People don't want cars, they want rides. And they're scrambling to do something about it. Just months after GM poured money into Lyft (the one with the pink mustasche), Toyota and Volkswagen both said today they were joining up with other ride-hailing rivals. Toyota, meanwhile, is partnering with Uber to, among other things, let people automatically deduct their car payments from the fares they make as Uber drivers. Clearly automakers have Silicon Valley envy.

One of the most useful things about robots is that they don't feel pain. Because of this, we have no problem putting them to work in dangerous environments or having them perform tasks that range between slightly unpleasant and definitely fatal to a human. And yet, a pair of German researchers believes that, in some cases, feeling pain might be a good capability for robots to have. The researchers, from Leibniz University of Hannover, are developing an "artificial robot nervous system to teach robots how to feel pain" and quickly react in order to avoid potential damage to their motors, gears, and electronics. They described the project last week at the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) in Stockholm, Sweden, and we were there to ask them what in the name of Asimov they were thinking when they came up with this concept.

The Iller river stretches for 91 miles through southeastern Germany before meeting up with the Danube. This river, like all rivers, is filled with sediment-- rocks and pebbles from thousands of years ago that sit on the riverbed and along the bank. One day last year, Benjamin Maus was lounging near the Iller admiring a handful of pebbles. "I was basically just sorting pebbles and spraying them with sunscreen, which made the colors much more vivid," Maus recalls. At the time Maus, an artist, had no clue that these pebbles would inspire his latest work.

French police have raided Google's Paris office as part of an investigation into the company's tax affairs. The raid began at 5 a.m. Tuesday, Paris time, according to local newspaper Le Parisien, and involved five public prosecutors, 25 computer experts, and investigators from the French tax office and the Central Office for the Prevention of Corruption and Financial and Tax Crimes (OCLCIFF), the public prosecutors' office told local media. French prosecutors began investigating Google's finances last June, following allegations from the tax authorities that the company was involved in serious tax fraud. Tax officials in other European countries are concerned about the resulting loss in tax revenue.

It has become one of the most popular dating apps for young, single people looking to meet partners. But Tinder is also the go-to service for some couples looking for a ménage à trois, and it seems the company wants to keep it that way. Tinder is trying to shut down a threesome app called '3nder', suing it over the similarity of the companies' names. You might associate Tinder with young, single people looking to meet partners. But the dating app is also the go-to for some couples looking for a ménage à trois, and it seems the company wants to keep it that way.

There's been a perception that the adoption of technology in legal services has been slow over the past few years. However, according to the ALM 2015 Law Tech Survey this is certainly beginning to change as 95% of firm leaders and technologists respondents agreed or mostly agreed with recent decisions by management regarding the firm's technology. Law firms have faced a number of challenges over recent years. Although the UK is recovering well from the 2009 financial crisis this also led to stricter compliance regulations. With the increase in regulatory demands there is a need for better finance and risk mitigation.

Inc.'s 11th annual 30 Under 30 list features the young founders taking on some of the world's biggest challenges. In 2013, a high-frequency trader named Michael Coscia was arrested in New Jersey for an activity called "spoofing"--essentially manipulating the market by flooding trading systems with future orders he had no intention of completing. He was fined 6 million--with the possibility of jail time. It was the first such prosecution under a new set of financial regulations from the 2010 banking reform law called the Dodd-Frank Act. That was an aha! moment for David Widerhorn, 28, and it became his reason for founding Neurensic.

In machine learning, a programmer might develop an AI that can calculate all possible consequences of a single action. Humans, however, don't have the same raw computational power; we have to efficiently create and execute a plan. We mentally invent different "layers" to organise our actions and then think about the higher levels rather than individual steps, according to a Neuron study from members of Google DeepMind and the University of Oxford. "The idea is basically to understand how humans or animals make long-term decisions," says Jan Balaguer, a PhD student at University of Oxford and member of Google DeepMind. "We're interested in trying to find machine-learning solutions to difficult tasks and real-life problems. Quite often it can be useful to draw inspiration from neuroscience."

There's been a perception that the adoption of technology in legal services has been slow over the past few years. However, according to the ALM 2015 Law Tech Survey this is certainly beginning to change as 95% of firm leaders and technologists respondents agreed or mostly agreed with recent decisions by management regarding the firm's technology. Law firms have faced a number of challenges over recent years. Although the UK is recovering well from the 2009 financial crisis this also led to stricter compliance regulations. With the increase in regulatory demands there is a need for better finance and risk mitigation.

Move over Janet Yellen, automation in the workplace is about to get personal. Instead of relying on the Federal Reserve chair, imagine using a computer to transform mountains of raw economic data into reliable predictions for unemployment, inflation and gross domestic product. "The capability is here," says Andrew Lo, director of the Laboratory for Financial Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, near Boston. "The biggest hurdle is the cultural barrier. You've got a lot of central bankers who are not as open to technology."