2015-05-15

Notes.

Another plug: Help me & Zach out. Come to Soho on Memorial Day Weekend, have lunch, chat, and put together a few Public Radios. You'll learn stuff, and it'll prepare you for whatever logistical/hardware thing you'll organize or encounter in the future. Holler.

I sent that new 3D printed titanium part to get destructively tested this week, and am heading to RAPID (the 3D printing conference) next week. If you'll be there, also holler.

Pathfinding.

• Speed to product != Speed to learning.
• Alibaba named a new CEO.
• DuPont successfully fought off a proxy fight with Trian Fund Management, which wanted a board position at the company. This article does a good job explaining the situation - and its implications for other companies.

Building.

• A pretty crazy interview with a guy whose main gig is actively gentrifying Brooklyn.
• Tesla's Powerwall is sold out until mid 2016.
• Foxconn has 50,000 robots (presumably mostly their "Foxbots") at work in their factories, but that still pales in comparison to their ~1M employees.
• Sciaky launched a few new EBAM 3D printers. These machines are really big, and use an electron beam and wire-fed metal to create freeform parts.
• There's a $1B desalination plant being built in San Diego County.

Logistics.

• CloudDDM, a company founded by former MFG.com CEO Mitch Free, is putting a bunch of 3D printers in UPS's Lousiville distribution center. I've got strong (and decidedly mixed) feelings about MFG.com, and have a warmth for Shapeways (which this will compete with), but this could be a strong move. What I *don't* believe: 1) the 3 employees thing, and 2) the CloudDDM branding in the photo of the machines.
• The Aeromobil flying car founder crashed his prototype... flying car, but he wasn't hurt. Which reminds me of that time the owner of Segway died while riding a Segway off-road.
• Amazon got a surprisingly broad patent for drone delivery.

Evaluation.

• The FTC ruled that automakers should be allowed to sell direct to customers. This is big for Tesla.
• Ben Thompson on Amazon Web Services' size and profitability.
• De-Sta-Co, the manufacturer of all kinds of workholding equipment, is 100 years old.
• The comparison between Whole Foods' food pseudoscience and Kosher law is pretty apt.

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

• So I grew up with these, but I'm not sure if anyone else knows about them: Rudyard Kipling's "Just So" stories, narrated by Jack Nicholson with Bobby McFerrin accompanying him. They're great.
• Five castles that are cheaper than an apartment in San Francisco.
• The Siege of Vienna was the first Ottoman attempt to capture Vienna, and ended up being the pinnacle of Ottoman power. If you're looking for an analogy for the last overreach of a waning force, this might be a good one.

And.

This is where people from California get parking tickets
when they're visiting NYC.