Trump rarely uses email or computers despite his frequent tweeting. "You know, if you have something really important, write it out and have it delivered by courier, the old-fashioned way. Because I'll tell you what: No computer is safe," Trump told reporters during his annual New Year's Eve bash. "I don't care what they say." Trump has repeatedly cast aside allegations by U.S. intelligence agencies that Russia tried to influence the presidential election through hacking.

Trump rarely uses email or computers despite his frequent tweeting. "You know, if you have something really important, write it out and have it delivered by courier, the old-fashioned way. Because I'll tell you what: No computer is safe," Trump told reporters during his annual New Year's Eve bash. "I don't care what they say." Trump has repeatedly cast aside allegations by U.S. intelligence agencies that Russia tried to influence the presidential election through hacking.

Donald Trump has expressed continued skepticism over whether Russia was responsible for computer hacks of Democratic Party officials. In remarks to reporters upon entering a New Year's Eve celebration at his Mar-a-Lago estate, Trump warned against being quick to pin the blame on Russia for the hacking of US emails. "I just want them to be sure, because it's a pretty serious charge," he said. "And if you look at the weapons of mass destruction, that was a disaster, and they were wrong." The Washington Post also reported on Friday that Moscow could be behind intrusion into a laptop owned by a Vermont electricity utility.

Gillian Christie is the health innovation manager at the Vitality Institute. Derek Yach is the chief health officer at the Vitality Institute. In the weeks since the U.S. presidential election, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been firefighting. Widespread accusations assert that his social media company contributed to the election's unexpected outcome by propagating fake news and "filter bubbles." Zuckerberg has harshly refuted these allegations, but the case poses a thorny question: How do we ensure that technology works for society?

Good news, fellow humans: The United Nations has decided to take on killer robots. At the international Convention on Conventional Weapons in Geneva, 123 participating nations voted to initiate official discussions on the danger of lethal autonomous weapons systems. That's the emerging designation for so-called "killer robots" -- weapons controlled by artificial intelligence that can target and strike without human intervention. The agreement is the latest development in a growing movement calling for an preemptive ban on weaponized A.I. and deadly autonomous weapons. Last year, a coalition of more than 1,000 scientists and industry leaders, including Elon Musk and representatives of Google and Microsoft, signed an official letter to the United Nations demanding action.

Humankind has cast an eye toward another "giant leap" forward nearly half a century after the United States' Apollo 11 spacecraft delivered humans to the moon for the first time. The U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is planning to put a manned spacecraft into orbit around Mars in the 2030s, before sending humans to explore the red planet. Similar in size to Earth, and relatively close, Mars is widely considered as the most promising and realistic candidate planet for manned space exploration. The planet, however, is more than 50 million km away from Earth even when their orbits are at their closest. With a round-trip journey taking multiple years, a realistic approach to the journey calls for fuel and other required materials to be made available along the way.

We'll come right out and say it: 2016 wasn't the greatest year by any standards. In particular, divisive politics and celebrity death seemed to cast a long shadow over the last 12 months. There was the occasional ray of light poking through the clouds though. Especially in technology, which is what brings us all together here at Engadget. Over the last year, we've tried to bring you as many of those uplifting stories (even if they are bittersweet) as possible, to provide a little respite from 2016's emotional hailstorm.

Next time you stop for gas at a self-serve pump, say hello to the robot in front of you. Its life story can tell you a lot about the robot economy roaring toward us like an EF5 tornado on the prairie. Yeah, your automated gas pump killed a lot of jobs over the years, but its biography might give you hope that the coming wave of automation driven by artificial intelligence (AI) will turn out better for almost all of us than a lot of people seem to think. The first crude version of an automated gas-delivering robot appeared in 1964 at a station in Westminster, Colorado. Short Stop convenience store owner John Roscoe bought an electric box that let a clerk inside activate any of the pumps outside. Self-serve pumps didn't catch on until the 1970s, when pump-makers added automation that let customers pay at the pump, and over the next 30 years, stations across the nation installed these task-specific robots and fired attendants. By the 2000s, the gas attendant job had all but disappeared.

The UK's Investigatory Powers Act is now in effect, placing Britain under some of the widest-ranging spying powers ever seen. The law – passed last month but going into effect on 30 December – is intended as an update to Britain's often unwieldy surveillance legislation. But it also includes a large set of new powers – including the ability to collect the browsing records of everyone in the country and have them read by authorities as diverse as the Food Standards Agency and the Department for Work and Pensions. Most of the central parts of the act are now in force. That includes new powers to gather and retain data on citizens, and new ways to force technology companies and others to hand over the data that they have about people to intelligence agencies.

In November, WIRED published a special issue guest-edited by President Obama. The magazine's features editor Maria Streshinsky says that working with the president was an exciting opportunity for everyone at WIRED, especially editor in chief Scott Dadich. "He could really recognize a lot of the language that the president would use as far as what the future could hold, and that it's well within our grasp to have an optimistic future," Streshinsky says in Episode 236 of the Geek's Guide to the Galaxy podcast. "Those are the ideas that the president was very interested in, and that just sit squarely in what Scott believes and what WIRED tries to focus on." WIRED associate editor Jason Kehe, a big science fiction fan, was particularly excited to learn more about the president's taste in science fiction.