2016-10-30

Notes.

Just a reminder: If you're in NYC, holler at me - I'd love to meet. Special kudos to smart people who want to work on good things and are thinking about moving here.

Wayfinding & Strategy.

• The White House issued a call to the states to reduce the prevalence of non-compete agreements.
• Siemens announced an "end-to-end solution" for additive manufacturing.
• Something I missed last week: Tesla's upcoming autonomous software update has a EULA, and that EULA dictates that the autonomous driving software cannot be used to make money by renting your car out to Uber, Lyft, or anyone other than Tesla.
• GE's bid for SLM failed, and they purchased a 75% stake in Concept Laser instead.
• PCC, which you'll recall was acquired by Berkshire Hathaway a bit ago, bought a metal 3D printing shop in Florida.
• MIT started a startup accelerator.
• Apple is apparently moving towards a full E Ink keyboard.

Making & Manufacturing.

• A very good recap of the manufacturing, tuning, and FBA distribution of a two-factor authentication dongle. There should be more blog posts like this one out there! I especially like that way that the project fits into Conor's overall career.
• Lamborghini and MIT have a new way of making composite parts, and it looks more like forging than traditional methods.
• More from Divergent3D, fka Divergent Microfactories, and their purportedly "green" manufacturing process.
• How the MTA makes subway signs: In a shop in Crown Heights.
• Construction is at risk of stoppage at La Sagrada Familia, due to the fact that the church doesn't have a current building permit, hasn't been paying construction taxes of $921k per year, and doesn't have plans for relocating the ~3000 residents that its esplanade will displace.

Maintenance, Repair & Operations.

• A history of the microwave oven, whose invention was spurred because Raytheon had a bunch of radar magnetrons left over from WWII.
• Researchers at MIT created a bimaterial lattice that exhibits negative thermal expansion - in other words, it shrinks when you heat it.

Distribution & Logistics.

• Comma.ai received a pretty strongly worded letter from the NHTSA, and is moving to a software-only approach.
• Uber's Otto division drove a semi truck 200 km with no human intervention.
• A pretty awesome new pure rolling rotary transmission.
• While I find Musk's Mars ambitions, fueled by the Fermi Paradox, intellectually powerful, I gotta admit that Bezos' "I'm just building the pipes" message is kinda awesome, in an understated way.

Inspection & Testing.

• A good side-by-side review of inexpensive prototype PCB suppliers.
• Some interesting details on Ikea's pricing strategy - namely, that prices almost always go down. Also, apparently Ikea uses 1% of the world's lumber!
• McMaster-Carr's plastics info sheet.
• A pretty rad digital camera that uses 16 inexpensive sensors to do a lot of the things that would normally be done by DLSRs.
• The Tesla Model X got a pretty bad rating in Consumer Reports.
• SpaceX still doesn't know why their Falcon 9 exploded.

Tangents.

• Herman Miller's new Aeron has fabric panels with anisotropic properties.
• Starting a startup is *not* cheaper today than it was in the past.

Credit to Star, Ryan, Terry, and Andre for sending links this week. If you see something, send something :)

And.

A short, and pretty serious, photoessay on e-waste.