Paul Krugman on elections in austere Italy, Mathew Ingram on Google re-upping a nasty Nascar video, Tom Gross on the UN and modern-day slavery, Gordon Chang on Foxconn's exit from China, and Timothy Lee on Comcast as a threat.
In a multi-layered, Foxconn-sprinkled update on its working conditions in Chinese factories, Apple has released a report that claims to have found no underage workers in "any of our final assembly suppliers." But Apple's supply chain goes much deeper.
For the second time in a year Apple CEO Tim Cook has travelled to China, and for the second time the purposes of his visit are shrouded in mystery, speculation, and, of course, tech-world chatter about world domination.
A summary of the best reads found behind the paywall of The New York Times.
The New York Times took a victory lap of sorts, when it published the latest installment of its iEconomy series explaining how Foxconn changed after global outrage over working conditions.
When they complain that their days are too short, they really mean that the pay at the notorious Chinese electronics manufacturer is still too low.
When it comes to manufacturing, China is the new America, meaning America might be the new China?
Now that labor watchdog groups have started complaining about the poor working conditions in Samsung's Chinese factories, maybe the South Korean electronics behemoth will make changes.
Life at Foxconn isn't always so bad, then again, there are times when the electronics manufacturer tricks its employees into making less money than they deserve.
On a tour of the factory notorious for under age workers, riots, and 12 hour workdays, The Atlantic's James Fallows discovers the lighter side of Foxconn.
After defending its forced internship program, Foxconn admits that "a small number" of those workers were underage, as young as 14 years old, reports Bloomberg News's Tim Culpan.
It's unclear if the brawl that broke out at a Foxconn plant yesterday had anything to do with the iPhone 5, even though that's the conclusion some labor groups are making.
A Foxconn plant that creates parts for Apple's new iPhone had to be shut down today after a huge dormitory brawl escalated into a riot involving as many as 2,000 workers.
After spending just 10 days working inside a Foxconn factory putting metal backs on iPhone 5s, an undercover reporter for the Shanghai Evening Post (translated by Micgadget) confirms both the monotony and physical taxation of the job.
A summary of the best reads found behind the paywall of The New York Times.
Foxconn has defended itself against charges that the company is forcing teenagers to assemble iPhones, saying it's okay to have underage workers put in 12-hour days because they can leave if they want.
Foxconn and Apple are the two names we usually hear in discussions of the poor working conditions involved in making our favorite gadgets. But a just released report from the labor rights group China Labor Watch brings Samsung's dirty practices to our attention.
One year ago today Steve Jobs stepped down as CEO of Apple anointing Tim Cook king of the iKingdom and by many metrics he has done a good job as leader of the gadgeteers.
Within the first 10 minutes of Wednesday's Washington D.C. performance of The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, Mike Daisey embodied the image I'd had of the man who lied to This American Life. "I've been doing this for a long time, it's a kind of professional blundering," he said before letting out a series of squawks while shaking his arms like a spastic bird.
Apple's trying harder to look like a pro-America company, giving all of its retail employees raises, according to The Wall Street Journal's Ian Sherr.
Something must've been lost in translation last Friday, when everybody got excited about Foxconn's CEO Terry Gou's confirmation of the inevitable release of an Apple television.
Either the chief executive of Foxconn is running his mouth or the much-blogged about Apple television is in the works.
Following months of Foxconn damage control, Apple has made an announcement its critics have hoped for, ending five savvy months of PR clean-up with the savviest move of all.
Every day The Atlantic Wire highlights the video clips that truly earn your five minutes (or less) of attention.
Since Mike Daisey's lies tarnished any perception we have of life on Apple's infamous Chinese factory line, Marketplace's Rob Schmitz has gone in to re-report and re-shape the image of the place where our iStuff gets made.
Just when people were starting to be nice to him again, Mike Daisey's eponymous blog and his Twitter account mysteriously went dark Tuesday, but they're back again.
As a result of the independent Fair Labor Association audit of Foxconn factories, workers will no longer work those notorious 12 hour shifts, according to the just released report.
