One million robots in three years – Foxconn’s Robot Kingdom

The largest private employer in China, Foxconn with over 1 million employees, is finally facing stiff labor costs. This is great news for the U.S. manufacturing sector who may be able to lure some work back to the United States.

It will be interesting to see how this affects the global market, but for now the advantage is all for the robots:

Taiwanese technology giant Foxconn will replace some of its workers with 1 million robots in three years to cut rising labor expenses and improve efficiency, said Terry Gou, founder and chairman of the company, late Friday.

The robots will be used to do simple and routine work such as spraying, welding and assembling which are now mainly conducted by workers, said Gou at a workers’ dance party Friday night.

Foxconn, the world’s largest maker of computer components which assembles products for Apple, Sony and Nokia.

via Xinhua News Agency

A quote from Foxconn reveals that the issue of rising labor costs for the company are just going to get worse:

…talked about moving its human workers “higher up the value chain” and into sexy fields such as research.

via The Economist

In 2012, broadband will be in 678 million homes

We are truly in the age of the internet, or rather the Dawn of the Internet Age, as the number of internet connected homes approaches a billion.

The stats on broadband and wi-fi in homes:

According to a new report from Strategy Analytics, 25 percent of all “households” worldwide now have Wi-Fi networks set up. In terms of adoption, South Korea tops the list of the 17 countries the firm researched, at 80.3 percent — followed by the UK, Germany, France, and Japan. The US comes in at 61 percent, while India is at the bottom with only 2.5 percent.

The firm predicts that by 2016 worldwide household adoption of Wi-Fi will reach 42 percent.

More from the report:

By the end of 2012, 678 million households worldwide will be connected to the internet via broadband — a 8.5% increase from 2011. Of these 678 million broadband households, 492 million households (73% of broadband households) will use a wireless router to create to WLAN, or Wi-Fi home network. Asia Pacific will have the highest number of Wi-Fi households in 2012, representing nearly 38% of global Wi-Fi households.

via The Verge

FDA ruling – cigarette makers must be transparent about chemical additives

A ruling by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) requires tobacco companies to be transparent about the chemicals in their products. This hasn’t yet happened, despite all the warnings and labels on cigarettes, and it’s no wonder considering:

“Over 7,000 chemicals and chemical compounds are present in tobacco and the smoke that emanates from tobacco. A list of 93 HPHCs has been established by the FDA that tobacco companies will need to inform consumers about in their products sold throughout the country.”

The act, called the The Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, requires “makers of tobacco products, as well as importers, to report what HPHCs (harmful and potentially harmful constituents) exist in their products or the smoke that comes from their products, by brand and sub-brand.”

“They will also have to back up any “reduced harm” claims with compelling proof, the Agency added.”

It will be interesting to see what the results of this are. I have smoked tobacco products sold in other countries, from Europe to the Caribbean, and noticed a vast difference in the quality. Not to mention a seemingly lower amount chemicals in them, meaning I cough less, have less aftertaste, and don’t get as addicted.

 

// Quotes from Medical News Today, thx to Amelia S.

Continue reading “FDA ruling – cigarette makers must be transparent about chemical additives”

Canadian penny is going away – cost 1.6 cents to produce

In April 2012, the Canadian government will begin phasing out the Canadian penny. It was left out of the latest budget because it just didn’t make financial sense to keep it going.

“The penny is a currency without any currency”

The Canadian penny now costs Canada 1.6 cents to produce. The government says it loses $11 million each year making and distributing pennies.

How Canada actually goes about doing away with its own penny may prove to be a model for the U.S.

In April, Canada will mint its final penny, and a few months later, it will halt all distribution of pennies to the country’s financial institutions as it attempts to withdraw them from circulation.

As for how Canadian businesses and consumers deal with a world without pennies, that’s largely up to them. The government is suggesting that they either round up or down to the nearest five cents. For those who use debit or credit cards, prices will still be charged to the cent.

via Moneyland

 

Oh and by the way:

The U.S. penny costs an incredible 2.4 cents to make (and the nickel, by the way, costs 11.2 cents).

 

Thx to Scott Beale – Photo via Kasia

Surfing the mouth of Newport Harbor, 1938

Here is some rare footage from 1938 of a few big swells coming into Newport Harbor (Newport Beach, CA). The long jetties at the mouth of the harbor providing smooth seas haven’t been built yet, and the waves are looking really good!

The area was known as the “Waikiki of the west coast”. The Balboa side jetty was built using a railroad to bring in rocks from inland, and is under construction when this film was made. The CDM side jetty was constructed a few years later using rocks barged over from Catalina Island.

Here are a few screenshots from the footage showing the harbor mouth without the jetties you see there today.

