When I look up, I can see wispy clouds passing overhead. Large photos hang on the gallery walls. They're pictures of a landscape devastated by war and portraits of men fighting in those wars. I hear footsteps behind me. I turn around and watch two figures enter the room and take up stations in front of the portraits.

Just about everyone has watched animated movies such as Frozen or Big Hero 6 or has at least heard about 3D computer games. It seems more fun to enjoy the movies and games rather than reading a Linear Algebra book. But it is because of linear algebra that we are able to watch a character move on the screen. Linear Algebra is the motivation of our new digital world. Through this article, we will learn matrix arithmetic and learn how to use numpy to carry out these operations in python.

Researchers at Netflix are experimenting with creating software-edited trailers personalized for individual subscribers to get more peeps to watch its films, according to a well-placed source familiar with the matter. The popular streaming service has over 100 million subscribers across hundreds of countries. It collects troves of data about its users and their behaviors, and uses a range of machine-learning algorithms to tweak and improve the way it streams and presents its content. The large datasets allow researchers to find effective ways to maximize the time your eyeballs are glued to its TV network. And one way to get more users to watch its original content could be to tailor trailers to their individual tastes. For example, an action movie may be more appealing if the romantic scenes are highlighted for people who watch more romance films or if the scenes containing a preferred actor or actress are included.

In 1961, the world's first industrial robot clocked in at a General Motors plant in Trenton, New Jersey. The 4,000-pound mechanical arm, named Unimate, was designed to weld cars and lift big pieces of metal. The robot was a huge success--even landing a spot on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. Almost sixty years later, the emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) has seen machines leap from physical to mental labor. As computers step into roles that involve reasoning, a new wave of industries ranging from medicine to finance stands to benefit from--or get left behind by--AI.

"The advent of the internet and the subsequent information explosion has made it increasingly challenging for journalists to produce news accurately and swiftly." So begin the research and development team at the global news agency Reuters in a paper on the arXiv this week. For Reuters, the problem has been made more acute by the emergence of fake news as an important factor in distorting the perception of events. Nevertheless, news agencies such as the Associated Press have moved ahead with automated news writing services. These report standard announcements such as financial news and certain sports results by pasting the data into pre-written templates: "X reported profit of Y million in Q3, in results that beat Wall Street forecasts ... " So there is significant pressure on other news agencies to automate news production. And today, Reuters outlines how it has almost entirely automated the identification of breaking news stories.

The Power9 chips in the systems hitting the market now don't rev up to the top speeds provided by Intel's Xeon Scalable Processor line, but they offer blazing throughput aimed to give them an edge in machine learning and accelerated database applications.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has generated enormous hype in recent months, but opinions about the real impact of technologies like machine translation, autonomous vehicles, natural language processing, and computer vision vary widely. Optimists envision a world in which "driver" becomes a superfluous word; pessimists worry about the millions of truckers at risk of unemployment. But while often described with the futuristic fancy of Skynet in the "Terminator" movies, AI has very real near-term applications for the entertainment industry. Here are some of the most exciting examples. AI is poised to touch every facet of entertainment, even that most time-honored of parental traditions: reading stories to children before bed.

Given how easy it is to discover new music on Spotify, it's just as easy to forget about all the equally delicious tracks you found last month. Thankfully, Spotify won't let that happen, today releasing Your 2017 Wrapped. This clever feature, initially rolled out last year to replace its previous'Year In Music' recap, lets you effortlessly relive all the gems you discovered in 2017 and set some goals for the new year ahead. By heading here and signing into your account, Spotify swiftly analyses your year's worth of valuable listening and comes back with some pretty remarkable stats. Check out how long our CEO Spotify-binged this year! I listened to 230,639 Minutes of music this year: https://t.co/ko6UNvC6wL

Most salespeople will tell you the same thing – no amount of preparation, banter, or efforts can ever match the absolute luck involved in catching a customer at the precise point that they are looking to make a purchase. Finding a person who is a potential customer is simply one part of a company's acquisition process; like the salespeople, companies want to talk to the person, precisely when the time is right and get the right deal at the right time. However, this is very rare – those very salesmen will tell you many stories about the many hundreds and thousands of customers whom they've spoken to and ended up wasting ridiculous amounts of time on, but just never made a purchase. Companies have long known that each customer goes through different stages before actually buying a product and different stages post-purchase as well. Knowing which stage a customer is in helps companies phrase and frame their communications to them, and this customer life-cycle is a very important part of any company's sales strategy.

Virtual advisors are helping meet the demands of investors who want data-driven insight and a rich, personalized experience akin to Netflix. Cognitive software platforms, which provide the tools to analyze, organize, access, and provide advisory services based on a range of structured and unstructured data, are set to attract investment of nearly US$2.5 billion in this year alone. Additionally, spending on intelligent and cognitive applications is forecast by IDC to grow at an impressive 69 percent compound annual growth rate from 2017 to 2020. Driving this explosion is the fact that more data will be created in 2017 than in the last 5,000 years. And it's expected to increase three-fold from this year until 2021.