Good morning. 
Tuesday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 30. Sunrise is 7:25 AM and sunset 4:35 PM for 9h 09m 40s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 4.5% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1923, Milton College president A.E. Whitford bans dancing by students in off-campus, semi-public places such as confectionery stores.
Michael Liedtke reports Former Theranos CEO Holmes convicted of fraud and conspiracy:
SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) — In a case that exposed Silicon Valley’s culture of hubris and hype, Elizabeth Holmes was convicted Monday of duping investors into believing her startup Theranos had developed a revolutionary medical device that could detect a multitude of diseases and conditions from a few drops of blood.
A jury convicted Holmes, who was CEO throughout the company’s turbulent 15-year history, on two counts of wire fraud and two counts of conspiracy to commit fraud after seven days of deliberation. The 37-year-old was acquitted on four other counts of fraud and conspiracy that alleged she deceived patients who paid for Theranos blood tests, too.
The verdict came after the eight men and four women on the jury spent three months sitting through a complex trial that featured reams of evidence and 32 witnesses — including Holmes herself. She now faces up to 20 years in prison for each count, although legal experts say she is unlikely to receive the maximum sentence.
The jury deadlocked on three remaining charges, which a federal judge anticipates dismissing as part of a mistrial ruling that could come as early as next week. The split verdicts are “a mixed bag for the prosecution, but it’s a loss for Elizabeth Holmes because she is going away to prison for at least a few years,” said David Ring, a lawyer who has followed the case closely.
Michael Hiltzik observes that The Theranos verdict won’t stop investors from pouring money into the next big fraud:
How many of the factors that enabled Theranos to raise hundreds of millions of dollars without a workable technology have changed?
None. Investors are still looking for the next big thing, still looking for places to park their millions, still susceptible to superficially persuasive pitches by self-assured confidence schemers, still fearful of being left by the wayside as others pile in.
That’s human nature. The only difference is that the numbers next to the dollar signs are bigger.
See also Theranos as a Cautionary Tale.
In Wisconsin, our frauds use public money, and our shorthand term for them is Foxconn.
In Whitewater, our frauds also follow the taxpayer-money model, and falsely based on a supposed thousand jobs from an ‘Innovation Center’ or ‘economic multipliers’ and ‘1Family’ from millions for artificial turf.
Passengers rescued from mountaintop cable cars in New Mexico:
Foxconn is discovering the brutal reality of the contract manufacturing biz, which is that any customer that is more than a quarter of your businesss now owns you, and can have their way with you. Apple is most of Foxconn’s business and there is trouble in paradise. Apple is cutting deals with the mainland, and moving away from Foxconn:
https://9to5mac.com/2021/12/30/in-depth-report-details-apples-shift-to-chinese-suppliers-to-cut-costs-and-curry-favor-with-beijing/
This is part of what is the never-ending chase for the cheapest manufacturing possible. Taiwan, Foxconn’s home, isn’t the best deal in contract manufacturing anymore, and hasn’t been for many years. I had a business representing Taiwan contract manufacturers about 15 years ago, and the trend was clear even then. Most Taiwan contract manufacturers had relationships with mainland houses to offload the truly cost-sensitive products to the mainland and concentrate on higher-end products domestically.
Apparently Foxconn didn’t follow that recipe and is now getting squeezed out. Judging from reports from India, they richly deserve to be:
https://9to5mac.com/2021/12/30/iphone-plant-shutdown-india/
Lordstown…Listen up! This is your future. Where Foxconn goes, as Wisco-World has learned the hard way, shit piles up.
Thanks much for this — a reminder (for the non-technical, of whom I am one) that manufacturing is a constantly evolving set of technological and economic processes.