Daniel (Danny) Bobrow passed away peacefully at home with his wife Toni and daughters Kimberly and Deborah in Palo Alto, California, on March 20, 2017, having bravely fought a five-month battle with cancer. Danny was born to Ruth Gureasko Bobrow and Jacob Bobrow on November 29, 1935, in the Bronx, New York City. A gifted student, he attended Bronx High School of Science and went on to earn a BS from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, an MS from Harvard, and a PhD in Mathematics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology under the supervision of Marvin Minsky. His was one of the first MIT doctoral theses in Artificial Intelligence. A pioneer with a long and distinguished research career in Artificial Intelligence as a Research Fellow in the System Sciences Laboratory of the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), he is remembered as a mentor, friend, and role model for many.

The European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI), which wrote the original specification for network functions virtualisation (NFV), has set up its experiential network intelligence industry specification group to handle the task. He sees many parallels between the evolution of cars and where networks can get to. "Years ago, cars were painfully manual, but we've made it much more convenient and 14 years ago we started looking at self-driving cars, which is an absolute disruptive change." In order for self-driving networks to become a reality, vendors and providers must fully collaborate, he says. Interestingly, ETSI's AI initiative, which has an initial two-year work programme, is coming from vendors, ETSI director general Luis Jorge Romero told GTB at Mobile World Congress.

Built with artificial intelligence, the Hover Camera Passport selfie drone detects and follows users. Source: Zero Zero Robotics At this year's CES, a little company named Zero Zero Robotics demonstrated a flying camera drone that hovers near you taking pictures and autonomously detects, follows and records your movements. That selfie drone, called Hover Camera Passport, is now available and just picked up a huge backer in the form of Apple Inc. The smartphone giant has started exclusively selling the drone online and in its Apple stores in five countries. The Hover Camera Passport is powered by internally-developed artificial intelligence that the company says allows consumers to operate the drone camera out of the box and works for both indoor and outdoor environments.

Facebook has announced a range of new features for Messenger. The social network says it wants to make the app more like the Yellow Pages and, in doing so, it will make it easier for users to get in touch with businesses. Unfortunately, this means that businesses will also be able to pester users more easily than ever. A new tab in Messenger called Discover provides a straightforward way for users to "find the businesses they care about". It sounds like an app store for chat bots.

Facebook has announced its plans for augmented reality at its F8 developers conference. The company shed light on its future intentions for the various features its portfolio of apps have ripped from Snapchat. Facebook, Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp have all added Snapchat-like functionality over the past year. "That was Act One," said Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. 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 Donald Trump administration is planning to expand the use of biometric facial recognition systems at airports around the United States. News of the expansion comes from U.S. Customs and Border Protection's Larry Panetta, who spoke about adoption of facial recognition technology at the Border Security Expo. "We currently have everyone's photo, so we don't need to do any sort of enrollment," Panetta said. "We have access to the Department of State records so we have photos of US Citizens, we have visa photos, we have photos of people when they cross into the US and their biometrics are captured into [Department of Homeland Security database] IDENT." The project to equip airports around the country with facial recognition systems is known as Biometric Exit.

Samsung's new Galaxy S8 phone is stunning. But its $100 price hike is hard to swallow. That's how much extra you'll shell out for the S8, which starts shipping Friday for about $750 -- $100 more than the iPhone 7 and last year's Galaxy S7 when it launched. A larger sibling, the S8 Plus, goes for about $850. True, the S8 phones come with several refinements that, totaled up, are indeed worth more than $100.

Intel launched its new global business-to-business (B2B) marketing campaign starring "The Future" and recurring actor Jim Parsons, and focusing on sectors where Intel technology is building the future, such as artificial intelligence and autonomous driving. The campaign includes two commercials featuring "The Future" as a character representing how Intel technology empowers businesses to face the future with confidence. "The new campaign brings to life the idea that at Intel, we know the future, because we're building it," said Steve Fund, senior vice president and chief marketing officer at Intel Corporation. "We'll showcase the advances we're making in emerging technologies today to make the future of business even more amazing." Intel recently conducted research among senior business leaders, which revealed a universal anxiety about what the future will bring and a fear of being outpaced by emerging technologies.

It's the quiet-but-pressurised noise of Samsung executives holding their breath as they wait to see if the new Galaxy S8 is the success they so badly need it to be. After the Galaxy Note 7 had to be withdrawn last autumn because of safety issues, the S8 really must not fail. I've been using the S8 and its larger sibling, the S8 for a week. So, is it sigh of relief or hard, disappointed exhale for the execs? The look of the Galaxy S8 is a refinement of the Galaxy Note 7 and the Samsung Galaxy S7 edge.

A device that can read people's minds by detecting their brainwaves has been developed in a breakthrough that could eventually enable people with "locked-in syndrome" to communicate. The system was only partially effective with a 90 per cent success rate when trying to recognise numbers from zero to nine and a 61 per cent rate for single syllables in Japanese, the researchers said. But, nonetheless, a statement about the research issued by the Toyohashi University of Technology in Japan said it showed that an effective device to read people's thoughts and relay them to others was possible in the "near future". They even suggested an "easily operated" device with a smartphone app could be ready in just five years. An electroencephalogram (EEG) was used to monitor people's brain waves while they spoke.