On the plus side, at least we’re finally being honest that digital enforcement for micromobility is about who has rights to space… “In certain crowded nightlife areas where teenagers congregate, all rented e-bikes are being slowed down even further.”

You've seen the movie, now read the book joincolossus.com/article/ai-w...

The transformation that the bike industry is undergoing looks a lot like what’s happening to the automotive sector due to electrification. Very messy and long overdue. The reckoning was triggered by reverberations from COVID supply shocks, but what’s happening is much larger.

“It is hard to imagine the world deploying $5 trillion of capital without at least some hiccups.” on.ft.com/43S8CiY

While Meta/OpenAI are building city-sized data centers, groundbreaking research is happening on the average gaming PC:

In concept I’m a huge fan of porting infrastructural code to Rust/memory safe languages, but shipping broken code — especially code that causes silent data loss — doesn’t help that cause.

Somebody at the body shop DIY’ed the compact pickup Detroit won’t build.

In large part, this is the difference between how China vs the US are investing in AI. Augmenting existing systems and human capacity and finding incremental value, vs betting everything on a winner takes all LLM godhead.

If the federal show of force in Washington has had a deterrent effect on crime, it appears to have deterred entirely normal aspects of city life, too. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/11/u...

The NYC battery fire crisis is an employment classification problem. If Uber et al were liable for the destruction caused by their use of illegal bikes this problem would go away. Instead they’ve lobbied to shift responsibility on to workers making subsistence wages.

Glad to chat with Alex Roy and Joel Johnson on Tool Or Die last week; China's car game is solid -- I can understand why some are blindsided and taken aback, but others....I don't know how they didn't see it coming. Give it a listen. www.toolordie.com/p/why-does-k...

Sinophobic petrostate fusionism

Hadn't seen this happen before: Claude dropped into Mandarin to explain that I was attempting to mix (混合) two different ideas in my request.

Just posted a first draft of something I've been working on. Geoceiver began as part of an IoT project looking at ways to improve GNSS precision in urban environments. Turned out the data infrastructure powering GNSS is mostly text files shared on FTP sites, and it's holding back lots of R&D.

This is such an important conversation and mirrors where I'm at on LLM use/value. The critique got frozen in amber a 1-2 years ago, and is fueled by (valid) structural issues like energy, copyright, deepfakes, etc. But the tech continues to evolve in ways that are unrelated to these problems.

Great piece on BYD's $8,000 EV. Also, fascinating tidbit about Shanghai banning small/inexpensive cars:

"We have entered a feedback loop in which Sinophobia is both a byproduct and a driver of strategic rivalry. It fuels the antagonism, and the antagonism legitimizes the prejudice. And in the meantime, real people — scientists, students, ordinary Asian Americans — are swept up in it..."

Big lesson from the last several years: 4a law isn't equipped to handle the harms embedded in pervasive surveillance tech like ALPR. Also, lots of people (who don't support LE dragnets) ended up on the wrong side of the right to privacy in public fight because pervasive surveillance seemed useful.

Astonishingly, the US bike lobby is attempting to get sectoral tariff relief by blaming a lack of protectionism and "cheap" foreign bike imports in the 1990s for the collapse of US manufacturing. 1) Bonkers logic. 2) US cos failure to respond to 90s trends like MTBs killed the domestic industry.

As funny as this is to watch it looks like it's at least partly caused by the poor over the hood visibility of modern mega trucks. Unfortunately it's not just rocks these trucks run over, and in most crashes, the truck wins.

Tariffs just got real: our first $36K bill with 125% + 20% + 25% markup hits hard 💸. These are upfront costs - due before selling a single unit - causing serious cash flow strain, price increases, read more! 📦 adafruit.com/tariffbill #tariffs

It's hinted at in this conversation, but the retail margins are going to take the brunt of the tariff impacts. I suspect we'll see lots of niche/low volume products go fully DTC as retailers fail and/or brands try to reclaim margins to get above water. Kinda bonkers given % of retail jobs in the US.

