Over 30 different Android smartphones and tablets have been found to have had malware preinstalled on them before users even switched them on, according to a cyber security firm. Check Point detected a "severe infection" on 38 handsets being used by two of its corporate clients, a telecommunications firm and a multinational technology company that have not been named. The issue affects smartphones from a number of big-name brands, including Samsung, LG and Google. It must be made clear, however, that not all models of the devices named above are affected. "According to the findings, the malware were already present on the devices even before the users received them," reads the Check Point blog post announcing the discovery.

Once fully deployed in South Korea, a THAAD battery could theoretically use its radar to see and monitor activity beyond North Korea, deep into Chinese territory. Russia also worries the deployment could compromise its security, and said it would lead to a stalemate on the Korean peninsula.

Have you ever wondered how you would act at the end of the world? Players' actions in a video game could reveal insights into how an impending apocalypse might affect people's behaviour. A team of researchers analysed how players behaved in a beta test of ArcheAge, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG). The players knew that all of their character information and progress would be deleted at the end of the test, which lasted about 11 weeks. This meant the researchers could watch how their actions changed as they got closer to the virtual world's end.

"My role is working with customers, helping them go through this digital transformation. I spend a lot of time talking to banks, big industries, manufacturers working through how they are integrating and transforming their IT platforms and moving them forward," explained William Morrish, General Manager Product Sales at Interoute, in this SYS-CON.tv Cloud computing is now being embraced by a majority of enterprises of all sizes. Yesterday's debate about public vs. private has transformed into the reality of hybrid cloud: a recent survey shows that 74% of enterprises have a hybrid cloud strategy. Meanwhile, 94% of enterprises are using some form of XaaS - software, platform, and infrastructure as a service.

Chinese ridesharing leader Didi Chuxing has opened a Silicon Valley research hub, where it will join the race with other tech companies for autonomous driving. The Didi Labs centre in Mountain View – which is also the home of Google – will focus on "intelligent driving technologies," according to a statement Wednesday. Building on rich data and fast-evolving AI (artificial intelligence) analytics, we will be working with cities and towns to build intelligent transportation ecosystems for the future," said Didi founder and chairman Cheng Wei. One of the engineers hired for the lab is Charlie Miller, who gained famed two years ago for hacking into a Jeep to show how automobiles can be taken over remotely. "My job is to make sure the assisted driving and autonomous systems developed and used by Didi are resistant to external attacks and threat," Miller, who has been working at Uber, said in a tweet.

In order to counter the growing nuclear threat from North Korea in the Korean Peninsula, the U.S. is expected to deploy an unmanned aircraft system to South Korea, Yonhap News Agency reported Monday, citing a Seoul military official. The attack drone will be deployed to strengthen strike capabilities against ground targets in the North, the official told the South Korean news agency. The Gray Eagle aircraft will be deployed to a U.S. military base in the southwestern town of Gunsan -- about 111 miles south of Seoul, the report said. However, it is still unclear when the system will be installed. The Gray Eagle is capable of striking military facilities in the north of the Military Demarcation Line separating the two Koreas, the official told Yonhap.

Plenty of animals communicate with one another, at least in a general way--wolves howl to each other, birds sing and dance to attract mates and big cats mark their territory with urine. But researchers at Tel Aviv University recently discovered that when at least one species communicates, it gets very specific. Egyptian fruit bats, it turns out, aren't just making high pitched squeals when they gather together in their roosts. According to Ramin Skibba at Nature, neuroecologist Yossi Yovel and his colleagues recorded a group of 22 Egyptian fruit bats, Rousettus aegyptiacus, for 75 days. Using a modified machine learning algorithm originally designed for recognizing human voices, they fed 15,000 calls into the software.

Perhaps in the future, artificial intelligence will intervene and write this article. Perhaps in the future, the editorial team will become redundant and ARN will embrace a form a robo-journalism. Perhaps in the future, it even won't matter, because the entire channel will also be unemployed. And what a different world it would be. For the rise of AI - as the world likes to categorise it - is storming along like a tech freight train, charging through barriers and racing towards a new world. Within this new world, will naturally be new ways to engage, conduct business and make money, creating opportunities and challenges for the channel in parallel.

Good news for road warriors: Keeping track of travel expenses is getting a whole lot easier. From mobile apps with voice recognition to online travel-booking sites, new technology is allowing employees to record and create expense reports on the fly as they travel, so they don't have to spend as much time after the fact tallying up their costs. The innovations are reducing one of the biggest headaches business travelers face: keeping track of receipts, submitting expense reports on time and facing questions about the legitimacy of certain charges. "I am so glad the days of having to carry around and protect receipts are over," says Michael Jacobs, chief procurement officer for office-supply company Staples Inc., which uses expense-processing technology from Coupa Software. In addition to streamlining expense reporting, the tools are helping organizations save money by making it easier for employees to comply with company travel policies.

How can people learn to work better with robots? First, have them watch robots on the silver screen. That's the finding of a recent study that had 56 undergraduate students rate their feelings toward humanlike service robots. Half of the group watched the science-fiction movie "Robot and Frank," which involved a robot, and the other half watched "Safety Not Guaranteed," a sci-fi romantic comedy that didn't involve robots, before they made their decision. The result: Those who viewed the movie with the robot were more likely to say that they would buy humanoid robots that assist the elderly.