Journalist goes undercover making the iPhone 5 at Foxconn
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Let's be real here. What matters is how Foxconn compares to other Chinese factories. For all I know, Foxconn could be providing better pay, better living conditions, and better benefits than every other Chinese company. However, since there's nothing in this article to give me a better perspective, I have no way of knowing. There's no reason to expect Foxconn to act any differently than any other Chinese company. The issue here is the Chinese government and their lack of concern for fair and equal treatment of workers. Don't blame Foxconn simply because they make Apple products when they are doing the same thing as every other Chinese company.
Also, what's with this fixation on Foxconn and Apple? Foxconn does a whole hell of a lot more than just assembling ipads and iphones. I'm sure Apple accounts for but a small fraction of their total revenue.
As others have said, if you truly don't approve of these practices, then stop buying the end products of them...
Think it like some journalist in NYC working for a major media company goes to some manufacturing plant in the Midwest, finding people are doing hard work under not good enough conditions. And that'll give some perspectives.
A NY Times reporter covering poor working conditions in a meat packing plant in the Midwest is also a story worth reading. It happens, sometimes it changes when it's exposed, but almost never changes without exposure. An American reporting on bad American working conditions is more impactful than a Chinese reporter reporting on poor American conditions and the reverse is also true.
Upton Sinclair was able to change things with his work on The Jungle. I don't see this as being a lot different.
I actually agree. What I wanted to point out is for the reader of the story to keep in mind that the writer is a white collar Shanghai journalist, and would inevitably come with his frame of references because of it. For a NYT journalist living in NY, I believe most Western readers will assume a liberal bias, and view the reporting through some lenses, but the sophistication towards China probably stops at the reporter being a "Chinese Journalist".
Sure, the writer is more qualified than you and me, but he didn't answer some critical questions - is this factory above or below average in Chinese manufacturing plants? Is Foxconn raising or lowering labor standards in the area? Is Foxconn providing better alternatives to local labor, who may have to make a living by going down a tunnel in a coal mine or planting rice under the sun? Is having the plant there better or worth than not having the plant there?
Did you actually read the article? A Chinese journalist reporting in Chinese media would indicate that Foxconn's conditions are a concern to the Chinese "world view". Apple is the most profitable company in the world, yet they continue to choose a manufacturing partner that treats workers poorly.
It doesn't make a lot of sense for Chinese media to do a hit piece for Chinese readers if the working conditions are the norm.
It's irrelevant if Foxconn is twice as good as other companies. Sounds like they could be 3 times as good and still need improvement.
HN is full of stories about how to get your startup into the media and about startups wanting to change the world. This person is trying to use media coverage of the iPhone 5 to help people directly. Good on them.
Is it really helping them, though?
Improving working conditions and the wellbeing of employees costs money. Put pressure on Apple/Foxconn to spend more on labor in China and there'll come a point where they just move production elsewhere, leaving these Chinese people without any jobs.
Let's not forget these people are working in these factories voluntarily. The working conditions might be a bit crap, but the employees are choosing to endure them at their current wage.
Because they have no choice. The alternative is starving. You have to understand that spreading awareness is the first step in actually solving this problem. That's how working conditions improved in the west, and that is how they'll improve in China.
Got it. So because people lost the genetic lottery and were born in China, they're lesser than you, and don't deserve the same rights and privileges that you do.
I'd like to see you try and work in these conditions and then try to have the same opinion. This Western attitude of shitting on "3rd-world" countries just appals me. As the child of immigrant parents in Canada, I'm absolutely grateful that I was able to escape this world. But I'm sure you'd love to send us back.
The point he's (admittedly somewhat poorly) attempting to make is that the article doesn't have enough context to draw conclusions about the greater state of factory workers across the entire Chinese industrial base. He never states that the workers shouldn't demand better working conditions, and never says that Foxconn offers a better work environment than other factories.
Apple is the most successful business in history. They have literally billions of dollars in the bank. The fact that they have reached this position by exploiting international labor conditions is dissonant with the glowing opinion of them in the American press. It is seen as hypocritical.
From your tone, I infer that you think you may agree - but that you feel conflict, and conceal that from yourself by lashing out at the messenger.
It is not a valid excuse to say they're Chinese, any more than it is valid to allow West Virginian mine workers to die of black lung to provide cheap heat for Philadelphia.
