We could say our 30th annual list of the most transformative products and discoveries required trucks full of experts, hours of toil, and countless friendship-ending debates. That's true, but you just want the good stuff. A robot just made me french fries. Delicious, they cooked for four minutes less than the instructions dictated. One minute less, they'd've been soggy.

The Sonos One wireless speaker, priced at $199, will be available Oct. 24. It will support multiple voice services, launching with Amazon Alexa, but will add Siri using AirPlay 2, and Google Assistant, in 2018. Sonos is upping the volume in the smart speaker race. Already well-known for its great sounding wireless home speakers, Sonos is bringing to market the first whole home speaker system with built-in voice control using Amazon's digital voice-commanded assistant Alexa. The new speaker, the $199 Sonos One, due out Tuesday, raises the bar for good-sounding smart speakers.

Remember Swing, SWT and the likes of wxWidgets? We had to reinvent them for the browser world. Several new UI programming models emerged, which mostly focused on components. We had to find a way to design, build, and test apps while keeping them responsive (a term we use to describe a website that doesn't look like crap on a mobile phone). We also needed to keep it slim -- not everybody has a fast connection, but everybody has a browser in their pockets.

By its very nature, virtual reality is an immersive medium. But for Rama Allen, that bar is higher. The interactive artist and Executive Creative Director at The Mill has made a name for himself leading inter-disciplinary teams of designers, filmmakers, coders, editors, engineers and VFX artists to create new kinds of cinematic experiences. At the inaugural Engadget Experience, a tech-art installation happening in LA next month, Allen will share some of his strangest creations, including a collaboration with an emotional AI; a VR experience that uses biometrics for levitation; a sculpting tool for the human voice; and a mixed-reality galactic journey to spread peace across the universe. Buy your tickets here, and hurry because discounted pricing ends next week, on October 27th.

Jefferson Graham tests the Google Pixel 2 XL smartphone camera--is it the best one ever, as some have said? He compares to the Apple iPhone 8 Plus in a beach shootout on #Talking Tech. LOS ANGELES -- OK Google, we love the new Pixel XL 2 smartphone as a camera, but alas, for photos and videos, our hearts go to the Apple iPhone 8 Plus. With each new smartphone release, critics are quick to dub a new one as the best mobile camera out there. We said just that last year about the then-new Google Pixel, which won our 2017 shootout. Months have gone by, and many new mobile cameras have been released.

Recent scandals around fake news have spurred an interest in programmatically gauging the journalistic quality of an article. Companies like Factmata and Full Fact have received funding from Google, and Facebook has launched its "Journalism Project" earlier this year to fight the spread of fake stories in its feed. Discriminating between facts and fake information is a daunting task but often times, looking at the publisher is a good proxy to gauge the journalistic quality of an article. And while there is no objective metric to evaluate the quality of a newspaper, its overall quality and political bias is generally agreed upon (one can for example refer to https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/). In this article, we present a few techniques to automatically assess the journalistic quality of a newspaper.

The BBC wants to leverage machine learning to improve its online services and the programmes it commissions every year. Today, the broadcaster announced a five-year research partnership with eight universities from across the UK. Data scientists will help the best and brightest at the BBC set up the "Data Science Research Partnership," tasked with being "at the forefront of the machine learning in the media industry." It will tackle a range of projects not just with the BBC, but media and technology organisations from across Europe. The larger aim is to take the results, or learnings, and apply them directly to the BBC's operations in Britain.

"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.