At the moment we have a rare event in the tech sector, right now in China there is developing a specialized tech sector that is zeroing in on what is called autonomous or self driving cars, while at the same time a very similar but completely separate market for exactly the same thing has been developing in the United States. Many people in this technological field actually believe China has better conditions for the uptake of the technology, and because of the much more aggressive support from the national and local governments in China the conditions are actually much more favorable for fast adoption of the driverless car. China also has one more advantage over the United States in that the Chinese never developed a passion for the open road and car ownership.

Pony.ai provides automobile engineering, technology solutions, artificial intelligence and autonomous driving technology for transportation and operates in the United States and China. Baidu Inc the main search engine in China also provides navigation services and Baidu serves clients globally. Aptiv (in photo) . Aptiv is a global technology company that develops safer, greener and more connected solutions enabling the future of mobility.

Of course in recent years car ownership in China has spiked dramatically, most economic experts agree that within 15 years China will be the largest automobile market in the world. Technological experts are actually putting their bets on to the automation of the Chinese taxi industry as a first step. As these cars would nearly all be electric vehicles, it would greatly aid the Chinese government in the lowering of the pollution levels in major cities of Beijing and Shanghai. There has been a massive torrent of startup companies in China going into this technological area.

Most of the start up companies are extremely unusual in that the executives, nearly 100%, have all come from being employed by major US tech giants, the best well-known is run by ex-Intel senior executive. This particular company, even though its backers are well guarded secret, is expecting to put its first demonstration model would show at the consumer electronic show in Las Vegas in 2017. This company has attracted what is commonly called a collection of super talent with one of their latest employees being the former head of Google in China. Both Tesla and Google, the two leaders in the US race to build a completely driverless car were asked their opinions of the Chinese companies that are also having their own race, both companies didn't really want to comment but Tesla says they expect their first self driving cars to be on the road in late 2018 and Google expects its first model to be on the roads by early 2019. Both of these dates are around about the same dates the Chinese are talking about.

When talking to some of the Chinese leaders they said something which caught everyone's attention, most of the people in the field only talk about China and the United States but the Chinese say they believe that BMW in Germany has also been working on an autonomous vehicle since 2013, so in their words the project should be well advanced by now.

The biggest hurdle both teams have is actually getting their cars on the road, in the United States both Tesla and Google have been fighting uphill battles to allow their cars to be tested on the open road, in China is the exact opposite, with the government the biggest driving force behind these cars as fast as one comes off the production line is on the road being tested.

2019 marks Facebook's 10th F8 but looking back when it was launched in 2004 Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg pitched it as a way to get a date, wonder if he succeeded. When he opened his company's annual F8 developer conference in San Francisco recently he illustrated just how ambitious he is now, 14 years later. He said Facebook will now bring the world online, it would pioneer artificial intelligence and perfect virtual-reality. He introduced a whole series of bots that basically are designed to serve as robotic customer service reps for anyone who really wants one. He also brought onto the stage a piece of the Aquila pilotless plane which will supposedly bring wireless Internet to parts of the developing world that don't currently have it.

He said that the idea of building a plane that could stay in the air for several months at 60,000 feet, which is twice the cruising height of a commercial airliner, and also weighs less than most small cars, then he would've said you were crazy. His ambitions illustrate exactly how technology companies are no longer content with just getting people to go to their website and maybe download something, these technology oligarchs now believe their future depends on them being omnipresent in people's lives. During his address Mark Zuckerberg made several thinly veiled attacks on Republican US presidential candidate Donald Trump and his policy of closing the borders and turning the United States inward, he said “I hear fearful voices talking about building walls, it takes courage to choose hope over fear”.

He also said later on after he been challenged over the fact that he had spent the past three years lobbying for more visas for foreign workers, “instead of building walls we can build bridges, instead of dividing people we can connect them. We should do it one person at a time, one connection at a time and that is why I think the work we're doing together is more important than it has ever been before”. Developers will be able to build new chat bots to work with messenger, the CNN bot was demonstrated and also the 1-800-flowers bot was also demonstrated, with this plot you can order flower deliveries with personalized messages.

Much of the buzz at the developer event was around the seemingly nerdy new product of chat bots, these bots send live, automated messages or images or video into Facebook's chat tool, messenger, which is currently used by 900 million people every month as well as 50 million businesses. For most of the people who used the bots at the event this was their first experience of interacting with artificial intelligence. This move for Facebook is as much about making money as being social, if businesses use Facebook then they make more money and Facebook can make more money from them.

Gear VR, Facebook's low-end VR goggles is part of a technology that is claimed is going to change the way we all experience the world, Facebook claims customers have currently watched 2 million hours of VR video and it already has over 50 games in production.

Nothing beats the field of technology and innovation more than Apple. Apple has always been a tough competition for other companies either in the field of mobile phones or smartwatches.

Apple watch series 3 is considered one of the best smartwatches one could buy.

Apple watch series 3 was launched with a built in 4G technology. Apple's latest technology science provides extraordinary health features that include fibrillation detection which has an ability to perform an ECG test on one's wrist itself. It has a 30% larger display and a fast processor in comparison to other smartwatches in the market. However, the design of the series 3 is identical to the series 2. Although the size of apple watches are constant, this model has a new dual core processor and LTE connectivity.

