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It is a dismal situation when 4 out of 5 persons in France do not know what work the European parliament does and what bills it has passed in recent years. Even though the $700 billion aid package for pandemic support was done in the EU parliament and the Green energy deal was also done there in Strasbourg, France most Europeans cannot name this or are unaware of it. About 46% or half of French think that European parliament elections on June 6-9 are for the European Commission. Social media and Google, Apple have done a dismal job of educating people- this is the reality today as Lyrarc engages in this role of educating and informing people so that they can affect and shape the decisions that determine the quality of their lives.

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The world is too dependent on one semiconductor manufacturer, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, TSMC. Companies in Taiwan make 65% of the dollar value of the world's chips. How did this happen? It poses a threat to the US and to the world economy. Finally the US is making an effort to correct this. The European Union already has plans to produce 20% of the world's next generation chips in 2030. Intel plans $20 billion investment for 2 chip factories in the US. Only months earlier this report in WSJ says Intel president Bob Swan was giving more contracts to TSMC for next generation chips.  It shows how much the pandemic has changed views on supply chain security. Intel ousted Mr. Swan for missteps in relying too much on TSMC as this dangerous policy became evident during the pandemic. Such was the culture that existed before the pandemic on supply chains, on investment allocation, and related issues. As a single semiconductor factory can cost $20 billion, the Biden administration is getting involved with Congress to rebuild America's semiconductor industry and independent supply chain. TSMC is built on subsidies from Taiwan government. Morris Chang founded TSMC in 1987 after studying at MIT and working 30 years at Texas Instruments. At founding half of the investment for TSMC came from Taiwan government. The US to rebuild will require the government to support the chip industry in many ways. In this sense the US manufacturers who ceded manufacturing to TSMC were shortsighted- AMD, Intel, Qualcomm Apple. They without realizing it built the model on which TSMC would thrive and invest and grow. Take just one example- to meet Apple's first order TSMC spent $9 billion with 6000 people working round the clock to build a factory in 11 months. Yes Apple did not have to worry about chip manufacturing and quality by contracting it out. Yet over the years it was ceding the manufacture of the most important chips in its products to an exclusive supplier. It was also ceding away the technologies that went with it. Americans were told not to care by the best universities and professors, by economic departments and scientific educational institutions for two decades leading to the situating facing America today. Meanwhile Taiwan is supporting its chip industry even further as it relies on the chip industry to provide protection in its struggle to maintain its independence from China. A situation no American manufacturer understands or had planned to create, but is now left to the Biden administration and president Biden to solve. After twenty years of unchecked capital allocation and investments by the leaders of American manufacturing based on an inadequate and incomplete understanding of the role of manufacturing and manufacturing technologies in the life of America since its founding two hundred years ago, president Biden faces the task of restoring confidence in America. And this at the time of a pandemic that has taken hundreds of thousands of lives.      ...

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Apple's new upgraded operating system makes a change this fall which finally gives users the right to opt out of web tracking activity by apps. It will ask users if they want their web activity tracked. All users of apps have to do is to click No. 

This change implemented by Apple gives users the privacy they need without a constant barrage of ads based on web tracking activity. After the pandemic quieter times are needed for people to think about the essential things that add joy in their lives without the constant disruptive effect of ads. It has become so ubiquitous that people have lost memory that this was not always the way previous generations lived. For people under 20 they have never known anything different.

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Stephen Lezak of Oxford looks at the costs of mining for lithium, cobalt and other minerals needed for EV's. There is the danger of the EV transition happening at the increbible cost to producing countries in Africa and Asia. In the Congo the problem of child labor and in Indonesia the problem of destroying huge parts of tropical forest. Can the EV transition happen on the backs of environmental destruction of forest or child labor?  Lezak suggests bringing mining for lithium, cobalt, back to the US with strict controls and for Apple, and EV makers to have a passport that shows where their EV battery materials come from, the responsible sourcing of materials and the controls in place. This is a problem that won't go away and will require serious solutions for green to mean something entirely positive.

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China's tariffs on US products could be called self-respect tariffs as US exports to China are small compared to China's $1 trillion surplus a year. $143 billion mainly oilseeds and grains! US business not willing to rely on US labor created the outshoring that built Chinese industrial growth, shipping out technology in the process, that created this situation. Consultants to Apple at the time such as myself bringing Total Quality of Management from Japan to the US, could see the failure of production quality at the Colorado Springs plant just before Steve Jobs returned to the company in 1998. About 20-25% of PC product was defective on the production lines seen with my own eyes. Looking back I believe it was not just the workers but the managers and engineering that needed to guide and motivate the workers with new ways to build in quality control. These were the days when Apple's Steve Jobs hired Tim Cook to revamp production and ship it to China. American workers got blamed. Yet as Jim Carlton shows in "Apple the Inside Story of Intrigue, Egomania, and Business Blunders," by 1996 a new German CEO Michael Spindler 1993-1996 had driven the company to the ground. The struggle with Microsoft gave Jobs an idea- by shifting production to a low cost location he could make the high margins to outinvest all competitors with new products-ipods, iphones, ipads. There is nothing wrong with American workers and their craftsmanship. Timeline- Steve Jobs returns to Apple 1997-1998 Tim Cook is hired from Compaq to revamp manufacturing in 1998 1999-2000 - the strategy is made to shift all of the production to China. Jobs could generate the margins and quality to challenge Microsoft, and profits to invest in new products 2020 -   the weakness of the strategy is apparent with supply side shock for chips and computers with the pandemic stopping shipping 2024 - after taking small steps to shift production to India does little to shift back to America 2025- Apple facing serious tariffs and the country's mood shifting to Make in the USA tells the new US president DJT it will invest $500 billion to shift production back to America. ...

