Open up your mind and say, ahh...

Last week Foxconn pushed its starting salaries up from 900 yuan ($143) to 1,800 yuan per month, the latest and biggest in wage upticks that began in 2010. Foxconn did this for one main reason: international attention focused on the firm and associated ethical questions surrounding its treatment of workers. The lens through which this attention was focused bears just one name–Apple–because the iPhone seller is one of the biggest companies in the world, and has recently made very bold steps to improve worker conditions. But Foxconn is actually a key supplier for a laundry list of international electronics firms, from Samsung to numerous household American names. Now two of those firms, tech giants HP and Dell, have warned that rising costs in their Chinese supply chain may result in increased in-store prices for their wares.

Just think about that for a minute, let it simmer in your mind. While it’s cooking, here’re a few spicy facts to add to the flavor.

1. Apple, facing enormous criticism about unfair treatment of workers in its supply chain–who technically work for a totally different company, in a different nation with a vastly different social and economic background–has tried to improve the situation, and has admitted errors publicly.

2. Foxconn faced controversy in the past over its supposed suicide problem. As a harsh statistic it’s worth pointing out its actually much lower than the Chinese average. Infer from this what you like about worker conditions. And remember that many potential employees are battling to work at Foxconn compared to its competitors.

3. In early 2011 it was noted that China already had the third highest labor costs in the emerging Asian economies.

4. China’s work ethics, worker conditions, and economic situation are radically different than those in the U.S., influenced by Chinese politics, history, local economic effects, laws, social habits, and tradition.

5. Raw global economics and relative currency values mean that the local equivalent of a dollar can go further in many nations than you may expect it to go in the U.S. Anecdotally a can of Coke costs $0.34 at equivalent rates.

Now, here’s more to chew on: Thanks to rising Chinese wages, brought on partly by economic booms caused by Western revenues at firms like Foxconn, partly thanks to recent events, Dell and HP have said they’ll have to pass on the costs to the consumers. That means many consumers in the U.S., a vocal number among which have recently taken to pressing Apple, and Apple alone, for improvements and an “ethical iPhone.”

Let’s ignore the odd idea of looking at Chinese work ethics through glasses tinted with Western experience, let’s skip merrily past complex global politics and economics, and brush over how critics ignore the fact economies in countries outside the U.S. work very differently, including with different value associated with cash.

Ignoring all this, we can say many Western consumers may be happy to pay more for a premium device if they knew it was produced under more comfortable–Western-like, natch–situations.

But Apple hasn’t said it’ll raise its prices because of all these moves. In a way it doesn’t have to, it can eat any increased costs passed onto it by Foxconn thanks to its high profit margin. Good business planning there.

Dell and HP aren’t doing so well financially, and losing increased production costs in their thinner profit margins may not be so easy. But these firms have kept their head below the parapet in the Foxconn battle thus far, and now their bold move is to say “folks must pay more.” That’s at the least incredibly uninspiring, and the opposite of innovative.

No one’s apologizing for Apple, nor saying Foxconn’s employees enjoy the very best of conditions. But maybe it’s time to suggest other computing giants like Michael Dell’s outfit, Korea’s government-intertwined big name, and Meg Whitman’s new gig start thinking differently. That means applying their innovative, creative thinkers into changing their supply chain dynamics, improving worker conditions, being open about their suppliers, actually adapting their behavior from make-it-low-cost/stack-it-high/sell-it-cheap. Think of all the lovely positive PR.

Related: Apple’s Tim Cook on Foxconn: Data Transparency, Work Hours

Related: The Foxconn Effect: Where Will Electronics Be Made If China’s Wages Rise?

Image: Flickr user ttstam

For online security professionals, 2012 is turning out to be a banner year. Prominent hacks are taking place nearly every week. Credit card fraud and piracy on the Internet are booming. Hacktivist attacks against government computers and private companies are occurring almost daily. Big-name government agencies and businesses everywhere are shelling out for security assistance … but for everyday Internet users, it’s a giant headache with unclear risks.

