2018-12-17

Notes.
Thanks to all the great feedback on last week's update to the tool guide. Note that we do maintain a want-to-try list of tools & books, and are always looking for your recommendations to add to it :)

Planning & Strategy.

• Patent Pandas, a resource to help make patent law friendly for everyone.
• Patagonia's new corporate mission statement: “Patagonia is in business to save our home planet.”
• A reminder that the real hard problems in running a small business are mostly dumb and not particularly good fits for name-your-buzzword-technology-solution.
• A remarkably honest and forthcoming disclosure of how an outside salesperson at a contract manufacturer embezzled over $100k from Keyboardio. As you read this, I recommend that you think critically about how relevant it is that the CM is Chinese, and whether a similar story could play out domestically as well (I tend to think that it could).
• Louisiana has a digital driver's license.

Making & Manufacturing.

• A pretty fantastic 48 hour time lapse video of a tunnel being built in Holland.
• The Chevy Express sells more than Jaguar, Genesis and Alfa Romeo combined and uses parts that date back as far as 1985.
• The Bloodhound supersonic car project, which aimed to beat the land speed record using a jet engine strapped to a rocket, was cancelled due to lack of funds.
• I'm looking for a new supplier for die cut corrugated boxes, ideally in western MA or central CT. If you have suggestions, send them!

Maintenance, Repair & Operations.

• A mini documentary of the diver that maintains Mexico City sewers.
• A mini profile of NYC's official clock master, who maintains public clocks & adjusts them for daylight savings time.

Distribution & Logistics.

• A list of female executives at transportation, mobility & AV startups.
• Amazon killed the Instacart-Whole Foods partnership, something I've been expecting since 2017-11-14.
• Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo flew to 82.7 km in its first successful test launch.

Inspection, Testing & Analysis.

• A thorough, long, and (to me) riveting history of GE under Jack Welch, Jeff Immelt, John Flannery, and Larry Culp.
• A rather discouraging recap of Elon Musk's last year or so; Tesla does *not* seem like a fun/healthy gig.
• On copper usage in electric vehicles. The (electric) Chevy Bolt requires 80% more copper than the (internal combustion) VW Golf.
• Luminar and Volvo say that their long-range Lidar system can identify pedestrians' postures, which they see as a prerequisite to understanding whether (and presumably how) they'll move.

Tangents.

• I'm reading My Brilliant Friend, the first of Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan Novels.
• Pheasant Island is an uninhabited river island between Spain and France, whose administration alternates between the former (February through July) and the latter (August through January).
• If you read the section above about supporting The Prepared and thought "I wonder what this newsletter looked like five years ago," here's the answer :)

An academic history of the phrase "made in."