Apple boss Tim Cook says that people's personal data is being "weaponised with military efficiency" by companies who are using it to make profit for themselves. Mr Cook and the rest of Apple have repeatedly argued that some parts of the technology industry are abusing the trust of its users by taking intimate data from them and using it to make money. But the latest comments at the International Conference of Data Protection and Privacy Commissioners are perhaps the strongest attack on those firms yet. Mr Cook said that there should be a federal law in the US that stops data being abused, promoted Apple's own commitment to privacy, and praised the new GDPR rules that are meant to protect data in Europe. The I.F.O. is fuelled by eight electric engines, which is able to push the flying object to an estimated top speed of about 120mph.

The Amazon Fire TV Stick has just been treated to an upgrade, pushing the best cheap streaming device on the market even further ahead of the competition. It was launched in the US some time ago, but has only just come to the UK, and brings with it a number of improvements that make it well worth buying, even if you already own an Amazon Fire TV Stick. Its headline feature is support for Alexa, Amazon's excellent voice assistant. This doesn't just enable users to track down TV shows, films and apps much, much faster than ever just by speaking to the voice-controlled remote, but also to accurately control playback without having to fiddle with any buttons. The I.F.O. is fuelled by eight electric engines, which is able to push the flying object to an estimated top speed of about 120mph.

LONDON – They come from very different worlds, yet have remarkably similar tales to tell. One hails from Takasaki, Gunma Prefecture, while the other was brought up in the shadows of the Merendon mountains in the Sula Valley of northwestern Honduras. Bonding over a "love of good coffee and jazz," Yasutomo Takano and Cristian Mejia have come a long way since they first met four years ago while studying bibliometrics at the Tokyo Institute of Technology. Back then they were both enthusiastic students with a love for robotics and the "internet of things." Now, they are using their combined skills to solve challenges in academia.

For example, Chennai-based Xcode Life Sciences is notably India's first bioinformatics company to introduce a DNA-based anti-aging skincare program for women. The program is known as Come Alive and is one of the most successful and promising bioinformatics companies in the country. The company also provides other services such as Gene Health -- a health module that identifies genetic markers of diabetes, obesity and heart conditions leading to preventive care and treatment. The genomics company first made news for launching its innovative DNA Ancestry test that allows people to trace their ancestry by matching it with more than 35 ethnic groups in India and other groups across the world and also the most recent paternal ancestor.

Here in 2018, big data is a big deal in China, and nowhere is this truer than in Guizhou, a remote, impoverished province in southwestern China where the provincial government is trying to build a big data industry from scratch. As He Yuan -- a manager at the Shanghai-based company Beige Big Data, which has an office in Guizhou -- put it to me in a recent visit to the province: "Everyone wants a piece of big data … Many still haven't figured out what the term means, exactly." Despite this lingering confusion, the Chinese government seems fully invested in what The New York Times columnist David Brooks refers to as "data-ism" -- the belief that "everything that can be measured should be measured; that data is a transparent and reliable lens that allows us to filter out emotionalism and ideology; that data will help us do remarkable things -- like foretell the future." And Guizhou -- a province less commonly associated with cutting-edge technology and more often with rugged mountains, poor soil, and extreme poverty -- is trying to position itself at the forefront of this nationwide push. Yet for all its leaders' grand ambitions, several hurdles remain to be overcome.

Indian e-commerce companies are still novices when it comes to Artificial Intelligence (AI) and mining big data. Nevertheless, they are still betting big on AI, which they think could be the magic bullet that will help them offer tailored shopping experiences. In 2017, homegrown e-commerce firm Flipkart announced the launch of an initiative called AI for India, wherein the company would develop solutions for issues like deciphering complex addresses and catching address fraud. Flipkart-owned fashion brand Myntra runs two AI-powered brands, Moda Rapido, and Here and Now. Delhi-based Paytm's homepage is personalised and reordered differently for each of its 225 million users, and the platform makes 20,000 recommendations per second--each of them in under 20 milliseconds.

Cloud OnBoard Big Data and Machine Learning is a free, full-day training event that will provide you with a detailed view of Google Cloud Platform's data processing and machine learning capabilities. Through a combination of instructor-led presentations and demos, you will learn how to leverage the ease, flexibility, and power of data and machine learning tools like Cloud Dataproc, Dataflow, Machine Learning APIs, Tensorflow and BigQuery. Who should attend this event? The topics that will be discussed at Cloud OnBoard Big Data and Machine Learning are best-suited for data analysts, data scientists and business analysts. This event will provide powerful insights if you're responsible for:

NVIDIA VP for Accelerated Computing Ian Buck unveiled the graphics processing unit (GPU) provider's new open-source platform, RAPIDS, which promises major potential for accelerating the ability for data scientists to incorporate neural networks and machine learning into data analytics platforms. Buck unveiled RAPIDS as part of an hour-long opening keynote during NVIDIA's GPU Technology Conference (GTC) at the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington D.C. this week. NVIDIA has been hosting GTCs throughout 2018 to explain how artificial intelligence, machine learning and other embedded computing processing concepts can be applied in innovative new ways to new industries. Washington D.C. comes after GTCs in Europe, Israel and Japan, with the final one of the year scheduled for China next month. RAPIDS is NVIDIA's new open-source software that serves as a GPU-acceleration platform to give companies ability to analyze massive amounts of data and make accurate business predictions at unprecedented speed. NVIDIA developed the software as a suite of open-source libraries for GPU-accelerated analytics, machine learning and eventually data-visualization purposes.

Indian e-commerce companies are still novices when it comes to Artificial Intelligence (AI) and mining big data. Nevertheless, they are still betting big on AI, which they think could be the magic bullet that will help them offer tailored shopping experiences. In 2017, homegrown e-commerce firm Flipkart announced the launch of an initiative called AI for India, wherein the company would develop solutions for issues like deciphering complex addresses and catching address fraud. Flipkart-owned fashion brand Myntra runs two AI-powered brands, Moda Rapido, and Here and Now. Delhi-based Paytm's homepage is personalised and reordered differently for each of its 225 million users, and the platform makes 20,000 recommendations per second--each of them in under 20 milliseconds.

I've given a few runs of my presentation on Driverless Cars in Australia, Malaysia and NewZealand. One thing I've noticed is how engaged and excited the audience become when they see a Tesla Model S, driving itself for the first time. What I wanted to achieve in this blog, is to share with you some of this magic and some of the graphics and features I present to the audience. Now…the reason I've picked the Tesla Model S is because: 1 – it's a cool car, 2 – it's Tesla and who doesn't love Elon Musk and 3 – They make the most advanced and lowest price driverless cars in the world…oh…and did I tell you they have the best range of any electric car, maxing out at around 667km for the lower-end model at 70 kph (see diagram 1 below) and decreasing to 452km at 120 kph. The Tesla Enhanced Autopilot system is the key to the car.