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Enlarge / Kirk and Spock wear nifty outfits in order to contemplate the concept of the Prime Directive, which was first introduced in the episode "Return of the Archons." (credit: Paramount)

Asking lawyers about Star Trek is a bit like asking bike mechanics what their favorite beer is. Even if it’s not their area of professional expertise, they have lots of clear, well thought-out opinions on the subject. One day last month, I put out a quick call for Trek-minded attorneys, and they flooded in. Within minutes, this actual e-mail message landed in my inbox.

Sir:

I suddenly had five people e-mailing me saying I had to chat with you! I aver that I am a lawyer who defines himself first and foremost as a Starfleet officer. May I help?

CWW
Christian W. Waugh
Waugh Law, P.A.

Sent from my Starfleet Communicator

I should add that this guy goes by the handle @AdmiralWaugh on Twitter. I knew I had hit on something great.

As a Trek fan—I'm a child of the 1980s, TNG was my first foray into the universe—and someone who reports frequently about legal issues, I wanted to honor the 50th anniversary of the series with a look at the legal issues at play across Star Trek. Sure, entire books have already been written on this subject, but this was boldly going into terra nullis for yours truly.

The carbon fiber-reinforced plastic gets built up. (credit: Local Motors)

On Tuesday, General Electric announced that it would spend $1.4 billion (~£1 billion) to acquire two European 3D printing companies—Arcam AB from Sweden and SLM Solutions Group from Germany. According to the Associated Press, GE spent $1.5 billion (~£1.1 billion) on 3D printing investments since 2010, meaning the acquisitions will double what the company has invested in the last five years.

In a press release, GE noted that Arcam “invented the electron beam melting machine for metal-based additive manufacturing and also produces advanced metal powders.” SLM Solutions, on the other hand, “produces laser machines for metal-based additive manufacturing.” Both companies have histories of doing business in the aerospace and healthcare industries, and SLM Solutions also has customers in the energy and automotive industries.

Speaking to The Wall Street Journal, GE’s CEO of Aviation David Joyce said that GE’s jet engine business has been the primary outlet for so-called additive manufacturing at the company, but it plans to use 3D printing more frequently in its power turbine and medical equipment businesses.

The meme that launched a veritable fleet of investigations. (credit: Kevin Lamarque / Getty Images)

Last Friday, the Federal Bureau of Investigations published a 58-page redacted memorandum on the investigation of the mishandling of classified information by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The memo includes details from Clinton's interview with the FBI and a summary of other interviews the FBI conducted during the yearlong investigation.

During her three-and-a-half-hour interview with FBI investigators, Hillary Clinton said that she had used a personal e-mail account "out of convenience" because she only wanted to carry a single mobile device—and the State Department would not allow her to connect a work device to her personal e-mail. She said she had no recollection of anyone voicing concerns over the arrangement. But the FBI investigation found records of an exchange with former Secretary of State Colin Powell on the topic, where he warned her of the risks and told her how he had "gotten around it."

The FBI report shows that Clinton generally allowed others to make decisions about how to support her Blackberry habit and that the private mail server she used was run largely at the direction of former President Bill Clinton's staff. And while the FBI did not find that Clinton did anything criminal, the investigation revealed a generally lax approach to security overall by the State Department, Clinton's staff, and Clinton herself.

Enlarge / Heather Bresch, chief executive officer of drugmaker Mylan Inc. (credit: Getty | Bloomberg)

On Tuesday, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman announced that his office is investigating Mylan Pharmaceuticals Inc, the maker of EpiPen, for potentially using anticompetitive terms in contracts it had with many school systems. Those terms allowed schools to receive Mylan’s EpiPens for free or at discounted prices—as long as they didn’t buy any competitors' products for a year.

The terms may have helped Mylan hike the price of the life-saving medical devices without facing stiff competition from similar epinephrine-injecting products, such as Adrenaclick. Since 2007, the year Mylan acquired EpiPen, the company has raised the price of the pens by more than 400 percent, pushing the list price above $600 (~£446) and drawing sharp public and political criticism.

