The ancient ruins of Palmyra, one of Syria's oldest cities, have stood for 3,000 years, but, since last May, the Unesco World Heritage site has been facing some of the most brutal threats to its existence. Located in an oasis northeast of the Syrian capital of Damascus, Palmyra has become a significant symbolic and military position in the now 5-year-old Syrian conflict. After seizing the city of roughly 50,000 residents last May, the Islamic State group was forced out of Palmyra over the weekend by forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar Assad. On a strategic level, retaking Palmyra gives the Syrian regime a strong military base for future operations against the militants' other strongholds as well as renewed control over some of Syria's most important oil and gas fields. But regaining Palmyra is also a highly symbolic win for the Syrian regime -- now trying to salvage whatever is left of the ancient ruins -- in its quest to position itself as a key partner in the fight against the terrorist group, also known as ISIS. An aerial view of the historic city of Palmyra, in Homs Goveronorate, Syria, is seen in this still image taken from a drone video, March 28, 2016.

Nintendo will launch its first app for mobile devices in the U.S. on March 31, the video game maker announced Tuesday. Interestingly, Nintendo's first app, called Miitomo, isn't a game but a social experience where users interact with each other using Mii avatars, which were introduced with the Nintendo Wii video game console. Users start by downloading the app and creating their Mii with an avatar editor, or using a picture of themselves taken with their smartphone camera. Users can also import their Mii from the Wii or Nintendo 3DS through a QR code. Users then link the app to their Facebook or Twitter accounts to add friends, then answer a series of questions to help spur conversations.

So he and his business partner, Dan Roth, decided to create a program that would help lawyers manage electronic documents for litigation. Their idea led them to purchase an e-discovery application. By 2000, Leib and his partner launched their own creation, Discovery Cracker. "We saw a gap in the marketplace," Leib says. Lawyers need tools to keep up with it." Instead of wading through piles of paper, lawyers now deal with terabytes of data and hundreds of thousands of documents. E-discovery, legal research and document review are more sophisticated due to the abundance of data. So while working as chief strategy officer at kCura in Chicago, Leib saw a need again in the market. "For years, lawyers have been stuck with antiquated tools that focus primarily … on Boolean search. Better tools are needed to truly understand data." "What is the future of the industry?

In addition to work authored by humans, it also considers the literary output of artificial intelligence software. And the results of the latter are--surprisingly and scarily--not that bad. Researchers from Japan's Future University Hakodate submitted a short story called "The Day a Computer Writes a Novel," or "Konpyuta ga shosetsu wo kaku hi," and it comes across as something a human might have written (though not perhaps a human called Jonathan Franzen): I writhed with joy, which I experienced for the first time, and kept writing with excitement. The day a computer wrote a novel. The computer, placing priority on the pursuit of its own joy, stopped working for humans. The prize was created in the memory of Hoshi Shinichi, a science fiction writer whose novels include The Whimsical Robot.

While fans eagerly await the release of the'Tom Clancy's The Division' game, Ubisoft Entertainment and BETC Paris announce the launch of Collapse, a realistic, local and global end of society simulator. Collapse is an interactive digital experience, created by BETC Paris to promote Ubisoft's upcoming online open world action role-playing game, 'Tom Clancy's The Division'. Based on the game's fictive yet realistic storyline, which takes place in a society on the brink of destruction, Collapse is an end of society simulator that uses real data to create a personalized experience of events to set the scene before the game launches on March 8. Collapse is a powerful reminder of the fragility and complexity of the interdependent systems that we rely on daily – power, transport, banking, hospitals and communications. When one fails, others follow, creating a deadly domino effect that can cripple society in a matter of days. Through a sequence of interactive storytelling, Collapse takes viewers through the consequences of the fictional Variola Chimera pandemic, demonstrating how quickly the cities and society that we take for granted can fall apart. Launching on March 8, 2016, Tom Clancy's The Division (TCTD) is set in a society on the brink of collapse.

Chat apps are very popular and arguably, most people would prefer engaging in a chat conversation rather than make a phone call. Going by recent buzz, it's apparent that tech giants are planning to bring chat conversations to advertisers and marketers. But there are many startups out there already using chat conversations to simplify user queries. Yellow Messenger is one such Bangalore-based startup. Instead of a team of people answering your queries however, it has put in place an Artificial Intelligence-powered interface that converses with users and responds to their queries related to shopping, real estate, recharge, etc.

Tech and the elderly are often thought of as being incompatible. Everyone has spent painful hours teaching their grandmother how to text, and entire days have been dedicated to setting up a computer for an elderly person. But tech can actually help the elderly in numerous ways. From smart homes to wireless trackers, tech for the elderly can increase independence, alleviate the concerns of carers and relatives, and generally make life a whole lot easier. The elderly tech market should not be underestimated: the proportion of Britons aged 85 and over is expected to double from 2.5% to 5% within 20 years.

Umbo CV has raised a 2.8 million seed round for its security cameras, which use artificial intelligence to identify suspicious activity and prevent crimes before they happen. The Taipei- and San Francisco-based startup's funding was led by AppWorks Ventures, with participation from Mesh Ventures, Wistron Corporation, and Phison Electronics. The two-year-old startup has already shipped its system--including cameras and a cloud-based management platform--to clients in Dubai, the United States, and Europe, and will begin mass manufacturing next month. Co-founder and chief executive officer Shawn Guan says Umbo CV has also received 1.4 million in pre-orders and letters of intent from other customers. Its funding will be used for research and hiring.

A team of researchers at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) led by Li-Shiuan Peh has come up with a new infrared depth-sensing system. The new system, which works outdoors as well as in, was built by attaching a US 10 laser to a smartphone, with MIT saying the inexpensive approach could be used to convert conventional personal vehicles, such as wheelchairs and golf carts, into autonomous ones. Inexpensive rangefinding devices, such as the Microsoft Kinect, have been a great help to robotics engineers. Using the off-the-shelf product that relies on an infrared laser to measure distance, they allow for rapid prototyping and the ability to create robots that can sense and navigate in their environments without having to constantly reinvent the necessary technology. Unfortunately, Kinect and similar infrared-based systems tend to be a bit fussy when it comes to ambient light conditions.

Here's the technology news you need to know this Tuesday. The FBI says it has hacked into the San Bernardino shooter's iPhone without Apple's help. The fact that the FBI was apparently able to get the encrypted data without Apple's help raised new security questions about Apple's devices. The photo app plans to completely change the way its feed works by algorithmically ranking photos, instead of showing them in reverse chronological order. NTT Data Corp wants to expand in North America and improve its services business.