Minggu, 31 Maret 2019

A Look Inside Tesla's Fremont Automotive Factory — #CleanTechnica Exclusive - CleanTechnica

March 31st, 2019 by  



Tesla recently invited CleanTechnica to its automotive factory in Fremont, California, for an exclusive tour that took us behind the scenes in one of the largest manufacturing facilities in the world. This is the factory that serves as the beating heart of Tesla’s automotive business.

From the outside, the factory itself spans several city blocks, with numerous smaller facilities in the blocks and miles surrounding the factory to add onto the Tesla fun. For example, Tesla’s seat factory is just 2.6 miles down the road. We also toured that factory and will have much more to say about the place where Tesla builds all of the seats for its vehicles — and why it’s so special.

Tesla Fremont Locations. Image credit: Google Maps

Tesla is taking over Fremont, and even a cursory tour of the area highlights how fast the company is growing and the benefit of pulling all of Tesla’s various tasks into a single Gigafactory location. After months of planning, CleanTechnica’s Zachary Shahan, Chanan Bos, and I rolled up to the gates of the factory on a crisp March morning and took it all in.

The factory proper is nearly ¾ of a mile, or just over 1 kilometer long, and sits like the great ice wall from Game of Thrones across the property. Its white walls are accentuated by the occasional pop of red and large TESLA logos to shout out to the world and the nearby freeway what’s happening inside.

Tesla’s Fremont, California, automotive factory. Image credit: Kyle Field | CleanTechnica

Upon entering the factory, we found ourselves in an open-concept office space, with random single-person working pods referencing Harry Potter, like the “Chamber of Secrets,” along the sides. There was also the usual assortment of huddle rooms and conference rooms. Unfortunately, we didn’t see any of Willy Wonka’s oompa loompas running around, or magical unicorns farting out showers of 2170 batteries. (Maybe next time.)

It was just a bunch of people working their tails off to move the business forward — designing vehicles, building out secretive new Autopilot hardware chipsets, and patching together the latest Autopilot release. It’s all in a day’s work at Tesla. The office looked clean and well branded, with a thick dose of coffee punctuating the otherwise stale office smell. Recognizing the vast thirst for coffee across the company, Tesla even has its own coffee roast, which is rumored to still available from some of the caffeination stations buried in the depths of the factory.

General Assembly

Team CleanTechnica donned our personal protective equipment and headed into the factory proper, where we were quickly greeted with the familiar sounds of forklifts, conveyors, and motors, punctuated by the occasional pop of a weld from the nearby body shop. Hopping on an electric cart, we zipped over to the General Assembly for Model 3 and took a few minutes to look at the Model S assembly lines.

A Tesla Model S getting its battery. Image credit: Kyle Field | CleanTechnica

General Assembly is where the painted body of the car comes to get all the fun stuff that humans actually interact with. That includes the wiring, carpet, dash, monitor, center console, seats, and the like. Hundreds of parts and sub-assemblies are bolted onto and into the vehicles as they move down a linear production line that has been selectively automated to eliminate ergonomically incorrect tasks and the need to lift heavy or awkward parts, or simply to speed up the process.

To Automate Or Not To Automate

In the Model 3 General Assembly lines, the balance of automation vs. human effort had clearly been worked out as Tesla sought to make the assembly process not only faster and more predictable, but also more friendly for humans. Generally speaking, Tesla found that machines are great at working with parts that are always the same size and in the same place, like metal, bolts, batteries, battery packs, hard plastics, and such. When it comes to working with fabrics, belts, wires, and the like, humans are better.

Location of the Tesla Model 3 “marriage,” where the lower battery and motor assembly is mounted to the vehicle body. In this picture, you can see the bottom “skateboard” of a car and a Model 3 body moving toward a location above it where the two will be married. Image credit: Kyle Field | CleanTechnica

There is a strong case for using robots where lifting, placing, and bolting parts might result in repetitive strain injuries. The placement and fixing of the heavy dash assembly into the car is a great example. Machines can easily and quickly place the dash into the car and bolt it in predictably, time after time, without having to wonder if every bolt was torqued correctly. Tesla actually tracks each and every individual bolt and part used in a vehicle, along with the torque specs that were used when fixing them to the vehicle.

Tesla’s Manufacturing Operating System was built completely in-house and has evolved over time as the company grew. It currently supports nearly all of the company’s manufacturing equipment. The custom-built operating system has allowed Tesla to fine-tune its equipment and processes. It clearly comes at a cost, as every change must be vetted and developed internally, but the upshot of the additional internal complexity is flexibility. Tesla can quickly come up with a new improvement or change to its products, equipment, or centerlines and implement it before another automaker would even be able to get a formal proposal together to send to a vendor.

