The judging panel of hit TV show Strictly Come Dancing (pictured) may appear animated in their reactions to dance routines, but science could help explain why. Revealed: 6,000-year-old amulet was created with ancient... Nintendo NES classic mini edition consoles are selling for... Not so smart after all: AI robot now has to get a'real job'... Christmas shopping can be as stressful as running a... Revealed: 6,000-year-old amulet was created with ancient... Nintendo NES classic mini edition consoles are selling for... Not so smart after all: AI robot now has to get a'real job'... Christmas shopping can be as stressful as running a... Professional dancers watching live performances are more attuned and show a stronger emotional response. When viewing the black and white videos of live ballet performances, the faces were blurred so the response was based solely on their bodily movements.

When the first Ghost in the Shell movie was released in 1995, it was revolutionary, presenting a whole new way of looking at technology, artificial intelligence, and more. Twenty years later, director Rupert Sanders not only has to live up to that legacy, he's trying to build upon it, despite being stuck in a cloud of controversy. Sanders is the director of next year's live-action adaptation of Mamoru Oshii's anime masterpiece, starring Scarlett Johansson as the Major, a futuristic cyborg in a world where the human essence, called Ghosts, can be transmitted electronically into robot bodies, called Shells. He, along with Johansson and Japanese legend Takeshi Kitano, debuted the first trailer and several clips this past weekend at an event in Tokyo, Japan. "We're taking the next chapter of this legacy very seriously," Sanders said of the franchise that has been around in various formats since 1989.

I've been connecting VideoGuides, WebTVs, TiVos, DVRs, Apple TVs, gaming consoles, speakers, and amps together since before the web existed. Amazon's Alexa line of products will soon get new home automation skills thanks to the release of an API by the company. While the gear has changed over the years, one constant has always remained: switching between devices has always been a bit of a pain. When the first Philips Pronto came out in 1998 or so, I snapped it up. It was more than $500, but even so, it was worth it because it unified all those remote controls.

Something is happening in Bhaumau - a rural village in India's populous state of Uttar Pradesh where parents spend most of their time working in agriculture and as day labourers. Children, with no guidance from adults, are forming learning groups and with nothing more than a tablet computer preloaded with educational videos, stories and games, they are learning English and conducting science experiments. In the first three months of playing with the tablets there has been, according to the project's monitoring data, an 11% increase in pupils' core academic skills such as reading in children's mother tongue, reading and speaking in English, and science. Maybe even more important, children are figuring out how to navigate the digital world to find out answers to their questions and are more confident about speaking up. This is a radically different approach to using technology to advance learning.

The day before the election, as millions of Americans were feeling confident that the vast majority of the country shared their opinions, a pair of researchers at the University of Southern California Information Sciences Institute published a paper that looked closely at something many of us ignored: the provenance of political tweets. Where do they come from? How many are, in reality, made by humans? And if not, who is designing these crude straw-bots? Analyzing Twitter during three televised debates, they discovered that 20% of all political tweets were made by bots.

I must admit however that I find that it odd that you introduce so many heuristics/restrictions (fixed embedding size, fixed sequence length, etc), in handling the input-output pairs for the feedforward encoder-decoder. It strikes me that part of the contribution is to get rid of heuristics to increase program search efficiency through machine learning. Although your approach does greatly improve with respect to a weakly-informed baseline; you also introduce the need for even further tuning of fixed parameters/restrictions to be able to learn your model. Perhaps in this context a GRU/LSTM to replace the current feed forward encoder/decoder isn't such a bad idea after all?

Google released an update for Google Play Music, its music-streaming service. With this update, the service will use machine learning to present a user with personalized music recommendations based on "signals" such as their location, current activity and the weather. For instance, a selection of workout music may appear when a user walks into a gym. Google said users can opt in to receive these personalized recommendations. In addition, the app's home screen has been updated to provide users with additional personalized content.

Chinese drone maker DJI unveiled two new drones aimed at advanced amateurs and filmmakers here Tuesday on the Warner Bros. studio backlot. The introduction comes just weeks after DJI introduced its lowest-priced, consumer drone, Mavic, which has been plagued by production issues. DJI says orders for the $750 (without controller) or full-service $999 Mavic will be filled in 4-6 weeks. The Mavic's main competition, the $1,100 GoPro Karma, was released in October and recalled two weeks later, after reports of the Karma losing power during filming. The Phantom Pro 4 is aimed at drone enthusiasts, starting at $1,499, and starts shipping next week.

Turns out that DJI's Mavik wasn't the company's only new airframe for the year. On Tuesday, a pair of updated drone models joined the family: the Phantom 4 Pro and the Inspire 2. The Phantom 4 Pro (P4P) is the upgraded version of the Phantom 4 (P4), which debuted earlier this year. The P4, if you recall, integrated a suite of obstacle avoidance systems: a pair of stereoscopic sensors mounted on the front of the drone. The P4P builds on that system, adding a second pair of stereoscopic sensors on the rear of the frame as well as an infrared sensor on either flank. These IR sensors have a 7m range -- shorter than the 30m range of the front and rear stereos but still plenty farsighted to avoid sideswiping trees and fences.

That fake news and misinformation on Facebook could have influenced the outcome of the US presidential election is worrying (Opinion, 15 November), but, in reality, this is only tinkering around the edges of a major problem. The first amendment of the US constitution was designed to protect freedom of the press. However, for the most part, the supreme court has failed to use it to rule on libel cases: hence tabloids such as the National Enquirer can get away with printing pretty much anything they like. It is possible to police the publishing and broadcasting industry – if nations are willing to do it. Sufficient staff (not robots) need to be employed to fact-check before publishing or broadcasting.