Injustice doesn't have to be in your own street for it to be injustice.
And of course you are going to get reprimanded if you don't do your job correctly, e.g. too much oil or inaccurate placement. And of course a new employee won't be good at it at first.
Personally, the most atrocious thing I've read in the whole article is that dirty sheets is commonplace. And frankly, that is common in China.
deelowe seems to have the "if someone's gonna do it, it might as well be us" mentality; as if it was morally ok to exploit labour in China just because China does that to itself.
What we should be looking at is the Purchasing Power Parity. If the Chinese factory workers can afford much less than American factory workers, we should try to make it more fair.
My stance is that this is an issue the government needs to resolve. It's unreasonable to expect Apple or Foxconn to do anything about this on their own accord. I doubt they are behaving any differently than any other company with manufacturing operations over there. There's no need to crucify Apple or Foxconn over this.
Sounds kinda ridiculous when you change a coupla words, no?
I always see a lot of people complaining about Foxconn and the like, but nobody offering any solutions that would actually work. It's especially annoying when they don't acknowledge exactly why the problem is so difficult to solve, considering all the political, economic, social, and technological trends that contribute to the problem. IMO, those who criticize the problem, but can't offer any viable solutions, should at least put their money where their mouth is and not contribute to the problem. This means they shouldn't buy any electronics or in fact, shouldn't buy many things. Most stuff is made in China these days, or other countries with similar lax issues.
It's a complicated issue, and I see too much straw man applied to this issue too many times.
Living here, I realize most people have no idea how poor the vast majority of people are in China. I had no idea until I came here. I'm not saying the situation is acceptable. I am saying the situation is too complicated for the commentary we see over and over again.
Are they 90% free? 50%?
I'm not trying to draw a comparison to slavery, there is actual slavery in Southern China's brick making industry that is truly appalling.
It is also worth noting that the article in question was originally written by a news agency from Shanghai -- it is not an American, outsider-perspective that's painting a scathing picture, it's the Chinese themselves with their own experiences.
Why? That standards of living are higher in some places than others is no reason to be negative about attempts to change the status quo. Drawing attention to this has resulted in improvements, even if there's a long way to go. People always want things to be someone else's problem. The good news is that, looking at history, these things usually get better over time.
> There's no need to crucify Apple or Foxconn over this.
These are their own workers. They are directly responsible for the conditions in their own factories. The notion that it's China, so it's reasonable to expect them to be treated like crap doesn't sit well with me. That may be how things are in much of China, but it says nothing about how things ought to be in China. You could complain that if so, they ought to improve things, but that's exactly what they are doing here: bringing the issues to light so they can be dealt with.
Exploitation is not a fact; it's a judgment.
Indeed, for the actions of a corporation, failure to exploit is damning evidence of incompetence.
If it has negative connotations, perhaps you should examine why you feel so negatively about it.
> Apple is the most successful business in history.
> They have literally billions of dollars in the bank.
> The fact that they have reached this position by
> exploiting international labor
Just because other Chinese working conditions suck doesn't mean that its right. Yeah, so maybe the pay isn't as high because the cost of living is lower, but that doesn't mean you treat people like crap when they are making you filthy rich just because "everbody does it".
Also, it wasn't just steel. It was steel, oil, coal and many other industries. Which, I'd argue is the same issue in China.
Unfortunately, the Chinese govt. is not the same as the US govt., w.r.t how it treats its own people. So appealing to their govt. will not work. Appealing to Apple might?
Don't blame the poor plantation owners, they are just doing the same thing as all the others....
Sheesh, until now I never realized it was possible to have your head so far up your ass it ended up buried in the sand...
Seriously?
From the wikipedia definition of irony: "Ironic statements (verbal irony)[2] are statements that imply a meaning in opposition to their literal meaning."
But thank you for the definition of the word irony. I wish you a good day.
I would say you are wrong partially wrong here, at least in the long term. We did not have good condition 50 or 100 years ago, the conditions in china are better then they where 30 years ago too.
The richers a society the better there places of work will become.
Aside the editorial content at the end, I think the article was quite fair in that the journalist simply reporte what he saw (if the windows really have screens installed for suicide prevention, merely describing this fact does not make an article "trash"). I also don't think the author has any intent of making the Western world go up in arms about anything. The point is more about checking how much things have changed since the famous chain of suicides was made public.
