Category Archives: Automation

The other day I was shopping at a large retail store with a shopping cart full of groceries and other items for the house and yard.

I had too many items for the express lane, but with only four other checkout lanes open, I was tempted to try it anyway.

Instead, I was steered toward the dreaded self-checkout area, which really doesnt have enough room for everyone trying to use the registers there.

I dont mind checking out my own things it can be quite convenient when you have only a few items. If you have a lot, its not so convenient.

Automation is nothing new, of course, but more machines are doing things humans used to do.

For example, the Changying Precision Technology Co. in China makes mobile phones and uses automated production lines. The factory used to be run by 650 employees, but now just 60 people get the entire job done, while robots take care of the rest.

According to Monetary Watch, Luo Weiqiang, the general manager of the company, says the number of required employees will drop to 20 at some point. While there are fewer factory workers, the robots are producing more equipment (a 250 percent increase). Quality also has improved.

And youve probably seen the stories of some fast food chains experimenting with ordering kiosks, replacing the cashiers who normally do that. I wouldnt be surprised at seeing more in the future.

Still, not everything can or should be automated.

In an email sent recently by Ball State University, two Northeast Mississippi counties Chickasaw and Benton were said to be at risk to automation. Three counties were at risk to offshoring (jobs being moved to another country) include Pontotoc, Tippah and Chickasaw.

How Vulnerable Are American Communities to Automation, Trade and Urbanization? was prepared by the Center for Business and Economic Research and the Rural Policy Institutes Center for State Policy at Ball State University.

Automation is likely to replace half of all low-skilled jobs, says CBER director Michael Hicks. Communities where people have lower levels of educational attainment and lower incomes are the most vulnerable to automation. Considerable labor market turbulence is likely in the coming generation.

The analysis also found that roughly one in four of all American jobs are at risk from foreign competition in the coming years.

More worrisome is that there is considerable concentration of job loss risks across labor markets, educational attainment and earnings, Hicks says. This accrues across industries and is more pronounced across urban regions, where economies have concentrated all net new employment in the U.S. for a generation.

So should the residents and workers in those communities be worried about their jobs going to robots or going overseas?

Ive got a pretty good idea why Chickasaw, Tippah and Pontotoc made the list of offshoring manufacturing makes up more than 43 percent of the workforce in Chickasaw, 34 percent in Tippah and 54 percent in Pontotoc.

Its quite natural to assume that those manufacturing jobs can easily be sent overseas.

But using robots to build upholstered furniture isnt something youll see much of. Its still a very labor-intensive job that requires people.

By the way, the Ball State study said the 10 most off-shorable occupations included computer programmers, data entry keyers, electrical and electronic drafters, mechanical drafters and computer and information research scientists.

The study also said the 10 most automatable occupations included data entry keyers, mathematical science occupations, telemarketers, insurance underwriters and mathematical technicians.

So take that for what its worth.

View original post here:

Automation can make life better and worse | Business | djournal.com - Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal

Nearly two-thirds of Inland jobs are at risk in the next 20 years due to automation, according to researchers at the University of Redlands.

Warehouse workers lead a list from the Institute of Spatial Economic Analysis, a division of the universitys school of business.

The Inland Empire had 55,660 warehouse jobs in 2016, with 47,310 of them automatable, according to ISEA. The average annual wage was $29,010.

In second and third place were retail salespeople and cashiers, with 82,400 of 87,280 jobs endangered between them.

Food services leads ISEAs list of job categories that could be transformed, with 87.3 percent of jobs capable of being automated.

Farming and sales and retail came in second and third, with 86.6 and 8.25 percent of jobs automatable.

Overall, research ranked 62.7 percent of jobs in the Riverside/San Bernardino metropolitan area as expected to be automated. The region had1,362,440 jobs earning $63.8 billion in 2016, according to ISEA.

To be very clear, that just means the share of jobs that are technically automatable, said JohannesMoenius, director of the institute. That doesnt mean the number of jobs that are going to be lost.

The institute reached its conclusions by combining research from a 2013 Oxford University study on the future of employment with data from the U.S.Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The Oxford study numerically ranked 700 jobs for probability of computerization. On the low end were such occupations as recreational therapists, dentists and choreographers. On the high end were such occupations as restaurant hosts, tax preparers and telemarketers.

ISEA is rolling out its results in phases and plans to eventually have maps online showing automatable jobs by ZIP code.

The first phase looks at demographics, with black, Hispanic and young workers most at risk.