Agile Manufacturing In Real Life

This flexibility and agile design methodology is common to hear about in just about any company with an IT department, but to see it playing out and actually, mostly working in a manufacturing plant is unheard of outside of Tesla. Again, people talk about what they call in the industry “extreme manufacturing,” but coming from nearly two decades in traditional manufacturing with 5 years in applied IT, actually seeing it functioning in the real world was impressive.

Tesla isn’t perfect, so don’t read this as if we’re stating that Tesla has automotive manufacturing so dialed in that nobody could ever do it better. It’s hardly that. Temporary engineering workstations were set up in the middle of the production line to troubleshoot the equipment. When we were there, I noticed line of partially finished vehicles had been pulled out of the production flow for body shaping issues to be corrected before moving along to painting. The factory, like every other factory I have visited, is a living, breathing entity.

The lesson we gleaned is that, while Tesla is far from perfect at manufacturing, it is, at the same time, improving at a rate that has never been seen before in automotive manufacturing history. The variability of a normal production line in any other factory in the world is compounded at Tesla by the stream of continuous improvements that are fed into the process every day, every week. This doesn’t just apply to the manufacturing process — the machine that builds the machines — but also its products. We heard and saw this play out time and time again throughout the day.

Tesla is constantly improving. Every day, its seats are getting better than the day before. Each and every day, its software is improving, iterating, evolving. Its welding has been tweaked, its battery chemistry is constantly being refined, battery module designs change, chassis, safety, steering, power output … you name it. That’s why Tesla doesn’t have model years for its vehicles. They are constantly evolving. Each day, or at least each week, Tesla is producing a different car than it was producing a week before.

Tesla Model 3 General Assembly. Image credit: Kyle Field | CleanTechnica

Everything and anything in the company and in the car is up for debate. There are no so-called sacred cows that cannot be touched. That principle reared its head with the all-out push to release the $35,000 Tesla Model 3 Standard Range, which resulted in the very public statement that Tesla would be closing many of its retail stores and would be switching to 100% online sales, and that it would be slashing prices across its lineup at the same time. A few simple days of number crunching later, Tesla walked its position back a little, raising vehicle prices back up a few percent. Overall, a healthy equilibrium is reached, but the journey to get there is often bumpy, stressful, and unpleasant — especially if you are not accustomed to this style of business.

The Stamping Press

Tesla takes its vehicles all the way from rolls of aluminum to completed vehicles at its factory. That all starts with its massive Schuler press servo tandem line. This is the stamping press that’s tasked with stamping out body panels for the Tesla Model 3. While there are 35 of these presses in Europe, Tesla’s Schuler is the first of these high-precision, high-throughput presses in the US.

The Schuler press is so large that it is hard to take in at a single glance. We walked around the Schuler press and were able to see a changeover of the dies it uses to stamp out parts. Matched sets of dies are used in the Schuler to stamp out uniform aluminum body parts even faster than the rate claimed by the manufacturer, thanks to numerous improvements made by Tesla after commissioning the press. (Watch the 4 second video clip above for a visual on this.)

The Schuler may be the first of its kind in the US, but Tesla didn’t use that as an excuse to ramp up production slowly. Instead, Tesla’s team installed and commissioned the Model 3 servo press in ~25% less time than the fastest installation Schuler had ever done before. And that was just the starting point. Tesla proceeded to scrutinize every single piece of the press, making small tweaks and changes along the way.

At the discharge of the press, Tesla completely reworked the conveyors in order to fit more functionality into less space. The company did this by replacing the two discharge conveyor belts that came with the press with four shorter belts that fit better into the available space.

Changes like this and more allowed Tesla to increase the rate of the press from 12 strokes per minute to 14 strokes per minute, a 16% improvement. That translates to more throughput from an extremely expensive piece of equipment and less capital required to scale up production. Putting that into context, Tesla can now produce body panels and stampings from the Schuler press at twice the rate as its Model X stamping press line and a mind boggling four times the rate of the older Model S production lines.

After coming out of the stamping press, body panels and stampings are then manually inspected by a team of workers, with any imperfections being buffed out or flagged for correction before being filed into waiting racks. The racks of finished parts are then stored in an adjacent building until the body shop is ready to start welding them together into the body of a car.

