2015-08-10

Notes.

What a week. Thanks to everyone who reached out about Undercurrent's closing - and sorry to everyone I haven't gotten back to yet (due to inbox overflow).

In case you missed it: I'm a free agent. I'm working on some independent stuff over the coming weeks, and poking around for full-time gigs in manufacturing too. If you know something I don't, holler!

Pathfinding.

• Supercomputers have about the same shelf life as PCs, and after it's over they're often crushed like a used car.
• According to the New York Times, some Chinese textile mills are setting up shop in the US. This is part of a major global economic trend that you yourself can see in person (if you just look): the rising cost of Chinese labor.

Building.

• Pretty cool - using an old microwave and some off-the-shelf components to build a spot welder.
• A good article (with good photos) on the team that's building a car (which is powered by a jet engine, plus a rocket, plus a Jaguar combustion engine that's there just to feed hydrogen peroxide into the rocket) that will attempt to break the (~1000mph) land speed record.

Logistics.

• I've always wondered why the cars all disappear when you hit "request" in the Uber app. Turns out that they're just phantom cabs - a rough approximation of how many Uber drivers are in your area.
• Some really good graphics showing how that Malaysia Airlines flight probably went down, and where the debris would have ended up.
• This article is kinda vapid but the photos of Amazon's Robbinsville, NJ fulfillment center are good.

Evaluation.

• This is cool: A company that makes sensors that are embedded in concrete, and can transmit data about the curing process as it happens.
• Homejoy's failure and platform leakage.

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

• Tufte CSS.
• An interesting NYTimes article on General Tso's Chicken, which was invented in the US and since repatriated to Hunan.
• Uber continues to lose money.

And.

Why we should - and what it would take to - build
a global high voltage DC electric grid.