Archive for the 'Economy' Category
Sweden Tries to Halt Its March to Total Cashlessness
June 12th, 2018Via: Bloomberg: A key committee of Swedish lawmakers wants to force the country’s biggest banks to handle cash in an effort to halt the nation’s march toward complete cashlessness. … The move is a response to Sweden’s rapid transformation as it becomes one of the most cashless societies in the world. That’s led to concerns […]
Vote to End Fractional Reserve Banking in Switzerland
June 10th, 2018Via: Reuters: A radical plan to transform Switzerland’s financial landscape by barring commercial banks from creating money when they lend looked set to fail, according to initial projections on Sunday. … The vote, called under Switzerland’s system of direct democracy after gathering more than 100,000 signatures, wanted to make the Swiss National Bank (SNB) the […]
Inside Tesla’s Model 3 Factory
June 9th, 2018There are some interesting photos of the Model 3 assembly line in this piece. Via: Bloomberg: On the Model 3 body line on a Tuesday afternoon in early June, everything is still. Tesla Inc. is just coming off a week of downtime during which workers added a new production line, improved ventilation after a fire […]
Netherlands: 3D Printed Houses
June 9th, 2018Five. It would be much more interesting if the number was 5,000 or 50,000. Well, it’s early days. This reminds me… I recently read an interesting sci-fi/cyberpunk/dystopia novel called Voidstar by Zachary Mason. In the near future, the sprawling favelas that exist between San Francisco and Los Angeles have been 3D printed by autonomous machines. […]
Amazon Using Over 100,000 Warehouse Robots
June 4th, 2018Warehouse robots to the horizon… Via: MIT Technology Review: Amazon’s fleet of automated warehouse robots, now more than 100,000 machines strong, is working alongside human employees to help meet the e-commerce giant’s massive fulfillment demand. The company’s robots carry inventory around massive warehouse floors, compiling all the items for a customer’s order and reducing the […]
20 Years Of Socialist Utopia In Venezuela Summed Up In 20 Seconds
May 27th, 2018Via: ZeroHedge: This is the result of almost 20 years of socialist revolution in Venezuela. A sad reality. #Chavismo #May22 pic.twitter.com/vS58mxF8hj — Michael Welling (@WellingMichael) May 22, 2018
Pentagon Worked with “Private-Sector Organizations” on Plan to Verify Identity with Mobile Phones
May 23rd, 2018Via: Nextgov: The Defense Department is funding a project that officials say could revolutionize the way companies, federal agencies and the military itself verify that people are who they say they are and it could be available in most commercial smartphones within two years. The technology, which will be embedded in smartphones’ hardware, will analyze […]
Robots Fight Weeds in Challenge to Agrochemical Giants
May 22nd, 2018Via: Reuters: In a field of sugar beet in Switzerland, a solar-powered robot that looks like a table on wheels scans the rows of crops with its camera, identifies weeds and zaps them with jets of blue liquid from its mechanical tentacles. Undergoing final tests before the liquid is replaced with weedkiller, the Swiss robot […]
New Zealand: Northlanders Living in Cars as Housing Crisis Hits Hard
May 21st, 2018We had a couple with five children turn up to Playcentre. They’re living in tents. They fled Wellington with a plan to build some sort of shack on a small piece of land that they bought a couple of valleys over from us. Until that happens: Tents. Both mum and dad had been in the […]
Recovery: 51 Million U.S. Households Can’t Afford Basics
May 18th, 2018Via: United Way: There are 50.8 million U.S. households that can’t afford a basic monthly budget including housing, food, child care, health care, transportation and a cell phone, according to new data released by the United Way ALICE Project. This calculation includes the 16.1 million households in poverty as well as another 34.7 million families […]