A select set of the finished parts are pulled for quality assurance testing, where they are run through a vision system that checks them against a digital template. The multiple levels of quality checks aim to eliminate defects resulting from the press section, which translates into a better product for customers and a lower total cost to manufacture for Tesla. Quality is one of those metrics that we can all get behind.

Body Shop

After the press section, we headed into the heart of the beast. The tour path twisted and turned so much that my head began to swim, and before I could get my bearings, the process engineer that would be our guide emerged with a smile on his face. He explained that he would be taking us on a tour of the body shop, which is, contrary to popular belief, not the part of the shop where Elon and the other Teslateers go to get ripped.

The body shop is, in fact, where Tesla turns body panels into fully assembled auto bodies. Each section of the shop is comprised of densely packed robots that look like they came straight out of the latest Transformers movie. In each section, an army of these robots attack a specific set of tasks that grab body parts and inspect, fit, weld, or glue them together into a finished vehicle frame.

Tesla told us that the Model 3 body line is 90% automated and has over 1,000 robots, which is not hard to believe after visiting the factory. That figure takes on a completely new meaning when you see all those robots in real life, building cars, moving parts, and welding seams. As the Model 3 bodies are assembled, a team of 47 robots are hard at work at a dozen inline scanning stations that measure 1,900 points in every auto body to ensure that the cars coming off the line meet Tesla’s exacting standards. Take that, panel gaps.

Building on the philosophy described higher up in this article, where automation is well suited to tasks that involve rigid parts and repetitive tasks that might be ergonomically unfriendly or could result in high-impact quality variations, the body shop is all about automation. Body panels are fed into the process from storage racks and are quickly assembled like pieces from a Lego Technic set, with arcs of welding slag flying through the air (behind the guards) punctuating the process.

As we moved along the body shop production line, beautiful polished metal bodies emerged from the swirl of robots, evoking a smile of recognition from our group. The team of Transformer robots were extremely effective in turning a mass of body panels into an assembled thing that had a striking resemblance to my very own Tesla Model 3 out in the parking lot.

A Seat By Any Other Name

We took a stroll down the street to meet with some of Tesla’s interior and seating experts at the company’s “second-to-none” seat factory. Tesla’s decision to manufacture its own seats was yet another sharp diversion from traditional automotive manufacturers. It is yet another example of Tesla’s ability to pull difficult production tasks in-house, and the result is a one-of-a-kind level of vertical integration in its seat manufacturing.

The decision was initially made in response to a healthy dissatisfaction with the status quo. There are four primary seat builders that build seats for the auto industry, but in typical Tesla fashion, they found that they needed higher quality, lower cost, and more flexibility than the suppliers could provide. So, Tesla brought seats in-house by hiring some of the best in the interior automotive and seat manufacturing industries.

Their Model 3 seat factory was initially built with capacity for two seat assembly lines with a total production capacity of 10,000 seats per week (5,000 per line). However, since starting up its first assembly line, Tesla has been able to squeeze out 7,000 seats per week from the first single line. That is especially relevant when we look at the high percentage of shared components between the Model 3 and the recently unveiled Model Y.

That translates to a 40% improvement in throughput from the single line and has allowed Tesla to continue to ramp up its automotive production without having to install the second line. Though, that day is surely approaching as Model 3 production continues to ramp up. CapEx is also positively affected, as Tesla could presumably achieve the same rate on the second line, effectively buying two lines and getting nearly a third line worth of production capacity for free, thanks to the improvements it made on the first two lines. Zach will soon publish a full piece on the wonders of the seat factory alone.

Stay tuned here on CleanTechnica for a comprehensive rundown of everything we experienced at the factory, including some fantastic video footage.

Related: Tesla’s Vertical Integration Unlocks Hidden Flexibility & Innovation — #CleanTechnica Field Trip 
 





 

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About the Author

I'm a tech geek passionately in search of actionable ways to reduce the negative impact my life has on the planet, save money and reduce stress. Live intentionally, make conscious decisions, love more, act responsibly, play. The more you know, the less you need. TSLA investor.



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https://cleantechnica.com/2019/03/31/a-look-inside-teslas-fremont-automotive-factory-cleantechnica-exclusive/

2019-03-31 17:45:42Z
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Investigators say Saudi Arabia accessed Jeff Bezos' phone - Engadget

Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Jeff Bezos' accusations of blackmail and extortion extend beyond just the National Enquirer and its parent AMI. Bezos' investigation team has determined "with high confidence" that Saudi Arabia had access to the Amazon chief's phone. Team leader Gavin de Becker pointed to a number of factors leading to the conclusion. Most notably, he rejected the Enquirer's claims that Michael Sanchez (the brother of Bezos' lover Lauren) was the sole source for the info. Sanchez told Page Six that the Enquirer had already seen text messages when it contacted him to investigate Bezos' possible affair -- there was another source, and de Becker's group believes Saudi Arabia is the most likely culprit given its methods, motivations and connections to AMI.

