Touchscreens in MacBook Pros, robots in space, caffeine in Soylent: It's The Daily Crunch.

THE DAILY CRUNCH WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 10 2016 By Darrell Etherington The Daily Crunch 08/10/16 Robots on earth, simulations in space – at least us humans are finally getting a MacBook Pro refresh or we'd be completely irrelevant. I'll explain in The Daily Crunch for August 10, 2016. And for those of you desperately wishing there was some way you could combine your morning Soylent with your morning coffee – be sure to stay until the end. 1. [A MacBook Pro with a new kind of modularity] The MacBook Pro hasn't had a big body design change in a dog's age, but it's about to get one according to Bloomberg. New 13- and 15-inch MacBook Pros are set to hit stores late this year, the report claims, probably in and around the fourth quarter. The most interesting feature these will offer might be a context-aware OLED display at the top of the keyboard, replacing the function key row. This will offer different touchscreen actions based on what app you're using, the report claims, which would be much better than trying to remember key combos specific to each individual app. Hardware modularity died long ago in Apple notebooks, but interface modularity is the way of the future. 2. [Will Elon Musk be your next roofer?] You might be able to opt for a Tesla/SolarCity roof next time you need to replace yours: Elon Musk made a special guest appearance on SolarCity's earnings call yesterday to drop some product bombs – SolarCity will be making solar roofs, starting as early as later this year. Not solar panels FOR roofs; actual roofs that collect solar power. Like instead of shingles. It sounds awesome but it also sounds like it will be very expensive. And with Tesla and SolarCity set to merge, maybe it'll just be an upgrade option for the Model S. 3. [Disney funds a spin-out of MLB's streaming star] MLB's streaming media tech is the surprise tech hit of the decade, and the baseball league's infrastructure now underpins streaming content from HBO Now, the NHL, WWE and the PGA. That's a lot of acronyms, but ESPN might be the most important one: Disney acquired a 33 percent stake in BAMTech, the standalone streaming co. spun out of MLB as a result of the deal, and BAMTech will be working on a new OTT subscription service for Disney-owned ESPN. Live sports is traditional TV's last real leg to stand on, so this should be good. [SPONSORED CONTENT: TechCrunch Disrupt SF - 3 Days Left To Save On Tickets] TechCrunch's Disrupt SF Conference on Sept 12-14 promises to be better than ever with our amazing speaker lineups including Marc Benioff and Marc Andreessen Get your early bird tickets today before prices go up after August 12! [Learn More…] 4. [Intel picks up some AI expertise] The deeper the learning, the better the backup to your chip business. That's Intel's bet, anyway, as it just picked up deep learning startup Nervana Systems for a tidy few hundred million. The acquisition will help boost Intel's AI aspirations, which will help it compete with Nvidia, as the graphics card maker has been pushing hard on being the brains behind AI systems of late. 5. [The sky's no limit in this new game] "I'll just take a little stroll..." is something I now say before disappear into an hours long play session of No Man's Sky. The category-busting, procedurally generated galaxy exploration game is one of the weirdest, most wonderful things to come out of console-based title in a long time (it's a PS4 exclusive until Friday, when it hits PC). Part Minecraft, part Ender's Game, this thing is engrossing as hell. We could only hope to inhabit a simulation so fun to explore. 6. Robots – they do it all What can't a robot do these days? They're [making shoes] (something had to be done to satisfy the market demand generated by TC's esteemed editor Matthew Panzarino), [picking apples] and [mapping the galaxy]. No job too big, no job too small – a bot will do it all. 7. [Soylent is caffeinated people] Or, caffeinating people rather. The modern-day SlimFast concoction is trying something new, adding coffee-type ingredients to Soylent's basic recipe of algae nutrient slurry. Also, proving beyond any doubt that Soylent is essentially SlimFast Redux, the company announced new Soylent Bars. Will each new generation have its own food goop? 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