Differences in educational attainment likely explain the differences between demographic groups, wrote lead researcher Jess Chen. Young people, workers of Hispanic ethnicity and African-Americans all tend to have lower educational attainment and therefore tend to work in jobs at a higher risk of automation.

Women also fall in the higher-risk group.

Experts have long said the Inland Empire is held back by having too few workers with educations beyond high school.

ISEAs research came out at the same time as a report by the Public Policy Institute of California called Meeting Californias Need for College Graduates.

It says that college graduation needs to increase here, in Los Angeles County and in the San Joaquin Valley to avoid a shortfall of 1 million educated workers by 2025.

The Inland Empire and the San Joaquin Valley together only award about 12 percent of the states bachelors degrees, even though they produce 27 percent of Californias high school diplomas, the report states.

ISEAs report shows vulnerabilities but doesnt attempt to predict what will happen in job sectors. Chen and Moenius point out that technology has historically been a job creator.

For every local job that has come in that has been a high creativity job, you had four or five new jobs created that were not requiring a high level of education, said Moenius. But with automation, we just dont know whether this ratio will still hold. That is the big question. But there will be new jobs coming in.

Its starting to happen at Norco College, according to Kevin Fleming, dean ofinstruction, career and technical education.

Fleming, in a phone interview, said Norcos digital electronics program is partnering with Loma Linda University to work on wiring for robotic prosthetic limbs.

Its not as if the skills are so advanced everybody needs a PhD, he said of technologys advances.

Its important that our high schools, K-12, as well as junior colleges and universities continue to evolve the curriculum As a region we want to make sure our students are aware of whats coming. I think thats the challenge of our educational community, to make sure were cutting-edge.

Fleming does not foresee an end to the service-based economy.

Definitely our cars are more computerized. Theres technology and automation involved in car maintenance, but I dont think we could ever drive into a car dealership and not see a human being.

Moenius said technology creates jobs in three ways:

Launching entirely new professions, such as mobile app developers.

Replacing occupations, such as turning assembly line workers into engineers who program robots.

Lowering costs of goods, which makes them more in demand and increases the need for workers.

Look at the U.S. right now, he observed. We are close to full employment, so all the technological progress we have seen in the last decades has not led to mass unemployment. So in the long run, I think this is where we will end up again.

What I am worried about is that in the medium run (5 to 10 years) the speed of deployment of robots and AI in the service sector will be fast enough to lead to substantial labor savings, meaning unemployment, and that the economy will not be able to create new jobs at a speedy enough pace to keep up with this.

What it is: One of the spatial studies programs at the University of Redlands that helps business and government understand their communities.

What it does: Publishes reports retail, employment, housing, logistics and other topics.

Information:www.iseapublish.com

Source: ISEA

See the rest here:

Find out which local jobs are threatened by automation - Press-Enterprise

The FDAs latest draft guidance on the Drug Supply Chain Security Acts (DSCSA) product identifier requirements gives pharmaceutical manufacturers a little breathing room, as enforcement of the original November 2017 deadline gets pushed back a year.

But this news should not inject indolence into the industry, because the reality is, nothing has changed except that companies wont be facing enforcement of the requirementsuntil November of 2018.

To be clear: the law remains intact and this should not be seen as a sign that the FDA is easing off the industryat all. In fact, I asked a few industry experts what this change means, and it seems to be a friendly gesture by the FDA to give the companies that are way behind in compliance some more time. But there are no free rides here. In fact, it just means stricter enforcements in the future.

It is more than likely that this suspension of enforcement for 12 months will entail a complete zero-tolerance approach in 2018 as anyone not in compliance would technically have been in violation of the law for a full year, said Dave Harty, vice president of professional services at Adents, a maker of unit identification serialization and traceability software.

In short, pharmaceutical companies and CMOs producing prescription medicines will not be penalized if they do not meet the upcoming serialization deadline of November 2017, Harty explained. But, and this is very important, the original deadline remains unchanged. You still are legally required to serialize prescription medicines intended for distribution to the American market before the end of the year.

Peter Sturtevant, senior director of industry engagement for GS1 US, agrees. Even though it may seem like manufacturers have the luxury of an additional year, the FDAs enforcement delay has no direct impact on the Act itself.It would require an act of Congress to change DSCSA, he said. The question for manufacturers now becomes, when November 27th approaches, do we want to be compliant with the law or not? The FDA announcement means it will not enforce any penalties on manufacturers for non-compliance of the serialization requirement, but it still makes good business sense for manufacturers to continue to prepare their production lines for serialization.

Indeed, the law is not expected to change, even though theres been industry speculation that the Trump administration is angling to eliminate regulations that burden businesses unnecessarily. But this law is not about creating problems for pharma companies. Rather, it is meant to protect the consumer by keeping counterfeit products out of the supply chain.

