Have you ever considered what real people actually do with the products of all of the innovation flowing from the IT industry? Sometimes, the answers are quite obvious. Shopify (NYSE:SHOP) essentially builds websites for mainly smaller businesses and facilitates credit card transactions. Silver Spring Networks (NYSE:SSNI) uses the technology of the IoT to facilitate the "intelligent city" and the "smart grid." Salesforce (NYSE:CRM) sells solutions that help companies manage both their sales people or agents and manage their customer interactions. Those and other solution sets are sold to rather obvious customers. But who actually buys and uses Big Data Appliances or Artificial Intelligence or advanced analytics. But in recent years, some financial services firms have tried to transform themselves from their roots as the providers of simple financial products used by consumers and business into what is known these days as Fintech. There are more than few such companies and perhaps at this point, there are companies with more aspirations as opposed to significant revenue. Equifax (NYSE:EFX) for many years has been known as one of the 3 major credit reporting agencies, the people who calculated your credit score using some arcane methodology. The business of selling credit scores to both business and consumers is hardly the most exciting in the world and has modest growth organic growth prospects in the US.

When Donald Trump opens his mouth, the output can seem like the work of a demented Markov chain, a poorly trained algorithm trying its hand at rhetoric. Key words--"great again," "let me tell you," "we don't win anymore"--end up strung together by exceptionally weak ligaments. His syntax seems generated on the fly, word to word, each stumbling straight into the next, bound by the barest loyalty to grammar. As only he could, Trump's brought the state of political speech down to the state of the art of machine speechwriting. This past winter, a graduate student at the Technical University of Denmark earned significant attention for the politicians he was crafting in Python.

Looking in fine form after two days of rest, Roger Federer equaled Jimmy Connors' Open-era record by reaching his 14th Wimbledon quarterfinal and added to his own mark by making it at least that far at a Grand Slam tournament for the 48th time. Federer, a seven-time champion at the All England Club, has not dropped a set in the tournament through four matches after beating unseeded American Steve Johnson 6-2, 6-3, 7-5 at Centre Court on Monday. Johnson was making his debut in the fourth round of a major. The No. 3-seeded Federer hadn't played since Friday, when he was the only man to finish a third-round match. He next faces No. 9 Marin Cilic, the 2014 US Open champion, who advanced when Kei Nishikori retired from their fourth-round match.

Each Sunday, we publish a list of top articles and other content related to manufacturing in areas like quality control, product development, supply chain management, sourcing, auditing and law. The world of manufacturing is constantly evolving. It never seems to stop. Just when one technology seems to take center stage, another one steps up. One big performer on the horizon is machine learning.

Nearly one in four of the UK adult population – 12.6m adults – lacks key basic digital skills, according to GO ON UK. This gap has many causes and implications, but high on the list is jobs, because those who lack digital skills are more likely to be unemployed. This is more significant to young people, given that the youth unemployment rate is 14.4% and people aged 16 to 24 are three times more likely to be out of work than the rest of the working population. It is estimated that over 4.4 million IT jobs will be created around Big Data, but only a third of these new jobs will be filled. At Acorn Aspirations we strongly believe that if young people are inspired to create technology from an early age, they will be better equipped to face the constantly changing digital world we live in and contribute as creators of technology and change-makers to solve the most pressing local and global problems.

It's your nighttime routine: You drop your phone onto the nightstand charging pad, and it asks about your day. You tell it, talking to the virtual personal assistant just like you'd talk to a friend. Your phone's artificial intelligence knows you almost as well as you know yourself (maybe even better). So when it suggests ways to get through tomorrow's calendar, you trust its advice. AI is practically everywhere, and getting smarter all the time.

Amazon wasn't the only technology stock to outshine the broader market for tech shares during the last three months. Investors also hit the'play' button on shares of companies that get all or most of their revenue from the computer-games business. Sony (SNE), Activision Blizzard (ATVI), Electronic Arts (EA) and NetEase all posted market-trouncing returns for the second quarter, a period when the Nasdaq was essentially flat. So did shares of Nvidia (NVDA), whose graphics chips are used in powerful computers favored by gamers. The question now for momentum investors is how far the stocks can run, as these issues tend to be volatile.

German car maker BMW has announced that it is joining forces with US computer chip giant Intel and the Israeli technology firm Mobileye to develop self-driving cars. The three companies'are collaborating to bring solutions for highly and fully automated driving into series production by 2021,' they said in a joint statement. The news comes amid growing interest in self-driving cars following tests over the past few years by Google and research by several major automakers. The future of BMW could see driverless cars rolled out by 2021 in an effort to make travel'safer and easier'. Pictured is the German car firm's i3 electric car Germany's premium auto makers are at the centre of thecountry's global reputation for meticulous engineering. But with the expected shift in focus from a car's body toits brains, the risk is that the expertise will accumulate insilicon valley or in China, rather than Germany's carmakingregions of Bavaria and Baden-Wuerttemburg.

In April, a group of Finnish farmers outfitted a spindly black drone with a remote-controlled chainsaw and filmed it decapitating snowmen. They called it "Killer Drone." More formally, it was a DJI S1000. This spring, marine biologists flew a drone over the Sea of Cortez to capture samples of the fluid sprayed from the blowholes of blue whales. It was a DJI Inspire 1.

Welcome to California Inc., the weekly newsletter of the L.A. Times Business section. When trading resumes Tuesday, investors will be watching whether the stock market can retain the momentum it had at the end of last week when U.S. stocks had almost completely recovered from the losses suffered after British citizens voted to leave the European Union. The Bank of England has promised to take steps to boost the British economy, but U.S. investors may be looking close to home when the latest national jobs report is released Friday. Zombies released: Universal Studios Hollywood will open its "The Walking Dead" attraction Monday, one of several new attractions this summer at Southern California theme parks. "Walking Dead" will rely on a combination of animatronics and real-life actors playing zombies who chase and lunge at park visitors.