"Westworld" from HBO and "The Handmaid's Tale" from Hulu might sound like two completely different shows, but costume designer Ane Crabtree, who is responsible for the outfits of both shows, believes there are actually some similarities between the two. "Both shows for me are rather punk and have a lot of anarchy," Crabtree told Gold Derby. I don't see them as totally opposite, which is weird maybe, but visually, they're so different." "Westworld" is set in the near future, while the timeline in "The Handmaid's Tale" is based in 2020. For "Westworld," Crabtree opted for designs from the 1850s because "it was the most intriguing visually." For "The Handmaid's Tale," she created something sinister of her own. "Gilead is three years in the future, but it's way darker," she said. Crabtree has her work cut out for her in "Westworld" Season 2 especially since show creators Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy teased about the introduction of Roman and Medieval worlds. When Deadline asked them both why they decidedly left these out in the first season, Nolan simply answered: "We had to save something for Season 2." The first season showed just how cruel park guests can be towards the hosts. So for next season, the hosts will get their revenge. Nolan said that humans' neglect and ignorance are some things that fans should give careful consideration about. "I feel evenly split between the fear that A.I. will enslave us and make us do its bidding and my fear that it won't," said Nolan. "If you look at things that have gone down in the last year, humans are terrible at running this world.

Today, the company introduces the Blast and Megablast, the network-capable and Alexa-enabled siblings of UE's Boom 2 and Megaboom. This new line was built explicitly for the Amazon Alexa ecosystem of apps and features, and along with the Power Up charging base, offers always-on functionality to cater to your verbal demands. Unlike many other options though, this one also includes an on-board battery for portability. Fans of the Boom 2 and Megaboom don't have to worry, as those products will continue to exist (along with the tiny Wonderboom), but the new models eschew some Bluetooth features in exchange for a focus on WiFi connectivity. The main difference (aside from Alexa) is that the Blast and Megablast will only work on their own or in tandem over a WiFi network.

Their joint research will focus on developing the fifth-generation wireless technology known as 5G, which could deliver data at a much faster speed than the current wireless technology and is seen as crucial for autonomous vehicles. They will also research other wireless technologies needed for the safety of connected cars, LG said in a statement.

About a year ago, Adobe announced its Sensei AI platform. Unlike other companies, Adobe says that it has no interest in building a general artificial intelligence platform -- instead, it wants to build a platform squarely focused on helping its customers be more creative. This week, at its Max conference, Adobe provided both more insight into what this means and showed off a number of prototypes for how it plans to integrate Sensei into its flagship tools. "We are not building a general purpose AI platform like some others in the industry are -- and it's great that they are building it," Adobe CTO Abhay Parasnis noted in a press conference after today's keynote. "We have a very deep understanding of how creative professionals work in imagining, in photography, in video, in design and illustration. So we have taken decades worth of learning of those very specific domains -- and that's where a large part of this comes in. When one of the very best artists in Photoshop spends hours in creation, what are the other things they do and maybe more importantly, what are the things they don't do? We are trying to harness that and marry that with the latest advances in deep learning so that the algorithms can actually become partners for that creative professional."

When Charles Reilly and Donald Ingber set out to make their short film--In the Beginning, an homage of sorts to Star Wars that (spoilers) tells the tale of a single sperm's triumph in a literal life or death race to fertilize an egg--they had just one goal. Ingber, the founding director of the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University, and Reilly, a biochemistry researcher also at the Wyss Institute, wanted the animated film to be scientifically accurate. To achieve this, the two reached for techniques more common to the silver screen than the lab. They sought digital imaging software ordinarily used by video game designers and film animators. Not only did they achieve cinematic glory, but by reaching far outside the scientific silo they were able to happen upon a new discovery: an understanding of the molecular-level mechanics that let a sperm whip its tail back and forth to fuel its need for speed.

Baidu chief executive Robin Li on Tuesday said the Chinese internet giant will have a self-driving bus on the road soon as it races for a lead in autonomous vehicles. Baidu is collaborating with an array of companies on autonomous cars, and is working with a large bus maker in China to have a self-driving bus running a route by next year, Li said in an on-stage interview late Tuesday at The Wall Street Journal D.Live conference in Laguna Beach, California. Most major automakers and technology titans including Google-parent Alphabet have been stepping up efforts on autonomous driving in recent years, convinced that these systems could eliminate most road accidents. Baidu's search engine dominates the Chinese internet, and online ads are a key revenue stream. But since a crackdown by authorities on Baidu's online advertising business after a much-publicized scandal over promoting a fake medical treatment, 'China's Google' is seeking to focus on artificial intelligence and is investing heavily in the sector.

Voice assistants seem to represent the best of what films offered us in the future: the ability to control your home, your music and everything else about your life simply by talking to a digital butler. But science fiction never had them sounding quite so bad. Despite all the hype around voice assistants, they have mostly been confined to things that make them sound terrible when they speak. Siri mostly comes out of your phone speakers, for instance, and the best the Google Assistant can do is the little rounded Google Home. The Sonos One represents the first time that you can talk to a voice assistant and actually have its voice – and anything else it does – sound good.

While it may seem like Amazon and commercial banks are worlds apart, Amazon's "Day 1" business model offers key success drivers for banks to consider. The Day 1 model, spelled out in CEO Jeff Bezos' 2016 shareholder letter, in essence means the company continually operates as a start-up. Also, Amazon--like other digital giants and fintechs--is raising customer expectations. And in small business credit, Amazon is competing directly with banks. Banks, instead, often operate like Day 2 companies and make good decisions slowly based on a maximum amount of data. While banks cannot completely emulate the Day 1 model due to their critical role in maintaining financial stability and security, and meeting attendant compliance constraints, they can adapt and adopt certain aspects of it.

Sonos has multi-room audio down to a science, but it desperately needed a speaker capable of voice recognition if it was to fend off the veritable flood of smart speakers coming to market. The Sonos One is that speaker. It sounds better than the last entry-level Sonos speaker, it's compatible with Amazon's Alexa digital assistant, and it will be compatible with Google Assistant soon. If you already have Sonos speakers in other rooms, you can control all of them with voice commands with the addition of a single Sonos One to your network. And once you have that, you can control any Sonos speaker from any Amazon Echo.

In my house, we use it to play radio stations, to get the weather, and to answer questions like "When was the Edo period?" One thing I don't often use the Echo for is music. That's because it sounds terrible. As good as Amazon's Alexa voice service is, the Echo's black tin can croaks out audio just a notch better than the 20-year-old Coby FM radio I keep in the garage. Amazon has taken steps to improve the Echo's sound quality with a reboot last month, and companies like Lenovo have coaxed Alexa into nicer-sounding enclosures.