DARPA has a new Grand Challenge underway, but it's not an automation moonshot like the self-driving car challenges of the early 2000s or the recent (and hilarious) Robotics Challenge. The Defense Department's R&D wing wants to revolutionize something with a bit less sex appeal, but plenty of real-world applications: radio frequency spectrum splitting. The Spectrum Collaboration Challenge, which DARPA has cleverly abbreviated SC2, is about getting the billions and billions of wireless devices out there to play nice together rather than fight for space in the increasingly crowded RF landscape. Seriously, check out that cool chart at the top (much bigger version at DARPA's site if you want to print out the poster – 56k warning): everything is spoken for right up to the border with microwave frequencies, and more gadgets are crowding into each one daily. "The current practice of assigning fixed frequencies for various uses irrespective of actual, moment-to-moment demand is simply too inefficient to keep up with actual demand and threatens to undermine wireless reliability," said William Chappell, director of DARPA's Microsystems Technology Office, in a DARPA press release.

A fully loaded fireproof mini tankbot has proved size really doesn't matter. Called Uran-9, this mini tank bot stands just a few feet taller than a human and is fully loaded with a machine gun, missiles and a 30-millimeter cannon that fires 350 to 400 rounds per minute. A Russian defense organization created this unmanned vehicle to provide reconnaissance and fire support to infantry and counter-terror units. Uran-9 stands just a few feet taller than the average human being, but there is no need to be any bigger as the machine does not transport soldiers. This vehicle will assists infantry units and counter-terrorism groups by reaching places soldiers are unable to travel.

A report of drone sightings from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) shows that despite a new registration scheme, near misses between unmanned and piloted aircraft in American are on the rise. Sightings by pilots and airport officials have steadily increased from less than one a day in 2014, to over 3.5 between August 2015 and January this year, many of them from commercial passenger aircraft. In the most serious incident, the pilot of an American Airlines jet last September had to swerve to avoid a drone. On September 13, flight 475 took off from Atlanta, Georgia en route to Charlotte, North Carolina. It was climbing to 3,500 ft when the pilot of the Airbus had to take evasive action to avoid a collision with an unidentified unmanned aerial system (UAS) or drone.

A drone has successfully delivered a package to a residential location in a Nevada town in what its maker and the state's governor said on Friday was the first fully autonomous urban drone delivery in the US. Matt Sweeney, chief executive of drone-maker Flirtey, said the six-rotor drone flew about a half-mile along a programmed delivery route on 10 March, then lowered the package outside a vacant residence in Hawthorne. The route was established using GPS. A pilot and visual observers were on standby during the flight but were not needed, Sweeney said. He said the package included bottled water, food and a first-aid kit.

Over July 4th weekend in 1981, several hundred game nerds gathered at a banquet hall in San Mateo, California. Personal computing was still in its infancy, and the tournament was decidedly low-tech. Each match played out on a rectangular table filled with paper game pieces, and a March Madness-style tournament bracket hung on the wall. The game was called Traveller Trillion Credit Squadron, a role-playing pastime of baroque complexity. Contestants did battle using vast fleets of imaginary warships, each player guided by an equally imaginary trillion-dollar budget and a set of rules that spanned several printed volumes. If they won, they advanced to the next round of war games--until only one fleet remained. Doug Lenat, then a 29-year-old computer science professor at nearby Stanford University, was among the players. But he didn't compete alone. He entered the tournament alongside Eurisko, the artificially intelligent system he built as part of his academic research. Eurisko ran on dozens of machines inside Xerox PARC--the computer research lab just down the road from Stanford that gave rise to the graphical user interface, the laser printer, and so many other technologies that would come to define the future of computing. That year, Lenat taught Eurisko to play Traveller. Doug Lenat says his common-sense engine is a new dawn for AI. The rest of the tech world doesn't really agree with him. Lenat fed the massive Traveller rulebook into the system and asked it to find the best way of winning.

A mesmerising simulation of the sun has provided the most accurate representation of its magnetic field to date. The hypnotic map shows the complex and turbulent forces that shapes the ball of plasma, causing violent solar flares and coronal mass ejections. Researchers hope the model could help solve a long-standing mystery about our star; if the magnetic lines on the surface are so chaotic, how is it that it has a unified magnetic field? A mesmerising simulation of the sun has provided the most accurate representation of its magnetic field to date. The hypnotic map shows the complex and turbulent forces that shapes the ball of plasma, causing violent solar flares and coronal mass ejections.

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 world of computing has followed Moore's Law for generations. The "law," which was developed by researcher Gordon Moore in the 1970s, says that the number of transistors that can be squeezed into a set amount of space will double every two years. It's been a reliable gauge ever since. Moore's Law may be nearing its end, however. Tom Simonite at the MIT Technology Review writes that Intel has declared in a regulatory filing what insiders have suspected: The company is slowing the release of new chips in a manner that doesn't keep pace with the law.

Economic inequality has become a prominent issue in this year's U.S. presidential election. Candidates in both parties argue that the wealthy have bent the political system to their own economic benefit. And while the rich have grown richer, wages for the median worker have been stagnant. By many measures, the gap between high earners and low earners has widened substantially. But is this all the result of nefarious influence-peddling by the 1%?

A drone has successfully delivered a package to a residential location in a small Nevada town in what its maker and the governor of the state said Friday was the first fully autonomous urban drone delivery in the U.S. Flirtey CEO Matt Sweeney said the six-rotor drone flew about a half-mile along a pre-programmed delivery route on March 10 and lowered the package outside a vacant residence in an uninhabited area of Hawthorne, southeast of Reno. The route was established using GPS. A pilot and visual observers were on standby during the flight but weren't needed, Sweeney said. He said the package included bottled water, food and a first-aid kit. "Conducting the first drone delivery in an urban setting is a major achievement, taking us closer to the day that drones make regular deliveries to your front doorstep," Sweeney said.