2016-09-18

Notes.

None.

Wayfinding & Strategy.

• An interesting idea from Fred Wilson on how to encourage YIMBYism.
• The Equitable Building, built in 1915 in lower Manhattan, blocked sunlight to a number of its neighbors - triggering huge changes in the way we manage building size & setbacks in the US.

Making & Manufacturing.

• Ingersoll and ORNL announced a FDM printer (with a high speed milling head) that's 250' long.
• A good description of the laser processes used across smartphone manufacturing.
• Redesigning a mixing manifold for AM.
• Proto Labs is now offering overmolding.
• Blue Origin is apparently working on a very large new rocket.
• Tesla won a bid to build a grid-scale Powerpack in Southern CA.
• Related Companies are building a $150MM interactive sculpture at Hudson Yards.

Maintenance, repair and operations.

• NYPL's Rose Reading Room is reopening on October 5, after two years of restorations.

Distribution & Logistics.

• The Dutch police bought four eagle chicks and are training them to take down drones.
• My friend Adam (who I worked with at Brilliant Bikes and who now runs ops at Thrive Market) is thinking factors in fulfillment center site selection & automation, and looking for folks to talk to. Does SKU optimization interest you? Holler at him -> here.
• A bit more detail on Saildrone from the NYTimes.
• One problem that's really hard to do physical testing on: emergency evacuations of airports.
• Using plasma actuators instead of flaps on airplane wings.

Inspection & Testing.

• This week I re-read Atul Gawande's The Score, on Cesarean sections and the knowability of the success of childbirth. Gawande is one of the most emotionally and intellectually compelling writers I've ever read, and I consider The Score to be essential reading for anyone thinking about improving outcomes.
• iFixit's very good teardown of an iPhone 7+.
• XKCD's timeline of the earth's temperature.
• A retrospective of the Eisenhower Expressway, the section of I-290 that was built through Chicago between 1949 and 1961.
• 538 on the skills gap in manufacturing.
• Uber riders aren't very sensitive to changes in price.

Tangents.

• Smokey Mountains National Park's Fall Foliage tracker.
• A Rube Goldberg machine of watch parts.

Credit to Severin, Andreas, Reilly, Terry, Oliver, Mackenzie, and Andre for sending links this week. If you see something, send something :)

And.

Where Hanjin's container ships are now.