Month: November 2018

via Engadget http://www.engadget.com

November 2, 2018 at 04:06PM

The RED Hydrogen One, a phone with a “holographic” display and what can only be described as a unique design, is now available for purchase from Verizon and AT&T. It’ll cost you around $1,300 if you want one.

We reviewed the RED Hydrogen One this week and weren’t exactly blown away by anything it offered. It came off as an unfinished product, with poorly tuned software, an average camera, and a display that gave us a headache in 4V (the holographic thing) and didn’t look great in 2D either. It’s huge, has a year-old processor, and may some day be a part of a modular ecosystem, but isn’t now. Hey, battery life was good, though!

If you are indeed still interested after reading that, Verizon will sell you a RED Hydrogen One in “Shadow” or “Titanium” at a cost of $53.95/mo for 24 months. AT&T would rather you spread the cost out over 30 months and would run you $43.17/mo.

Want one today or at least take a look in-person? Store availability is going to be hard to come by. Verizon’s site lists it as “available online only,” while AT&T’s site couldn’t find any stores near me (Portland) that have them. Verizon’s site also shows shipping dates of 11/13 (Black Aluminum) and 11/21 (Shadow).

On a related note, a weird story was floating around yesterday suggesting that Verizon units had been put in “quarantine” and were not going to be sold today. We reached out to Verizon who said that is not true at all and that launch today is still on.

Buy RED Hydrogen One: Verizon | AT&T

China has built a staggeringly large radio telescope in a remote part of the country, and although it is the largest and most advanced instrument of its kind in the world, the country continues to have a difficult time staffing up the observatory.

Not only has the 500-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope, or FAST instrument, still failed to attract a chief scientist, according to the South China Morning Post the facility is also struggling to attract two dozen researchers to work on site to maintain the instrument and analyze data collected there.

One problem is pay. According to the Post, astronomers interested in joining working there should speak fluent English, and expect to work in the remote location on a long-term basis. (The telescope is located southwest China’s mountainous Guizhou province.) Compensation for the job is meager, at least by Western standards—about 100,000 yuan, or $14,400 annually.

“It’s not surprising they have had difficulties hiring people, given the low pay compared with similar international institutes,” an unnamed Chinese chemical physics researcher told the paper. “They are looking for contract workers instead of permanent employees, as the National Astronomical Observatory doesn’t have that [many] permanent posts.”

Chief scientist, still wanted

International astronomers say there are simply not that many radio astronomers in China qualified to work with the technical data collected by the radio telescope, and process it for research purposes. Given the contract nature of the position, it seems possible that foreign astronomers brought to China on a contract basis may be training their replacements, and will not see their contracts renewed.

Meanwhile, the observatory is still having difficulty attracting a chief scientist to oversee scientific operations. Only a few dozen people in the world have the qualifications that China is seeking for this position, a US astronomer told Ars last year.

The proffered compensation may seem generous, at about $1.2 million. But it seems that this pay package entails a one-time start-up grant, after which the annual salary will be considerably less. So far Chinese officials have yet to announce any results from their job search.

Another concern international astronomers have about the chief scientist position, as well as that of the research associates, is that their activities will be controlled by the Chinese Academy of Sciences. This seems likely to limit the academic freedom that western observers generally enjoy.

The Nigerian army reportedly used the words of President Trump to defend fatal shootings of Muslim protesters last weekend and Monday.

In a tweet, which appears to have been taken down, the army posted a video of Trump’s anti-migrant speech in which he said rocks would be considered firearms if thrown toward soldiers at the U.S. border, according to the BBC and The New York Times.

In a Nov. 1 speech on immigration, when asked by a reporter if active duty soldiers being sent to the U.S. border with Mexico would fire on migrants seeking asylum, Trump said he hoped not.

“But I will tell you this,” he continued, “anybody throwing stones, rocks, like they did to Mexico — the Mexican military, Mexican police — where they badly hurt police and soldiers of Mexico, we will consider that a firearm, because there’s not much difference when you get hit in the face with a rock.”

