2014-11-27

Notes.

It's Thanksgiving.

I worked on two big things this week:

NYIO's notes from our recycling facility tour, and,

What I believe to be the most complete public list of US metal powder bed fusion (i.e. metal 3D printing, e.g. DMLS) service providers. Your boy (that's me) is on a mission to be a proper expert on the metal AM supply chain. If you've got tips, holler at me.

Pathing.

• The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is now requiring that grant-funded research be published under a Creative Commons attribution license.
• Ben Thompson gives the business case for why Uber fights like it does.

Building.

• Baidu (the Chinese web services company) is building a bicycle.
• A lingerie company that A/B tests obsessively, with really interesting results.
• IEEE Spectrum's "Patent Power" report ranks the patent portfolio growth in, like, all of the companies.

Logistics.

• An awesome interactive map showing the global supply chain for metal powder bed fusion.
• The USDA approved a genetically modified potato, which was designed to resist bruising and have lower levels of acrylamide, which is linked to cancer.
• A Hong Kong businessman is building a canal across Nicaragua, which will compete directly with the Panama canal. Construction is scheduled to begin late this year.
• The world's biggest dump truck, the BelAZ 75710, is powered by a Siemens electric motor.

Reflecting.

• Researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Lab developed a way of assessing post-build stresses in sintered metal parts.
• The NYTimes piece on "the secret life of" passwords is good.
• The troubled history of Yucca Mountain, and how outrageously difficult it is to design a 10,000 year storage facility for nuclear waste.

Stuff that doesn't fit into my dumb/arbitrary categories.

• The TL;DR version of the Bible. <- Pretty good.
• 3D Systems purchased an Israeli CAD/CAM software company, and released a couple interesting industrial 3D printers.

And.

There were a *lot* of buildings built in Manhattan
at the turn of the 20th century.