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Blade Runner 2049 is something of a miracle--a sequel to a 35-year-old science fiction classic that feels urgent and necessary and which actually improves upon the original in some ways. Writer Sara Lynn Michener is thrilled with the new movie. "It passed the piss test," Michener says in Episode 277 of the Geek's Guide to the Galaxy podcast. Both my partner and I had to pee halfway through, and neither of us could go to the bathroom, because we didn't want to miss any of it." Science fiction author Matthew Kressel is a massive fan of the original Blade Runner, and appreciates that the sequel replicates its mood and pacing. "A lot of today's Hollywood films don't have a lot of patience," he says. "They sort of expect the audience to get bored really quickly, so they're like, 'We've got to have an explosion every 10 minutes.'" But the slow pace of Blade Runner 2049 is proving a challenge for many viewers, and so far the movie hasn't attracted an audience that extends much beyond fans of the original. Michener thinks it's appropriate that the film, like its predecessor, is a box office disappointment. "They made a sequel to a cult classic," she says. "It was not designed to work with the Fast & Furious crowd." Bestselling author Daniel H. Wilson thinks the movie will pick up steam over time due to its many ambiguities, which compel discussion. "If your friend hasn't seen it, well then they damn well better go see it, so that you can talk about it, because I've got things I need to talk about," he says. "That is how this virus spreads." Listen to the complete interview with Sara Lynn Michener, Matthew Kressel, and Daniel H. Wilson in Episode 277 of Geek's Guide to the Galaxy (above). And check out some highlights from the discussion below. "In 2017 the'radical visionary' is a kind of villain and a kind of hero at the same time.

Q: I think someone put a spy program on my phone. Are there programs that will secretly record and send my texts, pics and phone calls to another person? A: Originally, these apps were designed for concerned parents, but it's extremely easy for them to fall into the wrong hands. Once you know the kinds of spy apps there are, you'll have two important follow-up questions: How do you find out whether they're already on your phone, and if they are, how do you remove a spy app before it's too late? Click here for five smartphones apps that could be spying on you, and how to remove them.

The holiday season is in full swing, which means we're all whipping out our decorations and decking our homes out for the festivities ahead. That means it's time to get your spook on. Between monstrous masks that evoke the horror icons who haunt our nightmares (thanks, Chucky), and our favorite home decor (like dangling skeletons and that cobweb gunk you can never seem to fully scrape off), you've got plenty of ways to make your house the scariest on the block. But it's 2017, and you don't need to pull out all your decorations just to get in the Halloween spirit. We're living in the future, and all you need is a smart speaker like Google Home or Amazon Echo and a few connected devices to transform any pad into a creepy crypt fit for the damned.

Suddenly, a hole to outer space opens up in the floor. A man who has just spat up an eyeball steps through. Sunspring, a science-fiction short based on this premise, could be an experimental film written and directed by a group of film-school students. Indeed, it was judged to have creative merit, placing in the top 10 of Sci-fi London's 48-Hour Film Challenge, a contest in which participants create a film based on prompts over the course of two days. There's just one catch: Sunspring was written by a robot.

"[Machine learning] has theoretically lots of potential, but any time I've actually seen it used it hasn't really been as useful as the proponents thought it …

They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. If that's true, Amazon must be tickled pink right now. The obvious inspiration for last year's Google Home was the Amazon Echo, and it's just as obvious that the new Google Home Mini is taking cues from the Echo Dot. To be fair, it's a logical strategy: by packaging all of Alexa's features into a smaller and cheaper package, Amazon expanded the Echo ecosystem and made it easier to blanket your house with voice-activated assistants. Google is now doing the same, right down to the price. The $49 Home Mini does almost everything the larger Home does, at a price that makes the idea of buying three or four to place around the house a lot more palatable.

Online fashion tech startup Vue.ai is selling technology that analyzes pieces of clothing and automatically generates an image of the garment on a person of any size, shape, or wearing any kind of shoes. Neural networks, the technology that GANs are built on, are an approximation of how our brain works: Millions of tiny, distributed neurons, processing data and passing them along to the next neuron. These networks are trained on thousands of images, and the neurons learn to distinguish different kinds of elbows, hips, and colors. Through trial and error, the two engineers figured out exactly the right neurons to alter the size, weight, or shape of a person, or the hardest part, the shoes they're wearing.