2015-11-01

Notes.

None.

Pathfinding.

• IBM acquired Weather.com and the huge amount of weather data it owns.
• The SEC finally approved equity crowdfunding rules. Somewhat surprisingly, Indiegogo says they're interested in making it a part of their business model.
• Trek is apparently going to sell bikes direct to customers online.

Building.

• Using molten towers of salt to store solar energy. Weird.
• Octopart keeps improving their BOM tool - now with custom pricing and custom parts.
• The circuitous and weird workflow I'm using (with increasing success ;) to design 3D lattice structures for metal 3D printed parts.
• This is silly but actually really cool: A gun that extrudes tubes of sticky tape, ostensibly so you can prototype furniture in your house (but really just for you to play with).

Logistics.

• Global shipping is down. It's so bad, in fact, that Maersk laid up one of their Triple-E ships.
• A town in New Jersey has raised money to give drunk people free Uber rides home.
• Due to lack of funding, the MTA had to resubmit their capital budget for 2015-2019 with about $1B less than they had originally wanted. The effect: Phase 2 of the 2nd Avenue Subway is going to be delayed.

Evaluation.

• Danny Meyer is eliminating tipping in all of his restaurants. Apparently *everyone* has read this article already and I've had a few conversations (really random ones) about it this week. I'm 100% for this; I think it'll make dining *way* more pleasant as a customer (not being in foodservice myself, I can't really comment on the other purported benefits).
• A good article on the ongoing debate about what a subway map should look like, and whether it should include geographical information about what's above ground.
• I had a long article published in Metal Additive Manufacturing Magazine. It's a recap of a lot of my work over the past two years, and includes some more of my thoughts on the industry in general.

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

• Untapped Cities and the NYCEDC are running some great tours of NYC buildings & infrastructure over the next few months. If anyone out there decides to go on one, let me know - I may join you.
• A good series of blog posts recapping an MIT Media Lab student's trip to Shenzhen.

And.

Photos from NYIO's trip to the MTA's Coney Island Complex.