Over the years, society has become more dependent on digital technologies. Today, nearly every person, business, and government agency uses the internet to transmit and store data. As a result of that dependence, there is no shortage of hackers who try to access that data. We see this at every level. Celebrities have had their phones hacked and their personal photographs stolen and dispersed online.

It looks like the Curiosity rover won't be the only craft exploring Mars. NASA recently released a video of its latest Regolith Advanced Surface Systems Operations Robot prototype going through its paces in a test facility. "RASSOR uses counterrotating bucket drums on opposing arms to provide near-zero horizontal and minimal vertical net reaction force so that excavation is not reliant on the traction or weight of the mobility system to provide a reaction force to counteract the excavation force in low-gravity environments," NASA writes. Simply put, this should make excavation on alien planets easier because the device can work without needing high amounts of traction to stay in place while performing its task. It looks like flipping over and becoming inoperable shouldn't be an issue either, based on the proven design. Popular Mechanics suggests that a whole slew of these will be sent ahead of any Martian colonists as a way of prepping the landing pad, so to speak.

Self-driving cars without steering wheels or pedals might have gotten a little bit closer to reality late last week. On Friday, the California Department of Motor Vehicles released a revised draft of regulations that could give more flexibility to autonomous car manufacturers than they have today. The proposed regulations allow testing driverless cars that pass a federal safety inspection, even with no driver in the car. At the moment, states with self-driving car regulation normally require the presence of drivers. In California, 15 companies have permits to test vehicles as long as there is a licensed driver along for the ride, according to Reuters.

Never mind cancer research or climate change: IBM is finally bringing its Watson AI technology to bear on one of the real challenges still facing human civilisation – regulatory compliance. Big Blue has announced plans to snarf up Promontory Financial Group, a risk management and regulatory compliance consultancy, and combine the firm's expertise with Watson's cognitive capabilities in order to address the growing burden of regulation and risk management requirements. Promontory has about 600 workers in 19 offices across North America, Europe, Asia Pacific and the Middle East, and these are set to form the stout-hearted core of a new Watson Financial Services portfolio within IBM's Industry Platforms business. If all goes well, the transaction is expected to close before the end of 2016, but financial details of the deal have not been disclosed. According to IBM, more than 20,000 new regulatory requirements were created last year alone, and the complete catalogue of regulations is projected to exceed 300 million pages by 2020.

A significant chunk of the data that we encounter on a daily basis is available in an unstructured, free text format. Hence, the ability to glean useful bits of information from this unstructured pile can be quite valuable. In this post, we will attempt a basic analysis of the text from the first Presidential debate between Clinton and Trump. A good part of this post involves data manipulation steps to convert the raw transcript text (of the debate) into a more structured/ ordered form, which you can then start analyzing – This initial data manipulation process to transform the raw text into a more structured form suitable for further analysis/modelling, is a key step in any text analytics effort, and hence a key focus point of this post. Post data transformation and structuring, we attempt to answer a few simple questions from the data (such as Who spoke more, Who interrupted more, Key discussion points etc).

Amazon has been busy testing out its new Prime Air initiative at a secret location in the English countryside. The service's promise of a 30-minute delivery by specially designed drones may look like click-bait PR, but it's an early sign of the significant changes coming to cities around the world. For the moment, much of the hype around drones is full of caveats: safety is always the first priority, and nobody quite knows the full extent of what's possible. Amazon has been busy testing out its new Prime Air initiative at a secret location in the English countryside. This undated image provided by Amazon.com

During my commute the other day, I ended up on a dark subway car. The train still had power--the air conditioning was on, the announcements were coming through--but all the lights were dead. I live near an above-ground stop, so at first there was morning sunshine coming in through the windows. But when the train went underground, we were plunged into complete darkness. I found myself suddenly in a sea of floating, ghostly faces, illuminated by the glow of smartphones.

Apple is in the final stages of constructing a mammoth new campus in California to house the bulk of its workers. It's been lovingly called the "Spaceship" for years, and the latest drone flyover of the site shows you why. As per usual, two drone pilots have been conducting flyovers of the facility using DJI Inspire 1 and Phantom 4 quadcopters. They show an outer building that's mostly done, with details like landscaping and solar panels being finished at speed. The first video, filmed by Duncan Sinfield with his Inspire 1, does a good job of showing you around campus.

A Department of Veterans Affairs hospital in Wisconsin spent nearly half a million dollars on equipment it couldn't use, including two robots purchased to move supplies throughout the facility. Staffers at the VA Medical Center in Madison, Wisconsin, purchased two robots for about 313,000 in September 2012 without determining whether they could move effectively through the hospital's hallways, according to a Friday report released by the agency's inspector general substantiating allegations of wasted funds at the medical center. The robots were not used for two years. The watchdog found that the hospital wasted about 410,000 on the robots and a laser lead extractor, which was leased by the facility's cardiology department for nearly 100,000 and not used for two and a half years. The audit provides the latest evidence of wasted funds at the federally run network of hospitals, which has been faulted for spending billions each year on contracts for goods and services without sufficient oversight.

Indian and Pakistani troops fired at each other in disputed Kashmir on Monday, as Indian troops searched an army camp elsewhere in the region where suspected militants killed an Indian paramilitary soldier. Indian army Lt. Col. Manish Mehta said Pakistani troops fired without provocation using small arms and mortar shells in the Poonch sector of the Line of Control separating the Indian- and Pakistani-controlled parts of Kashmir. Pakistan's army said in a statement that its troops were responding to unprovoked firing by Indian soldiers. Both sides said the exchange of fire was continuing. In Islamabad, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif met with the leaders of all Pakistani political parties to discuss the ongoing clashes.