I spent a few days in Fly shops last year, bought a Fly 11 Pro, and did a battery teardown. The first battery I bought was broken when it left the store, the second wasn't new. Zero chance it was UL anything.

pretending that tariffs and immigration are about preventing opioid drug overdoses and then pulling narcan distribution is about as unforgivably evil as it gets

This morning in mobility

Has anyone considered the possibility that they legit think they are negotiating with China, but are actually the prank victims of a drive-time morning zoo radio program in Shanghai?

Not sure if Brian Deese's career-long bet on hitching the Democratic Party's fortunes to salvaging US auto incumbents has paid off for anyone, but I agree that the path we're on right now will destroy it.

Interesting example of how overly restrictive EV incentives actually make US vehicle manufacturers less competitive. Its 52kWh pack should be built using LFP, but Slate was required to use a more expensive/problematic NMC batteries to qualify for tax credits. That added about $1,000 to build cost.

Itemized tariff line on the receipt...

PhD Timeline xkcd.com/3081

This little video game asset come to life could be the most important experiment run on the US auto market in ages. It promises to answer some deep questions about whether the supply side can shape demand, or whether everyone really does just want bigger, plusher crossovers and full-sizers.

Every part of this is fascinating, but the most interesting part is who/how they're making them. Can't wait for the follow on reporting about the team and manufacturing infrastructure.

This is actually a great-power competition story masquerading as a drink marketing piece.

Leadership like this is what cuts through the propaganda and manipulation. As @vanhollen.senate.gov said: Bukele relented because of pressure and the damage this is doing to his reputation. This press conference is a masterclass in the kind of clear, unwavering communication/pressure we need.

I found a GPS alternative at #NABShow that *very few* people outside the broadcast industry have heard of. BPS can be received indoors, can get time independent of satellites (eventually—using a mesh), and could possibly make your TV the most accurate clock in your building!

"It has become fashionable to say Washington is taking a page out of Beijing’s book with nationalist industrial policy. But it’s critical to recognize that Chinese firms aren’t making world-beating products because of market interventions but because they are betting on the future."

I’m gonna say something that is going to sound crazy, but when has that ever stopped me from saying something publicly: there is a way in which the U.S. chucking its position in the world could actually fast-track energy transition. A few things that have me thinking this way 🧵

One of the many knock-on effects of US tariff insanity: pricing pressure will impact product safety. E-bikes and other Li+ products are at particular risk of backsliding on safety as batteries make up a huge % of BOM cost/opportunity to reclaim lost margin. www.linkedin.com/pulse/real-d...

The most interesting part of the Slate mini-pickup story is the link to Re:Build Manufacturing. That's a legit interesting group that's not gotten enough attention. They appear to be rolling up lots of smaller manufacturing/engineering companies into a Foxconn-like production group.

The situation over on Kickstarter is not good. Here's an info graphic on how one project is trying to avoid bankruptcy, and explain known knowns/unknowns while waiting for their shipment to arrive: www.kickstarter.com/projects/zep...

'For Tern, the new tariff is simply a non-starter. “I don’t want anything with 47% duty,” he said. “I have some inventory here, and I have one container we know is safe, several more (in transit) that might be safe. After that I don't know, I'm hoping something changes.”'

A fantastic article the in the Institute of Navigation newsletter on something else of societal importance, held together only by norms and fraying international agreements: The invisible global infrastructure supporting GPS and other satnav systems.

Hitting Taiwan almost as hard as China and Vietnam much harder, incredible choices

I’ll never get over how softly media carried the insane bailouts WE paid to farmers to cover the catastrophe of his first term tariffs. It didn’t get emphasized in debates or in response to his campaign tariff threat.HE TRIED THIS ALREADY. We paid. Remember? From 2020. www.forbes.com/sites/stuart...

Given that imports from Taiwan now face 32% tariffs, are we about to see a fiber and data center boom in Mexico and Canada, or even further away for non-latency sensitive, high-capex stuff?

I miss the DC Metro zeitgeist

The most informative explanation of US tariff insanity comes from the "think tank" advocating for the policy: Tariff revenue offsets income tax. Their response to (valid) claims of regressivity: income tax policy *could* offset these effects. That's not going to happen. Full stop.

I missed this part of the DC law firm capitulation saga until Brad Bondi turned up as Trevor Milton's lawyer, brokering a pardon for securities fraud.