2016-07-25

Notes.

I'm in Seattle for about a week, visiting Ada's family and taking a few days (partially) off. I also snuck in a few work-ish things, including a very cool visit to ChefSteps to visit their hardware design team and learn a little about the complexity of cramming 1100 Watts into a 1.85" diameter cylinder.

Also - did you notice that you can now send donations to support The Prepared? If you read this regularly and get some value out of it, then I'd love your support :)

Wayfinding & Strategy.

• Tesla's new Master Plan. You should probably read this.
• How Charles Kao, by asking what was possible (as opposed to what had been done previously), beat Bell Labs and ultimately developed the whole field of fiberoptics.
• The Lowline got its first official approval from the NYCEDC.
• The FDA released new guidelines for nutrition labels, and stuck with Helvetica despite widespread opposition. Why? So that small producers don't need to buy new font packs.
• Bunnie Huang is suing the US Government to challenge section 1201 of the DMCA.
• ARM was acquired by SoftBank.

Making & Manufacturing.

• A nice, short video of Dyson manufacturing & testing their new autonomous vacuums. I *want* one of these robots.
• A new kind of mirror for cubesats, constructed of carbon nanotubes and epoxy resin.
• A great conversation with Dave Rauchwerk about CHIP, the $9 computer.
• A quick shout-out to Manufacturing Porn, which I've been following for a couple of months and have found at least a couple of links from. Good shit!

Distribution & Logistics.

• The Strategic National Stockpile warehouse stores supplies for all sorts of emergency situations.
• SpaceX is requesting two additional rocket landing pads in Orlando. I hadn't even thought of this - that the Falcon Heavy, with its three separate boosters, will need three landing pads available.
• The head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration essentially said that it's okay for autonomous vehicles to be imperfect - as long as they're better than humans are.

Inspection & Testing.

• Lucas emailed me this week to ask if I had any go-to tomes on quality/metrology, and I came up blank. Know one? Holler.
• Ben Wellington found a $791MM error in the NYC budget.

Tangents.

• I reread Wallace Stevens' 1954 poem "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" this week, and continue to *really* enjoy it. There's something great about the way he takes an abstract approach to such a weird combination of concrete things.
• Anil Dash on NYC's tech ecosystem as a place that's concerned with things other than *just* tech.
• I listened to a bunch of Malcolm Gladwell's new podcast this week, which I enjoyed. I'd recommend starting with The Big Man Can't Shoot, which ends up being about how Wilt Chamberlain was too concerned with what people thought of him.

Credit to Gabe for sending links this week. If you see something, send something :)

And.

A good reminder that lab glass (like most things) is made by people.