For a long time, we've been sold -- and we've bought -- the idea of the nerd hero; usually a man, usually brilliant, and usually a social outcast who, inevitably, gets the girl. That was the happy ending. But now, we're surrounded by powerful, self-styled nerds who have it all and still want more. And, to some, it's increasingly hard to root for these guys. Ian Bogost, a writer and video game designer, joins us.

Have you received a message or a web link from your'bank' or power utility, threatening to block your card or snap the power connection to your home? Thousands of people fall prey to such messages after getting coaxed by targeted attacks, ending up giving sensitive information to fraudsters and losing money. Tanla Platforms has launched a Blockchain-based platform'Wisely ATP', which can filter SMSes in a fraction of a second and block all the suspicious phishing messages delivered over various telecom networks. The artificial intelligence-based solution will instantaneously send alerts banks, financial institutions, telcos, and law-enforcement agencies. Wisely ATP was formally launched at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) being held in Barcelona (Spain) on Monday.

The introduction of AI systems in militaries and acquisition by countries, especially great powers, may have grave implications in the long run. A perceived inequity can be seen in the balance of power if the AI race starts to gain momentum. One can argue that the race will be catalysed by the influence of a state acquiring AI systems thus posing a threat to another state all due to the anarchic nature of the international arena. As we grow, or at the very least try to be mindful of the unintended results affiliated with the advancement in military technology and autonomous weapons, we realize the militaristic attraction that these weapons possess and how we cannot sufficiently envision the possibility of these self-sufficient weapons advancing. In 2016, a professional competition took place between a South Korean expert of the strategy game called Go and Google's artificial intelligence program in which the master player Lee Se-Dol announced his withdrawal from the contest after failing to win against the program.

Years ago in college, I took a course on the Philosophy of A.I. and Machine Learning. This course had me thinking about computers in ways I'd never thought of them before--not as abstract, magical black boxes, but as mechanical devices using simple rules. Understanding how these simple rules lead to complex processes is the key to understanding machine learning. In this article I want to demonstrate the basics of Machine Learning -- one of the more advanced and cutting edge areas of Computer Science. And as in the previous articles of this series, we're not going to need any computers.

The menace of trade-based money laundering (TBML) is an increasing, yet often under-reported, financial and reputational risk to banks and a growing concern to governments and regulators. Transnational crime is worth up to $2.2trn each year and much of it is facilitated by various forms of trade-based money laundering. A PWC report stated that 80 percent of illicit financial flows from developing countries are accomplished through trade-based money laundering. With sums of this magnitude, it is not surprising that banks, who are often the (unwitting) facilitators of this illegal activity, are coming under increasing pressure from regulators to take greater action to limit this growing international crime. For banks, TBML, disguised under the huge volumes of legitimate trade, is also extremely difficult to detect.

Yuval Noah Harari has scored phenomenal success with both his "brief history of humankind", Sapiens, published in 2014, and its follow-up, his "brief history of tomorrow", Homo Deus, of 2016. Now he offers us his take on the present, couched as advice, almost self-help. It's a lesser book than its predecessors, being, beneath this urgent format, a ragbag of articles from papers and magazines, unified by his authorship but not conceived as a whole. The first chapters are the most forceful. He warns that "no remaining human job will ever be safe from the threat of future automation".

Artificial Intelligence (AI), machine learning and the internet of things (IoT) lead emerging technology conversations across the world. Companies recognise that these technologies are ready to be used to drive real business benefits. The Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ) region is set to pick up the pace on these two fronts. According to a recent cloud survey by MIT Technology Review Custom and VMware, more than 70% of non-users of AI in APJ said their organisations will adopt the technology within five years. IDC forecasted global IoT spending to surpass $1 trillion USD in 2020, with APJ leading the way.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) may well be the most powerful technology of the 21st century, helping to solve humanity's most complex unsolved problems: environmental, social, and more. Yet sceptics believe that AI's risks are as large as its potential benefits. How can they be avoided? And why isn't the most powerful technology being used more widely today to solve the world's greatest "wicked" problems? Great technological advances are often a double-edged sword.

The use of machine learning to teach computers to play board games has had a lot of interest lately. Big companies such as Facebook and Google have both made recent breakthroughs in teaching AI the complex board game, Go. However, people have been using machine learning to teach computers board games since the mid-twentieth century. In the early 1960s Donald Michie, a British computer scientist who helped break the German Tunny code during the Second World War, came up with Menace (the Machine Educable Noughts And Crosses Engine). Menace uses 304 matchboxes all filled with coloured beads in order to learn to play noughts and crosses.

New IPs are a rarity in our current age of sequels, and new exclusive IPs are almost unicorns at this point, as it's become unusual for a brand to attempt to create new iconic franchises when everything is cross-platform. But that's what Guerrilla Games has tried to do for Sony with Horizon Zero Dawn, and after playing the game for 30 hours, I'm going to say they've succeeded. Horizon Zero Dawn is a radical departure for Guerrilla, best known for the Killzone series, which has always been a PlayStation staple, but not exactly a stand-out entry in the overly-crowded shooter genre dominated by Call of Duty, Battlefield and the like. Switching to an open world title isn't exactly blazing some bold new path either at this point, as the genre is well-established and some would even say oversaturated at this point. In many ways, Horizon Zero Dawn can feel like a lot of what's come before.