Archive for the 'Rise of the Machines' Category
Mark Zuckerberg: Facebook Can Play a Role that Churches and Little League Once Filled
June 27th, 2017I’ll see you down at Reverend Wayne’s Pearly Gates. Via: CNBC: Mark Zuckerberg wants Facebook groups to play an important role that community groups like churches and Little League teams used to perform: Bringing communities together. And with nearly 2 billion people around the world on Facebook today, he might have a chance to make […]
Amazon Robots Poised to Revamp How Whole Foods Runs Warehouses
June 26th, 2017Via: Bloomberg: In negotiations, Amazon spent a lot of time analyzing Whole Foods’ distribution technology, pointing to a possible way in which the company sees the most immediate opportunities to reduce costs, said a person familiar with the matter who asked not to be identified because the issue was private. Amazon, through a spokesman, declined […]
Amazon: Delivery Drone ‘Beehives’?
June 23rd, 2017Via: The Verge: Amazon’s drone delivery program stopped being a joke a while ago, but the company still has to overcome serious challenges to make the technology actually work. One of these is getting drones near enough to large populations so they’re more efficient than regular road delivery. Amazon has an idea for that though: […]
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 […]
