Doctors have turned the brain signals for speech into written sentences in a research project that aims to transform how patients with severe disabilities communicate in the future.

BMW will turn Apple CarPlay into a subscription service beginning with its 2019-model-year vehicles. The German automaker currently charges a one-time $300 to add Apple CarPlay capability to navigation-equipped BMW models.

The following are suggestions for the best magazine articles (in English) ever.  Stars denote how many times a correspondent has suggested it. Submitter comments are in italics. For a great way to read long-form magazine articles on a tablet device see my review of LongForm and Instapaper here.

Microsoft is investing $1 billion in OpenAI to support us building artificial general intelligence (AGI) with widely distributed economic benefits. We’re partnering to develop a hardware and software platform within Microsoft Azure which will scale to AGI.

Team TUM achieved 299mph (482km/h) in the Hyperloop prior to the pod rapid unplanned disassembly. The brakes stopped it immediately, they’re designed to work even if loss of power. The crowd and team were ecstatic! @SuperclusterHQ @TUM_Hyperloop @elonmusk

Welcome to Big, a newsletter about the politics of monopoly. If you’d like to sign up, you can do so here. First, housekeeping. I’m launching a new section of Big called “From the Mailbag,” which are emails from readers.

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Bob Ross painted more than 1,000 landscapes for his television show — so why are they so hard to find? We solve one of the internet’s favorite little mysteries. Watched the video? Here are a few more details.

As our body’s central control center, the brain has to keep going at all costs. It makes sense that it’s surrounded by biological safeguards: a bony skull, a sack of tissue, and blood vessels that filter out most infectious bugs.

Welcome to baseball, circa 2019. Balls are flying, and records are falling. Players are on pace to hit 6,618 home runs, 1,000 more than last season’s 5,585 and 500 more than 2017’s all-time high of 6,105.

Toyota is testing a new and improved version of the solar power cells it previously launched on the Japan-exclusive Prius PHV, in a pilot along with partners Sharp and Japanese national research organization NEDO.

The energy in the DTC sector is undeniable. In just about every vertical we see new businesses taking advantage of the evaporation of friction in launching an ecommerce brand. With the democratisation of tools like Shopify and Instagram Ads anyone can launch a DTC business.