“They want to throw rocks at our military, our military fights back,” Trump told another reporter at the news conference. “We’re going to consider it, I told them, consider it a rifle.”

The Nigerian government came under harsh criticism after Amnesty International reported the killing of Shiite Muslim protesters by Nigerian security forces.

A spokesman for the Nigerian army told the BBC “this is what Trump was talking about,” and said their decision to fire live rounds at protesters was justified because they were armed.

Earlier this week, Amnesty International reported that Nigerian soldiers killed more than 40 protesters in the Islamic Movement of Nigeria while they were peacefully demonstrating against the imprisonment of their leader Ibrahim Zakzaky. The human rights group said the protesters were killed by security forces using automatic weapons on Saturday and Monday in Abuja, the capital, and the neighboring state of Nasarawa.

The group said soldiers fired on the Islamic Movement of Nigeria protesters in a “horrific use of excessive force.” At least six people were killed Saturday, Amnesty said. On Monday the death toll was at least another 39, and 122 people were injured with gunshot wounds, according to the group.

The Financial Times reported that Nigeria’s military said Monday that “three protesters had been killed while four soldiers were wounded in what it said was an ‘attack’ by ‘massive numbers’ of the sect.”

Nigeria’s government said its soldiers were acting in self-defense, according to The Guardian. “They met the soldiers in the call of their duty, and the soldiers tried to defend themselves,” The Guardian quoted army spokesman John Agim as saying.

Nigeria’s Embassy in Washington, D.C., has not replied to NPR’s phone and email requests for comment.

Several activists and former U.S. officials condemned the Nigerian army’s behavior.

Samantha Power, who served as ambassador to the United Nations under President Barack Obama, tweeted an image of the now-deleted Twitter post by the Nigerian military.

Amnesty International reported some victims suffered multiple gunshot wounds, and were shot in the chest and head. “This pattern clearly shows soldiers and police approached IMN processions not to restore public order, but to kill,” said Osai Ojigho, director of Amnesty International Nigeria, using the initials for the Shiite protesters.

“It seems the Nigerian military are deliberately using tactics designed to kill when dealing with IMN gatherings. Many of these shootings clearly amount to extrajudicial executions,” Ojigho continued.

Nigeria, Africa’s largest economy, is split between a mostly Muslim north and a largely Christian south.

Most of the Muslims in the country are Sunni, but Zakzaky has attracted increasing numbers of followers to Shiite Islam. Zakzaky has been under arrest since 2015, when the Nigerian army raided his Shiite Muslim sect, reportedly killing hundreds of people.

Regarding the deaths on Saturday and Monday, the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria said it is concerned and is urging “restraint on all sides.”

The embassy called for Nigerian authorities to “conduct a thorough investigation” and “take appropriate action to hold accountable those responsible for violations of Nigerian law.”

Packaging designer Ryan Gaither believes in the power of cardboard.

At the Swedish-owned BillerudKorsnäs design lab in Portland, Oregon, he’s laid down a massive sheet of it, as big as a king-size bed.

He flips the switch on a machine that zips around the cardboard, stabbing and cutting it like a robotic exact-o knife.

“Basically anything we create, any design we’re looking to validate, we cut out with this machine,” he says. “This lets us know if we’re on the right track or on a fool’s errand.”

When it’s done, he folds the resulting cut-out into a three-dimensional shape that’s designed to replace the plastic foam end caps companies use to ship laptop computers. Gaither says inventions like this are helping the company build a growing customer list.

“I think now people are more concerned about the impact plastics are having on the environment,” he says. “Paper packaging is a much more renewable resource. It biodegrades.”

The growing number of campaigns to ban plastic waste are putting pressure on companies to find alternatives – not just for straws, but for all kinds of plastic packaging. So BillerudKorsnäs tests out products they hope to sell in the budding market for plastic replacements.

