The German car manufacturer admitted cheating emissions tests. Which companies are impacted directly or indirectly by these revelations? James Phare from Data To Value used graph analysis and open source information to unravel the impact of the VW scandal on its customers, partners and shareholders. Since September 18 when VW admitted to modifying its cars to disguise their true emissions performances, the news has made headlines worldwide. In all this noise, it's difficult to piece together the important information necessary to assess the event's impact.

Just last week, an evil, god-like robot defeated Go grandmaster Lee Sedol, a tragic accomplishment that seemed decades away in 2012. In some ways it completed the Triple Crown of robot-fun-killing which began with Garry Kasparov's defeat at the hands of DeepBlue in 1997 and continued with the ritual slaughter of Ken Jennings on Jeopardy in 2011. And now, the robots are coming for our books. As reported by Japan News, researchers from Japan's Future University Hakodate have announced that a book co-written by team members and artificial intelligence made it onto the long list of the Nikkei Hoshi Shinichi Literary Award. The prize itself is somewhat unique.

Customers hoping to buy a new phone in Tokyo are being met with a team of'emotional' robots ready to answer their questions. SoftBank has replaced staff with 10 humanoid Pepper robots in the city's first Pepper Phone Shop. The robots can answer questions, give suggestions and chat to customers by reading their tone of voice and facial expressions. SoftBank has replaced staff with a team of 10 humanoid Pepper robots in the city's first Pepper Phone Shop (picutred). It is the world's first store to be exclusively staffed by machines and will be open until 30 March.

Global technology leaders and senior executives from around the world spoke on a range of topics, including Digital India, Smart Cities, Make in India, Skill India and cutting-edge technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, 3D printing, drones, robotics, robotic surgeries and genomics, at the two-day EmTech India 2016 event, held in New Delhi on 18 and 19 March. The event was organized by Mint and MIT Technology Review, published by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The speakers included Jack Hidary, senior adviser at Google X Labs; Bhaskar Pramanik, chairman of Microsoft India; and Sharad Sharma, co-founder of think tank iSPIRT. The full list can be accessed at emtech.livemint.com/speakers. Here are edited excerpts from their speeches. A moonshot is an initiative that accompanies a goal that was previously thought to be near impossible. Moonshot philosophy sounds like it is quite radical and risky, but actually it is low-risk. That is because it attracts the best human capital and finance. Moonshot approaches do a few things. First, they attract the best human capital, which is a key driver of growth. They attract the best financial capital as well; capital from big and long-term thinkers. One describes India as a moonshot nation. India itself is going through a radical transformation--the likes of what we have never seen. This is very different to what is happening in China or any other country in the world. It is a combination of smartphones, digital payments, broadband and power of energy storage coming together. Smartphones ease the access to the Internet and open up users to mobile apps and that really changes the name of the game.

Somewhere in a Cupertino warehouse, a giant labors with robotic precision, its 29 arms singularly focused on one thing: an iPhone. But instead of putting pieces together, this robot is pulling pieces apart. It disassembles iPhones at the rate of one handset every 11 seconds--less time than it takes you to fish your phone out of an overcrowded bag. Apple calls the machine Liam. The project was kept secret for three years, says Mashable deputy tech editor Samantha Murphy Kelly, who was allowed a sneak preview of Liam in action.

The video game industry has already taken 2016 by storm. With San Francisco's annual Game Developers Conference seeing record numbers of attendees, and Ubisoft's The Division becoming the fastest-selling original IP in games history – and generating 300m in the process – there's good reason to be excited if you're a video game fan. If first-person shooters are not your cup of tea, there's Stardew Valley, a new role-playing adventure game that allows you to go fishing, plant seeds and fall in love. Joining co-hosts Keith Stuart and Jordan Erica Webber are the founder of UK-based studio Fourth State, Mark Backler, and the community manager at Chucklefish, Molly Carroll.

Mauna Kea Technologies (Euronext: MKEA, FR0010609263; OTCQX: MKEAY), inventor of Cellvizio(R), the multidisciplinary confocal laser endomicroscopy platform, today announced its full-year results for the financial year ended December 31, 2015, as approved by the Board of Directors at its meeting on March 23, 2016. Benoît Jacheet, Chief Financial Officer of Mauna Kea Technologies, stated: "2015 was a critical year in the implementation of our updated strategic plan and this affected our sales performance. Even so, we successfully delivered a significant improvement in our gross margin and operating performance by streamlining our cost structure to reduce fixed operating costs. Increased financial flexibility is expected to support the continued growth of our global user base." As previously reported, Mauna Kea Technologies recorded a 22% decline in its full-year 2015 sales to EUR8,547 thousand.

Editor's note: Kevin Gray is president of Cannon Gray LLC, a marketing science and analytics consultancy. He would like to thank Marco Vriens of Ipsos for his helpful comments on a draft of this article. Machine learning gets a lot of buzz these days, usually in connection with big data and artificial intelligence (AI). But what exactly is it? Broadly speaking, machine learners are computer algorithms designed for pattern recognition, curve fitting, classification and clustering.

March 24--Hey, millennials: Microsoft wants to chat with you. The Redmond company introduced tay.ai Wednesday, an emoji-fluent, snarky chat bot aimed at 18- to 24-year-olds in the United States. The bot will reply to messages sent to it on any of those platforms in a style mimicking teenage Web speak. Tay, Microsoft says, was built by mining public data and using machine-learning technology and input from a staff that includes improvisational comedians.

Life essentials made better and more affordable." These are the types of startups that partner Paul Buchheit said were demoing today at Y Combinator's Winter 2016 Demo Day 2. Yesterday, we covered the first 60 startups from the batch, and picked our 7 favorites. Buchheit went on to say about today's big aspirations, "Those challenges may seem too large or too complex for a startup to solve. But as Kyle and Dan showed us with Cruise, often the hardest problems are the best investments." He was referring the GM's 1 billion acquisition of Cruise, a YC startup that built self-driving car tech. Today, the room was jam packed, with more chairs brought in for rich investors who were forced to sit on the floor yesterday. Buchheit joked about the first YC batch in summer 2005, saying "Back then no one wanted to go to Demo Day." Someone in the crowd yelled, "15 people wanted to go to Demo Day." Now, there are several hundred VCs avidly watching the presentations. Over the past few years, Y Combinator has expanded to accept startups from a much wider range of industries than traditional apps, including biotech, energy, hardware, and international logistics. When we spoke to investors in the past, some worried they might not have the expertise necessary to evaluate these companies. Now, YC President Sam Altman tells me many VCs have "hired other experts" to fill the gaps. He says "it's become fashionable to hire a Chief Science Officer." As a result, Altman believes that when it comes to funding, these alternative startups "seem to be doing just was well if not a little better" than their traditional software batchmates. Spinal Singularity – Better catheter Last year, over 5 million people were catheterized. Spinal Singularity wants to tap into the 2 billion urinary catheter market with a connected catheter that allows you to control the flow of urine by actuating a magnetic valve. The connected catheter is minimally invasive, and can be inserted or extracted in your own home.