The Saudi government reportedly relied extensively on covert phone surveillance as part of the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, according to the New York Times and de Becker's expert consultants. And when the Post (owned by Bezos) started covering Khasoggi's murder in earnest starting October 2018, the Saudis started attacking Bezos and de Becker with organized social media attacks and threatened boycotts.

There's also a "close relationship" between Saudi regent Mohammad bin Salman and AMI chairman David Pecker, according to de Becker. The chairman brought bin Salman's intermediary Kacy Grine to a private meeting with President Trump, while the company also created a magazine to sell bin Salman to the US with Grine's help. The implication, as you might guess, is that Saudi Arabia intended to retaliate against Bezos and the Post using the Enquirer as a willing conduit.

AMI has insisted that it "acted lawfully" in reporting on Bezos, while the Saudis have denied both involvement in the Bezos incident and bin Salman's involvement in Khashoggi's murder. Not that this will necessarily help them much. De Becker has submitted the results to federal officials investigating AMI's actions, and it's up to them to decide whether or not Saudi Arabia and AMI were compromising Bezos' phone.

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https://www.engadget.com/2019/03/31/jeff-bezos-investigation-accuses-saudi-arabia/

2019-03-31 17:36:57Z
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Jeff Bezos’ investigators believe ‘with high confidence’ that Saudi Arabia accessed his phone - The Verge

Following the revelation that the The National Enquirer had obtained intimate texts and images between Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanches, Bezos ordered an investigation into who was behind the data breach. In a post on The Daily Beast, Bezos’ security consultant Gavin De Becker says that his team of investigators have “concluded with high confidence that the Saudis had access to Bezos’ phone,” although he says that they haven’t been able to to link that access with the data that the Enquirer claimed to have.

In February, Bezos released a remarkable post on Medium, saying that Enquirer and its parent company, AMI, had attempted to extort and blackmail him with images that he had texted to a woman with which he was having an affair. The story is part of a much larger one that feeds into the rivalry between Bezos, who also owns The Washington Post, and President Donald Trump, who has described the publication as a “lobbyist newspaper,” and includes an international angle involving Saudi Arabia, which reportedly sees Bezos and the Post as a threat.

After Bezos published his post, he directed de Becker to figure out how the tabloid had gained access to his images and texts. Word quickly emerged that it was Sanchez’s brother, Michael who provided the publication with the texts, but other theories have since emerged: that Bezos was hacked, that an intelligence agency leaked the images to the Trump Administration, or that it was from a foreign government agency, like Saudi Arabia or the UAE.

In his post for The Daily Beast, de Becker pointed to details that indicates that Michael Sanchez might not have been the source of the texts: saying that the Enquirer had contacted Michael Sanchez after already seeing text exchanges between Bezos and Lauren Sanchez, which “would mean, clearly and obviously, that the initial information came from other channels—another source or method.”

He goes on to say that his investigation concluded “with high confidence that the Saudis had access to Bezos’ phone, and gained private information.” He says that they “did not reach our conclusions lightly,” and have since passed on their findings to federal officials. But, he also says that while they believe that Saudi Arabia might have accessed Bezo’s phone, it’s unclear if they passed that information on to AMI.

de Becker points to the Enquirer’s history and connections with the Kingdom, and paints a picture that the country is using AMI and its publications to put pressure on people it deems enemies, such as Bezos and The Washington Post.

Bezos alluded to Saudi Arabia in his post, saying that AMI had been investigated for “various actions they’ve taken on behalf of the Saudi Government,” pointed to The Washington Post’s coverage of Jamal Khashoggi’s murder, and that “the Saudi angle seems to hit a particularly sensitive nerve.” AMI has since released a statement, denying that Saudi Arabia was involved.

