Go/No-Go

Go/No-Go

por Lumafield
NegociosCiencia
Temporada 1
Federico Faggin designed the first microprocessor and the capacitive touchscreen. He joins Go/No-Go to argue that AI cannot be conscious, however capable it becomes.
Federico Faggin designed the first microprocessor. The Intel 4004 was the chip that first made it possible to put an entire programmable computer on a single piece of silicon. The process technology he developed at Fairchild Semiconductor became the foundation for every microprocessor, memory chip, and logic device built in the half-century since. The touchscreen on your phone exists because of work he went on to do at Synaptics in the 1990s, when his team replaced the trackball with capacitive touch. In between, he spent years in the 1980s building hardware for neural networks at a moment when the AI research establishment considered the whole idea a dead end. History has proven him right. Faggin joined Jon to recount the physical reality of early chip design, from drawing transistors by hand at 500 times scale to sizing circuits with a slide rule and building the Z80 with 11 people and $400,000. Decades of working at the vanguard of silicon technology led him to confront the ultimate capabilities of computers. That question has consumed the second half of his career. He has written a book, Irreducible (2024), arguing that consciousness is not something a classical computer can produce, no matter what it seems able to accomplish, and he cautions against allowing AI enthusiasm to make us forget what makes us human in the first place. Links from the discussion: Irreducible: Consciousness, Life, Computers and Human Nature (Essentia Books): https://www.collectiveinkbooks.com/essentia-books/our-books/irreducible-consciousness-life-computers-human-nature Irreducible on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1803415096 Silicon: From the Invention of the Microprocessor to the New Science of Consciousness on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Silicon-Invention-Microprocessor-Science-Consciousness/dp/1949003418 Federico’s profile at the Computer History Museum: https://computerhistory.org/profile/federico-faggin/ Tom Wolfe, "The Tinkerings of Robert Noyce" (Esquire, 1983): https://classic.esquire.com/article/1983/12/1/the-tinkerings-of-robert-noyce
T1 · E16
26 jun 2026
54:45
Iran war bitumen shortage stalls roads, Ford's $30K electric truck, Tesla Semi ships, BYD's private fleet, Amazon logistics, and the real cost of quality.
The war with Iran keeps reshaping manufacturing in unexpected places. A bitumen shortage tied to the oil disruption is stalling road construction from India to Italy, and ships stuck in the Gulf are accumulating barnacles and jellyfish that foul their hulls and raise fuel costs. We trace that thread through a packed automotive segment: Ford's secret skunk works racing to build a $30,000 electric truck, the Tesla Semi finally shipping at $290,000 with 300 miles of charge in 30 minutes, and BYD's fleet of eight company-owned car carriers that ferry 300,000 vehicles a year through waters other ships avoid. Amazon is opening its logistics network as a third-party service, and the Trump Mobile phone shipped nine months late looking a lot like an HTC handset from Taiwan. Then we sit down with Alex's new Cost of Quality report, built on a survey of 210 quality decision makers, on what quality actually costs and why most manufacturers can't measure it. Links from the discussion: Ticking Time Bomb (John Keller's Takata documentary):__ https://www.tickingtimebombfilm.com/__ Alarm spreads among road-builders as Iran war bitumen shortage bites:__ https://www.ft.com/content/5933b845-96cc-4f11-add2-e1af789946c4__ The secret team blowing up Ford's assembly line to make a $30,000 electric truck:__ https://www.wsj.com/business/autos/ford-ev-electric-truck-7fdb0e0a__ Tesla's Semi truck could jolt the trucking industry:__ https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/19/business/energy-environment/teslas-semi-truck.html__ How BYD gets an edge from ships that brave war, outrun storms:__ https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-05-19/china-s-byd-builds-up-shipping-fleet-to-export-cars-amid-war-weather-threats__ Amazon built a massive supply chain for itself, now it's for hire:__ https://www.wsj.com/logistics-report/amazon-built-a-massive-supply-chain-for-itself-now-its-for-hire-c7d128b0__ Barnacles and jellyfish infest ships trapped in the Gulf:__ https://www.ft.com/content/e2344964-03bc-40e1-a8ce-5d62ad9a4e63__ Trump Mobile finally ships, experts say it looks like an HTC phone made in Taiwan:__ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8d8EojYVtCs__ Cost of Quality Report (Lumafield):__ https://www.lumafield.com__ Scan of the Month: BYD car parts:__ https://www.scanofthemonth.com__ Go/No-Go Episode 12: Takata airbag Reconstruction:__ https://www.lumafield.com/podcast__
T1 · E15
29 may 2026
48:28
Paradromics CEO Matt Angle on building the highest data rate brain-computer interface, hermetic sealing vs. Neuralink, and what makes BCIs last a decade in the body.
