Earlier this year, Sling released its multi-camera video production device SlingStudio that made it a heck of alot easier to juggle multiple feeds for live or edited video. Today the company announced that the platform will now be compatible with DJI drone systems, including models from the Phantom, Inspire and Matrice series. "SlingStudio simplifies production for videographers looking to film with multiple drones, or drones in combination with ground cameras," said Dish CTO Vivek Khemka in a statement, "Its wireless, drone friendly setup allows drone pilots to capture footage without being limited by cords or cumbersome film equipment." The drones' remote controllers can plug into SlingStudio's HDMI port or they can connect to the device wirelessly with Sling's CameraLink wireless adapter. Video feeds stream through the drones' controllers and are then routed to the SlingStudio hub.

SlingTV is taking another step toward replicating the traditional pay-TV experience: Offering pay-per-view events. If you're impatient, know that it starts this weekend with UFC 214, so you won't have too long to wait before testing it out for yourself. "Although we haven't announced specific plans to offer other fights, we will carry additional pay-per-view events in the future," the company told TechCrunch. "Integrating UFC 214 directly into the Sling TV experience is the next step in Sling TV becoming a true cable replacement." You won't be able to use Sling's cloud DVR to record Cormier and Jones beating the snot out of each other (again), however.

DIS is known for its box office hits: Beauty and the Beast, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, and Captain America: Civil War, just to name a few. As one of the biggest media conglomerates in the world, Disney is looking to better understand its moviegoing audience so that its upcoming movie line-up can continue to be moneymakers and crowd pleasers. Disney hopes to do this through artificial intelligence (AI) and facial recognition technology, using deep learning techniques to track the facial expressions of an audience watching a movie in order to gauge any emotional reaction to it. Called "factorized variational autoencoders," or FVAEs, the researchers said the technology works so well that after observing an audience member's face for just 10 minutes, it can predict how the person will react to the rest of the movie. The FVAEs go on to then recognize many facial expressions from movie viewers on their own, like smiles and laughter, and can make connections between different viewers to see if a particular movie is getting a wanted reaction at the right place and time.

On a warm day in April 2013, I was sitting in a friend's kitchen in Paris, trying to engineer serendipity. I was trying to get my computer to write music on its own. I wanted to be able to turn it on and have it spit out not just any goofy little algorithmic tune but beautiful, compelling, mysterious music; something I'd be proud to have written myself. The kitchen window was open, and as I listened to the sounds of children playing in the courtyard below, I thought about how the melodies of their voices made serendipitous counterpoint with the songs of nearby birds and the intermittent drone of traffic on the rue d'Alésia. In response to these daydreams, I was making a few tweaks to my software--a chaotic, seat-of-the-pants affair that betrayed my intuitive, self-taught approach to programming--when I saw that Bill Seaman had just uploaded a new batch of audio files to our shared Dropbox folder. I had been collaborating with Bill, a media artist, on various aspects of computational creativity over the past few years. I loaded Bill's folder of sound files along with some of my own into the software and set it rolling. I was thrilled and astonished.

Apple has killed the iPod Nano and Shuffle. The two iconic music players have been quietly removed from the Apple Store, signalling that they join the company's many other dead but much loved products. The line is now gradually diminishing – leaving only the iPod Touch left. That product, which is like a slimmed down iPhone without the phone, has been updated. The I.F.O. is fuelled by eight electric engines, which is able to push the flying object to an estimated top speed of about 120mph.

While some designers look to the future of fashion and tech, Gucci is going back to what 1960s and '70s Hollywood thought the future would be. For its Gucci and Beyond Winter Instagram campaign, the fashion house showed off some colorful, kaleidoscopic fashions on a Star Trek bridge and transporter room, with Forbidden Planet's robot thrown in for good measure. Chanel had its own spin on tech recently, with robot fashion models in a faux data center and a smoke-spewing rocket ship at Paris Fashion Week. However, Gucci designer Alessandro Michele was apparently going for both futuristic and vintage, so the wild colors are married with mixed patterns, embroidery and metallic accents. The video and Instagram shots were filmed by fashion photographer and director Glen Luchford on what we imagine were some very weird and expensive sets.

A young boy named Dennis has just received the birthday present of his dreams. It's you -- a Japanese robot that can repeat words, although for the most part you just watch silently. That's the premise of Felix & Paul Studios' 40-minute-long VR comedic feature for Funny Or Die called Miyubi, which launches in the Oculus store today. Through events happening to a family over the course of a year, it tells a bleak story of the futility of trying to outrace obsolescence. The harrowing message hits especially hard because of how effectively the show's creators used the medium, forcing you to witness times changing around you.

As a kid, I remember thinking about how smart adults are. I can't wait to be an adult! They are all super smart and know about things like the stock market, catching the right bus, and, like, the government and stuff! Probably the worst part about becoming an adult was realizing that there was no Matrix-style download for Adulting 101 once I turned 18. The stock market, public transportation, and the government are still mysterious things that loom large in my mind.

A clearer picture has emerged of what may have happened to the young members of Burundi's robotics team who vanished last week. The team's six teenage members disappeared after a robotics competition in Washington, D.C. -- but recent reports revealed their parents may have known of their plan not to return home. The principal of Iteletique High School, where two of the students were enrolled, said the teens told their parents of their plans in advance. The parents themselves have not yet made any public statements regarding the disappearances. "Talking with parents, they told us that once the kids arrived there, they told them they may not come back," the principal, Esperance Niyonzima, told VOA's Central Africa news service Thursday.

At first blush, the aging pop star Billy Joel wouldn't seem to have much to tell us about automation and the future of work. His main contribution to forecasting was the dystopian "Miami 2017 (Seen the Lights Go Out on Broadway)," a 1976 song that ends with the island of Manhattan being sunk at sea. (Spoiler: It's 2017 and the island of Manhattan is very much buoyant. However, in sifting through the constant barrage of headlines, reports, projections, and warnings about robots and automation, the hook of another Billy Joel song, "Summer, Highland Falls," comes to mind: "It's either sadness or euphoria." Those seem to be the polar reactions to the advent of the next wave of disruptive technology. Automation and artificial intelligence, we are told, have the capacity to replace all manner of jobs quite soon. And the result will likely be sadness on a massive scale for many workers.