Adidas is inviting all sports enthusiasts to join its product design team, using machine learning to transform the customer experience appropriately enough with speed and agility. "We haven't created a separate digital strategy," said Adidas CIO Michael Vöegele. "Digital technology is the enabler to help us achieve our objective to be the best sports brand in the world. To change people's lives, you need to build direct relationships with your consumers." Vöegele spoke during the keynote on the last day of the SAPPHIRE NOW and ASUG Annual Conference, sharing his company's vision to co-create a new supply chain with customers.

Sony is facing huge backlash over the way it has dealt with the release of Fortnite on the Nintendo Switch. Nintendo announced this week that the hugely popular battle royale game would arrive on the Switch, leading to excitement above fans. That enthusiasm was increased when it became clear that cross-platform play would be allowed, letting Switch players take on their friends on other consoles. But there is now considerable backlash after PlayStation users found that can't play on both the Switch and Sony's console. If they have already played on the PS4, for instance, then they cannot log onto their Fortnite account on the Switch.

JERUSALEM/BERLIN (Reuters) - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday that a roughly one-billion-euro ($1.18 billion) drone deal with Germany would strengthen bilateral security relations and give a boost to Israel's defense industry.

Regulators are beginning to teach robots who's the boss. After spending billions of dollars on cutting-edge artificial intelligence technologies, Europe's insurers and banks face tougher scrutiny of the tools they use to help root out fraud, check borrowers' creditworthiness and automate claims decisions. European Union rules starting this week will stress human oversight and consumer protection, which may hamper companies trying to build the tools of the future. "Companies developing AI technologies will have to consider and embed the data protection issues into the design process," David Martin, senior legal officer at Brussels-based consumer advocate BEUC, said in an interview. "It's not something where they can just tick a box at the end."

TECH industry leaders have identified Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba as a company that is'most likely to disrupt business', according to a survey by KPMG. In The Changing Landscape of Disruptive Technologies 2018 report, the global audit firm found that 12 percent of nearly 800 tech leaders ranging from startups to Fortune 500 companies are most worried about the Chinese conglomerate. Alibaba's innovative and diversified line of businesses, which includes cloud computing, entertainment, payment gateway, and mobile data, is why the company is the'greatest' business disrupter, the report said. "The challenge to satisfy China's over one billion population market requires visionary leadership," the report said. In the US, Alibaba was identified by the tech industry leaders as the company they worry about the most to disrupt their business.

Technology companies are racing to develop ultra-precise digital maps that can guide self-driving cars to within inches of where they should be -- a hurdle the industry needs to clear if it hopes to deliver on its promise of widespread use of driverless vehicles. The government is backing a three-dimensional mapping system developed by Mitsubishi Electric Corp. that includes a wealth of details, such as trees and pedestrians. It promises to be off by no more than 25 cm. That would be a big improvement over satellite-based GPS, which is used by ships, aircraft and increasingly by drivers or those on mobile phones but can be off by up to 20 meters, especially inside buildings or underground. The developers say the improved mapping technology will likely be used first in vehicles in isolated areas such as warehouses, or it might be used to help drivers of vehicles that aren't entirely autonomous.

Nasa is keeping close watch on the Opportunity rover in hope that it will wake up again. The until now unstoppable robot has run into trouble as it moves around the surface of Mars. The red planet is rapidly being encircled by a vast and unprecedented dust storm, meaning that it could be months until there is enough light to charge the rover's batteries and wake it back up again. Officials say they are hopeful the rover will make it through. But there will be no way to know until Opportunity wakes back up again – or doesn't, leaving it dead on the planet's surface.

Tourette's syndrome is a neuro-psychiatric disease defined by the occurrence of so-called "tics". Tics are sudden, fast and recurring non-rhythmic movements or sound expressions. The development of tics is associated with specific abnormalities of brain activity. Basal ganglia in particular are attributed a role in the development of tics. The underlying mechanisms are still largely unexplored.

Telltale Games has announced that it is bringing "Minecraft: Story Mode" to Netflix as an interactive show later this fall. The video game developer also revealed that it is developing an entirely new game that's based on the hit Netflix series "Stranger Things." "We're delighted by the response we're seeing to the idea of'Minecraft: Story Mode' coming to Netflix in the fall as an interactive adventure. Separately, we're thrilled to confirm that Telltale is developing a game based on'Stranger Things' that we'll publish to consoles and computers at a later date," Telltale Games said on its Twitter page. "Our partnership with Netflix is something we're incredibly proud of, and while we don't have anything more to share right now, we're excited to reveal details on these projects later in the year."

"I don't think Homo sapiens-type people will exist in 10 or 20 years' time," Getnet Assefa, 31, speculates as he gazes into the reconstructed eye sockets of Lucy, one of the oldest and most famous hominid skeletons known, at the National Museum of Ethiopia. "Slowly the biological species will disappear and then we will become a fully synthetic species," Assefa says. "Perception, memory, emotion, intelligence, dreams--everything that we value now--will not be there," he adds. Assefa is a computer scientist, a futurist, and a utopian--but a pragmatic one at that. He is founder and chief executive of iCog, the first artificial intelligence (AI) lab in Ethiopia, and a stone's throw from the home of Lucy. Their desks are cluttered with electronic components and dismembered robot body parts, from a soccer-playing bot called Abebe to a miniature robo-Einstein.