The Falcon 9 Rocket successfully landed on the droneship Of Course I Still Love You on April 8. There couldn't have been a more perfect launch than yesterday's. The sun was shining, a gentle breeze was blowing, and SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket took off right on schedule. As we watched from a few miles away, the glare of the rocket's flames was searingly bright, hard to look at but impossible to look away from, like the sparklers kids play with on the Fourth of July. The sound, too, was like Independence Day, the boom and shake of a thousand fireworks going off, crashing through the sound barrier. The cargo made it safely into orbit, where it's on its way to the International Space Station.

I do have opinions about the now infamous e-mail server (which will no doubt come out here), but when the WSJ folks made it possible to search the Clinton email releases I though it would be fun to get the data into R to show how well the igraph and ggnetwork packages could work together, and also show how to use svgPanZoom to make it a bit easier to poke around the resulting hairball network. NOTE: There are a couple "Assignment" blocks in here. My Elements of Data Science students are no doubt following the blog by now so those are meant for you:-) Other intrepid readers can ignore them. It's not advertised, but it's not hidden either. They were kind enough to actually make this resource available to the public to help them make up their minds as to whether this was a horrible, awful, terrible, inexcusable breach of national security through conceit, hubris and naïvety (see, I have opines:-) – or not – and we really shouldn't constantly hit their API just because we want to work with the data on our own.

The Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI) and cloud computing are three technologies that are converging to disrupt nearly every industry. IoT refers to a connected network of objects embedded with technology that enables the collection and exchange of data. Cloud computing is the storing and retrieval of data, and accessing application programs via the Internet. Artificial Intelligence is the simulation of human intelligence by machines. We are currently in the midst of the rise of the first wave of this technological convergence.

The thousands of bright orange automatons that haul shelves full of merchandise at Amazon's fulfillment center here could be seen as a sign of the impending doom of the human workforce. But the 500 or so full-time workers employed at this site have something robots won't have for many years, according to experts. Humans have an intuitive understanding of the movement of objects, and fine motor skills that give them a firm hold on key warehouse operations like packaging and stowing goods. That helps explain why Amazon.com, The company has 30,000 robots -- but more than 230,000 employees, not counting the temporary staff it hires during the peak holiday period.

SpaceX has finally managed to safely land its re-usable rocket onto a barge, after previous repeated attempts saw the Falcon 9 kit explode. Successfully landing the booster onto the large "drone ship" is a huge step forward for SpaceX and its found Elon Musk, and for private space travel more generally. The company hopes that the re-usable rockets will make space travel much cheaper in future, since they can be re-filled and then sent back into space rather than re-building from scratch. Mr Musk celebrated the successful landing by referencing the T-Pain song "I'm On A Boat". He later deleted the tweet.

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

William Hertling is the author of Avogadro Corp, A.I. Apocalypse, The Last Firewall, The Turing Exception, and the upcoming Kill Process. These near-term science-fiction novels explore the emergence of artificial intelligence (AI), the coexistence of humans and smart machines, and the impact of social reputation, technological unemployment, and other near-future issues. His novels have been called "frighteningly plausible," "tremendous," and "must-read." Hertling's Singularity Series novels have been endorsed by and received wide attention from tech luminaries including Harper Reed (CTO for the Obama Campaign), Ben Huh (CEO Cheezburger), and Chris Anderson (CEO 3DRobotics, former Editor-in-Chief Wired). His first novel for children, The Case of the Wilted Broccoli, was published in 2014. Hertling grew up a digital native in the early days of bulletin board systems. His first experiences with net culture occurred when he wired seven phone lines into the back of his Apple IIe and hosted an online chat system. A frequent speaker on the future of technology, science fiction, and indie publishing, Hertling has spoken at SXSW Interactive, Defrag, OryCon, University of Colorado, Willamette Writers Conference, and many other conferences. Did you start off wanting to become a writer, or did you stumble into it? WH: I very much stumbled into it, although, in retrospect, there were a few hints ahead of time.

The world's first unmanned ship set sail on April 7. The new ship, called the Sea Hunter, will hunt enemy submarines lurking in the deep. A new hunter is lurking in the deep -- and it's made of metal, silicon, and lots and lots of artificial intelligence. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) officially launched its unmanned submarine-hunting ship, holding a christening ceremony on Thursday (April 7) for the "Sea Hunter." The new vessel is part of DARPA's larger initiative to use artificial intelligence (AI) for a wider array of military decisions and tasks.

Do you know what is common between San Bernardino's shooting spree and the terrorist attacks in Paris last month? Jillennials, Jihadis who are Millennials. We mine data worldwide, a lot of it, a ton of it, every day and every night, and we do this for a living at PredictifyMe. We have partnership with the United Nations to protect school-goers in Pakistan, Nigeria, Sudan and Lebanon using our proprietary software SecureSim and Soothsayer . When the Paris attacks unfolded, we asked ourselves (and our database), how can we use data sciences to prevent something like this from ever happening again. Can we find out what factors influence an otherwise ordinary citizen to become radicalized?

A new hunter is lurking in the deep -- and it's made of metal, silicon, and lots and lots of artificial intelligence. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) officially launched its unmanned submarine-hunting ship, holding a christening ceremony on Thursday (April 7) for the "Sea Hunter." The new vessel is part of DARPA's larger initiative to use artificial intelligence (AI) for a wider array of military decisions and tasks. The seafaring drone's task is to find and neutralize enemies' ultraquiet diesel submarines, the agency said. While the Sea Hunter, which is part of DARPA's Anti-Submarine Warfare Continuous Trail Unmanned Vessel (ACTUV) program, is not helmed by a human captain, people are still in the loop (at least for now). "Although ACTUV will sail unmanned, its story is entirely about people," Scott Littlefield, DARPA program manager, said in a statement.