2018-01-29

Notes.
Thanks to everyone who sent in questions. Got a burning curiosity about something in manufacturing? Send it along :)

I'll be at the 3MF consortium this week, working on file specs for 3D printable lattice structures for nTopology.

Planning & Strategy.

• The US International Trade Commission ruled 4-0 that Bombardier's CSeries pricing does *not* harm Boeing, and discarded the Commerce Department's recommendation that their new narrow-body jets be subject to a 292% tariff. "Through a venture with European planemaker Airbus SE, which has agreed to take a majority stake in the CSeries this year, Bombardier plans to assemble CSeries jets in Alabama to be sold to U.S. carriers [including, importantly, Delta] starting in 2019."
• Elon Musk "has agreed" to stay on as Tesla's CEO for ten years, and will only be paid (in stock which would be worth as much as $55B) if the company's value increases more than tenfold over that period.
• I'm reading (er, skimming on audiobook) Profit First, which was recommended (with some caveats) by Maria, and which Dan accurately describes here as "one of those books that should have been a blog post." Like them, I recommend it - with some caveats.
• Andrew Ng, the AI researcher formerly of Google and Baidu, is now working on manufacturing.
• Andreas is looking for a student (undergrad, masters, or PhD) with strong CS skills in 3D graphics/geometry and familiarity with mechanical engineering and simulation concepts to join the Autodesk Design Research team in SF. Hit up Andreas on LinkedIn or via email for more information.

Making & Manufacturing.

• The invention of the bendy straw.
• An interview with the CEO of Veelo (nee General Nano), a tiny but heavy hitting manufacturer of products based on carbon nanotubes. Interestingly, their focus has been on the electromagnetic (for lightning strike protection on aircraft) and thermal (for deicing on aircraft) properties of CNTs, rather than on their mechanical characteristics.
• Trump's infrastructure 'principles' state that "[federal] grant awards can’t exceed 20 [percent] of total project cost," much less than the 50% expected for NYC's Gateway project under an Obama agreement. Meanwhile, municipalities around the country have been planning & completing infrastructure projects as if Head Start and Small Starts funding will eventually materialize - and congress has done little to dissuade them.

Maintenance, Repair & Operations.

• The city of New Orleans is undertaking an emergency cleanup of its 68,000 sewer catch basins, cleaning 15,000 of them since late September. Among the 7.2 million pounds of debris that they've removed was at least 93,000 pounds of Mardi Gras beads.
• An exhibit at the City Reliquary on the history of trash in NYC.

Distribution & Logistics.

• On the fight brewing around congestion pricing in NYC.
• NYC's plow map, which tracks DSNY and other plows in real time.
• On Chicago's Pedway, a five mile long network of subterranean pedestrian tunnels.
• On the rise of low power FM radio.

Inspection & Testing.

• On the Octopart (a sponsor of The Prepared) blog, a post on how Sims Metal Management, a touchstone of NYC's garbage processing system, uses sensors to sort recyclables. See also my detailed notes from a 2014 trip to Sims.
• The New York Times' obituary for Naomi Parker Fraley, the original model for Rosie the Riveter. "Mr. Miller’s poster was never meant for public display. It was intended only to deter absenteeism and strikes among Westinghouse employees in wartime."
• A good, wonky discussion of the Replication Crisis in economics.
• US soldiers abroad use Strava when they jog; their locations are included in Strava's heat map.
• Walmart is the largest private employer in 22 states.

Tangents.

• On the rise and... continued rise of supermarket rotisserie chicken. "Costco sold 87 million in its 2017 fiscal year...Now Costco is building its own roughly $300 million chicken-processing plant in Nebraska, which should be cheaper than buying ready-to-cook chickens from suppliers."
• On Kodak's new blockchain foray, which is being run by WENN, which (in its own words) "developed an international pool of paparazzi photographers" in the 90s. "What does KodakOne do? It trawls the web for unauthorized use of images that WENN holds the rights to. When the system finds a licensing violation, it will settle payments due to photographers using KodakCoin."

A good overview of tunnel boring machines + The Boring Company's specious rhetoric.