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https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/31/18289296/jeff-bezos-gavin-de-becker-saudi-arabia-accessed-phone-data-national-enquirer

2019-03-31 16:20:36Z
52780255188841

Jeff Bezos' security consultant accuses the Saudi government of hacking Amazon CEO's phone, linking them to extortion attempt - Business Insider

jeff bezosAlex Wong/Getty Images

  • Jeff Bezos' chief security consultant has said the Saudi government hacked the Amazon chief's phone and accessed his private information.
  • Gavin de Becker wrote in a column published Saturday that he could conclude that his investigation found that Saudis had gained access to Bezos' private information. 
  • The investigation was launched after the National Enquirer published an exposé into Bezos' relationship and the paper threatened to publish Bezos' intimate photos and text messages. 

Jeff Bezos' security chief Gavin de Becker said in a column published Saturday that the Saudi government had access to the Amazon chief's phone and gained private information from it.

De Becker wrote in The Daily Beast that he could confirm the connection after an extensive investigation into the publication, which was sparked by reports targeting Bezos in tabloids owned by American Media Inc.

"Our investigators and several experts concluded with high confidence that the Saudis had access to Bezos' phone, and gained private information," de Becker wrote. "As of today, it is unclear to what degree, if any, AMI was aware of the details."

In February, Bezos alleged in a widely-read Medium post that the National Enquirer tried to blackmail him by threatening to publish intimate text messages and photos. He also revealed that he had launched an investigation after a January exposé on his relationship with Sanchez to find out how the paper obtained the private information in the piece. 

Read more: These are the main players in the explosive saga of Jeff Bezos' love life and his war with the National Enquirer

Bezos drew a connection in the letter between the kingdom of Saudi Arabia and American Media Inc., specifically accusing owner David Pecker of trying to blackmail him unless he publicly declared that the tabloid's reporting on him had no political motivation.

Days after Bezos' post, AMI attorney Elkhan Ambramowitz doubled down on the paper's commitment to their explanation that Sanchez's brother had been the only source, flatly denying any connection to the Trump administration and the media company's ties to Saudi Arabia.

De Becker points to an appearance by Abramowitz on ABC as perhaps the most concerted effort to throw blame on Sanchez's brother for the revealing materials in the January story, when he insisted that the source was "not Saudi Arabia" but a "person that was known to both Bezos and Ms. Sanchez." 

This statement was marred by reports from the Wall Street Journal and Page Six that said the Enquirer came to Sanchez after it knew about the relationship, de Becker said, which suggests there were other sources. 

Numerous outlets suggested that Saudi Arabia's alleged role in AMI's pursuit of Bezos was motivated by Bezos' ownership of the Washington Post, which created diplomatic issues for the country through its dogged reporting on the killing of its columnist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, last October.

Bezos acknowledged in his February post that his ownership of the Post was a "complexifier," and De Becker wrote in the Beast that the Saudi government had been threatening Bezos since October. 

The kingdom reportedly denies any connection, as well as any responsibility for Khashoggi's death. 

De Becker also points to owner Pecker as a central figure in the paper's Saudi connections, ushering in glowing coverage for Crown Prince Mohamed Bin Salman, including an advanced copy of a magazine that the prince and his aides had a chance to edit. 

De Becker's investigation reportedly relied on interviews with "current and former AMI executives and sources," "top Middle East experts in the intelligence community," "leading cybersecurity experts who have tracked Saudi spyware," "discussions with current and former advisers to President Trump," "Saudi whistleblowers," and "people who personally know the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman." 

De Becker also wrote that he has turned over his investigation's findings to US federal officials and will be releasing no further details. 

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https://www.businessinsider.com/jeff-bezos-saudi-government-hacked-amazon-ceos-phone-national-enquirer-gavin-de-becker-2019-3

2019-03-31 15:34:02Z
CAIiEE-4X60JgrLKGG4B-S4oa28qLggEKiUIACIbd3d3LmJ1c2luZXNzaW5zaWRlci5jb20vc2FpKgQICjAMMJzw5wE

Jeff Bezos' security consultant accuses the Saudi government of hacking Amazon CEO's phone, linking them extortion attempt - Business Insider

jeff bezosAlex Wong/Getty Images

  • Jeff Bezos' chief security consultant has said the Saudi government hacked the Amazon chief's phone and accessed his private information.
  • Gavin de Becker wrote in a column published Saturday that he could conclude that his investigation found that Saudis had gained access to Bezos' private information. 
  • The investigation was launched after the National Enquirer published an exposé into Bezos' relationship and the paper threatened to publish Bezos' intimate photos and text messages. 

Jeff Bezos' security chief Gavin de Becker said in a column published Saturday that the Saudi government had access to the Amazon chief's phone and gained private information from it.

De Becker wrote in The Daily Beast that he could confirm the connection after an extensive investigation into the publication, which was sparked by reports targeting Bezos in tabloids owned by American Media Inc.

