At the end of the first film, the powerful Dark wizard Gellert Grindelwald (Johnny Depp) was captured by MACUSA (Magical Congress of the United States of America), with the help of Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne). But, making good on his threat, Grindelwald escaped custody and has set about gathering followers, most unsuspecting of his true agenda: to raise pure-blood wizards up to rule over all non-magical beings.
In an effort to thwart Grindelwald’s plans, Albus Dumbledore (Jude Law) enlists his former student Newt Scamander, who agrees to help, unaware of the dangers that lie ahead. Lines are drawn as love and loyalty are tested, even among the truest friends and family, in an increasingly divided wizarding world.
Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald – In Theaters November 16
Ever since he was a kid, David Aguilar was obsessed with Lego. He spent his childhood building cars, planes, helicopters, and eventually, his own prosthetic. Born with a deformed arm, the self-named “Hand Solo” decided to take his Lego-building skills to the next level. At age 18, he perfected his designs with the MK2, a prosthetic arm with the ability to bend and pick up objects with a pincer-like grip. Now, he’s the coolest kid on the block.
Donald Trump has blocked Singapore’s Broadcom from taking over American’ chipmaker Qualcomm. He says it’s for security reasons rather than a business matter.
As well as manufacturing a huge range of semiconductors, processors and communications devices, Qualcomm has played a key role in the development of several mobile data standards. Broadcom operates in similar areas and had offered to pay $140 billion to take over its rival. The idea was to combine the scale of Broadcom with the research and development of Qualcomm, particularly when it came to making chips for 5G data.
Although Broadcom does much of its work in San Jose, it’s not incorporated in the US. If it were, the deal would likely have attracted regulatory interest on competition grounds.
Instead the President has surprisingly used the Defense Production Act to block the deal. That’s a law introduced during the Korean War that gives the President some powers over business where deemed necessary for national defense.
In the executive order blocking the deal, Trump wrote that there was “credible evidence” that by exercising control of Qualcomm, Broadcom “might take action that threatens to impair the national security of the United States.” The order didn’t give any specifics about either the evidence or the hypothetical action.
The timing of the order is particularly surprising. While blocking deals on security grounds isn’t unprecedented, it’s unusual that it would take place before stockholders in the company being bought out have voted to accept the deal. The decision also comes before a Congressional investigation into the deal has completed.
Several sources cited by the New York Times questioned the reasoning behind the order, suggesting it was as much about protecting a US business from foreign takeover as it was a security measure.
A burger-flipping robot is on a break from work after it appeared to be too slow to meet demand. But ‘Flippy’ might not be to blame.
The robot, made by Miso Robotics, was set to work at a Cali Burger restaurant in Pasadena. It uses image recognition to keep track of the burgers on a grill and heat sensors to determine when each needs flipping. (And it also uses ‘being a robot’ to avoid going crazy through tedium.)
Cali Burger says it plans to put the robots into 50 restaurants, sparking debate over automation of jobs. It’s not necessarily a case of the robot being any better than the human at burger flipping. Instead the chain says the high turnover of employees in this specific role makes the cost of recruiting and training staff a problem.
Flippy ‘worked’ for only two days before being withdrawn from service, something the restaurant is blaming on an unusual (if inevitable) spike in business caused by the media coverage. It appears Flippy is able to cope with the workload as it can handle 2,000 burgers a day.
However, the restaurant doesn’t have enough staff to keep up with the steps in the production process immediately before and after grilling the burgers (namely preparing the patties and adding lettuce to the grilled burger) and then synchronize with Flippy.
Another problem to be solved is that human staff can talk to one another and adjust their operating speed to avoid logjams. With Flippy, everyone else has to work around the robot’s schedule.
