Google has made access to Nvidia graphics cards available on its Compute Engine and Cloud Machine Learning platforms, enabling users to access additional computational horsepower for training smart software and artificial intelligence (AI). Users of the Google Cloud Platform (GCP) will be able to tap into the parallel processing capabilities of Nvidia's Tesla K80 graphics processing units (GPUs) by spinning up virtual machines in the us-east1, asia-east1 and europe-west1 regions of the GCP. Offering such a service helps avoid the need for companies working on software and systems that use machine and deep learning algorithms to have GPU clusters in their own data centres. "As always, you only pay for what you use. This frees you up to spin up a large cluster of GPU machines for rapid deep learning and machine learning training with zero capital investment," said Google's product manager John Barrus.

As hedge funds embrace the cool calculations of big data, they find themselves wrestling with something far more human -- a struggle for power. The firms have been loading up on data scientists and coders to deliver on the promise of quantitative investing and lift their ho-hum returns. But they are discovering that the marriage of old-school managers and data-driven quants can be rocky. Managers who have relied on gut calls resist ceding control to scientists and their trading signals. And quants, emboldened by the success of computer-driven funds like Renaissance Technologies, bristle at their second-class status and vie for a bigger voice in investing.

The smartphone is enabled with artificial intelligence (AI) for snapping amazing selfies. Apart determining the age and gender, the Magical AI Beautification (aka MTbeauty 2.0) on Meitu T8 can enhance selfies by detecting the skin tone. The AI selfie feature can even improve the appearance of each face individually in group photos. The Magical AI Beautification can whiten the teeth and remove the saggy appearance below the eyes. It can make the skin look smoother and add make the face glow without making it artificial.

As Katy Franco waited for her morning coffee, passersby pulled out their phones and snapped photos and video of her barista. A man in his 20s did a double take, recorded the scene on his iPhone and posted it to Instagram. Another woman drifted toward the barista and asked no one in particular: "What's going on here?" Franco's barista was a robot. It's part of an automated coffee shop called Cafe X - the latest example of the San Francisco's dual infatuations: artisanal coffee and automated technology.

Apple will soon open the door of its huge new campus, moving thousands of staff into the donut-shaped building. The campus, which brings to an end years of work, will be christened Apple Park and take up 175 acres in the Santa Clara Valley. The vision for the campus began in 2011, when Steve Jobs presented plans for the building to the council. In the six years since it has become a fascination of Apple and architecture fans, based on its huge ring-shaped design which is made entirely of the world's biggest glass panels. As well as hosting 12,000 of Apple's staff, Apple Park will also feature a visitors centre that will include an Apple Store and cafe.

First commercial rocket launch from Kennedy Space Center's historic pad 39A where Apollo missions started the voyage to the moon. The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched from Kennedy Space Center on Sunday, Feb. 19, 2017, en route to the International Space Station. The Dragon cargo ship was scheduled to dock with the space station Wednesday, Feb. 22, 2017, but it was pushed back to Thursday, Feb. 23, 2017. MELBOURNE, Fla. -- An unmanned SpaceX Dragon cargo ship aborted a planned Wednesday morning rendezvous with the International Space Station and will try again Thursday, NASA said. At 3:25 a.m. EST, less than three hours before the Dragon was to be captured by a robotic arm on the station, Dragon computers automatically rescheduled the approach after its navigation systems recognized something wrong in data about the station's location.

A few hours after dark one evening earlier this month, a small quadcopter drone lifted off from the parking lot of Ben-Gurion University in Beersheba, Israel. It soon trained its built-in camera on its target, a desktop computer's tiny blinking light inside a third-floor office nearby. The pinpoint flickers, emitting from the LED hard drive indicator that lights up intermittently on practically every modern Windows machine, would hardly arouse the suspicions of anyone working in the office after hours. But in fact, that LED was silently winking out an optical stream of the computer's secrets to the camera floating outside. That data-stealing drone, shown in the video below, works as a Mr. Robot-style demonstration of a very real espionage technique.

President Donald Trump's "poisonous" rhetoric during his campaign to win the presidential election led to a global trend in increasingly divisive politics, Amnesty International's 2016/17 annual report released Wednesday said. "Donald Trump's poisonous campaign rhetoric exemplifies a global trend towards angrier and more divisive politics. Across the world, leaders and politicians wagered their future power on narratives of fear and disunity, pinning blame on the "other" for the real or manufactured grievances of the electorate," the report titled "The state of the world's human rights" read. The publication also commented on the instability of the Trump-led administration, saying: "His predecessor, President Barack Obama, leaves a legacy that includes many grievous failures to uphold human rights, not least the expansion of the CIA's secretive campaign of drone strikes and the development of a gargantuan mass surveillance machine as revealed by whistleblower Edward Snowden. Yet the early indications from President Trump suggest a foreign policy that will significantly undermine multilateral co-operation and usher in a new era of greater instability and mutual suspicion."

A video game livestreamer has mysteriously died after taking part in a day-long challenge. Brian Vigneault, who was known to his friends and fans as Poshybrid online, intended to run a 24-hour livestream of himself playing games as part of a challenge to raise money for the Make A Wish Foundation. But 22 hours into the stream, Mr Vigneault went for a cigarette and didn't return to the computer. Fans later discovered that he had collapsed and died while away from the video. That information was shared by first responders who arrived at Mr Vigneault's house the morning after the stream, and used a computer logged into his chat app to confirm the news with a friend.

There's a rising chorus of concern about how quickly robots are taking away human jobs. Jobs are vanishing much faster than anyone ever imagined. In 2013, policy makers largely ignored two Oxford economists who suggested that 45% of all US jobs could be automated away within the next 20 years. But today that sounds all but inevitable. Those self-driving cars you keep hearing about are about to replace a lot of human workers.