Pathing.
- Why there are so many wallets on Kickstarter.
- One NASA team wants to send a submarine to explore the oceans of Titan, while another is apparently serious about building a Star Trek style warp drive.
- An excellent, old Paul Graham essay on being an outsider.
- Tesla is open sourcing (ish?) their patents.
- Apple buying Beats + encouraging headphones to use Lightning connectors = An interesting shift.
- How Seattle's new minimum wage could spur automation of low-wage jobs.
Building.
- Bill Gates reviews a book on building materials.
- Arup, 3DSystems, and Within Labs are working on DMLS building components.
- A great profile of Xiaomi, the Chinese handset manufacturer.
- Factorli is working to help startups prototype and manufacture medium-size hardware runs.
- Ford is teaming with Heinz to find automotive uses for tomato scraps.
- "Bipedal Humanoid Robot That Makes Humans Laugh With Use of the Method of Comedy and Affects Their Psychological State Actively."
- A 3D printer is going to the ISS this summer.
- Travertine is a form of limestone deposited by mineral springs.
Logistics.
- Xerox's transportation logistics business is really interesting.
- An interview with the head of freight rail operations at the NYCEDC.
- Amazon is apparently planning a local services marketplace.
- The University of Michigan is building an urban test course for autonomous cars.
- iOS8 will scramble users' MAC addresses for privacy.
Reflecting.
- Doctors on Quora on how revolutionary HealthKit could be.
- A very fun review of the 1984 Mercedes Benz 300TD wagon.
- On LeBron's leg cramping and the pseudoscience of sports hydration.
- RAS Syndrome.
- Nate Silver compares Eric Cantor's loss to an earthquake.
Stuff that doesn't fit into my dumb/arbitrary categories.
- A computer called "Eugene" passed the Turing Test (haters gonna hate, but whatever - it's philosophy).
- Junto, Benjamin Franklin's mutual improvement club.
- John F. Simon's 1996 piece "Every Icon" generates every possible combination of 32x32 pixel icons.
- It's possible that not everyone saw the excellent NYer spoof on the NYTimes dialect quiz. That should change.
- FiveThirtyEight's is searching for America's best burrito.
And.
Arnell's "Breathtaking" is the most amazing brand study you've ever seen.
Love, Spencer.
ps - Thank you to everyone - especially my friends at Gin Lane, Undercurrent, and on twitter - who referred me to everything here.
We should be closer friends. Coffee's on me.
