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The fuzz and maybe even fear about robotics taking over jobs that used to be done by people is still growing. I came along an article about Nike, a company that’s always trying to be ahead of the curve in the sports market.

Probably everyone of you reading this knows what a Fitbit is, what some of you might not know is that Nike, already back in 2015, started working together with Flex, the high-tech manufacturing company that produces the Fitbit, among other products. Nike’s purpose of this partnership is to reduce the need for human labour, which is a great cost in the labour-intensive process of making a running shoe.  In fact the required labour is as big as the 493000 line workers, working in 15 different countries. All involved in the production of just the Nike footwear. For all the products sold by Nike, its contracted factories employ 1.02 million workers.
Flex’s facility in Mexico has become one of Nike’s most important factories. Not only because of its increasing part in Nike’s total production, but also, maybe even more importantly, because of the developed innovations from there. Such as laser-cutting an automated gluing. Analysts from Citibank estimate that if all Nike’s 2017 Air Max would be produced by the Flex manufacturing process labour costs would be cut in half and material costs would be reduced by 20%. If almost one third of Nike’s footwear, sold in North America would come from Flex’ facilities, savings of 400 million USD would be possible based on labour and material cost reductions, increasing the earnings per share by 5%.

And although Nike said: “We don’t expect there to be any displaced workers. We are going to need just as many manufacturing jobs in our source base.”, they are also saying that production facilities will move closer to its key customers in North America.

This makes me wonder what will happen to the debate about abusing low-paid workers in developing countries after many of their jobs will be displaced.

 

 

Article can be found here: https://www.ft.com/content/585866fc-a841-11e7-ab55-27219df83c97

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This week I came across an article about a new security possibility for Google users. This new possibility is called “Advanced Protection Program”, it’s already online at https://landing.google.com/advancedprotection/.

 

The main function of this Advanced Protection Program is to safeguard personal Google Accounts of people who are most likely to be targeted by hackers. Such users could, for example, be: journalists, business leaders or politicians. But the beauty of it is that the program is also available to people like you and me. All you need to do is buy two physical goods, the first one being: https://www.amazon.com/Feitian-MultiPass-FIDO-Security-Key/dp/B01LYV6TQM, this is a Bluetooth dongle, while the second item is a USB-like device: https://www.amazon.com/Yubico-Y-123-FIDO-U2F-Security/dp/B00NLKA0D8.

 

To log in to your Google Account from a desktop the USB key is required, while the Bluetooth dongle is required when signing in from a mobile device. Downloads and email attachments, which are only downloadable from Chrome, are delayed by about one minute, in this minute Google performs a scan that’s more advanced than the standard scan. When logged in, all running services and apps which aren’t Google’s own will be exiled to reach any data from your Google Account.

 

Other forms of 2-step authentication aren’t new of course in the digital world, but the advantage over older techniques is that it won’t be necessary to enter a code anymore. This is favourable because a code could be intercepted, for example at a phishing website. Google checks if the physical key belongs to the user that’s trying to log in, and if it matches it opens the possibility to log in from inside so to say.

 

Another security measurement that comes with the program is the advanced, and at this moment still secretive, account recovery process. If you’ve lost your physical keys, getting access to your account again won’t be as easy as it is right now. Details are still unknown, but Google announced that it includes a “cooling-off” period and that your whole account will be entirely shut down for a, still unknown, period of time.

 

The offering of such an option is very welcome and could prevent a lot of tragedies for individuals and society.

 

The article can be found here: https://www.wired.com/story/google-advanced-protection-locks-down-accounts/