2016-05-30

Notes.

None.

Wayfinding & Strategy.

• Fuck your 90 day exercise window.
• Microchip acquired Atmel, and Boston Dynamics is going to Toyota.
• Ben Thompson on Google's technological strength - and their lack of product success.
• A good old article about a family of businesses that essentially use Amazon reviews as focus groups, releasing scores of new products based on the obscure combinations of features that people want.

Making & Manufacturing.

• Airbus APWorks unveiled an electric motorcycle whose frame is made of a series of DMLS scalmalloy structures, TIG welded together.
• The many ways to house electronics in plastic.
• How buttons are made.
• A good Instagram account of conventional manufacturing videos from Japan. I particularly liked the recent posts of planers at work.
• A good overview of the Navy's efforts developing railguns.
• Othermill announced an upgraded version of their desktop CNC aimed at PCB development. Check out that 26k spindle!

Distribution & Logistics.

• A good piece on the impact that a larger Panama canal will have. Interesting that LNG transport will benefit, but oil will not.
• How Austin beat Uber.
• Toyota and Uber announced a ridesharing partnership.

Inspection & Testing.

• A side by side teardown of fake and genuine Apple Watches.
• A good teardown of a wireless mouse.
• A *lot* of wind turbines have been built in China in the past few years, but their total wind energy output remains unimpressive. This is due partly to lower quality equipment, but apparently the bigger factor is curtailment - which itself is partly due to anomalies about their grid, and partly due to political pressure from coal interests.

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

• Oracle lost its lawsuit against Google, which claimed that its Java APIs should be protected under trademark law; Oracle is, of course, swearing to appeal the decision. For a good description of the implications of the case, see here.
• Carl Bass on the O'Reilly Hardware Podcast, talking about CAD.
• Seven of Frank Gehry's doodles, and the buildings they turned into.

Credit to Zach, David, and Jay for sending links this week. If you see something, send something :)

And.

Swimming humanoid robots.