The next obvious observation, however, is, how this will impact the downstream deadlines for repackagers (November 2018), distributors (November 2019) and dispensers (November 2020), which must comply with the same serialization mandates.

There is a strong possibility downstream trading partners will experience cascading discretionary delays as a result of this announcement, as we saw this happen the last time there were discretionary enforcement delays on two different occasions for phase one of DSCSA for the lot-based requirement, Sturtevant said.

Similarly, Dirk Rodgers, a regulatory strategist with Systech International and the founder of RxTrace, noted in an article that, by not enforcing the manufacturers requirement to apply the new DSCSA product identifier on all drug packages by this November, the FDA is forced to soften some of the deadlines for other segments of the supply chain. But, he added, that the new draft guidance makes it clear that the repackager, distributor and dispenser deadlines will still be enforced for product that the manufacturer introduced into commerce with the new DSCSA product identifier before November 27, 2017.

In addition, Rodgers noted that other than the product identifier enforcement delays, manufacturers should be aware that there are a number of requirements that will still go into effect on November 27, 2017. In his article, Rodgers stated: Manufacturers must begin to provide the transaction information, transaction history and transaction statement in electronic format only, except when selling directly to a licensed healthcare practitioner who is authorized to prescribe medication under State law, or to other licensed individuals who are under the supervision or direction of such a practitioner who dispenses product in the usual course of professional practice.

The bottom line here is that nothing has changed, because, as noted, Congress set the deadlines and only Congress can change the deadlines. And, Rodgers points out that because the FDA is the agency that enforces the law, they can choose to enforce it selectivelyparticularly to minimize possible disruptions in the distribution of prescription drugs in the United States.

For now, the FDAand hopefully the industryis still on track to meet the 2023 deadline for full serialization interoperability with track and trace for all supply chain trading partners.

So, pharma manufacturers, take a breath, but keeping moving forward on thisquickly.

Go here to see the original:

The DSCSA Delay: What it Means to Manufacturers - Automation World

Amazon's Alexa AI. Robots have the potential to both enrich human society and polarise wealth distribution. Rick Wilking : Reuters

As robots and automated services increase in number globally, scholars have been quick to point to the potential threat such developments pose to a harmonious society.

Are these concerns reasonable and do Arabian Gulf economies' unique features generate distinct dynamics?

Before discussing the threats, one must first acknowledge that labour-saving and productivity-enhancing technological innovations are fundamentally beneficial. If you are concerned about discoveries that diminish the need for human handsthen recall that once upon a time, in the days of hunter-gatherer societies, including the Gulf Bedouin civilisation, unemployment was zero, because everyone spent all day eking out a living. Labour-saving technology is a key reason why you can consume so much today, starting with farming, which allows society to feed itself while only dedicating a small percentage of the population to the task. The labour hours saved by replacing hunting and gathering with farming have ended up being used to produce more advanced commodities, such as clothes, carsand mobile telephones.

Therefore, when a fast-food restaurant introduces automated order-delivery stations, your first impulse should be: Great! Society can now produce more in total, as the people previously taking customer orders can now perform other jobs. A good illustration is ATMs. Prior to their invention, most bank employees were cashiers, leading to big restrictions on the speed and availability of cash withdrawal services. Today, most bank employees are able to deliver advanced services at a low cost, such as investment advice or help with managing a small business, precisely because technology has freed them up to perform such tasks.

However, technological progress is not unambiguously desirableand it carries two risks.

The first is unfavourable changes in the distribution of wealth and income. While innovation increases the total size of the economic pie, it may also modify the sizes of the slices that people earnand, in particular, certain groups may lose even if society as a whole gains, or inequality might become very acute. For example, when Japan developed cultured pearls in the early 20th century, the world instantly became able to produce more pearlsbut pearl divers in Bahrain lost their livelihoods. The younger ones may have been mentally nimble enough to pursue alternative professionsbut the older ones were essentially doomed to a lower standard of living.

Why not just compensate those losing out, possibly by taxing those benefiting from the improvement? Many people think that is the best way to deal with technological progress, including the rise of robots, but practical implementation can be challenging. In particular, correctly identifying winners and losers in a dynamic economy is nearly impossibleand so any rule will inevitably encourage fictitious claims of being a loser rather than a beneficiary, in an attempt to secure handouts and avoid taxes. This is why some favour restrictions on a the roll out of a technology, most famously the Luddites of the British Industrial Revolution, who destroyed the textile weaving machines that threatened their livelihoods.

