"Domhnall Gleeson stars as a bright young programmer named Caleb, who's invited by his genius billionaire boss, Nathan (Oscar Isaac), to spend a week at a remote compound, testing the intelligence of a super-advanced android, Ava (Alicia Vikander). As the experiment plays out, Caleb begins to have feelings for Ava and questions the sanity and motivations of Nathan. The movie follows a somewhat predictable path from there, but the striking set design and strong performances make it an enjoyable trip, and the conversations about what makes us human will be sparking inspiring, late-night arguments for decades to come. The DVD and Blu-ray add featurettes."
This fascinating and provocative film peeks into the dystopian future predicted by Stephen Hawkins in his famous quote; "Artificial Intelligence may be man's greatest achievement and also his last". In the past year we have seen two thought provoking science pectin movies Ex Machina and Interstellar. It looks like the long drought is over. John H Armwood
"HE Z4 TABLET SOUNDS GREAT IN THEORY, BUT THE FINAL PRODUCT DISAPPOINTS
Yet again, I find myself deeply frustrated by Sony’s failure to live up to its own expectations and produce a cohesive product. The company’s ideas are not bad: there is definitely a class of more conservative mobile PC users that demands a real physical keyboard and Microsoft Office compatibility. Such people can be very adequately served by the Surface Pro 3, but they don’t strictly need a Windows PC. An Android tablet — especially one preloaded with Word, Excel, and PowerPoint as the Z4 is — can fulfill most of their needs, while costing and weighing less. If I was heading off to university this fall, I’d definitely consider getting a super thin device that can be both my YouTube video player and my modernist take on the netbook for taking lecture notes. Sony's premise is sound. Its execution isn’t."
"NYTimes: Office of Personnel Management Says Hackers Got Data of Millions of Individuals. "
"When did you last call your mother? Don't worry if you can't remember -- the National Security Agency can once more keep track of that for you. That is, for the next 180 days.
After briefly suspending its bulk collection of phone call data, the NSA now has the authority to start it up again, a federal judge ruled on Monday.
The data collection program has become the center of national debate over government surveillance and privacy in the digital age. Whistleblowers like former NSA contractor Edward Snowden have made public intelligence programs designed to reach into the vast store of information on our phones and Internet browsers and paint an extremely detailed picture of the nation's communications.
Despite the continuation of the program, Monday's ruling helps push forward Congress's ongoing plan to narrow the NSA's phone call data collection practices by reaffirming its end in November. After November, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court won't provide a blanket approval to the practice any longer."
"What disheartens me is how little care and appreciation any of them give (or in Mr. Jobs’s case, gave) to hard-working and loyal employees, and how unnecessarily cruel and demeaning they could be to the people who helped make their dreams come true."
"Google native apps I use all the time, like Google Inbox and Gmail, Keep, Google Drive and Google Now suffered on the iPhone and sometimes didn’t work at all. I missed the level of personalization I had on Android, some of it so basic that I was surprised to find out it was lacking on the iPhone. One such example was that on Android I am able to move my folders however I want on the screen, where it is much more comfortable to press with my thumb. Another example is the back button for the iPhone, which is often on the top left, far away from reach, where on Android it’s at the bottom where I can access it. Important widgets, like calendar and weather information, are lacking, and even though available from the notification pan on the iPhone, they leave much to be desired, compared to the different screens I have on the Android."
"After working behind closed doors for months, browser engineers on Wednesday unveiled a project called WebAssembly. The effort would marry the unbeatable reach of the Web with the speed of software written to run natively on operating systems like Apple's iOS, Microsoft's Windows and Google's Android."
"There seems to be a lot of evidence that Samsung is planning a super-sized version of the S6 Edge -- not least the pictures that leaked a couple of weeks ago -- and now we have a few more hints to go on."
