Monday, October 23, 2017

Taylor Swift appears naked in new music video

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/10/23/taylor-swift-appears-naked-new-music-video/

Swift posted three short clips on her Instagram page and within an hour they had been viewed more than 2.5 million times.

Taylor Swift performing in 2016

The 21st-century Hollywood: how Silicon Valley became the world’s trend capital

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/oct/23/the-21st-century-hollywood-how-silicon-valley-became-the-worlds-trend-capital

Snapchat’s Evan Spiegel with Miranda Kerr.

Yes, this sounds ridiculous. But then, there was a time – not so long ago – when you might have been sceptical about the prediction that, by 2015, the average British child would spend less time outdoors than a high-security prisoner (less than an hour on average, whereas a lifer should get 60 minutes, under UN guidelines). Or that one in three British preschool children would own their own iPad. But what came out of Cupertino changed all that. Silicon Valley is the new Hollywood in many ways, but with one crucial difference: this time, it’s not just make-believe.

Saturday, October 21, 2017

Tech giants face Congress as showdown over Russia election meddling looms

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/oct/22/facebook-google-twitter-congress-hearing-trump-russia-election

Facebook, Twitter and Google once seemed to encapsulate freedom and connectivity. At a hearing on 1 November a new question will be posed: have they become a tool for foreign autocracies and domestic extremists?

Thursday, October 19, 2017

Moguls and starlets: 100 years of Hollywood’s corrosive, systemic sexism

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/oct/19/moguls-and-starlets-100-years-of-hollywoods-corrosive-systemic-sexism

From the earliest days of Hollywood, women were stage managed and manipulated by older men in powerful positions. And it’s clear that, although Harvey Weinstein has been outed, little has changed

Wednesday, October 18, 2017

'It's able to create knowledge itself': Google unveils AI that learns on its own

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/oct/18/its-able-to-create-knowledge-itself-google-unveils-ai-learns-all-on-its-own

In a major breakthrough for artificial intelligence, AlphaGo Zero took just three days to master the ancient Chinese board game of Go ... with no human help


Go boardgame


Tuesday, October 3, 2017

French dreams of rivalling Hollywood with Gallic Star Wars end in fiasco

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/10/02/french-dreams-rivalling-hollywood-gallic-star-wars-end-fiasco/

With its stock dropping by more than 40 per cent since July, EuropaCorp CEO Marc Smuger said that its American operation has had to reduce staff by 90 per cent from 60 employees to six, and promised it would eschew blockbusters by spending no more than $25 to $30 million per film in the future.