The Justice Department will soon start trying to jam cellphones smuggled into federal prisons and used for criminal activity, part of a broader safety initiative that is also focused on preventing drones from airdropping contraband to inmates. Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein told the American Correctional Association's conference in Orlando on Monday that, while the law prohibits cellphone use by federal inmates, the Bureau of Prisons confiscated 5,116 such phones in 2016, and preliminary numbers for 2017 indicate a 28 percent increase. "That is a major safety issue," he said in his speech. "Cellphones are used to run criminal enterprises, facilitate the commission of violent crimes and thwart law enforcement." When he was the U.S. attorney in Maryland, Rosenstein prosecuted an inmate who used a smuggled cellphone to order the murder of a witness.

Just as Apple's iOS is forever linked to the iPhone, Alexa has been synonymous with Amazon's Echo speaker. But Amazon's digital assistant is becoming increasingly independent -- integrating into speakers made by Sonos, the Nest thermostat or lights made by Philips. Now it's also finding its way onto computer towers and notebooks made by PC makers, a move that could simultaneously ratchet up tensions between Amazon and Microsoft. PC makers like HP, ASUS and Acer are announcing Alexa integrations at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week, and in some cases the partnerships see hardware being upgraded to make Alexa more accessible, according to GeekWire. HP, for instance, plans to add a custom LED to its Pavillion Wave desktop computer tower that can glow when it hears Alexa's name, activating the digital assistant.

This week's milestone in the history of technology is the patent that launched the ongoing quest to get machines to help us and them know more about our world, from tabulating machines to machine learning to deep learning (or today's "artificial intelligence"). On January 8, 1889, Herman Hollerith was granted a patent titled the "Art of Compiling Statistics." The patent described a punched card tabulating machine which launched a new industry and the fruitful marriage of statistics and computer engineering--called "machine learning" since the late 1950s, and reincarnated today as "deep learning" (also popularly known today as "artificial intelligence"). Commemorating IBM's 100th anniversary in 2011, The Economist wrote: In 1886, Herman Hollerith, a statistician, started a business to rent out the tabulating machines he had originally invented for America's census. Taking a page from train conductors, who then punched holes in tickets to denote passengers' observable traits (e.g., that they were tall, or female) to prevent fraud, he developed a punch card that held a person's data and an electric contraption to read it.

The woman in the photo seems familiar. She looks like Jennifer Aniston, the "Friends" actress, or Selena Gomez, the child star turned pop singer. She appears to be a celebrity, one of the beautiful people photographed outside a movie premiere or an awards show. That's because she's not real. She was created by a machine.

So on Nov. 1, Brown underwent the first robotic Whipple procedure at the James at Ohio State University. The emerging surgical technique is meant to be less invasive than traditional surgery and results in reduced blood loss, smaller incisions with less scarring and faster recovery times.

The battle now raging between the big technology companies for consumer cash is focused on the voice-controlled smart speaker. Having already conquered the pocket with the ubiquitous smartphone, big tech has been struggling to come up with the next must-have gadget that will open up a potentially lucrative new market – the home. A pilot light was lit when Amazon's Echo launched in 2014 and became a sleeper hit. Now the voice controlled smart speaker is rapidly becoming the next big thing, capable of answering questions, setting timers, playing music, controlling other devices about the home, or even potentially selling products. "The last 12 months have been explosive for smart speakers, which have surged into the mass market for two reasons.

While companies like Amazon pour considerable resources into finding ways of using drones to deliver such things as shoes and dog treats, Zipline has been saving lives in Rwanda since October 2016 with drones that deliver blood. Zipline's autonomous fixed-wing drones now form an integral part of Rwanda's medical-supply infrastructure, transporting blood products from a central distribution center to hospitals across the country. And in 2018, Zipline's East African operations will expand to include Tanzania, a much larger country. Delivering critical medical supplies in this region typically involves someone spending hours (or even days) driving a cooler full of life-saving medicine or blood along windy dirt roads. Such deliveries can become dangerous or even impossible to make if roads and bridges get washed out.

An image released by Hyundai shows a hands-off driver checking his phone and drinking coffee. The company is partnering with Aurora, a U.S. startup, to boost its autonomous vehicle program.

American authorities have decided that Alibaba's digital payment firm, Ant Financial, won't be allowed to acquire the cash transfer company Moneygram.