After what feels like months of waiting, Nintendo's newest console - the Nintendo Switch - is almost here. The console makers have very kindly sent The Independent a console before release, the above video showing our unboxing. A few notes: the Switch is the first console to be charged by a standard cable, the USB-C, a new form of USB port that is gradually growing in popularity. Second, the Joy-Con controllers do not charge through the included grip. Instead, users will have to buy a separate, chargeable grip.

Ever since the idea of autonomous of vehicles began appearing on the roadmaps of major car makers, the UK government has made it clear that Britain can provide a strong platform for them to develop and test what they've built. Some projects, like the Lutz Pathfinder pod, are already underway, but questions have remained over who will be liable when autonomous modes are engaged on public roads. The 2016 Queen's Speech included a "Modern Transport Bill" that set out what needed to be done to support the introduction of driverless cars in the coming years. The document, which called for new and updated legislation, has now been worked on and finalised as the Vehicle Technology and Aviation Bill. In it, the government lists a number of proposals regarding how self-driving cars should be insured and suggests new rules requiring petrol stations (like Shell) and businesses to install more charging points for electric and hydrogen-powered cars.

Insurance companies will need to offer two types of protection for self-driving cars in the UK, to cover times when the vehicle is driving itself and times when a human driver is in control, according to government proposals. The plans, which are detailed in the Vehicle Technology and Aviation Bill, enable drivers involved in an accident to claim compensation if the incident took place when their car was driving autonomously. Under the rules, insurers would be able to try to recover their costs from the vehicle manufacturers. The giant human-like robot bears a striking resemblance to the military robots starring in the movie'Avatar' and is claimed as a world first by its creators from a South Korean robotic company Waseda University's saxophonist robot WAS-5, developed by professor Atsuo Takanishi and Kaptain Rock playing one string light saber guitar perform jam session A man looks at an exhibit entitled'Mimus' a giant industrial robot which has been reprogrammed to interact with humans during a photocall at the new Design Museum in South Kensington, London Electrification Guru Dr. Wolfgang Ziebart talks about the electric Jaguar I-PACE concept SUV before it was unveiled before the Los Angeles Auto Show in Los Angeles, California, U.S The Jaguar I-PACE Concept car is the start of a new era for Jaguar. Japan's On-Art Corp's CEO Kazuya Kanemaru poses with his company's eight metre tall dinosaur-shaped mechanical suit robot'TRX03' and other robots during a demonstration in Tokyo, Japan Japan's On-Art Corp's eight metre tall dinosaur-shaped mechanical suit robot'TRX03' performs during its unveiling in Tokyo, Japan Singulato Motors co-founder and CEO Shen Haiyin poses in his company's concept car Tigercar P0 at a workshop in Beijing, China A picture shows Singulato Motors' concept car Tigercar P0 at a workshop in Beijing, China Connected company president Shigeki Tomoyama addresses a press briefing as he elaborates on Toyota's "connected strategy" in Tokyo.

Luciano Floridi has a job title that might seem odd at first glance but has a strong underlying logic: professor of philosophy and ethics of information at the Oxford Internet Institute at the University of Oxford. Anyone who thinks seriously about technology's role in society has to bring an element of philosophy to the mix. It involves critical discussion and questions around ethics in addressing the core issue of whether innovations are going to be good or bad for people in the long term. It underpins Floridi's work in looking at the implications of digital technology on people's lives and society, and leads him into areas beyond those highlighted by many of the tech evangelists. It includes the implications for public services, and while he is no alarmist, he says that governments should be careful in planning for what they want to achieve.

We are almost at the point when ALL future apps will include elements of AI -- and the implications are profound. I am sure we are all familiar with the Intel slogan, "Intel inside." This has been a very powerful tagline and one that has helped Intel become the dominant PC chip supplier. But I believe that this slogan will be rapidly replaced by "AI inside" because I believe we are almost at the point when ALL future apps will include elements of AI. I also believe there is a very good chance that Amazon's Alexa might become the de facto automatic speech recognition platform that will sit in front of (outside) every single app in the future.