There are some interesting bits in there from the perspective of understanding the manufacturing process, but in terms of the worker conditions and so on, it's nothing new and anyone for whom this is news has presumably been hiding under a rock for the last couple of years and making a concious effort not to think about how certain countries can make things this cheaply.
That's not to make light of the conditions, just to say that we're all somewhat complicit and any outrage needs to be matched with action, not just against Apple but against anyone using Foxconn or their peers.
I presume Apple has the largest clout with Foxconn and can essentially demand better worker conditions from them. Other companies may not have as much leverage, though I agree there needs to be more awareness about things like laptops, XBox, and PS3.
Put this in the perspective it really needs - what percentage of Asia's comparable manufacturing output do you think Apple accounts for?
And now consider that it's not just Asia, it's countries all over South and Central America and Eastern Europe.
A friend of mine used to be a town planner and part of his job was getting planning permission for new McDonald's sites. When you're pitching to the relevant authorities in the UK, you're under no obligation to reveal who your customer is, just the basic nature of the business (in this case fast food restaurant). But, he said, they would often hint (in a deniable manner obviously) that they were representing Burger King because McDonald's had such a bad reputation.
That reputation while largely deserved, distinguished them only from what we'd want them to be like, not from their competitors. Any fast food chain on that scale at a corporate level is largely indistinguishable from McDonald's - it's how they remain competitive.
But McDonalds' rep meant that they got the kicking so people would rather have a (morally identical) Burger King in their town. Cosmetically a win perhaps, in reality nothing got any better anywhere.
What I'm saying in a very roundabout way, if you boycott Apple, if all you do is move your custom to another organisation who are no better, you've made close to no difference at all. If this really bothers you, then you probably need to look further afield for your next smartphone or PC or tablet than the next big player.
Simply doing nothing is only hypocritical if that's contrary to other actions or statements I make.
I guess my point is I find embracing consumerism at the expense of cheap labor to be more honest than refusing to admit my role in not being a solution.
You need to distinguish "I believe there are things I can do but I'm not doing them" (which is hypocrisy) with "I've thought about it and I don't think there is any meaningful action I can take" (which isn't).
I think I'm in the second camp. I may be wrong in my assessment of the situation and what I can do, but if that's true it's misguided rather than hypocrisy.
I'm not indifferent, I'm just pointing out that viewing this as an Apple / Foxconn problem misses the point, and that most action based on that view will be ineffective and possibly even counter productive.
Journalists piggy back these stories on Apple because that shifts papers or gets clicks. That's fine as it raises the issue and puts pressure on companies to improve things (which seems to be happening).
As a result of this Apple are probably the most scrutinised company in China and are likely at the better end of things when it comes to how workers are treated. What does boycotting them and giving your business to a less scrutinised company really achieve?
The point is if you're going to use this as part of your buying decision, then assess it properly and apply the same standards to all the products and companies you are considering.
As for my position, I'm not sure what this wilful indifference really is.
My position is that other than monitoring the situation and revising my views as things change (for the better or worse), any significant action I might take would inconvenience me in a manner disproportionate to the impact it might have and that effort would be better invested elsewhere.
Why do people like to jump at one manufacturer while ignoring almost all of the others who have devices built in unsavoury conditions?
> not to think about how certain countries can make things this cheaply.
Some products - a t-shirt from a budget shop - cost a few dollars. We kind of expect those products to be made in a sweat shop. We hope there's at least some kind of legal regulation. And then there are expensive designer t-shirts - a $150 billionaire boys club t-shirt - and we really hope that these garments are not made in the same sweat shops. We really hope that some of that $150 trickles down to the factory in the form of much better regulation and conditions and pay.
Fairtrade-like schemes could work here, if they're done properly.
Bob produces widgets. He gets paid $0.20 per widget. I as the end consumer buy a widget for $1.00
If I pay $1.02, that's a 2% increase for me, and if that whole $0.02 goes to Bob he gets $0.22, a 10% increase.
Unfortunately, it feels like I pay $1.10, and Bob gets $0.02.
Good luck with that.
