"Hidden Figures," a movie about three African-American women pioneers at NASA, was slated for worldwide release Friday. The story of the women who calculated flight trajectories that helped John Glenn become the first American astronaut to orbit the Earth previously opened in a limited release on Christmas. The film, which has a Rotten Tomatoes rating of 91 percent and will expand to 2,300 theaters Friday, is a historical comedy-drama based on a nonfiction book published by Margot Lee Shetterly in 2016. The characters' work with NASA aided in the launch of Project Mercury in the late 50s and early 60s, and the 1969 Apollo 11 flight. Some who have watched the film said it accurately portrayed what happened in history, like Johnson, who said it "sounded very, very accurate" after watching the film's advance screening in November.

There is no shortage of attention lately on the "Internet of Things". As a case in point, see the "Developing Innovation and Growing the Internet of Things Act" or "DIGIT Act", i.e., S. 2607, a bill introduced in the Senate on March 1, 2016 and amended on September 28, 2016, "to ensure appropriate spectrum planning and inter-agency coordination to support the Internet of Things" – A companion bill, H.R. 5117, was introduced in the House of Representatives on April 28, 2016. However, since there is no "internet" dedicated to "things", it is fair to state that the Internet of Things does not exist as such. We are left with a definitional vacuum, but it is hammering the obvious to acknowledge that there is no dearth of attempts around the world to fill the gap. Perhaps as a helpful shortcut, we could view the expression as a metaphor that captures the arrival of almost anything and everything, until now out of scope, into the communications space.

In the first of our series exploring the top 5 drivers of business disruption in 2017, we focus on the rise of Artificial Intelligence in our daily lives. High profile figures including Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk insisted that AI should be carefully contained and controlled, whilst Ray Kurzweil stated that we can, 'protect ourselves against rogue AI' by creating safeguards. Despite the negative press, the last 12 months has seen a huge increase in investment in AI. Since 2013, funding has tripled. This relentless expansion led tech giants Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Amazon and IBM to create a partnership at the end of the year, supposedly to hash out ethical concerns.

"Also, ain't no rule says a dog can't play basketball." SAN FRANCISCO -- President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to make America great again. But if the sentiments of tech workers and the general public are any indication of what he's about to face in the White House, he has a split country to stitch together. Such is the onerous task he inherits, based on a new study measuring the viewpoints of 500 "Tech Elites," defined as people who work or invest in the technology sector, and 1,000 members of the U.S. "General Population." For starters, 65% of tech elites believe innovation is going in the right direction, compared with just 46% in the general public (33% say they don't know).

NASA's chief astronaut, Christopher Cassidy, said from Mission Control that sticky bolts often stymie astronauts, so everyone was grateful to hand over the chore to Dextre. Riding on the end of the station's robot arm, Dextre and its 11-foot arms also made easy work of the battery transfers from one end of the station to the other, a distance spanning approximately half a football field.

Nissan announced their intention to use NASA technology in the company's autonomous vehicles. During Nissan's keynote at CES 2017, CEO Carlos Ghosn announced that the next lot of its Leaf electric cars will use autonomous driving technology from the American space agency. The next line of the electric cars will be integration with NASA's SAM (Seamless Autonomous Mobility) system. The technology is meant to tackle one of the biggest problems with autonomous vehicles: deciding when to hand over control to humans. SAM will show vital information to its "mobility manager" whenever the system sees a confusing obstacle.

Do you know what is common between San Bernardino's shooting spree and the terrorist attacks in Paris last month? Jillennials, Jihadis who are Millennials. We mine data worldwide, a lot of it, a ton of it, every day and every night, and we do this for a living at PredictifyMe. We have partnership with the United Nations to protect school-goers in Pakistan, Nigeria, Sudan and Lebanon using our proprietary software SecureSim and Soothsayer . When the Paris attacks unfolded, we asked ourselves (and our database), how can we use data sciences to prevent something like this from ever happening again. Can we find out what factors influence an otherwise ordinary citizen to become radicalized?

South Korea will develop a laser weapon system to shoot down drones sent by North Korea, the country's defense ministry said Friday. This comes as Seoul has repeatedly alleged Pyongyang of building large drones that have greater range capability to be flown remotely using flight controllers. The development of the laser weapon system is expected to begin by 2018 and it is expected to be ready by 2020, the defense ministry said, according to Yonhap News Agency. The technology will be part of its broader laser weapon system, the report added. The North operates about 300 observation drones and around 10 machines capable of conducting attacks with weapons as per South Korea's estimates, military officials told Yonhap.

The following is a guest article from Santosh Varughese, president of Cognetyx. Since cybersecurity threats have become a topic of nightly newscasts, no longer is anyone shocked by their scope and veracity. What is shocking is the financial damage the attacks are predicted to cause as they reverberate throughout the economy. Cybersecurity Ventures predicts global annual cybercrime costs will grow from $3 trillion in 2015 to $6 trillion annually by 2021, which includes damage and destruction of data, stolen money, lost productivity and theft of intellectual property, personal and financial data, embezzlement and fraud. That doesn't even include post-attack disruption to the normal course of business, forensic investigation, restoration and deletion of hacked data, systems and reputational harm.

This piece was coauthored with Megan Beck, Chief Insights Officer at OpenMatters, and Steven Cracknell, advisor to OpenMatters. When we examine and value companies, we use a lens that is more than five hundred years old. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP), which dates back to a Venetian Friar who lived in 1500 AD, has long been the determinant of what we how society measures value. According to this now global standard, things and money are valuable assets. People and ideas, and their development, are expenses.