After fifty years of books, games and movies, what more could the Aliens franchise deliver? The description "genre-defying" gets thrown around a lot these days - it is a convenient sticking plaster for any film or series that hasn't quite figured out what it wants to be. That said, it is an apt term for the Alien franchise. Ridley Scott's 1979 movie Alien, in which Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) is part of a crew trapped on a spaceship with a salivating, scorpion-like "xenomorph", had such blood-curdling visuals that it made an indelible impact on both science fiction and horror films. But while the deadly parasite and its psychosexual torment were ever present, subsequent instalments tried their hand at being everything from a blockbuster to a prison flick to a philosophical drama.

One of the most perfect things about the original Alien is its fiendish simplicity. Driven in part by technical limitations, the movie largely confines its glistening monster to the shadows, and keeps the reasons for its existence similarly obscured. Driven purely by the instinct to drive and reproduce, the xenomorph--a designation the creature didn't even acquire until the second movie in the series--is both a perfect killing machine and the ultimate plot device. It not only requires no explanation but allows none, because the alien's very nature means that no one who might be in a position to pass on information about it survives to do so. Simplicity, however, is not really Noah Hawley's thing.

This essay was adapted from Phil Christman's newsletter, the Tourist. Before 2023, my teaching year used to follow a predictable emotional arc. In September, I was always excited, not only about meeting a new crop of first-year writing students but even about the prep work. My lesson-planning sessions would take longer than intended and yet leave me feeling energized. I'd look forward to conference week--the one-on-one meetings I try to hold with every student, every term, at least once--and even to the first stack of papers.

DoorDash has started robot deliveries in Los Angeles and Chicago. This is thanks to a partnership with the company Coco Robotics. Eligible customers will be able to receive sidewalk deliveries sourced from over 600 participating merchants. Coco robots have been making deliveries for DoorDash in Helsinki since late last year through its international sub-brand Wolt. DoorDash says that Coco robots completed over 100,000 deliveries during this initial pilot phase.

The Weak-form Estimation of Non-linear Dynamics (WENDy) algorithm is extended to accommodate systems of ordinary differential equations that are nonlinear-in-parameters (NiP). The extension rests on derived analytic expressions for a likelihood function, its gradient and its Hessian matrix. WENDy makes use of these to approximate a maximum likelihood estimator based on optimization routines suited for non-convex optimization problems. The resulting parameter estimation algorithm has better accuracy, a substantially larger domain of convergence, and is often orders of magnitude faster than the conventional output error least squares method (based on forward solvers). The WENDy.jl algorithm is efficiently implemented in Julia. We demonstrate the algorithm's ability to accommodate the weak form optimization for both additive normal and multiplicative log-normal noise, and present results on a suite of benchmark systems of ordinary differential equations. In order to demonstrate the practical benefits of our approach, we present extensive comparisons between our method and output error methods in terms of accuracy, precision, bias, and coverage.

Ever get your McDonald's order mixed up at an AI-powered drive-through? The experiment behind the fast food giant's current automated order taker will soon be coming to a close. McDonald's confirmed Monday that it decided to end a global partnership with IBM, which has been testing this artificial intelligence technology at select McDonald's drive-throughs since 2021. That doesn't mean you'll never encounter some sort of chatbot while picking up fries on your car ride home again. While the IBM partnership for McDonald's current automated order taker test is winding down, the Chicago-based company suggested that it wasn't ruling other any other potential AI drive-throughs plans down the road -- pointing to "an opportunity to explore voice ordering solutions more broadly."

DoorDash just announced the launch of a drone delivery pilot program, in partnership with Alphabet's Wing. The testing began in Christiansburg, VA (approximate population 22,000), and is limited to only "eligible items" from fast food chain Wendy's. Whether that includes the iconic Frosty dessert/fry condiment is as yet unclear. There's only one affiliated Wendy's location, but local consumers should see a "deliver by drone" tab on the DoorDash checkout page. The company says orders should arrive in 30 minutes or less, making high-flying drones about as fast as a standard pizza delivery in the 1980s.

This week, Felix Salmon, Emily Peck and Elizabeth Spiers ponder the future of computers, cars, and…fast food? They discuss why Elon Musk is suing Sam Altman and OpenAI and the altruistic origins of ChatGPT. Also: Wendy's "surge pricing" gaff had customers crying foul and Apple's electric car has been scrapped. If you enjoy this show, please consider signing up for Slate Plus. Slate Plus members get an ad-free experience across the network and an additional segment of our show every week.

Wendy's, a United States fast food chain, is looking to test having the prices of its menu items fluctuate throughout the day based on demand, a strategy that has already taken hold with ride-sharing companies and ticket sellers. During a conference call this month, Wendy's CEO Kirk Tanner said the Dublin, Ohio-based burger chain will start testing dynamic pricing, also known as surge pricing, as early as next year. "Beginning as early as 2025, we will begin testing more enhanced features like dynamic pricing and daypart offerings along with AI-enabled menu changes and suggestive selling," he said. "As we continue to show the benefit of this technology in our company-operated restaurants, franchisee interest in digital menu boards should increase, further supporting sales and profit growth across the system." Wendy's plans to invest about 20m to launch digital menu boards at all of its US company-run restaurants by the end of 2025.

Checkers and Rally's restaurants have launched the first Spanish ordering system that uses AI, Checkers restaurants announced. The system from a company called Hi Auto is already in use at 350 of those restaurants, following two months of beta testing at five locations. The service allows for a more "inclusive environment" by accommodating Spanish speakers, the company said, but it remains to be seen whether customers or employees will embrace it. The system takes orders via a virtual assistant and detects the customer's language spoken, automatically switching between English and Spanish. Hi Auto says it has "unique customization capabilities" that let franchises easily scale the system up.