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Tag Archives: tech-culture
A Heinlein Meme Started the Space Race
… according to the excellent Washington Post podcast Moonrise. It’s an account of what led up to the Apollo 11 moon landing, starting with Robert Goddard, John W. Campbell, Sergei Korolev, and Wernher von Braun in the 1920s and 30s, … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged movie-ish, sf-ish, space-ish, tech-culture, tech-history
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The Obsolescence of White Nationalism
I was sitting in a conference room the other day, meeting with a company that wanted to supply a component for a new chip we’re working on. These days most chips are assembled from big pieces from other firms. It’s … Continue reading
Immigration and the Nobel Science Prizes
It’s hard to take the current Administration’s stance on immigration seriously. Their policies are deliberately cruel, as in family separations, and clearly motivated by bigotry. In response, people have pointed to the 80 million US immigrants and their huge contributions … Continue reading
Is STEM Recruitment Working?
The technical world, that of math, science, and engineering, has been trying for decades to get more young people interested in it. It collectively sponsors TV programs, high school contests, and scholarships. Politicians are constantly touting the benefits of STEM … Continue reading
Who Are the World’s Leading EEs?
The Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineering (IEEE) is the world’s largest technical society, with about 420,000 members. Although founded in the US in 1884, over half its members are international. Its highest rank is Fellow, which can only be … Continue reading
Assange is Winning
A colleague pointed me to a good New York Times article last week, Why Samsung Abandoned Its Galaxy Note 7 Flagship Phone, on the epic disaster of its exploding phones: After the initial reports that the lithium-ion batteries were catching … Continue reading
When IP Escapes – the Sad Case of the Hoverboard
A few weeks ago my son was bothering me incessantly about hoverboards. People in his class were talking about them, so he just had to get one. The Amazon reviews were equally split between 5-star “This is the coolest toy … Continue reading
Microsoft Buys the Brains of Boys Everywhere
So Microsoft just bought Mojang, the studio that produces Minecraft, for $2.5B. That sounds like a ridiculous amount for a video game, particularly one that looks so crude, unless you happen to know some boys. For my 10-year-old son and … Continue reading
Paying for Bad News: Funding the Keeling Curve
Here’s one of the most frightening charts in all of science: CO2 has risen by a quarter just in my lifetime, and we all know the consequences. The chart comes from a remarkably sustained effort by Charles David Keeling: and … Continue reading
Solectria – Achieving Goals By Lowering Them
A few days ago some good news finally came to a guy who has been trying to save the world for a very long time. James Worden is the founder of the Massachusetts company Solectria Renewables, and it just got … Continue reading
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Tagged electric-cars, energy-ish, mit-ish, solar inverters, Tech life in New England, tech-culture
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