How do you improve on a design as classic as the round wall clock? Glance Clock founder and CEO Anton Zriaschev has conjured up a delightful timepiece that blends elements of analog and digital design and promises to make you more productive by helping you avoid distractions and--surprisingly enough--the compulsion to keep an eye on the clock so you don't miss important events and appointments. TechHive only covers the occasional crowdfunding project (the Glance Clock's Indiegogo campaign starts today). To catch our interest, the project has to be particularly interesting, and the startup must be able to provide a working prototype. Zriaschev has only a handful of those, so he made the three-hour trek from the San Francisco Bay Area to my home (and TechHive's de facto test lab) to show me his invention.

BEIJING – Prime Minister Shinzo Abe earned unusual praise from Chinese netizens Wednesday -- but for the quality of his calligraphy, rather than his diplomacy. Beijing and Tokyo are at loggerheads over disputed islands and wartime history, and Abe has raised hackles with his criticism of his neighbor's assertiveness in the South China Sea. But the Japanese leader was lauded after he purportedly left a hand-written note in Chinese thanking a cleaner at the hotel he stayed in for the G-20 summit in Hangzhou last week. It gave Abe's name, title and the date, adding: "Thanks." It was posted on China's Twitter-like Weibo last week by a journalist who founded what is said to be Japan's largest Chinese-language news website, and had been reposted more than 700 times by Wednesday.

From launching a yearlong anti-ISIS airstrike campaign in Syria to conducting naval exercises in the South China Sea this week, Russia's military might is showing no signs of slowing after its global expo promoting the country's brand new weapons of war concluded Sunday. The International Military-Technical Forum, an event held this past week near Moscow called "Army-2016," featured more than 11,000 pieces of modern military hardware to show "the maximum range of the export potential of Russian high-tech military products, represented in the form of natural samples on static display and in action on land, water and in the sky," the official website says. Some of the items on display included bombs, air defense systems and unmanned vehicles for both the air and ground that Sputnik News called robots. Below are photos and video of 10 key state-of-the-art weapons of war Russia had on display. The horwitzer armored truck that is also known as the "Phlox" comes with a powerful cannon mounted on top that has the ability to shoot with precision targets that are more than 6 miles away.

Apple may be rethinking its strategy on self-driving cars. The firm has never publicly announced its automotive plans, but it has long been rumoured that it is working on an autonomous vehicle of its own. Now the focus appears to have shifted to creating the software for an autonomous vehicle, opening the door to the possibility of partnering with other car companies. Earlier this year, a concept video revealed ideas for a futuristic-looking Apple car, with a wide dashboard display and smart capabilities. Claims that Apple is working on cars may seem like a leap, but it isn't the first time such projects have been discussed by the Californian firm.

For being known as fighting to keep their projects secretive, Apple doesn't seem to mind that it's not so secret car project is known everywhere. Now, there's been a slight change in focus from being an automaker to developing its own self-driving technology. The iPhone-maker's automotive project, long an open secret in Silicon Valley, is shifting to focus on creating the technology for an autonomous vehicle that doesn't require a human driver. The new direction apparently doesn't foreclose the possibility that Apple might someday build its own car, but it opens the door to partnering with other car companies. The new emphasis was confirmed Friday by a person with knowledge of the project after the New York Times reported that Apple is "rethinking" its automotive strategy. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to discuss the project.

Ford Motor Co. F -2.75 % unveiled on Friday the latest part of its vision for future: bicycles and buses. The 113-year-old auto maker, whose Model T spawned a billion-plus horseless carriages, is racing other auto makers and upstarts such as Apple, Google and Uber toward a world transformed by innovations such as self-driving cars. Chief Executive Officer Mark Fields on Wednesday announced the auto maker had agreed to acquire Chariot, a private shuttle service popular in the Bay Area, and that it would sponsor the city's version of New York's Citi Bike. Blue Ford GoBike bicycles will become ubiquitous starting next year as the San Francisco program run by Motivate ramps up to 7,000 bikes in 2018 from 700 today. The moves illustrate Ford's effort to provide solutions for big-city congestion, Mr. Fields told the crowd.

Two self-sailing ships have been travelling across the Bering Sea, off the coast of Alaska. The boats are operated by Saildrone, a company that is creating robotic sailboats that can travel without sailors for up to eight months. These autonomous vessels can collect details on water temperature, salinity and ecosystem information that would be difficult and expensive to collect by person. Saildrone is a company creating robotic self-driving sailboats that can travel without sailors for up to eight months. The Saildrone boats have been used by scientists and engineers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to collect valuable information about the Alaskan coast.

Forget ideology, liberal democracy's newest threats come from technology and bioscience

Naturalist Charles Darwin believed the expanse of open ocean in the Pacific was an'impassable barrier' that separated species living on its east and west coasts. This, he argued, accounted for the differences seen in animals on each side of the ocean in much the same way as a mountain range or a desert may split habitats and lead to different species evolving on either side. Now researchers have proved him correct after showing that coral living in the eastern tropical Pacific are completely isolated from the rest of the ocean. Researchers have simulated how coral larvae spread across the Pacific Ocean using computer simulations. While coral themselves are invertebrates that form large static reefs fixed in place by their hard exoskeletons, they can spread by producing swarms of larvae that can colonise new areas.

The investment firm Susa Ventures won't have any partners based in Los Angeles as it begins investing from a new 50-million fund. Susa unveiled its second fund -- double the size of its first -- Tuesday. In looking at the first batch of investments, Susa's geographically spread apart team realized that most of the companies were in the San Francisco Bay Area, including finance start-ups Robin Hood and LendUp. They decided to consolidate in San Francisco, too. "To take it to take next level, we all needed to be in the same office and S.F. seemed like the best," said general partner Seth Berman, who moved there from Los Angeles more than a year ago.