Robots to Make Robots at ABB’s New $150 Million Factory in China
October 27th, 2018Via: Reuters:
Robots will make robots at a new ABB factory in China, which the Swiss engineering group said on Saturday it plans to build for $150 million in Shanghai as it defends its place as the country’s largest maker of industrial robots.
The factory, located near ABB’s China robotics campus, is due to be operating by the end of 2020 and will produce robots for China as well as for export elsewhere in Asia. China is ABB’s No. 2 market after the United States.
NSA Has Top Secret Documents on Seth Rich
October 26th, 2018I contacted @Ty_Clevenger to confirm that he made a FOIA request to NSA, as described in the piece below. He did:
Via: Sic Semper Tyrannis:
But now there is new information that may corroborate what the human sources quoted in the Fox article claimed about Seth’s role in getting the DNC documents to Wikileaks. Borne from a FOIA request filed in November 2017 by attorney Ty Clevenger, who requested any information regarding Seth Rich and and Julian Assange. The NSA informed Clevenger in a letter dated 4 October 2018 that:
Your request has been processed under the provisions of the FOIA. Fifteen documents (32 pages) responsive to your request have been reviewed by this Agency as required by the FOIA and have found to be currently and properly classified in accordance with Executive Order 13526. These documents meet the criteria for classification as set forth in Subparagraph (c) of Section 1.4 and remains classified TOP SECRET and SECRET.
Google’s Smart City Dream Is Turning Into a Privacy Nightmare
October 26th, 2018Via: Engadget:
Sidewalk Labs, an Alphabet division focused on smart cities, is caught in a battle over information privacy. The team has lost its lead expert and consultant, Ann Cavoukian, over a proposed data trust that would approve and manage the collection of information inside Quayside, a conceptual smart neighborhood in Toronto. Cavoukian, the former information and privacy commissioner for Ontario, disagrees with the current plan because it would give the trust power to approve data collection that isn’t anonymized or “de-identified” at the source. “I had a really hard time with that,” she told Engadget. “I just couldn’t… I couldn’t live with that.”
A Dark Consensus About Screens and Kids Begins to Emerge in Silicon Valley
October 26th, 2018Begins? haha That’s a good one.
Just off the top of my head, I thought of this one from 2011.
Via: New York Times:
The people who are closest to a thing are often the most wary of it. Technologists know how phones really work, and many have decided they don’t want their own children anywhere near them.
A wariness that has been slowly brewing is turning into a regionwide consensus: The benefits of screens as a learning tool are overblown, and the risks for addiction and stunting development seem high. The debate in Silicon Valley now is about how much exposure to phones is O.K.
“Doing no screen time is almost easier than doing a little,” said Kristin Stecher, a former social computing researcher married to a Facebook engineer. “If my kids do get it at all, they just want it more.”
4Chan Trolls Mock ‘False Flag’ Bomb Scare By Making Parody ‘Bombs’ Of Their Own
October 26th, 2018Via: Information Liberation:
“Just got this in the mail, I’m scared!”
The Parallel Stories of Tesla and Apple, as Model 3 Has Its ‘iPhone Moment’
October 25th, 2018Part of my comment on Tesla from 9 October:
The long argument, of course, is that Tesla is different. Is it?
Yep. I think so. In my opinion, the correct past analogy is Apple and the initial release of the iPhone. What Tesla is doing is “iPhone” level in terms of EVs and energy storage.
Via: Electrek:
Perhaps the most compelling detail from Tesla’s quarterly report yesterday was the company’s claim that Model 3 is now the highest revenue generating car model in the US. Similarly, Apple has long touted that despite some competitors having higher volumes, the iPhone is responsible for the vast majority of profits in the smartphone industry. Given the Model 3’s high gross margins, it seems likely that it is also the highest profit generating car model in the US.
So with Model 3 having its “iPhone moment,” a comparison between these disruptive silicon valley companies is more appropriate than ever. What other similarities can we find between their respective stories?
China: “Vocational Schools”
October 24th, 2018Via: BBC:
On 12 July 2015 a satellite swung over the rolling deserts and oasis cities of China’s vast far west.
One of the images it captured that day just shows a patch of empty, untouched, ashen-grey sand.
It seems an unlikely place to start an investigation into one of the most pressing human rights concerns of our age.
But less than three years later, on 22 April 2018, a satellite photo of that same piece of desert showed something new.
A massive, highly secure compound had materialised.
It is enclosed with a 2km-long exterior wall punctuated by 16 guard towers.
Will There Ever Be a “Freedom Loving” Majority?
October 24th, 2018This doesn’t even mention the unbelievably dire security situation with electronic voting machines.
Via: The Daily Bell:
There was never a majority of freedom-loving honorable Americans.
People who believe in individual freedom and natural rights are a minority and always have been.
Trying to vote our way to freedom is not a sound strategy. There simply are not enough people who share these values. Really, most people have little or no values. They simply react to their surroundings.
And it is too easy for bad-acters to manipulate the unthinking majority. Just look at how everyone is encouraged to vote, even if they are entirely clueless.
Michele Obama recently said:
“Voting does not require any kind of special expertise… You don’t have to read every news article to be qualified to vote…I’ve been voting since I was 18 years old — and, trust me, I didn’t know nothin’ about nothin’ at 18 years old.”
So what exactly should you choose a candidate on if you know nothing? Skin color? Good looks? Party affiliation? Name recognition?
Votes in federal elections are extremely watered down as it is–your vote is diluted to the point where it really doesn’t count. Then add a bunch of ignorant voters tipping the scale randomly–or more likely, according to how the media manipulates them.
America’s Homelessness Crisis Is Rapidly Exploding On Both Coasts
October 24th, 2018Via: The American Dream:
The homelessness crisis in the United States is getting a lot worse, and it is happening at a pace that is absolutely frightening. Did you realize that more than half a million Americans are homeless right now? One out of every four homeless Americans actually has a job, but thanks to rapidly rising housing prices they are not able to afford a place to live. So every night in this country, hundreds of thousands of people are sleeping in shelters, in their vehicles or on the streets. It is a national crisis that isn’t going away, and during the next economic downturn it is only going to intensify.
Related: America’s Social Depression Is Accelerating
Tesla Surprises with $312 Million Profit in Third Quarter
October 24th, 2018Via: Autoblog:
Tesla is reporting that the Model 3 has gross margins of over 20 percent, which has in part driven Tesla into profitability.
Ahead of the earnings webcast, Tesla released a shareholder letter detailing its third-quarter results. According to the letter, Tesla has turned a profit — and a sizable one. The letter reports a GAAP (generally accepted accounting principles) net income of $312 million, driven by strong Model 3 sales. The news has sent Tesla stock soaring in after-hours trading, running about 9 percent up at the time of this writing.