The second risk associated with technological progress is that it might change our culture and norms in an undesirable way, independently of concerns relating to inequity. For example, many Gulf citizens today complain that smartphones have stunted peoples ability to engage in sustained, meaningful conversations, be they at the dinner table or in the majlises that constitute the backbone of social relations. In the case of robots, there is a fear that society's more modestly skilled workers will suffer a crisis of self-esteem if technology leaves them unable to hold down a regular job, even if they are compensated financially. Most would agree it would be unhealthy to have 20 per centof a labour force catatonically staringat the TV out of sheer boredom.

In the case of the GCC, I recently asked my University of Bahrain students (MA public policy) to predict any GCC-specific threats or opportunities relating to robots and automation. A popular response reflected the uneasy relationship that Gulf nationals sometimes have with migrant workers. While the economic benefits accruing to citizens and migrants from the abundance of foreign workers are evident to most observers, Gulf citizens tend to fixate on the fact that they have become minorities in their own countriesand feel that their cultural norms are threatened. For example, in The Dubai Mall, the operator ofthe establishment has arranged for signs reminding patrons to refrain from wearing revealing clothing or physical displays of affectionbecause nationals are too small in number to set an effective example.

Since migrant workers in the Gulf are concentrated in low-skilled jobs, some Gulf citizens welcome the opportunity to displace these workers with robots, perceiving it as an opportunity to reaffirm traditional Islamic and Gulf values.

Whatever ones inclination, it is worth bearing in mind two maxims regarding technological progress. First, as the Luddite example indicates, people have been fearing innovation for centuries. Yet, the world is a better placeand so we should ease our concerns. Second, since the middle of the 18th century, nobody has had much success stopping progress.

We welcome economics questions from our readers through email on omar@omar.ecor on twitter via@omareconomics

Read more:

The risks and rewards of automation - The National

When it comes to continuous monitoring for cybersecurity and its companion strategy of continuous diagnostics and mitigation federal agency practitioners need to be realistic about how they apply the words monitoring and continuous.

Thats according to Peter Schawacker, Director of Security Intelligence Solutions at Optiv, a cybersecurity products reseller.

Too often, he says, management presumes there will be eyes on glass and people watching stuff. In reality, that mode is really only operative during the hunting phase, after the network instrumentation signals something is wrong and its time to use human intervention.

That model is too slow for todays threat perpetrators, Schawacker says. He says agencies must move more aggressively into automation of the kill-chain monitoring, detection, evaluation and action, and free up more time for people to do predictive analysis.

Host

Tom Temin, Federal News Radio

Tom Temin has been the host of the Federal Drive since 2006. Tom has been reporting on and providing insight to technology markets for more than 30 years. Prior to joining Federal News Radio, Tom was a long-serving editor-in-chief of Government Computer News and Washington Technology magazines. Tom also contributes a regular column on government information technology.

Guest

Peter Schawacker, Director of Security Intelligence Solutions, Optiv

Peter Schawacker (pronounced like shaw-walker) serves as the Director of Security Intelligence Solutions for Optivs Services Center of Excellence. He is an intrapreneneur who mines Optiv for opportunities to solve client problems and grow the company. A veteran of the Information Security industry, as part of the early days of EarthLink in the mid-1990s. Later, he ran Citigroups SOC, before taking on technical, sales and marketing roles with ISS, NFR, McAfee and Tenable. Prior to his current role at Optiv, he built SIEM consulting services for Alchemy Security and Accuvant. Mr. Schawacker resides in Mexico City.

Peter Schawacker, Director of Security Intelligence Solutions, Optiv Peter Schawacker (pronounced like shaw-walker) serves as the Director of Security Intelligence Solutions for Optivs Services Center of Excellence. He is an intrapreneneur who mines Optiv for opportunities to solve client problems and grow the company. A veteran of the Information Security industry, as part of the early days of EarthLink in the mid-1990s. Later, he ran Citigroups SOC, before taking on technical, sales and marketing roles with ISS, NFR, McAfee and Tenable. Prior to his current role at Optiv, he built SIEM consulting services for Alchemy Security and Accuvant. Mr. Schawacker resides in Mexico City.

Read this article:

Optiv's Schawacker says automation must be future of continuous monitoring - FederalNewsRadio.com

How, exactly, are people supposed to talk to each other online? For Facebook, this is as much an operational question as it is a philosophical one.

