2014-03-15

Pathing.

• Matthew Yglesias/Slate: "Morgan Stanley Predicts Utopian Society by 2026." I was pretty sure this headline (and at least *some* of the original report) was ironic, but I'm not certain. Anyway, it's about Uber & Tesla. Kind of.
• Google: Project Tango. This project comes out of the sliver of Motorola that Google kept - ATAP. Basically it's a croudsourced 3D mapping project.
• Stephen Wolfram's Introduction to the Wolfram Language: This is fucking crazy. Next time I need to build a data classifier (or whatever), I know what I'll use.
• Sapna Maheshwari/BuzzFeed: "New Esurance Site Says It Can Predict If Local Gas Prices Will Rise Or Fall 90% Of The Time." This is what location-based services are all about.
• Matt Asay/Readwrite: "The Internet of Things: The Real Money Is The Internet, Not The Things." I would quibble that the real money is in the interaction, but the point here is well made.
• Manny Picciola/Stuart Jackson/HBR: "Why the Greek Yogurt Craze Should be a Wake-Up Call to Big Food." My big takeaway here: Big Food should think smaller.
• Yiren Lu/The New York Times Magazine: "Silicon Valley's Youth Problem." This is a really, really, good piece.
• Dave Thomas/PragDave: "Agile is Dead (Long Live Agility)." A very good takedown of management philosophies writ large.

Manufacturing.

• The Selvedge Yard: "Buz Knows Speedos." An informal interview with a dude who makes custom speedometers for (primarily) Honda CB motorcycles. You should "read" it for the photos.
• 3ders: "Local Motors to deliver first 3D-printed electric vehicle this September." Local Motors is pretty interesting, and of course I'm down with people using additive manufacturing to make interesting things. I question a few of the details (or lack thereof) in this article/press release, but it's interesting nonetheless.
• Kyle Maxey/Engineering.com: "Jeffries Believes Metal 3D Printing is Set to Grow." If anyone has access to this original report, I'd love to read it.
• Terry Wohlers: "AM Material Pricing." Basically, there are signs that 3D printed plastics materials should be dropping in price in the next few years.
• Bolt.io: "Hardware is NOT the New Software." Good advice on how to approach a hardware startup.
• 3ders: "3D printing bikes on Taiwan's streets turn old plastic into 3D printed objects." This is brilliant, and kinda idiotic, and also brilliant.

Logistics.

• Felix Salmon/Reuters: "Charts of the day, female risk-aversion edition." Salmon sums up research that compares risk aversion between men & women & across age groups. Very interesting.
• Zach Miners/ITWorld: "Gmail's 'unsubscribe' tool comes out of the weeds." I actually can't confirm that this exists - I'm not seeing it in my gmail yet - but it highlights the powerful position that Google is in vis-a-vis direct marketing.
• 8bitfuture: "Rewritable paper developed." This looks like a pretty cool development, except that WHY ARE WE STILL USING PAPER?!??!
• Ben Thompson/Stratechery: "Netflix and Net Neutrality." I had no idea how the ISPs actually deliver content, and Ben's analysis here of how the extant system compelled Netflix to act was really informative.
• Marc Andreessen/Twitter: "Because sewers and electricity are far more static markets than broadband. You don't shit 10x as much every 3 yrs." This is also re: Netflix & Net Neutrality; the conversation on twitter is really great.
• Katie Fehrenbacher/Gigaom: "The sheer size of Tesla's massive battery factory could be a game-changer in many ways." This definitely looks important. Incidentally, the political effects should be really interesting too.
• Marcus Wohlsen/Wired: "Comcast Burns Netflix Again by Snagging House of Cards." I had no idea HoC's syndication rights weren't Netflix's.

Reflecting.

• Bolt.io/Medium: "The Internet of (Dumb) Things." Quote: "The tragedy of the IoT movement is smart, talented, ambitious founders spending huge amount of time and money trying to solve problems that people don’t really have."
• James Surowiecki/The New Yorker: "Twilight of the Brands." A well put argument, and one that I largely agree with: Brands today are only as good as their most recent product.
• Tatiana Kouskoulas/Jennifer Conlin/Jaunt Detroid: "City of Glass." This contains a really interesting history of the glass industry in Detroit, which I had never paused to consider - but which, of course, was *key* to the auto industry. Note: The first third or so is TL;DR/all about stained glass.
• Suzanne Berger/Boston Review: "How Finance Gutted Manufacturing." The argument here is that it's not industrial automation, or globalization, that is killing US manufacturing jobs. Instead, it's that shareholders (who are, it should be noted, people too) eliminate efficiencies in search of higher profits.
• Ben Horowitz: "Notes on Leadership." Good breakdown of three powerful leadership qualities.
• Ben Horowitz: "Why We Prefer Founding CEOs." (Basically) Ditto the above.
• Tony Haile/Time: "What You Think You Know About the Web Is Wrong." On Chartbeat, banner ads, and the portion of attention that's below-the-fold.
• Felix Salmon/Reuters: "Satoshi: Why Newsweek isn't convincing." A good argument for doing things the bloggy way.
• Mark Liberman/Languagelog: "Holacracy." ::Sigh:: Languagelog is the best, especially when it's on-topic and references Dilbert.

Stuff that doesn't fit into my dumb/arbitrary categories.

• Quoctrung Bui/Planet Money: "74,476 Reasons You Should Always Get The Bigger Pizza." Talk about economies of scale.
• Nicola Twilley/Edible Geography: "Harvesting Winter." A really good description of the (mostly lost) practice of harvesting, storing & distributing natural pond ice.
• Aaron Blake/WaPo: "White House: Obama's 'Between Two Ferns' cameo driving traffic to HealthCare.gov." If you haven't seen this, whatever. But it was really smart.
• Reuters: "'Sicilian Space Programme' launches pastry into stratosphere." This is apparently *not* a joke.

And.