The Centre Valbio research station, a modern building of stone and glass set in the jungled hills at the edge of Madagascar's Ranomafana National Park, was starting to look like the third season of The Wire. Big tackboards lined the walls, each one covered with dozens of pinned-up photographs. Some images were grouped together in families, while others floated alone, unconnected. It was 2012, and Rachel Jacobs was using Detective McNulty-style tactics to sort out the associations in a very different kind of crew: the park's population of red-bellied lemurs. A biological anthropologist, Jacobs was studying how color vision evolved in lemurs, which meant keeping track of more than 100 animals.

Nasa might have announced the biggest exoplanet find ever, but gamers are already gearing up find the next one. As scientists announced that they had found the "holy grail" of exoplanets – a solar system of seven worlds that could support life – a game announced that it was beginning the search for the next one. Massively multiplayer online game EVE Online has announced that it will be launching a search for planets orbiting our solar system, looking through the huge amount of data and images captured of other planets in our galaxy. From the International Space Station, Expedition 42 Flight Engineer Terry W. Virts took this photograph of the Gulf of Mexico and U.S. Gulf Coast at sunset This image of an area on the surface of Mars, approximately 1.5 by 3 kilometers in size, shows frosted gullies on a south-facing slope within a crater. The image was taken by Nasa's HiRISE camera, which is mounted on its Mars Reconaissance Orbiter The Soyuz TMA-15M rocket launches from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Monday, Nov. 24, 2014, carrying three new astronauts to the International Space Station.

Amazon has argued that the voice of Alexa, the artificial intelligence assistant used in its range of Echo speakers, has First Amendment rights. The company is fighting an order to hand over recordings from an Amazon Echo used by James Andrew Bates, who is on trial for allegedly murdering his friend Victor Collins in Arkansas in November 2015. Amazon has filed a 90-page document, which is available to read on Forbes, contesting the warrant demanding the audio covering the 48-hour period from 21-22 November 2015. The giant human-like robot bears a striking resemblance to the military robots starring in the movie'Avatar' and is claimed as a world first by its creators from a South Korean robotic company Waseda University's saxophonist robot WAS-5, developed by professor Atsuo Takanishi and Kaptain Rock playing one string light saber guitar perform jam session A man looks at an exhibit entitled'Mimus' a giant industrial robot which has been reprogrammed to interact with humans during a ...

AI powered by neural nets have not only excelled at tasks that require pattern recognition, they have also succeeded in performing tasks that require basic logic and reasoning -- areas that have conventionally been computers' Achilles' heel. In this backdrop, the question is, can neural networks be exploited to usher in an era of data-driven astronomy and create some of the sharpest ever images of celestial objects? The answer, according to a new study published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, is yes. In the paper, a group of researchers from the Swiss university ETH Zurich describe a neural net-enabled system that can recognize and reconstruct astronomical features that telescopes could not resolve, including star-forming regions, bars and streams of dust in galaxies. In order to create this system, the researchers used an adversarial learning technique, wherein two neural networks compete and try to outsmart each other.

The launch of the Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8 is still weeks away, but many of the handsets' details have already been revealed in a series of leaks. Samsung will almost certainly not unveil its new pair of flagships at Mobile World Congress this weekend, and is instead rumoured to be planning a New York event towards the end of March, ahead of an April release. The latest Samsung leak comes from Twitter user @evleaks, who has got his hands on a legitimate-looking specs list for the larger of the two upcoming smartphones. Assuming it is the real deal, the list confirms that the Galaxy S8 will feature an enormous 6.2-inch screen, with a Quad HD resolution. For comparison, the ill-fated Note 7 – Samsung's flagship large-screened handset before it was recalled and discontinued – used a 5.7-inch display, and last year's S7 and S7 Edge used a 5.1-inch screen and 5.5-inch screen, respectively.