Design:
- A 3D printed adapter for connecting a telephoto zoom lens to a Game Boy camera. While on its face it seems like an absurd little design project, it highlights how broad availability of 3D printing along with some fairly basic CAD skills can enable the creation of objects that bridge the gaps in technology odds-and-ends that we accumulate over time, extending their useful lives.
Data Logging:
- A malware attack on the Atlanta Police Department allegedly destroyed years of dashcam footage, which could compromise pending cases.
Designing Space:
- Mapping how much, and how frequently the spaces within a family home are used. The study showed a large portion the spaces within U.S. households are basically unused, with whole rooms acting more as a storage locker or shrine to possessions than living space.
Machines for Moving:
- A Tesla car (while being controlled by self-driving features) crashed into another vehicle, in nearly the exact same spot as another self-driving Tesla accident occurred last year.
- The self-driving car company, Waymo, is purchasing over 60,000 hybrid minivans to add to their fleet, potentially setting them up to absorb a massive chunk of the environmental tax credits set aside for people or companies that purchase hybrid or electric vehicles.
Communication:
- A very cool little project from Tim Hwang that sends you a different obscure trade journal once per quarter. It's a nice, oblique strategy for counteracting the media-consumption or industry bubbles we all often find ourselves in, and reveling in the joy of knowledge for knowledge sake.
- Internet memes emerge, spread rapidly, grow shopworn, and then fade into the ether. That process has become more frenetically paced, and formerly reliable efforts to turn memes into money through merchandizing are falling behind, unable to keep up with the speed of meaning being made and re-made, minute to minute.
- When celebrities, or celebrity-like CEOs send out public missives to their millions of followers, the more fervent fringes of their fanbase often self-mobilize, lashing out at critics on behalf of the stars they admire. Luke O'Neill looks at one recent example from Elon Musk's negative comments on the media, and individual reporters. Social media platforms like Twitter are horrible for the very same reasons they are good: they allow for the temporary collapse of space between the nobody and the somebody. At its best, it helps brilliant people toiling in obscurity to suddenly become known, at its worst it ferments mobs and crystallizes hate that can be targeted, laser-like, on unsuspecting victims.