Before he died, eccentric philosopher Jeremy Bentham asked that his body be stuffed and wheeled out at parties to help his friends with their grief. But the social reformer didn't stop there, bequeathing 26 memorial rings to those he knew and admired, featuring his bust in silhouette and strands of his hair. Now scientists are on the hunt for Bentham's rings, of which just six have been found since his death in 1832. The philosopher commissioned the rings a decade before he passed, leaving them in his will and testament to a list that included famous politicians, journalists, fellow philosophers and several of his servants. Researchers say the missing artefacts could be spread across the globe, after one was found in a jewellery shop in New Orleans.

Here's what to do when a drone gets too close for comfort. Sam Sargent uses a DJI drone to get aerial photographs of a home for sale in the Crocker Highlands neighborhood of Oakland. Users here of the local social network Nextdoor for months have been stewing about these small, flying vehicles, which often carry cameras, accusing them of snooping or maybe casing the joint. They wonder if it's legal to fight back, say by lassoing the pesky vehicle flying outside their window – or even shooting it down with a potato gun. Oakland resident Katy O'Neill goes as far as blaming it for shattering her dining room window.

Jefferson Graham runs down the ten rules you need to know before taking your new drone out for a spin on Talking Tech. Drones are one of the most popular tech products, but they're not as simple as opening the box, charging the batteries and then letting the new gadget soar into the skies. There are several rules that need to be obeyed. The Federal Aviation Administration first insists that all owners must register their unit with the agency or face fines of up to $250,000. From there, many cities have rules about drone use in their municipalities, some hard and fast, others gray.

Xbox's latest release, the Adaptive Controller, allows compatibility external joysticks, pedals, switches and buttons. Microsoft's Seeing AI for the iPhone tries to identify a person's gender, approximate age and mood. Retiree Douglas Wakefield is a tech enthusiast. The 76-year-old begins a typical day by donning his Apple Watch and listening to its synthesized voice deliver the weather. Over coffee, the Arlington, Virginia, resident catches up on overnight news on his iPhone X and consumes books read out loud on topics like coding – his goal is to write apps for the iPhone.

The military's research arm said Friday it will invest up to $2 billion over the next five years toward new programs advancing artificial intelligence, stepping up both a technological arms race with China and an ideological clash with Silicon Valley over the future of powerful machines. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, part of the Defense Department, said it will fund dozens of new research efforts as part of a "Third Wave" campaign aimed at developing machines that can learn and adapt to changing environments. DARPA director Steven Walker announced the effort Friday to an audience from American academia, private industry and the military at a symposium outside Washington, saying the agency wants to explore "how machines can acquire human-like communication and reasoning capabilities." "This is a massive deal. It's the first indication that the United States is addressing advanced AI technology with the scale and funding and seriousness that the issue demands," said Gregory C. Allen, an adjunct fellow specializing in AI and robotics for the Center for a New American Security, a Washington think tank.

In August, not long after The Intercept revealed that Google has been working with the Chinese government to launch a censored search engine, workers at Google drafted a letter demanding that their bosses stop their plans and put in place a "concrete transparency and oversight process" to avoid being blindsided in the future by projects that conflict ethically with the employees working on them. To date, according to Buzzfeed, more than 1,400 people have signed the letter. The letter is the latest evidence that tech workers are interrogating their roles in changing the world. Before this, organized white-collar tech workers' biggest success occurred in June, when Google announced it wouldn't renew its contract for the Pentagon's Project Maven, which "involved drone video footage and low-res object identification using AI." To the more than 3,100 Google workers who signed an open letter, this contract would not only "irreparably damage Google's brand" but also pivot the company into "the business of war."

A pioneering artificial intelligence has been used to spot dozens of mysterious signals coming from deep in space. The new AI spotted 72 previously undiscovered "fast radio bursts" emanating out of distant galaxies, according to Breakthrough Listen, a program searching for proof of life elsewhere in the universe. FRBs have long been thought to be one of the mysterious phenomena in the universe. They are intense blasts of radio emissions that can be detected on Earth and then switch off. From the International Space Station, Expedition 42 Flight Engineer Terry W. Virts took this photograph of the Gulf of Mexico and U.S. Gulf Coast at sunset This image of an area on the surface of Mars, approximately 1.5 by 3 kilometers in size, shows frosted gullies on a south-facing slope within a crater. The image was taken by Nasa's HiRISE camera, which is mounted on its Mars Reconaissance Orbiter The Soyuz TMA-15M rocket launches from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Monday, Nov. 24, 2014, carrying three new astronauts to the International Space Station.

Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your Automaton bloggers. We'll also be posting a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months; here's what we have so far (send us your events!): Let us know if you have suggestions for next week, and enjoy today's videos. Built by Engineered Arts, 2 Mesmer Heads perform a synchronised sequence. One is complete with lifelike skin and hair, the other is showing it's mechanical workings.

Tomorrow, key figures at leading Silicon Valley technology companies will appear on Capitol Hill. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, and a Google representative (lawmakers want Alphabet CEO Larry Page, the company wants to send lawyer Kent Walker) will answer questions from various members of Congress about bias, artificial intelligence, and, we suspect, whether these mammoth companies should continue to be the dominant communication platforms for most Americans. Here are some of the main themes to look out for in the discussions--and one overarching question that really should frame the debate. Key question: Why shouldn't you be broken up? Background: The economic clout of the tech giants--and its implications for other areas of their influence--has sparked considerable debate already this year.

Tomorrow, key figures at leading Silicon Valley technology companies will appear on Capitol Hill. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, and a Google representative (lawmakers want Alphabet CEO Larry Page, the company wants to send lawyer Kent Walker) will answer questions from various members of Congress about bias, artificial intelligence, and, we suspect, whether these mammoth companies should continue to be the dominant communication platforms for most Americans. Here are some of the main themes to look out for in the discussions--and one overarching question that really should frame the debate. Key question: Why shouldn't you be broken up? Background: The economic clout of the tech giants--and its implications for other areas of their influence--has sparked considerable debate already this year.