Last week, Facebook announced it has two billion users, which means roughly 27 percent of the worlds 7.5 billion people use the social media network. In a post at Facebooks Hard Questions blog, the company offered a look at the internal logic behind how the company manages hate speech, the day before ProPublica broke a story about apparently hypocritical ways in which those standards are applied. Taken together, they make Facebooks attempt to regulate speech look impossible.

Language is hard. AI trained on human language, for example, will replicate the same biases of the users, just by seeing how words are used in relation to each other. And the same word, in the same sentence, can mean different things depending on the identity of the speaker, the identity of the person to which its addressed, and even the manner of conversation. And thats not even considering the multiple definitions of a given word.

What does the statement 'burn flags not fags' mean?, writes Richard Allan, Facebooks VP of Public Policy for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. While this is clearly a provocative statement on its face, should it be considered hate speech? For example, is it an attack on gay people, or an attempt to 'reclaim' the slur? Is it an incitement of political protest through flag burning? Or, if the speaker or audience is British, is it an effort to discourage people from smoking cigarettes (fag being a common British term for cigarette)? To know whether its a hate speech violation, more context is needed.

Reached for comment, a Facebook spokesperson confirmed that the Hard Questions post wasnt representative of any new policy. Instead, its simply transparency into the logic of how Facebook polices speech.

People want certain things taken down, they want the right to say things, says Kate Klonick, a resident fellow at the Information Society Project at Yale, they want there to be a perfect filter that takes down the things that are hate speech or racist or sexist or hugely offensive.

One reason that Facebook may be parsing how it regulates speech in public is that, thanks to a trove of internal documents leaked to the Guardian, others are reporting on how Facebooks internal guidance for what speech to take down and what speech to leave up.

"According to one document, migrants can be referred to as 'filthy' but not called filth,'" reports ProPublica, "They cannot be likened to filth or disease 'when the comparison is in the noun form,' the document explains."

Klonick studies how Facebook governs its users, and while the kinds off moderation discussed in the Hard Questions post arent new, the transparency is. Says Klonick, "It's not secret anymore that this happens and that your voice is being moderated, your feed is being moderated behind the scenes."

To Klonicks eye, by starting to disclose more of what goes on in the sausage factory, Facebook is trying to preempt criticism of how, exactly, Facebook chooses to moderate speech.

Theres nothing, though, that says Facebook has to regulate all the speech it does, beyond what's required by the law in the countries where Facebook operates. Several examples in the Hard Questions post hinge on context: Is the person reclaiming a former slur, or is it a joke among friends or an attack by a stranger against a member of a protected group? But what happens when war suddenly changes a term from casual use to something reported as hate speech?

One example from Hard Questions is how Facebook choose to handle the word "moskal," a Ukranian slang term for Russians, and "khokhol," a Russian slang term for Ukrainians. When a conflict between Russia and Ukraine broke out in 2014, people in both countries started reporting the terms used by the opposing side as hate speech. In response, says Allan, "We did an internal review and concluded that they were right. We began taking both terms down, a decision that was initially unpopular on both sides because it seemed restrictive, but in the context of the conflict felt important to us."

One common use of reporting features on websites is for people to simply report others with whom they disagree, invoking the ability of the site to censor their ideological foes. With the conversion of regular language to slurs in the midst of a war, Facebook appears to have chosen to try and calm tensions itself, by removing posts with the offending words.

"I thought that example was really interesting because he says explicitly that the decision to censor those words was unpopular on both sides," says Jillian York, the EFF's Director for International Freedom of Expression. "Thats very much a value judgement. Its not saying 'people were killing themselves because of this term, and so were protecting ourselves from liability;' which is one thing that they do, one thats a little more understandable. This is Facebook saying, 'the people didnt want this, but we decided it was right for them anyway.'"

And while Facebook ultimately sets policy about what to take down and what to leave up, the work of moderation is done by people, and like with Facebooks moderation of video, this work will continue to be done by people for the foreseeable future.

"People think that its easy to automate this, and I think that that blogpost is why its so difficult right now, how far we are from automating it," says Klonick. "Those are difficult human judgements to make, were years away from that. These types of examples that Richard Allen talked about in his blog post are exactly why were so far from automating this process."

Again, Facebook is deciding the rules and standards for speech for over a quarter of the worlds population, something few governments in history have ever come close to or exceeded. (Ancient Persia is a rare exception). With the enormity of the task, its worth looking at not just how Facebook chooses to regulate speech, but why it chooses to do so.

"On scale, moderating content for 2 billion people is impossible," says York, "so why choose to be restrictive beyond the law? Why is Facebook trying to be the worlds regulator?"

Read more here:

Facebook can't solve its hate speech problem with automation - Popular Science

Most perceive automation in accountingas automated software, but in reality, automation-driven accounting software actually helps accountants automate all of their processes.

