Boeing’s venerable 747 faces an uncertain future, as do the 767 and the 777 classic. Those older airplane models have threadbare customer demand.
Robots, meanwhile, have slashed the number of people needed to paint a 777 wing, and more bots are on the way to automate other tasks.
With so many changes coming — from the Boeing Co. product line to the way the planes are made — what will the Chicago company’s Everett plant look like in a decade?
“Put photons on the target…..one guy, one laptop, with an XBox controller…”
Boeing has a pretty storied history with lasers and now its testing one that can take out UAVs and rockets regardless of where it’s installed. A recent trial run of the tech was conducted in Florida under some pretty grueling conditions (heavy fog, rain and wind), to prove that even a lower-powered version of High Energy Laser Mobile Demonstrator — HEL MD for short — is capable in a maritime environment. As Boeing tells it, the firm exceeded all of its goals and successfully engaged with some 150 different targets including drones and 60mm mortar shells with its 10 kilowatt laser. Wired says that the energy beam is powered by lithium ion batteries, and that the whole setup only requires a diesel-backed generator to keep the wheels of war defense moving. Meaning, running out of fuel, not munitions, is basically the only threat the energy weapon faces.
Perhaps most interesting is the fact that the armament isn’t controlled by some arcane set of switches and levers: an Xbox controller and a laptop do the dirty work. The next logical step for the HEL MD? Upping the system’s damage with a stronger, 50- or 60-kilowatt laser. Naturally.
Impressive video at the link.
You could have fooled us. Wait, actually, you did.
The best special effects are often the ones you never notice–which may make Ikea the most skillful special effects studio in the world. The Swedish furniture company has been aggressively ramping up its use of computer generated imagery in their
catalogs. Ikea’s first CG photo was a Bertil pinewood chair in 2006. By 2012, the Wall Street Journal reported that 25% of their products were CG. Today, that figure has ballooned to 75%.
Yes, that means three out of four things you see in an Ikea catalog are fake. The fixtures. The furniture. The walls. The light. Why? It beats shipping endless pieces of prototype furniture halfway across the world for photo shoots.
In 1939, a Boeing 314 Clipper took to the skies. It was the largest airliner at the time — with wings so big they could be serviced by crew members on interior walkways — yet still only carried around 25 passengers. Known as “flying hotels,” these new Clippers offered an upper flight deck, lower passenger cabin, lounge that converted into a dining room, separate men’s and women’s restrooms and even a swanky De Luxe bridal suite in the back.
Yet with the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941, all tourism to Hawaii was stopped by the U.S. military, and so was Pan Am’s six year reign of the skies.
Boeing appears to be investing in the employees, at least in their huge Charleston facility.
Boeing Co is expected to receive final approval on Thursday to build what could be a Silicon Valley-style corporate campus as part of a major expansion of its factory in South Carolina.
Boeing has asked officials to rezone 466 acres of newly acquired land for use as an “Aerospace Campus,” with dining and other consumer conveniences more familiar to employees of Amazon.com Inc or Google Inc than airplane factory workers.
Boeing, which tends to be guarded about any future expansion, said there no immediate plans to start erecting the new services, but it is not ruling them out.
The conceptual plan shows the “maximum utilization” of the site “as potential future business needs might dictate,” spokeswoman Candy Eslinger said.
The new zoning would enable Boeing to include restaurants, coffee shops, cafes, dry cleaners, office supply stores, travel agencies, barber shops, newsstands, convenience stores, and child care, health and postal facilities, according to plans filed with the city of North Charleston.
Uber, the controversial online cab and limo service, just launched Corner Store, an experimental grocery delivery service in Washington, D.C. The experiment is limited to two zones of the city, and is available on weekdays from 9 AM to 9 PM.
The service enhances Uber’s original business model — which allows anyone to become a paid driver — by turning its drivers into “personal shoppers.” Customers can use Uber’s app to order drugstore items like diapers, gum, and shaving cream, and drivers will make an instant delivery. There’s no minimum purchase, delivery fee, or tip — the driver is compensated by Uber, meaning that the company is likely running this experiment at a loss.
Beacons are taking the world of mobile by storm. They are low-powered radio transmitters that can send signals to smartphones that enter their immediate vicinity, via Bluetooth Low Energy technology. In the months and years to come, we’ll see beaconing applied in all kinds of valuable ways.
For marketers in particular, beacons are important because they allow more precise targeting of customers in a locale. A customer approaching a jewelry counter in a department store, for example, can receive a message from a battery-powered beacon installed there, offering information or a promotion that relates specifically to merchandise displayed there. In a different department of the same store, another beacon transmits a different message. Before beacons, marketers could use geofencing technology, so that a message, advertisement, or coupon could be sent to consumers when they were within a certain range of a geofenced area, such as within a one-block radius of a store. However, that technology typically relies on GPS tracking, which only works well outside the store. With beaconing, marketers can lead and direct customers to specific areas and products within a store or mall.
Quotes from Foundation, by Isaac Asimov
“Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right.”
The first pilot of the IoT aquaculture management system is being tested on an eel farm in Gochang, South Korea this month. A set of sensors in dozens of 20-foot-wide eel tanks wirelessly transmit data on water temperature, pH and dissolved oxygen levels to a sensor hub (in fact, the system probably works similarly to your smart home), which in turn connects to SK Telecom’s LTE network using a machine-to-machine radio.
