volkerdi - Slashdot User

Foxconn Replacing Workers With Robots 530

Posted by Unknown Lamer on Monday July 07, 2014 @10:04PM from the human-workers-sent-to-protein-bank dept.

redletterdave (2493036) writes The largest private employer in all of China and one of the biggest supply chain manufacturers in the world, Foxconn announced it will soon start using robots to help assemble devices at its several sprawling factories across China. Apple, one of Foxconn's biggest partners to help assemble its iPhones, iPads, will be the first company to use the new service. Foxconn said its new "Foxbots" will cost roughly $20,000 to $25,000 to make, but individually be able to build an average of 30,000 devices. According to Foxconn CEO Terry Gou, the company will deploy 10,000 robots to its factories before expanding the rollout any further. He said the robots are currently in their "final testing phase."

Comment Re:A couple of coworkers just got back from Beijin (Score 1) 63

by swv3752 on Monday July 07, 2014 @06:07PM (#47403335) Attached to: IBM Tries To Forecast and Control Beijing's Air Pollution

How the hell is China having awful pollution the fault of IBM? By golly I know IBM is not perfect, but all the cases I have personally seen, customers dump a pile of crap into IBM's hands, then hamstring them while demanding they polish the turd.

Former NSA Chief Warned Against Selling NSA Secrets 138

Posted by Unknown Lamer on Thursday June 26, 2014 @04:05PM from the alan-grayson-hates-freedom-and-puppies dept.

An anonymous reader writes Former NSA Chief General Keith Alexander has apparently started his own cybersecurity consulting firm, IronNet Cybersecurity, and approached the banking industry pitching his company's suite of services. Word from Wired indicates that his services cost $1 million per month with a special discount asking price of $600,000 per month. Congressman Alan Grayson (D-FL) expressed concern about General Alexander's activities to the banking industry, stating, "I question how Mr. Alexander can provide any of the services he is offering unless he discloses or misuses classified information, including extremely sensitive sources and methods....Without the classified information he acquired in his former position, he literally would have nothing to offer to you." (PDF) The congressman from the House of Representatives reminds the bankers (and General Alexander, should he be listening) that selling top secret information is a federal offense.

What's Your STEM Degree Worth? 148

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday June 25, 2014 @10:10PM from the doing-the-math dept.

Jim_Austin writes A recent study by economist Douglas Webber calculates the lifetime earnings premium of college degrees in various broad areas, accounting for selection bias--that is, for the fact that people who already are likely to do well are also more likely to go to college. These premiums are not small. Science Careers got exclusive access to major-specific data, and published an article that tells how much more you can expect to earn because you got that college degree--for engineering, physics, computer science, chemistry, and biology majors.

Comment Formats supported? (Score 1) 89

by Dr.Dubious DDQ on Saturday June 21, 2014 @10:57PM (#47291233) Attached to: Mozilla Is Working On a Firefox OS-powered Streaming Stick

I suspect I can safely assume that it'll be easy for anyone (e.g. MediaGoblin or other projects) to write an interface to it. Can we also safely assume it'll support all media formats that Firefox supports natively (i.e. .ogg [vorbis], .ogv [theora/vorbis], .webm [vp8/vorbis], .opus [opus audio in ogg], and .webm version 2 [vp9/opus])?

(and, seriously, why doesn't Mozilla throw in with MediaGoblin, or perhaps start a similar project to help end-users host their own "content"? It seems like an obvious direction for Mozilla's heavy emphasis on "web video" these days.)

Comment Re:Guaranteed Death (Score 1) 218

by volkerdi on Thursday June 19, 2014 @05:14PM (#47276337) Attached to: It's Not a Car, It's a Self-Balancing Electric Motorcycle (Video)

Yeah, and don't forget that "loud pipes save lives" around typical inattentive drivers. This thing is silent but deadly.

Comment Re:prices (Score 1) 192

by swv3752 on Wednesday June 18, 2014 @05:22PM (#47266587) Attached to: Amazon Announces 'Fire Phone'

Yeah, but I am fairly certain one will be able to buy an Amazon Fire Phone, unless one is really lucky at begging, one cannot buy a Oneplus One.

Google: Indie Musicians Must Join Streaming Service Or Be Removed 364

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday June 17, 2014 @01:25PM from the our-way-or-the-highway dept.

Sockatume writes: In a statement to the Financial Times and reported by the BBC, Google has confirmed that it will remove the music videos of independent artists unless they sign up to its upcoming subscription music service. Many independent musicians and labels have refused to do so, claiming that the contracts offer significantly worse deals than the likes of Spotify and Pandora, and that Google is unwilling to negotiate on the rates it offers artists. A Google spokesperson indicated that the company could start removing videos within days.

