Wave 1 - The Internet: The dawn of the Internet was the first wave of innovation in fin tech. In the early 1990's many people were still get stock prices from Newspapers a day later than the price. With the Internet came access to stock quotes and stock trading -- both of which were tightly held by the finance industry as barriers to entry for a retail investor. Wave 2 - Democratization of Data: This started in 2009 after the great recession and really took hold about two-years ago: the democratization of all financial data -- that is financial statements, events, insider trading, and more. As small fin techs scraped the SEC filings, the data sets became available to smaller firms to re-publish in their own portals.

Dan Hunter is a prison guard's worst nightmare. But he's not a hardened crim. As dean of Swinburne University's Law School, he's working to have most wardens replaced by a system of advanced artificial intelligence connected to a network of high-tech sensors. Called the Technological Incarceration Project, the idea is to make not so much an internet of things as an internet of incarceration. Professor Hunter's team is researching an advanced form of home detention, using artificial intelligence, machine-learning algorithms and lightweight electronic sensors to monitor convicted offenders on a 24-hour basis.

"The people closest to the problem are also the people closest to the solution," Capt. Chris Wood, co-lead for Additive Manufacturing with the US Marine Corps, told Engadget. In 2016, the USMC put that adage to the test as it launched the Logistics Innovation Challenge, a program "to solicit ideas from Marines, sailors and civilians from across the Marine Corps" that would address challenges that they face in their daily duties. And this is only the start to the US Military's additive-manufacturing aspirations. Pretty soon, everything from ammunition to autonomous vehicles could come from the Corps' cadre of 3D printers.

In the last few decades, telecom services and information technology in India have seen a steady progress. Today we are inching towards a New India. With PM Narendra Modi's Digital India vision, India is seeing a paradigm shift moving gradually towards a cashless economy, with Digital at the forefront and a more conducive business environment. True to its sense, digital is the next wave of transformation and by immersing in it, India is set to emerge as a superpower. The intrinsic usage and utility of technology is not just the thing of urban India now but is also touching upon the rural country landscape.

Hoaxes and trickery are almost as old as human history. When the Roman Republic first conquered the Italian peninsula between 500-200 BC, it was known to send fake refugees into enemy cities to "[subvert] the enemy from within." "Pope Joan" was believed to be a woman who allegedly tricked her way into become pope in the Middle Ages by pretending to be a man -- but the entire story is now viewed as fake, a fictional yarn spun centuries after her purported reign. "Vortigern and Rowena," a play that debuted in 1798, was initially touted as a lost work of William Shakespeare -- but was in fact a forgery created by William Henry Ireland.

With the use of ever more artificial intelligence (AI) techniques in the computer mediated world around us, from robot vacuum cleaners to autonomous cars, intelligent voice bots to humanoid receptionists, how, if at all, should governments and lawmakers respond -- and what should they be responding to? And how can businesses, as well as members of the public, best keep themselves informed about the extent to which advances in AI may impact on the economy, as well as our society? A recent consultation by the UK House of Lords Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence has called for evidence on the economic, ethical and social implications of advances in artificial intelligence [call for evidence PDF]. The consultation poses a range of questions in particular topic areas, such as the impact of AI on society and the public perception of it, as well as ethical considerations and the role of the government in responding to AI's development and use. For example, one question, targeted at experts in the field, asks "What is the current state of artificial intelligence and what factors have contributed to this?".

Elon Musk says artificial intelligence poses more of a "risk" than a potential nuclear conflict between the US and North Korea. The CEO of Tesla issued the warning after an AI built by OpenAI, a company founded by Mr Musk, defeated the world's best Dota 2 players after just two weeks of training. "If you're not concerned about AI safety, you should be. Vastly more risk than North Korea," he tweeted shortly after the bot's victory, along with a picture of a poster bearing the slogan: "In the end, the machines will win". The poster, incidentally, is actually about gambling.

Elon Musk's SpaceX is poised to launch an unmanned cargo ship carrying a supercomputer to the International Space Station (ISS) today. The supercomputer is hoped to help direct astronauts on future deep-space missions. The goal is to test the computer for one year to see if it can operate in the harsh conditions of space - about the same amount of time as it would take for astronauts to arrive at Mars. The liftoff of the Falcon 9 rocket, carrying the Dragon cargo ship, is planned for 12:31pm ET (5:31pm BST) from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The goal is to test the Spaceborne Computer for one year to see if it can operate in the harsh conditions of space.

Last night, OpenAI's Dota 2 bot beat the world's most celebrated professional players in one-on-one battles, showing just how advanced these machine learning systems are getting. The bot beat Danil "Dendi" Ishutin rather easily at The International, one of the biggest eSports events in the world, and remains undefeated against the world's top Dota 2 players. Elon Musk's OpenAI trained the bot by simply copying the AI and letting the two play each other for weeks on end. "We've coached it to learn just from playing against itself," said OpenAI researcher Jakub Pachoki. "So we didn't hard-code in any strategy, we didn't have it learn from human experts, just from the very beginning, it just keeps playing against a copy of itself. It starts from complete randomness and then it makes very small improvements, and eventually it's just pro level."

Susie and her computer friend Sadie appeared in 1960s adverts to promote a now defunct UK computer company, accompanied by a young, attractive, nameless woman. Feminised adverts like these were a common ploy in Britain at the time, when male managers, uninitiated in the complexities of this new technology, viewed the machines as intimidating and opaque. "Computers were expensive and using women to advertise them gave the appearance to managers that jobs involving computers are easy and can be done with a cheap labour force," explains technology historian Marie Hicks. They might have been on a typist's salary, but women like the one who appears alongside Susie and Sadie were not typists – they were skilled computer programmers, minus the prestige or pay the modern equivalent might command. As Hicks' book Programmed Inequality illustrates, women were the largest trained technical workforce of the computing industry during the second world war and through to the mid-sixties.