Matt Angle is the CEO of Paradromics, a neurotechnology company building high data rate implantable brain-computer interfaces for people who have lost the ability to speak and move. The company's Connexus system, currently entering clinical trials, clocks an information transfer rate of over 200 bits per second (more than 20x the reported performance of comparable systems) and is designed to last more than a decade in the body. The conversation covers the basic physics of what separates an implanted electrode array from a surface EEG, the design of the Connexus itself, and the engineering choices that distinguish Paradromics from Neuralink: hermetic sealing, modular battery placement, and a deliberate bet on durability over planned obsolescence. We also get into what it takes to manufacture a device at the micro scale, where CT scanning fits into quality control once you've welded a titanium case shut, and the formative go/no-go moment when the team bet their company on a DARPA contract against consortium bids from Berkeley, Harvard, Stanford, and UCSF. Links from the discussion: Paradromics: https://www.paradromics.com Connexus BCI for people unable to communicate: https://www.paradromics.com/product SONIC benchmarking standard: https://www.paradromics.com/blog/bci-benchmarking SONIC preprint (bioRxiv): https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.09.30.679683v1 Tempo BCI for mental health brain-state monitoring: https://www.paradromics.com/tempo
T1 · E14
12 may 2026
41:40
Allbirds collapses, SpaceX IPO targets $1 trillion, Iran buys a Chinese spy satellite, Sony Honda AFEELA canceled, Slate raises $650M, lab-grown chocolate.
Allbirds sold its name and assets for $39 million after a $4 billion IPO in 2021, and the shell listing is now being used to raise $50 million for a GPU-as-a-Service company called NewBird AI. We use it as a window into the D2C brand era and what it takes to build a consumer brand that lasts. SpaceX filed confidentially for a June IPO targeting $50 to $75 billion at a self-assessed valuation over $1 trillion, with Starlink generating $11.4 billion of that revenue in 2025. Iran acquired a Chinese spy satellite with half-meter resolution for $36.6 million through an in-orbit delivery model designed to sidestep export restrictions. A Citrini Research analyst rode a speedboat through the Strait of Hormuz to find out whether the blockade is real. On the automotive side: the Sony Honda AFEELA is canceled before release, Honda expects a $15 billion loss and its first unprofitable year since 1957, Slate raised $650 million for a bare-bones $25,000 EV pickup, and Stellantis is recalling 700,000 vehicles over a fire risk. We also cover lab-grown chocolate and why cocoa went from $3,000 to $12,000 a ton. Links from the discussion: Allbirds pivots to AI hyperscale as NewBird AI: https://www.theverge.com/news/912484/allbirds-ai-hyperscale SpaceX files to go public, setting stage for huge IPO: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/01/technology/spacex-ipo-elon-musk.html Iran used Chinese spy satellite to target US bases: https://www.ft.com/content/1fddd2cd-1294-4e9c-a17d-5ea06b399355 Citrini Research: Strait of Hormuz field trip: https://www.citriniresearch.com/p/strait-of-hormuz-a-citrini-field Sony Honda Mobility cancels AFEELA 1 before release: https://www.shm-afeela.com/en/news/2026-03-25/ Slate Auto raises $650 million Series C: https://www.wardsauto.com/news/slate-auto-says-650m-boost-will-get-it-to-next-stages-of-production/817388/ A new kind of hybrid car is about to hit America's streets (EREV explainer): https://apple.news/AMS9PudLNTgedX0f8eo1MkQ Stellantis to recall up to 700,000 cars worldwide over fire risk: https://www.reuters.com/business/stellantis-recall-up-700000-cars-worldwide-over-fire-risk-2026-04-01/ Israeli startup makes world's first lab-grown chocolate bar: https://www.ft.com/content/ea3610be-2a9d-45ac-b4c9-5e18225fed6b CT scan: cacao pod: https://voyager.lumafield.com/project/3af46887-0dea-447a-8629-a0d16cb4073a
T1 · E13
30 abr 2026
29:59