Accounting is a combination of work you do as a human being and the work the software does (storage, defined algorithms validating data and performing defined computations, and so on).

Let us say at your practice the current human-to-machine ratio is 3:1 (the time taken by humans to perform a process from start to end to the time taken by the software to perform its part in that process). Moreover, 75 percentof your particular process involves manual work and the software does 25 percentof it.

What automation does is that it keeps moving this ratio more and more from humans to the software. Let us say it becomes 2:1, so 66 percentby humans and 33 percentby the software. Automation, in effect, identifies the work only humans can do, and that, in essence, is the work you should be doing in any case.

Humans Should Do the Work That Only Humans Can Do

The real impact of automation is life-liberating. As a child, when you were asked, What will you be when you grow up? I am sure that you did not reply, I will take data from A and put it into B. Unfortunately, accounting software made you do exactly that, until now that is. Butautomation is making things different now.

Let us take an example: Write-up work is one of the services provided by a majority of accounting firms. It used to be (and still is for many firms) one of the most manual processes at any accounting firm. Automation started changing that. It is interesting to take a quick snapshot of the progress of automation in the write-up work.

Automation Today

Now, automation technologies are more advanced. They bring in not only the bank transactions, but also the check images and bank statement PDFs. Gone are the manual efforts to follow up with clients to obtain this information. The only manual effort is to code the transactions to correct accounts and to seek clarification if the payee is an individual (as most businesses info can be Googled to identify type of expense).

Even bank feed automation is getting smarter. It remembers which vendor/payee transaction was classified to which account, and the next time accounting software imports the bank transactions, transactions get automatically coded to the correct account.

What remains manual is to classify NEW vendor and payee transactions,and to quickly review if you need to re-classify any transactions. The automated software does most of the work; very less manual work.

Thats not the end. Technologies are getting smarter. Artificial intelligence and machine learning, combined with the ability cloud gives, can (and will) generate accurate, crowd-sourced intelligence to code the transactions to the correct account.

For example, if several other businesses and accountants have a coded transaction for a particular vendor to a particular account, the software will suggest the account to use and it will be based on the type of business. And with secure digital checks, the accounting software can email out several digital checks in just one click, with no need to print or mail checks at all.

All that you need is vendors/payees email addresses; very less manual work.

Use this formula: In the points mentioned above, wherever you see the words manual work,think of it as time and cost and loss of profit. Manual Work = Time, Cost, Loss of Profit

Several research studies prove that humans are more driven by loss aversion than by gains.

Soinstead of having a growth target,reframe it as a loss reduction target. Instead of saying, We will grow our revenue by 20 percentthis year,say, We are losing 20 percentof revenue to our manual process inefficiencies (which, in fact, is a fact if you are not embracing and leveraging automation).

The real impact: Life-liberating. The sheer productivity growth will mean that your firm can service far more number of clients without adding any more overhead and staff.

More and more of your staff will use their knowledge and experience, rather than just using their hands and fingers. It will give them more job satisfaction because they will get an increasing sense of meaningful contribution to your firms success, as well as that of your clients.

And yes, the profitability will increase to levels you never thought was possible. With automation, you can make much more, if you choose to automate your processes.

Originally posted here:

Why Automation Will Liberate You - Accountingweb.com

My evenings tend to be rather dull and uneventful, but I was excited on that particular night. I locked my door, dimmed the lights, turned off my phones notifications and giddily pulled out my new toy: the Fleshlight Launch.

Disclaimer: This review contains inappropriate language. Please find something else to readunless youre 18 or older.

For those unfamiliar: the Fleshlight Launch is a fully automated masturbation robot that can make your head spin at 180 strokes per minute figuratively and literally. It is also threateningly large and happens to resemble the sort of contraption aliens in movies give to male abductees theyve selected for reproduction.

Credit: Fleshlight

The device is the latest collaboration between seasoned adult toy makers Kiiroo and Fleshlight, which have previously worked together on other high-tech teledildonic solutions for long distance dalliances like the Onyx and the Pearl.

As with their previous team efforts, Kiiroo handled the technology side of things, while Fleshlight provided high quality materials for the actual masturbatory accessories. This also means that the Launch is fully compatible with practically any Fleshlight toys for men.

The Fleshlight Launch comes with two modes: manual and interactive. Unlike the manual option which puts you in control of the speed and frequency of strokes at which the device operates, the interactive mode is entirely hands-free and fully synced up with the videos you watch so you wont even have to lift a finger.

