Robot talk

KRAFTWERK’S seminal album The Man-Machine, above, sprang to mind when we heard the news that a certain technology conference was taking place again in Scotland today. Because that, quite frankly, is the way The Bottom Line’s simple, Pavlovian mind operates.

Recruitment firm Cathcart Associates will again host the Scotland Machine Learning in Edinburgh today after its inaugural event last year was deemed a success.

Taking place in the city’s Quartermile, it promises to bring together the “best and brightest” minds from the data science, machine learning and AI sectors in a “relaxed, informal environment”.

We can but wish the event is sound-tracked by Germany’s finest electro pioneers.

Scoring streak

IF Loch Lomond Group was the striker in a football team, newspaper reports might say it is in rich goal-scoring form.

The distiller just netted a notable hat-trick when it scooped three “best in class” gongs at the 2018 Scotch Whiskies Awards, including the Best Malt 12 and Under category for its Inchmoan 12-year-old single malt.

It comes as the firm continues to score success breaking into markets around the globe under its current owner.

Former Imperial Tobacco chief Colin Matthews led a private equity-led buyout of the distiller from the Bulloch family in 2014. He said: “We are extremely proud of our innovative single malts and the recognition that they have received by industry leaders from all over the world.

Back of the net, as Alan Partridge would say.

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Out of this world

THE mere mention of the word prometheus is usually enough to set The Bottom Line’s mind ablaze with images of parasitic aliens, as depicted in the famous Ridley Scott movie.

More cheerily, when news bearing the same word reached us this week it was to herald details of a decidedly sumptuous-sounding libation.

Prometheus is the name given to a range of rare malt whiskies released by the Glasgow Distillery Company and its third, a 28-year-old dram from Speyside, is out this week.

Sounds more appetising than playing host to a life-sucking extraterrestrial.