It's many times more expensive to build a mile of train tracks in the United States when compared with Spain or Tokyo. One of the biggest problems with this, aside from the fact that it deters construction of mass transit, is that we aren't really sure why it costs so much more. Some likely culprits: NIMBYism, and the fact that our government agencies are relatively unpracticed at running large transit projects. link
Have you heard about the chip shortage? It has nothing to do with Tostitos, and everything to do with why I got a great deal on my trade-in Volkswagen earlier this summer. Nilay Patel interviewed silicon industry veteran Dr. Willy Shih to get to the bottom of why there aren't enough computer chips right now to meet demand. This story has everything: complicated multi-national manufacturing processes involving single machines that cost upwards of $150 million, dramatic spikes and drop-offs in demand, fearful hoarding in the face of political embargos, factory fires and extreme weather, and so much more. One lesson we can draw from this situation is that when you have a massively complex and intricate system, it's rarely a simple answer when trying to figure out what ground it to a halt. link
What if the obesity crisis has little to do with diet, nutrition, and exercise, but instead is caused by widespread industrial chemical contamination? If you feel like digging into a healthy conspiracy theory, expertly laid out in an unsigned blog article (as they all should be), look no further. Whether you think they're on to something or just blowing smoke, this is one of those arguments that lives rent-free in your brain for a while. link
A group of wealthy crypto enthusiasts and sea-steaders dropped $10 million to buy a cruise ship for their offshore libertarian paradise. They encountered so much complexity in the logistics of ship operations and insurance they ended up abandoning the plan and reselling the boat before it even arrived. link
"When they look at New Hampshire, they’re looking at a bunch of towns and cities who have minimal IT staff that have lower levels of technical sophistication and a lot of truly well-meaning and trusting people that transfer and handle a lot of money.” This is a cybersecurity expert explaining why small municipalities have recently become targets of phishing and ransomware attacks. Amanda Gokee writes about a New Hampshire town of 6,500 that was taken for $2.3 million because of a spoofed email. link
The worlds remotest island is now even harder to get to, and it's because the residents wanted it that way. Tristan da Cunha is roughly the same physical size as Boston and boasts 260 residents, not counting the plentiful spiny lobsters abounding in the surrounding waters. In a bid to protect the lobsters from unnatural destruction and overfishing, residents voted to establish a protected zone that limits ship traffic, which is the only way to reach the island that sits roughly halfway between Africa and South America. link
"...today’s Y-Combinator founders weren't born the last time anybody in Silicon Valley thought about mainframes, but IBM’s install base (measured in computing capacity) is still growing - in fact IBM shipped record mainframe capacity last year." Benedict Evans argues that while tech's focus is on edge technology like VR and AI, there's plenty of activity and spend in the relatively sedate world of Enterprise IT as they transfer to the cloud. And once they've completed that migration, there will be more to do and spend in transforming to the next platform. link
MIT Researchers achieved a new milestone in nuclear fusion by generating the strongest magnetic field ever demonstrated on Earth, and moving another item on the fusion to-do list from theoretical to doable. link
Several Vermont ski towns achieved 60%+ population growth when the decennial census numbers were published. The problem: Vermonters aren't really sure if they believe the numbers. These towns became a refuge for those fleeing cities during the height of the initial COVID wave of summer 2020, which also happens to be when the census was being counted. Even if these recent transplants were planning on making these towns their permanent homes, it seems unlikely these population gains will be maintained. link
Major storms are only increasing in frequency, so how can we make our relatively fragile and important electrical grids more resilient? Perhaps one solution is to enable residents less reliant on the grid for power. link