Some of their customers now use cardboard instead of clear plastic packaging for camping gear, and paper bags instead of plastic ones for food like pasta. The lab is even working on a paper soda bottle, which Tor Lundqvist, head of the company’s Americas division, calls a “fly to the moon kind of thing.”

BillerudKorsnäs is primarily a paper company that prides itself on its sustainably managed forests. It also has a process — the details of which it won’t divulge — that it says produces super strong paper.

“We can use these products in solutions where they can actually push out plastic for plastic bags, for instance, or plastic trays,” Lundqvist says.

And any time you replace plastic with paper, he says, it does more than reduce plastic pollution. It also helps climate change since plastic is made from fossil fuels.

But making a beverage bottle out of paper may be the company’s biggest challenge so far.

“Our CEO wanted us to do something really difficult with our raw material that people thought was not possible to do,” says Lundqvist. “It’s going very well. It looks like we are going to have a product on the market in the near future.”

Conrad MacKerron isn’t convinced. He’s with the non-profit As You Sow, which teams up with investors to push big manufacturers to change their plastic packaging. He’s heard about the BillerudKorsnas paper bottle project, but he doubts a leak-proof bottle can be made purely out of paper. Even paper cups, he says, generally include plastic to keep the liquid from leaking.

“We think of them as recyclable,” he says, “but because of the thin plastic lining a lot of paper mills cannot process them. So they reject the cups, and they go to landfills.”

Still, MacKerron is heartened to see many big companies finally take this problem seriously.

“I think most companies were hoping this concern about plastic pollution would blow over,” he says. “That tune has changed because people are so appalled and offended at how bits of plastic are now just everywhere.”

Scientists say the world is dumping 8 million tons of plastic into the oceans every year, and it never really goes away. It’s choking fish, filling the bellies of seabirds and turtles, and even showing up in our drinking water.

“I think the sense that it’s become pervasive is what can turn the tide, and come up with perhaps radical solutions that were not thinkable three, four, five years ago,” MacKerron says.

In the past few years, BillerudKorsnäs has seen 25 percent revenue growth year after year. Future success may depend on how its products perform.

At the company’s lab in Portland, designers slide a laptop with their paper end caps into a box. They’re testing to see if the paper can match the protective power of plastic.

First, a mechanical arm drops the laptop 3 feet. Then, a shaking machine mimics the bumps on a delivery truck. Finally, another machine squeezes it between two metal arms.

After all that, there are no dents in the box and no damage to the laptop. That could one day mean more customers for the company, and more laptops getting packaged and shipped plastic-free.

SMYRNA, Tenn. – At points along the assembly line at

Nissan Motor Co

Ltd’s largest U.S. factory, workers wheel trolleys past shelves selecting parts wherever they see a green or blue light.

Nissan

calls the system “pick to the light,” and it helps workers get the right part for whichever of six different vehicles built at the plant, according to Ryan Fulkerson, director of new model engineering during a walk along the line.

“No matter which model comes down the line, the right parts are waiting for it,” said Fulkerson.

Designing assembly lines to build more than one type of vehicle dates back decades. But the ability to shift production from one type of vehicle to another is now proving vital for an automotive industry coping with multiple challenges.

Consumers around the world are shifting rapidly away from traditional sedans in favor of

sport utility vehicles

. The recent rise in U.S. gasoline prices is a reminder that a more serious oil price shock could make smaller vehicles popular again. Trade tensions and tariffs threaten companies that ship significant numbers of vehicles from one country to another.

Weakening China sales, market stagnation in America and fears of a full-blown trade war have only added to uncertainty, spooking auto investors.

Nissan and rival Japanese automakers

Honda

Motor Co Ltd 7267.T and

Toyota Motor Corp

7203.T have been the best at flexible manufacturing, auto experts and industry executives said. Historically, Japanese automakers focused on interchangeable processes and platforms out of necessity – because one model for the Japanese market could not sustain an entire factory.

