Archive for the 'Economy' Category
Not a Typo: Chinese Company Pays NZ$526 for 146 Million Litres of Water a Year… In a Drought Zone
April 27th, 2016I like to think of NZ as a sort of remote, limited bandwidth version of a Mr. Lee’s Greater Hong Kong franchise: Via: Radio NZ: A veritable drop in the ocean. No, we’re talking about fresh water. Forget it, Nick. This is Chinatown. Pardon? Nothing.
The Driverless Truck Is Coming, and It’s Going to Automate Millions of Jobs
April 26th, 2016Via: Tech Crunch: A convoy of self-driving trucks recently drove across Europe and arrived at the Port of Rotterdam. No technology will automate away more jobs — or drive more economic efficiency — than the driverless truck. Shipping a full truckload from L.A. to New York costs around $4,500 today, with labor representing 75 percent […]
Robot Longshoremen
April 26th, 2016Via: Bloomberg: On one end of a dock at America’s busiest port, tractor-trailers haul containers through dense, stop-and-go traffic. Sometimes they collide. Sometimes the drivers must wait, diesel engines idling, as piles are unstacked to find the specific container they need. A few hundred yards away, advanced algorithms select the most efficient pathway for autonomous […]
Tesla Will Install More Energy Storage with Solarcity in 2016 Than U.S. Installed in 2015
April 26th, 2016Disclosure: I sell solar power systems in New Zealand. — Via: electrek: It looks like Tesla is about to change the battery game – this time by installing more energy storage capacity in 2016 with SolarCity alone than all of the USA installed in 2015. In a recent filing with the SEC, it was found […]
Japan’s Next Generation of Farmers Could Be Robots
April 23rd, 2016Via: Bloomberg: As the average age of farmers globally creeps higher and retirement looms, Japan has a solution: robots and driver-less tractors. The Group-of-Seven agriculture ministers meet in Japan’s northern prefecture of Niigata this weekend for the first time in seven years to discuss how to meet increasing food demand as aging farmers retire without […]
‘Scientists Can Now Make Lithium-Ion Batteries Last a Lifetime’ *
April 22nd, 2016* Using gold. (sigh) In, ARPA-E Batteries to Challenge Tesla?, I wrote: If you’re interested in energy generation and storage technologies that will actually be for sale in the near to medium term, you can safely ignore most press releases about new energy technologies working only in labs. That stuff might as well be on […]
Britain: Bulk Personal Datasets
April 22nd, 2016Via: Ars Technica: The UK’s intelligence agencies (MI5, MI6, and GCHQ) are spying on everything you do, and with only the flimsiest of safeguards in place to prevent abuse, according to more than a thousand pages of documents published today as a result of a lawsuit filed by Privacy International. The documents reveal the details […]
Firms that Paid for Clinton Speeches Have U.S. Government Interests
April 22nd, 2016Well holy shit. Thanks, Captain! Via: AP: It’s not just Wall Street banks. Most companies and groups that paid Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton to speak between 2013 and 2015 have lobbied federal agencies in recent years, and more than one-third are government contractors, an Associated Press review has found. Their interests are sprawling and […]
Cisco’s Latest Attempt to Dodge Responsibility for Facilitating Human Rights Abuses: Export Rules
April 19th, 2016Via: EFF: Cisco custom-built the so-called “Great Firewall of China,” also known as the “Golden Shield.” This system enables the Chinese government to conduct Internet surveillance and censorship against its citizens. As if that weren’t bad enough, company documents also revealed that, as part of its marketing pitch to China and in an effort to […]
Defaults Hit Highest Level Since ’09 Bust
April 19th, 2016Recovery! Via: USA Today: Get ready to step over some landmines, investors. The number of companies defaulting on their debt is hitting levels not seen since the financial crisis, and it’s not just a problem for bondholders.