There's no doubt that working conditions in China can and should improve, and there's nothing wrong with trying to accelerate the process. But taking money out of the country probably isn't the answer. They are transitioning from a developing country to a developed one, and it is a process that will take time. Coercing the entire country (with boycotts) into improving conditions seems unlikely, and just focusing on one factory will only hurt the workers at that one factory.
Not buying Chinese is very difficult and the amount of people with the dedication to do this is miniscule and won't make an impact. Shaming the most profitable company in the world into either switching to a more ethical manufacturing partner or pressuring its manufacturing partner to improve working conditions is more likely to succeed. Success with this will increase the odds of success with other Western companies indirectly profiting from bad treatment of workers.
No, it's not pretty, and it's going to stay not pretty for a while. But buying goods from China, and buying a lot, is the best foreign aid money can buy.
In today's modern, integrated economy it is near impossible to buy anything that isn't at least partially made in China. Defence suppliers try to avoid foreign parts for political reasons and even they cannot prevent some components, metals, plastics or raw materials being sourced from China.
It is you who are living under a rock if you believe you can truly vote with your wallet. You don't have that choice any more. Even if you go out of your way to avoid all electronics (I guarantee you at least some of those components came from China) and only buy locally sourced, fair-trade hemp clothing you will still be giving money to someone else who is buying almost everything from China.
This doesn't just apply to China, it applies to every nation (except, maybe, North Korea, you really need to try hard to find something that they have exported recently). Economies are interconnected and boycotts are feelgood nonsense.
I really think it's hard to believe journalists these days, especially if the stories are unheard of and outrageous. The decline of advertising money and newspaper subscriptions has lead to a decline of journalistic integrity and objectivism, I think.
Addendum, I studied journalism & communication, most of my friends are journalists, and I'd say they try hard, but the economic pressure sounds untenable sometimes. Some of them earn so little money, that I wonder how they even manage to pay rent.
It's super easy for a journalist to exaggerate something like this, with relatively little risk for a massive gain. On the other hand, a "Company" hiding things involves many, many more people involved in the conspiracy, and the penalty for failure isn't really that much (how many decades of big-companies-with-bad-working-conditions stories have we had?).
It also doesn't give any sense of context - how reliable the newspaper is, what the average working conditions are for that class of facility, etc etc.
Also, again it doesn't seem (or at least the writeup doesn't) to include the information about foxconn being more than just apple, that seems to get forgotten every time there is a Foxconn story.
The story is about making an iPhone 5, which is expected to boost the GDP of the US. http://www.latimes.com/business/money/la-fi-mo-apple-iphone-...
As we're constantly reminded by the Apple blogs and on here, Apple takes 75% of the profits in the phone industry and have huge margins which their competitors can't come close to, so isn't it logical that Apple gets more of the bad press for bad working conditions since they are in the best position to improve the workers' pathetic work and living environment?
Near as I can tell, the only complaint is that there was a large raw number of suicides a while ago...in a company so huge it has more workers than the population of Wyoming. Last time I looked it up, the suicide rate there seemed to be lower than the rate among chinese people, lower than the rate among chinese college students, lower than the rate among US factory workers and so on. And that problem was largely in the past, not an ongoing issue.
If I recall correctly, even the rate at which Americans are murdered on the job is higher than the rate at which Foxconn employees commit suicide there. So if you want to keep claiming there's something uniquely bad about Foxcon in this regard, let's hear some actual numbers from you. What specific numbers are you looking at that lead you to believe Foxconn is unusually bad?
I fear that this function (actually the only relevant function that journalism enjoys, imho) is less and less fulfilled. I just took the doubts I have about this article as an example of that.
A working journalistic system shouldn't have to fear really hard economic pressure, otherwise it can't work correctly anymore. This relates to all other contents on this site as well, as long as they're journalistic and not public relations.
I dealt with several Chinese manufacturers in the late 1990's who were doing custom PCB runs for one of our products. They treated their staff like shit then and hid it all under the rug when you went to see them. They wheeled out the turd polish in double-quick time.
I don't think it's changed and I don't think it will change unless people on the production lines just say "no". This has happened in the textile industry over there (according to my cousin who is an importer of textiles) and staff are earning great rates now. The cheaper staff are in Mexico and India now.
Regarding the money - the cost of living is pretty damn cheap over there by their standards.
Note: I don't like buying products myself which are responsible for this sort of thing, but I'm not that sympathetic.
