Happy Chinese New Year everyone!  This week saw the beginning of the Year of the Sheep.  Mark Zuckerberg welcomed the new year with a video post in, what Business Insider calls, “vastly improved” Mandarin Chinese.

Meanwhile, Tech Crunch reports that our friends at Buzzfeed have ventured further into mobile territory this week with the acquisition of GoPop, a startup helping people have “visual conversations.”

Given the popularity of the GIF on Buzzfeed’s quizzes and listicles, the San Francisco based GoPop, which builds simple animations, should feel right at home.

Elsewhere in the world, Dutch nonprofit Mars One has narrowed its list of finalists vying for a seat on a future one-way trip to the red planet to 100 names – 50 men and 50 women.

38 of the 100 live in the U.S.

To fund the 2024 mission, which carries an approximately $6 billion price tag, the Dutch company will be televising the process from here on out as applicants compete to make the final team.

Apple, ever one to stay in the news, has the entire tech industry abuzz with rumors of iCars in our future.

CNET reports on a lawsuit, filed earlier this month, which accuses Apple of poaching or attempting to poach several top-level engineers from an electric car battery company.

In addition, Bloomberg Business reports insiders at the company quoting a hopeful 2020 start date for production of an Apple electric vehicle.

In other car news, Swedish company Volvo  has made waves by promising a 2017 test-drive of their in-development self-driving cars.

With as many legal hurdles as technological ones, most companies have been hesitant to label such a specific end-goal, though many have been happy to say they’re working on it.

Erik Coelingh, a technical specialist at Volvo, told Yahoo! Tech, ““It is relatively easy to build and demonstrate a self-driving concept vehicle.  But if you want to create an impact in the real world you have to design and produce a complete system that will be safe, robust and affordable for ordinary customers.”