Microsoft Monday is a weekly column that focuses on updates in regards to the Redmond giant. This week, Microsoft Monday includes details about gamerpic support coming to Xbox Live, a custom Windows 10 version for China, an update about the Xbox 360 class action lawsuit, a data sharing agreement with Adobe, a Recon Tech Special Edition gamepad, a new LinkedIn enterprise CRM tool, a new partnership with Publicis and much more! Microsoft has completed the development of a custom Windows 10 version for the Chinese government, according to The Verge. To build the custom Windows 10 version, Microsoft collaborated with the China Electronics Technology Group (CTEC). Microsoft did not specify the changes that were made for the custom version of Windows 10 for China.

Stephen Hawking made an appearance in Hong Kong to discuss President Donald Trump and Brexit and he did it without having to travel anywhere. The Brief History of Time author, cosmologist and Cambridge professor appeared to the audience of hundreds at an "Evening with Stephen Hawking" event on Friday as a "HumaGram," or human hologram, to deliver his remarks, according to the Independent. The HumaGram is 3D interactive holographic technology developed by the company ARHT Media. The technology can be used life or can be prerecorded and is then only visible to audience members wearing a special pair of glasses. Hawking, who has ALS, used his speech aiding computer to discuss Donald Trump and Brexit saying that between the two, "we are witnessing a global revolt against experts," according to the Independent.

After venturing into space exploration, electric cars and solar roof, business magnate and visionary Elon Musk wants to create devices that can be implanted to the human brain so that AI and the brain can work hand in hand. This Monday, the 45-year-old inventor announced his new company Neuralink Corp. The new venture is the first step to realizing Musk's desire to connect the human brain and computers. According to The Wall Street Journal, the SpaceX and Tesla CEO's new venture aims to produce devices that can be implanted to the human brain in order for artificial intelligence software to merge with the brain's activity, enhancing the latter's memory and allowing for a more direct interaction between the brain and computing devices. Though the venture is very new, Musk is already assuming an "active role" in backing the neuroscience startup.

Don't worry about artificial intelligence taking over the world and endangering humans -- at least not to start with, said Demis Hassabis, the head of Google's AI project. Hassabis, CEO of Deep Mind, a British business Google bought in 2014, said he has rebuked the likes of Microsoft founder Bill Gates and SpaceX and Tesla founder Elon Musk for their comments on AI, the Times of London reported Monday. AI is the theory and development of computer systems that can perform tasks that mornally take human intelligence. "I don't think it's very helpful for other people who are incredible in their domains commenting on something they actually know very little about, but because they are quite big celebrities now, more than just scientists or businessmen, it gets picked up a lot," he said at a Cambridge Society for the Application of Research event. He said the "general meme of fearfulness doesn't help reasoned debate.

Early-stage venture fund, pi Ventures has secured an undisclosed amount of investment from venture capital fund Accel Partners. The World Bank's financial arm, International Finance Corporation (IFC) has also proposed to make an equity investment of $3 Mn in the fund. This investment would be made through the IFC Startup Catalyst (ISC) programme. Commenting on the development, Manish Singhal, Founding Partner, pi Ventures said, "Accel has played a key role as they have been good mentors and go to guys for us. We are working on some investments along with them as well. So, it is good to get them on board as investors in the fund. Also, we are excited that IFC is considering us. The process is still on."

A startup based in Petah Tikva, Isreal, Airobotics,has scored the right to fly drones autonomously for business purposes in Israel. The Civil Aviation Authority of Israel (CAAI) was the first in the world to authorize commercial, fully unmanned drone flights in their nation's airspace. Airobotics' drones are marketed for use in site surveying, security and other industrial applications. Allowing these drones to fly sans operator means that companies can run inspections for miles along power lines, train tracks, or acres of farmland, for example, without humans positioned along the route or token interruptions for point-checks. The startup's self-flying, quadcopter drones launch and land from a base station where they can swap out spent batteries for newly charged ones.

SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk is backing a brain-computer interface venture called Neuralink, according to The Wall Street Journal. The company, which is still in the earliest stages of existence and has no public presence whatsoever, is centered on creating devices that can be implanted in the human brain, with the eventual purpose of helping human beings merge with software and keep pace with advancements in artificial intelligence. These enhancements could improve memory or allow for more direct interfacing with computing devices. Musk has hinted at the existence of Neuralink a few times over the last six months or so. More recently, Musk told a crowd in Dubai, "Over time I think we will probably see a closer merger of biological intelligence and digital intelligence."

When my mother's mother was in her early twenties, a century ago, a suitor took her duck hunting in a rowboat on a lake near Austin, Texas, where she grew up. He steadied his shotgun by resting the barrel on her right shoulder--she was sitting in the bow--and when he fired he not only missed the duck but also permanently damaged her hearing, especially on that side. The loss became more severe as she got older, and by the time I was in college she was having serious trouble with telephones. Her deafness probably contributed to one of her many eccentricities: ending phone conversations by suddenly hanging up. I'm a grandparent myself now, and lots of people I know have hearing problems. A guy I played golf with last year came close to making a hole in one, then complained that no one in our foursome had complimented him on his shot--even though, a moment before, all three of us had complimented him on his shot. The man who cuts my wife's hair began wearing two hearing aids recently, to compensate for damage that he attributes to years of exposure to professional-quality blow-dryers. My sister has hearing aids, too. She traces her problem to repeatedly listening at maximum volume to Anne's Angry and Bitter Breakup Song Playlist, which she created while going through a divorce. My ears ring all the time--a condition called tinnitus.

The height of individual vs. collective irrationality has to be automobile traffic. We build roadways around the assumption that we as individual human actors will behave in ways that appear to reward those behaviors at the level of individuals but wind up harming the collective's goal of moving many cars through a limited amount of space as quickly as possible. Witness how a single greedy merge, for example, can send out a cascade of brake lights leading to a further wave of merges, some of which will themselves be greedy (careless). There really is no truly individual behavior in traffic and yet people are people. Fixing this is among the promises of driverless cars.

Police body cameras are widely seen as a way to improve law enforcement's transparency with the public. But when mixed with police use of facial-recognition tools, the prospect of continual surveillance comes with big risks to privacy. Facial-recognition technology combined with policy body cameras could "redefine the nature of public spaces," Alvaro Bedoya, executive director of the Georgetown Law Center on Privacy & Technology, told the US House Oversight Committee at a hearing on March 22. It's not a distant reality and it threatens civil liberties, he warned. Technologists already have tools, and are developing more, that allow police to recognize people in real time. Of 38 manufacturers who make 66 different products, at least nine already have facial recognition technology capabilities or have made accommodations to build it in, according to a 2016 Johns Hopkins University report, created for the US Department of Justice, on the body-worn camera market.