Happy Wednesday everyone, here are the top recent articles/videos I found most interesting over the past month or so, in the typical hodgepodge of loose groupings and randomness.

🎤 Great Talks

Mary Lou Jepson talks about packing MRI-level resolution brain scanning into holographic-imaging chips to unlock the future of medical advances as well as communication/user interfaces at Open Water.  Here’s a great podcast with a further deep-dive into her background and technology.

Peter Diamandis: The Future Is Faster Than You Think - a wide-ranging talk on implications of exponential technological progress.

Jeff Bezos At The Economic Club Of Washington on his upbringing, the new Bezos Day One Fund, and decision-making.

Barrack Obama’s speech in response to receiving an award for ethics in government at the University of Illinois.

A talk with Carbon Carbon co-founder and CEO Joseph DeSimone ranging from their Futurecraft 4D shoes with Adidas to making the world's first 3D-printed FDA-approved dentures.  In other 3D-printing news, engineers at the University of Minnesota have 3D printed the first prototype of a bionic eye with flexible conductive photodetectors onto a hemisphere of glass.  Printing pneumatics chambers enabled Nicole Hone to program specific beautiful sequences of lifelike movement in Tangible Animation. 

Manufacturing

🔧 NYC CNC takes an awesome tour of Sandvik Coromant, one of the world’s largest tungsten carbide cutting inserts, in Sweden.  Impressive automaton of robots transporting material, loading it into the different machines, and integration of data analysis. 

⚙️ The impressive MatchSticks CNC is a portable machine designed for the specific tricky job of cutting various wood joints for fitting mating parts together.  Designed, for the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, MatchSticks is particularly unique in its parametric library providing instructions for optimizing the of many other tools in order to best prepare material for cutting and subsequent assembly.

🔨 Nifty nail-dispensing hammer might save some sore thumbs. 

🏗 Factory on the Fly is a prototype for a shipping container sized robotic system that is designed for quick deployment to construction sites.

↩️ This Amazing German Lawnmower Attachment Can Cut Around Poles and Fenceposts.

Satellites

🛰 SmarterEveryDay has a cool video on the design of the now-launched Parker Solar Probe along with behind a scene series of 3x 15min interviews with some of the head engineers/scientists on the project.  Following that up, Destin got an Up Close Delta IV Heavy Launch Pad Tour with Tory Bruno, CEO of ULA, and also posted his Medium writeup here.

🌎 Katherine Scott talks about being the Image Analytics Team Lead at Planet, which has 150+ satellites taking 1.2 million pictures of the Earth daily to analyze countless things, from optimizing farming to spotting signs of hidden nuclear detonation tests.  At the recent Global Climate Action Summit, California Governor Jerry Brown announced the state government will partner with the SF-based company to launch satellites to pinpoint pollution sources, which will certainly be needed to meet the new monumental bill committing the world’s fifth-largest economy to full carbon neutrality by 2045.

More assorted awesome videos

🏢 Watching a real urban planner play SimCity 2000 is incredibly satisfying.  UC Berkeley PhD student Dave Amos narrates the development of his grid-based city with funny insights into the (often impressive) similarities and differences between the game and reality.

🎣 In more job/fun crossovers, a Lego designer combines Nintendo Labo form with Lego functionality.

🌊 The Weather Channel has started using augmented reality for powerful visualizations of the devastation wrought by powerful tornadoes and hurricanes. 

💉 On YouTube, Episode 3 of Bloomberg’s “Next Jobs” series covers a Rwandan drone launcher who delivers blood to remote hospitals after surviving the recent genocide.

🗻 How to Simulate an Avalanche – And All Its Subtle Mechanics.

🌀 2 Timelapses: A 3-year yacht building process time lapses down to 6mins and Voyage To the Core, a 4K Milky Way time lapse.

🎨 Animated shorts: TINK is a lovely looking and sounds CGI Rube Goldberg-esque machine.  Future Thoughts is a neat surreal “collection of ideas about everyday life and new technologies in the near future.”


Until next time,
Kendall