A cute, robotic language tutor called Musio, has made it from crowdfunding campaign to full-fledged product with a debut in stores this week in Japan. Priced at JPY 98,000 (about US $900), Musio is now sold online through SoftBank's marketplace and Amazon Japan, and through a handful of brick-and-mortars stores. Musio's parent company, AI venture AKA Study, is the latest startup from Raymond Jung, a co-founder of the massively successful test-prep venture, Hackers Education Group, in South Korea. AKA employs about 50 full-time today, with most in Seoul, and a small office in Santa Monica, Calif. Technically, the company is headquartered in the U.S., but it's not making any consumer electronics for the American market yet.

Japan is certainly fond of its robots so it's perhaps little surprise that the women's national volleyball team has started using them to help improve its game. Engineers designed a team of opponents that mimic the actions of "blockers" -- players that jump close to the net with their arms aloft to prevent an attacker's powerful shot from coming over to their side of the court. The setup, as reported by the New Scientist, consists of three pairs of robotic arms that move left and right along a track at a speed slightly faster than that of a human player. Smashing the ball across the net is one of the most common ways for a team to win points in volleyball, but they have to be able to outwit the opposing team's blockers who're waiting to slam the ball immediately down to the ground for their own point. The unique blocking machine was created by researchers at the University of Tsukuba in partnership with the Japanese Volleyball Association and lets an operator choose the robots' playing style using computer software. It's even possible to program the robots with team-specific tactics or styles of play similar to those of the opponents that the Japanese team is about to face, allowing for more effective pre-game preparation and training.

In late February, the UN-Secretary General held a press conference, highlighting the risk of starvation in East Africa and the necessity to raise funds to address the emergency situations in Somalia and South Sudan. Drought has been back in these countries and their neighbours since 2016, leading to a huge current food crisis. While governments are trying to handle the situation, how could technology innovations help prevent starvation and improve agriculture management in the future? We met with Laurent Rivière, a French 30 years-old entrepreneur, who shared with us his view on the subject with a combination of engineer pragmatism and changemaker idealism . Founder and CEO at Sunbirds for two years, he explained to us how his "bird of the sun," his solar drone, is addressing the agriculture challenges of the 21st century.

When science fiction author Isaac Asimov devised his Three Laws of Robotics he was thinking about androids. He envisioned a world where these human-like robots would act like servants and would need a set of programming rules to prevent them from causing harm. But in the 75 years since the publication of the first story to feature his ethical guidelines, there have been significant technological advancements. We now have a very different conception of what robots can look like and how we will interact with them. The highly-evolved field of robotics is producing a huge range of devices, from autonomous vacuum cleaners to military drones to entire factory production lines.

Microsoft has started blocking Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 updates for computers running certain new chipsets. The company announced plans last January to block next-generation Intel, AMD and Qualcomm processors from system updates on older versions of Windows, but didn't reveal when support would be cut. 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 giant human-like robot bears a striking resemblance to the military robots starring in the movie'Avatar' and is claimed as a world first by its creators from a South Korean robotic company Waseda University's saxophonist robot WAS-5, developed by professor Atsuo Takanishi and Kaptain Rock playing one string light saber guitar perform jam session A man looks at an exhibit entitled'Mimus' a giant industrial robot which has been reprogrammed to interact with humans during a photocall at the new Design Museum in South Kensington, London Electrification Guru Dr. Wolfgang Ziebart talks about the electric Jaguar I-PACE concept SUV before it was unveiled before the Los Angeles Auto Show in Los Angeles, California, U.S The Jaguar I-PACE Concept car is the start of a new era for Jaguar. Japan's On-Art Corp's CEO Kazuya Kanemaru poses with his company's eight metre tall dinosaur-shaped mechanical suit robot'TRX03' and other robots during a demonstration in Tokyo, Japan Japan's On-Art Corp's eight metre tall dinosaur-shaped mechanical suit robot'TRX03' performs during its unveiling in Tokyo, Japan Singulato Motors co-founder and CEO Shen Haiyin poses in his company's concept car Tigercar P0 at a workshop in Beijing, China A picture shows Singulato Motors' concept car Tigercar P0 at a workshop in Beijing, China Connected company president Shigeki Tomoyama addresses a press briefing as he elaborates on Toyota's "connected strategy" in Tokyo.

