When holiday hiring and automation meet. Retailers and logistics operators are shopping for robots in the runup to the holiday season, The Wall Street Journal's Jennifer Smith reports.
-
France-based Geodis SA is boosting its robotic workforce by 75% to help workers at its U.S. warehouses fulfill fast-fashion orders.
-
XPO Logistics Inc., which is hiring 20,000 human workers for the seasonal rush, is advancing its purchase of millions of dollars’ worth of robots the company expects to need next year.
A contributing factor: age. Many seasonal warehouse workers are over 55, said Melonee Wise, chief executive of Fetch Robotics Inc. “They have back pain and knee pain, and not everyone is up for walking.”
China, Silicon Valley can't quit each other. Technology investors, entrepreneurs, attorneys and others tell The Wall Street Journal's Heather Somerville that investment ties between the two countries remain tight despite a 2018 law intended to curb foreign access to sensitive technologies.
The scene. Last month, more than 10,000 people flocked to a tech gathering of Chinese and American tech workers and investors. Speakers included scientists affiliated with U.S. national labs. “Some people in Washington want to decouple the two economies. We disagree,” Ren Faqiang, China’s deputy consul general in San Francisco, told the audience.
Google to face court on claims it misled Australians on personal data. The Australian regulator’s case against Google focuses on two Google Account settings: one labeled ‘Location History,’ and another labeled ‘Web & App Activity.’ It alleges that Google misled consumers from January 2017 to late 2018 by staying silent about the fact that both settings had to be switched off to stop the company collecting data. (WSJ)
Whole lotta crazy. Since Amazon bought Whole Foods in 2017, stores have been flooded with what the company calls Prime Now shoppers, under pressure to deliver customers' groceries. As these gig-economy shoppers dash through aisles and bang carts into shelves of quinoa, there is less room for the niceties that many customers felt justified the chain’s “whole paycheck” reputation for high prices, report the Journal's Heather Haddon and Jaewon Kang.
Behold the city of the future. E-commerce has left New York City's streets even more clogged with idling delivery trucks and its bridge link to the mainland the most congested interchange in the country, says the New York Times.
Here's a prime number. "The average number of daily deliveries to households in New York City tripled to more than 1.1 million shipments from 2009 to 2017."
Alphabet makes offer for FitBit. The company's wearables track daily steps, distance traveled and calories burned, among other metrics. (Reuters)
|