Worldwide spending on cybersecurity likely topped 75 billion last year, researchers at Gartner estimated, with companies more wary than ever of the risks posed by data breaches and other digital attacks. And along with rising costs, the sheer volume of digital security data has also increased dramatically: IBM estimated in a recent study that the average organization sees more than 200,000 pieces of security event data per day and that more than 10,000 security-related research papers are published every year. "Security researchers are getting hit with a firehose," says Caleb Barlow, vice president of IBM Security. "Once they get done with today, they've got another deluge of data coming tomorrow." To help companies handle that flood of data, IBM says it's training its Watson artificial intelligence platform--previously known for using its natural language processing power to beat humans on Jeopardy--to parse cybersecurity information, from automated network-level threat reports to blog posts from security professionals. "It's just gonna think just like a forensics investigator," says Barlow.

Organizations are struggling with a fundamental challenge – there's far more data than they can handle. Sure, there's a shared vision to analyze structured and unstructured data in support of better decision making but is this a reality for most companies? The big data tidal wave is transforming the database management industry, employee skill sets, and business strategy as organizations race to unlock meaningful connections between disparate sources of data. Graph Databases are rapidly gaining traction in the market as an effective method for deciphering meaning but many people outside the space are unsure of what exactly this entails. Generally speaking, graph databases store data in a graph structure where entities are connected through relationships to adjacent elements.

It was big week for solar power as well. For starters, scientists developed a breakthrough photovoltaic cell that set a new world record for efficiency. Portugal made headlines by running on 100-percent renewable energy for more than four days. The Mistbox is a new device that uses solar energy to cut down on summer cooling costs. And scientists discovered a new form of spiralized light that flies in the face of everything quantum physics says about photons.

It's an unfortunate feature of working as both a novelist and a games designer that I end up sitting through a lot of panels, round-tables, conferences, discussions and other exercises in head-nodding where digital people try to get to grips with storytelling, or where story people try to understand the digital world. Both these types of event have their aggravations. When digital people run workshops or colloquia or jams (there are infinite names for the basic principle of bringing people together in combination with coffee) about storytelling, they often seem not to notice that quite a lot of very clever people have been thinking very hard about stories for, oh, the past 3,000-4,000 years. I've heard people suggest that maybe stories have a "pattern" or "structural ordering" that holds together their parts, without apparently realising that a lot of people have written about this, from Aristotle on. And let's not even get on to the people who say things like "data is a story", "products are a story", "your robo-vacuum cleaner has a story to tell you".

Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour has been killed, Afghanistan's National Directorate of Security confirmed Sunday afternoon after several hours of uncertainty. The Afghan intelligence agency said Mansour, who was officially named the group's leader last year, was killed in an "airstrike" in a remote area in Balochistan in southwestern Pakistan Saturday. Prior to that, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani also confirmed that Mansour had been targeted in a drone strike by the United States. "Mullah Akhtar Mansour refused to answer repeated calls by the people and Government of Afghanistan to end the war and violence in the country. While sheltering himself in hideouts outside Afghanistan, he was also involved in deception, concealment of facts, maiming and killing innocent Afghans, terrorism, intimidation, drug smuggling as well as obstruction of development and progress in Afghanistan as he obstinately insisted on continuing the war," the Afghan president's office said in a statement Sunday.

Marvel's release of Captain America: Civil War is the most recent superhero movie to blow up the box office. Rotten tomatoes gave it a 90 percent rating, and it had the fifth highest domestic opening in history at 181.8 million. That got me thinking about how much we not only love but also need superheroes in our lives. They use their superhuman powers to protect the innocent or vulnerable people of our society, and we love that ideal. We can't get enough of it.

The movie's opening may as well arrive with an on-screen statement. Loud shrieking lends the impression a couple is having sex, but the first sight is a close-up of a cat. Then the camera cuts to the source of the shrieks, and it turns out what sounded like love was actually an assault. Needling, absurd, sexual, kinetic -- all those adjectives apply to Verhoeven. The Dutch-born director has followed one of the more improbable career arcs in modern cinema -- from European obscurity to Hollywood heights to industry punch-line ("Showgirls," anyone?), back to European acclaim.

I can't remember the last time I called someone on the phone to place an order for pizza. Papa John's told investors during its first-quarter earnings call that 55% of its total sales now come through digital. Sixty percent of those digital transactions came from mobile devices. Competing pizza chains Domino's and Yum! Brands' Pizza Hut are also investing heavily in e-commerce. Both have invested in ordering methods for smartwatches, connected cars, and video game systems.

Afghan authorities confirmed Sunday that the leader of the Taliban, Mullah Mohammed Akhtar Mansour, was killed in a U.S. drone strike. The National Directorate of Security said in a statement that Mansour was killed at 3:45 p.m. local time Saturday. The Associated Press, citing a statement from the spy agency, said the attack took place in Baluchistan province, in southwestern Pakistan. "The attack happened on the main road while he was in his vehicle," the statement said. Mullah Abdul Rauf, a senior Taliban commander, told the Associated Press earlier Sunday that Mansour was indeed killed in the drone strike.

Criteo is the world leader in performance Internet advertising. The Recommender System is at the core of its Engine. Real-time prediction: Everybody predicts clicks. But how do you accurately predict if the userâ s click on a product will generate a sale? Thankfully, you have billions of data points to help you.