2015-04-25

Notes.

This week Clay and I put the most recent prototype seatmast topper on his bike and rode it 20 miles. For clarity and in case you haven't been following, this is a 3D printed titanium bike part that I designed.

If that isn't enough, Zach and I have been hustling (with a lot of help from Suz, Daniel & Kane) on The Public Radio's testing & tuning routine. So much work. Coming along.

Pathfinding.

• Justine Musk (ex wife of Elon) wrote a great answer on Quora about what it actually takes to become someone of Elon Musk's stature. TL;DR: give up on the idea of being happy or having any kind of a regular life.
• Eric Wiesen (a partner at RRE, who invested in Makerbot) wrote some good thoughts on the scrutiny that Makerbot (now part of Stratasys, a public company) is subject to. I wrote my own reaction as well, though it relates more to the future of FDM (the 3D printing technology that Makerbot uses), which I'm short on.
• ...and meanwhile, XYZprinting (a low cost Makerbot competitor) is working to put one of their 3D printers into every primary school in China.
• Tartine merged with Blue Bottle and is expanding - including to New York.

Building.

• The NYTimes video on robots (mostly Kuka) in China is really beautiful. Also, a good NYTimes article from like a year and a half ago on the progress & history of New York City Water Tunnel #3.
• The ways that utilities are fighting the threat of distributed solar power are glaringly obvious in Hawaii.
• HP is working on a computer that swaps RAM and a hard drive for memristors. This story makes them seem partly delusional and partly pragmatic and rational.

Logistics.

• GE has a huge locomotive testing track in the desert. By the way, you're aware that I do consulting for GE, right?
• Google Chrome apparently *kills* your Mac laptop battery life. I always use Chrome, but from now on it's Safari only when I'm on a plane.

Evaluation.

• A good trend in New York Employment caselaw: Courts are refusing to "blue pencil" overbroad noncompete agreements. Blue penciling is when a court finds one part of an agreement to be unenforceable, but continues to enforce the rest of the agreement. Well recently, New York State courts have decided that when employers are excessive (in terms of breadth, duration, or overuse of their superior bargaining position) in employee noncompete agreements, the entire agreement is void. I like this.
• A good retrospective of Deepwater Horizon (you may know it as "Macondo") and how the oil industry continues to  handle risk.
• Jerry Saltz's review of the new Whitney Museum. I found this pretty compelling.

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

• Pork roll is kinda like Spam, but different, and often (in NJ/PA) served in lieu of bacon on egg sandwiches.
• Nick Chirls on the fee structure for VC funds.

And.

All I want to do right now is build my own (better)
version of this bike.