“No child’s life should be put at risk because a parent, school, or healthcare provider cannot afford a simple, life-saving device because of a drug-maker’s anti-competitive practices,” Schneiderman said in a news release. “If Mylan engaged in anti-competitive business practices, or violated antitrust laws with the intent and effect of limiting lower cost competition, we will hold them accountable.”

Until now, space tourism has been largely a venture based in the United States. Virgin Galactic, XCOR, Blue Origin, and World View have all announced various plans to fly would-be astronauts into space—or to the edge of space—from American soil. But now a Chinese-based company, KuangChi Science, wants to get into the game by launching balloons from Hangzhou, in eastern China.

China Daily reports that KuangChi will invest about $1.5 billion (~£1.1 billion) into development of futuristic experiences, including a "deep space tour that offers the experience of flying up to 24 kilometers above the ground, which is just beyond the border of outer space." Technically, this might overstate the flight, as the generally accepted boundary between Earth’s atmosphere and outer space is 100km, known as the Kármán line. Moreover "deep space" is generally considered by experts to lie beyond Earth orbit.

But pay no mind to the details. According to KuangChi's website, the balloon experience aboard the "Traveller" capsule will "bring you on a comfortable near-space trip you have never experienced!" The Traveller vehicle is based on the same "airtight cabin design" as the Shenzhou V capsule (China's first crewed mission, launched in 2003) to block cosmic rays. Moreover, the company says the design of the vehicle will ensure the comfort of passengers, "enabling them to feel like sitting in a limousine car."

(credit: Aurich Lawson / Thinkstock)

When AT&T purchased DirecTV, merger conditions imposed by the Federal Communications Commission required the ISP to offer Internet service for either $5 or $10 a month to people with low incomes.

But AT&T has found a way around this requirement in areas where the company has failed to upgrade its network to anything remotely resembling modern Internet service. If you live in a place where AT&T's maximum download speeds are less than a paltry 3Mbps, you can't get the discount from the new "Access from AT&T" program.

The FCC merger condition appears to require discount Internet service only in areas where speeds of at least 3Mbps are available. In most places, AT&T must offer either 5Mbps or 10Mbps Internet service for $10 per month to poor people. But in areas "where AT&T has deployed broadband service at top speeds below 5Mbps," the FCC merger order says, "the Company shall offer wireline Broadband Internet Access Service at speeds of at least 3Mbps, where technically available, to qualifying households in the Company’s wireline footprint for no more than $5 per month."

Enlarge / Sony should finally confirm the widely known existence of the PS4 Slim tomorrow. (credit: NeoGAF)

After largely ignoring hardware news at June's E3, Sony is set to make news with the splashy, official introduction of two pieces of PlayStation hardware tomorrow. The first, a redesign being called the PS4 Slim, has already been leaked and dissected in many corners of the game press, dampening any surprise from tomorrow's expected announcement. The other, a hardware upgrade with the codename "PS4 Neo," has been confirmed to exist, but we're looking forward to confirmations of the rumours and reports surrounding the half-step.

In any case, we'll be on hand at New York's PlayStation Theater starting at 3pm Eastern/Noon Pacific/8pm UK on September 7, ready to keep you up to date with the announcements and some instant analysis as they happen. While you wait for the start, why not take a deeper dive into our expectations for the event, based on the best reporting and rumor-wrangling we've seen so far. When you're done, click the link below and get ready to follow along.

Enlarge / Last-minute design tweaks being made to a truck part at Toyota's factory in Texas. (credit: Toyota)

Just-in-time (JIT) manufacturing has many aliases: Short-Cycle Manufacturing, Continuous-Flow Manufacturing, the Kanban System (Kanban itself being only an element of JIT manufacturing), and the Toyota Production System. That last one is in its fifties, codified and instituted at Toyota in the 1960s. The notion arrived on Western shores roughly 20 years later.

Today, manufacturers are leapfrogging the just-in-time concept and blurring lines in the digital space in which body parts, mechanical systems, and designs live before they hit the reality of metal, plastic, and glass.

At Toyota's Texas truck plant, which builds Tacomas and Tundras, the lead engineer responsible for those products works right on the factory floor, overseeing actual production and end-of-line quality. This truck plant lives in arguably the most agile manufacturing ecosystem in the US, with the vast majority of suppliers inside the factory, building parts on an "immediately in time" basis.