Tinder, the dating app notorious for translating physical attraction into the swipe of a single fingertip, has launched a group dating feature. Tinder Social has been rolled out on a trial basis in Australia, but has been met with alarm after users realised the new feature exposes Facebook friends that also use the app. In a blog post announcing the launch of Tinder Social, the company presents the function as a means to meet people on a platonic basis, promising to take "an average night out with your friends to the next level". Users included in the trial are now able to join public groups consisting of Facebook contacts, and others can add them to these groups without permission. Crucially, these features are opt-out rather than opt-in; Tinder might out a person as a user of its app before an individual has a chance to turn the feature off.

Tinder wants to help you go out and bring along some friends. The popular dating app is expanding beyond one-to-one matches and looking to connect groups. Called Tinder Social, the new feature lets users create a group of people that includes everyone's pictures and names -- pulled from users' Tinder profiles -- as well as a location of where you are interested in going for the night. The app then functions the same as one-to-one matching, where users can swipe and match with other nearby groups that are interested in a night out. Once you're matched, you can chat with everyone in the group.

Plants have memories of past events that they can pass onto their offspring. For instance, 'mother' plants can sense temperature changes and use that information to form long-term memories that help future generation flower at the right time. Now, new research has found a prions, a protein linked to mad cow disease, could be responsible for how plants form memories. Plants have memories of past events that they can pass onto their offspring. Prions are a type of protein that fold under certain conditions. They can also trigger other proteins around them to fold as well.

They had invented--or, rather, discovered; no, really they'd just inexplicably gone to the trouble of creating--a die with a hundred and twenty sides. "What do you use it for?" "We have no idea," he answered. Futility notwithstanding, the d120 is billed as the "ultimate fair die allowed by Mother Nature (i.e., mathematics!)," At two inches in diameter and a little more than three ounces in weight, the d120 casts an impressive but not a runaway roll--even with so many sides, all of them skinny right triangles, the die is far from spherical.

With business applications of artificial intelligence ranging from customer service, to hiring, to marketing, it's clear that AI is a tool that is critical for companies to embrace. But using AI has consequences for business structures, hierarchies, and budgets. The world's smartest cities: What IoT and smart governments will mean for you Intelligent cities are at the forefront of the next wave of the Internet of Things. The goals are to streamline communication and improve the lives of citizens. And save a little money along the way.

A slowdown in tech start-up funding has at least one big beneficiary: Walt Disney Co.'s video games division. The entertainment giant is having an easier time finding partners with whom it can develop mobile games, one of its top executives said last week. Why? Up-and-coming companies are losing access to the cash needed to launch games on their own. "As the venture money has dried up and exits have slowed down and valuations have come down, larger game developers that have one or two hits [but not a big stable of them] are now open to work with us in co-development," said Chris Heatherly, senior vice president and general manager at Disney Mobile Games. The comments came during a discussion last week at the L.A. Games Conference with Michael Metzger of investment bank Houlihan Lokey.

Auckland-based software developer Touchpoint Group has launched a new artificial intelligence program, designed to help companies better understand customer behaviours. Labelled Ipiphany, it is the first cognitive analytics program in the world to be able to simultaneously "learn" from combinations of customer information collected via text, machine learning and natural language processing. Launched following a three-year cognitive behaviour research project by data scientists in Australia and New Zealand, the research allowed Touchpoint Group to develop a cloud-based solution designed to deliver faster insight compared to traditional research methodologies. Formed in Auckland in 2001, Touchpoint is one of the region's leading developer of customer engagement software across industries including banking, insurance, and utilities, and already provides solutions for many of the largest banking and financial services companies. Touchpoint Group CEO Frank van der Velden believes Ipiphany could "dramatically improve" the financial returns from existing investments in "customer data" made by large companies.

Golfers in Japan will soon be able to get drinks, snacks, and other products delivered to them by drone while they're out on the course. Rakuten, a major Japanese shopping portal, will launch the drone delivery service in May at a course in Chiba, to the east of Tokyo. Golfers will be able to order from a menu of roughly 100 items through a dedicated Android app, and each drone delivery will be limited to 2kgs of goods. The service will be offered daily from 8:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. and suspended during bad weather. To operate the service, Rakuten has a dedicated drone depot where an operator will pack the goods and set the delivery location.

Professor Toby Walsh, Professor of Artificial Intelligence at the University of New South Wales will be giving a lecture on the future of robotics tomorrow at UCT. Professor Walsh is currently on the Executive Council of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, and an advocate of the'Campaign to Stop Killer Robots'. He is also Editor-in-Chief for the Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research. John Maytham speaks to Professor Walsh to find out more about the lecture he will be delivering, and the interesting subject of artificial intelligence. AI is trying to build computers to do things that we would normally think of as intelligent and its starting to pervade our lives. He says artificial intelligence is starting to take over more aspects of the things humans do.

Artificial intelligence and UAVs are two emerging technologies with big potential. Due to the continual breakthroughs in semiconductors, natural language processing, and other technologies, some scientists think that AI could eclipse human intelligence as soon as 2029. Given the improvements in weight reduction and battery technology, many investors believe UAVs could do everything from powering Internet connections to delivering products quickly over the next decade too. Given the two technologies' potential, it isn't surprising that Chevron (NYSE: CVX) has big plans for artificial intelligenceand UAV technology for its future. Let's explore in more detail.