Shadow of Trump hangs over future EU-US tech collaboration
Orange candidate has been known to use protectionist policy against allies
AI + ML
8 Apr 2024 | 12
Let’s check in with that 30,000-job $10bn Trump-Foxconn Wisconsin plant. Wow, way worse than we'd imagined
It’s been three years since Wisconsin approved more than $3bn in incentives to bring Foxconn to the US state. The Taiwanese monster manufacturer promised to build a $10bn plant making LCDs, requiring 30,000 workers, which was quickly reduced to 13,000, and turn Wisconsin into a Silicon Valley of the Midwest. It was a vision …
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Tuesday 20th October 2020 09:47 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Trump is a con man
Just look at 'Trump University'. A scam from start to finish and he had to settlle in court.
If you can vote him out of office then please do for be benefit of the whole world.
Then instead of jailing Hillary, Obama, Biden and the rest, jail Trump and then sieze all his assets.
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Friday 23rd October 2020 17:40 GMT MachDiamond
Re: Trump is a con man
"If you can vote him out of office then please do for be benefit of the whole world."
When advocating for one thing, you have to look at what the alternative will be. This is the second Presidential election where the lesser of two evils is the debate. Not which candidate is best.
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Tuesday 20th October 2020 18:23 GMT Rol
Re: Not a total failure...
Now there's a thought. Here in little Britain we have a traditional hand puppet theatre called Punch & Judy. It features a puppet called Punch who is married to Judy, and they have a baby. Punch spends most of his time beating his wife with a stick, and abusing his baby, and quite disturbingly, it's intended audience is young children.
Warning spoiler alert!
It's credibility goes south when Punch gets eaten by a crocodile, as even the pre-schoolers know there are no crocodiles in Britain, however, give Punch a quiff of ginger hair, or whatever colour that thing is sitting on Trumps head, have him sexually abusing everyone except Judy, who now has a stick to defend herself and call the crocodile an alligator, and this easily franchised industry could be just the thing to revitalise America and teach modern history in a manner that even children might understand - it could be an election changer.
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Tuesday 20th October 2020 02:04 GMT IceC0ld
from the article :-
It gets worse. Wisconsin’s current governor, Tony Evers – who beat Scott Walker in some part because of his promise to find out what was really going on with the Foxconn contract – is being stymied by the state’s Republican-held legislature which refuses to allow access to information about what is going on behind the scenes. It just so happens that one of the biggest defenders of the deal is the speaker of the Wisconsin Assembly, Robin Vos, who also happens to represent the district where the factory is located.
HOW can the legislature STOP the access to information about this ?
simple question.
and WHY isn't something happening to sort this clusterfuck out ?
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Tuesday 20th October 2020 17:45 GMT DS999
Political games is why
HOW can the legislature STOP the access to information about this ?
When republican candidate Scott Walker lost his bid for re-election to governor, the republican legislature put forth some a bill in a lame duck session to greatly limit the power of the governor, which Walker signed. That meant the incoming democratic governor had much less power than his predecessors, so the only way he'll be able to truly govern is if democrats take back control of the state legislature (which looks unlikely this election from what I gather)
The republicans have been playing a scorched earth policy of late, this isn't the only state they've done this or tried to do it in. If a state's constitution isn't explicit about the powers of the governor and the legislature, it is within their power to play these sorts of games.
Mitch McConnell's obstructionist tactics have infected the whole republican party, and now with Trump making things ten times worse, the whole party needs to burn to the ground at this point and return to its roots.
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Tuesday 20th October 2020 19:34 GMT Snake
Re: Burn it down to the roots
The GOP is enamored with power, that's all they care about. Anyone, or anything, damaged or destroyed for them to gain or keep that power is irrelevant. Burn to the ground? Yes, but they are too power-hungry to allow that, gerrymandering the world if needed if only to assure that they, exclusively, are on top.
Moscow Mitch is morally corruprt but Kentuckians will keep him in office, believing that any power he wields will always benefit their beliefs.
Suckers. They only care about themselves.
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Wednesday 21st October 2020 15:47 GMT Jimmy2Cows
Re: Burn it down to the roots
TheGOPDemocratic PartyisBoth parties are enamored with power, that's all they care about. Anyone, or anything, damaged or destroyed for them to gain or keep that power is irrelevantThere, fixed your FTFY... (umm... TFY-FTFY...?)
Universal political truths are not bound by such piffling concepts as party allegiance.
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Wednesday 21st October 2020 20:02 GMT martinusher
Re: Burn it down to the roots
Oh come on. The GoP got into this 'scorched Earth power at any price' business a long time ago, it started back in the 70s and early 80s but really got under way with Newt Gingrich's "Contract with America" and his tenure as House Speaker. The snowball has been getting bigger ever since.
This isn't so say that the Democrats haven't taken notice but in general they've been blindsided by this, playing the traditional gentleman's game. The danger we now face as a country is that is both power blocs start playing by these 'no holds barred' rules then our political system is effectively dead.
So, just saying "Both sides are as bad as each other" is really ducking the problem and making it worse. If you follow the money -- and there's lots to be had if you espouse the right ideology -- then its pretty easy to see what's going on. See, for example....
https://news.google.com/s/CBIwvv7wzVQ?sceid=US:en&r=12&oc=em
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Tuesday 20th October 2020 21:31 GMT Eclectic Man
Re: Political games is why
Looks like the USA's Founding Fathers who claimed to have written their constitution to have checks and balances did not conceive of the shenanigans to which people may go to keep power for themselves and avoid allowing other publicly elected people from another party to do what they were elected to do.
The example of the nomination of Amy Coney Barrat to the SCOTUS by a person who in the last year of the Obama presidency said that it was not proper to nominate a new Supreme Court justice in an election year, and that he would not do it in four years time, has now done just that. Trump has nominated vast numbers of senior judges during his presidency, all of them political appointments. I cannot help feeling that this embeds corruption at the heart of US 'Justice'. You simply cannot get a court hearing presided over by a non-political judge in the USA.
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Wednesday 21st October 2020 13:38 GMT First Light
Re: Political games is why
I disagree as to non-political. Federal judges have been mostly apolitical, however state-level judges traditionally can be more goofy and politically-influenced.
What Trump has done in putting extremists/loyalists on the federal bench is a disaster. People are upset about it because it DOES represent a departure from the norm.
