2014-12-21

Notes.

So, people *really* liked that Paul Graham/Ben Evans twitter conversation last week. Which I was not expecting, but that's cool. Also: I'm maybe switching to sending this out on Saturdays. Does that matter to anyone?

Pathing.

• Bunnie Huang wrote a piece about sourcing in China. It's really, really great - and speaks to exactly the reason that I find talk about the digitization of the supply chain to be a bit premature - and also kinda beside the point.
• D'Angelo dropped an album, almost 15 years after Voodoo was released. My two cents: Listen to the new jam a couple times definitely and see what you think. But regardless, don't plan on taking Voodoo out of the rotation anytime soon.

Building.

• Friction stir welding is just *wildly* cool. Basically you take two pieces of metal and press them together, tight. And then you take a third piece of metal, which is essentially a cylinder with a smaller cylinder at its end, and you spin it really fast and rub it across and through the joint. The friction creates heat, softening the pieces you're trying to join, and then the spinning literally stirs the two parts to mix them. It has a few advantages over traditional welding, and is used a fair amount in aerospace applications.
• Sigma Labs and Additive Industries are working on a partnership to improve in-process control for metal 3D printing. In-process control for metal 3D printing is a huge deal, but I hear rumors that Sigma is mostly just good at sales.
• This DARPA report says some interesting things about how metal 3D printing can (and can't) be rapidly developed as a reliable, industrialized technology.
• The NYer's piece on graphene.
• An appropriately technical article on how difficult it is to (subtractively) process composite materials.

Logistics.

• DHL is investing $173M in Chinese logistics infrastructure.
• BitTorrent is building a browser. They continue to do really interesting stuff, and very little of it is related to piracy.
• Working more than 49 hours a week has little to no effect on total productivity.
• Two great stories about animals from the New Yorker: On the crazy things people will let you do if you've got an Emotional Support Animal, and on the intense and fascinating history and variety of police dogs.
• Russians are moving to Bitcoin.

Reflecting.

• A compendium of incredibly old websites that are still active.
• I read 4.7 million words in Pocket last year. According to Amazon, that's about 74 average length books. This feature - Pocket emailing me to tell me my stats - is basically my favorite thing about any app/service that I use.
• A good essay on Serial, the medium (as opposed to genre) of podcasting, and the power of tape (as a subset of journalism).

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

• Goetta is a patty, usually fried and made from ground pork, beef, and steel cut oats. It's of German origin, and is popular in the Cincinnati area.
• An artist residency aboard a container ship.

And.

Krampus, the German Christmas devil, is really creepy.