Notes.
New subscribers! Welcome :)
Pathfinding.
- I've been reading Managing the Flow of Technology, and a number of things (related to my own career, network, and relationship with the world) have jumped out at me. It's a fascinating book so far - my reactions here.
- Tim Cook's encryption letter.
- Infrastructure needs better marketing.
Building.
- I wrote an essay on CAD, automation, and human machine interfaces. It was prompted partly by discussions at nTopology, partly by a blog post written by Autodesk's CTO, and partly by Our Robots, Ourselves.
- Pratt & Whitney is having some trouble with rotor bowing on their new geared turbofan engines, causing longer-than-desired startup times.
- Sciaky is introducing closed loop process control on their massive directed energy deposition machines.
- A good, technical article on how to model the metal powder bed fusion process.
Logistics.
- De Blasio's streetcar won't offer free transfers to the subway system. I can't see how this ends well.
- From Jay, a time lapse video of a container ship as it bounces back and forth across the Baltic sea. The precise maneuvering is pretty cool.
- Lowe's built a robot (OSHbot) to help people navigate their Orchard Supply Hardware chain (thanks, Mackenzie!). I wonder if the ambiguous relationship with the open source hardware movement is intentional?
- Flexport's Ryan Peterson (whose recent output is *impressive*) on bills of lading and DHL's origins.
- More megaships -> more grounded megaships.
Evaluation.
- Gothamist published a good, long interview with Robert Caro about his work studying Robert Moses' and LBJ's political power. I've said this before, but I *really* recommend reading The Power Broker.
- A bunch of physical kilogram standards are, over the next weeks, converging in Paris to test the redefinition of that basic unit in such a way that it's fixed to the Planck constant.
- An ode to industrial supply catalogs.
- A history of the shopping cart.
Stuff that doesn't fit into my dumb/arbitrary categories.
- Apparently the US honeybee population is doing pretty good, in spite of colony collapse disorder.
And.
Photos of the World Trade Center under construction.
(Thanks, Dan!)
Love, Spencer.
p.s. - We should be better friends. Send me a note - coffee's on me :)