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Wednesday 21st October 2020 17:03 GMT DS999
Re: Political games is why
Unfortunately I don't see a way we can go back to the old way. Even if the senate replaced the rules allowing filibusters requiring 60 votes to end for nominations, we'd risk ending up with the same fate if McConnell is still around or someone who decided to follow in his footsteps.
As it is, if Biden wins and the republicans hold the senate McConnell won't let him get a single judge seated, even if he picks moderates. He'd rather see if he can wait until 2024 and hope another republican wins the white house. If Trump wins and democrats take the senate, I'm sure they'll do a tit for tat and not let Trump get any more judges for the next four years. That's probably one reason they are racing to get Coney Barrett seated before the election.
So we're going to be stuck with hard left or hard right judges now, all of them young so they can stick around for decades, from now on. The best fix I can come up with is a constitutional amendment that gives them a 10 year term rather than a lifetime appointment, to stop with the insanity of nominating ever younger judges, experience be damned!
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Monday 26th October 2020 00:59 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Political games is why
"Do we have any evidence, as in actual rulings, that these judges are extremists and terrible human beings?"
None of them have actual rulings, so no.
But they aren't nominated not only by Trump, but by GOP. That means they are, by definition, outright evil and ultra-extreme right.
By definition Trump doesn't appoint moderates, so your claim about 'false argument' is false.
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Tuesday 20th October 2020 12:33 GMT Lars
Re: Too funny.
And a AC Trumpist even more funny.
In a democracy you do not have to like the President.
How Trump must envy Putin who has seriously managed to loot the state coffers, who can remain in power as long as he likes, can probably choose who "replaces" him and can indeed jail any opposition the way Trump would like too.
Russia is not a democracy nor would the USA remain one if Trump could have his way.
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Tuesday 20th October 2020 15:13 GMT Alan Brown
Re: Too funny.
" nor would the USA remain one if Trump could have his way."
There's a book about that.
It's called "It can't happen here" - and it's worth noting how much it got changed for TV in the 1970s because the plot was considered so outlandish (the villains becoming flesh-eating alien lizards), but it's proving to be even more chillingly accurate than was thought possible in 1935
Events in the first televised debate with Biden looked eerily like Buzz Windrup calling the Minutemen to attention
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_Can%27t_Happen_Here
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Tuesday 20th October 2020 21:52 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Too funny.
Wow.
Seems you clearly didn't catch Hunter Biden's corruption story being blocked on FB and Twitter.
Seems that everything you and others accuse Trump of doing... The Dems are doing.
And no, I'm not a Trumper. I'm an independent. BTW many Dems are now claiming to be independents because they are too embarrassed to call themselves Democrats.
From the middle, I am a bit more objective and what is happening is pathetic and sick.
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Wednesday 21st October 2020 09:17 GMT Holtsmark
Re: Too funny.
The reason why the story is only being pushed by FOX news opinionists and their likes is that the story reeks so badly that even the NYP journalists that had to write the story refused to put their names behind it.
This is not a matter of censorship, it is a matter of lack of believability, and a matter of stopping more damage being done to an already weakened democracy.
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Wednesday 21st October 2020 08:25 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Hunter Biden
was blocked because there was no real substence to the story. A lack of hard facts is a killer in the run up to the election. The same goes for the 'guilt by association' of Hunter Biden and Child Pron because a FBI warrant for his laptop was signed by an agent who had been working on Child Pron.
If at some point in time in the future some real hard evidence emergese that Hunter Biden has been involved with such nasties then I'll willingly villify him. Until then, guilt by association? Pah.
I fully expect more of this sort of thing to emerge between now and election day although if the numbers of those voting early are continued, the resuly might be a foregone conclusion in many states before polling day.
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Tuesday 20th October 2020 21:55 GMT Anonymous Coward
@ST ... Re: Too funny.
Clearly you're not from either WI or IL.
Being in Tech and Chicago at the time... we talked about it.
We saw the big problem. Water supply.
So too did the Chicago Tribune.
But unless you were there... you would never known it.
So while you folks pick on Trump... believe me ... If Biden wins, he's out of office in less than 1 qtr. EIther Pelosi and Kamala use the 25th. Or... he's impeached.
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Tuesday 20th October 2020 02:07 GMT aregross
I live in Wisconsin, I knew it was a bust before it even began. Foxconn had done the same thing before in a couple other states.... EXACTLY the same thing. People lost their homes, there was a huge investment in roads, sewers, etc. And nothing. The WisGOP gets to hang their hat on this one, in it's entirety!
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Tuesday 20th October 2020 04:35 GMT Anonymous Coward
Projection 101
You can pretty much see what's coming up from Republican rhetoric. e.g. Fox News is pushing Q Anon, pizzagate mk 2 lies. Shortly after a judge ruled Ghizelle Maxwell's deposition cannot be kept secret, so you can see what Republicans are trying to pre-emptively deflect there.
Just apply the projection rule and see what's in the news that somehow got submarined, and you can see easily what they're up to.
I don't see anything on this though, its chump change. Not worth deflecting. Giant boondongle that was a US tax dodge was giant boondongle, supprising exactly nobody, fooling exactly nobody.
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Tuesday 20th October 2020 02:53 GMT whoseyourdaddy
Tech where you need an engine block heater? Are you kidding me?
When I worked in the Chicago suburbs or western NY state, I'll never forget getting up at 6AM to scrape my car off so I can play bumper-cars on patches of black ice and other traffic headaches.
I hope to never face this at temps that frequently dropped to 20F deg below zero.
Dumb...
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Tuesday 20th October 2020 07:23 GMT 9Rune5
Re: Tech where you need an engine block heater? Are you kidding me?
Could you elaborate?
Hardware enjoys lower temperatures. And close to the arctic circle we have plenty of cooling to offer.
As for driving a car, nothing is more fun than wrestling a corner with the ass of the car going wide.
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Tuesday 20th October 2020 08:34 GMT jake
Re: Tech where you need an engine block heater? Are you kidding me?
Engine blocks don't survive long in Wisconsin winters without block heaters. Most hardware hates the concept of 40 below (C or F, I'm not picky ...). Most wetware hates it even more.
If you have to wrestle anything while driving your car you're doing it wrong.