 

Thx to Ghetto Juice

The rise of e-reading in America

28% of Americans age 18 and older own at least one specialized device for e-book reading – either a tablet or an e-book reader.

The holiday season saw a huge boost in ownership for both e-readers and tablets. Both jumped 9%, meaning that nearly one in ten Americans received a device over the holidays.

The average reader of e-books says she has read 24 books in the past 12 months, compared with an average of 15 books by a non-e-book consumer.

78% of those ages 16 and older say they read a book in the past 12 months.

Overall, those who reported reading the most books in the past year include: women compared with men; whites compared with minorities; well-educated Americans compared with less-educated Americans; and those age 65 and older compared with younger age groups.

30% of those who read e-content say they now spend more time reading, and owners of tablets and e-book readers particularly stand out as reading more now. 

The longer people have owned an e-book reader or tablet, the more likely they are to say they are reading more.

The prevalence of e-book reading is markedly growing, but printed books still dominate the world of book readers. 

In our December 2011 survey, we found that 72% of American adults had read a printed book and 11% listened to an audiobook in the previous year, compared with the 17% of adults who had read an e-book.

There are four times more people reading e-books on a typical day now than was the case less than two years ago.

10x more stats at – The rise of e-reading, Pew Internet

 

And, a fun ending:

Why people like to read. 

Advanced computers push science forward through millions of hours of processing power

Harnessing the power of supercomputers and their million hours of processing power has allowed some very intriguing physics calculations to take place. One of them is the study of matter in the universe on a subatomic level.

The question, how did we arrive at a universe composed almost exclusively of matter with virtually no antimatter?

The calculation took 54 million processor hours on the IBM BlueGene/P supercomputer at the Argonne National Laboratory in the U.S.

The new research, reported in the March 30 issue of Physical Review Letters, represents an important milestone in understanding kaon decays — which are a fundamental process in physics. It is also inspiring the development of a new generation of supercomputers that will allow the next step in this research.

“It has taken several decades of theoretical developments and the arrival of very powerful supercomputers to enable physicists to control the interactions of the quarks and gluons, the constituents of the elementary particles, with sufficient precision to explore the limits of the standard model and to test new theories,” says Chris Sachrajda, Professor of Physics at the University of Southampton, one of the members of the research team publishing the new findings.

The process by which a kaon decays into two lighter particles known as pions was explored in a 1964 Nobel Prize-winning experiment. This revealed the first experimental evidence of a phenomenon known as charge-parity (CP) violation — a lack of symmetry between particles and their corresponding antiparticles that may explain why the Universe is made of matter, and not antimatter.

via Science Daily – continue reading about the next generation of supercomputers, 10-20 times more powerful…

Argonne's Blue Gene/P Supercomputer

 

// Photo via Argonne National Lab – Article via Lauren Weinstein

An innovative virtual store for an online retailer

The number 2 grocery chain in South Korea, Home Plus, is looking to improve sales through innovation. They have created a virtual store offering “500 items including food, electronics, office supplies and toiletries.”

The store is at an underground subway station in Seolleung, located in the south of Seoul, South Korea, a city of 10 million people. It takes up seven pillars in the stations and six walls. On it are life size pictures of items in a real store.

Next to each item is a small barcode, actually a QR code. Shoppers use their smartphone and a downloadable app to scan and make purchases.

The order is then sent to the store closest to the shoppers home and a delivery truck completes the order. Dropping off a box of groceries at your front door.

it’s very similar to shopping on Amazon or using Peapod, but represents one of the first successful physical stores for an online service.

Taken from Amusing Planet, where they also have a video introducing the concept.

 

Thx to Stacie Dauffenbach

Sweden leads the world in Heavy Metal bands

In Flames

 

Sweden has most heavy metal bands per 100,000 inhabitants. According to Metal-archives.com, it’s Scandinavia in general and Sweden in particular that has the most heavy metal bands in the world. According to their study there are 53.2 metal bands per 100,000 inhabitants in Sweden.

Joacim Cans, singer in the metal band HammerFall, is not surprised. He points at death metal (death metal is an extreme subgenre of heave metal music) and its so-called “Gothenburg sound” as a possible explanation.

Cans believes that bands such as In Flames and Opeth have inspired younger generations of metal musicians to create their own bands. “When a music style becomes world leading, then young people listen and want to do the same thing themselves. It reverberates.”

Cans also believes that the prerequisites for musicians and bands are especially good in Sweden. “In the US it’s very expensive to rent a rehearsal studio. In Sweden we have the municipal school of music, where you can learn to play an instrument at no cost at all.”

via Nordstjernan

 

// Photo via Nirazilla