You would usually be expected to fully charge the device before using it which could be a nuisance for users yearning immediate satisfaction but I made sure I was adequately prepared for my first time.

I had comfortably settled into my couch, stocked up on lube and lined up several windows of raunchy videos to choose between.

Setting up the Launch for first-time usage was fairly straightforward. Once youve locked in the Fleshlight into the Launch by gently applying clockwise rotating moves, youll hear a brief clicking noise this should be your cue that the device is ready to use.

After youve made sure the Fleshlight is properly screwed into the Launch, you can lube up the device and proceed to turn it on by pressing the button at the front.

Kiiroo and Fleshlight offer their own lubing solutions, but the toy works with practically any water-based lubricants though be warned that denser lubricants could make it difficult for the device to perform strokes as intended.

While it was the interactive mode that initially piqued my curiosity, one thing I had forgotten to prep up in advance was connecting the Launch to the corresponding FeelMe app the platform that actually powers the fully automated experience.

But since my impatience was growing stronger, I ultimately decided to put off testing the interactive mode for next time and swiftly inserted my baldheaded eagle into the Fleshlight Launch.

As an absolute newbie to adult accessories, the sensation felt oddly defamiliarizing though by no means unpleasant and I hadnt even turned on the device yet.

Once things get to that point, the first thing you will notice is the steady mechanical rhythm of the strokes.

Unlike a real human being, the movements the Launch performs are awkwardly machine-like and methodical; and while you can manually modify the speed and distance of the strokes, it takes a while to get the hang of the touch sensitive strip.

The good thing is that once you master the controls, playing with the toy gets exponentially more fun. While I found using the touch strip somewhat distracting at the beginning, I eventually got accustomed to the sensation and gradually began to luxuriate in the activity.

Not only did the distraction aspect vanish with continuous practice, but it also made switching between the whole range of stroke motions much more intuitive and natural. Perhaps you will like the sensation from certain modes more than others, but this is up to you to figure out along the way.

Credit: Fleshlight

In fact, by the time I got to mess around with the interactive feature, I had grown so accustomed to the manual option that I found it difficult to take pleasure in the fully automated mode.

One thing that made things less user-friendly is that, while FeelMe offers a wide selection of pornographic content to choose from, the platform had made only a handful of synced videos available to stream for freeat the time of testing.

But since Pornhub recently launched its own section specifically curated with interactive content, diversity of choice will likely no longer be an issue in the near future.

Disregarding FeelMes limited catalogue, the interactive experience was no less delightful than the manual mode especially when the stroke motions aligned with the action on screen. To co-ordinate movements, Kiiroo uses a technology it calls subtitling which relays time-based signals to the Launch in order to instruct it when and how to perform strokes.

The interactive mode is also compatible with VR for a fully immersive experience, but Im yet to test out the functionality though I suspect it will make the sensation all the more potent (assuming synchronization is on point).

For those interested to learn more about the syncing tech that powers the device, you can take a peek at the chat our editor-in-chief Alejandro Tauber had with Kiiroo chief technology officer Maurice Op de Beek earlier this year at SXSW:

Sexual fulfilment is a very personal thing and this will significantly influence the way you experience the Fleshlight Launch. One way to think about this is in terms of what youre hoping to replace or spice up with the device.

Another thing to keep in mind is that Kiiroo has decided to offer the starter Launch kit without the Fleshlight included. The Launch currently retails at $200, but you can take advantage of the current promo deals and cop aFleshlight pre-packaged set for $250 now.

For those seeking to relieve sexual frustration, the Launch might fall short of providing the intimate and in-the-moment nature of sharing an experience with another human being; even though the interactive mode does elevate the sensation to something a little more unpredictable and exciting than an ordinary wank session.

Individuals seeking to diversify their masturbation habits are more likely to find the Launch a worthy addition to their at-home routine especially with the added capability for control that the touch sensitive strips enable.

But chances are the device will appeal the most to long-time Fleshlight users looking for new exciting ways to jazz up their masturbation habits.

The Fleshlight Launch fundamentally alters all three of these experiences: while it will noticeably dull certain sensations, it will also markedly augment other aspects that you have only felt marginally in the past.

As someone who has come to appreciate the single life, the Launch has made it easier for me to balance between my urges for instant gratification and prolonged physical intimacy.

Yes, I still find myself craving sex and an occasional hand-enabled rub: and chances are the device will never eliminate these desires. What it does though is make me experience these sensations much more viscerally when an opportunity presents itself; and this is perhaps the thing about the Launch I cherish the most.

