Mike Murphy

It’s Nov. 4, 2036. Looking to capitalize on the goodwill of his father’s two successful terms in office, Donald Trump, Jr. is leading the pack of politicians running for US President. After some quick Googling on your invisible wall-mounted computer, you have figured out who you want to vote for. But you don’t need to fire up your super hoverboard or personal drone-ship to vote: You can now go from Google’s search page right to voting. After a few more clicks, you’ve found the election page on Google’s site, done your civic duty while still in your pajamas, Tweeted about it, and are off to 3D-print yourself some breakfast.

In the future, everything will drive itself, from our cars, to our buses and trucks—and now it seems, our office chairs. Nissan, the Japanese car maker, has unveiled a new office chair inspired by the autonomous parking technology found in its newer vehicles.

Artificially intelligent programs can learn to walk like we do, beat game shows and board games, and even drive cars. But are they ready to find and fight enemies for us?

We’re getting closer to the plug-and-play human body.

Since the early 1990s, the same five teams—Manchester United, Chelsea, Arsenal, Manchester City, and to a lesser extent, Liverpool—have dominated the English Premier League. It’s been over 20 years since a team other than one of those five took home the trophy.

There appears to be nothing virtual about Google’s interest in VR. According to reports from the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times (paywalls) this past week, Google is looking to expand its virtual reality offering with a new headset.

In the future, constructing skyscrapers may be as simple as following the instructions on a Lego model—albeit on a much grander scale.

Officials in Orange County, Florida, said that a 13-year-old boy died Monday (Feb. 8) after accidentally being shot in the head by his cousin.

On a call with analysts today following the release of its fourth quarter earnings, Tesla CEO Elon Musk was asked about the rollout of the company’s most recent vehicle, the crossover Model X. He said, in hindsight, the company probably should’ve tried to do less with the first iteration of the vehicle, but he had some grand statements to make about Tesla’s first two electric cars, which were somewhat contradictory.

Tesla is getting ready to go into insane mode.

One of the biggest days in any US high schooler’s life is when they get their driving license. And now, Google’s self-driving cars have been granted that same level of freedom. The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has said that Google’s self-driving cars will now be considered legal drivers in the eyes of the law, Reuters reported.

The machines are starting to team up—although for now, it’s just to beat classic video games.

Look out, Amazon.

With every passing presidential debate, candidates’ stump speeches and jabs at each other are starting to feel more rote, even robotic. With opinion split among Democratic voters and no clear winner yet emerging from the Republicans, it might be the perfect time for an actual robot to enter the race: IBM’s Watson.

The robots are coming—to save your life.

Last year was the year of the hoverboard. The non-hovering, self-balancing scooters seemed to be in the news just about everywhere as some new celebrity or other tried one out, made their own version, or fell off one. But the devices were just as often in the news for blowing up and setting houses—and people— on fire.

About a week after beating a supposedly unbeatable board game, robots are now turning their attention to a game you’ve actually heard of: golf. LDRIC, a robot named after Tiger Woods’ birth name (“Eldrick,” phonetically), knocked in a hole-in-one on the 16th hole of the Waste Management Phoenix Open in Scottsdale, Arizona on Wednesday.

“Six degrees of separation” is a longstanding theory, first suggested by Hungarian author Frigyes Karinthy in 1929, that everyone on Earth is only six introductions away from meeting everyone else on Earth.

Sometimes, the simplest changes can have massive impacts. In a Wall Street Journal column (paywall), Joanna Stern outlined a number of ways that consumers can keep their mobile data usage under control to avoid paying expensive overage fees for additional data. Her tips included making sure to turn off auto-playing videos on Facebook and using different browsers to watch videos.

GoPro’s financial history since going public in 2014 has so far proven to be as extreme as the activities people film with the company’s cameras.

Amit Singhal, a 15-year veteran of Google and the company’s head of search, announced through Google+ today that he is retiring. Singhal will be replaced by John Giannandrea, who has been running Google’s artificial intelligence research division.

What’s the best way to stop a bad guy with a drone? A good guy with a drone-fighting eagle, apparently. At least, that’s the logic of the Dutch National Police, who released a video showing off their new eagle on Jan. 31.

On Monday (Feb. 1), Google announced that its self-driving car program was simulating driving 3 million miles a day. As The Verge noted, that’s the equivalent of about 500 round trips between New York City and Los Angeles, and roughly 90 million simulated miles a month. The company also announced that, since 2009, its fleet of 55 autonomous cars have driven a total of over 1.4 million miles on actual roads around the Bay Area and Austin, Texas.

Last week, Facebook announced on its earnings call that 80% of its revenue now comes from mobile users. In four years, the social network has created a $13 billion mobile business. At Yahoo, however, the picture is quite the opposite: Today, Yahoo announced its fourth-quarter earnings, pulling in $1.3 billon in revenue for the quarter. But only $291 million—about 23%—came from mobile.