7458

Apple generates $27M in profit every couple of hours.

That’s important to understand because the fuel for that economic furnace is powered by people. You’d think it’s devices (and it is really), but at the end of the day, it’s people who assemble these ivory devices. Apple’s device sales generate the bulk of their cash. That’s why Apple has been focused on other revenue segments such as services and entertainment recently. Foxconn, is Apple’s primary fabricator and production darling, located in Shenzhen.

The majority of confirmed COVID-19 cases are in China, and as The People Republic of China contains its spread, only a fraction of workers are allowed to go back to work. Foxconn is deeply affected by this. Only about 10% reported back to work in Shenzhen last week. That’s painful for Apple, but for Foxconn, every day they aren’t producing, it eats into their margins as production estimates slip. They’ve begun to recall workers back to their factories in phases according to the Financial Times.

If only Foxconn would’ve built this mysterious factory in Mount Pleasant sooner. In fact, Foxconn has yet to manufacture a single thing in Wisconsin at all. They risk losing their Republican-apportioned tax credits and now they risk their razor-thin margins due to an outbreak that could have been contained much sooner.

The Coronavirus is essentially a flu-like respiratory-illness. Here’s what we know so far:

• It’s contagious like SARS, and about 2x more infectious than the seasonal flu.
• So far, the fatality rate is less than 3%. There’s already been more fatalities than the last SARS outbreak in China. Keeping that number low is going to have to be a global effort. Young children and the elderly are at a higher-risk of respiratory issues.
• The period for symptoms to fully appear is roughly 2-weeks. This is what makes this virus especially difficult to detect and prevent. The virus can easily spread from person to person prior to showing any symptoms.
• The virus has already spread across multiple borders. Primarily mainland China has the most confirmed cases. Russia, Unites States, United Kingdom, Thailand, Turkey, Japan, Australia and have had infected travelers confirmed.
• The WHO has declared the Coronavirus a global health emergency which should catalyze superpowers to work to contain the spread of the infectious virus.
• To prevent further spread of the disease, many Chinese companies are asking their corporate workforce to work-from home:

Tiko Mamuchashvili, a senior event planner at the Hyatt hotel in Beijing who was supposed to return to work on Friday, was initially told her vacation would be extended until Feb. 3. Then she received a notification to work from home for two additional days. A few days later, the directive was extended until Feb. 10. She has to notify her department each morning about her whereabouts and report whether she is running a temperature.

“Usually going back to work from holidays feels a little weird, but working from home this time with such short notice feels even more unusual,” she said. With hotel event cancellations rolling in on a daily basis, “basically, all I can do is answer emails,” she said.

Wuhan’s concerted effort to fight the spread of this virus abroad and within its border is remarkable. But, other metropolitan areas like Hong Kong are not getting the same countermeasures. Reportedly there’s been 15 confirmed cases in Hong Kong. Hopefully others can and will emulate Wuhan’s work-from-home experiment and their hyper-mobilized efforts to quarantine, treat and contain the spread:

CORONAVIRUS HOSPITAL: The Chinese city of Wuhan is working around the clock to build a new 1,600-bed hospital in its race to contain the spread of the coronavirus. https://t.co/1FvTppkyVM

— NowThis (@nowthisnews) February 3, 2020

The people of China are vacationing more than ever before. A while back I came across a story where Chinese tourists swarmed a tiny village in Austria. Who could blame them, UNESCO World Heritage Sites are breathtaking places to visit.

In 2018, there were 2.9 million Chinese travelers to the United States. Each year, that number has been in decline. But China’s boom isn’t slowing down. In 2010, we knew it was just warming up. As travelers from the People’s Republic of China ebbs and flows, there’s been some espionage lurking underneath.

This story centers around a Chinese tourist, Qingshan Li. He was visiting the US under a tourist visa in San Diego, California. Li was allegedly caught attempting to purchase military munitions under suspicious circumstances. Justin Rohrlich at Quartz reports:

One of the items Li was allegedly after, a Harris Falcon III AN/PRC 152A radio, is designated as a defense article on the United States Munitions List, and subject to international arms trafficking regulations. This means the Falcon III, which provides US troops in the field with National Security Agency-certified encrypted communications, cannot leave the country without a special license issued by the State Department.

Li had agreed to pay AB a total of 50,000 renminbi, or roughly $7,200, for the radio. He knew AB was already under investigation for export-related crimes and believed AB “was attempting to get rid of the radio in light of AB’s entanglement with law enforcement,” according to court filings.

What’s old is now new again. This isn’t the first, nor the last time we’ll be seeing foreign actors participating in freelance espionage while vacationing abroad. Popular tourism spots such as Tallinn, Estonia’s capital used to be hotbeds for KGB activity during the Cold War.

While the he largest immediate threat to the US is cyber-security and Russia’s election interferences — we can expect to see more of this tried-and-true method of “freelancing spying” from other countries, not just China.

Chris Welch reporting at The Verge writes:

Late last week, Sonos was called out on Twitter by Devin Wilson for its practices around sustainability. The company drew particular attention for a “Recycle Mode” software feature that, once activated, begins a countdown that eventually renders older Sonos devices basically inoperable. Recycle Mode is part of the trade-up program that Sonos announced back in October, which lets customers get a discount on newer Sonos speakers like the One, Beam, or the Port that Nilay just reviewed.

At first glance, the Recycle Mode seems like a good idea. Except for this one crucial feature of the Sonos App:

Recycle Mode is a state your device enters 21 days after recycling confirmation in the Sonos app. In Recycle Mode, all data is erased and the device is permanently deactivated so you can safely and securely dispose of it. Once a device is in Recycle Mode, it cannot be reactivated.

Wait. What the fuck? This is so fucked. I’m all for reducing, reusing and recycling. But, I prefer to do the reducing and reusing first.

Anyone even remotely familiar with recycling can tell you the mantra "reduce, reuse, recycle." Recycling takes energy and, while it saves materials, reuse is always better.

Sonos is throwing any claimed environmental friendliness in the trash in order to sell more speakers. pic.twitter.com/4yL4XKZfvQ

— walking mirage (@atomicthumbs) December 27, 2019

Forcing customers to brick their devices, to force them to recycle is not ideal. In fact, forcing consumers to brick their devices should be illegal. It turns out that recycling isn’t even the most effective way to recover materials. Simply put, shipping our recyclables to China (or elsewhere) for processing isn’t working. As a result, many cities are moving away from recycle programs. In fact, many are forced to recover energy from plastics and trash by burning it in furnaces, and in many cases this is the most green scenario. So, why on Earth is Sonos doing this? To edge up profits in this fierce smart-speaker market of course.

Marc Bain writes at Quartz:

Drought has been a chronic issue in southeastern Australia for years. In regions such as southern Queensland, months can pass without rain. Local communities have to ration water or risk running out.

Yet a company owned by Chinese investors based in Brisbane still got approved last week to run a commercial water-mining operation in the area. It plans to transport the water to a facility where it can bottle and sell it.

This reminds me of the Nestlé Bottling company which continues to bottle clean water near Flint, Michigan as the city of Flint continues to suffer from tainted poisonous lead-tainted water. Thanks to the egregious and violent extremes of climate change, we can expect more and more of these sorts of stories. Simply put, water is the new oil in this new era.