Taro Yoko, director of NieR: Automata, leans forward in his chair. "The stories I write really aren't very good at all," he says, through a translator. So I wouldn't have great expectations for the game if I were you." I've just spent a few hours playing a preview build in London, and it was anything but crap. The story follows a pair of combat androids who are fighting on humanity's behalf. They talk about life and death, and what it means to be caught up in a never-ending cycle of war. The Japanese game designer is, perhaps, trying to temper expectations. Two years ago, no one would have guessed that a new NieR was in development. The first title was a commercial flop, and Square Enix, the game's publisher, had shown no interest in a sequel. NieR was a strange experience, extending the story of the original, equally bizarre Drakengard game from the PlayStation 2 era. It starts in the distant future, in a bleak, snow-covered Tokyo. The adventure then cuts to more than 1,000 years later, where humanity has reverted to swords and rudimentary houses once more. Even stranger, the same characters depicted in the "modern" prologue seem to be living in this new, fantastical world. "Square Enix came to me and said, 'Well, it didn't sell very well.

The live-action remake of Ghost in the Shell is fast-approaching theaters, so of course Hollywood's marketing machine is churning out more trailers in anticipation. The latest teaser is a two-minute affair diving into "The Major" and her mysterious origins. Little is revealed but there are plenty of hints concerning her previous life. While the government has given her one story, the film's shady villain, a damaged but dangerous cyborg called Kuze, is offering another, quite different version. Much of the movie, it seems, will focus on The Major hunting Kuze and the truth simultaneously.

Our breath contains a slew of information about our health in the form of molecules whose existence and concentration can serve as biomarkers for disease. Typically breath sensors focus on a single biomarker and therefore are limited in their scope and screening ability. A worldwide scientific collaboration headed by a team from Technion Israel Institute of Technology has developed a breath sensor capable of detecting many different molecules and correlated these biomarkers to 17 different diseases. The device consists of an array of specially prepared gold nanoparticle sensors and ones based on a random network of single-walled carbon nanotubes. While it is impressive on its own, what gave it special powers was to use it to collect breath samples from thousands of patients with different diseases and to use artificial intelligence software to find correlations in the data.

The race for autonomous cars is starting to heat up after Ford announced they will be investing a billion dollars over the next five years into Argo AI, an artificial intelligence company. Ford have previously made it clear to the public they will be releasing a self-driving car in 2021 and this monumental investment into developing the best AI technology only reinforces their commitment to the cause. Argo AI, founded by former Google and Uber leaders, will be sharing their robotics and AI expertise with Ford to further develop Ford's already advanced virtual driver system. Ford President and CEO, Mark Fields, compares autonomous vehicles to Ford's previous accomplishments in terms of their impact. "The next decade will be defined by the automation of the automobile, and autonomous vehicles will have as significant an impact on society as Ford's moving assembly line did 100 years ago," he said.

After numerous PR requests were thwarted I was forced to cave and buy an Echo Dot - the first time ever I have had to buy technology - bar Apple products - such was the draw. After two months my verdict is in; if you haven't bought one yet, wait to buy one...this puppy is cute not toilet trained (yet). Firstly, let me say Echo is a superbly made product that is changing a lot of lives, playing a lot of music and will influence how people buy stuff. However excited I am by the potential, I am equally, if not more, saddened by how far we are still yet to go and why some functionality was omitted. Echo is, for all intents and purpose a glorified speaker and lazy audio search.

The Galaxy Note 7 was not only a big disappointment to fans, it was also an expensive learning experience for Samsung. Nevertheless, the overall success of the Note series is far greater than the fiasco the problematic handset caused the South Korea tech giant. So, just like what many tech sites are saying, Samsung is not at all done with the Galaxy Note brand and it is far from abandoning its famous phablet line. Ever since Samsung mobile unit head D.J. Koh announced last month that the company is releasing a Galaxy Note 7 successor, many fans of the Note series were pleased and have since started to keep tabs on updates regarding the next phablet. If the latest report on the upcoming handset is to be believed, Samsung may have derived the device's codename or working title from the deepest lake in the world.

Countries are amassing cyberweaponry on an unprecedented scale and reconfiguring militaries to meet the threat of cyberwar. Autonomous weapons are being increasingly sought my militaries around the world, but experts fear the worst. AUTONOMOUS robots with the ability to make life or death decisions and snuff out the enemy could very soon be a common feature of warfare, as a new-age arms race between world powers heats up. Harnessing artificial intelligence -- and weaponising it for the battlefield and to gain advantage in cyber warfare -- has the US, Chinese, Russian and other governments furiously working away to gain the edge over their global counterparts. But researchers warn of the incredible dangers involved and the "terrifying future" we risk courting.

India's patent laws allow for reverse-engineering of certain technologies. A prime example of this reverse-engineering is in the pharmaceutical space, where Indian pharma companies are allowed to reverse-engineer drugs, especially life-saving ones. These drugs may have been developed by pharma majors in other parts of the world--and then introduced into western markets--after India-based outsourcing firms had helped them out with clinical trials, data gathering and reporting to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) or its equivalent to get these drugs passed. Indian courts have continued to allow such reverse-engineering of drugs--famously prompting Bayer AG's then CEO Martin Dekkers to say at a conference a few years ago, "We did not develop this medicine for Indians. We developed it for western patients who can afford it."

Dyson is expanding its footprint in Singapore, with a new Technology Centre opened today by the maker of vacuums and other smart home electronics. The UK company will be investing $561 million as part of its commitment to the new facility, which hosts working labs where research and development teams can pool their cumulative hardware and software know-how to help advance the company's growing ambitions. If you're only passingly familiar with Dyson's work, you might be wondering what a company that makes vacuums needs with a half-million dollar tech facility with a focus the company says is on "artificial intelligence, machine learning and software development. But Dyson has always emphasized its tech edge in the domestic cleaning hardware market, and it's only doing more to push that advantage lately, including more work in robotics, computer visions systems and machine learning with products like its Dyson 360 Eye robot vacuum. As you can see from the photos of the facility, the company also put a lot of engineering work into one of its most recent products, the Supersonic hair dryer.

PayPal has updated its list of User Agreements to include an unusual "non-discouragement clause for sellers" designed to prevent sellers from criticising the service. It has announced a number of price hikes too, which are detailed further down the page. "In representations to your customers or in public communications, you agree not to mischaracterize PayPal as a payment method," reads the non-discouragement clause. 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.