It's already been three years since Amazon first revealed its somewhat audacious plan to make deliveries by drone. But the company is quite serious about this, and today it is announcing that it complete the first Amazon Prime Air drone-powered delivery. The company recently launched a trial in Cambridge, England -- and on December 7th, Amazon completed its first drone-powered delivery. It took 13 minutes from order to delivery, with the drone departing a custom-built fulfillment center nearby. Amazon's video about the project says that it's only servicing a few customers in the area right now, but will soon be open to dozens more who live within a few miles of the Cambridge fulfillment center.

The Minecraft video game is popular with children; now a version is being used to test artificial-intelligence programs. The Minecraft video game was familiar to José Hernández-Orallo long before he started using it for his own research. The computer scientist, who devises ways to benchmark machine intelligence at the Polytechnic University of Valencia in Spain, first watched his own children play inside the 3D virtual world, which focuses on solving problems rather than shooting monsters. In 2014, Microsoft bought Minecraft, and its science arm, Microsoft Research, gave its own researchers access to a new version of the game that allowed computer programs, as well as people, to explore and customize the 3D environment. Then, after inviting a small group of outside researchers that included Hernández-Orallo to download the machine-friendly version of the world, last July, Microsoft made it freely available to anyone, with the goal of speeding up progress in artificial intelligence (AI).

This week, we bring you the first VB Engage to have been recorded live on stage! That's right: At Web Summit in Lisbon earlier this year, we got to interview Alan Schaaf of internet phenomenon Imgur about the evolution of the company, geek culture, community, and what it takes to create a success from seemingly meagre beginnings. In the news segment, Travis quizzes Stewart about his trip to Helsinki (where he spoke at Nexterday North and Slush), and discovers what he learned about the near future, artificial intelligence, mobile marketing, and where technology is taking us next.

M6 Publicité and M6 Web Select Accenture's New Advertising Offering, Powered by Artificial Intelligence, To Target Ads More Effectively NEW YORK; Dec. 13, 2016 – M6 Publicité and M6 Web, Group M6 subsidiaries, have chosen Accenture's (NYSE: ACN) new Advanced Video Analytics offering that uses artificial intelligence to more accurately predict customer advertising preferences and serve targeted ads more effectively. M6 Group is the second largest private TV Group in France with major traditional TV channels such as M6, W9, and 6ter, as well as 6play, a free digital TV platform. M6 Publicité and M6 Web chose Accenture to implement a powerful data-driven advertising optimization tool run by a team of data scientists, analysts and developers. This data tool integrates several Accenture offerings including artificial intelligence that increases the number of users reached with targeted ads. Processing large amounts of historical user data, artificial intelligence can predict with more precision users' interests, behaviors, and purchasing actions.

'Scumbag unions': Chants outside Brighton rail station Watch woman get dragged off jet by police in Detroit'We talked about life': Trump and Kanye discuss surprise meet Drag race ends in Lamborghini crashing into other cars Impressive fireball lights up Spain's Costa del Sol night sky Feliks Zemdegs breaks Rubik's cube speed-solving world record Caught on camera: Checkout line fight erupts over couponing Angry motorist challenges traffic warden over'illegal parking' Brave 12-year-old punches armed robber in the stomach Hunters forced to shoot a wild bear dead as it charges towards them Confrontation with taxi driver found in back seat with young girl

A video game industry insider has revealed how he helped track down a "troll" who had threatened to leak his company's secrets. Sam van Tilburgh said his team had managed to identify the teenager and obtain some of his schoolwork, which it then published online as a warning. The firm followed this up with its own threat to alert the youth's family to his activities. More than a decade later, the stolen materials remain private. Mr Van Tilburgh disclosed the affair at an event held by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (Bafta) on Tuesday evening.

The Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence has organized a 4 month contest in Kaggle on question answering. The aim is to create a system which can correctly answer the questions from the 8th grade science exams of US schools (biology, chemistry, physics etc.). DeepHack Lab organized a scientific school hackathon devoted to this contest in Moscow. Our team decided to use this opportunity to explore the deep learning techniques on question answering (although they seem to be far behind traditional systems). We tried to implement Dynamic memory networks described in a paper by A. Kumar et al.

To get your morning started right, take a look at the latest stories published since yestereday. Science fiction has moved one step closer to science fact, with Microsoft's launch of a universal translator, an application that allows conversations between groups of people speaking different languages to be translated in real time. Tagged In Smartphone Microsoft Star Trek App Store (i OS) Android (operating System) Artificial Intelligence London Spanish Language Skype German Language Google Play Refugee Afrikaans Chinese Language Welsh Language Human Trafficking Universal Translator Klingon Language Samoan Language Matthew Tostevin/Reuters The Minecraft video game is popular with children; now a version is being used to test artificial-intelligence programs. The Minecraft video game was familiar to José Hernández-Orallo long before he started using it for his own research. The computer scientist, who devises ways to benchmark machine intelligence at the Polytechnic University of Valencia in Spain, first watched his own children play inside the 3D virtual world, which focuses on solving problems rather than... Tagged In Smartphone Minecraft Virtual World Microsoft 3D Computer Graphics San Francisco Web Browser Video Game California Seattle Artificial Intelligence Robotics London Spain University Of Washington Elon Musk Artificial Neural Network Cambridge Microsoft Research Chief Technology Officer Turing Test Visual System Atari Valencia Computing Bloomberg Satya Nadella, chief executive officer of Microsoft Corp., speaks during a keynote session at the Microsoft Developers Build Conference in San Francisco, California, U.S., on Wednesday, March 30, 2016.Microsoft Corp. said it will release a translation app for Windows and other operating systems from rivals Apple Inc. and Google, part of a broader race between the world's largest technology companies for supremacy in the field of artificial intelligence.

Earth is NOT prepared for a surprise asteroid strike: Nasa warns'there's not a lot we can do about it at the moment' Experts have warned that humans are not prepared for an asteroid impact, and should one head for Earth, there's not much we can do about it (stock image) Back from the dead: Haunting reconstruction lets you look... Can'antacids' tackle climate change? Scientists say... Nasa and Stephen Hawking to launch a'self-healing' starship... The mystery of the'brightest supernova ever seen':... Back from the dead: Haunting reconstruction lets you look... Can'antacids' tackle climate change? Scientists say... Nasa and Stephen Hawking to launch a'self-healing' starship... The mystery of the'brightest supernova ever seen':... Nasa is planning an ambitious mission that will see a robotic spaceship visit an asteroid to create an orbiting base for astronauts.

Now we know what facial expression the rodents make when they're feeling good. The best way to tell if a rat's happy, according to a new study, is to look at its ears. A happy rat's ears hang relaxed to the sides (right), instead of perked up (left). It can be hard to tell, since they can't exactly greet us with a grin. But now, for the first time, scientists have spotted the rat equivalent of a smile--and it's all in the ears. They found that happy laboratory rats not only can be literally tickled pink, but they relax their ears so that they hang loosely to the side.