Apple is expected to remove the headphone adapter with its next iPhone, leaving people unable to use traditional headphones with their new mobiles. The company famously – or infamously – dropped the headphone jack from its handsets with the iPhone 7. But at the time it promised that nothing much would change for people with traditional headphones, since the box would come with an adapter that would allow them to be plugged into the charging port. Now that adapter is being removed, according to various reports. As such, people will be required to stop using their traditional headphones, or get an adapter of their own.

Science has always relied on a combination of approaches to derive an answer or develop a theory. The seeds for Darwin's theory of natural selection grew under a Herculean aggregation of observation, data, and experiment. The more recent confirmation of gravitational waves by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) was a decades-long interplay of theory, experiment, and computation. Certainly, this idea was not lost on the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory, which has helped advance the boundaries of high-performance computing technologies through the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility (ALCF). Realizing the promise of exascale computing, the ALCF is developing the framework by which to harness this immense computing power to an advanced combination of simulation, data analysis, and machine learning.

Where is AI already the norm? Are you reading this blog on your smartphone, by any chance? Are you sure that all the tweets you have read in the last few days were written by humans? Did you use a machine to check in for your most recent flight? Traffic lights collect information on how many cars and pedestrians are currently approaching them and who should therefore get a green light next.

As Britain braces for a second bout of scorching weather this weekend, experts have warned this summer could finally break the records set by the infamous heatwave of 1976. The blistering temperatures in June stood toe-to-toe with those of June 1976, while this summer's July was hotter than its counterpart 42 years ago. If Britain is hit by a hotter-than-average August - as has been forecast by advanced computer models - 2018 could be the hottest summer ever recorded. This year's prolonged heat is the result of a number of factors, including extended high pressure and higher than average surface temperatures in the Atlantic Ocean. Experts have also warned that rising global temperatures caused by climate change are making the heatwaves gripping the northern hemisphere more ferocious and more likely.

Companies across sectors and regions are seeing an initial boost in process speed and performance from machine learning (ML). SMART MACHINES ARE REINVENTING HOW WORK IS DONE 3. To maximize the potential of AI, digital leaders must create self-adapting, self-optimizing "living processes" that use machine learning algorithms and real-time data to continuously improve. The ability for machines to act as agents of process change will unlock new roles and ways for humans and machines to work together. Of the companies surveyed: agree that machine learning will result in improvements in job satisfaction and retention. Consider your workforce and AI to be complements.

It's coming quickly down the road: a world where we can get in a car anytime we want to but don't own one. Where accidents are drastically reduced, and we don't have to worry about dangerous drivers on the road. Where we can join conference calls or draft a report on our morning commute. Cars are changing more quickly and drastically now than at any other point in their history. And it's no wonder: from 2014 to 2017, start-ups, automakers and other stakeholders invested an estimated $80 billion into autonomous vehicle (AV) technology.

Sarah Jeong, a technology journalist hired by the New York Times and vilified online for tweets comparing "dumbass f****** white people" to dogs and saying they would "all go extinct soon", has been targeted for harassment by dishonest trolls, her former employer has claimed. Editors at The Verge, an online tech magazine, denounced what they called "disingenuous" criticism of Ms Jeong by "people acting in bad faith". The senior writer had been the victim of a Gamergate-style campaign designed to "divide and conquer by forcing newsrooms to disavow their colleagues", they suggested. Ms Jeong, 30, posted a string of offensive and apparently racist messages including "#CancelWhitePeople" and "white men are bulls***" up to five years ago. After being uncovered they quickly spread and were picked up by conservative media including the Daily Caller and Gateway Pundit websites.

Japan's graying society will require more investment in technologies such as artificial intelligence and robots to make up for a decline in the labor force and its effect on economic growth, according to a government report released Friday. The world's third-largest economy is on a firm footing, the white paper said, having enjoyed a moderate recovery for the past five and a half years under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's policies, including aggressive monetary easing by the Bank of Japan. "Corporate profits are at record highs, labor and income conditions are improving, and increased income is leading to an expansion in consumption and investment, showing that a'virtuous economic cycle' is beginning to take hold," said the annual white paper on economy and fiscal policy. But the report warned that the country is also experiencing its worst labor shortage in a quarter century, and some industries such as transportation services and construction may already be seeing earnings suffer as a result. "Amid an aging population, (Japan) needs to drastically strengthen the supply side of the economy in order to deal with the labor shortage and realize sustainable growth," it said.

Can machine learning be used to accelerate the development of traditional software development lifecycle? As artificial intelligence and other techniques get increasingly deployed as key components of modern software systems, the hybridisation of AI and ML and the resultant software is inevitable. According to a research paper from the University of Gothenburg, AI and ML technologies are increasingly being componentised and can be more easily used and reused, even by non-experts. Recent breakthroughs in software engineering have helped AI capabilities to be effectively reused via RESTful APIs as automated cloud solutions.

Historically, artificial intelligence (AI) in the finance sector has been limited to algorithmic systems that can trade stock at lightning speeds. Yet such programmes, designed to exploit tiny differences in value, have little understanding of any wider business context. "The challenge for finance is that information that could be relevant to any financial decision could be scattered across a huge number of different places", says David Robson, Watson Director of Financial Services in Europe. "Finance is not a closed system – it's affected by world events, by national legislation, even by the emotions of the people involved. That needs far more than rapid calculation – it needs a system that can learn and understand" This short video explains how IBM Watson absorbs human learning and uses it to support business processes - interacting with individuals to improve and personalise the customer experience, and taking the'work' out of paperwork.