foxconn - Gizmodo

posts about #foxconn more →
Rumor: Is This the Apple Tablet's SIM Card Tray
Nokia ARM-Based Smartbook To Follow Booklet 3G?
Foxconn Increases Compensation For iPhone Suicide Employee's Family
Foxconn Building Apple Tablet for September or October Launch?
Foxconn Employee Describes His Oppressed Life from Inside the Factories
Foxconn Worker Had 16 iPhone Prototypes, Girlfriend Given MacBook
iPhone Leak Suicide: Where Is the Lost Gen iPhone Prototype?
Foxconn iPhone Worker Sun Danyong's Final Messages
Chinese Paper Reports iPhone Worker Not Tortured, Yet Worker Implies Force Was Used
Why Apple Will Probably Keep Doing Business With Foxconn After iPhone Leak Death

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Thee Sea
10/26/09

In reply to Rumor: Is This the Apple Tablet's SIM Card Tray
Okay, seriously?

Foxconn makes parts for a -lot- of companies. A lot of companies that make cell phones too. How do we know this isn't for a new Motorola smart phone or something like that? #impending
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Jrsy Devil's Advocate®
10/26/09

In reply to Rumor: Is This the Apple Tablet's SIM Card Tray
$14.05 for a SIM card tray.

Yep, that confirms it's Apple alright. #impending
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ludwigk
10/26/09

In reply to Rumor: Is This the Apple Tablet's SIM Card Tray
*shrug* I don't really make anything of this. Just sounds like he means that they need a mobile content strategy for the current generation of devices which will scale effortlessly to future unnamed devices as well. Sorry, my conspiracy hat is at the dry cleaners this weeks... #nytimesexecmentions
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weatherman
08/26/09

In reply to Nokia ARM-Based Smartbook To Follow Booklet 3G?
what the hell's a smartbook?
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Hello Mister Walrus
08/26/09

@weatherman: It looks like it's the alternate word for netbook for people that don't want to call them netbooks.
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Justapspfan
07/28/09

In reply to Foxconn Increases Compensation For iPhone Suicide Employee's Family
So what about the girlfriend, does she get a PC now?
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Lite: is on a boat. promoted this comment Justapspfan was starred Justapspfan was unstarred

Lite: hates Illinois Nazis
07/28/09

@Justapspfan: According to Microsoft, the Apple costs more, and therefor would be the bigger compensation amount.
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player_of_games
07/28/09

In reply to Foxconn Increases Compensation For iPhone Suicide Employee's Family
So really Foxconn are admitting responsibility for the man's death? I'm sure things work differently in China then here in Western Europe but isn't that's a strange thing to do considering the rumours of shady goings on?

He wasn't killed in a workplace accident so there would be no reason for them to give such a payment to the family except PR, guilt and/or as a deal.

I can imagine the police investigation that follows being thwarted at every turn, a la Beverly Hills Cop III.
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Lite: hates Illinois Nazis
07/28/09

@player_of_games: Actually, the CEO of motorola (or Old CEO?) is reported to have worked the guy who invented the RAZR into an early grave.
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player_of_games
07/29/09

@Lite: That's awful. But just the kind of behaviour I'd expect from the company that helped create the G5, one of the most evil chips in the history of computing.

I believe the original prototype is currently being kept underground in a secret bunker and sprayed round the clock with liquid nitrogen to keep the chip frozen and the world safe from its terrible power.

If it were to escape ... [shudders]
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pdditty
07/28/09

In reply to Foxconn Increases Compensation For iPhone Suicide Employee's Family
A lump sum payment of $52K and $4K on an annual basis aint bad at all. They dont get paid a lot over there so I'm equating this as the family hitting a small lotto. Remember Foxconn did not have to pay them anything at all
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Lite: hates Illinois Nazis
07/28/09

@pdditty: Actually, they did. Otherwise the general growing outrage would cost them a lot of money in companies jumping ship eventually.
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Hi, I'm God
07/28/09

In reply to Foxconn Increases Compensation For iPhone Suicide Employee's Family
50 grand is a ton of money in China. You could buy... 150 iPhones, a bottle of scotch, a sweatshop, and Tawain.
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Lite: hates Illinois Nazis
07/28/09

@Hi, I'm God: Well let's see:

Get harassed until you kill yourself in China: Get $52,600 + residuals until Foxconn kills the parents.
Die because you're an idiot and a freight car crushes your skull in the US: $200,000
Dump your fucking coffee from McDonalds in your lap because you're a tool in the US: $2,700,000

Apparently the labor in China isn't the only thing that is cheap.
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Toastie
07/28/09

@Lite: is on a boat.: To this day I pray that the lady who sued mcdonalds over the coffee spill dies a terrible and painful death. Along with any other idiot who discovers that their hot coffee is hot! (yes I know the coffee was hotter than it should have been, but I hate that this lady got so much money. 2 million of that cash should have been donated to other burn victims, her surgery and work opportunity cost probably cost her less than $700,00)
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Kaiser-Machead promoted this comment Edited by Toastie at 07/28/09 7:10 PM Toastie was starred Toastie was unstarred

Kaiser-Machead
07/28/09

@Toastie: Actually, the woman who sued McDonalds only went after them for the medical bills alone. She didn't actually look for any profit. While that in itself may still seem questionable, at the very least, it wasn't out of greed. She was awarded a large lump sum for punitive damages simply because she was shrugged off when she approached them, but the award was reduced in appeals afterwards.
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Toastie
07/28/09

