2016-01-10

Notes.

Busy week. Lot of reading, too!

Pathfinding.

• Avio Aero (the metal 3D printing shop that GE acquired back in 2013 along with Morris Technologies) bought 10 Arcam Q20s.
• CES Link #1: Quanergy announced a $250 solid state LIDAR unit.
• CES Link #2: 3D Systems announced their ProX320 metal AM system, which is apparently based on the Layerwise machines that I had parts printed on last year.
• An interview with Jeff Immelt about his time at GE. I particularly liked this.
• New plans for Penn Station.
• An awesome guide on equity compensation.
• Airbus is holding a robotics competition that requires robots to drill a bunch of holes in the fuselage of a plane.

Building.

• A really great recap of the Novena project, in which Bunnie Huang and others built a fully open source laptop.
• The process of bringing a bunch of new (and *really* long) tracks over to the 7 Line Extension is kind of interesting.
• The two decks that will support the Hudson Yards development will require 100,000 tons of steel. Related, via Dan: A cool video showing how the deck for the Manhattan West development will be built.
• NYC is (actually) getting public wifi.

Logistics.

• Tesla announced a software update with a new feature (Summon) that lets owners... summon their cars.
• The new Long Beach Container Terminal has a few cool automation features, bringing it (maybe) up to par with the big global ports.
• SpaceX is going to try to land the first stage booster from their next launch (on Jan 7) on their floating autonomous barge (again).

Evaluation.

• Via Matt and Jason, I've been listening to Econ Talk recently. This "dinner table economics" episode analyzes the underlying causes of a bunch of interesting phenomena.
• Another (old) story about MIT Building 20. What a great setup.
• There's an exhibit at the New York Historical Society on the huge role that NYC (primarily via IBM and AT&T) played in the 20th century. I haven't been yet but plan on it.
• Over the past 15 years, Lego sets (kept in pristine condition) have been a better investment than gold or basically anything else.
• Airbnb's "release" of data is pretty pathetic.

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

• A variety of stories describing the Barlow Knife's creation.
• Hart's Island - and the general problem of how to store unidentified corpses that accumulate in a city like New York - is pretty crazy.

And.

Photos of old AT&T Long Lines microwave towers.