U.S. and

European automakers

have worked to catch up. For example,

Ford Motor Co’s

F.N Kentucky truck plant makes some of its

best-selling pickup

trucks and large SUVs on the same platform, and is expected to hit full capacity this year.

But

General Motors Co

GM.N illustrates some of the pitfalls of relying on single models. While The No. 1 automaker’s U.S. plants producing popular pickup trucks are running around the clock to meet demand, others that make a single car model are running well below capacity.

At the

GM

plant in Lordstown, Ohio, workers make only the

Cruze

compact sedan, which has suffered a 26.5 percent sales decline this year through September. The plant is running a little over 30 percent capacity, on one shift.

“We continuously look at our global operations to find ways to drive greater efficiency and capacity utilization,” GM said in a statement.

Workers at Lordstown are campaigning for GM to build another vehicle at the plant to make it viable. The

UAW

has consolidated two locals at the facility to simplify the negotiating process. It also has agreed to allow outsourcing of some non-production jobs and worked to significantly improve quality.

Dave Green, UAW Local 1112 president, said his members are on edge.

“We’re doing all we can to be competitive,” Green said. “We know that if we can’t compete, we’re out of business.”

Using one assembly line to build a variety of different body styles requires careful coordination that starts with the engineers who design the vehicles, and extends to the construction of the tools used to weld and assemble them.

Honda’s assembly factory in Greensburg, Indiana started operation in 2008 building

Civic

sedans, and later a small sedan for the

Acura

brand. Last year, as

sedan sales

weakened and demand for SUVs soared, Honda decided to add production of its compact

CR-V

utility vehicle at Greensburg.

Honda had designed the CR-V and Civic so they could be put together on the same line, but engineers and workers at the Greensburg plant had to make changes.

Before the CR-V was introduced, Civic trunks and hoods were welded together by one group of machines, or cell, in the body shop. The metal pieces for the hood and trunk lid were placed in an industrial-strength Lazy Susan and the same robots welded them both.

However, the tailgate of the CR-V is a bigger piece that requires 37 more welds. The same system would not work for both the Civic and CR-V. An entirely new welding line to handle the CR-V work would be too expensive, and the plant had no space, said Honda engineer Zach McCurdy during a tour of the plant.

Instead, McCurdy and other engineers separated the hood welding line from the Civic trunk and CR-V tailgate welding system, reusing many of the robots. The plant bought 10 more welding robots – fewer than originally proposed. During a planned production week-long shutdown, workers reconfigured the area of the welding shop.

Honda has not pushed automation to the limit at Greensburg, managers at the plant said. Workers load parts by hand into fixtures that hold them in place so robots can weld them together. Such repetitive work could be automated, said the Greensburg plant’s new model manager, Tom Hilfinger. But it does not pay off.

“People are more flexible,” he said.

The Nissan plant in Smyrna has two lines that can each produce 60 vehicles an hour. The plant’s 8,000-plus workers make six different vehicles on two production lines here – three SUVs and three cars, including Nissan’s best-selling, higher-margin Rogue SUV

crossover

. Last year Smyrna made 623,000 vehicles, more than 97 percent of its capacity, and it is running over 90 percent now.

Auto plants need to operate at 80 percent of capacity or above to remain profitable.

To keep Smyrna running at a high rate, Nissan last year exported 100,000 vehicles to 70 countries. The automaker still imports most of the Rogues it sells in the United States, to avoid idle production lines at plants in Japan and South Korea.

U.S. President Donald Trump has threatened to impose auto tariffs of up to 25 percent. That would be a direct hit to companies such as Nissan, which imported two thirds of the 310,000 Rogues it has sold in America during the first nine months of this year.

Denis Le Vot, who heads Nissan North America, declined to discuss the possibility of Trump’s tariffs on imported vehicles.

But when asked if Nissan could make those imported Rogues in the United States if faced with a massive supply chain disruption, Le Vot said: “Sure, we can.”

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