As for the journalists - they are as full of crap as the factory bosses are.
You really think piss-poor working conditions in Second-World factories are "unheard of and outrageous"? It's been going on for centuries. Sure, this story was impeccably timed, and I'm sure there are liberties taken here and there, but that's because running a magazine/newspaper is a business. That doesn't provide carte blanche to deny that there is truth behind the writing. I think it's a dangerous precedent when the populace begins to say, "you can't believe the media". In fact, I'm sure that there are terrible governments around the world that would love the population to think that way.
I'm a big believer in capitalism and globalization, so I think that, net, having these factories in China is beneficial. But I also don't disclaim that they are probably horrible, unhealthy places to work. How much responsibility is Apple's, and how much is China's is the important question.
This may be a cultural thing, but while I do believe in free markets and capitalism, I think that there're certain parts of society which need to be handled separately as the optimization for economic success (the cheaper the better) doesn't fare well (imho) with health and media. I like the approach of the UK, where the BBC is state paid but not state controlled. But this is a huge separate discussion and I can understand different viewpoints here and I'm afraid it's often about cultural differences which viewpoint we chose.
"Industrialization of China did occur on a significant scale only from the 1950s, in the Maoist Great Leap Forward." [1]
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Revolution_in_China
he probably added tons of hyperbole and wrong encounters into his story, just to make it all the more dramatic.
I may well be wrong there, but I tried to express an opinion based on a theory (explained in the post) that economic pressure can lead to a lower quality of journalistic output. My examples of hyperbole & more were, then, just examples of typical traits of said process. It's well known, that journalistic outlets of less quality (Sun in the UK, Fox News in the US, BILD in Germany, etc) do just what I explained above: They add unnecessary hyperbole, shift facts & more - as long as the story sells. I was just expressing that less money may lead to less quality.
Working in a factory in China is not a glorious undertaking, but it is not (in this case) slave labor nor is it unethical.
The author suggests robots could do this, but instead they use humans - as if it were a horrible thing to voluntarily employ humans. Do you think those earning a living there would prefer to be fired and replaced by robots?
There are horrible situations in China - like the gulag prison labor system. There are certainly factories where children are put to work unethically and illegally (as there are in the US). This article however exposes nothing alarming.
And besides, isn't Apple something like 0.001% of Chinese manufacturing output? Apple isn't the problem; if anything Apple may well be the strongest force for positive change at Foxconn.
Setting up automation will become quicker and cheaper, forcing the labour alternative to become even cheaper and more demanding to compete with that. This is what is happening.
As this progresses, fewer people will be willing to work for that pay or under those conditions. Then these jobs will go away.
This is a good thing, but bad if you are used to slower technological progress where you can always make ends meet by taking up some low paid low skill jobs.
and if that's for 7 days a week 10 hours a day as the reporter said, that's 300 hours.. so 1.33 dollars per hour.
BTW, the typical salary range for a junior Ruby dev in a second or third tier city in China is about 800 - 1600 USD per month. Just to put things in perspectives
But they work a lot more hours.
Can anyone give any context of how bad this actually is? Obviously it's not as terrible as if somebody got paid $4 for two hours of overtime here in the UK, in terms of average wage and typical cost of living, but no idea how much less bad it is..
So, $350 / 22 working days (per month aprox, assuming 2 days of weekend, I don't know if they have 1 or 2) => $15.9 per day. / 10 hours per day => $1.59 per hour
Earning $2 for every extra hour... is like earning 1/3 extra per hour. Just to compare, here in Argentina, every extra hour is paid double by law. But I don't know if this is regulated in China...
Anyway, given the kind of job, I wouldn't try to stimulate working extra hours, as attention would decrease too much for this kind of monotonous and precision work. So, it makes sense that they pay little for overtime work.
[1] http://www.zdnet.com/blog/china/iphone-manufacturer-foxconn-...
The journalist also notes that "there aren’t enough workers to fill the positions at the factory as they keep resigning". This doesn't neccessarily mean its a bad place to work. I hardly have any friends that haven't quit at least one job in the last year or two. Modern Chinese culture -- particularly among young people -- accepts quitting your job, messing around for a few months ("playing" in Chinese) and then finding another as quite normal.