Russia's space-bound humanoid robot FEDOR (Final Experimental Demonstration Object Research) is being trained to shoot guns from both of its hands. The activity will help improve the android's motor skills and decision-making, according to its creators, who have also tried to address concerns that they're developing a real-life Terminator. "Robot platform F.E.D.O.R. showed shooting skills with two hands," wrote Russia's deputy Prime Minister, Dmitry Rogozin, on Twitter. 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 giant human-like robot bears a striking resemblance to the military robots starring in the movie'Avatar' and is claimed as a world first by its creators from a South Korean robotic company Waseda University's saxophonist robot WAS-5, developed by professor Atsuo Takanishi and Kaptain Rock playing one string light saber guitar perform jam session A man looks at an exhibit entitled'Mimus' a giant industrial robot which has been reprogrammed to interact with humans during a photocall at the new Design Museum in South Kensington, London Electrification Guru Dr. Wolfgang Ziebart talks about the electric Jaguar I-PACE concept SUV before it was unveiled before the Los Angeles Auto Show in Los Angeles, California, U.S The Jaguar I-PACE Concept car is the start of a new era for Jaguar.

Way back in 1988, Wes Cherry was a Microsoft intern and during his time at the company he created the biggest time waster the world has ever known: The Solitaire computer game. Cherry built the game out of boredom instead of being directed by his superiors. But he bosses -- including CEO and founder Bill Gates -- liked the game so much they added it to Windows in 1990. Since then, Cherry has made exactly zero dollars on his creation. And you thought your internship was bad. Meanwhile in Japan, the national volleyball team is using a robot to block its spikes.

WhatsApp is testing two major new features that could soon make their way to all users. The messaging app has long been rumoured to be working on an "unsend" option for messages, which would allow users to delete messages they've already sent. The company is testing the feature in a new beta release of WhatsApp Web, reports @WABetaInfo, which says it offers users a five-minute window to revoke sent messages. 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 giant human-like robot bears a striking resemblance to the military robots starring in the movie'Avatar' and is claimed as a world first by its creators from a South Korean robotic company Waseda University's saxophonist robot WAS-5, developed by professor Atsuo Takanishi and Kaptain Rock playing one string light saber guitar perform jam session A man looks at an exhibit entitled'Mimus' a giant industrial robot which has been reprogrammed to interact with humans during a photocall at the new Design Museum in South Kensington, London Electrification Guru Dr. Wolfgang Ziebart talks about the electric Jaguar I-PACE concept SUV before it was unveiled before the Los Angeles Auto Show in Los Angeles, California, U.S The Jaguar I-PACE Concept car is the start of a new era for Jaguar.

For all the excitement about policing the web with image detection algorithms, machine learning, and other tools, the task of keeping the internet functioning and habitable still falls to people. Beneath the slick automation of companies like Google and Facebook hides a hidden army of manual laborers--many in countries like India and the Philippines. They perform the tedious, disturbing task that machines still can't, and that most Americans won't: Filtering social media sites for obscenities, abuse, and violence. In their short documentary The Moderators, filmmakers Adrian Chen and Ciaran Cassidy go inside an Indian firm doing that work, capturing a week-long training session for new employees. Their film, which WIRED is premiering online, centers on a group of young Indians starting their first jobs for Bangalore-based Foiwe Info Global Solutions, whose clients include a handful of dating sites in the US, Europe, and India.

As a computer science student many years ago, I learned a bit about artificial intelligence and its applications. At first, I was quite excited by the idea of computers thinking like humans. Then, I quickly realized: computers couldn't really "think"-- at least not the way that a human brain could. What if--I thought--we gave a computer large amounts of data and compute power. Could it do something that resembled thinking?