This article is part of a series about season four of Black Mirror, in which Futurism considers the technology pivotal to each episode and evaluates how close we are to having it. Please note that this article contains mild spoilers. Season four of Black Mirror is now available on Netflix. A 20-something man walks into a restaurant and takes a seat at an empty table. A few minutes later, a young woman enters.

This article proposes a taxonomy to categorize and review the research in the area of explanations. It provides a unified view on the different recommendation paradigms, allowing similarities and differences to be clearly identified. Such information is commonly exchanged between a sales assistant and a customer during in-store recommendation processes and is usually termed an explanation (Brewer, Chinn, and Samarapungavan 1998). We define explanations in recommender systems by two properties. First, they are information about recommendations, where a recommendation is typically a ranked list of items.

This article explores how contextual information can be used to create intelligent and useful recommender systems. It provides an overview of the multifaceted notion of context, discusses several approaches for incorporating contextual information in the recommendation process, and illustrates the usage of such approaches in several application areas where different types of contexts are exploited. The article concludes by discussing the challenges and future research directions for context-aware recommender systems. As additional observations are made about users' preferences, the user models are extended, and the full collection of user preferences is used to generate recommendations or make predictions. This approach, therefore, ignores the notion of "situated actions" (Suchman 1987), the fact that users interact with the system within a particular "context" and that preferences for items within one context may be different from those in another context.

The much awaited Apple's Siri voice assistance based AI speaker HomePod is all set to launch soon. In order to ensure takers, existing smart speakers were being sold at heavy discounts on Amazon. Google and Amazon heavily discounted their smart speakers during the Christmas break. The Amazon Echo Dot and Google Home Mini were available to the customers for around $29 from $50. And even though this move might have costed them a few dollars per unit, this may point out towards a whole new strategy.

From the digital assistants like Siri in our phones to the algorithms that recommend us things to buy on Amazon, artificial intelligence is truly ingrained in the function of our technological society. Some of the most innovative forms of media exist because machine learning has exponentially become more prominent, and it is no surprise researchers at Stanford University use it to learn more about humans and their political patterns. These researchers identified a unique association among U.S. voters and the type of cars they own. If a city has a higher percent of sedans than pickup trucks, then there is an 88% chance the city will vote Democrat in the 2020 presidential election. And vice versa, if a city has a higher percent of pickup trucks than sedans, then there is an 82% it will vote Republican.

It's hard to believe there's anything to look forward to in 2018, but as the ecommerce wars heat up, there's at least plenty to pay attention to. During these pivotal moments, artificial intelligence and augmented reality continued to shake up how people--and the ecommerce industry--use their phones and the experiences they seek. Most of the trends coming in 2018 are pointing towards making the consumer happier than ever. You probably think this section is about you, don't you? Well it is, as another trend expected to pick up in 2018 is personalization, some of it driven through AI and mobile.

The scope and pace of technological innovation is ascendant, advancing at a pace that is impossible to keep up with. Much ado about artificial intelligence, blockchain, the internet of things, virtual reality, … the list of emerging technologies continues to grow. But for the buzz, all the investment, and all the 2017 roundups and 2018 predictions, we often fail to remember technology's secret. The most powerful disruptions rarely occur from single technologies but well-timed convergence of multiple existing technologies to foster something altogether unprecedented. In my analysis of the impacts of emerging technology, I identify how and where people, organizations, and ecosystems are being transformed by technological convergence.

An 18-count indictment alleges the men arranged meetings at victims' homes through a social media dating platform for gay men. Investigators say most victims were tied up, assaulted and robbed at gunpoint.

The HomePod had a bit of a notable production setback, back in December, but Apple's high-end smart speaker is still on-track for an "early 2018" release. As it preps for the release of its first Siri-focused device, the company is making some tweaks to its voice assistant. As 9to5Mac first noted, the latest beta version of iOS (11.2.5) sports a new news feature.

No, it wasn't for a Christmas card: Mom wanted to nail the perfect dating profile pic. She has been on Match.com, Revenue from dating services was projected to hit $2.7 billion in 2017, according to market research firm IBISWorld. And going forward, the ones geared toward baby boomers are expected to see the most growth. I met Lauryn at a bar while chatting up strangers about online dating.