"Our investigators and several experts concluded with high confidence that the Saudis had access to Bezos' phone, and gained private information," de Becker wrote. "As of today, it is unclear to what degree, if any, AMI was aware of the details."

In February, Bezos alleged in a widely-read Medium post that the National Enquirer tried to blackmail him by threatening to publish intimate text messages and photos. He also revealed that he had launched an investigation after a January exposé on his relationship with Sanchez to find out how the paper obtained the private information in the piece. 

Read more: These are the main players in the explosive saga of Jeff Bezos' love life and his war with the National Enquirer

Bezos drew a connection in the letter between the kingdom of Saudi Arabia and American Media Inc., specifically accusing owner David Pecker of trying to blackmail him unless he publicly declared that the tabloid's reporting on him had no political motivation.

Days after Bezos' post, AMI attorney Elkhan Ambramowitz doubled down on the paper's commitment to their explanation that Sanchez's brother had been the only source, flatly denying any connection to the Trump administration and the media company's ties to Saudi Arabia.

De Becker points to an appearance by Abramowitz on ABC as perhaps the most concerted effort to throw blame on Sanchez's brother for the revealing materials in the January story, when he insisted that the source was "not Saudi Arabia" but a "person that was known to both Bezos and Ms. Sanchez." 

This statement was marred by reports from the Wall Street Journal and Page Six that said the Enquirer came to Sanchez after it knew about the relationship, de Becker said, which suggests there were other sources. 

Numerous outlets suggested that Saudi Arabia's alleged role in AMI's pursuit of Bezos was motivated by Bezos' ownership of the Washington Post, which created diplomatic issues for the country through its dogged reporting on the killing of its columnist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, last October.

Bezos acknowledged in his February post that his ownership of the Post was a "complexifier," and De Becker wrote in the Beast that the Saudi government had been threatening Bezos since October. 

The kingdom reportedly denies any connection, as well as any responsibility for Khashoggi's death. 

De Becker also points to owner Pecker as a central figure in the paper's Saudi connections, ushering in glowing coverage for Crown Prince Mohamed Bin Salman, including an advanced copy of a magazine that the prince and his aides had a chance to edit. 

De Becker's investigation reportedly relied on interviews with "current and former AMI executives and sources," "top Middle East experts in the intelligence community," "leading cybersecurity experts who have tracked Saudi spyware," "discussions with current and former advisers to President Trump," "Saudi whistleblowers," and "people who personally know the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman." 

De Becker also wrote that he has turned over his investigation's findings to US federal officials and will be releasing no further details. 

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https://www.businessinsider.com/jeff-bezos-saudi-government-hacked-amazon-ceos-phone-national-enquirer-gavin-de-becker-2019-3

2019-03-31 15:05:23Z
CAIiEE-4X60JgrLKGG4B-S4oa28qLggEKiUIACIbd3d3LmJ1c2luZXNzaW5zaWRlci5jb20vc2FpKgQICjAMMJzw5wE

5 Social Security Mistakes You Probably Don't Even Realize You're Making - The Motley Fool

We all make mistakes. We make non-financial ones, such as brewing caffeinated coffee in the evening when we meant to brew some decaf, and financial ones, such as not saving and investing enough to build a sufficient war chest for retirement.

Another kind of mistake that shortchanges our comfort in retirement is a mistake we make related to Social Security. That's dangerous, since fully 48% of married elderly Social Security beneficiaries and 69% of unmarried ones get 50% or more of their income from it, according to the Social Security Administration (SSA).

The foot of a man in a suit about to step on a banana peel.

Image source: Getty Images.

Here are five Social Security mistakes many people make. You may be making one or more without even knowing it.

No. 1: Not setting up a "my Social Security" account

If you haven't yet set up a "my Social Security" account at the SSA website, you should -- for several reasons. First, it's where you can look up estimates of your future benefits at any time and see the SSA's record of your income and taxes paid into the Social Security system.

It's also good to set up this account as soon as possible because if you don't, an identity thief might. That's one way that crooks are causing massive headaches for many Americans -- posing as them online and trying to get their Social Security benefits.

No. 2: Not checking your earnings history

While you're at your my Social Security account, look over that record of your income over your entire working life and see if it looks correct. If you keep good records, you may actually be able to check it closely.

It's smart to review the record every now and then so that you can spot any possible errors and have them fixed. If the record doesn't reflect all your earnings, when it comes time to calculate (and pay!) your benefits, you'll get shortchanged.