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Tuesday 20th October 2020 12:51 GMT Lars
Re: Tech where you need an engine block heater? Are you kidding me?
Living in a country with a winter I agree. When a kid my father had a MB, every evening when coming home he would emty the water onto the street, and every morning we would carry out hot water to fill it up.
But also I don't think we had syntetic 5-40 oil then either.
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Tuesday 20th October 2020 17:07 GMT GBE
Re: Tech where you need an engine block heater? Are you kidding me?
Engine blocks don't survive long in Wisconsin winters without block heaters.
Nonsense. I've lived in Minnesota for 40 years. Neither I nor anybody I know has a block heater, and nobody I know has ever had an engine block fail.
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Wednesday 21st October 2020 20:30 GMT Lars
Re: Tech where you need an engine block heater? Are you kidding me?
@Boo Radley
Here up in northern Europe parking heaters like Webasto and similar have become very popular. No fuss with electrical plugs and cables, they have a timer and will heat the car inside too if you want, they run on the gas in the car itself.
https://www.webasto-comfort.com/int/heating/car-parking-heater/
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Friday 23rd October 2020 17:48 GMT MachDiamond
Re: Tech where you need an engine block heater? Are you kidding me?
"Nonsense. I've lived in Minnesota for 40 years. "
It's common on diesel engines in cold climates. Starting a diesel engine in sub-freezing temperatures can be a project. Petrol engines with winter oil viscosity don't need them. Maybe in Siberia, but not in the US.
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Tuesday 20th October 2020 11:12 GMT My other car WAS an IAV Stryker
Re: Tech where you need an engine block heater? Are you kidding me?
Electronic hardware enjoys lower temperatures, sure.
But engines involve combustion (chemical ignition) and moving parts like bearings. Although they create heat during operation and that heat must be removed (yay, cold!), too cold -- especially at startup trying to achieve rotation and ignition -- can be a problem.
And then there's the unavoidable thermal stress of "hot on the inside, cold on the outside". The further apart the two temperatures are, the more strain on the materials.
(Regarding the other point: my old Buick LeSabre was fun on neighborhood corners. Left unplowed to thaw-and-freeze, it all ended up as ice. Smaller/lighter cars like Chevy Cruze and SUVs like Traverse with beefier suspensions can't duplicate it -- instead of slippage I feel I'm going to break something.)
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Thursday 22nd October 2020 01:25 GMT Anonymous Coward
SNOW! Nice place to visit...
wouldn't want to live there.
The rent checks suck but the look on my east coast relatives faces when I'm wearing shorts on new years day is almost worth it.
The north east's penchant for road salt is also pretty tough on cars. The areas that switched to cinders seem to see much less body rot, bridge collapses, and other horrors. Is there a reason it's still so popular in the cold hard north?
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Tuesday 20th October 2020 03:55 GMT Flocke Kroes
Trump caught telling the truth!
“one of the most incredible plants I’ve ever seen,”
Incredible means "not worthy of belief". It is one of his favourite words. The only questionable part of the statement are what the other most incredible plants were. My guess: Audrey II and the spaghetti trees.
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Wednesday 21st October 2020 07:26 GMT the Jim bloke
Re: Trump caught telling the truth!
Bullshit
No plant so he couldnt have seen it.
Please provide subject, dates and times of when ever Trump has told the truth.
It will be a short list, and probably all accidental.
First thing to do when you hear a statement from Trump, is ask, "is he lying?", and the answer almost always turns out to be "yes".
This is the man that gave us "Fake Media" - and never stopped.
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Tuesday 20th October 2020 05:51 GMT Sanguma
foot in mouth
meet Mr Bullet ...
“The eighth wonder of the world,” the hyperbolic reality TV star promised while claiming the deal was a reflection of him keeping his word to bring manufacturing back to America and make the country great again.
Sticking your foot in your mouth while brandishing a loaded gun then shooting yourself in the foot ... may appeal to some people, in particular those who can contort themselves and their friends as much as the Federal Secretary of Silly Tweets frequently does ... in the eighties I read about a trick some US military suppliers had, for ensuring their hands were stuck deeply into the taxpayer's pocket for the foreseeable future - overpromise and underdeliver, so the poor taxpayer gets "bought into" the project. The more it changes, the more it stays the same.
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Tuesday 20th October 2020 06:28 GMT Danny 2
Re: foot in mouth
"Sticking your foot in your mouth while brandishing a loaded gun then shooting yourself in the foot"
It's not a great boast but as far as I know I invented that bon mot in '94. I searched for other references but no. I was less wordy - "You put your foot in your mouth and then shot yourself in your foot".
Didn't copyright it, relax.
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Tuesday 20th October 2020 06:23 GMT Danny 2
Potemkin factory
In politics and economics, a Potemkin village is any construction (literal or figurative) whose sole purpose is to provide an external façade to a country which is faring poorly, making people believe that the country is faring better.
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Tuesday 20th October 2020 15:32 GMT Rich 11
Re: Such wisdom
Guy 3: He'll definitely build the wall in his second term. And get Mexico to pay for it.
Guy 4: Lock her up! Lock her up!
Guy 5: The coronavirus will just vanish next April.
Guy 6: If Biden gets elected he'll cancel Christmas the very first day he takes office, er, 20th January.
(This is too easy.)
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Tuesday 20th October 2020 07:14 GMT Kevin McMurtrie
Using yesterday's technology to solve today's problems tomorrow *
Hopefully this was for LCD backlighting technology where there's still a few years left of profitable innovation. You can shrink the inorganic LEDs down farther and farther to reduce halos in HDR mode. Getting from UV-A to television RGB isn't perfect yet either.
If this was for making the LCD sheet itself... that would be a very Trump thing to do. Maybe the factory can run off coal furnaces.
* Quote stolen from awesome co-worker
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Tuesday 20th October 2020 07:35 GMT Khaptain
El Reg becoming political now ?
I understand that Californians have a strong preference for lefty politics but do we honestly need to hear that on El Reg, this article just stinks of pre-election bias.
What's next, Critical Race Theory in between articles on how to prepare GPOs via Powershell.
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Tuesday 20th October 2020 08:10 GMT Danny 2
Re: El Reg becoming political now ?
