Hasta La Gadget!

Toshiba today unveiled a remote-controlled robot which it hopes will be able to probe inside one of the three damaged reactors at Japan’s ill-fated Fukushima nuclear power plant. The ultimate aim is to be able to grip chunks of the melted fuel, which is highly radioactive, with this robot.

Some of you might be well aware that the three reactors at the Fukushima plant had core meltdowns after the complex was damaged by a tsunami in 2011. The natural disaster damaged important cooling systems which resulted in the core meltdowns.

The robot has been designed to slide down an extendable 11 meter long pipe and grip melted fuel inside the Unit 2 reactor’s primary containment vessel. The reactor itself was built by both Toshiba and GE.

A probe sent earlier with a camera was able to capture images of melted fuel in the reactor. Robotic probes sent in the other two reactors were able to detect traces of damaged fuel but were not able to help in figuring out the exact location of the highly radioactive fuel.

Toshiba has said that it will conduct experiments with this new robot next month to ascertain the additional equipment and technologies required to remove the fuel debris. This is the most challenging part of the decommissioning process that’s expected to take decades.

Toshiba’s Latest Robot Will Probe Fukushima’s Melted Nuclear Reactors , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.

Apple has released an update on its spendings in the U.S. According to the company, Apple is now working with 9,000 different companies in the U.S. Those companies mostly work on hardware components and chipsets for Apple’s devices.

You may remember that Apple announced last year it would spend $390 million to expand Finisar’s production in the U.S. Finisar has been working on a key component for the iPhone and iPad Pro — the TrueDepth camera system.

That investment was part of a commitment to spend $1 billion in U.S.-based companies with its Advanced Manufacturing Fund in order to build new facilities and help manufacturers.

But Apple is already spending much more money with American companies. In 2018 alone, Apple spent $60 billion, which represents a 10 percent increase compared to 2017. The company estimates that it represents around 450,000 jobs.

In addition to Finisar, Apple names a few partners in its announcement — Corning, Cincinnati Test Systems and Broadcom.

Finally, if you take into account everybody working for Apple in one way or another, there are now 2 million people helping Apple as an employee, a contractor, a store manager, a supplier, etc. This number is up from 600,000 in 2011.

Gaming on an iPhone or an iPad could get a lot more interesting if this morning’s news of an Apple game subscription pans out. According to people familiar with the matter, Apple’s plans include a subscription service for games – something like Netflix, but for mobile gaming titles. This sort of subscription service is already live for other platforms – … Continue reading

For many years, “Designed by Apple in California” has been the closest most Apple products can come to claiming the “Made In U.S.A.” label. But in 2012, the company decided to assemble the Mac Pro in Texas. According to a new report, that plan got off to a rocky start because of a single tiny screw.

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Add Apple to the list of companies working on their own game streaming services. A new report claims that the Cupertino, California company is in talks with game developers about a streaming service. Companies like Microsoft have already confirmed their intentions to launch such a service while others like Sony already have them up and running.

Cheddar reports that Apple is thinking about launching its very own game streaming service. It’s unclear at this point in time which platforms the service will support, what games it might offer, and what the price point could be.

The possibility exists that Apple might scrap the service before it takes off if it doesn’t end up making sense. The report adds that Apple has discussed acting as a publisher with developers for their games, taking the lead on distribution and marketing for some games.

Apple hasn’t officially confirmed or denied anything at this point in time so take this report with a grain of salt. However, it won’t surprise anyone if the company does go ahead with this service. It has been making major investments in its services division over the past few years and this would be a logical step to take going forward.

Apple Reportedly Developing A Game Streaming Service , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.