The visual difference of series 3 is that it has a big red dot in the Digital Crown which mostly draws attention that you are possibly wearing the most expensive smartwatch around your wrist. The series 3 focuses on keeping a track on health and fitness, offering a variety of exercising tools. The workout app is more advanced as compared to the past models by adding a couple of new exercises. This intelligent watch lets you keep a track of your laps and lengths of strokes underwater as well. This is a result of the new science and technology Apple has incorporated in its Apple Watch Series 3. It measures your heart rate before and after the average walking. It also monitors your resting rates and the recovering time after your workouts. Siri being the biggest advantage in Apple's smartwatches, saves your time and energy when your hands are not idle. Whether it is a matter of setting up the time or changing a music track in the middle of the jog, you can easily do it with Siri.

There are thousands of third-party apps one can enjoy along with the core apps of Apple, making full use of the technology of the series 3. Apple Watch Series 3 can sync music automatically with its new technology software WatchOS 4. However, it is an Apple Music only venture. Also, wireless headphones are required for this.

However, the drawback is the battery life of series 3 is not long lasting and one needs to recharge it frequently. The watch is not user friendly if you don't own an iPhone.

The question that arises is that is Apple Series 3 worth the money? The answer to this question lies in the use of your gadgets. If you own an IPhone, a set of Air pods and a subscription to Apple Music Library, then an apple watch adds as a latest technology extension to your collection. It will benefit you with cellular activities, it will monitor your fitness regime and the sleek design will add to your style statement. For majority of the people the cost of the watch is not affordable along with limited battery life. Whereas, other get fascinated by Apple's latest technology and innovation.

Apple Watch Series 4.

Fundamentally redesigned and re-engineered to help you be even more active, healthy, and connected.

The largest Apple Watch display yet. Electrical heart sensor. Re-engineered Digital Crown with haptic feedback. Entirely familiar, yet completely redesigned, Apple Watch Series 4 resets the standard for what a watch can be.

Notifications for low and high heart rate. Fall detection and Emergency SOS. Breathe watch faces. It's designed to improve your health every day and powerful enough to help protect it.

Automatic workout detection. Yoga and hiking workouts. Advanced features for runners like cadence and pace alerts. See up to five metrics at a glance as you precisely track all your favorite ways to train.

Walkie-Talkie, phone calls, and messages. Apple Music and Apple Podcasts. They're all there, right on your wrist. Seriously if you like to wait till new products get refined till you buy, I think this it the time to jump in...

Malware activity increased 61% from December 2018 to January 2019.

Everyone today needs to understand the evolving risks associated with our modern technology, the chances are that sooner or later you will be targeted by something that is growing dramatically, it is commonly called ransomwear, basically it is a piece of malicious software that encrypts all of the data on your computer or smartphone and the people who put it there then demand a ransom to return access to your device. In late 2015 Intel security released a report stating that the incidence rate of ransomwear installations had increased by 26% during the previous 12 months. According to the FBI, the criminal gangs that use ransom ware attacks are netting up to $150 million per annum.

The FBI report did not estimate the overall value of the losses sustained by the known 6 million attempts to install this type of malware on computer systems across the world. Most ransom ware attacks today involve not only the demand for ransom but threats aimed at the owner if they fail to pay, usually these threats involve sending pornography to all your customers if you're in business or on forwarding the malware to anyone you know, the latest infections have been included in Microsoft Word documents which has made them very effective.

The practice of using ransomwear is growing mostly because the software is easy to obtain online and is also relatively cheap, on top of that the advent of systems like bitcoin, which enables the criminals to be paid but remain untraceable has aided not just ransom ware peddlers but other forms of cyber crime. Nearly all these type of attacks are directed at what are commonly called “soft targets”, these are individual computers or a small network of computers that have relatively low level protection, most of them usually don't even have a firewall.

The upside of all of this is it is relatively easy to protect your computer against this kind of attack, the simplest and easiest way is to perform a backup of your complete system every three months if it's a personal computer and every month if it's a business system. Then if you have an attack occur all you have to do is restore the computer using the backup and the ransomwear is defeated, and the threats become meaningless but there are some things you should do even if you have effective protection.

Number one thing on the list of things you should do is to report the attack to the authorities, unless they know what is going on they have no chance of either catching the criminals or issuing bulletins advising of how the malware was installed. You should always use reputable antivirus software and you must have a firewall installed as well, having these two items installed and up-to-date will most likely defeat any incoming malware, not just ransomwear.

If you are a business it is recommended that you purchase cyber insurance to protect yourself against this type and other types of cyber crime. You'll need to enlist an insurance expert to make sure you are not only covered for currently known cyber crimes but also for evolving cyber crimes. Like the rest of the community the world of crime is changing and technology is speeding up the pace of that change, educate yourself to understand the evolving risks most of which are easy and not expensive to defeat, all it takes is a little forethought and effort in the criminals will go and look for softer marks.