"3d printing" entries

Four short links: 1 April 2015

Four short links: 1 April 2015

Tuning Fanout, Moore's Law, 3D Everything, and Social Graph Analysis

by Nat Torkington | @gnat | +Nat Torkington | April 1, 2015
  1. Facebook’s Mystery Machine — The goal of this paper is very similar to that of Google Dapper[…]. Both work [to] try to figure out bottlenecks in performance in high fanout large-scale Internet services. Both work us[ing] similar methods, however this work (the mystery machine) tries to accomplish the task relying on less instrumentation than Google Dapper. The novelty of the mystery machine work is that it tries to infer the component call graph implicitly via mining the logs, where as Google Dapper instrumented each call in a meticulous manner and explicitly obtained the entire call graph.
  2. The Multiple Lives of Moore’s Law — A shrinking transistor not only allowed more components to be crammed onto an integrated circuit but also made those transistors faster and less power hungry. This single factor has been responsible for much of the staying power of Moore’s Law, and it’s lasted through two very different incarnations. In the early days, a phase I call Moore’s Law 1.0, progress came by “scaling up”—adding more components to a chip. At first, the goal was simply to gobble up the discrete components of existing applications and put them in one reliable and inexpensive package. As a result, chips got bigger and more complex. The microprocessor, which emerged in the early 1970s, exemplifies this phase. But over the last few decades, progress in the semiconductor industry became dominated by Moore’s Law 2.0. This era is all about “scaling down,” driving down the size and cost of transistors even if the number of transistors per chip does not go up.
  3. BoXZY Rapid-Change FabLab: Mill, Laser Engraver, 3D Printer (Kickstarter) — project that promises you the ability to swap out heads to get different behaviour from the “move something in 3 dimensions” infrastructure in the box.
  4. SociaLite (Github) — a distributed query language for graph analysis and data mining. (via Ben Lorica)
Four short links: 24 March 2015

Four short links: 24 March 2015

Tricorder Prototype, Web Performance, 3D Licensing, and Network Simulation

by Nat Torkington | @gnat | +Nat Torkington | March 24, 2015
  1. Tricorder Prototype — collar+earpiece, base station, diagnostic stick (lab tests for diabetes, pneumonia, tb, etc), and scanning wand (examine lesions, otoscope for ears, even spirometer). (via Slashdot)
  2. Souders Joins Speedcurve — During these engagements, I’ve seen that many of these companies don’t have the necessary tools to help them identify how performance is impacting (hurting) the user experience on their websites. There is even less information about ways to improve performance. The standard performance metric is page load time, but there’s often no correlation between page load time and the user’s experience. We need to shift from network-based metrics to user experience metrics that focus on rendering and when content becomes available. That’s exactly what Mark is doing at SpeedCurve, and why I’m excited to join him.
  3. 3 Steps for Licensing Your 3D-Printed Stuff (PDF) — this paper is not actually about choosing the right license for your 3D printable stuff (sorry about that). Instead, this paper aims to flesh out a copyright analysis for both physical objects and for the digital files that represent them, allowing you to really understand what parts of your 3D object you are—and are not—licensing. Understanding what you are licensing is key to choosing the right license. Simply put, this is because you cannot license what you do not legally control in the first place. There is no point in considering licenses that ultimately do not have the power to address whatever behavior you’re aiming to control. However, once you understand what it is you want to license, choosing the license itself is fairly straightforward. (via BoingBoing)
  4. Augmented Traffic Control — Facebook’s tool for simulating degraded network conditions.
Four short links: 20 March 2015

Four short links: 20 March 2015

USA Hire, AR Game, CS Cheatsheet, and 3D Printing Cured Resin

by Nat Torkington | @gnat | +Nat Torkington | March 20, 2015
  1. David Recordon Joins US Govt — This afternoon, President Barack Obama will announce a newly created position for David Recordon, who has worked as one of Facebook’s engineering directors since 2009. Recordon will join the White House as the director of information technology. Obama building an A team from Foo Campers.
  2. MagicLeap/Weta Workshop FPS in AR (YouTube) — fun!
  3. Theoretical Computer Science Cheat Sheet (PDF) — how to appear smart.
  4. Carbon3D — Traditional 3D printing requires a number of mechanical steps, repeated over and over again in a layer-by-layer approach. CLIP is a chemical process that carefully balances light and oxygen to eliminate the mechanical steps and the layers. It works by projecting light through an oxygen-permeable window into a reservoir of UV curable resin. The build platform lifts continuously as the object is grown.
Four short links: 6 March 2015

Four short links: 6 March 2015

Design Fiction, 3D License, Web Funding, and API Magic

by Nat Torkington | @gnat | +Nat Torkington | March 6, 2015
  1. Matt Jones: Practical Design Fiction (Vimeo) — the log scale of experience! Fantastic hour-long recap of the BERG thinking that he’s continued at the Google Creative Lab in NYC. (via Matt Jones)
  2. 3dPL — public license for 3d objects. (via BoingBoing)
  3. Google Contributor — when the web’s biggest advertiser tries alternative ways to fund web content, I’m interested.
  4. Templar — an HTTP proxy that provides advanced features to help you make better use of and tame HTTP APIs. Timeouts, caching, metrics, request collapsing, …
Four short links: 16 January 2015