Having been a migrant worker myself, I think this is a great way for the mobility of young people, especially when the jobs offer accommodation too.
By not providing any context to the local norms, we tend to compare conditions to our norms and see it in stark terms, while the reality is more nuanced. FoxConn's compensation and work conditions may be imperfect, but are good enough relative to local alternatives they have sufficient supply of willing workers. The "exploitation by US consumers" is an effect of globalization.
Most criticism and remediation efforts should not be directed at the various firms, but at the country that allows it to occur.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/02/mac-mcclelland-f...
Amazon is a market leader too, and there's almost no coverage of how it treats its workers. Likewise Google and Samsung (the latter is considered unusually bad, having engaged in coverups).
[1] http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/industrial-robot...
Humans don't have those sort of problems.
Also keep in mind that sometimes, manual labor trumps robotics. Let's say there will be 70 million of these backplates shipped, and then no more will be needed. That's a lot of automation investment in a solution for a temporary product. Workers can move from one task to the next with ease, while robotics require a lot of development, logistics, and testing. For a company like Foxconn that will always be manufacturing different things, the investment in human labor might allow for more "pivoting" than robotics. Comes down to what makes the most business sense for them.
I don't understand why so many people are trying to defend the working conditions. Fine, the conditions may be considered fine in the context of China. That does not make them acceptable; it just means that the working conditions in China as a whole are bad.
If I'm honest, I had not ever considered the plight of the Chinese factory worker. I use things everyday that are manufactured in China under conditions that might be worse than those at Foxconn. That being said, this article was useful in that it opened my eyes a bit. This isn't to say that I thought the working conditions were probably great. I just had never considered them at all. It's quite easy to live in a bubble and sometimes articles like this help break out of it.
Remember that some of these people might end up designing and producing the products of the future as well. I know if I was 18 I would jump at the chance to take a job like this.
Injustice is injustice no matter where it happens.
The reality is that masses of people in third world countries are exploited and they don't have very many options to do otherwise. The governments and multinational companies are very interested in maintaining this status quo -- that is how you can earn billion (get cheap labor for low costs and sell at high prices).
Apple doesn't sell their products at 1/5th the price in the US to reflect the local rates (for that matter most things like a Mercedes would sell for the same international price). The point is that a large section of world population is denied many benefits simply because where they are (think about the quality of medical treatment in the US vs a place like China or India or Uganda).
It is in one's interest to ensure access to all such services/products at low cost (subsidized by someone else) while ensuring comparatively high compensation due to residence in a first world nation.
Hopefully the inequity will grow smaller over time.
Like every other technology hardware company they're addicted to cheap labor. Super automated factories are obviously where things are headed. Apple could lead the way in yet another way. In fact it's one thing Tim Cook could probably get done even better than Steve Jobs could have.
China is a regime, and it's convenient for the west that it stays that way. It's a source of inexpensive labour force and a place you can pollute building your gadgets. If they were to follow the most strict rules from EU/US, there's no way in hell that you would have access to cheap electronics.
Now I ask: would you exchange first world conditions for those workers for more expensive products? The majority of us consumers don't have a clue, we just go for what has a good cost/benefit. Ethics often isn't a factor on where we spend our money.
[1] http://images.apple.com/supplierresponsibility/pdf/Apple_SR_...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/sep/12/pakistan-factory...
http://www.ted.com/talks/leslie_t_chang_the_voices_of_china_...
"In the ongoing debate about globalization, what's been missing is the voices of workers -- the millions of people who migrate to factories in China and other emerging countries to make goods sold all over the world. Reporter Leslie T. Chang sought out women who work in one of China's booming megacities, and tells their stories."
Fucking hippies lamenting over the lot of a few Chinese working 10 h/day in a toxic prison factory while they are not even totally enslaved.
http://www.ted.com/talks/leslie_t_chang_the_voices_of_china_...
To be fair, at my job it's more like 100 and 1.
Of course, in the end it's all just a spectrum. Totalitarian regimes are just very extreme authoritarian regimes. Modern China, however, is far from being comparable to historic or current totalitarian regimes.
there is empirical evidence to suggest very successful companies get more bad press, Apple(for foxconn working conditions), Amazon(for temp warehouse jobs) being leading example.
This is an area where Google and/or an Android vendor could make a splash. "Fair trade" gadgets?