To promote new sci-fi movie MindGamers, someone thought it would be a good idea to strap a thousand audience members into "cognitive bands". Tying into the movie's debut, the bands will let researchers monitor and record the state of the audience's mind simultaneously during the feature, resulting in a "mass-mind state" image of everyone's feelings and brain activity. Details are thin on exactly what's being monitored, although the screening is bookended by introductory talks and Q and As from experts in neuroscience technology. That may help to distract from having to wear a headband throughout the entire feature. The movie (starring Sam Neill!) centers around a group of "brilliant young students" that create a "wireless neural network" that could link every mind in the world through a quantum computer. However, some kind of sinister threat arises from the idea connecting everyone's brains, and they have to do something about it.

Standing in a pink desert landscape, I looked down and realized I'd become a robot, with skinny metal legs and pincers for hands. Without warning or explanation, my hands became cannons and began firing projectiles, which, on further inspection, I saw were small metallic cats. In the sky, a giant cat appeared; it shook an infant's bottle, and stars came out. Earlier that same day, I spent time as a black woman, in a neurocosmetology salon of the future. According to the staff, I needed both hair-styling and a neurological upgrade; namely, "transcranial extensions designed to make the brain's synapses more excitable and primed to increase neuroplasticity."

Sky is going to let people watch all of its TV channels without a satellite dish for the first time ever. The company is going to let people watch its full TV service through broadband instead of installing an entire satellite dish on their house. The move is apparently an attempt to stop the rate of "churn" at Sky – how many people join the service and then leave. The announcement came as Sky revealed surging numbers of people leaving to competitors like BT – up to 11.6 per cent from 10.2 per cent last year. Those same results showed a 9 per cent fall in earnings because of the increased price of football rights.

Announced at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, BelleFox (www.bellefox.ai) is poised to revolutionize how families interact in this constantly connected world. The BelleFox Wi-Fi router is a unique technology that delivers not only reliability and fast speeds, but a host of features to help parents see and understand their children's online behavior -- and even to learn more about who their children are as individuals. The system uses Big Data and AI (artificial intelligence) to deliver its powerful, useful insights. "Children today are online natives, which can be extremely stressful for parents," stated Lily Li, co-founder of BelleFox. "Until now, family Wi-Fi systems simply offered ways to limit children's time and access to specific sites.

An algorithm watching a movie trailer is a project by Lasse Korsgaard and Andreas Refsgaard from the creative coding studio Støj, that tries to explore how an object detection algorithm experiences a movie trailer. Object detection is the process of identifying specific objects such as persons, cars and chairs in digital images or video. For most humans this task requires little effort regardless of how the objects may vary in different sizes, scales and rotations or whether they are partially obstructed from view. For long these tasks have been difficult for computers to solve, but recent developments have shown impressive improvements in accuracy and speed, even while detecting multiple objects in the same image. We wondered what a fast paced movie trailer would look like seen through the lens of an object detection algorithm.

A true genius, Alan Turing was played brilliantly by Benedict Cumberbatch inThe Imitation Game -- the movie about his life and role in ending WWII -- which introduced him to a whole new generation of admirers. It wasTuring who predicted machine learning would play a big role in modern computing in his article the "Turing Test," way back in 1950. Indeed, Turing was way ahead of his time, which was a major theme in the movie, but now the world has caught up. The major advancements in readily accessible computing power, the quantity of data available, and algorithms that truly make machine learning possible are driving our ability to process data, analyze it, and act on it in ways that would make Mr. Turing proud. These advances have completely changed the machine learning game: The fundamental concept remains the same, but now it's far more sophisticated, efficient, and easily deployable. Beyond the big headline-grabbing examples of how machine learning will impact our lives -- such as through driverless cars -- it has exciting potential to put an end to the bland and sometimes ineffective customer experiences that many retailers are delivering to their customers.

Arrival Amy Adams stars in this elegant, involving science-fiction drama that is simultaneously old and new, revisiting many alien-invasion conventions but with unexpected intelligence, visual style and heart. The Eagle Huntress A portrait of a 13-year-old Kazakh girl from Mongolia who defies eons of tradition by learning to hunt with fierce golden eagles is a documentary so satisfying it makes you feel good about feeling good. The Edge of Seventeen Hailee Steinfeld gives a superb performance as a high-school misfit in Kelly Fremon Craig's disarmingly smart teen dramedy, the rare coming-of-age picture that feels less like a retread than a renewal. Elle Paul Verhoeven's brilliantly booby-trapped thriller starring Isabelle Huppert is a gripping whodunit, a tour de force of psychological suspense and a wickedly droll comedy of manners. The Founder Michael Keaton gives a performance of ratty, reptilian brilliance as Ray Kroc, the American salesman who turned a California burger stand into the global fast-food behemoth that is McDonald's, in John Lee Hancock's shrewd and satisfyingly fat-free biopic.

Ricoh has announced the Pentax KP, the follow-up to the K-3 II, which features a new'high sensitivity' 24MP sensor and improved in-body image stabilization system. The new CMOS sensor brings with it a top ISO of 819,200 and an electronic shutter that tops out at 1/24000 sec (the mechanical shutter goes to 1/6000 sec). The KP uses the new 5-axis'Shake Reduction II' IBIS system, first seen on the K-1 full-framer, which offers up to 5 stops of stabilization according to Ricoh. As with other Pentax models, the KP supports Pixel Shift Resolution as well as AA Filter Simulation. The KP uses the same SAFOX 11 autofocus system as the K-3 II, meaning that it has 27 points, 25 of which are cross-type.

Every day we create billions of bits of data. Ever faster and more powerful computers can use that big data to learn, predict events and carry out key tasks. Surveillance, voice recognition and driving vehicles are all areas where people are becoming superfluous. The BBC's Colm O'Regan explores the process known as "deep learning" - a branch of machine learning used to develop artificial intelligence.

With Valentine's Day just around the corner, it's a good idea to start thinking about gift options now -- lest you wind up with some half-hearted, last-minute present. Here are nine things I wouldn't mind getting this year. Everybody has different preferences, of course. But consider this a jumping off-point for your own quest for the perfect gift. I recently came into the possession of The Art of Rogue One, which is full of gorgeous concept art from the latest movie.