2015-07-11

Notes.

I visited Tesla's Fremont factory this week, and wrote up some notes on my visit.

I also started planning the sourcing trip to China that Zach and I are taking for The Public Radio. We'll be there 07.24 through 07.31, and will have time in Shenzhen, Dongguan, Hong Kong and (for like a night) Beijing. Holler if you have a recommendation that we definitely shouldn't miss!

Pathfinding.

• Parbunkells.
• ^ This reminds me of how George Eastman came up with the name Kodak: "there were three principal concepts he used in creating the name: it should be short, easy to pronounce, and not resemble any other name or be associated with anything else."
• The economics of in-flight wifi are pretty interesting, and have everything to do with the business models of the airline you're on.
• In order to align funding with their R&D calendar, Toyota created a new class of stock that matures over 5-years.

Building.

• Brooklyn artisanal closet brackets. <- Which is hilarious and which I am quoted in extensively.
• I'll be a little disappointed if the first killer app for graphene is microphones and speakers, but the flat frequency response stuff is pretty cool.
• IBM made some seven-nanometer chips, which means that Moore's law has at least a few years left.

Logistics.

• An interesting study on the effect that Uber has on midtown Manhattan gridlock: "an Uber trip entailing 2.5 miles driven...is imposing an $18 'social delay cost' that easily exceeds the amount paid by the rider."
• How to clean up space junk today: Send up one satellite, and it eats a smaller CubeSat like Pac-man.

Evaluation.

• Your big Minecraft picture is wrong. <- AFAICT this is a real letter to the editor of the Financial Times.
• As I've been writing more about the process of developing 3D printed metal parts, I've relied heavily on the kindness (and self-interest) of companies in the industry. Which makes me think back to Malcolm Gladwell's Disclosure Statement, which (whatever you think of him as a writer/thinker) is really, really good.
• The US Appeals Court for the Federal Circuit ruled against Intellectual Ventures (Nathan Myhrvold's patent holding company), saying that two of their patents are based on "unpatentable abstract ideas." They cited Alice v. CLS, which is a really big case in patent law today.
• So, the Beats headphones that Bolt tore down (cf. last week's email) were actually counterfeit.
• A pretty good explanation of the difference between the two names for Chinese currency: renminbi (RMB) and yuan (CNY).

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

• This week Ada sent me a link to a really good piece on how the Women's World Cup is one of the few places where women publicly display intense desire, and it made me think back to my own experience with sports (and, importantly, construction) as a kid.
• Bill Simmons is being paid by ESPN until September, and apparently NBC & CBS aren't interested in hiring him.

And.

China's stock markets are batshit crazy right now.