I happen to have been at several chip conferences recently, and it s depressing to see how quickly high-tech moves from one fad to another. AI is the current fad, of course, and was a dominant theme at all of them. Continue reading
I recently learned about an extraordinary archeological discovery, that of an ancient high-tech culture that really was drowned in a cataclysm. It just didn t happen to be the one Plato was thinking of when he described Atlantis. He was Continue reading
Most of the stuff in your daily life, of course, is made in the US. That s groceries, and gasoline, gas and electricity, and construction materials like lumber, bricks, glass, and drywall. Yet your clothing almost certainly isn t, nor are most Continue reading
We re watching the tremendous Ken Burns PBS series The American Revolution . It stresses that the British tried to hit the Americans suddenly and hit them hard. They would disperse this disorderly rabble with a whiff of grapeshot. They burned everything Continue reading
I was out taking my constitutional the other evening when I noticed a new little free library. There are five of them within just three blocks of my house: Hmm! I see from the Little Free Library site that about Continue reading
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
Our town has a theater, the Regent, where a lot of tribute bands come to play. They do covers of Elvis, Sinatra, and the Eagles, which are unsurprising. They were all massive stars with the usual songs about falling in Continue reading
Last May 31st I attended Technology Day at MIT, where the school presents talks on all kinds of interesting research to its alumni. Commencement is always the day before, and the alumni reunion events are that evening. I m a big Continue reading
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
was April 19, 1775, and that was plenty! That s when the Regulars (both sides thought of themselves as British) retreated down Concord Road (now Massachusetts Avenue) from the Battle of Lexington and Concord. They had gone out there to Continue reading