Earlier this month, entrepreneur Corey Jaskolski pulled out a pen and drew his best guess at what the surveillance balloon shot down by a US jet would have looked like from space. Then he fed the sketch and "a gob" of recent satellite images from the area where the balloon was taken down into algorithms developed by his image and video detection startup Synthetatic, and waited. Within two minutes, he says, the algorithms found the 200-foot-tall balloon off the coast of South Carolina. "I couldn't believe it," Jaskolski says. Nor could his wife when he excitedly showed her his results.

I finally got the opportunity to watch Free Guy recently. Before I go any further, there are probably going to be spoilers here. The further we get from the original release date, the less that will matter. However, there may be some people who still haven't seen this movie and don't want it spoiled. I will say it was a good movie that could have been better. I enjoy movies in this genre.

Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust has added a fourth surgical robot to to its collection in a bid to speed up cancer operations delayed by the pandemic. The new addition joins three 4th generation da Vinci surgical systems from manufacturer Intuitive which the trust already owns and with four machines, the trust now has the largest robotic programme in the UK currently. The new robot, which is on loan until the end of the year, will operate on NHS patients from the private floors of the Cancer Centre at Guy's as part of a collaboration with private healthcare provider, HCA Healthcare UK. The new delivery will help to clear a backlog of surgical procedures and it is also hoped it will lead to improved patient outcomes. The use of robots in surgery leads to increased operative precision which can mean less pain for patients, smaller scars and reduced hospital stays post-surgery.

It is very likely that you've heard all the buzz that has been going lately about the chatbots, and how they're going to revolutionize everything in the coming years, but if you haven't, let me guide you through the revolution. Well, fear no more, dear reader, this is (part one of) all you need to know about chatbots. In general terms, a bot is a piece of software that automates a task, but talking specifically about chatbots, we come to the concept of automating an interaction through a conversational UI. But don't mind my fancy wording. Chatbots are a way in which you can automate a written conversation, simulating an interaction between two real human beings.

Robots have been used to carry out kidney transplants for the first time in the UK. The machines are controlled by surgeons but computers and precision motors allow greater accuracy, meaning much less painful damage to muscle. As a result, the man and woman who had the operations at Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust in London were able to recover using only paracetamol rather than morphine. Siobhan Morris, 42, who underwent the operation a week ago, had previously had a kidney transplant by traditional open surgery, but found the pain with the robotic method was'probably 80 per cent less'. 'I was amazed,' the mother-of-two from Kent told The Sunday Times.