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Best Buy is shifting to the small store format as it competes with online sellers and Apple stores.

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Following positions heading manufacturing in 2006 and the expansion of Ford's China operations in 2008, Joe Hinrichs is now president of the Americas group in 2014. Hinrichs is responsible for the product launches in 2014-2015, including the new aluminium body F-150 pickup. Hinrichs supported a strategy for expanding SUV sales in China, which helped increase Ford market share to 4.4% in China in 2013. He started at GM after getting an electrical engineering degree from the University of Dayton in 1989. He is one of the younger managers who came up through manufacturing and feel at home in factories, talking to workers telling them why things should be done a certain way, and problem-solving on the factory floor. Apple CEO Tim Cook also started in manufacturing, with roots in Alabama, and joined Apple in 1997 as Apple struggled with quality issues in factories.

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European Travel Information and Authorization System  ETIAS fee $24. ETIAS for travel to Europe starts late 2026. Visa free countries will still need visitors to get ETIAS a form of travel clearance. This means US, Japanese, Canadian and UK visitors to Europe will need to apply online before entering European countries. The authorization will be valid for 3 years or until the passport expires whatever comes first. Travelers may not stay more than 90 days in a 180 day period. Children under 18 and adults over 70 years will be exempt from the fee. Once one enters personal details the authorization is digital and received in minutes.

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David Gelernter, Yale professor of computer science, says above all things Steve Job was designer-in-chief. At his Stanford commencement address in 2004, Jobs recounts his experience in a calligraphy course at Reed College as one of the singularly important experiences of his life, and something he carried over to the the revolution in portable devices- portable Macs, iPod, IPhone and iPad. The search for and building of elegant, easy to work, fun to use devices. Job was able to grasp the potential of such devices, says Gelertner, from his very first visit to the Xerox research labs in Palo Alto in 1979. In doing this he gives credit for long forgotten pioneers of the personal computer, who were just as important perhaps even more so, Douglas Engelbart and Alan Kay. At Xerox, Kay built on the earlier innovations of Engelbart. Engelbart was first to develop the mouse, onscreen window, and the concept of computers doing more than just computing, such as controlling machinery, doing everyday stuff, and doing things with pictures. Xerox's corporate executives failed to grasp the significance of the developments in their labs. Jobs grasped this rightaway and put all his efforts into developing the Apple Macintosh in 1984 incorporating these ideas. A decade later Gates copied the Mac's eay to use features and created economies of scale, creating the personal computer that we know today. The internet was a parallel development during that decade after the pioneering work of Tim Berners-Lee on the worldwide web. Jobs took the experience one step further and created new devices like the iPhone and the iPad that brought mobility, ease, and refinement to the internet experience....

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Jimmy Lai of the Apple Daily in Hong Kong and Taiwan supported the democracy protests in Hong Kong in 2014.

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The Biden administration is looking for more information from companies facing a global shortage of semiconductors. This request for more information comes as leaders of GM, Ford, Intel Corporation, Apple, Samsung, Medtronic, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing meet Mr. Biden at the White House, and the Biden administration looks for ways to help tackle the shortage. Diplomats of the US in Malaysia and Vietnam and other countries will work with governments in these countries to keep factories running with covid 19 protections in place.  The president of the Semiconductor Industry Association says the companies are looking forward to the discussion to meet national security and global technology leadership concerns, and strengthen America's chip supply chain.

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Nokia is initiating a search for a new CEO to replace Mr Kallasvuo who became CEO in 2006. Since then Apple's iPhone has changed the market and Nokia has not been able to match the trend set by iPhones in the mobile phone device market. Nokia's stock has fallen 42% since April 19, 2010. Nokia's response to the iPhone was to replace its mobile phone executive and to create a separate operation for smartphones. Nokia plans to have a new line of smartphones in 2010 to compete with the iPhone. The main problem is its operating system software which needs to be more sophisticated. Nokia holds about 40% of the cell phone market with Europe and countries like India being its strong points. But Nokia's margins in India are low because of intense competition. Apple has already surpassed Nokia in the profit in phones, making $1.6 billion in profit in the third quarter of 2009 compared to Nokia's $1.1 billion.

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Vance says he is skeptical and inherently mistrustful about the constructive influence of Silicon Valley on America, on the broader economy in all parts of America, and on education expanding opportunity for all. Vance says of his stint in Silicon Valley starting in 2013 when he moved to the Bay Area after graduating in law from Yale to 2022 when he ran for the US Senate from Ohio, that it taught him something about the influence of venture capital on America. He is skeptical about its constructive influence when seen from the American heartland, from the Kansas prairies of Eisenhower to his own rust belt state of Ohio and the hinterland of Appalachia across the eastern US from New York through Tennessee to Mississippi. Vance says: "I've certainly personally been very close to the technology sector. Because of that experience, I inherently mistrust it or worry about its influence in the broader economy." WSJ's Angel Au Yeung calls it short lived but it stretched for 10 years and Vance returned to Ohio for Narya Ventures, worked with AOL founder Steve Chase on Revolution to look at what could be done in places such as Chattanooga, Tennessee, in the south and midwest with these venture concepts. This is enough experience just to understand its effects on all parts of America. Realizing in the end that it failed to support education or expanding opportunity for all. Even Apple's much touted iPad succeeds as a potentially useful tech device but fails when one sees what little interest or effort Apple put into developing its educational potential to expand opportunity for all. The reasons are that that was never the intended goal to subordinate public interest to profit, when education is inherently public interest. And because tech tools alone cannot do the work of educating minds. Only human beings and knowledge, ideas in books can do this, as they have done in all of America's and Europe's past. ...