Um, I think the founding fathers here self-described as anarchist from the start. As do I. I have no problem with you, El Khaptain, or your political opinions. We are a broad, mainly atheist church. Me, I am honestly a reverend, in the same way Joey from Friends was. ULC.
I'm on the bottom left square of the Political Compass, (take the test yourself!) but that doesn't mean we can't chat rationally.
It's a journal. It focusses on IT but it covers science and current affairs too. I like that. I also liked 1980s California, especially the Dunkin' Donuts.
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Tuesday 20th October 2020 10:52 GMT Danny 2
Re: El Reg becoming political now ?
"If that's the best you got out of California, you must not have set foot outside the LA basin."
We were mostly in SF but stuck for a night with no cash overnight in one of the Sans (San Jose?) waiting for a Greyhound.
I just checked my forum history here, I was warning about the dangers of the Covid19 pandemic on Feb 4th. I hate to say everyone I know are all idiots for not listening to me when I am always right, but.
(Danny, 11/9/2001: I told you something world changingly bad would happen in September!
Derek: Danny, you say a lot of things)
Fourth of effing February. I am the Jucinda Arden Scotland never earned.
I'm sorry for my lack of communication
But as I'm staring out this fifth floor window
It seems like the least amount of communication the better
Oh, well what am I supposed to say
"there's a bloody effigy on my wall
And the complimentary carnation is falling apart"
And I ain't got time for the niceties
Or rather I was never, never fond of the niceties
I will see you around
I will see you around
See you around
Well I must admit I'm flattered by your consecration
It's a mind-numbing spine-chilling
But never-the-less heartwarming gesture
But as you make your advances so clumsily
I'll save us both the both the hassle and leave
And hang out all night
In the familiar fluorescent light of Dunkin' Donuts
'cause I ain't got time for the niceties
Or rather I was never, never fond of the niceties
I will see you around
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Tuesday 20th October 2020 20:40 GMT jake
Re: El Reg becoming political now ?
Sorry to burst your bubble, but I'm a vi aficionado, TYVM.
Here's a post of mine from 11 years ago on the subject.
Watching the bubbles in your beer is probably more productive. This round's on me.
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Tuesday 20th October 2020 12:44 GMT Khaptain
Re: El Reg becoming political now ?
@Danny2 "I'm on the bottom left square of the Political Compass, (take the test yourself!) but that doesn't mean we can't chat rationally.2"
I ended between Angela Markel and Nicola Sturgeon, almost bang in the middle... Left Libertarian as per the certificate ( I would prefer to choose the word "independant"), This doesn't' shock me at all , as mentioned above I like neither candidate nor the games that they or the media are playing....
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Tuesday 20th October 2020 22:27 GMT Danny 2
Re: El Reg becoming political now ?
@Khaptain
"I ended between Angela Markel and Nicola Sturgeon, almost bang in the middle"
Lucky you, that's one of my sexual fantasies too.
It's spelt 'independent', we've got good at spelling that in Scotland. Did you know that the song I just sneakily linked to is Scottish?
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Wednesday 21st October 2020 14:31 GMT Lars
Re: El Reg becoming political now ?
Jake, it was nothing against what you wrote.
But probably because I was reading this thread "newest first" I came to read comments dealing with the supposed lack of enginers and knowledge in the USA and about China.
And the reason for that and many other American problems starts from the very beginning.
Americans used to understand the importance of education, and that has to start with kids, all kids, but that has all moved towards education for profit.
American kids do not do well in any comparison to other countries today.
A democracy, what we still call "one man, one vote", doesn't work well if a large part of the population is uneducated. Uneducated people tend to fall for any snake oil salesman. I would claim this was the case both in the USA and in England regarding Brexit.
I don't agree with Michio Kaku's use of the word "genius", but on the whole he is spot on also regarding the fact that China is no longer just about cheep labour.
For the USA to become great again you have to take education more seriously starting with all kids.
I hate to believe anything as ridiculous as Trump could happen in a educated country.
Regards
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Thursday 22nd October 2020 09:19 GMT Khaptain
Re: El Reg becoming political now ?
"I hate to believe anything as ridiculous as Trump could happen in a educated country."
You do realise that the education system has been "systemically" indoctrinating the children and college students for the past 20 or so years..
So the problem is not Trump but the American System that has ignored what it going on in their own schools... Obama, Bush and Clinton are far more to blame than anyone else, there were presiding when this crap started....
At least Trump had the balls to call out that ludicrous "Critical Race Theory" agenda.
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Tuesday 20th October 2020 08:16 GMT jake
Re: El Reg becoming political now ?
You'd be crowing about it if it weren't pure graft, and you know it.
ElReg would be the first to report on it if it were real instead of a boondogle, and you know that too.
Instead of whining about ElReg's so-called politics, how about trying to find holes in the story to gripe about instead?
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Tuesday 20th October 2020 08:49 GMT Chris G
Re: El Reg becoming political now ?
I think it rates as very newsworthy for a tech publication to report on the failed promises from a world class tech company and the POTUS, to construct a huge bigly factory, gain billions in potential subsidies and then not only fail to deliver but keep making promises that are clearly never going to happen.
You may be unhappy about the reporting, think hiw unhappy those in Wisconsin are.
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Tuesday 20th October 2020 11:33 GMT Khaptain
Re: El Reg becoming political now ?
It's a three year old story that involves nothing but politics. This is just another Orange Man Bad jibe which is really boring on an IT site.
I don't like Donald Trump , nor do I like Joe Biden and I believe that neither will do any good for the US.
But what I dislike more than both of them though is the left swinging media which has completely lost it's objectivity.. The MSM has simply become a propaganda machine for whoever pulls the strings. I was kinda hoping that El Reg would remain independent....
The Hunter Biden macbook story would have been far more interesting, there was at least a modicum of IT involved.
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Tuesday 20th October 2020 13:05 GMT juice
Re: El Reg becoming political now ?
> The Hunter Biden macbook story would have been far more interesting, there was at least a modicum of IT involved
Yeah, if only this story had some sort of tech angle...
"The Taiwanese monster manufacturer [Foxconn] promised to build a $10bn plant making LCDs, requiring 30,000 workers, which was quickly reduced to 13,000, and turn Wisconsin into a Silicon Valley of the Midwest".
Nope, not a single tech element there.
