China is already more digitized than many observers appreciate and has the potential to set the world’s digital frontier in coming decades.China has one of the most active digital-investment and start-up ecosystems in the world, according to a new discussion paper from the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI), China’s digital economy: A leading global force. China is in the top three in the world...

Self-driving cars could be bamboozled by stickers on stop signs, according to research from a new multi-university team. Amid the rush to develop self-driving cars, there are a few questions that need answering. We've been worrying about hackers taking control of our autonomous vehicles, but it turns out they could be spooked by much simpler means. A team of researchers says strategically place...

Sometimes it helps to see these things in context.From the transcript of Apple’s Q3 2017 earnings call:Tim Cook: Services revenue hit an all-time quarterly record of $7.3 billion, representing 22% growth over last year. We continue to see great performance all around the world, with double-digit growth in each of our geographic segments. Over the last 12 months, our Services business has becom...

A SelfPaint-guided robot paints a chair, with its calculated "painting path" seen in the inset.Regardless of the industry, products are becoming increasingly customized; in the long term, production is set to be characterized by batch size 1. When it comes to the painting process, however, businesses are still up against some major challenges in this respect. After all, automation and customize...

Both make way more than companies outside Silicon Valley. Silicon Valley companies are more efficient at making money than traditional industries, as evidenced by net income and revenue per employee in their latest quarterly filings.Facebook, which employed 20,658 people this past quarter — a 43 percent increase over the same period last year — made the most profit per employee out of the com...

It looks like Snap is enlisting outside help to advance its expansion into new hardware projects. The U.S. company is in talks with China-based drone maker Zero Zero Robotics over an acquisition, according to a source with knowledge of discussions.The deal, which was first reported by The Information, is in the range of $150 million-$200 million, the source told TechCrunch. That price would rep...

The very idea that something like the Upside Down PC can exist excites me. Designed to be used in a wide variety of configurations, from a laptop, to a tablet, to a workstation tablet, to a desktop, the Upside Down concept computer comes with a 360° hinge, a touchscreen, and a track-pad with a detachable keyboard beneath it. The laptop and tablet configurations have been explored enough with c...

Until recently, artificial intelligence (AI) was similar to nuclear fusion in unfulfilled promise. It had been around a long time but had not reached the spectacular heights foreseen in its infancy. Now, however, AI is realizing its potential in achieving human-like capabilities, so it is time to ask: How can business leaders harness AI to take advantage of the specific strengths of man and mac...

More comfortable online than out partying, post-Millennials are safer, physically, than adolescents have ever been. But they’re on the brink of a mental-health crisis.One day last summer, around noon, I called Athena, a 13-year-old who lives in Houston, Texas. She answered her phone—she’s had an iPhone since she was 11—sounding as if she’d just woken up. We chatted about her favorite songs...