Inc said on Tuesday it shipped over 5 billion items worldwide via its subscription based Prime service in 2017 while adding more new members than ever before. The e-commerce giant, which revealed its Prime shipment numbers for the first time, did not give comparable full-year shipment number for 2016. Amazon claimed that its Fire TV Stick and voice controlled smart device Echo Dot were the best-selling products among U.S. Prime members from any manufacturer in any category across all of its product offerings. The e-commerce giant, which revealed its Prime shipment numbers for the first time, did not give comparable full-year shipment number for 2016. Customers can receive free two-day shipping on most items by paying for a $99 annual'Prime' membership.

Loup Venture co-founder Gene Munster made the claim in a report highlighting eight predictions for the technology industry in 2018. 'Target is the ideal offline partner for Amazon for two reasons, shared demographic and manageable but comprehensive store count,' Munster wrote. Loup Venture co-founder Gene Munster made the claim in a report highlighting eight predictions for the technology industry in 2018. The analyst, best known for his incorrect prediction Apple would make its own TV set, claims the timing of the deal is hard to know. 'Getting the timing on this is difficult, but seeing the value of the combination is easy.' 'Amazon believe's the future of retail is a mix of mostly online and some offline,' Munster wrote.

For years, the X Prize Foundation has funded competitions that ask participants to make sci-fi a reality: a device to extract water from thin air, like Star Trek's replicator; a tool to instantly diagnose disease, like the Star Trek tricorder; a crime alert network, inspired by Minority Report. But for its latest competition, Seat14C, the organization is putting the fiction first--by asking writers to envision what humanity will need in the future. Starting today, 22 new science fiction stories go live on the Seat14C website, courtesy of genre luminaries like Margaret Atwood and Charlie Jane Anders. Each story details the future from the perspective of a different passengers on a plane that traveled through a wormhole 20 years into the future. Other writers will then compete to tell the story of the passenger in seat 14C.

Margaret Atwood on why'The Handmaid's Tale' is more relevant now than ever When "The Handmaid's Tale" was published in 1985, reproductive rights were under siege and acid rain was corroding the forests and rivers. The Canadian writer Margaret Atwood reasoned that if you took all this to its logical end, you could wind up with a theocracy, not a democracy, and a population rendered sterile by its own poisons. So her novel of speculative fiction imagined a hyper-religious nation where young women who were still fertile were rounded up and confined to the human equivalent of puppy mills, forced to bear the children of powerful men. Well, here we are in 2017, and women's rights to control their own bodies are at risk again, the environment is threatened again -- and "The Handmaid's Tale" is more popular than ever. It became a feature film in 1990, and this April 26, Hulu launches "The Handmaid's Tale" as a 10-episode series. Why is this book, like George Orwell's "1984," finding a new and large and attentive following?

When "The Handmaid's Tale" was published in 1985, reproductive rights were under siege and acid rain was corroding the forests and rivers. The Canadian writer Margaret Atwood reasoned that if you took all this to its logical end, you could wind up with a theocracy, not a democracy, and a population rendered sterile by its own poisons. So her novel of speculative fiction imagined a hyper-religious nation where young women who were still fertile were rounded up and confined to the human equivalent of puppy mills, forced to bear the children of powerful men. Well, here we are in 2017, and women's rights to control their own bodies are at risk again, the environment is threatened again -- and "The Handmaid's Tale" is more popular than ever. It became a feature film in 1990, and this April 26, Hulu launches "The Handmaid's Tale" as a 10-episode series. Why is this book, like George Orwell's "1984," finding a new and large and attentive following?

The ritualized procreation in the novel--effectively, state-sanctioned rape--is extrapolated from the Bible. " 'Behold my maid Bilhah, go in unto her; and she shall bear upon my knees, that I may also have children by her,' " Atwood recited. "Obviously, they stuck the two together and out came the baby, and it was given to Rachel.

During my commute the other day, I ended up on a dark subway car. The train still had power--the air conditioning was on, the announcements were coming through--but all the lights were dead. I live near an above-ground stop, so at first there was morning sunshine coming in through the windows. But when the train went underground, we were plunged into complete darkness. I found myself suddenly in a sea of floating, ghostly faces, illuminated by the glow of smartphones.