From a remote farmhouse to a shopping mall and even a bar, films are full of suggestions of where to hide out in the event of a zombie apocalypse. But researchers have developed an apocalyptic simulator that suggests the best thing to do is literally run for the hills - if you live in the US at least. Other advice from scientists-turned zombie experts, includes keeping silent and even mimicking zombie behaviour should you run into one of the fictional reanimated corpses with a taste for human flesh. Use the simulator below to start a zombie apocalyse. Physicists Alexander Alemi, Matthew Bierbaum, Christopher Myers and James Sethna of Cornell University, created a zombie simulator based on techniques used in in epidemiology – the study of how disease spreads – to work out how the apocalypse might play out in the US.

When Tor.com published Daniel H. Wilson's short story "The Nostalgist" in 2009, the author wasn't yet a leading voice on robotics in fiction. Sure, the Carnegie Mellon Ph.D. had won a Rave Award from WIRED in 2006 for his book How To Survive A Robot Uprising, but his bestselling novel Robopocalypse was still a few years off. So when filmmaker Giacomo Cimini wanted to adapt Wilson's story into a film, it wasn't a big ask. After Wilson's novel hit big, though--with Stephen Spielberg and Drew Goddard tapped to direct and write the movie adaptation--the writer had to take more time to think about it. "I was just this Italian director living in London who wanted to adapt one of his short stories," says Cimini.

Up to 1.6 million patients have had their private medical files passed on to Google without their permission, it was revealed today The internet giant was given the data by one of the largest NHS trusts to develop an app to monitor possible kidney failure. The encrypted information includes the names and medical histories of every patient who had stayed in hospital overnight or attended A&E in the past five years. None of the patients was told beforehand and the revelation has exposed the ease with which private companies can obtain highly sensitive medical information without consent. Privacy campaigners told MailOnline that the revelations exposed the public's lack of power and control over their own personal details. Experts say the deal between Google and the Royal Free NHS Trust could set a precedent for patient data to be routinely passed on to private firms.

It was Usain Bolt's toughest test yet - and a battle of man versus technology. The world-record holding athlete took on a shoebox sized robot - and lost. The tiny Puma Beatbot, created by his sponsors to help its athletes train, was able to match and exceed bolt's 44km/hr top speed. The tiny Puma Beatbot, created by Usain Bolt's sponsors to help its athletes train, was able to match and exceed Bolt's 44km/hr top speed. 'Everyone runs faster when there's someone to beat, said Puma.

In 1985, for example, Sandberg-Diment declared laptops would never be a mass-market technology. "On the whole, people don't want to lug a computer with them to the beach or on a train to while away hours they would rather spend reading the sports or business section of the newspaper," he wrote. "Somehow, the microcomputer industry has assumed that everyone would love to have a keyboard grafted on as an extension of their fingers. It just is not so ... Because no matter how inexpensive the machines become, and no matter how sophisticated their software, I still can't imagine the average user taking one along when going fishing." Before that, he had predicted people would never use laptops on airplanes because the Federal Aviation Administration would ban the devices.

About one in four owners of premium cars would buy a self-driving vehicle, according to Volvo's chief executive, who has vowed to make the technology affordable. Håkan Samuelsson said Volvo had had a deluge of interest in its "Drive me" trial in London next year, when 100 drivers will test its new autonomous driving technology on motorways and major roads. The Swedish carmaker plans to start selling vehicles equipped with the technology as early as 2020. Volvo will test the technology in Gothenburg this year. It is also looking into conducting a trial in China, where congestion and road safety are major issues.

In a move that marks a major step in the inexorable march towards making self-driving cars a reality, Google have announced what it is calling a "first of its kind" partnership with car manufacturer Fiat Chrysler. The partnership, which was announced Tuesday, will see Google's self-driving technology integrated into a Chrysler Pacifica hybrid minivan, a move which will more than double the testing fleet of self-driving vehicles that Google operates. Tech companies such as Google, Uber and Apple, as well as chip maker Nvidia, have all been working toward autonomous vehicle technology in competition with both each other and car manufacturers. BMW, Audi, Ford, General Motors and Mercedes-Benz are among more than a dozen automotive outfits working on the technology. But Google's alliance with Fiat Chrysler marks the first time two companies have come together from opposite sides of what is often a cultural, as well as technological, gulf – though Elon Musk's Tesla can be seen as a sort of hybrid.

A company owned by Google has been given access to the healthcare data of up to 1.6 million patients from three hospitals run by a major London NHS trust. DeepMind, the tech giant's London-based company most famous for its innovative use of artificial intelligence, is being provided with the patient information as part of an agreement with the Royal Free NHS trust, which runs the Barnet, Chase Farm and Royal Free hospitals. It includes information about people who are HIV-positive as well as details of drug overdoses, abortions and patient data from the past five years, according to a report by the New Scientist. DeepMind announced in February that it was developing a software in partnership with NHS hospitals to alert staff to patients at risk of deterioration and death through kidney failure. The technology, which is run through a smartphone app, has the support of Lord Darzi, a surgeon and former health minister who is director of the Institute of Global Health Innovation at Imperial College London.

Think of the gear you can't live without: The smartphone you constantly check. The camera that goes with you on every vacation. The TV that serves as a portal to binge-watching and -gaming. Each owes its influence to one model that changed the course of technology for good. Some of these, like Sony's Walkman, were the first of their kind. Others, such as the iPod, propelled an existing idea into the mainstream. Some were unsuccessful commercially, but influential nonetheless. And a few represent exciting but unproven new concepts (looking at you Oculus Rift). Rather than rank technologies--writing, electricity, and so on--we chose to rank gadgets, the devices by with consumers let the future creep into their present. The list--which is ordered by influence--was assembled and deliberated on at (extreme) length by TIME's technology and business editors, writers and reporters.

A Silicon Valley chip designer has launched a USB stick with a supercomputer onboard. Movidius, based in San Mateo, California, has essentially put a deep learning chip inside a USB drive. Deep learning involves "training" a computational model so it can decipher natural language. The "Fathom Neural Compute Stick" has been designed to connect to existing systems (running Linux) and increase the performance of deep learning tasks by 20-30 times. Movidius chips are also used to help drones to avoid obstacles and thermal cameras to spot people in a fire.