In the fall of 2010, I traveled to New Zealand, and one of the places I visited was the small south island city of Christchurch. I was charmed by the tree-lined Avon River, the English-style cathedral in the main square, and the mountains looming in the distance. Inside the cathedral was a stack of poems with a moving message of peace. I saved one to tack on my cork board at home, where it remains to this day. Three months later I turned on the news to see the Christchurch cathedral splintered and broken, its spire crumbled to the ground.

Uber is making an aggressive drive into meal delivery, backed by a wave of staff recruitment, with the U.S. tech heavyweight gearing up to enter at least 22 new countries and take on local rivals. In a measure of rising ambition beyond its taxi business, Uber will begin delivering meals in Amsterdam on Thursday just as Dutch market leader Takeaway.com And according to current job listings on Uber and other recruiting sites - for about 150 roles ranging from general managers and sales staff to bike couriers - UberEats is planning to enter at least 22 new countries across the world in the near future. That is on top of the six countries where it already operates. Uber is making an aggressive drive into meal delivery, backed by a wave of staff recruitment, with the U.S. tech heavyweight gearing up to enter at least 22 new countries and take on local rivals Download the UberEATS app and add your delivery address.

On September 22, Lupus LA presented its Annual Get Lucky for Lupus LA Celebrity Poker Tournament and Party at historic Avalon nightclub at Hollywood & Vine. Michael B. Jordan, Ryan Cabrera, Amanda Righetti, Kellie Martin, Allen Maldonado, Omar Benson Miller, Eddie Matos, Phil Lewis, Erik Valdez, poker stars Tiffany Michele and Maria Ho, Jessica Hall, Verne Troyer, Mike Mizanin and more were among the celebrities that came to support Lupus LA, which raises funds for lupus research and local patient programs. Each year Lupus LA presents awards to individuals who strive to make the world better for those living with lupus, whether it is through research, charitable gifts, spreading awareness and more. Lupus LA honored the Band From TV and members Scott Grimes, Greg Grunberg, Bob Guiney, James Denton, Adrian Pasdar and Jesse Spencer. Get Lucky For Lupus LA Celebrity Poker Tournament and Party was sponsored by fenix cosmetics, Peroni, Tito's Handmade Vodka, JottShots, and True Religion.

X, formerly known as the Google X lab before spinning off into a new unit under parent Alphabet after a company restructuring, has tapped artificial intelligence to drive one of its most popular projects. Project Loon, which looks to launch balloons into the stratosphere to provide internet access to users on Earth, made a major breakthrough recently. One of its balloons was able to stay up in Peruvian airspace for 98 days, an impressive feat considering the difficulty to keep a balloon at a certain spot for a long period of time. The breakthrough was announced by the Project Loon team through its official Google page, where it stated that it was hard at work in the development of the navigation technology that its balloons will use. The latest updates were put to the test this summer on one of Project Loon's flights, launching the balloon from a site in Puerto Rico and then having it travel to Peru.

Anti-money laundering, fraud prevention and sanctions processing are three of the key areas people working in in the payments industry see potential for artificial intelligence (AI) to play a role. In a survey of senior payment professionals in banks and corporates, 63% of those polled identified these three areas as potentially benefiting from AI that can learn from previous experience and behaviour patterns. That's according to Pelican, a company that – it should be noted - helps financial institutions apply application technologies to transactions. Formerly known as ACE software solutions, Pelican says it combines tools such as natural language processing and machine learning to profile payments and apply human-like logic to transactions. Pelican CEO Parth Desai says it's time the industry "wakes up" to the need to replace manual processes and legacy systems for payments processing. He says the gradual appearance of AI into everyday life will raise consumer expectations of faster results and services in their banking products too.

As Wired notes, the algorithms now comb over large amounts of data and learn from it. In one case, the balloon temporarily floated over the Pacific Ocean to catch winds when it determined that there wouldn't be enough gusts to stay over land. There's even "reinforcement learning," which has the balloon refining its behavior even after making predictions as to what will happen. All told, the Peru vehicle made just under 20,000 tweaks to its altitude over the course of those 14 weeks, or dozens per day. The AI-based upgrade should not only keep balloons in place for longer, but help Google trim costs and expand its reach.

Steam rolled out of the pot, and my kitchen was filled with an intoxicating blend of scents. I'd cooked a turkey ragu before, but as soon as I opened the pot, I knew this would be an entirely different experience. There were the familiar, comforting notes of ground turkey and mushrooms, but there was also earthiness from the beets, the fire of serrano chile, and an unexpected brightness from the coriander seed (coriander seed!). My dinner wouldn't have been out of place at one of San Francisco's trendy food trucks or upscale restaurants, but coming out of my 15 IKEA pot, it was unbelievable. As I mixed in the pasta and ricotta cheese and took the first incredible bite, I realized that A.I. could do a lot more for me than just beating me at Go.

The pascal visual object classes (voc) challenge.

After the launch of Project loon, Google has been using static algorithms to make its internet balloons change altitude and stay in position for several years. Those hard coded algorithms were confined to adapt to unexpected weather patterns, which are pretty common in a place like the stratosphere. Well, those situations are history now. The Project Loon team has revealed that their engineering team is moving away from those hard coded control algorithm, instead, they are using machine learning to alter those internet balloon's behavior and make them stick to the desired flight path much longer. The company has already launched a test balloon into the stratosphere over Peru, which stayed there for 98 days, adapting to difficult wind conditions that might have sent it floating away.

When Google first introduced Project Loon, its internet balloons used static algorithms to change altitude and stay in position. While clever, they were limited -- Google couldn't do much to adapt to unexpected weather patterns, which are quite common tens of thousands of feet in the air. The Project Loon team has revealed that it's using artificial intelligence technology (specifically, machine learning) to alter balloons' behavior and keep them in position for much longer. One test balloon stayed in the Peruvian stratosphere for 98 days, adapting to tricky wind conditions that might have sent it drifting away. As Wired notes, the algorithms now comb over large amounts of data and learn from it.