2018-08-20

Planning & Strategy.

• 5G has been in the news a lot lately, with several new phone annoucements and Verizon's wireless TV pitch. 2019 looks to be the year. This in-depth article from ZNet has lots of juicy details about the new network band. Here's what stood out to me:
• "the act of cooling 4G LTE equipment alone may contribute as much as 2 percent to the entire global warming problem. ... Global warming is a direct contributor to compound annual increases in wireless [4G] network costs." Somehow this makes consuming an Ireland's worth of energy for Bitcoin mining appear far more benign.
• "...telcos may need to create additional revenue generating services such as edge computing and mobile apps hosting, placing them in direct competition with public cloud providers." If this becomes true, it would completely upend the way we think of Internet services and the pipes it runs through. This would put servers (with services on them) in the pipes, kind of like having Amazon AWS as a part of your mobile network.
• "5G allows for three service grades that may be tuned to the special requirements of their customers' business models:" Avoiding network service tiers was one of the central arguments for net neutrality laws. It looks like 5G was built with tiers in mind though.
• "...installation of extremely high-frequency millimeter-wave (mmWave) antennas throughout the landscape... hundreds, perhaps thousands, of them would be needed to thoroughly service any densely populated downtown area....mmWave antennas would bounce signals off of each other's mirrors, until they eventually reached their intended customer locations". Werner Herzog did a movie about the Internet a few years back; one particular scene featured a clan of people who couldn't tolerate electricity and had moved into the woods. Presuming that electronic sensitivity is a phenomenon, I can only wonder how additional radiowave exposure might impact the health of city dwellers.
• Relatedly, high frequency traders are looking to get in on the wireless network connection speed savings.

Making & Manufacturing.

• A profile on ion-rocket manufacturer, Accion. Small, cheap ion-powered rockets have the potential to change the economics of rocket launches. I love that the company name is a Harry Potter reference.
• A Syrian outfit made a plane detection system to warn about impending bombings. Pretty cool what you can build with a dedicated crew and off the shelf electronics. The dataset that they've collected is fairly valuable, particularly around airstrikes on civilian property: “They have laid the groundwork for the attribution of human rights violations to specific parties and, ultimately, for their accountability.” It'll be interesting to see if anything comes out of this at the UN level.
• A short tweet on the impact of CAD on our physical world. I'd love to hear about other tools that leave their mark on the finished product in such a distinctive way, shoot them my way if you've got any!

Maintenance, Repair & Operations.

• This shrinkwrap shoe protector looks awfully handy. I love to see well-known tools (heat gun and shrinkwrap) re-purposed for making a common task like shoe protection a lot simpler.
• A curator at SF's Exploratorium ran into some trouble when he left a parabolic mirror in his car.

Distribution & Logistics.

• A poop train with a load of New Yorker crap got stuck outside of a small Alabama town for two months. This kind of 'ship the excrement to the boonies' attitude probably doesn't do much to improve Rural/Urban political relations. I found it really fascinating to see the mayor's response to the whole incident.
• Should California integrate its electricity grid with other states?  Long, in-depth read from Vox.
• You can keep track of the Tesla Model 3 production with this handy Bloomberg portal. See how Tesla's output stacks up against other manufacturers here.

Inspection, Testing & Analysis.

• Scientists grow the first 'bendy' crystals.
• How our Soviet rivalry caused NASA to hide the true nature of the moon, for decades. I'm pretty sure this explains the fake landing stories.
• It's tough job but somebody's got to test airplane pull out slides.

Tangents.

• Lightning Packs got a lot of press this week for their newest product line: a hovering 'ergonomic' backpack. Be sure to watch the video.
• Bon Apetit's #1 restaurant for 2018 is in Oklahoma City.
• I ate a pretty delicious cantelope a few weeks back, which led to me wondering if it was possible to make wine from melons. It turns  out you can, but the flavor isn't guaranteed to be as good as the original melon.

A video on making cross boomerangs