How do you improve on a design as classic as the round wall clock? Glance Clock founder and CEO Anton Zriaschev has conjured up a delightful timepiece that blends elements of analog and digital design and promises to make you more productive by helping you avoid distractions and--surprisingly enough--the compulsion to keep an eye on the clock so you don't miss important events and appointments. TechHive only covers the occasional crowdfunding project (the Glance Clock's Indiegogo campaign starts today). To catch our interest, the project has to be particularly interesting, and the startup must be able to provide a working prototype. Zriaschev has only a handful of those, so he made the three-hour trek from the San Francisco Bay Area to my home (and TechHive's de facto test lab) to show me his invention.

Donald Trump's daughter Ivanka promised during the Republican National Convention that her father would offer more help to working families, and this week the elder Trump laid out more of the specifics: six weeks of paid maternity leave for new mothers and a new approach to tax breaks for child-care expenses. Perhaps the best that can be said is that it's refreshing to see a Republican presidential candidate advocate for federal paid family leave policies and financial assistance to help working parents afford the tremendous costs of raising children. Like so much of what Trump has said during the campaign, the proposal falls short on details, including how to pay for these new benefits, and it's woefully out of touch with the needs of many families. Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton's plan is similarly lacking in key details, but at least her plan is more attuned to the challenges faced by the growing proportion of families with no stay-at-home parents. And yet, the nation is probably better off with Trump offering a flawed, half-baked plan, rather than no plan, because it suggests a bipartisan consensus that maternity leave and child care are critical national issues that the federal government can do much more to address.

UBS is testing out artificial intelligence (AI) to see if it can assist clients in how best to invest their money – just by looking at their facial expressions. UBS chief investment officer Mark Haefele says the Swiss bank is running several pilot programmes – with one tool able to interpret clients' facial expressions while they watch a video on financial planning. "This helps uncover biases," Haefele says. "You can say, 'Look, you said your biggest interest is planning for the long term but this artificial intelligence is showing us what you're really excited about are short-term trading ideas.'" This may not get down well with customers – who wants to be contradicted about what they're thinking?

Is HBO's new show "Westworld" considered a Western series or a sci-fi series? If lead star Evan Rachel Wood, who plays robotic host Dolores Abernathy, were to be asked, it's a little bit of both. "It's science fiction, it's a Western, it's an existential drama and an intellectual nightmare," Wood told the Rolling Stone, adding, "and I've never really read or seen anything quite like this -- including the movie. And for those of us playing the hosts, it was also like the Acting Olympics: 'I need you to have a panic attack, and then I need you to be in character, and then I need you to go into computer mode, and then I need you to breathe, and then I need you to be downloading…'" Show creators Jonathan Nolan and his wife Lisa Joy really wanted to deliver something new to television. In most sci-fi movies, humans are always the protagonists, while robots or machines are trying to bring them down.

The fitness class at the Do Life Shinagawa nursing home begins at 10:30 a.m., drawing about two dozen eager participants -- many of them pushing 70, 80 and even 90 years of age. At the front of the room is a human instructor, but it is the 16 inch tall robot standing on a table to his right that the crowd is paying attention to. The sleek, white humanoid robot is turned on and with fluid motion, stands up and spreads out its arms. "Why are you waking me up?" the robot asks in Japanese in an almost child-like voice. "Oh, you want to exercise?"

The Justice Department is investigating Wells Fargo & Co.'s improper sales tactics, according to a person familiar with the probe. Federal prosecutors in San Francisco and New York are in the early stages of an investigation that could lead to criminal or civil charges, the person said Wednesday. Last week, the San Francisco bank agreed to pay 185 million to settle investigations by Los Angeles City Atty. The sales tactics, first uncovered by the Los Angeles Times in 2013, involved thousands of bank employees opening as many as 2 million accounts that customers did not authorize in order to meet aggressive sales goals. The local and federal investigations described some of the steps employees took to open the accounts as fraudulent and illegal.

The future arrived on Monday, wrapped in a tortilla. Chipotle burritos were delivered via drone to waiting Virginia Tech students in the first of a series of tests that could be giving foodies a taste of things to come. The drone delivery arrived just before 1 p.m., according to Roanoke Times journalist Jacob Demmett, who managed to capture the landmark moment on video. The flying burrito tests were not open to the public, presumedly so the recipients wouldn't have to share their bounty with other hungry students. The burrito drone descended to about 10 feet over a grass patch before lowering a large white package to the ground on a string.

Editor's note: Our 6th Annual Vator Splash LA conference is coming up on October 13 at the Loews Hotel in Santa Monica. Speakers include Mark Cuban (one of the hosts of Shark Tank and owner of the Dallas Mavericks); Brian Lee (Founder & CEO, Honest Company); Leura Fine (Founder & CEO, Laurel & Wolf); Nick Green (Co-Founder and Co-CEO, Thrive Market); Tri Tran (CEO & Co-founder, Munchery); Adam Goldenberg (Founder & CEO, JustFab); Andre Haddad (CEO, Turo); Mike Jones (Founder, Science) and many more. Yesterday I ate lunch at Eatsa. If you've never been, imagine a fast food joint the size of a large bedroom. Instead of a line of cashiers with the kitchen behind them, you see a line of electronic kiosks with a grid of screens behind them. After sliding your credit card in the kiosk and selecting your quinoa bowl, you wait alongside several other humans, looking at their phones, waiting for their orders.

Suzanne Dworak-Peck, an internationally recognized leader in social work and a USC alumna, has donated 60 million to the USC School of Social Work, the university announced Wednesday. The gift is the largest donation from an individual to a social work school, according to USC, and changes the school's name to the USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work. "Today is about recognizing and celebrating social work -- as a focus for learning and research, as a profession and as an investment in the future of humanity," said Dworak-Peck, who has served as president of the National Assn. of Social Workers and is known for forging partnerships in the field around the world. "Our school will always be a destination for learning, where future generations of students will feel that we value and are invested in empowering their goals and their creativity and their growth. This is the feeling I took from USC and internalized throughout my career, and I really want to share that exceptional experience with others."

Smart technology has made life so much easier in recent years. It's made homes safer, it's made meals tastier, and it's made watches a whole lot more complicated. Unfortunately, there is no device that can work out for you. There's no app that can motivate you to run, and there's no wearable that will give you abs. Working out is still something you need to do on your own.