The Federal Aviation Administration has published long-awaited rules that loosen restrictions on commercial use of drones but don't go as far as allowing drone delivery services like those proposed by Amazon. The rules, scheduled to take effect in late August, replace temporary restrictions that have required thousands of companies to apply for special permission to use drones as part of their job. Many of the rules are similar to the temporary restrictions including the requirement that drones be kept within line of sight of the operator at all times. That means automated delivery services like Amazon's Prime Air will be unable to operate. Amazon did not immediately reply to a request for comment, but the company has been outspoken in the past about moving its drone research and development overseas if the FAA didn't allow operations. The line of sight requirement will also affect other promising potential applications of drones, such as inspection flights along power lines, gas pipelines and railway lines to check for problems or obstacles.

Intel's chip arsenal appears to have some glaring weaknesses. One of them is the lack of a high-end graphics processor, which is important for gaming, virtual reality and machine learning. However, the company does have powerful alternatives: two monster chips that will be ammunition to take on GPUs and rival chips in the areas of machine learning and supercomputing, which are important to the company. In 2018, Intel will likely release a faster and more power-efficient Xeon Phi, a supercomputing chip that is already used in some of the world's fastest computers. Intel is also looking beyond CPUs to FPGAs (field programmable gate arrays), which can be faster at key tasks.

Human babies seem to have a natural knack for languages. Fluency in any of the world's 6,500 languages comes within the first few years of life, without much apparent effort. A recent study of how songbirds learn their melodies seeks to shine light on the cognitive processes through which young birds learn and imitate vocal communication – insights which could lead to a better understanding of the development of human speech, as well. "A bird's baby song is really immature. There's no clear structure - it's more like a baby babbling, but then it becomes structured, like the tutor song [as the bird gets older]," Yoko Yazaki-Sugiyama, co-author of the study published in Nature Communications Tuesday, tells The Christian Science Monitor in a phone interview. The male zebra finch learns a complex song from his father, or tutor, in order to attract a female finch.

Nasa has announced that it has found evidence of flowing water on Mars. Scientists have long speculated that Recurring Slope Lineae -- or dark patches -- on Mars were made up of briny water but the new findings prove that those patches are caused by liquid water, which it has established by finding hydrated salts. Several hundred camped outside the London store in Covent Garden. The 6s will have new features like a vastly improved camera and a pressure-sensitive "3D Touch" display

Burner numbers might seem like a plot device best left to the writers on cheesy cop shows, but a fast-growing startup--aptly named Burner--is proving there are everyday use cases for a secondary set of digits that you can access through your existing phone via app. Online Dating: In an era when people might swipe right and swap numbers before they meet, having a secondary number can offer daters a sense of control and privacy. "We say if you give your number to someone on Tinder, they shouldn't be able to figure out who you are," says Burner CEO Greg Cohn. On Tuesday, the company announced a new feature for these users: a text bot that will ghost unwanted wooers through their burner line. Craigslisting: Phone numbers, relative to the phones they're associated with, are pretty dumb, Cohn says.

In the early 1990s, a Hungarian girl who attended Alexey Turchin's school suddenly died. Turchin, a Muscovite teenager who had a crush on the girl, resolved to bring her back to life. To do this, he decided to interview the girl's classmates and friends in order to collect every bit of information about her. This data, fed into a supercomputer (to be designed, built, and operated by Turchin himself) would then be used to conjure up a digital reproduction of the late girl's self. The plan didn't pan out, partly because there wasn't a supercomputer able to emulate the human brain, and partly because--as Turchin puts it--"that was before social networks and there wasn't much information around about her."

The startup yesterday opened a new facility in National Harbor, Maryland, and along with it, a new range of miniature buses that can autonomously take passengers wherever they ask to go. Local Motors' new buses, which look a bit like ski lifts on wheels, are called Olli, and will be puttering around the greater Washington, D.C., area after their maiden voyage yesterday. The electric vehicles, which have a top speed of about 12 mph and a range of roughly 30 miles per charge, use similar technologies to Google's self-driving cars to see the world as they roll around. But they also use Watson, IBM's suite of artificial intelligence software, to understand what's around them as they move, as well as whatever their human passengers ask of them. Olli has the same speech recognition and language understanding built in that allowed Watson to beat a bunch of smart humans at the quiz show "Jeopardy!"

Amazon acquired Kiva for 775 million in 2012 but only started using the orange robots in its warehouses in late 2014. The deal was expected to make inventory management more efficient. It's now beginning to become clear by how much. The "click to ship" cycle used to be around 60-75 minutes when employees had manually to sift through the stacks, pick the product, pack it, and ship it. Now, robots handle the same job in 15 minutes, according to a Deutsche Bank note published Tuesday (June 14) based on Amazon's metrics.

Drones in national parks are a safety hazard and nuisance to visitors and wildlife, said Jonathan Jarvis, the park service's director. WASHINGTON -- Routine commercial use of small drones was cleared for takeoff by the Obama administration Tuesday, after years of struggling to write rules that would both protect public safety and free the benefits of a new technology. The Federal Aviation Administration has created a new category of rules for drones weighing less than 55 pounds. The long-anticipated rules would mean drone operators would be able to fly without special permission. Currently, commercial operators have to apply for a waiver from rules that govern manned aircraft, a process that can be time-consuming and expensive.

BMW is accelerating plans to acquire technology expertise in a race with the likes of Apple Inc. and Google to make cars smart enough to react like human drivers. The German automaker is pushing to acquire startups, partner with tech companies and hire talent to build an electronic brain for next-generation vehicles, Klaus Froehlich, BMW AG's head of development, said in an interview in Munich. At stake is billions of euros in potential profit as value in the auto industry gradually shifts to autonomous taxis. "There's a power play going on with other companies buying up software competencies at a fast clip," Froehlich said. "We definitely need partners in this area, and we massively need to build out in-house resources too."