The one thing no one is really able to explain is why cybercrime’s booming. According to a recent Norton study, cybercrime cost the global economy (in both direct damage and lost productivity time) $388 billion in 2011–significantly more than the global black market for marijuana, cocaine, and heroin combined. Officials at the Department of Homeland Security have reported exponentially increasing demand for cybercrime assistance–something confirmed by this reporter in anecdotal discussions with online security experts.

Every single expert has a different theory. Some say it’s due to a global economy that’s putting programmers out of work and turning them rogue. Others say it’s the easy availability of computers in poor regions of the world where job prosects are few. Then others say it’s simply that scripts and DDoS attacks have democratized cybercrime.

DDoS attacks–and their first cousins, botnets–are one of the biggest culprits. Most DDoS attacks are amazingly simplistic; they are denial-of-service attacks frequently made via software that requires no programming or IT knowledge. Botnets are impromptu networks of Internet-connected computers turned rogue via malware. Once a computer is compromised, they can be used for everything from financial fraud to knocking websites offline. Reached by email, Carl Herberger of security firm Radware put much of the blame on hacktivists such as Anonymous.

“The motive for attacks has changed and this new motive brought with it new tools and attack techniques,” Herberger tells Fast Company. “These new motives–frequently called ‘Hacktivism’–are in a new category which will go down in the record books as one of the most active periods of cyberattacks in the history of information security. Given the current efficacy of ideologically-based multi-vulnerability attacks such as WikiLeaks revenge attacks of 2010 and the Sony attacks of 2011, we believe this will only serve to encourage even more actors to enter the picture and spawn a vicious cycle of future malicious activity.”

While the idea that politicized groups such as Anonymous are malicious and/or criminals is controversial, many security experts agree with Herberger. At the recent Kaspersky Lab Cyber Conference in Cancun, CEO Eugene Kaspersky compared hacktivists to radicals who plant car bombs and commit arsons in the name of ideology. Similar alarms were raised in an end-of-year letter from risk management firm Stroz Friedberg, which largely conflated hacktivism with threats like state-sponsored data theft and zero-day exploits.

As for state-sponsored data theft, the New York Times just reported on the lengths to which American companies go to avoid Chinese cyberespionage. American businesspeople, consultants, and politicians working in China avoid bringing their work computers into the country and use throwaway mobile phones–to name the most common tricks–in order to avoid the loss of business secrets to state-sponsored corporate spies. While China is the most blatant nation-state to engage in spying on foreign businesses for the benefit of homegrown companies, it isn’t uncommon. Russia, France, Israel, Taiwan, and others have also been alleged to engage in the process.

The use of malware and worms is continuing unabated. While they remain common, little innovation has made it into the mass criminal market–the truly unique manifestations are only isolated creations of genius rogue programmers. But … the last major threat of 2012 is cyberwarfare. Anonymous has successfully transformed from their humble prankster beginnings at 4chan into an international movement. Other organizations such as LulzSec–and a host of others–are successfully coming up with cutting-edge prank attacks on high-profile targets. Non-state actors like Anonymous will increasingly see their methods used by nation-states and sympathetic patriots. Ongoing saber rattling between Britain and Argentina, friction between Russia and neighboring ex-Soviet states, war clouds over Israel and Iran, and the migration of foreign volunteers to Syria will all contribute to fertile grounds for cyberwarfare. The question now isn’t if us journalists are going to be writing about it–it’s when.

Image: Flickr user Scott Swigart

Who he is: Sir Li Ka-shing is a Chinese businessman based in Hong Kong, currently chairman of Hutchison Wampoa Limited and Cheung Kong Holdings. In 2010 the companies he manages were worth about 15% of the entire Hong Kong stock market, which qualifies Ka-shing as a magnate of epic proportions, rather than a mere businessman. He’s commonly considered Asia’s most powerful man, has the nickname Superman, and like many powerful figures associated with Facebook, he’s a a dropout, having left school at 15 (though that led to 16-hour work days at a plastics company). A serial tech investor, he’s philanthropic to the extent he thinks of his charity, the Li Ka-shing Foundation as his “third son.” Through it he’s already given away over $1.4 billion.

