Tag Archives: energy-ish

From Creepy DARPA Concept to Useful Widget – A Long But Typical Engineering Journey

Posted on October 20, 2025 by jlredford

The standard engineering story goes like this – someone thinks of a good idea, they found a startup to develop it, it gets backed by venture capitalists, it becomes a hit, everyone gets rich, and the field moves forward. Boy … Continue reading →

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“Whoosh” – Autonomous Gondolas vs Robo-taxis

Posted on June 21, 2025 by jlredford

A New Zealand-based company, Whoosh Solutions, is building a new kind of urban transit system – a network of overhead fixed cables that are used by self-driving battery-powered gondolas to go from point to point. They can switch from one … Continue reading →

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The Discrete and the Flashy at CES

Posted on January 19, 2025 by jlredford

I was just at the 2025 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. It’s the biggest tech show in the world these days, with 140,000 attendees and occupying a lot of the city. It fills the gigantic Las Vegas Convention Center, … Continue reading →

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Execs Erasing Techs

Posted on October 21, 2024 by jlredford

The executives of companies often take credit for the innovations that their lead technicals actually created, and erase them from company history. This is hardly surprising! It seems common enough that I’ve come across it in a number of previous … Continue reading →

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A Golden Age for Chemists – MIT on Climate Change

Posted on July 13, 2024 by jlredford

The physicists used to have all the fun, what with building species-ending weapons and ominously declaring that I Am Become Death. Yet nukes turned out to be useless for actual military purposes, as Putin has discovered to his dismay, and … Continue reading →

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A Better Heat Pump Scheme: Networked Geothermal

Posted on May 8, 2024 by jlredford

A lot of the green energy transition is already well underway. PV solar and wind are already cheaper than gas, and electric vehicles are at near cost parity with ICE and much more fun to drive. Major countries like Germany … Continue reading →

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Tech Crime Seems On the Rise

Posted on September 10, 2023 by jlredford

In the 2000s I was the CTO of a startup that quickly ran into trouble. Our CEO wildly over-promised in order to keep funding flowing, and he then got fired by the board. They appointed a new CEO, and he … Continue reading →

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When Will Scotland Sell More Wind Than Whisky?

Posted on April 30, 2023 by jlredford

Here’s something unexpected – there is actually an advantage to living on a storm-swept rock in the North Atlantic: Scotland now has more wind power per person than any other country! They’re now up to 1900 W/person of capacity for … Continue reading →

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Musk Really Is Like Tesla, But Not In a Good Way

Posted on January 22, 2023 by jlredford

Although Elon Musk did not found or name Tesla Inc, he often gets compared to its namesake, Nikola Tesla. Both were from the provinces – South Africa for Musk and Serbia for Tesla – and made their fortunes in the … Continue reading →

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Ekranoplans are Back! Maybe. The Regent Seaglider

Posted on January 23, 2022 by jlredford

The Soviets used to build the world’s biggest and ugliest airplanes: They called them by the ugly term “ekranoplans”, or “screen effect” in Russian. They flew low over water, and got lift from the cushion of air between the wings … Continue reading →

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