But be advised that no matter the reason why youre buying the Fleshlight Launch you will need to give yourself some time before you realize the full potential of this quirky sex robot.

Once you do though, it will entirely change the way you masturbate.

The good folks at Kiiroo gave us one Fleshlight Launch to give away. Tag someone who you think deserves or needs one in the comments or send an email with the subject line This is why I need a dick-sucking robot to dimitar [at] thenextweb.com. Dont forget to let us know the reason why!

Fleshlight Launch on Kiiroo

Read next: EU funded InVID launches a fake video news debunker

Read the original:

Fleshlight Launch Hands-on: How I tried outsourcing masturbation to automation - TNW

ABB announced today that it has completed its acquisition of B&R (Bernecker + Rainer Industrie-Elektronik GmbH), a provider of product- and software-based open-architecture solutions for machine and factory automation.

B&Rs products, software and services in PLCs, industrial PCs and servo motion-based machine and factory automation will no doubt strengthen ABBs position in the market. The acquisition marks a milestone in its ABBs Next Level business strategy.

Following the acquisition of B&R, we are the only industrial automation provider offering customers in process and discrete industries the entire spectrum of technology and software solutions around measurement, control, actuation, robotics, digitalization and electrification, said ABB CEO Ulirch Spiesshofer.

B&R will become part of ABBs Industrial Automation division as a new global business unit called Machine & Factory Automation, implementing ABBs PLC activities. The unit is headquartered in Eggelsberg, Austria, ABBs new global center for machine and factory automation.

However, this doesnt mean B&Rs customers will lose support, as ABB has committed to investing in the expansion of B&Rs operations.

Our commitment to growing the business of B&R is demonstrated by our investment in a new R&D center, which is to be built next to its headquarters in upper Austria, Spiesshofer said.

The co-founders of B&R, Erwin Bernecker and Josef Rainer, will act as advisors during the integration process.

The B&R team is proud to be part of ABB and its leading Industrial Automation division, said Hans Wimmer, former managing director of B&R and now managing director of ABBs Machine & Factory Automation business unit. With our compatible cultures, complementary strengths and leading technologies, ABB and B&R will have an even more compelling value proposition to offer our customers in the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

For more information, visit the ABB and B&R websites.

Go here to see the original:

ABB Completes Acquisition of B&R Automation - ENGINEERING.com

The struggling hedge fund world has seen more and more firms turn to computers for the heavy lifting of analytics in recent years. Quant firms have come to dominate large portions of the industry. In the most recent edition of Institutional Investor's Alpha's list of largest hedge funds in the world by AUM, quant firms figured prominently at the top of the rankings. (See also: What are the Biggest Hedge Funds in the World?)

Particularly at a time when client confidence in hedge funds is faltering, many managers are seeing computers as a way to secure the quickest, most thoroughly-researched bets. And yet, there are other managers who are pushing in the opposite direction, recognizing that old-fashioned human decision-making has something to offer as well.

A recent profile by Bloomberg introduces four significant money managers who have moved toward human decision-making and analysis in recent weeks. The report indicates that investment decisions at Winton, a $30.6 billion hedge fund that has a 20-year history of using computer algorithms for trading purposes, must still ultimately be made by humans.

Michael Hintze, a manager of another unnamed fund, indicated in the report that computer models are useful for spotting anomalies in the market, but these models are rarely able to suggest the best ways to answer these anomalies or turn them into worthwhile investment opportunities. Other managers believe that human beings are more useful when it comes to detecting patterns.

Why the sudden deference to human decision-making, which is, of course, prone to human emotion, misjudgment, and more? In recent years, many workers in the finance industry have wondered if the days of human employees are numbered. Some money managers have experimented with automating all sorts of areas of the sector, from securities underwriting to the management of portfolios. What's more, major figures in the finance world and the tech landscape have cautioned that machine learning may usher in a new wave of automation. (See also: Artificial Intelligence Hedge Funds Outperforming Humans.)

Executives at Winton indicated in a letter that there is, in fact, room for automation in the hedge fund industry. Nonetheless, those leaders believe that computers are not ready to make independent investment decisions. They still require humans to run the operations and oversee decisions at every stage. "The notion that human involvement in investment management should, or even could, be fully automated is wide of the mark," the executives wrote.

So how should humans ensure that they remain viable in a world increasingly dominated by machines? The simple answer is that workers should be prepared to diversify their abilities, be flexible in adopting technological partners, and, perhaps above all, be confident that they are very much necessary in order to ensure that everything functions as it should.

See the original post:

As Hedge Funds Move To Automation, Some Managers Prefer Human Analysts - Investopedia