In its latest Windows 10 Insider Preview Build, Microsoft has given you the power to shut down or restart your PC by your voice alone--a convenience that also may allow pranksters of all stripes to wreak havoc. Microsoft rolled out Preview Build 14986 of Windows 10 to insiders in the Fast ring on Wednesday, on the first day of its Windows Hardware Engineering conference (WinHEC) in Shenzhen, China. It's a rather substantial build, offering the ability to restart, lock, or shut down your PC via Cortana. It allows you more freedom to control your music via Cortana, provides better PC game support via the Windows Game Bar, includes a Windows Defender dashboard, features improved Windows Ink capabilities, and much more. The new build also ships with specific improvements for customers in Asia, including a better typing experience for Chinese keyboards.

WinHEC (Windows Hardware Engineering Community) is Microsoft's string of conferences designed to get hardware developers jazzed about developing for the Windows platform. Microsoft's goal, like anyone with an ecosystem, is to get their fair share of resources committed to their platform. At this year's WinHEC 2016 in Shenzhen today, Microsoft laid out what could possibly be the biggest look into the future of the personal computing platform we have seen in a while. Part of that has to do with the upcoming Creator's Update that is coming to Windows 10 next year that will enable new and more immersive user experiences. Microsoft brought both Intel and Qualcomm on stage to talk about the developments from each of the companies and how each of them is working with Microsoft to enable new experiences to users with Windows.

Competition for talented information technology experts is intensifying in Japan's job-hopping market amid advances in the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Demand for competent IT workers is growing rapidly from non-IT companies in the face of an expanding need for adaptation to the so-called internet of things (IoT), or the networking of automobiles, home appliances and other physical objects, and artificial intelligence. Automakers stand out in the market, and the new technologies not only promise drastic improvement in the efficiency of manufacturing operations but may also make self-driving technology fully practical. "Automakers are betting their fate on the development of self-driving vehicles now that Google Inc. and other nonautomotive companies are entering the sector," said Kaoru Fujii, chief editor of the Recnavi Next career-switch website. IT engineers who used to work mainly for the creation and management of in-house computer systems at non-IT companies are seen offering extra value to final products.

The stunning maps made from three million satellite images... The'golden cigar' UFO: Strange object flashes red and blue... The future of flying: NASA tests radical new embedded jet... Would YOU grow cannabis in your kitchen? The stunning maps made from three million satellite images... The'golden cigar' UFO: Strange object flashes red and blue...

Two simple proofs of the triangle inequality for the Jaccard distance in terms of nonnegative, monotone, submodular functions are given and discussed. The Jaccard index [8] is a classical similarity measure on sets with a lot of practical applications in information retrieval, data mining, machine learning, and many more (cf., e.g., [7]). A very simple, elementary proof of the triangle inequality was given in [5] using an appropriate partitioning of sets. Here, we give two more simple, direct proofs of the triangle inequality. One proof comes without any set difference or disjointness of sets.

We consider the problem of multi-class classification and a stochastic opti- mization approach to it. We derive risk bounds for stochastic mirror descent algorithm and provide examples of set geometries that make the use of the algorithm efficient in terms of error in k.

Could a robot one day feel a gentle breeze on its skin? We might be getting closer to yes. On top of protecting us from the elements and germs, our skin is a remarkable sensor. Through it we feel everything from the slightest breeze to a sharp slap, not to mention heat, moisture, texture and more. As researchers build sophisticated robots or prosthetics to replace missing limbs, they're trying to figure out how to replicate skin's abilities.

A new study has revealed that women who are optimistic are less likely to die from cancer, heart disease, stroke, infection, and several other major causes of death. The positive health effects for the women were shown to last over eight years. The study's most optimistic women had a nearly 30 per cent lower risk of death from major diseases than its least optimistic women. Do plants learn like humans? Smart seedlings can be taught...

Even the biggest businesses start out small. The sale last month of Skyscanner, the travel industry start-up, is just another example of British entrepreneurial success, built over a number of years – and defies those who bemoan the country's failure to produce big winners. But which are the businesses to watch in 2017? Well, while picking winners from smaller companies is fraught with difficulties, here are five young British companies tipped for big things over the year ahead. Captify is an insights-driven advertising technology company founded in 2011 that, via its purpose-built Search Intelligence platform, analyses more than 15 billion online searches each month.