Beyond membership in the Pantheon of Famous Brits, Winston Churchill and George Orwell would seem to have little in the way of common ground. Orwell was a journalist and novelist. Churchill had money and pedigree; the young Orwell lived on the street and raised his own vegetables during World War II. Churchill's political leanings were conservative; Orwell flirted with communism until he witnessed the betrayal of his Republican comrades by Soviet agents in the Spanish Civil War. In "Churchill & Orwell: The Fight for Freedom," Thomas E. Ricks gets beyond these differences and finds the iron core of both men.

Top network across the global media and entertainment ecosystem with proven track record in Europe and Latin America. Deep knowledge about Internet TV and Video applications from Business Plan, design, architecture definition to development on all platforms from mobile, game console, smart TV and STB. Hands-on startup leader, involved in all operational aspects of growing a business. Specialties: - Growing business from the greenfield to profitability - Video focused Start-ups - Artificial intelligence and Big Data - Business development - Internet TV/Video business models - Strategic partnerships - Connected Devices Lived in Silicon Valley (San Francisco) and Spain.

BENGALURU: On July 2015, a journalist named Sarah O' Connor tweeted about a robot killing a worker at a car plant in Germany. Immediately, the internet went into a frenzy. Many pointed out how this incident matched the plot of the dystopian sci-fi movie, Terminator where an artificial intelligence (AI) program ultimately takes over humans. The protagonist in the movie also incidentally had the same name as the journalist. While most of the chatter was of a humorous nature by movie buffs, there were those who seemed alarmed at what they believed was the fulfilment of a prophecy of sorts.

Spotify's editorial selection and music discovery process are hard to beat (ahem, Google Play Music) and it might get a little better with the company's latest acquisition. The music streaming service has just picked up Niland, a Paris-based machine learning startup that focuses on music search and recommendations. "The team from Niland will join our New York office and help Spotify continue innovating and improving our recommendation and personalization technologies resulting in more music discovery, which benefits both fans and artists," a press release says. "The best part of our journey was hearing from our clients how they were using Niland API to create innovative products that help musicians cut through the noise," Niland writes. Spotify has absorbed AI-minded companies in the past, and its Discover Weekly playlists have proven pretty popular with listeners.

Google's artificial intelligence research team Magenta has created software capable of generating entirely new sounds. The software uses thousands of instruments to create sounds that are otherwise impossible to produce. The Neural Synthesiser, or'NSynth', invents audio using deep AI neural networks, which blend the sounds of two instruments to create a novel, hybrid sound. The technology uses AI neural networks to blend two sounds together. This is not the same as layering two sounds on top of one another.

Mobile phone customers could soon be able to dump their network provider by text. Ofcom says people shouldn't need to make a potentially long and uncomfortable phone call to their operator in order to switch networks, as they currently have to. Research conducted by the regulator also shows that these calls can often be disrupted, causing further stress. 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. The giant human-like robot bears a striking resemblance to the military robots starring in the movie'Avatar' and is claimed as a world first by its creators from a South Korean robotic company Waseda University's saxophonist robot WAS-5, developed by professor Atsuo Takanishi and Kaptain Rock playing one string light saber guitar perform jam session A man looks at an exhibit entitled'Mimus' a giant industrial robot which has been reprogrammed to interact with humans during a photocall at the new Design Museum in South Kensington, London Electrification Guru Dr. Wolfgang Ziebart talks about the electric Jaguar I-PACE concept SUV before it was unveiled before the Los Angeles Auto Show in Los Angeles, California, U.S The Jaguar I-PACE Concept car is the start of a new era for Jaguar.

Minimalist blogging platform Medium is expanding into audio. Readers who have a $5 per month subscription can now listen to stories published by fellow members, as well as those hand-picked by Medium staff. As TechCrunch notes, more than 50 stories have an audio version at launch, and more will be added over time. It's a small number, however each one has been recorded by a professional voice artist, rather than a robotic text-to-speech service. You'll find them at the top of articles, both on the web and in Medium's mobile apps, with some basic playback controls.

Alien: Covenant is a decent film about android consciousness and ancient secrets wherein Michael Fassbender proves he can play an excellent android. But it has one big problem: In order to earn the "Alien" name, director Ridley Scott was forced to rehash a lot of moments from his 1979 sci-fi classic. Not even Scott, who seems much more interested in making connections to his 2012 prequel Prometheus than in filming another slobbering xenomorph. The result is a movie where the biggest money shots feel largely obligatory--just killers and filler, nothing more. Even documentaries are getting follow-ups now.

While Spotify may still be having a difficult time achieving profitability, the company has the money to continue buying essentially whatever it wants, as the financing and fundraising never seems to stop. In 2016 alone, the powerhouse collected $1 billion in debt financing and another half a billion in a convertible note, and that is to say nothing of the untold millions that weren't revealed in fundraising rounds and the actual revenue brought in by the company on its own.

Over the last few years we've seen more camera drones than we can count, but getting the best footage out of them will take something extra. While many big budget productions are already using drone cameras, a system developed by MIT and ETH Zurich researchers goes beyond mere Steadicam or even subject-tracking, by allowing the director to define exactly how a shot is framed. Specifically, it lets operators specify where an object or face should be in the frame, which direction it should face and how large it will appear, while also accounting for obstacles in the environment. That way the drone can calculate an appropriate flight path on its own, weighing the various factors against each other to get the best shot each time. The researchers will present their findings at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation later this month, but for now, directors will have to keep begging Roger Deakins to shoot their next project.