VC Chris Dixon of Andreessen Horowitz thinks it's a lot harder to predict financial cycles than it is to see a new computing platform coming down the pike. As he noted in a recent post, new cycles tend to begin every 10 to 15 years; assuming the 2007 introduction of the iPhone kicked off the last wave, we're fast heading toward the Next New Thing. Or things, technically, according to Dixon, who we caught up with yesterday. Among the trends that Dixon is watching closely, he says, are virtual reality, augmented reality, IoT, wearables, drones and cars. Not that it'll be easy to make money off these newer technologies. In fact, Dixon suggests it could be ridiculously challenging, given how quickly Facebook, Google, and Amazon are bringing aboard related talent.

A self-driving car built by Chongqing Changan Automobile Co, Ford's Chinese partner, has successfully driven 1,200 miles (nearly 2,000 kilometres) across China, Bloomberg reports. In a statement to the Shenzen stock exchange, the company revealed that the car had travelled from Chongqing in the southwest to Beijing in the northeast, using camera sensors and radar to test a variety of functions. These included lane-changing, automatic cruising, assisted driving in high traffic, traffic sign recognition, speed reduction and voice control. It made the journey in six days, which averages out at 200 miles per day. This is consistent with Google's 54 self-driving cars on public roads, which average between 185 and 275 miles per day.

When Hollywood actress Angelina Jolie found out she carried a faulty variant of the BRCA1 gene, her doctors told her she had an 87% chance of developing breast cancer. Armed with this knowledge, she chose to undergo a double mastectomy in 2013 to reduce the risk to around 5%. This kind of genetic testing can now be done much faster and at lower cost, giving clinicians the ability to target treatments more effectively. And combining this technological breakthrough with cloud computing and artificial intelligence is giving pharmaceutical companies the tools to develop drugs faster and with greater chance of success. One beneficiary of this new approach is Eric Dishman, founder of tech giant Intel's first health research and innovation laboratory in 1999 and a founding member of its digital health group in 2005.

Imagine yourself one hundred years from now. Yes, you're still alive, breathing through genetically engineered pig lungs, and having dinner at your favorite restaurant. A robot waiter rolls up to refill your glass of wine, which is equipped with a sensor that allows the restaurant to automatically deduct 10 from your Bitcoin account. Your companion, who doesn't actually speak the same language as you, is saying how much she loves her salad, which comes from a farm that uses precision agriculture techniques to boost productivity by effectively dividing fields into one-inch square plots that each receive customized fertilizer mixes based on their specific conditions. You understand her perfectly thanks to a small device in your ear that instantly translates her words and perfectly mimics her voice.

Nadine, a robot receptionist at the Nanyang Technological University (NTU), is staring at the visitor in front of her. "I remember you," she says. "You were here last Saturday." The long-haired, uncannily human-looking robot pauses as her software runs through past interactions to figure out the most appropriate thing to say. Finally, she settles on: "We talked about your job."

If you suspect that your significant other is bringing others into your bedroom, you could have an adult conversation about it or seek couple's counseling. Alternatively, you can buy a 1,700 smart mattress called the Smarttress that will tell you when your partner is having sex with someone that isn't you. Smarttress is the invention of Durmet, a Spanish mattress company that was inspired by the fact that Madrid has the highest number of cheating spouses in Europe. It features 24 sensors within the springs, which the company calls the "Lover Detection System." These sensors know which areas of the mattress are receiving pressure and make a 3D map of the bed.

It's a good time to be Alphabet Inc. (GOOG), the parent company of Google. The holding company that owns Google, YouTube and Android -- as well as so-called moonshots like self-driving cars, the home-networking division Nest and Google Fiber -- is expected to turn in healthy first-quarter results on Thursday, driven by its dominant position in online search and display advertising. On Wednesday, the European Commission is expected to formally charge Google for favoring its own apps and services on its Android mobile operating system, which powers more than 80 percent of the world's smartphones. That will be the latest in a decade of entanglements with regulators on both sides of the Atlantic; Google also got some bad press in Britain earlier this year for having paid just 185 million in taxes over the past decade. Also confronting Google -- and the rest of the tech industry -- is how to manage government and law enforcement requests for information.

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer delivers the keynote address at the Yahoo Mobile Developer Conference in San Francisco on Feb. 18, 2016. SAN FRANCISCO -- The news of the day was about Yahoo's latest quarterly earnings, but inquiring minds were riveted on bidding for the company's core Internet business. Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer on Tuesday didn't tell curious analysts and the media much, making it clear she wouldn't detail the initial bids for the embattled company or how Yahoo's business trajectory beyond this year impacts that process. But if first quarter results are any indication, the future isn't bright. Yahoo reported 859 million in adjusted revenue, down 17% from 1.04 billion in 2015, and compared to 1.09 billion in 2014.

If you thought you were good at badminton, then step aside and take a look at this robot champion hit a few shots against a human competitor in China. Scientists developed the robot which is modelled to play against an actual person and is being sold as a good alternative player if you're lacking a badminton playing buddy. The playmate was produced by scientists in Chengdu and unveiled at a tournament in southern China's Shenzhen City. Cool! Dubbed the Robomintoner, the machine took part in an amateur badminton competition on April 16 As the footage shows, the robot is the ultimate badminton playing partner. Dubbed the Robomintoner, the machine took part in an amateur badminton competition on April 16.

Machine learning is a subset of the field of computer science known as artificial intelligence (AI), which seeks to simulate the workings of a human brain. Machine learning is a form of programming, where the software improves its response after learning from previous responses, rather than following only scripted responses. Nascent forms of machine learning first emerged some 20 years ago. The most modern form is "deep learning", which tries to model the neural networks of the human brain by identifying millions of patterns in large datasets to predict the next outcome. It plays an important role in big data analytics and is currently the rage in machine-learning research, given the accessibility of big data and computational power.