President-elect Donald Trump will be able to employ deadly drone strikes largely at his discretion if current guidelines remain in place. And President Barack Obama has no plans to change those rules before he leaves office, the Guardian reported Tuesday. The next president will inherit the so-called drones "playbook" created by the Obama administration in 2013 that dictated policy on drone strikes, the president's main way of striking against terrorism. Since drone usage began under the administration of President George W. Bush, thousands of people have been killed through the targeted strikes from unmanned aircraft and many nations across the globe consider the standards the U.S. applies for drone strikes to be too secretive. "Maybe on the left no one would believe that Trump has a steady hand, but Obama has normalized the idea that presidents get to have secret large-scale killing programs at their disposal," Naureen Shah of Amnesty International USA told the Guardian.

Spending on cognitive systems and artificial intelligence (AI) across a broad range of industries will drive worldwide revenues from nearly $8.0 billion in 2016 to more than $47 billion in 2020. In its Worldwide Semiannual Cognitive/Artificial Intelligence Systems Spending Guide IDC said the market for cognitive/AI solutions will experience a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 55.1 per cent over the 2016-2020 forecast period. According to David Schubmehl, research director, Cognitive Systems and Content Analytics at IDC, "Software developers and end user organizations have already begun the process of embedding and deploying cognitive/artificial intelligence into almost every kind of enterprise application or process" "Recent announcements by several large technology vendors and the booming venture capital market for AI startups illustrate the need for organizations to be planning and undertaking strategies that incorporate these wide-ranging technologies," he said. Schubmehl said identifying, understanding, and acting on the use cases, technologies, and growth opportunities for cognitive/AI systems will be a differentiating factor for most enterprises and the digital disruption caused by these technologies will be significant. The ability to recognize and respond to data flows using algorithms and rule-based logic enables cognitive/AI systems to automate a broad range of functions across many industries.

Once the preserve of science-fiction movies, artificial intelligence is one of the hottest areas of research right now. While the idea behind AI is to make our lives easier, there is concern that as the technology becomes more advanced, we may be heading for disaster. How can we be sure, for instance, that artificially intelligent robots will make ethical choices? There are plenty of instances of artificial intelligence gone wrong. The case of the rude and racist chatbot** Chatbot Tay, Microsoft's AI millennial chatbot, was meant to be a friendly chatbot that would sound like a teenage girl and engage in light conversation with her followers on Twitter.

Anthony Foxx waits for the countdown, then hits the plunger. The catapult releases its bungee cord, slinging the drone from to a standstill to 50 mph in half a second. The drone spins up its twin propellers and flies a few hundred feet up, circling overhead. "That's amazing," Foxx says, as the UAV drops its package within a few feet of the practice delivery zone, then belly flops onto a brown landing pad that resembles the base of a jumping castle. During the closing months of his four-year run as US Secretary of Transportation, Foxx has come to California on a fact finding mission.

Behavioural change is a very tricky thing. We humans are so fickle. We see a bright shiny wearable device that can track our every move and we think it's our "silver bullet", a "ticket" to achieving our health and fitness dreams. Only for guilt to set in, as after a short time, the wearable device winds up in our top drawer. We knew the fitness data was great, but we really didn't know what to do with it. The truth is, behaviour change requires much more than data. Many programs have realized the magnitude of the problem and created incentive programs to reward people for being active, so they get a small pay-off on the road to achieving fitness. But in spite of these rewards, the drop-out rate remains problematic.

Investors believe it is'inevitable' that artificial intelligence will destroy millions of jobs and that governments are unprepared for such an impact, according to a new survey. Artificial intelligence (AI), or the process by which computers or robots take on tasks that need human intelligence, is one of the key themes of this week's Web Summit in Lisbon. The poll among 224 venture capitalists attending the conference showed 53 percent believed AI would destroy millions of jobs and 93 percent saw governments as unprepared for this. The poll among 224 venture capitalists attending the Web summit in Lisbon found 53 percent believed AI would destroy millions of jobs and 93 percent saw governments as unprepared for this. The survey also found that 83 percent of the investors canvassed expect Britain's exit from the European Union to damage Europe's economy and 77 percent believe it will damage British startups.

