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Musk Really Is Like Tesla, But Not In a Good Way
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
Ukraine v Russia Is a Tech War Like Union v Confederacy
In the 1860s the Europeans watched the American Civil War in horrified fascination. It had been almost 50 years since the Napoleonic Wars, when they had been in a real war with matched combatants. They had been mainly fighting colonial … Continue reading
How Re-industrialization Now Works: GO Lab and Wood Fiber Insulation
I was driving through central Maine recently, and was struck by how dreary the landscape looked. The houses and towns looked run-down, and store fronts were vacant. This is an old story about industry leaving rural areas, and can be … Continue reading
We’ve Got to Get To America 4.0
Every 80 years or so this country has been rebooted. Long-felt tensions exploded, and the country took a new direction. We’re at that point now. There is an outright criminal in the White House, there’s been a massive death toll … Continue reading
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
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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
A Niche in the Library of Babel 