What’s his connection with Facebook?: In 2007 Ka-shing poured some $120 million into Facebook for a 0.8% share at the company’s then valuation of $15 billion.

What he’s currently worth: Ka-shing may be the best example ever of nominative determinism–the notion that your name decides your career. He’s considered the 11th richest man in the world with an estimated worth of $22 billion in 2011. Ka-ching, indeed.

What Facebook’s IPO will bring: A 0.8% stake in a Facebook worth $85 billion at IPO would equate to $680 million for Ka-shing.

What he may do with the money: Invest, acquire, give it away, dive into piles of it à la Scrooge McDuck: The new value is equivalent to just 3% of his current riches.

Whether it opens the doors of knowledge or turns us into lazy researchers, the web can instantly gratify most inquiries. So when we wondered which questions weighed heaviest on the minds of Internet users this year, we naturally turned to the same Q&A sites that they did.

We asked Formspring, Ask.com, Quora and ChaCha to compile lists of their most popular questions of 2011. Since all of the sites take different approaches to Q&A, we let them choose their own criteria for what constitutes “popular.”

Whether it’s possible to become Batman (it doesn’t look good) to who started Occupy Wall Street (debatable), here’s what the web wanted to know this year.

1. Quora

What it is: Quora is a crowdsourced social Q&A forum that tends toward long-form answers.

Criteria: The most viewed questions.

• 10. What’s the best way to escape the police in a high-speed car chase? Former patrol officer Justin Freeman details what it would take to escape from the police – and why it’s a bad idea.
• 9. What is the worst piece of design ever done? People responded with more than 100 frustrations, pet peeves and things that could be improved about the world.
• 8. Is Amy Chua right when she explains “Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior” in an op/ed in the Wall Street Journal? Users shared powerful personal stories about parenting and growing up Asian-American, along with follow-up questions answered by Amy Chua herself.
• 7. Given our current technology and with the proper training, would it be possible for someone to become Batman? Screenwriter Mark Hughes delivers an extraordinarily entertaining answer about whether it’d possible to be Batman in the real world.
• 6. Why did Twitter suspend UberTwitter? Bill Gross, founder of UberMedia, shares what happened to his company.
• 5. Why did Steve Jobs choose not to effectively treat his cancer? Cancer researcher Ramzi Amri takes a sad look back at the progression of Steve Jobs’s disease.
• 4. How does a programmer become a brogrammer? A discussion of an emerging Silicon Valley subculture.
• 3. What are some interesting examples of photographs which show historical figures in unexpected places or company? Unexpected pairings of historical figures: Bill Clinton with John F. Kennedy, Nikola Tesla with Mark Twain, Salvador Dalí with Walt Disney.
• 2. What’s it like to be a drug dealer? A nerve-wracking first-person account of one person’s rise and fall in drug trafficking.
• 1. What’s the most epic photo ever taken? A powerful tour of the most important, most poignant and most beautiful photographs ever taken.

2. Ask.com

What it is: Ask.com is a Q&A platform turned search engine turned back to Q&A platform. It directs questions to people who are likely to have the best answers.

Criteria: The top “trending questions” posed by Ask.com’s 60 million users from Jan. 1, 2011 to Dec. 14, 2011. Ask.com defines trending questions as those that are posed and viewed most frequently by users.

Health, Nutrition and Fitness:

• 1. Healthcare Plan: Is the healthcare plan unconstitutional?
• 2. Health Insurance: How can I get affordable health insurance?
• 3. Juice Cleanse: What’s the best juice cleanse?

TV and Movies:

• 1. Kim Kardashian: Was Kim Kardashian’s wedding fake?
• 2. Oprah Winfrey: When is the Oprah finale?
• 3. Regis Philbin: Who is replacing Regis Philbin?

Technology:

• 1. iPhone: When will Apple release the iPhone 5?
• 2. Google: How can I join Google+?
• 3. Facebook: How can I keep my Facebook wall private?

Business:

• 1. Occupy Wall Street: Who started Occupy Wall Street?
• 2. Facebook: Is Facebook going public?
• 3. Unemployment: Is the unemployment rate getting lower?