At the recent Spark & Machine Learning Meetup in Brussels, Koen Dejonghe of Eurocontrol delivered a lightning talk titled "Simulation and processing of data streams in telecommunications." Specifically, Koen discussed the development of a prototype for processing of data coming from cell towers, executed for a telco operator in the Middle East--with the added difficulty that the customer could not provide real data. In the end, Koen developed a data generator in Scala/Akka, a data processor with Spark Streaming, and a visualization front-end with Node.js.

A dream is a succession of images, ideas, emotions, and sensations that usually occurs involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep.[1] The content and purpose of dreams are not fully understood, though they have been a topic of scientific speculation, as well as a subject of philosophical and religious interest, throughout recorded history. The scientific study of dreams is called oneirology.[2] Dreams mainly occur in the rapid-eye movement (REM) stage of sleep--when brain activity is high and resembles that of being awake. REM sleep is revealed by continuous movements of the eyes during sleep. At times, dreams may occur during other stages of sleep. However, these dreams tend to be much less vivid or memorable.[3] The length of a dream can vary; they may last for a few seconds, or approximately 20–30 minutes.[3] People are more likely to remember the dream if they are awakened during the REM phase. The average person has three to five dreams per night, and some may have up to seven;[4] however, most dreams are immediately or quickly forgotten.[5] Dreams tend to last longer as the night progresses. During a full eight-hour night sleep, most dreams occur in the typical two hours of REM.[6] In modern times, dreams have been seen as a connection to the unconscious mind. They range from normal and ordinary to overly surreal and bizarre. Dreams can have varying natures, such as being frightening, exciting, magical, melancholic, adventurous, or sexual. The events in dreams are generally outside the control of the dreamer, with the exception of lucid dreaming, where the dreamer is self-aware.[7]

It seems only yesterday that we were lying on our friend's sofa vowing to abstain from all alcohol for the entirety of 2016 before being coerced into a pub trip by our pesky co-workers the first Friday back in the office. Yes, the start of the year seems no time ago at all, but 2016 is nearly over. There are under 9 weeks left of the year and this, coupled with the arrival of the colder weather, has got us feeling all nostalgic. Let's recap some of the biggest tech innovations of 2016 and our predictions for the tech world in 2017. Well Pokémon Go launched in July and thanks to the enormous number of nostalgic noughties kids roaming the streets with little to do, it took off at an astonishing rate.

Jump to an update: • Waiting for Hillary on a gray morning • A few thoughts on the unthinkable • Palin speaks at the Trump party • Trump's path • Settling in for the night at Hillary Clinton's party • If Trump wins, he would likely also control all three branches of government • A new electoral map is upending the old one • The part of the night when Democrats start to freak out • Marco Rubio, again • The exit polls show a breakdown in demographics that is entirely predictable • A shooting near a polling place in Los Angeles • Early exit polls: No evidence Comey made a difference • Is the South still the conservative heartland? Clinton's motorcade arrived soon after. At campaign events and at her party last night, Clinton was permanently inside a huge bubble of safe space guarded by the Secret Service. At today's event, they were nowhere to be seen. Clinton arrived in a small caravan that stopped in a busy street. The only visible protection was provided by a handful of New York cops who hadn't received notice she was coming just then and halfheartedly tried to convince a crowd to move backward. Soon, Clinton's staff and the crowd and a few people who happened to have been walking down the street were mashed together for a panicky moment. A bicyclist, nearby, screamed, "Get out of the way, you fucking morons."--A. The executive branch of the United States government has grown in its power over the past eight years. After 9/11, George W. Bush built an aggressive national-security apparatus that Barack Obama only partially reined in. To cite just one of the powers that Commander-in-Chief Donald J. Trump would acquire, the American President has grown comfortable with killing alleged terrorists remotely with unmanned vehicles. Congress has done little in the way of oversight of this program, and it is just one of the many new powers Trump could inherit. Similarly, Congress has shown no interest in rewriting the overly broad war authorizations that Bush and Obama used to wage campaigns across the Middle East and Africa. As Congress and the White House became unable to pass legislation, Obama also pushed the boundaries with respect to the use of executive orders. These can be rescinded on day one of a Trump Presidency, but, just as important, Trump will undoubtedly push the boundaries of executive orders beyond what Obama did.