@Kaiser-Machead: Well, I silence myself momentarily in observance of my own ignorance. May she live a happy life and die peacefully in her sleep from old age. I guess the 90's is becoming a blur to me, or at least the unimportant parts of it.
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cpthook
07/28/09

In reply to Foxconn Increases Compensation For iPhone Suicide Employee's Family
If you work at apple and kill yourself, do you think Jobs provides you with a sleek aluminum casket, or does he just yell at your corpse until it spontaneously cremates?
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eagles3 speeeedin
07/28/09

In reply to Foxconn Increases Compensation For iPhone Suicide Employee's Family
BREAKING

Foxxconn employee kills himself, after being interrogated for releasing sensitive information regarding compensation of previous suicide victim.
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Shawn Pero
07/28/09

@Lance eagles3strong: Family to receive $50,000, as reported by a Foxconn official, who is later interrogated...
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Kaiser-Machead
07/28/09

In reply to Foxconn Building Apple Tablet for September or October Launch?
Man, I'm tellin' you. I got a bad feeling 'bout this tablet.
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Skeetz
07/28/09

In reply to Foxconn Building Apple Tablet for September or October Launch?
Forget Swarovski. I want mine adorned with blood diamonds!
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Hiphopopotamus
07/28/09

In reply to Foxconn Building Apple Tablet for September or October Launch?
Wow, those guys really ARE good at protecting company secrets - Am I right?
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Jrsy Devil's Advocate®
07/28/09

In reply to Foxconn Worker Had 16 iPhone Prototypes, Girlfriend Given MacBook
Well I guess I was mistaken. I didn't think his family would receive any compensation over this.

$44,000.00 isn't very much for a life though...
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Kai Chen
07/27/09

In reply to Foxconn Employee Describes His Oppressed Life from Inside the Factories
I too visited many factories in China, and have followed the rise of the Chinese economy, both academically and casually, over the last 20 years. My dad was an expat there in the early 90's, before all the shine and glitz, and I lived in Shanghai when there were 9 kids in the American school and Pudong was just farmland. Its amazing to see how far China has come in the last 20 years, and its not just in the large cities, but even in the countryside. One of my mom's sisters was left behind on the mainland during the '49 war, and when we got her out of the country in '92, her and her family only ate rice and chili peppers. No meat, no veggies, nothing. That was how life was. Now, most Chinese people get to eat meat at least once a week, if not on a daily basis in the cities. Oppressed life in a factory, sad to say, is a step up for most people in that country, especially for factory workers, even for recent college graduates.
Yes, there is room for improvement. If the allegations of torture are true, then yes, Foxconn should be punished. That said, there HAVE been improvements. A labor law implemented in 2008 have improved labor rights and given greater protection to workers. The thing is, it will take time for these improvements to start bearing fruit, because its not just the law that needs to change, but large scale social perceptions and mindsets, and these changes take generations to change. Its hard to see the improvements at the margins, but if you look at what was happening in China 20 years ago and compare it to how conditions are today, you'll get a much better appreciation of the progress that has been made, and where progress will be 20 years from now.
BTW, I've been to that Foxconn factory before (above picture.) My company was providing SCM services to Foxconn. That's their lunch room. All employees, from the janitors and line workers all the way up to top management eat there. the company provides free lunches as a benefit to the workers. One decent meat, two veggies, rice, soup, a drink and yogurt- something completely unimaginable just 20 years ago. Also, one last thing to note, many of these OEM/ODM companies, make razor thin margins, something like 1-2%. Some even take losses. Its a highly competitive, cut-throat industry that we can't even conceive of here in the US. Power, as it is, is currently in the hands of the Apples and Microsofts of the world. They control the value in the chain. However, Foxconn and others, are slowly moving up that chain, expanding markets and margins. As they do, you can expect conditions to improve. But right now, its miserable for everyone in that company.
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DeusExMach wonders what the hell happened to his star.
07/27/09

@Kai Chen: See, this is what I was talking about a couple days ago. Most people don't bother to take into account the social context under which situations like this occur. That cultural bias and tendency to view the rest of the world through the lens of one's own experiences at home is a major hurdle when discussing socioeconomic and sociopolitical issues.
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Kai Chen
07/27/09

@DeusExMach has jumped the snark:

Exactly, our paradigm is quite different from the Chinese worker paradigm. To put things in perspective, 30 some years ago, teachers were getting thrown out of windows in China; there were mass confessions, executions, protests, and close to a billion people in abject poverty. 20 years ago, Tiananmen happened. 15 years ago, ration coupons. 2 years ago, workers at my company weren't getting paid for overtime. Chinese history is something like 2000 years long. 30 years is a blink of the eye. In the US, that's 1/10th of our history. All of these things feed the collective psyche in China that is just so vastly different from our shared experiences. Yes, the US should be one of many models China works off of, but we can't expect China to follow the same trajectory.
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Nick: DeusExMach needs a star promoted this comment Kai Chen was starred Kai Chen was unstarred

Nick
07/27/09

@Kai Chen: you said trajectory and teachers gettin' thrown out windows in the same post. i like your style.
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Kai Chen
07/27/09

@Nick: DeusExMach needs a star:

I prefer to write visually, as if painting a picture in my mind with letters.
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