> The MSM has simply become a propaganda machine for whoever pulls the strings. I was kinda hoping that El Reg would remain independent....
No, you were hoping that it'd align with your personal biases.
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Tuesday 20th October 2020 14:21 GMT Charlie Clark
Re: El Reg becoming political now ?
The MSM has simply become a propaganda machine for whoever pulls the strings.
Hasn't that always been the case? Beaverbrook, Hearst, Berluscon,…
The plant was proposed to be a symbol of foreign investment demonstrating that high tech could be made in America: the I-Phones of tomorrow would still be "designed in California" but "made in Wisconsin" instead of China.
We all knew when the project was announced that it was just a PR wheeze that would lead to any new jobs but would be another subsidy bucket. But I will admit to being depressed by the details with people still being paid to do nothing so that the subsidy still flows. And the details do matter. The US trade deficit is at record levels as its borrowing and the money that has been wasted on this will be missing for other important things such as, I don't know, providing IT equipment and training for schools in Wisconsin.
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Tuesday 20th October 2020 17:03 GMT JDPower
Re: El Reg becoming political now ?
I agree, the Hunter Biden story could be reported here - picking it apart for the nonsense it is would be quite interesting. Failing that, Vice did it for anyone interested: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.vice.com/amp/en/article/qj4gqv/the-ny-posts-hunter-biden-laptop-story-is-a-right-to-repair-nightmare
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Tuesday 20th October 2020 19:14 GMT mad_dr
Re: El Reg becoming political now ?
"It's a three year old story"
Just because something has been happening for 3 years SO FAR, doesn't make it a three year old story. Otherwise you could say that we shouldn't discuss sexism anymore because, after all, it's a 500+ year old story, so who cares?
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Tuesday 20th October 2020 21:42 GMT cray74
Re: El Reg becoming political now ?
The Hunter Biden macbook story would have been far more interesting, there was at least a modicum of IT involved.
Yes, Foxconn only went to Wisconsin to expand its widely known cheese division, not for anything IT related.
Regarding the Hunter Biden MacBook (probably with some Foxconn chips), there were some interesting aspects:
1. Hunter Biden lives in California.
2. The computer repair shop was in Delaware - admittedly, where members of the Biden family are.
3. The computer repair shop owner couldn't positively ID Hunter Biden as the MacBook's owner.
4. The leaked emails contain names and dates that don't match up with Hunter's itineraries
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Tuesday 20th October 2020 22:27 GMT John Brown (no body)
Re: El Reg becoming political now ?
"The MSM has simply become a propaganda machine for whoever pulls the strings."
Phrases like that tend to point you out as a Trump supporter. Or is Trumps constant badgering having an effect on you? Does this prove "advertising" works? Or is all just a Big Lie?
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Tuesday 20th October 2020 12:08 GMT Cederic
Re: El Reg becoming political now ?
Perhaps he was hoping for political neutral factual tech reporting.
For instance, this story is being covered but not others. That's an editorial choice which applies a political skew to the site.
Hopefully The Register's Powers That Be will remember that half of the US supports Trump and over half of the UK supports Brexit and that their customer base does not all work on the Californian coastline.
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Tuesday 20th October 2020 15:17 GMT Santa from Exeter
Re: El Reg becoming political now ?
@Cederic "over half the UK supports Brexit" Citation please.
Only 52% of the people who actually initially voted in the (non binding) referendum 'supported' Brexit.
The total turnout was 72.2% and there were around 25,000 rejected ballots <1%
These figures have altered several times according to different polls, but you cannot draw the conclusion that 'over half of the UK supports Brexit' from them, nor can you draw the conclusion that around three quarters of the UK (totalling thoose that voted against with those that did not vote) wished to remain.
This is leaving aside the fact that the Electoral Commision found that the very question asked was skewed.
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Tuesday 20th October 2020 15:25 GMT Alan Brown
Re: El Reg becoming political now ?
"This is leaving aside the fact that the Electoral Commision found that the very question asked was skewed."
Not to mention that the only reason they couldn't prosecute anyone for the blatently illegal behaviour was that the referendum was laid down as non-binding
(Something that Theresa May's goverment's own lawyers successfully argued to defeat a case brought to stop Brexit - they argued it was non-binding and Brexit was merely the policy of the Conservative party)
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Tuesday 20th October 2020 15:20 GMT juice
Re: El Reg becoming political now ?
> Perhaps he was hoping for political neutral factual tech reporting.
On a website whose tagline is "biting the hand that feeds IT"? Or which explicitly describes itself as "The Register - Independent news and views for the tech community."...
> Hopefully The Register's Powers That Be will remember that half of the US supports Trump and over half of the UK supports Brexit and that their customer base does not all work on the Californian coastline
Really?
Hillary Clinton got *3 million* more votes than Trump in the last election (65.84m vs 62.98m); it's the electoral college system which won Trump the election, not the popular vote. And while the polls weren't particularly accurate last time, there's a sizable gap between Biden and Trump in the run up to the current election.
Equally in the UK, 52% of the vote was for Brexit, in a (non-binding, don't forget) poll which reached 72% of the 46 million elegible voters, from a total population of over 66 million people.
Or to put it another way, just 17.4 million people out of 66 million voted for Brexit. Or around 25% of the total population.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/politics/eu_referendum/results
There's certainly ways to counter the above hard facts (above and beyond the fact that Trump won, and Brexit went ahead), but "Half of country X supported Y" is clearly untrue.
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Wednesday 21st October 2020 12:01 GMT juice
Re: El Reg becoming political now ?
> And only 16.3 million people voted to Remain - or about 23% of the population.
True, but that wasn't the claim. Instead, the claim was that "50% of the UK voted for Brexit", when only 25% of the population did [*].
I'd be happy to debate things past there but fundamentally, the claim being made was provably false.
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Wednesday 21st October 2020 13:51 GMT juice
Re: El Reg becoming political now ?
Whoops, I forgot about the footnote. Which was around the *current* support for Brexit, and involved two key points:
1) At a glance, there's around 700,000 births per year, and 500,000 deaths. And sadly, the majority of deaths (70%+) affect the 65+ demographic, which also happened to mostly vote Brexit.
So we now have up to 2.8 million "young" people who are now eligible to vote (73% remain in 2016) and around 1.2 million fewer "old" people (60% exit in 2016).
