News You Can Use: 12/19/2018

  • American Entrepreneurs Who Flocked to China Are Heading Home, Disillusioned

    Now disillusion has set in, fed by soaring costs, creeping taxation, tightening political control and capricious regulation that makes it ever tougher to maneuver the market and fend off new domestic competitors. All these signal to expat business owners their best days were in the past.

    The Trump administration is making a hard-nosed challenge to China using trade tariffs, investment controls and prosecution of technology thieves, and many in American business are cheering, if silently, having soured on the market after years of trying.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/american-entrepreneurs-who-flocked-to-china-are-heading-home-disillusioned-1544197068?ns=prod/accounts-wsj

  • 24 Amazon Workers Hospitalized After Robot Punctures Bear Spray In Warehouse

    One worker was in critical condition, ABC News reported, and 30 more were sickened and treated on the scene. The primary cause for hospitalization was difficulty breathing, according to NBC New York. Bear spray contains concentrated capsaicin, the primary ingredient in pepper spray for humans.

    Robbinsville town spokespeople initially said that a can of bear spray had fallen off of the shelf in the Amazon fulfillment center, NBC New York reported, but officials later said that the cause of the accident was a robot.

    An investigation revealed that “an automated machine accidentally punctured a nine-ounce bear repellent can, releasing concentrated capsaicin,” Robbinsville public information officer John Nalbone told ABC News. It’s unclear how the incident occurred.

    https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/qvqe85/24-amazon-workers-hospitalized-after-robot-punctures-bear-spray-in-warehouse

  • The opioid crisis is profitable. Blockchain tech can end that
  • The limits of coworking

    So why is everyone trying to turn your favorite neighborhood dinner spot into a part-time WeWork in the first place? Co-working offers a particularly compelling use case for under-utilized space.

    First, co-working falls under the same general commercial zoning categories as most independent businesses and very little additional infrastructure – outside of a few extra power outlets and some decent WiFi – is required to turn a space into an effective replacement for the often crowded and distracting coffee shops used by price-sensitive, lean, remote, or nomadic workers that make up a growing portion of the workforce.

    Thus, businesses can list their space at little-to-no cost, without having to deal with structural layout changes that are more likely to arise when dealing with pop-up solutions or event rentals.

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/12/15/the-limits-of-coworking/

  • Foxconn and the village: the $10B factory deal that turned one small Wisconsin town upside down

    I think that they were basing a lot of the deal on assumptions. When you ask them, “Hey, the size of this incentive package that you’re offering is so very large, and you have a village whose budget is usually between $18 to $20 million, and you guys are offering an incentive package of $760 million, something you have to change is the state law to allow the village to do because it’s considered beyond the prudent borrowing ratio.” They say it was justified because the size of the deal was so large.

    Meaning, Foxconn is offering them $10 billion, which is so much money, and so we obviously had to come back with an equally sweet deal to get them here. I mean, the problem with that is, when you talk to people who study Foxconn, or you just look at the way Foxconn has operated in other countries, is that they often come with a very large deal, and they walk back the deal to a place that seems comfortable for them.

    https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/6/18128133/foxconn-deal-wisconsin-factory-mount-pleasant-trump-reply-all-sruthi-pinnamaneni

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