Apache Spark, the open-source cluster computing framework, will soon see a major update with the upcoming release of Spark 2.0. This update promises to be faster than Spark 1.6, thanks to a run-time compiler that generates optimized bytecode. It also promises to be easier for developers to use, with streamlined APIs and a more complete SQL implementation. Spark 2.0 will also include a new "structured streaming" API, which will allow developers to write algorithm for streaming data without having to worry about the fact that streaming data is always incomplete; algorithms written for complete DataFrame objects will work for streams as well. This update also includes some news for R users.

Unless you've been living under a rock (which will likely be affected by climate change soon, by the way), you know that between forest fires, illegal deforestation, poaching, and other crimes, an enormity of environmental issues puts our ecosystems in danger. According to the National Science Foundation, a century ago, more than 60,000 tigers roamed in the wild. Now, there are as few as 3,000 remaining. While human patrols can directly protect endangered animals, many protection agencies lack the resources necessary to cover the appropriate amount of ground, especially in large national parks where many of these illicit activities might occur. In 2011, Eve McDonald-Madden and her colleagues at the University of Queensland in Australia lamented that a lack of money limits the impact that management strategies can have on preventing the extinction of a species.

Musk and other tech giants are joining forces to fund research that will halt artificial intelligence from overtaking mankind. Elon Musk's contributions to society know no bounds: his latest scheme is intended to save humanity from being destroyed by artificial intelligence (AI). The billionaire, known for garnering a massive amount of wealth and attention with his revolutionary projects of PayPal, Tesla, and SpaceX, has consistently warned against AI, recently calling it humanity's greatest existential threat. His belief of the detriment AI may cause has led him to pool forces with other well-known tech entrepreneurs to establish an investment fund intended for researchers to pursue actions with a positive social impact. The 1 billion fund is slated to assist humans in staying at least one step ahead of technology.

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The National Telecommunications & Information Administration released Thursday a list of voluntary privacy best practices for commercial and non-commercial drone users, in the wake of concerns that drones could encroach on individual privacy and open a new front in the collection of personal data for commercial use. The privacy guidance, arrived at in consensus with drone organizations and companies like Amazon and Google's parent Alphabet, recommends that drone operators who collect personal data should have a privacy policy that explains what personally identifiable information they will collect, for what purpose the data is collected and if it will be shared with others, including in response to requests from law enforcement agencies. The guidelines also encourage drone operators to avoid using or sharing personal data for marketing purposes without consent of the individual. Drone operators should also not use personal data without consent for "employment eligibility, promotion, or retention; credit eligibility; or health care treatment eligibility other than when expressly permitted by and subject to the requirements of a sector-specific regulatory framework." Data collected should also not be held beyond a reasonable period, without the consent of the individual, or in exceptional circumstances, such as legal disputes or safety incidents.

There is so much doom and gloom associated with robots and jobs it is time to add some common sense to the misunderstandings created by so called experts opinions about robots and jobs – thankfully authors from the OECD may have added some clarity to the debate -- 'finding that on average, across the 21 OECD countries, '9% of jobs rather than 47%, as proposed by Frey and Osborne face a high automatibility.' Capitalism, the term for our global'free' markets, is a uniquely future-oriented economic system in which people invest, make innovations, apply for patents, and in other ways bet on the future. Behind all of this we find the hallmark of humanity, which is our creative intelligence. It is intelligence that drives these investments and innovations, and intelligence that forges within many of us an intense curiosity of what the future may hold. It is also intelligence that forges in others an anxiety over what the future holds. For many the future is no longer a promise but a threat!

The giant hedge fund, which manages 35 billion, is as much a technology company as it is a hedge fund. It uses advanced technologies to find investment opportunities, and it just hosted its annual artificial intelligence competition. One of those technological applications involves using natural-language-processing techniques to analyze the Fed minutes, such as those set for release Wednesday afternoon. "Historically, interpretations of those minutes required art, so Fed watchers pontificated and critiqued," the firm said in a note. "Now natural language processing techniques can translate those minutes into relatively objective data."

"Think about just how interconnected the world is now," said Matt Gould, the co-founder of Arria NLG, a prominent enterprise in the development and deployment of Natural Language Generation (NLG) technologies worldwide. "Think about it from just a personal context. How much data are you generating personally every day?" Modern, connected humans interact constantly online with computers, mobile phones, and many other devices. They pay bills, watch movies, purchase products, interact with medical professionals, use fitness apps, listen to music, and work online. "That whole drifting miasma of invisible data is spilling off you constantly and consistently, and it's happening for at least half the world's population now," said Gould during a recent DATAVERSITY phone interview.

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The advances have also fueled speculation of a wave of job losses as machines replace humans, just as the industrial revolution rendered many occupations redundant. The World Economic Forum predicted in January that by 2020, 5 million jobs could be lost to machines. Experts said when it came to the banking and finance sector, the topic needed a more nuanced approach. Speaking on a panel discussing global trends in fintech at InnovFest UnBound, a digital technology conference organized in Singapore, Avinash Hegde, co-founder of a chat bot service Supertext, explained that low-skilled finance jobs, such as basic analytics and number crunching, could soon be done by AI. "The way we interact with business and financial analysts is going to dramatically change in the next few years," he said. Would financial analysts find themselves out of a job?