So at this point, if the 2016 voting demographics held true, that would currently give us somewhere around 1.7m extra "remain" votes and 700k fewer "exit" votes.
But that leads us to...
2) Bregrexit (or whatever portmanteau is in vogue at the minute) is rising, thanks in no small part to the double-whammy fact that with just two months to go, we are looking ever more likely to end up with no-deal at a point when Coronavirus's effects on the NHS and the economy will be peaking...
Admittedly, there's been a lot of mess around Brexit, and I suspect a lot of people are thoroughly fatigued and just want and end to it all, regardless of what happens.
But whatever can be said about Brexit back in 2016, I don't think can be said now.
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Thursday 22nd October 2020 11:39 GMT juice
Re: El Reg becoming political now ?
> So at this point, if the 2016 voting demographics held true, that would currently give us somewhere around 1.7m extra "remain" votes and 700k fewer "exit" votes.
... and to correct myself[*], the above stats forgot to take into account that only around 70% of people eligible to do so actually did. Which suggests that there'd be actually be around 1.2m extra "remain" votes and around 500k fewer "exit" votes.
Though equally, it's surprisingly difficult to get a breakdown of deaths by age - there's a lot of C19 noise in the results, and it's generally presented as "deaths per 1000" which I CBA reworking into a single simple number.
For the above, I found a government statistic stating that 68.5% of deaths occurred in people aged over 75 and ran with that.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/death-in-people-aged-75-years-and-older-in-england-in-2017/death-in-people-aged-75-years-and-older-in-england-in-2017
However, I suspect that if you extended the age-range back to "people aged 60 or older", you'd probably end up with the percentage creeping up into the 80s (and thereby widen the remain/exit voting delta), but I'll leave that for people with more time and/or better google-foo.
tl;dr: the above numbers were scribbled on a beer mat, and any resemblance to any actual real numbers current or historical are entirely coincidental...
[*] STOP THE PRESS! SOMEONE'S ADMITTED THAT THEY WERE WRONG ON THE INTERNET!!1!
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Tuesday 20th October 2020 16:51 GMT diodesign
"political neutral factual tech reporting"
You're suggesting here that you don't like facts that go against your world view, which I can't do anything about except comment on it. It's something for you to wrangle with yourself.
"The Register's Powers That Be will remember that..."
This isn't how it works. We have in our mind, based on feedback, meeting people, reader surveys, etc, who our audience is and who we want to reach, and we write for all of them the best way we can with facts and reality. You can take it or leave it. We cannot please all the people all of the time.
We also can't get into a situation where we think "oh, better say something nice about X because 50% of readers like X and we don't want to lose them even though X screwed up."
If you're asking us to lie or bend the truth or say nice things about crap ideas to make people feel better, and others feel worse, then, yeah, we're not gonna do that, and have never done that TTBOMK.
And I'm talking news, BTW: if one of our columnists has a particular viewpoint, that's their headache.
C.
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Tuesday 20th October 2020 20:57 GMT Cederic
Re: "political neutral factual tech reporting"
You're suggesting here
I disagree with your interpretation of my comment and feel you are misrepresenting me.
I'm also removing the more lengthy reply I just posted because.. forget it. Your site, your choice. I understand that, and I won't waste your time with unwanted feedback.
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Wednesday 21st October 2020 09:13 GMT Roo
Re: "political neutral factual tech reporting"
"say nice things about crap ideas to make people feel better, and others feel worse, then, yeah, we're not gonna do that, and have never done that TTBOMK."
That's is precisely why I read the Reg. Thank you for sticking to your guns all these years !
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Monday 26th October 2020 01:29 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: El Reg becoming political now ?
"half of the US supports Trump "
That's BS, literally. Not even half of the *voters* support Trump, but about 40%.
40% of *those people who did vote*. That's about half of the people who *could vote*.
And then there's almost a third of the population who can't vote.
I'll do the math for you: 0.4*0.5*0.7 = 14% of the US supports Trump.
No more, no less.
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Tuesday 20th October 2020 14:58 GMT Lars
Re: El Reg becoming political now ?
@Khaptain
Here out in the big world there is very little love for Trump, European facists, there are some arround, have of cours understood too what he is and what he stands for. No surprise, as you know papa Fred was a KKK member.
As I wrote here.
There is no way to hide incompetence, dishonesty and sheer idiocy in the long run.
In the USA it's about Republicans and Democrats too, but in the big world it's only about a repulsive character who should not be in power in a great country like the USA.
When the head is rotten the body will suffer as they say.".
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Tuesday 20th October 2020 16:39 GMT diodesign
"this article just stinks of pre-election bias"
You mean, this article doesn't align with your, i dunno, your personal view of the world.
And you can't point at any and every article published before an election and say it's pre-election bias.
"I understand that Californians have a strong preference for lefty politics"
I think you're jumping to conclusions on the political leanings of individual staff members, not that it really matters. If someone does something stupid, we call it stupid -- doesn't matter where on the political map they are.
C.
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Tuesday 20th October 2020 17:24 GMT Filippo
Re: El Reg becoming political now ?
Mega-LCD factory being promised to be built in an unlikely place and then failing to be built is both IT and politics. Being an IT newssite means that you report IT. It doesn't mean that you don't report politics. So this gets reported.
You would have a legitimate complaint if you could honestly claim that The Register wouldn't have reported this if the factory had actually been built - but you can't. Every reader here knows that it would definitely have been reported at least as prominently (owing to how unlikely it was).
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Tuesday 20th October 2020 23:27 GMT jelabarre59
Re: El Reg becoming political now ?
I understand that Californians have a strong preference for lefty politics but do we honestly need to hear that on El Reg, this article just stinks of pre-election bias.
Yeah, I'd never have expected that Faceborg and TWITter would have subverted El Reg...
But I guess they have to pick on Donald Trump so they can forget about BoJo, if just for a little bit...
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Wednesday 21st October 2020 09:25 GMT Roo
Re: El Reg becoming political now ?
Speaking for myself, I don't pay much attention to BloJohnson because he is utterly irrelevant. He takes his marching orders from Lord Ashcroft, Rupert Murdoch, Russian Oligarchs and US Billionaire backed think-tanks. If he were to get shot tomorrow another stooge would step up with exactly the same policies.
