Recently a Quebec arts foundation required the Francophone rap group Dead Obies to give back an 18,000 grant they'd been awarded to record their newest album. A word count determined that the group had stirred too much English into their distinctive multilingual lyrics, falling short of the rule that 70 percent of the content be in French. Dough to get I got more shows to rip Dead-O on the road again, c'est mon tour de get Sous le spotlight, viens donc voir le dopest set We just gettin' started et pis t'es captivated Looking at me now, thinking: «How'd he made it?» Dead Obies is used to catching flak for their language mixing. In 2014, they were excoriated by several French-language journalists for their mongrel lyrics. Christian Rioux, writing for Le Devoir, suggested that such language practices were "suicidal" and would likely result in the formation of a "mediocre creole" incomprehensible to speakers of proper French or English.

From a remote farmhouse to a shopping mall and even a bar, films are full of suggestions of where to hide out in the event of a zombie apocalypse. But researchers have developed an apocalyptic simulator that suggests the best thing to do is literally run for the hills - if you live in the US at least. Other advice from scientists-turned zombie experts, includes keeping silent and even mimicking zombie behaviour should you run into one of the fictional reanimated corpses with a taste for human flesh. Use the simulator below to start a zombie apocalyse. Physicists Alexander Alemi, Matthew Bierbaum, Christopher Myers and James Sethna of Cornell University, created a zombie simulator based on techniques used in in epidemiology – the study of how disease spreads – to work out how the apocalypse might play out in the US.

When Tor.com published Daniel H. Wilson's short story "The Nostalgist" in 2009, the author wasn't yet a leading voice on robotics in fiction. Sure, the Carnegie Mellon Ph.D. had won a Rave Award from WIRED in 2006 for his book How To Survive A Robot Uprising, but his bestselling novel Robopocalypse was still a few years off. So when filmmaker Giacomo Cimini wanted to adapt Wilson's story into a film, it wasn't a big ask. After Wilson's novel hit big, though--with Stephen Spielberg and Drew Goddard tapped to direct and write the movie adaptation--the writer had to take more time to think about it. "I was just this Italian director living in London who wanted to adapt one of his short stories," says Cimini.

Think of the gear you can't live without: The smartphone you constantly check. The camera that goes with you on every vacation. The TV that serves as a portal to binge-watching and -gaming. Each owes its influence to one model that changed the course of technology for good. Some of these, like Sony's Walkman, were the first of their kind. Others, such as the iPod, propelled an existing idea into the mainstream. Some were unsuccessful commercially, but influential nonetheless. And a few represent exciting but unproven new concepts (looking at you Oculus Rift). Rather than rank technologies--writing, electricity, and so on--we chose to rank gadgets, the devices by with consumers let the future creep into their present. The list--which is ordered by influence--was assembled and deliberated on at (extreme) length by TIME's technology and business editors, writers and reporters.

Kim Kardashian West probably spoke for far more of her fellow Met Gala attendees on Monday than would care to admit it when she synopsized the look she was going for to an E! Entertainment reporter as, "Blingy, sexy robot." The theme of this year's gala, and the soon-to-open exhibition it's celebrating, is Manus x Machina: Fashion in an Age of Technology, and Kardashian West rose to the occasion with a body-hugging Balmain gown, silver in color and intricate of design. Husband Kanye also busted out the Balmain – in the form of a bedazzled-to-encrusted denim jacket worn with a pair of jeans with a gaping hole in the left knee. Others enlisting in the robot chic Balmain army for the evening included Jourdan Dunn, Cindy Crawford and Met Gala first-timer Kylie Jenner. Zayn Malik was one of the few men to do the robot thing, opting for a custom black Versace suit with molded metal arms that could have been borrowed from a suit of armor but for the Swarovski crystal and Versace Medusa head details. And while we're not sure who made the geometric silver patchwork and mirror-covered pantsuit beauty entrepreneur Julie Macklowe wore, it definitely gets our vote for most enthusiastic embrace of the cyber chic aesthetic (and an honorable mention for touching off a flurry of social media posts that paired her picture with C-3PO's).

Georgia Institute of Technology researchers have developed a new artificially intelligent system that crowdsources plots for interactive stories, which are popular in video games and let players choose different branching story options. With potentially limitless crowdsourced plot points, the system could allow for more creative stories and an easier method for interactive narrative generation. Current AI models for games have a limited number of scenarios, no matter what a player chooses. They depend on a dataset already programmed into a model by experts. Using the Georgia Tech approach, one might imagine a Star Wars game using online fan fiction to let the AI system generate countless paths for a player to take.

Currently at this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct the question-and-answer session and instructions will follow at that time. Also, as a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to your host to Richard Morin. Thank you, and good evening, everyone. Earlier today, we issued a news release announcing Cognex's earnings for the first quarter of 2016, and we've also filed our quarterly report on Form 10-Q. For those of you who have not yet seen these materials, both are available on our website at www.cognex.com. They contain highly detailed information about our financial results. During tonight's call, we may use a non-GAAP financial measure, if we believe it is useful to investors, or if we believe it will help investors better understand our results or business trends. For your reference, you can see a reconciliation of certain items from GAAP to non-GAAP in Exhibit 2 of the earnings release. I'd like to emphasize that any forward-looking statements we made in the earnings release or any that we may make during this call are based upon information that we believe to be true as of today. Things often change and actual results may differ materially from those projected or anticipated. You should refer to the company's SEC filings, including our most recent Form 10-K, for a detailed list of these risk factors. Now, I'll turn the call over to Cognex's Chairman, Dr. Bob Shillman.

With venture capitalists more guarded about where to put their cash amid a global economic slowdown, many technology start-ups are having to shed costs and generate profits sooner than expected. "If you want to become profitable at all costs, you're leaving users and growth on the table," said Farhad Mohit, chief executive of the image-sharing app. His Los Angeles company raised 70 million from investors about a year ago, a big haul that's still fueling the business today. The app enables people to create a slideshow from photos and videos, place samples of popular music in the background, add effects and share it with friends. Flipagram can get a small cut of sales if users buy a full song.

If you love aerial photography and videography, here comes an artificial-intelligence (AI)-powered drone that can take 13MP photos and make 4K video. A Beijing-based startup Zero Zero Robotics has developed a protoype of "Hover Camera" with 32GB storage. SEE ALSO: 7 affordable gadgets to make your home the best party place! You just need to simply toss the 238-gram "Hover Camera" into the air and it starts flying. Using AI-face tracking, it automatically locks onto a face and body for a perfect selfie.

Nobody wants to be fat and men don't often want to be seen as effeminate, but for those in the gay community who live at the intersection of such identities, life can be like the worst case of double jeopardy. For Jamal Lewis however, who is also black and gender deviant, being fat and effeminate is a source of power, and a subject worthy of exploration in a documentary titled "No Fats, No Femmes." "For me, I'm just interested in the spaces that people are afraid to occupy," said Lewis, who uses "he-she" as a gender pronoun. "I think there is something to be learned from what we are most afraid of and so, if that's what I was taught to be afraid of, well [forget] that. I am the Fat Femme." Jamal Lewis, director of "No Fats, No Femmes," poses for a portrait on Third Street and Broadway in Los Angeles, Calif.