The Digest: Spotify vs Taylor Swift… and 4 other things people are talking about today

[nextpage title="Next"] Spotify defends itself against Taylor Swift's criticism | BBC News "Spotify's chief executive has defended its business model, saying it has paid out $2bn (£1.2bn) to the music industry to date. Daniel Ek's lengthy blog post follows a high profile move by pop star Taylor Swift to pull her entire back catalogue from…

Opinion: Why we should all be scared of real robot wars!

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Jonathan Weinberg writes… One of the UK’s leading scientists reckons terrorists could soon be using robots to attack their targets – so should we all be worried and run for cover?

Well, I’ve already battened down my hatches, took the tin hat out of storage and stocked up on tins of corned beef and baked beans. Annoyingly, I don’t even like corned beef, but I’m told it lasts.

Anyhow, robots are without doubt one of the biggest technological advances and one of the biggest techno-tests we face in the future. If they can be used for good, it stands to reason they can be used for evil. Anyone who’s seen Steven Spielberg flick Artificial Intelligence: AI starring Jude Law will know how terrifying a world with ultra-realistic human-like robots could be…

Tech Digest's Robot World Cup: Semi-Final

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No, we hadn’t forgotten about it. We were just giving the final bots in our Robot World Cup a few weeks to rest their bones (well, mechanical joints) before rejoining battle. And what a battle it is. We’re at the semi-final stage, which means the last four robots in the competition. Three of ’em are humanoid: Honda’s Asimo, WowWee’s Robosapien RS Media, and KornTech’s Rogun. The quartet is completed by iRobot’s military Packbot, which swaps legs for tank treads.