Trump is awful, but I think folks need to be more worried about the fact the Republican Party are hellbent on creating a one-party state - and simply refuse to deal with anyone who isn't a fully paid up member or has enough wedge to buy them. The Tory party are going the same way, all bile and finger pointing, no actual policies, interest or ability to run a country.
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Wednesday 21st October 2020 13:54 GMT John H Woods
Re: one party state
Yes - this is increasingly happening in the countries without PR. It's not "we don't think they'll manage the country as well as we do" it's "they are *unfit* to run the country"
As the new "spooks=gods" bill now includes authorizing crimes up to and including murder in the interest of not just "national security" but of "economic well-being" it may not be long before there is 'legitimate' state-sponsored crime against political opponents.
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Tuesday 20th October 2020 11:30 GMT My other car WAS an IAV Stryker
Re: Typo
I prefer WisconSIN.
(Caveat: Born and bred in Minnesota -- Go Gophers; better dead than red! Anti-caveat: I did enjoy 4 years of college in Milwaukee, so I can say not all of it is bad. Caveat 2: I always referred to my location using the city name -- righty so since the university was adjacent to downtown -- without using the "W" word. Anti-caveat 2: Despite the other UMinn rivalry with Michigan, I've lived near Detroit over 15 years now, and my in-laws are UMich Wolverines fans, so I can tolerate some things. Caveat 3: Better Dead than Red still applies against Ohio State. Old habits die hard, and Badgers (still) Bite.)
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Tuesday 20th October 2020 09:26 GMT Anonymous Coward
Wisconsin project may go down as one of the biggest political and economic con-jobs
or again, it will be pedalled mercilessly as SUCCESS!!!! and 87% of respondents will claim they believe it is so, cause their President says so. Regardless, because, if facts contradict theory, so much the worse for the facts.
Here's another quote that pinpoints TWO factors to make it happen: "... it required, if it was to be made plausible, some distortion of facts and considerable ignorance".
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Tuesday 20th October 2020 10:01 GMT ibmalone
Human cost
What changes this from farce to tragedy is that people were forced out of their homes for it. Reply All has a good episode on how this played out for the residents in Mount Pleasant https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/wbhjwd
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Tuesday 20th October 2020 11:39 GMT codejunky
Will people learn?
"There is no LCD plant. In large part because the economics of it just don’t make sense: even when hiring people at $30,000 a year when Wisconsin’s median household income is about $60,000, it’s not possible to make a profit thanks to razor-thin margins."
People crying about low value manufacturing jobs being outsourced to other countries dont realise it happened for a reason. If we want mountains of regulation, cleaner air/water/land and the products we want then we need to produce it at a price people will pay.
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Tuesday 20th October 2020 15:15 GMT H in The Hague
Re: Will people learn?
"Unless you can get $1M/job in subsidies. Or you can import 'components' from your plants in China ..."
If you're good at building kit you don't need subsidies. I've got two customers who build serious equipment (mostly in NL & UK, elsewhere in Europe, one new plant in the US) and source quality components in Europe. Their kit is more expensive than that of their competitors but sells worldwide because it works well, is reliable and easy to maintain, and because the operators like it (i.e. lower TCO). But they are privately owned and can take a long-term view, and everyone from CEO to shopfloor operative is v focused on making ever better products. That's entrepreneurship.
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Wednesday 21st October 2020 08:41 GMT H in The Hague
Re: Will people learn?
"Unless you can get $1M/job in subsidies. Or you can import 'components' from your plants in China ..."
I think these folk produce all their products in the US, in Durango, CO:
https://stoneagetools.com/
And these guys mostly manufacture in the US, I think (except for some of their cheap consumer products):
https://thetorocompany.gcs-web.com/company-history
I don't work for these companies or use their products but some of my customers have links with them. Both companies export successfully worldwide.
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Tuesday 20th October 2020 15:34 GMT Alan Brown
Re: Will people learn?
The interesting thing is that CHINESE workers tend to cost more than American ones
Which is one of the reasons that Chinese manufacturers are heavily investing into production line automation (especially for the boring/error-prone pick'n'place and QC work)
Bernie et al bang on about "bringing jobs back" but they miss the point that the 12,000 worker car plant in Detroit became a 1500 worker car plant in Sonora(Mexico) and would become a 400-worker car plant in Tennessee (including the groundskeeping staff) if actually forced to return inside the USA
The jobs are gone. It's much cheaper to make things using machines and have a very few high skilled workers maintaining those machines (Technocrats in "Future Shock" parlance all the way back in 1970)
We should be concentrating on letting humans be good at what humans are good at (no, not killing each other) - regarding arts and culture as important, instead of superfluous. "Full employment" is a myth that hasn't existed in reality since the late 19th century because it hasn't NEEDED to exist
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Tuesday 20th October 2020 17:27 GMT Boris the Cockroach
Re: Will people learn?
This is the reality I work in
The company was founded about 30 odd yrs ago, using old manual machines, at its highest number of employees , it had 55 , 10 people doing setting and about 40 spinning handles/loading parts of some sort
All those old machines are long gone, apart from the toolmakers lathe, replaced by robotic machining cells, when they're all up and running* we do little more than swap raw part trays in and out and unload the finished stuff
The company employs 18 shop floor ppl over 2 shifts and we pump out about 100% more than when it was 55
Those jobs are NOT coming back, whatever some politician blathers on about.
*thats a fat chance given the reliabilty of one of the robots and the speed the cells chew through the work orders
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Friday 23rd October 2020 18:04 GMT MachDiamond
Re: Will people learn?
"The company employs 18 shop floor ppl over 2 shifts and we pump out about 100% more than when it was 55
Those jobs are NOT coming back, whatever some politician blathers on about."
And then the politicians go on about people having fewer kids and what can be done to encourage more breeding and population growth. In the next breath they are whinging about climate change caused by human activity.
The disappointing thing I see is automation isn't used very often to ensure consistent, high-quality products, but as a way to crank out cheap junk faster with less labor.
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Friday 23rd October 2020 18:00 GMT MachDiamond
Re: Will people learn?