Four short links: 16 January 2015

RF Snooping, Class and Tech, Nuclear Option, and Carbon Fibre

by Nat Torkington | @gnat | +Nat Torkington | January 16, 2015
  1. It’s Getting Easier for Hackers to Spy on Your Computer When It’s Offline (Vice) — surprisingly readable coverage of determining computer activity from RF signals.
  2. An Old Fogey’s Analysis of a Teenager’s View on Social Media — Teens’ use of social media is significantly shaped by race and class, geography, and cultural background.
  3. Putting the Nuclear Option Front and Centre (Tom Armitage) — offering what feels like the nuclear option front and centre, reminding the user that it isn’t a nuclear option. I love this. “Undo” changes your experience profoundly.
  4. 3D-Printing Carbon Fibre (Makezine) — the machine doesn’t produce angular, stealth fighter-esque pieces with the telltale CF pattern seen on racing bikes and souped up Mustangs. Instead, it creates an FDM 3D print out of nylon filament (rather than ABS or PLA), and during the process it layers in a thin strip of carbon fiber, melted into place from carbon fiber fabric using a second extruder head. (It can also add in kevlar or fiberglass.)
Four short links: 6 January 2015

Four short links: 6 January 2015

IoT Protocols, Predictive Limits, Machine Learning and Security, and 3D-Printing Electronics

by Nat Torkington | @gnat | +Nat Torkington | January 6, 2015
  1. Exploring the Protocols of the Internet of Things (Sparkfun) — Arduino and Arduino-like IoT “things” especially, with their limited flash and SRAM, can benefit from specially crafted IoT protocols.
  2. Complexity Salon: Ebola (willowbl00) — These notes were taken at the 2014.Dec.18 New England Complex Systems Institute Salon focused on Ebola. […] Why don’t we engage in risks in a more serious way? Everyone thinks their prior experience indicates what will happen in the future. Look at past Ebola! It died down before going far, surely it won’t be bad in the future.
  3. Machine Learning Methods for Computer Security (PDF) — papers on topics such as adversarial machine learning, attacking pattern recognition systems, data privacy and machine learning, machine learning in forensics, and deceiving authorship detection.
  4. voxel8 — Using Voxel8’s 3D printer, you can co-print matrix materials such as thermoplastics and highly conductive silver inks enabling customized electronic devices like quadcopters, electromagnets and fully functional 3D electromechanical assemblies.
Four short links: 22 December 2014

Four short links: 22 December 2014

Manufacturers and Consumers, Time Management, Ethical Decisions, and Faux Faces

by Nat Torkington | @gnat | +Nat Torkington | December 22, 2014
  1. Manufacturers and Consumers (Matt Webb) — manufacturers never spoke to consumers before. They spoke with distributors and retailers. But now products are connected to the Internet, manufacturers suddenly have a relationship with the consumer. And they literally don’t know what to do.
  2. Calendar Hacks (Etsy) — inspiration for your New Year’s resolution to waste less time.
  3. Making an Ethical Decision — there actually is an [web] app for that.
  4. Masks That Look Human to Computers — an artist creates masks that look like faces to face-recognition algorithms, but not necessarily to us. cf Deep Neural Networks are Easily Fooled.
Four short links: 12 November 2014

Four short links: 12 November 2014

Material Design, Inflatable Robots, Printable Awesome, and Graph Modelling

by Nat Torkington | @gnat | +Nat Torkington | November 12, 2014
  1. CSS and React to Implement Material Design — as I said earlier, it will be interesting to see if Material Design becomes a common UI style for the web.
  2. Current State of Inflatable Robots — I’d missed the amazing steps forward in control that were made in pneumatic robots. Check out the OtherLab tentacle!
  3. Dinosaur Skull Showerhead — 3D-printable add-on to your shower. (via Archie McPhee)
  4. Data Modelling in Graph Databases — how to build the graph structure by working back from the questions you’ll ask of it.
Four short links: 10 November 2014

Four short links: 10 November 2014

Metascience, Bio Fab, Real-time Emoji, and Phone Library

by Nat Torkington | @gnat | +Nat Torkington | November 10, 2014
  1. Metascience Could Rescue the Replication Crisis (Nature) — Metascience, the science of science, uses rigorous methods to examine how scientific practices influence the validity of scientific conclusions. (via Ed Yong)
  2. OpenTrons (Kickstarter) — 3d-printer style frame for micropipetting, magnetic micro-bead washes, and photography. Open source and kickstarterated. (via Evil Mad Scientist)
  3. Emoji Tracker — real-time emoji use across Twitter. (via Chris Aniszczyk)
  4. libphonenumber — open source Google’s common Java, C++ and Javascript library for parsing, formatting, storing and validating international phone numbers. The Java version is optimized for running on smartphones, and is used by the Android framework since 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich).
Four short links: 5 November 2014

Four short links: 5 November 2014

Robotic Microscallops, Fluid Touch, Brackets 1.0, and Robot Bodies

by Nat Torkington | @gnat | +Nat Torkington | November 5, 2014
  1. Swimming Robotic Microscallops (Nature) — blood, and indeed most of the internal fluids, is non-Newtonian, which works nicely with the simple reciprocating motion that basic robot actuators generate. Best headline and readable coverage in IEEE, and the best headline: Robotic Microscallops Can Swim Through Your Eyeballs.
  2. Eliminating Taps with Fluid Touch Gestures (Luke Wroblewski) — every tap powers Hitler’s war machine! Swipe and hold for Victory today!
  3. Adobe Brackets Reaches 1.0 — Brackets is Adobe’s open source code editor for the web, written in JavaScript, HTML, and CSS.
  4. Poppy — open source 3D-printed robot, built to encourage experimentation with robot morphologies (“bodies”). (via Robohub)