On Call Reg readers in the US and UK are about to enjoy long weekends – perfect occasions, and timing, for a spot of spring cleaning. But as we discover in this week’s edition of On-Call, our weekly reader-contributed tale of tech support traumas, that might be one chore it’s wisest to set aside. To … Read more
In a clear shot at Amazon, Minnesota lawmakers became the third state congressional body in America to pass a law protecting warehouse workers from unfair quotas and allowing them proper time for toilet breaks and the occasional meal. Minnesota House Bill 36was passed on Wednesday in the state senate by a razor-thin 34-33 margin after … Read more
A notorious source of stolen credentials, genesis.market, has had its web site seized by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigations. Security vendor Sophos in 2022 described genesis.market as “an invitation-only marketplace” from which buyers can acquire “stolen credentials, cookies, and digital fingerprints that are gathered from compromised systems”. Sophos described the stolen data souk … Read more
Robots have conquered ProMat. The supply chain and logistics show is a kind of perfect microcosm of where the industry is heading. Many of the show’s main attractions have moved from center stage to the physical margins of the show floor, while competitors like 6 River Systems and Locus grab the spotlight — my interviews … Read more
Swedish telecoms group Telia Company has developed a new machine vision solution for inventory management in warehouses which runs on a hybrid (‘virtual’; semi-private) private 5G network. The project, part of its work with Finnish logistics group Transval, automatically tracks and reports on the movement of inventory, removing the need for manual inventory counts and … Read more
When Happy Dog worked on autonomous driving technology at Bosch in Japan and Germany, he realized that “many tasks were still manual as over 85% of warehouses have almost no automation at all.” To help address the problem, Aso co-founded LexxPlussa now two-year-old, Japan-based startup that designs and develop autonomous mobile robots to transport loads … Read more
Developers of Apache Iceberg — the open-source project that originated at Netflix — have launched sign-up of their first product, a data platform for the open table format, which has won support from industry big hitters including Cloudera, Google and Snowflake. Launching the service with a blog, the company said Tabular was “everything you need … Read more
MWC 2023, Barcelona. Cellular will now find your IoT sensor in “every warehouse, farmhouse, outhouse, and doghouse”, to (mis)quote Deputy Marshal Samuel Gerard; Deutsche Telekom has said it is working with Intelsat and Skylo to offer a satellite extension to its terrestrial cellular IoT coverage from next quarter. The German telco reckons it will be … Read more