"Bernie et al bang on about "bringing jobs back" but they miss the point that the 12,000 worker car plant in Detroit became a 1500 worker car plant in Sonora(Mexico) and would become a 400-worker car plant in Tennessee (including the groundskeeping staff) if actually forced to return inside the USA"
That's part of it. Another factor is regulations. In the First World, there is often several regulatory agencies overseeing some aspect of the manufacturing process and they all have incompatible requirements. They also have the right to inspect which often means shutting down the process to take measurements. These aren't scheduled visits and if your paint or plating line is being closed at random times to satisfy the permit, it takes a big bite out of profits. It can get to the point where moving overseas saves so much money that import tariffs are a round error. Another factor is raw materials and component parts. The closer you are to your supplier, the better. If your product has an LCD screen and customs has decided to hold up a container load for a deep inspection, your whole production could be down if you don't have enough of those items to last until that container gets released. BTW, the freight company charges penalty storage for the container even though there is nothing you can do.
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Tuesday 20th October 2020 15:14 GMT HellDeskJockey
It is ever thus with corporations
Motorola did the same thing to Illinois about 20 years back with the cellphone plant at Harvard IL. Today it's an empty building. If a company has to have tax incentives to come it's not worth it. Sadly our elected officials of all stripes line up to hand out money to corporations. See the recent Amazon HQ2 mess. If a corporation is holding a bidding war then it means that the economics don't make sense.
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Tuesday 20th October 2020 16:05 GMT jason_derp
Really?
“one of the most incredible plants I’ve ever seen"
Really? In comparison to, like, a tree? I looked at a picture of that plant. I live in a town of less than 20k and I've worked in facilities that dwarf thing. They're also built in the middle of nowhere, get no infrastructure money put into them, and still manage to look far healthier. I guess maybe I'm just harder to impress with all the experience I've gotten from what I'd call "going outside once".
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Tuesday 20th October 2020 17:44 GMT Version 1.0
Todays politics is irrelevant
The issue is that the US exported all its tech talent to China starting about 20 years ago, I have friends who were sent to China to train their Chinese "colleagues" to design and build the technology in China, all of them were "retired" after a year or two and returned to the US, none work in the technology world these days. So Foxconn are going to have issues hiring high level technical talent in the US these days ... want to design a power supply? It's easy we'll use these connectors, they are only one ohm resistance, that's good.
But we're running twenty amps through the connector... (see icon, it's a joke).
This is a result of the corporate politics, moving everything to China made companies a lot of money, it's going to cost money to get US talent back to the levels of 30-40 years ago.
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Tuesday 20th October 2020 20:07 GMT Yet Another Anonymous coward
Re: Todays politics is irrelevant
>The issue is that the US exported all its tech talent to China starting about 20 years ago
The US stopped creating any tech talent 20 years ago.
Looking around 20 employees, the CFO and Office Manager (and our lawyer) are the only non-immigrants or 1st generation children of immigrants.
All the PhDs and engineers are furriners or furring-looking enough to get stopped at the airport.
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Tuesday 20th October 2020 23:36 GMT jake
Re: Todays politics is irrelevant
"The US stopped creating any tech talent 20 years ago."
As a guy who does some hiring and firing for several of the Fortune 500s, I have to disagree with your assessment. Yes, they are a smaller percentage of the world-wide pool than they were 20 years ago, but the raw numbers as a percentage of the US population are still there. If you think you can't find any, you are looking in the wrong places.
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Wednesday 21st October 2020 20:16 GMT martinusher
Not really news for the British
The US is merely undergoing the changes that the UK did 40 years ago, what with the 'rust belt', chronic unemployment in 'sunset industries' and the occasional loudly trumpeted local government initiative that's going to cost the taxpayer a bundle but is going to deliver so many jobs. Its been such a reglular part of UK life that it ceased to be news decades ago (and it gets really sad to hear of once thriving industries now generating the odd dozen jobs or so servicing the imports). The whole Foxconn saga had the same ring to it and as a British ex-pat I just smiled to myself because I knew what was going to happen -- empty promises and screwed taxpayer. To a certain extent Foxconn is relatively innocent; we're still at the old school industrial mindset that says "drop factory in greenfield site in the middle of nowhere, preferably in a non-union state, people it with willing locals (who need the jobs so we can keep wages low) and we'll be successful. Unfortunately in today's manufacturing environment just being a warm body doesn't cut it any more; even the most menial sounding of jobs is now quite skilled because of the level of automation (which also restricts the number to be hired). Its not automation 'taking our jobs' as automation 'being better at it and often the only way we can assemble products these days'.
The only way forward is a comprehensive industrial and educational policy, a policy that's not going to bear immediate fruit. We also need to tweak the tax system so that offshoring either production or jobs isn't quite as lucrative. (I've watched the bottom being knocked out of the engineering job market in two countries now; it paradoxically causes a serious skills shortage initially but then you find that even if you wanted to build something like a ship or a computer you just lack the skills base to do this, especially if you want to be competitive globally.)
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Friday 23rd October 2020 18:27 GMT MachDiamond
How about the Obama Solyndra plant?
I get it, some towns that have lost a major employer incentivize new companies coming in to replace those jobs so the town doesn't die.
Most cities and smaller counties have elected leaders that aren't versed in big business and may be hooked on the "growth" drug. In the first case, they get steamrollered by a large corporation's solicitors when these incentive contracts are drawn up. In the second case, they don't look at what it will cost to add another several thousand people to their city all at once. More police, a new fire station, a new or expanded sewage plant, more city services employees, etc. Things that will require the issuance of bonds and have payment terms measured in decades when the company might be out from under the obligations in half the time.
Since the article is written by somebody in San Fransisco, I can see the reason that it bashes the President since he's not a LBQGTXR with strong socialist ties. I'm sure it was used by the President to make him look good, it doesn't seem like he had much to do with it. Take a look at the 68 million dollar tax abatement Tesla received for promising to build a new factory in Austin, Tx to build the world's ugliest pickup truck. Given the number of jobs talked about (I haven't seen the contract which should be public), the plant will need to be there for 50 years or more for Austin to break even. With a market cap of nearly $400 billion, why should they get the credits? Given the lack of profits from selling cars, Tesla seems like a big risk for such a massive investment. For a quarter of the $68mn, the city could have incubated quite a number of growing companies with an equal number of employees. The upside is that a few going out of business wouldn't be as big of a hit as when Tesla needs to idle the plant and make a few thousand redundant at some point in the future. Every car maker does this when the economy has a down turn.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