Comment Correlation does not imply causation (Score 2, Insightful) 211

by volkerdi on Sunday June 01, 2014 @06:11PM (#47143343) Attached to: Study Finds Porn Exposure Associated With Smaller Brain Region

More pseudoscience. They say that they're not sure whether this means that porn shrinks your brain, or if the shrunken brain causes porn viewing. But, this leaves out the very real possibility that this correlation means nothing whatsoever. The site below collects correlations that look pretty convincing in the graphs, but quite obviously are unlikely to be cases of causation in either direction:

http://www.tylervigen.com/

Comment Re:But... (Score 0) 490

by swv3752 on Friday May 30, 2014 @04:36PM (#47131819) Attached to: UK Ballistics Scientists: 3D-Printed Guns Are 'of No Use To Anyone'

OK, then maybe we should go the other extreme. Lets take Kennesaw, GA- http://www.freerepublic.com/fo... or http://www.wnd.com/2007/04/411...

Every head of household is required to own a gun. Their crime rates, including murder, are down across the board. Morton, IL that took the opposite route banned all Guns, and has had increased crime rates.

Then there is Switzerland, with the majority of households owning a gun. They have a murder rate of .7 (.52 for murder by guns).

So maybe the answer is to have everyone trained and own a gun. After all, everything is on the table.

Or maybe we should look into curing our social ills. Removing guns from law abiding citizens does not remove them from criminals and case studies show that it emboldens criminals. I agree, we need to do something, taking away guns is not the answer.

Study: Royalty Charges Almost On Par With Component Costs For Smartphones 131

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday May 29, 2014 @06:57PM from the cost-of-things dept.

Bismillah (993337) writes "An interesting study by WilmerHale lawyers and Intel's assistant general counsel Ann Armstrong looked into how much royalty payments and demands actually amount to per device, and found the cost so high it threatens industry profitability and competitiveness. 'As the bank robber Willie Sutton is reported to have said, he robbed banks 'because that's where the money is' - so too of smartphones for patent holders,' the authors wrote."

Comment Re:I'd be satisfied with... (Score 3, Informative) 105

by swv3752 on Thursday May 29, 2014 @03:31PM (#47122397) Attached to: NYC Councilman (and Open Source Developer) Submits Bill Establishing Open Source Preference

About the only way to get open standards is to use FOSS. There are also benefits that will spur the local economy as proven with the recent story on Munich. Plenty of FOSS projects are best of class. It is not just about up front costs or installation and configuration. What are the ongoing support costs? For a given number of servers, it usually means more Windows admins that Unix/Linux admins. Unix/Linux can do more on given hardware than Windows. When Microsoft transitioned Hotmail from BSD to Windows Server, they had to more than double the amount of servers to achieve the same performance.

Plenty of Government uses FOSS- http://leeunderwood.org/linux/...
There are even more undocumented cases, but I am not at liberty to divulge that information.

The Energy Saved By Ditching DVDs Could Power 200,000 Homes 339

Posted by timothy on Thursday May 29, 2014 @03:25PM from the only-109-more-isolated-numbers-until-the-singularity dept.

Daniel_Stuckey (2647775) writes "The environmental benefits of streaming a movie (or downloading it) rather than purchasing a DVD are staggering, according to a new U.S. government study by researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. If all DVDs purchased in 2011 were streamed instead, the energy savings would have been enough to meet the electricity demands of roughly 200,000 households. It would have cut roughly 2 billion kilograms of carbon emissions. According to the study, published in Environmental Research Letters, even when you take into account cloud storage, data servers, the streaming device, streaming uses much less energy than purchasing a DVD. If, like me, you're thinking, 'who buys DVDs anymore, anyways?', the answer is 'a lot of people.'" The linked paper is all there, too — not just an abstract and a paywall.

Comment Re:What the f*$# is wrong with us? (Score 1) 1198

by waveman on Thursday May 29, 2014 @02:43AM (#47117099) Attached to: Misogyny, Entitlement, and Nerds

> I don't buy for a second that men are more likely to be the victims of violence, intimidation and other physical threats.

What planet do you live on? Planet feminism? Go look up some statistics. You know,some factual information.

inb4 facts are mean, and patriarchal.

Comment Re:So, to sum this up. (Score 1) 1198

by waveman on Wednesday May 28, 2014 @08:18PM (#47115231) Attached to: Misogyny, Entitlement, and Nerds

> From one male nerd to another: not acceptable.

Give me a break. Please turn off white knight mode before you embarrass yourself further.

> The whole point is women can't know a-priori who the good guys are and the penalty is being raped or killed

Here's a hint: it's hard to know whether a women is a bad risk too. 5% of women have borderline personality disorder. Another 1% bipolar, 1% schizophrenics, all in all crazy adds up to around 15% of women, and they often look just fine. And they can wreck your life.

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