No. 3: Not knowing your "full retirement age"

You should also find out your "full" retirement age. That's the age at which you can start collecting the full benefits to which you're entitled. It's important to know that age because it's likely to be a key part of any Social Security strategizing you may do. The full retirement age was formerly age 65 for everyone, but it's now 66, 67, or somewhere in between for most folks:

Birth Year

Full Retirement Age

1937 or earlier

65

1938

65 and 2 months

1939

65 and 4 months

1940

65 and 6 months

1941

65 and 8 months

1942

65 and 10 months

1943-1954

66

1955

66 and 2 months

1956

66 and 4 months

1957

66 and 6 months

1958

66 and 8 months

1959

66 and 10 months

1960 and later

67

Source: Social Security Administration. 

No. 4: Planning to start collecting benefits at a suboptimal time

You can make your Social Security benefit checks bigger or smaller than what you'd get if you started collecting at your full retirement age -- by starting to collect earlier or later. For every year beyond your full retirement age that you delay starting to receive benefits, you'll increase their value by about 8% -- until age 70. So delaying from age 67 to 70 can leave you with checks about 24% fatter.

That works in reverse if you start collecting early. For every year before your full retirement age that you start collecting, your benefits will shrink by about 7%. So if your full retirement age is 67 and you start collecting benefits at age 62, your checks will be about 30% smaller.

Many people aim to delay as long as they can for those fatter checks but they're not appreciating that while the checks will be bigger, there will be far fewer of them. The program is designed so that total benefits received are about the same no matter when you start collecting, if you have an average life span. Given that, and the fact that few of us know just how long we'll live, it makes plenty of sense for most people to start collecting at 62.

On the other hand, if your family has featured many people who lived well into their 90s and you can afford to delay starting to collect, it can make sense to do so.

It can also be a mistake to start collecting while you're still working -- or to take on a job with significant income while you're collecting benefits. Why? If you earn too much, you can have some of your benefits withheld. (That may be annoying, but you get that money later, so it's not a fatal error.) You may even end up with your benefits taxed.

No. 5: Not coordinating with your spouse

Finally, if you're married, be sure to coordinate when you'll start collecting benefits with your spouse. For example, you might start to collect the benefits of the spouse with the lower lifetime earnings record on time or early, while delaying starting to collect the benefits of the higher-earning spouse. That way, both of you get some income earlier, and when the higher earner hits 70, they can collect extra-large checks.

Also, should that higher-earning spouse die first, the spouse with the smaller earnings history can collect those bigger benefit checks -- as widows and widowers can choose to receive 100% of their late spouse's benefit instead of their own. (The survivor benefit is not available to those who remarry before age 60, but it is if you're at least 60 and were married for at least 10 years.)

It's worth learning more about Social Security so that you make smart decisions in order to get as much as you can out of the program. After all, you have probably been paying Social Security taxes (that "FICA" deduction on your pay stub) for your entire working life.

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https://www.fool.com/retirement/2019/03/31/5-social-security-mistakes-you-probably-dont-even.aspx

2019-03-31 12:03:00Z
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Social Security is a lifesaver but far from perfect. Here are 3 rules we hate - USA TODAY

For better or worse, Social Security is our nation's most prized social program.

Each month, 63 million benefit checks go out, with more than a third of these recipients lifted out of poverty as a result of this guaranteed monthly payout.

While Social Security was crafted to be a financial foundation for retired workers in the mid-1930s, it's evolved into so much more, with the program also providing long-term disability insurance benefits and survivor benefits to the immediate families of deceased workers.

But for as much of a financial lifesaver as the program has been, Social Security is far from perfect. There are certain "rules" within the program that I'm fairly sure we can all agree we hate and would prefer to see gone.

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Here are three such rules.

1. Taxing Social Security benefits (over certain income thresholds)

Not that I'm ranking these in any particular order, but if there were some aspect of Social Security that was more hated than any other part of the program, it would almost certainly be the taxation of Social Security benefits. In fact, a survey from Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit organization The Seniors Center, released in March 2017, found that an overwhelming 91 percent of retired Americans want the taxation of benefits shelved.

The taxation of paid benefits applies at the federal level when an individual's modified adjusted gross income plus one-half of their benefits exceeds $25,000 (or $32,000 for a couple filing jointly). Instituted in 1984, following the passage of the Amendments of 1983, this measure allowed up to 50 percent of a person's or couple's benefits to be taxed. In 1993, a second tier was introduced, allowing up to 85 percent of benefits to be taxed if a single taxpayer or couple filing jointly exceeds $34,000 or $44,000 in earned income, respectively. Although this isn't a case of double taxation, it sure as heck seems like it to a number of Social Security recipients.

