Telling Jeff Bezos he's wrong is always a frightening proposition. In the fall of 2014, though, a small group of the men and women building Amazon's new voice-controlled speaker felt they needed to confront the CEO. The release of the speaker was looming, and for the most part, things were falling into place. The device looked good, its voice recognition software was improving quickly, and even the boxes it would ship in had been designed and assembled. But there was a lingering issue with the name printed on those boxes: the Amazon Flash. Many people who worked at Lab126, Amazon's hardware division, hated the name, according to two former employees. Bezos, on the other hand, was strongly in favor.

China and Russia said Monday that the South China Sea dispute should not be internationalized and called for its settlement based on negotiation and consultation, Beijing's official Xinhua News reported. The comments come at time when the United States has beefed up its military presence in the contested region in a bid to help the Philippines and other Southeast Asian countries tackle China's assertiveness. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov made the comments during a meeting on Monday. Wang insisted that China was protecting its rights and interests in South China Sea, and was free to choose how to resolve tensions in the area, Xinhua reported. The world's second largest economy's refusal of the Philippines' proposed international arbitration case over the matter was meant to uphold the dignity and authority of the law, Wang said, adding that China and Russia should be cautious against abuses of mandatory arbitration. Meanwhile, Hugo Swire, the British minister of state responsible for East Asia, said earlier in the day that a ruling -- expected in May or early June -- in the Philippines' international arbitration case against China's South China Sea claims must be binding.

The Pentagon's once-secret submarine drones programme is being discussed in the open, with US defence secretary Ashton Carter hinting at their potential use in the disputed South China Sea. Surveillance is the initial function of these unmanned, undersea vehicles, which can operate in shallow water'where manned submarines cannot'. There are also plans to create a'Russian doll' or'mother' sub, which could release a number of far smaller drones to be mines, trackers or missile launchers, reports the Financial Times. The US military hopes the drone development would deter China from dominating the South China Sea. The countries of the South China Sea have long claimed rights to disputed international waters, but as its economic strength has grown, an increasingly confident China has built military bases on artificial islands and militarized one of the disputed Paracel Islands.

A recent academic study conducted by researchers from Leiden, Ben-Gurion and Toulouse Universities examined the performance of Cortical.io's Compared to the commonly used word-list method, Semantic Folding proved to have greater predictive power. Its other advantages were speed and ease of use. "Like the human brain, our Semantic Folding engine learns a language and understands the meaning of text by making analogies. Like the brain, it is both efficient and accurate. We are thrilled to see these compelling results confirmed by an independent academic study", comments Francisco Webber, inventor and co-founder of Cortical.io.

A Swiss data analytics and cybersecurity company is beefing up its Boston-area presence after grabbing 40 million in venture capital, led by Highland Europe. Nexthink established a U.S. presence three weeks ago with the opening of a sales office in Cambridge, MA. The company employs about 10 people there to start, but it plans to grow to 120 local employees over the next 18 months, a spokeswoman says. Nexthink helps IT departments analyze and monitor their businesses' applications, devices, and other network activity in real time. The goal is to sniff out cyber attacks and minimize software disruptions for end users.

"The robots are coming" is not something Paul Revere said during the American Revolution, but it is certainly something many people have uttered over the years. So have we finally reached the tipping point where artificial intelligence and robots will begin to take over human jobs en masse? Perhaps not, but we are closer to the time when they will be even more essential assets and presences in the workforce, explains Martin Ford, the author of the book "Rise of the Robots." I caught up with Ford at The Economist magazine's Innovation Forum event, which was held earlier this month. He pointed out that artificial intelligence is making its way into sectors that were once manned by only man, including the legal profession, where computer systems such as Watson could muscle in on human territory to provide legal counsel, and even journalism where stories are being written without direct human input about some articles.

Get ready for all sorts of updates and announcements from Facebook. The social network kicks off its annual developers' conference, F8, on Tuesday and the biggest topics on the agenda will likely be Messenger and video. Since Facebook first started letting businesses integrate with its chat app, Messenger, at last year's conference, it has continued to give companies more ways to use it to communicate with potential customers. Facebook's thesis is that some people hate talking on the phone and would rather do something -- buy a shirt, order an Uber, make a dinner reservation, check their flight status -- within a chat interface. So, it wants to turn Messenger into a full-on platform for retrieving information and getting things done through natural-seeming conversations with businesses.

SpaceX has arrived at the International Space Station (ISS), delevering the world's first inflatable tent for astronauts. The US aerospace company's unmanned Dragon cargo ship, carrying lettuce seeds, lab mice and an inflatable pop-up room, arrived on Sunday at the space station where six spacecraft are now docked. British astronaut Tim Peake reached out with the station's robotic arm and grappled the Dragon, carrying its nearly 3,175kg of gear, at 7:23am (11:23 GMT). "It looks like we've caught a Dragon," said Peake. Four Russian spaceships - two Progress cargo carriers and two Soyuz capsules which ferry astronauts - are docked at the space station, along with Orbital ATK's Cygnus cargo ship and SpaceX's Dragon. Not since 2011, during the final flight of the space shuttle Discovery, have there been six vehicles parked at the ISS at the same time, NASA said.

George Hotz, the latest Silicon Valley startup founder to get a multimillion-dollar check from venture capitalists, went for a ride in a Rolls-Royce around San Francisco on Monday. At 26, Hotz thinks he could teach the legendary vehicle a few tricks. Braking should be smoother, he says. The vehicle should run each time as if the best limo driver in the world was behind the wheel. "You don't want the champagne to spill," Hotz says.

Humans become aroused when touching robots in sensitive places, a new study has found. Far from seeing robots as just computers, humans can become physiologically aroused from touching a human-shaped robot in private places like their eyes and buttocks, the Stanford study found. The results could have huge consequences for the creation of robots in the future, such as ones that people live or even have sex with. It might also help people create "robot stand-ins", that allow people to touch others when actually being there isn't an option, the researchers said. Scientists have taken a leaf out of the script of The Martian by showing how easy it would be to grow your own veg on the Red Planet.