The first stage of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket returns to land in a time exposure at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, on the launcher's first mission since a June failure, in Cape Canaveral, Florida, December 21, 2015. Today's billionaires regularly channel their wealth into traditional areas of philanthropy like education and public health. Bill and Melinda Gates have spent billions to eradicate polio and malaria, Warren Buffet has pledged to give 85 percent of his Berkshire Hathaway wealth to the Gates Foundation and other charities, and duty-free shopping magnate Charles Feeney's giving includes almost 1 billion of donations to his alma mater, Cornell University. READ MORE: Cancer'moonshot' panel releases blueprint, but lacks guarantees on funding But the richest of the rich are also devoting significant resources to futuristic moonshots. Two billionaire fixations have caught my attention: space travel and life extension.

House Republicans are fighting to retain control of the chamber this fall, and they face looming priorities like stemming the Zika crisis and averting a government shutdown on a Sept. 30 funding deadline. But on Wednesday, they spent some a few lighter moments reviewing how the partisan divide can often be found on popular dating sites like OkCupid. At their first private session after returning from the long summer recess, House Republicans closed with a cheeky presentation on the interests most cited by liberals and conservatives in their dating profiles. "Yoga" ranked high among liberals; "Marines" by conservatives, according to a GOP source granted anonymity to discuss the private meeting. The presentation was based on a study released in July by OkCupid. GOP Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield is known for lightening up the often rocky GOP huddles, sometimes by showing movie clips.

September 8, 1966 was the day Science Fiction on television changed forever. It was the day Star Trek entered our public consciousness. In many ways, Star Trek was the right show, at the right time, this despite the fact that only after its initial run of 79 episodes, and a legendary letter writing campaign by its fans to try to save it, it was canceled by NBC for poor ratings. It came at a moment in our country's history when we were enjoying unprecedented technological advances and yet were experiencing social and political turmoil that threatened to rip apart the fabric of our nation and also potentially destroy our way of life as we knew it. This disparity between technology and humanity were themes that would define Star Trek in its various incarnations for the next fifty years -- and perhaps, if its fans see to make it so, for decades more.

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

LANSING, Mich – Michigan would no longer require that someone be inside a self-driving car while testing it on public roads under bills up for a vote in the Legislature. The change is expected to win Senate approval Wednesday and likely reach Gov. Rick Snyder's desk within months. The legislation is designed to keep the U.S. auto industry's home state ahead of the curve on autonomous vehicles. A researcher wouldn't have to be present in a self-driving test car. But he or she would be required to "promptly" take control of its movements if necessary.

Darktrace, the U.K. cybersecurity startup whose backers include Autonomy founder Mike Lynch's Invoke Capital, has closed 65 million in fresh funding. The new round was led by global investment firm KKR, with participation from existing investor Summit Partners and new investors TenEleven Ventures and SoftBank. I understand the new investment gives the 2013-founded company a valuation of more than 400 million, while in a call Lynch told me the new backing was a typical growth round and will be used for further international expansion and for R&D. In particular, he said Darktrace is developing technology to help companies respond to not only human-written cyberattacks but also the pending threat of machine-learning-based attacks that, in classic sci-fi-comes-true-fashion, will increasingly see AI battling it out with AI on behalf of the good and bad folks, respectively. But let's step back and take a look at what Darktrace offers today.

If Japan, home to the world's largest public debt, wanted to save a bundle, it would close the Bank of Japan. Auctioning off its giant neo-baroque headquarter buildings around the nation and pink-slipping roughly 4,900 full-time employees would cheer Moody's and Standard & Poor's and plug holes in the national balance sheet. That's not going to happen, of course. But imagine if the BOJ had closed shop 17 years ago, right after it first cut interest rates to zero, and turned its function over to a computer program. Would the artificial-intelligence version of the BOJ be any closer to 2 percent inflation than the well-compensated humans occupying its buildings?

Michigan would no longer require that someone be inside a self-driving car while testing it on public roads under bills up for a vote in the Legislature. The change is expected to win Senate approval Wednesday and likely reach Gov. Rick Snyder's desk within months. The legislation is designed to keep the U.S. auto industry's home state ahead of the curve on autonomous vehicles. A researcher wouldn't have to be present in a self-driving test car. But he or she would be required to "promptly" take control of its movements if necessary.

Editor's Note: Last month, Dark Reading editors named Deep Instinct the most innovative startup in its first annual Best of Black Hat Innovation Awards program at Black Hat 2016 in Las Vegas. As you reach for a water bottle, you don't pause to analyze its material, size or shape in order to determine whether it's a water bottle. Instead, you immediately reach for it, with complete confidence in its identification. If I show the same water bottle to any traditional computer vision module, it will easily recognize it. If I partially obstruct the image with my fingers, then traditional computer vision modules will have difficulty recognizing it.

CAPE CANAVERAL, FLORIDA – NASA is going after an asteroid this week like never before. It's launching a spacecraft to the exotic black rock named Bennu, vacuuming up handfuls of gravel from the surface, and then in a grand finale, delivering the pay dirt all the way back to Earth. The mission will take seven years, from Thursday night's planned liftoff from Cape Canaveral to the return of the asteroid samples in 2023, and cover an incredible 4 billion miles (6½ billion km) through space. It promises to be the biggest cosmic bounty since the Apollo moon rocks, hand-picked and delivered by astronauts in the late 1960s and early 1970s. NASA has already brought back comet dust and specks of solar wind.