While Mark Zuckerberg's using his China trip for touristy things with girlfriend Priscilla Chan, Apple CEO Tim Cook has taken his China trip to do some Foxconn related PR-cleanup.
Not wanting to take full responsibility for the worker abuses happening in his own country, Chinese senior politician Li Keqiang suggested to Apple CEO Tim Cook he thinks the iMaker should be the one to do the fixing.
Mike Daisey finally apologized for making up much of his Foxconn monologue, without blaming the media for perpetuating his lies or the audience for not understanding the context, but his mea culpa comes too late to salvage the harm he's done to his own cause.
In his first public remarks since This American Life ran its retraction of his Foxconn story last weekend, Mike Daisey explained how the system of talk-show types interviewing journalists turned him into a liar.
In Mike Daisey's response to This American Life's retraction of his Apple story, he continues to lean on his point that Apple and Foxconn hurt Chinese workers, but his claim that critics "dance on his grave" so they can go back to ignoring labor abuses is simply not true.
How to deal with the delicate situation of Mike Daisey and his falsified reports from Apple's Foxconn factory? By simply surgically removing the fabricated passages from his hit one-man show.
This American Life has retracted "Mike Daisey Goes to the Apple Factory," the story that arguably started the recent spate of articles examining Apple manufacturer Foxconn, because a Marketplace reporter discovered Daisey had lied about the facts.
Speaking with workers injured in a dust explosion last December at a Chinese factory where Apple products are manufactured, NPR uncovers the careless way these companies dealt with the problem.
Although Apple today claimed that it has created over 500,000 American jobs, a closer look shows that number is a bit of a stretch.
After hearing all about the horrible working conditions it takes to make our electronics at Foxconn, Mother Jones' Mac McClelland shows us what it takes to ship those products.
Somehow Foxconn has convinced the world that its treatment of workers isn't that bad.
We know all about the doom and gloom over at Foxconn, but during Nightline's trip to the iFactory on ABC last night, we learn about some of the perks of working at the industrial campus.
After a mass suicide threat, media exposes from both This American Life and The New York Times and factory audits from Apple and the Fair Labor Association, Foxconn has had about six weeks to shape up.
With the press all focused on Foxconn's unfortunate labor conditions, the despotic electronics maker has taken this moment to prove its factories aren't all that bad.
After yesterday's talk at the Goldman Sachs investment conference, Tim Cook has proven himself a better PR representative for Apple than his predecessor at a time when the company really needs a likable CEO.
Even with a formal statement from CEO Tim Cook, its own internal inspections and now an independent audit by the Fair Labor Association, Apple can't appease critics of the working conditions at Foxconn where it manufactures its iProducts.
Apple announced Monday that it would cooperate with the Fair Labor Association with special voluntary audits of its suppliers' factories in Shenzen and Chengdu, China, a move inspired by the spate of bad press for its factories.
We noted yesterday that the people planning to protest Apple's store in New York's Grand Central Station didn't want to give up their iPhones, they just wanted them produced more humanely. Today we learned they didn't really want to give up their free time, either.
A group of hackers calling themselves Swagg Security claims it has broken into the Web servers of chief Apple supplier Foxconn and leaked company user names and passwords, allowing anyone to place a large order ostensibly as a Foxconn client.
Recent coverage of the inhumane conditions at the Foxconn plant, where Apple manufactures its goods, has angered Apple customers enough to take action just short of denouncing their iProducts.
We've come full circle in this tale of Chinese worker exploitation, re-reaching the conclusion that Foxconn is still a hard place to work after hearing what it's really like from a woman who works on the inside.
It might not make sense to Americans, with our cushy office jobs filled with ergonomic keyboards and yoga-ball chairs, but a job at Foxconn is something a lot of Chinese people want.
An investigative series by the New York Times and a performance piece by Mike Daisey featured on This American Life have put the spotlight on Foxconn, the Taiwanese company whose massive Chinese factories manufacture some of the world's most popular consumer electronics. Here's a quick look at what we know about Foxconn.
Apple CEO Tim Cook didn't specifically mention The New York Times' exposé on working conditions at Foxconn in his company-wide email yesterday, but it's clear that this was the first attempt at damage control.
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