Archive for the 'Rise of the Machines' Category
How Just 14 People Make 500,000 Tons of Steel a Year in Austria
June 21st, 2017Via: Bloomberg: The plant, a two-hour drive southwest of Vienna, will need just 14 employees to make 500,000 tons of robust steel wire a year—vs. as many as 1,000 in a mill with similar capacity built in the 1960s. Inside the facility, red-hot metal snakes its way along a 700-meter (2,297-foot) production line. Yet the […]
Taiwan’s Foxconn, Assembler of iPhones, Considering Wisconsin Plant
June 14th, 2017I wonder if they’ll use the suicide prevention nets on the buildings? Thank you, thank you. I’ll be here all week. Don’t forget to tip your waitress. On a more serious note, my guess is that the plant will be centered around robotic manufacturing and the thousands of workers thing is being thrown out there […]
Tim Cook Says Apple Is Focusing on an Autonomous Car System
June 13th, 2017Via: Bloomberg: After years toiling away in secret on its car project, Apple Inc. Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook has for the first time laid out exactly what the company is up to in the automotive market: It’s concentrating on self-driving technology. “We’re focusing on autonomous systems,” Cook said in a June 5 interview on […]
SoftBank Agrees to Buy Robot Maker Boston Dynamics
June 8th, 2017Via: Bloomberg: SoftBank Group Corp. is taking over Google parent Alphabet Inc.’s robot dreams, buying Boston Dynamics to pursue a future when more machines intermingle with humans. As part of the transaction with Alphabet, SoftBank also agreed to buy Japanese bipedal robotics company Schaft. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed.
‘About Half of All U.S. Retail Jobs Could Vanish Due to Computerization’
June 1st, 2017Via: Kansas City Star: Consider this before you assume you can have a long or lucrative career in the retail industry: Up to half of all current jobs in the retail sector are likely to vanish because of e-commerce, automation of jobs and the closing of brick-and-mortar stores. Millions of retail jobs — as we […]
Google Now Tracks Your Credit Card Purchases and Connects Them to Its Online Profile of You
May 29th, 2017Via: MIT Technology Review: Google’s new ability to match people’s offline credit card purchases to their online lives is a stunning display of surveillance capitalism in action. The capability, which Google unveiled this week, allows the company to connect the dots between the ads that it shows its users and what they end up actually […]
How Facebook’s Tentacles Reach Further Than You Think
May 26th, 2017Via: BBC: Facebook’s collection of data makes it one of the most influential organisations in the world. Share Lab wanted to look “under the bonnet” at the tech giant’s algorithms and connections to better understand the social structure and power relations within the company. … “If Facebook were a country, it would be bigger than […]
Stanford Professor: Fossil-Fuel Vehicles Will Vanish in 8 Years in Twin ‘Death Spiral’ for Big Oil and Big Autos
May 18th, 2017I very seriously doubt it. Via: Financial Post: No more petrol or diesel cars, buses, or trucks will be sold anywhere in the world within eight years. The entire market for land transport will switch to electrification, leading to a collapse of oil prices and the demise of the petroleum industry as we have known […]
Here Comes the War for Commercial Drone Dominance
May 14th, 2017Via: Bloomberg: At some point in the not-too-distant future, fleets of commercial drones are expected to swarm across American skies. Companies in a wide range of industries will employ unmanned vehicles for tactical advantage—inspecting infrastructure, surveying crops, maybe even estimating how much your new roof will cost. And when these drones fly, a torrent of […]
More Robots, Fewer Jobs
May 8th, 2017Via: Bloomberg: Are you about to be replaced by a robot? The question has broad implications for the U.S. economy, especially the manufacturing sector. Industries that robotize tend to increase output. But robots can have dire consequences for workers. Two economists recently concluded that both jobs and wages fall in parts of the U.S. where […]