3. Formspring

What it is: Formspring is a social Q&A platform that lets users ask and answer questions.

Criteria: Most “smiles” to a response. Smiles are similar to Facebook Likes.

• 5. When was the last time you listened to that little voice in your head and what was it? Five minutes ago and it told me to eat 14 Oreos, which I did. – Sarah Lane, 1,182 Smiles.
• 4. Who do you look up to? <>People taller than me. – Fred Figglehorn, 1,327 Smiles.</>
• 3. When in 2012 is the part 2 of Breaking Dawn on screens? November 16, 2012 – Taylor Lautner, 1,453 Smiles.
• 2. What do you think of Brazil? I love Brazil! – Enrique Iglesias, 1,702 Smiles.
• 1. Who’s the smartest woman you have ever known? Justin Bieber – 30H!3, 3,358 Smiles.

4. ChaCha

What it is: ChaCha is an ad-supported service that employes 180,000 freelance “guides” to answer your questions immediately.

Criteria: Most answered questions (in no particular order).

• Is Justin Bieber a father?
• What are the lyrics to Super Bass by Nicki Minaj?
• When will The Hunger Games come to theatres?
• What is a Gleek?
• Who is Steve Jobs?
• When does Modern Warfare 3 come out?
• Is Osama Bin Laden dead?
• How did Amy Winehouse die?

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, fotosipsak

The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here.

Name:Wander

Quick Pitch: Wander is a free app that connects penpals and Instagram.

Genius Idea: Gives users the opportunity to immerse themselves in new cultural experiences through their iPhones.

__________________________________________

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Virginia — Oliver Kuttner is tired. He’s tired of your attitude. He’s tired of your conclusions. Mostly, he’s tired because he just returned from Germany and is so jet-lagged he’s almost drunk. Germany was good. They get it in Germany. They definitely get it in China. Not here. Not in America. You don’t get it, and even if you do get it, you’re not doing anything about it.

Edison2, the team of gearheads and former racing engineers Kuttner assembled to build one of the oddest cars you’ve seen, won the Automotive X-Prize. His funky, futuristic gas-powered Very Light Car gets 102.5 mpg and weighs 830 pounds. But he won’t build it. If he does build it, he almost certainly won’t build it here.

Oliver Kuttner is honest. Regardless of whether you think what he says is the raving of a mad inventor or God’s own truth, there’s no doubt Kuttner believes every word. As proof, the first thing he says during a screening of Revenge of the Electric Car at the University of Virginia is, “I’m sorry, I slept through half the film.”

Bold, given that he’d been invited to address the crowd gathered to see Chris Paine’s follow-up to Who Killed the Electric Car. Bolder still, he’ll spend roughly the next two hours trying to convince these folks electric cars are kind of a bad idea, even if they are inevitable.

These things would seem preposterous, given that the electric version of the Very Light Car is the best-performing EV yet measured by the EPA. His car achieved the equivalent of 350 mpg in combined city and highway driving, more than three times better than the Nissan Leaf.

The earnest college professor and EV collector moderating the evening’s discussion attempts to compliment Kuttner on this impressive feat. Kuttner attributes the figure to “accounting” and dismisses the praise with a weary wave.

Oliver Kuttner (that’s him on the left in the lead photo) is not Elon Musk. He makes this point a number of times. He’s stayed awake through enough of the film, and is familiar enough with Musk, to know he does not want to go down that road.

He’s not going into manufacturing. Are you crazy? Sure, he admires Musk. Who wouldn’t? But he’s convinced that Musk will spend a billion dollars pursuing his dream, then eventually sell all his technology to Toyota and break even. If he’s lucky.

Sure, Kuttner’s got an order for 2,000 cars. But there are plenty of people who can build a factory. He can’t. He won’t. Name an American automaker of any consequence that started in the past 50 years and remains in business. Kuttner doesn’t want to be Preston Tucker.

Stop Making Sense

Oliver Kuttner doesn’t know where his car is, and the communications manager for his company is catching on that I’m taking notes on my iPhone as we huddle around this man. This man who won’t stop talking. Who won’t stop making sense.