Making matters worse, the income thresholds associated with this tax have never been adjusted for inflation. Thus, as more years go by, more and more seniors are being taxed on their take-home from the program. At last check, The Senior Citizens League (TSCL) estimated that 51 percent of all senior households are paying some tax on their Social Security benefits.

The icing on the cake is that 13 states also tax Social Security benefits to some varied degree. Should you face state tax on your benefits, then you would indeed have a valid gripe about double taxation.

2. Using the CPI-W to calculate COLA

Another Social Security rule we'd love to give the heave-ho to is the use of the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W) as the program's inflationary tether for its cost-of-living adjustments (COLA). Think of COLA as the "raise" that beneficiaries receive each year in order to keep up the rising cost of goods and services (i.e., inflation).

The problem is simple: the CPI-W does a really bad job of measuring the costs that matter to retired workers – who, may I remind you, make up 70 percent of current beneficiaries. That's because the CPI-W, as the name implies, tracks the spending habits of urban and clerical workers, who, in nearly all instances, aren't Social Security beneficiaries. Just to recap for the skimmers: The program primarily provides benefits to seniors but has an inflationary tracking index that's pegged to working-age urban and clerical workers.

Since working-age Americans and seniors spend their money very differently, it results in seniors precipitously losing purchasing power on their Social Security dollars. Expenditures that matter more to retired workers, such as housing and medical care, are given less weighting, while less-important expenses, such as entertainment, transportation, education, and apparel, bear a higher weighting in the COLA calculation. Since the year 2000, TSCL finds that the purchasing power of Social Security dollars for seniors has dropped by 34 percent.

3. Subjecting early filers to the retirement earnings test

Being subjected to the retirement earnings test is another gripe that's common among early filers.

The retirement earnings test describes an earned income limit for retired workers who've chosen to take their benefit prior to reaching full retirement age. Your full retirement age is the age at which you become eligible to receive 100 percent of your monthly payout, as determined by your birth year. If an early filer surpasses this limit, their benefits can be partially or even fully withheld by the Social Security Administration (SSA).

In 2019, early filers who won't be hitting their full retirement age this year are only allowed to earn up to $17,640 annually ($1,470 a month) without any repercussions. For every $2 in earnings above this mark, $1 in benefits is withheld. If you will reach your full retirement age this year but have yet to do so, the earning threshold is $46,920, or $3,910 a month. In this instance, $1 in benefits can be withheld for every $3 in earned income above this mark.

Even though you'll get your withheld benefits back in the form of a higher monthly payout once you hit full retirement age, the retirement earnings test is a pest because it punishes early filers who are still working and might be looking to double-dip on their income streams. It may also inadvertently harm early filers who have no choice but to claim early.

Sorry, folks, but none of these rules is going away anytime soon

Unfortunately, even though we can all agree that these Social Security rules should be shelved, there's virtually no chance of changing any of them anytime soon.

Despite our loathing for the taxation of benefits, the program simply couldn't do without the revenue it's providing on an annual basis. According to the 2018 Social Security Trustees report, the taxation of benefits will generate $561.2 billion in revenue between 2018 and 2027. If this tax were simply stopped cold turkey, Social Security's already precarious financial situation would become even direr, potentially leading to steep benefits cuts in the future.

As for the CPI-W, switching to a perceived-to-be-more-accurate inflationary measure would require bipartisan cooperation in Congress – which, as we all know, is a fairy tale. OK, maybe that's a bit cynical, but both Democrats and Republicans have proposed a "fix" for Social Security's inflationary tether, and their suggestions couldn't be further apart. Without the required 60 votes in the Senate to amend Social Security, no changes to its inflationary measure will be made.

And the retirement earnings test isn't going away, either. That's because in order to avoid a rush on early benefit claims, the SSA wants to encourage folks to save more, invest for the future, and claim their benefit (ideally) at or after their full retirement age.

It's perfectly OK to hate these three Social Security rules. Just be aware that no amount of hate is going to make them go away.

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The Motley Fool is a USA TODAY content partner offering financial news, analysis and commentary designed to help people take control of their financial lives. Its content is produced independently of USA TODAY.

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https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/personalfinance/retirement/2019/03/31/social-security-benefit-3-rules-program-everyone-hates/39240269/

2019-03-31 10:00:00Z
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