Nataliia Dmytriievska was 15 years old and enveloped by flames when she first heard the call of outer space. A year earlier her boyfriend had taught her the basics of poi, a Maori dance in which performers swing flaming, tethered weights to describe bright geometric shapes in the dark. Despite the burns and bruises she earned, Dmytriievska was a determined pupil. She would practice for hours each day, drawing flowers and other outlines around her body using dummy weights, before attempting the same perilous tricks using fire. Although money was never the primary motivation – "I simply love the fire; there is something magical when you feel like it's in your control," she said – after a few years Dmytriievska turned semi-professional. She joined a circus troupe in her home city of Kiev, Ukraine to help support her university studies. In June 2007, the troupe began rehearsals for an interpretation of Edgar Allan Poe's poem, The Raven. As the backing music sounded out for the first time – a pipe organ, played rhythmically, as if calling people to worship, soon joined by galloping guitars and a furious drumbeat – Dmytriievska took to the stage. But her mind was not on the performance. As soon as she finished the routine she left the stage, walked up to her friend on the mixing desk and asked: "Where is that music from?" Eve Online: how a virtual world went to the edge of apocalypse and back. The track, he said, came from Eve Online, a science-fiction video game. It is, he explained, a game set in a vast galaxy comprised of tens of thousands of stars and planets, and inhabited by half a million or so people from around the world, who explore and do battle together daily via the internet.

The Amazon Echo was one of the most popular items during last year's Black Friday, and it's back this year for an even lower price. This model is Amazon-certified refurbished, and carries a one-year warranty – the same as a brand new one. It has been thoroughly tested, and it's certified to work and look like new. The built-in Alexa voice assistant will play songs, set reminders or alarms, order you an Uber, and even control your smart home. The Amazon Echo is the home gadget of the future, and word on the street is that if you use Alexa to buy items on Amazon, they'll offer you exclusive deals to make it worth your while.

The U.S. State Department generates some two billion e-mails every year. A significant fraction of these contain sensitive or secret information and so have to be classified, a process that is time-consuming and costly. In 2015 alone, it spent $16 billion to protect classified information. But the reliability of this process of classification is unclear. Nobody knows whether the rules for classifying information are applied consistently and reliably.

President-elect Donald Trump will be able to employ deadly drone strikes largely at his discretion if current guidelines remain in place. And President Barack Obama has no plans to change those rules before he leaves office, the Guardian reported Tuesday. The next president will inherit the so-called drones "playbook" created by the Obama administration in 2013 that dictated policy on drone strikes, the president's main way of striking against terrorism. Since drone usage began under the administration of President George W. Bush, thousands of people have been killed through the targeted strikes from unmanned aircraft and many nations across the globe consider the standards the U.S. applies for drone strikes to be too secretive. "Maybe on the left no one would believe that Trump has a steady hand, but Obama has normalized the idea that presidents get to have secret large-scale killing programs at their disposal," Naureen Shah of Amnesty International USA told the Guardian.

IBM captured our imaginations when it unveiled Watson, the artificial intelligence computer capable of playing--and winning--the "Jeopardy" game show. Since then, Big Blue has been introducing Watson's analytics and learning capabilities across various industries, including health care and information security. Cognitive security technology such as Watson for Cybersecurity can change how information security professionals defend against attacks by helping them digest vast amounts of data. IBM Security is currently in the middle of a year-long research project working with eight universities to help train Watson to tackle cybercrime. Watson has to learn the "language of cybersecurity" to understand what a threat is, what it does, and what indicators are related.

As artificial intelligence (AI) has progressed at quite a pace in recent years, it is inevitable that governments have tried to get a handle on things and better understand how it might influence society. For instance, I wrote recently about a report by the British government's Science & Technology Select Committee into AI, which looked at a number of topics, from ethics to employment. Hot on the heels of this is another British government report, this time from the office of the Chief Scientific Advisor. It examines the increasingly blurred lines between big data and AI, and particularly the benefits of this for the state. For instance, it highlights that governments could secure enormous savings by utilizing both to reduce tax fraud and minimize errors in tax collection.

There weren't many people who had heard of bioterrorism before 9/11. But shortly after the September 11th terrorist attacks, a wave of anthrax mailings diverted the attention of the public towards a new weapon in the arsenal of terrorists--bioterrorism. A US federal prosecutor found that an army biological researcher was responsible for mailing the anthrax-laced letters, which killed 5 and sickened 15 people in 2001. The cases generated huge media attention, and the fear of a new kind of terrorist warfare was arising. However, as with every media hype, the one about bioterrorism disappeared quickly.

Advances in machine learning are making security systems easier to train and more flexible in dealing with changing conditions, but not all use cases are benefitting at the same rate. Machine learning, and artificial intelligence, has been getting a lot of attention lately and there's a lot of justified excitement about the technology. One of the side effects is that pretty much everything is now being relabeled as "machine learning," making the term extremely difficult to pin down. Just as the word "cloud" has come to mean pretty much anything that happens online, so "artificial intelligence" is rapidly moving to the point where almost anything involving a computer is getting that label slapped on it. "There is also a lot of hype," said Anand Rao, innovation lead for US analytics at PricewaterhouseCoopers LLC.

Google has updated the app for users in 62 countries around the world The app now uses machine learning to suggest songs and playlists Subscribers will be able to listen to music offline, and the app will automatically create an offline playlist based on what you've listened to Subscribers will be able to listen to music offline, and the app will automatically create an offline playlist based on what you've listened to The latest feature to receive the'smart' treatment, is Google Play Music, which has been updated to be more assistive. Sex with robots will be'mind blowing': Expert says androids... Instagram wants to make'Stories' more sociable: App adds... You can finally send GIFs on WhatsApp for iOS: App... Were YOU killed off by Facebook? Sex with robots will be'mind blowing': Expert says androids... Instagram wants to make'Stories' more sociable: App adds... You can finally send GIFs on WhatsApp for iOS: App... Were YOU killed off by Facebook?

Bill Gates, Elon Musk, and Stephen Hawking all have something in common: All three have gone on the record sharing their concerns and fears about artificial intelligence and robotics. While these technologies hold a great deal of promise, and will have a real impact on our future, it's important for us to understand the ramifications they could have for all of us, particularly in terms of labor. My first big concern about AI was recently highlighted in a New York Times piece by John Markoff, who wrote that while AI has great potential for good, it could also be abused by criminals who might use it for their nefarious goals. The growing sophistication of computer criminals can be seen in the evolution of attack tools like the widely used malicious program known as Blackshades, according to Mr. Goodman. The author of the program, a Swedish national, was convicted last year in the United States.