“He’ll write down everything you say and he’ll put it on the Internet,” the communications guy tells Kuttner. “He writes for Jalopnik.”

It’s a warning. The communications guy would rather Kuttner go home. He has Kuttner’s keys and knows where the car is parked. The movie is over, the panel discussion is done and we’ve been kicked out of the theater. We’re standing in the foyer. We offer to help get Kuttner back to his car.

Oliver Kuttner likes the Chinese. Visit a Chinese factory and you’ll see equipment. So much new equipment. Gleaming equipment built in Europe. The Chinese want to build things. They want to build things like his Very Light Car, with its proprietary suspension and outrigger wheels like an F1 car and crazy low weight. You want a 400-pound car? Kuttner can give you a 400-pound car. But that’s too light. It’ll blow into your neighbor’s yard. The lightest you can practically build is 1,000 pounds, and anyone who builds a bigger car is wasting energy.

The Chinese are a perfect market for cars. They don’t know what a car is supposed to be. The idea of owning one is new. There are no preconceptions, not prejudice. The Chinese want to save fuel. The same is true of India. Kuttner would build a car in India. That’s another huge population.

And how do you improve the environment if everyone in India owns a car? Go ahead, America, and drive all of the Nissan Leafs and Chevrolet Volts you want. They won’t fly in India. How will you power them? They can’t even keep the lights on. Electric cars in India? You’re dreaming.

Cosco builds shipping containers. It wanted to build trucks, so it did. Tons of them. It can build cars, too.

American Cars Aren’t Really American

Oliver Kuttner is worried. He’s worried about America. He’ll always keep his design center in Virginia. He loves it here. But Americans don’t make things anymore.

Your NAFTA cars aren’t really built here. They’re assembled here. They’re assembled from parts built in another country and shipped to Mexico. They’re not American cars. Not really. There’s no political will to build anything, to invest in manufacturing. Half of our economy is healthcare and financial services. What do we build here?

People took the wrong lesson from Solyndra. We need more Solyndras, not fewer. It’s a $500 million failure, sure. But that money was invested. It’s not a total loss. If you want to make something you must try to make something. So what if you fail 90 percent of the time? The 10 percent of the time you do succeed leads to something like Silicon Valley. We need ten Silicon Valleys.

Oliver Kuttner is pessimistic. Someone thought a high-speed rail line from Washington to Boston was a good idea. They spent 30 years on it, then died. It didn’t happen while they were alive. Kuttner will be damned if he’s going to beat his head against the wall for 30 years and then die.

Oliver Kuttner also is optimistic. Germany was good. The people at Siemens and Bayern are open to his idea. They have the money. But it could be India. Or China. Anywhere. Kuttner knows he’s got the right idea. Someone will buy into it. Someone will produce it. It’s only a matter of time. Don’t worry.

He’s happy he didn’t get a Department of Energy loan. They develop the solution, then hand out money to achieve it. What do they know? The companies getting that money are using it to build the same ol’ car. It’ll never work.

And because Kuttner’s firm didn’t get that money, it’s more thoughtful. It isn’t building a car. It’s refining it. Everyone’s trying to build cars with carbon fiber. His original design was carbon fiber. It was easy. But it’s a joke. All carbon fiber does is trade saved energy costs to increased material costs. His new designs are aluminum and steel.

Gordon Murray is a smart guy. He built the first mass-produced carbon fiber car. Now he’s talking about using steel tubes and composite tubs and plastic bodywork. What does that tell you?

It’ll Work Out

Oliver Kuttner doesn’t know where his car is. I don’t know where his car is, but the PR rep from the University of Virginia does. I follow them, but realize I don’t know where I am or how to get home. No worries. Kuttner takes me home in his VW Jetta TDI.

He’s not worried about talking to me. He doesn’t know what time it is. He may not even know what day it is. He’s exhausted. I feel I might be taking advantage of him, writing down everything he says when he’s clearly exhausted. But he knows what he’s saying.

It’s better to be open, he says. It’ll all work out.

Photos of the Very Light Car during the Progressive Automotive X-Prize testing: Edison2