Six years after reporting its biggest-ever loss, Sony is no longer a conglomerate in freefall. Last week the Japanese group behind the Bravia TV set, the PlayStation, Beyoncé and the Spider-Man films said it was on track to set a new annual profit record – expecting to beat its previous corporate best of ¥526bn (£3.5bn) by 20%. It has been a long journey for the group after years of underperformance and missed targets, including most recently a £800m writedown of its Sony Pictures film division. But at last week's quarterly results update, the company stated that the film unit was one of the company's strongest performers and would help it beat the record profits it made in 1997-98: the year it released Men in Black, and when Steve Jobs had yet to release the Walkman-killing iPod. Now, Sony is expected to make full-year profits of £4.2bn.

Every day, the towering full-scale Unicorn Gundam statue in Tokyo's Odaiba waterfront district undergoes a transformation, eliciting shouts of joy from visitors young and old, many trying to snap good photos with their smartphones. The 19.7-meter, 49-ton statue of a mobile robot from the popular Gundam series has been standing in the Diver City Tokyo commercial plaza since Sept. 24. It replaced a previous model as part of the Tokyo Gundam Project 2017, in which the statue represents the future of Tokyo and helps invigorate the bay area. At night, a special short movie runs every 30 minutes from 7:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. In the Diver City Tokyo Plaza building just behind the gigantic statue, there is a venue called the Gundam Base Tokyo, a mecca for fans of plastic models.

Robot" and "Good Girls Revolt" and films like this year's "Stronger," Shaw is now both the face of and the creative force behind a premium cable show. "She's very much the same as when I met her all those years ago," Dieckmann says by phone.

The Kusama show at the Broad is raising the crowds (if not our critic's inspiration). Los Angeles just had a Philip Glass moment. There's been an architectural furor over possible changes to a work by Philip Johnson. Yayoi Kusama's exhibition of Infinity Mirror Rooms at the Broad is the hot museum show in L.A. right now. But Times art critic Christopher Knight says if you didn't score a ticket, you're not missing much.

In an odd turn for retail cooperation, Best Buy is now available on Alexa, Amazon's voice-powered digital assistant. Starting today, you can learn about and order Best Buy's Deal of the Day sales just by saying, "Alexa, talk to Best Buy." Sure, it seems odd to have a competing service on Amazon's own devices, but as the blog post from Best Buy points out, the big box store has been selling Amazon Alexa devices in a special section in about 700 of its stores earlier this year. Best Buy is only the latest retailer to jump on the voice-shopping trend, too. This isn't the first time Amazon has allowed a competitor into its garden, either. Spotify and Pandora live easily next to Amazon's own music service on its connected smart speakers, as do competing on-demand video services.

Gift-giving season shouldn't be confined to Christmas and birthdays, especially with tech as cool as this. Give your nose a reason to get out of bed with Sensorwake's olfactory alarm clock, which emits aromatic perfume such as Seaside, Peppermint and Toast to start your day on the right note. The HomePod is Apple's answer to the virtual home assistant trend, but the highlight here is the sound quality. Built-in spatial awareness helps the HomePod cater to the acoustics of the room. This one's for the friend who's always asking, "Have you seen my keys?"

"We are in an AI revolution," according to James Barratt, documentary filmmaker and author. "AI of course has gone through a number of false springs, but this one seems to have a lot more traction." TechRepublic's Dan Patterson met with Barratt to discuss where artificial intelligence (AI) is headed, and how businesses can take advantage. AI previously was used to enter data, and get back an answer, he said. Now, AI will learn about its users and what they are doing.

Artificial intelligence is now letting romance fans'skip to the good parts' of their audiobooks. Audible, the Amazon-owned audiobook firm, is rolling an algorithm picks out the steamy sections of 110 romance titles. X-rated content is found under'Hot Hot Hot'. Amazon-owned audiobook firm, is rolling an algorithm that picks out the steamy sections of 110 romance titles such as EL James's Fifty Shades of Grey (pictured) The'Take Me To The Good Part' algorithm, works by scanning for keywords associated with specific moments. For instance, a proposal scene may be flagged up by words such as'diamond', 'ring' and'kneel', Audible's machine-learning also creates a'Steaminess Score', which shows the level of graphic details that a listeners can expect. Audible could someday use similar algorithms to key passages of classic novels to help English literature students with their studies.

With an eye-watering price tag of £999, these customers will be hoping for some decent bang for their buck. But that didn't put off Apple fans as the much-anticipated iPhone X's with its lush screen and facial-recognition skills tests the patience of consumers and investors with demand outstripping supply around the world. And those who managed to get their hands on one this morning will be pleased to know they are sitting on potential gold mines, with devices already listed for sale on auction website eBay for up to £15,000. The X is Apple's next generation smartphone that uses facial recognition software for the first time and is going on sale in cities worldwide today - with queues building at Apple Stores amid rumours of limited stock. Among the first to get the new device in Britain was reality TV contestant Marco Pierre White Jr, 22, the son of the celebrity chef, who joined the queue last night to pick up a phone for his girlfriend Francesca Suter.