2018-07-09

Planning & Strategy.

• I was interviewed on a podcast! About my career as a product manager, which is something I don't think about consciously very often but which is a big part of the way I work. Check me out on 100 Product Managers.
• Lyft did, indeed, purchase Motivate. Related, NYCDOT selected Motivate, Jump, Lime, Ofo, and Pace to participate in a dockless bike share pilot this summer.
• A consortium of automakers are collaborating on a shared supply chain data platform.

Making & Manufacturing.

• "Popcorn driven robotic actuators."
• A very thin low-torque linear PCB actuator - a PCB that acts as a linear motor.
• A eutectic system is a homogeneous mixture of substances that melts or solidifies at a single temperature that is lower than melting point of the constituents. This is particularly relevant in soldering/brazing, where the filler material's properties may change significantly if it is non-eutectic.

Maintenance, Repair & Operations.

• On Baltimore's recycling & trash industry: "Of the nearly 6,800 tons of recycling [Baltimore] county collects each month, officials said, 32 percent typically passes through sorting to end up in a landfill...The city’s recycling was valued at $112 a ton seven years ago, but that value fell this year to $30, city officials said."
• A good overview of why the L train's Canarsie Tunnel needs to be repaired.
• Low ocean freight prices & less international oil shipping is leading to a surge of oil tankers being scrapped; something like $1B worth of ships will be recycled this year. This is only boosted by rising prices for scrap steel - up > 40% over 2016 prices.

Distribution & Logistics.

• Amazon announced its own last-mile delivery system, which will be comprised of contracted "entrepreneurs" who lease Amazon-branded trucks. "Building out a delivery operation with independently contracted service providers mirrors the strategy used by FedEx to create its home-delivery capability years ago, something it added after its founding as an air express company focused on overnight deliveries. UPS has a combined network of unionized drivers who are direct employees, as does the Postal Service." As a customer I find this a little disappointing, as (anecdotally) I find FedEx contractors to have incentive structures that make them considerably less accommodating than UPS's drivers.
• The Bard College Center for the Study of the Drone (what a name) has a *very* comprehensive weekly newsletter about all manner of autonomous/remote operated vehicles. Geeky.
• (Motivate operated) Ford GoBike's pedal-assist bikes get ~3x as many rides per day as the rest of their fleet.
• Cosco will acquire its rival Orient Overseas International, put the Port of Long Beach into a US-run trust, and sell it.

Inspection, Testing & Analysis.

• Tesla *barely* met their 5000-unit production target for Q2, *but* they canceled an apparently important brake test.
• Al Dean on the last decade in the CAD industry: "What’s interesting is that the same same four big vendors control the market: Siemens, Dassault Systèmes, PTC and Autodesk. What’s even more interesting is that, largely speaking, their collective product ranges haven’t changed that much either."
• The median sale price for a home in SF is $1.6MM. The *median.*

Tangents.

• Pranking welders with auto-darkening helmets.

Vintage 1988 CFD simulation at NASA.