963, this awards program has recognized the 100 most significant technologies transitioned to use or introduced into the marketplace over the past year. The winners are selected by an independent panel of expert judges. R&D World, an online publication that serves research scientists and engineers worldwide, announces the awards. The winning technologies are diverse in their applications.