Category: Computer technology

The new burger chef makes $3 an hour and never goes home. (It’s a robot)

The new burger chef makes $3 an hour and never goes home. (It’s a robot)

The response to the high wages demanded in low skill position was obvious.

Miso can offer Flippys (a robot for making food) to fast-food restaurant owners for an estimated $2,000 per month on a subscription basis, breaking down to about $3 per hour. (The actual cost will depend on customers’ specific needs). A human doing the same job costs $4,000 to $10,000 or more a month, depending on a restaurant’s hours and the local minimum wage. And robots never call in sick.

Sorry teenager trying to earn a few bucks to go to college, restaurants don’t need to hire you at the high wage that over-eager do-gooders are demanding.

https://www.latimes.com/…/flippy-fast-food-restaurant-robot…

Soon Your Phone Will Be Your Driver’s License, MetroCard and More

Soon Your Phone Will Be Your Driver’s License, MetroCard and More

While digital versions of our credit and debit cards aren’t widely accepted just yet, it’s a given that in the future, the majority of the places where we shop will accept Apple Pay, Google Pay and the like. I look forward to the day when I can increase my personal security and reduce my pocket bloat by only carrying a small computer (my phone) to identify me and conduct my transactions.

From government IDs to hotel keys, the rest of our cards are quickly moving to mobile phones. As this becomes more ubiquitous, it will be harder and harder to justify carrying unique pieces of plastic in your wallet.

I look forward to this image being everywhere!

 

Great reading on this topic: Soon Your Phone Will Be Your Driver’s License, MetroCard and More – WSJ

How to Stop Spam Phone Calls

How to Stop Spam Phone Calls

The number one feature that I would like for the iPhone is the ability to have a special ringtone for anyone that was not in my Contacts. That ring tone would be silent so that if a spammer got through it wouldn’t bother me, they would just go to voicemail. If it was a legitimate call then they would go to voicemail as well and I would call them back.

As it is, I hear my phone ring, see that it isn’t someone I know and manually silence my phone. By having a “silent” ringtone for non-Contacts, I would skip this step.

I think this is possible in Android and it is probably the only reason that I would buy an Android phone over an iPhone the next time I want to update my phone.

Source: How to Stop Spam Phone Calls

The phone rings. Do you assume it’s an actual human person, trying to reach you? I generally assume it’s a robot, calling to “inform” me that my car warranty is about to expire or that I’ve “earned” a free trip to the Caribbean.

And I’m not alone. There were an estimated 26.3 billion robocalls to US phone numbers in 2018, which was a massive increase from the year before. Most of these spam calls come from scammers using software dialers to call as many phone numbers as possible. Enough people fall for these scams for the practice to be profitable, which is tragic in and of itself. The rest of us, meanwhile, are getting more spam calls than actual calls, interrupting our daily lives, including during work hours—and the problem is only getting worse.

Restaurant Automation Is Almost a Guarantee

Restaurant Automation Is Almost a Guarantee

Consumer preferences, reduced technology costs, and government policies that increase labor costs are driving a trend toward automation in the restaurant business. If you make something more convenient and less expensive, it tends to catch on. This can also be said for the way the restaurant looks, a new structure/design can make people notice a new restaurant. An example of this is that there are now modular restaurants (https://bmarkostructures.com/modular-restaurants/) that can be made from shipping containers and designed in a specific manner rather than just a building. This can be intriguing and make people want to see what it is all about, combining that with updated automation it can bring in customers who love a modern eatery that satiates their food cravings and is aesthetically pleasing.

As recently as the 1960s, gas-station employees would rush to fill your car’s tank, wash the windows, check the oil and put air in the tires. Telephone operators made your long-distance calls and bank tellers cashed your checks. Those jobs now are either gone or greatly diminished.

Today, we reduce jobs whenever we shop on Amazon instead of our local retail outlet, use an Uber app rather than calling a cab dispatcher, order a pizza online, use an airport kiosk to print boarding passes, or scan groceries. Each of these changes in behavior has increased convenience and reduced labor costs-and competitive businesses pass the savings to their customers.

Just like there are kiosks replacing airline workers that check you in to your flight, the restaurant industry is ripe for order automation.

I fly a lot. Several airports have already automated their restaurants. In the Delta concourse (most of C & D) LaGuardia LGA, every seat with a table or counter has an iPad and a card reader in front of it. You order anything you want on the iPad from any of the restaurants in the concourse and it gets delivered to your table. They serve thousands of people simultaneously with a fairly small wait staff. Those businesses that haven’t already automated their restaurant may want to visit this page, as this looks like the direction the hospitality industry is heading.

In fact, Minneapolis MSP has a similar setup in several of the remodeled areas.

When was the last time you walked into a bank to get some cash for the weekend? The ATM has been a fixture in the banking world for decades now. That automation has increased to include scanning checks on your smartphone, so even paper checks are no longer a reason to walk into a bank building.

In 2015, 14 cities and states approved $15 minimum wages-double the current federal minimum. Additionally, four states, 20 cities and one county now have mandatory paid-sick-leave laws generally requiring a paid week of time off each year per covered employee. And then there’s the Affordable Care Act, which further raises employer costs.

Dramatic increases in labor costs have a significant effect on the restaurant industry, where profit margins are pennies on the dollar and labor makes up about a third of total expenses. As a result, restaurants are looking to reduce costs while maintaining service and food quality.

Part of the problem is that those with technical skills make good livings, while those who don’t have those skills are being priced out of entry-level jobs.

The low-labor concept may be a harbinger of the future. If consumers prefer it, or if government-mandated labor-cost increases drive prices too high, the traditional full-service restaurant model, like those old gas stations with the employees swarming over your car, could well become a thing of the past.

Source: Why Restaurant Automation Is on the Menu

Marc Andreessen On When The Robots Come To Take All Our Jobs

Marc Andreessen On When The Robots Come To Take All Our Jobs

It’s one of the great mysteries of our time, why there are so many insisting that this time around is different. That automation, as it proceeds, is going to leave everyone out of work and idling away their time with nothing to do and no income to do nothing with. It’s as if no one is willing to believe that the Luddite fallacy was in fact proven wrong. What’s worse is that all too many of those getting this wrong are setting themselves up as thinkers, philosopher kings, on the subject and as a result of their complete misunderstanding of the basic situation then they’re proposing all sorts of nonsense.

The simple fact is that as long as there’s things that humans can do which add value then humans will continue to have jobs. And when there’s nothing left that humans can do which adds value then no one needs to have a job so who in heck cares whether there are any or not?

Let’s instead go and look at what happened the last time technological change wiped out 95% of all jobs. Take it away Professor Friedman:

“When the United States was formed in 1776, it took 19 people on the farm to produce enough food for 20 people. So most of the people had to spend their time and efforts on growing food. Today, it’s down to 1% or 2% to produce that food. Now just consider the vast amount of supposed unemployment that was produced by that. But there wasn’t really any unemployment produced. What happened was that people who had formerly been tied up working in agriculture were freed by technological developments and improvements to do something else. That enabled us to have a better standard of living and a more extensive range of products.”

Source: Marc Andreessen On When The Robots Come To Take All Our Jobs – Forbes