The Takata airbag recall: how a propellant chemistry decision in the 1990s became the largest and costliest automotive recall in history, and why it still isn't over
We open with a Takata airbag sitting on the desk in front of us: a unit manufactured at the Monclova, Mexico plant at the center of the recall disaster, purchased on eBay and arrived by UPS ground. We couldn't determine whether it's one of the recalled units. The Takata airbag recall is the largest and costliest in automotive history, spanning just about every major automaker and now approaching 30 US deaths. We reconstruct the engineering story: how ammonium nitrate became the propellant of choice over cheaper and less stable alternatives, how its crystalline structure degrades through heat cycles and humidity over time, and how that degradation turns a supplementary restraint system into shrapnel. We also CT scanned the airbag, and we walk through what the scan reveals about how these assemblies are constructed. The organizational story runs alongside the engineering one: falsified test data, a 50-year Honda-Takata supplier relationship that led to complacency instead of accountability, a regulatory revolving door, and a whistleblower who spent years trying to prove that recalled airbags were being shipped as non-hazardous freight. The recall completion rate is now at 98%, a remarkable figure. The remaining 2% represents over a million vehicles still on the road, and the units that haven't been replaced are the oldest and most degraded. Links from the discussion: NHTSA Takata Recall Spotlight: https://www.nhtsa.gov/vehicle-safety/takata-recall-spotlight Check for Recalls using your vehicle identification number (VIN): https://www.nhtsa.gov/recalls Ticking Time Bomb: The Truth Behind Takata Airbag (documentary): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFL0pnV4hx8 NHTSA Takata recall history and key terms (fact sheet): https://www.nhtsa.gov/sites/nhtsa.gov/files/documents/120916-fact_sheet-takata_recall_history_and_key_terms-tagged.pdf Lumafield CT scan of the Takata airbag: https://voyager.lumafield.com/project/5af653fa-13c1-4287-b3df-db4efebd992b
T1 · E12
23 abr 2026
36:04
Nick Terzulli of Fellow on inventing Espresso Series One, why home espresso has stagnated for decades, and the physics of heating water on 120V.
Nick Terzulli is Vice President of Research and Development at Fellow, the San Francisco coffee equipment company whose products can be found everywhere from Target shelves to your favorite third-wave coffee shop. Before Fellow, Nick worked on military robotics and designed medical devices at Stryker and Dextera, before spending several years scrubbing toilets at a coffee shop for $10 an hour just to learn how to make coffee using the best equipment available. The central problem Terzulli came to Fellow to solve has constrained home espresso since the beginning: 120V household power limits thermal and pressure stability in ways that commercial machines, running on much higher amperage, simply don't face. The best home machines either take 40 minutes to heat up or sacrifice performance to achieve fast heat-up times. Terzulli's answer, which became Fellow’s Espresso Series One, uses three separate heating elements staged in sequence to achieve commercial-level stability with a two-minute heat-up time, a novel approach he holds the sole utility patent on. The conversation covers how that architecture came together, what it takes to design for both the beginner and the specialist, how Fellow uses firmware and over-the-air updates to build community around its machines, and why designing coffee burrs from scratch was, in his view, the hardest technical challenge of his career. Links from the discussion: Fellow: https://www.fellow.com Espresso Series One: https://fellowproducts.com/products/espresso-series-1 Ode Brew Grinder: https://fellowproducts.com/products/ode-brew-grinder-gen-2 Fellow Drops (coffee subscription): https://fellowproducts.com/pages/fellow-drops Aiden Pourover Coffee Maker: https://fellowproducts.com/products/aiden-precision-coffee-maker Coffee Bean Roast Level CT Analysis: https://www.lumafield.com/first-article/posts/the-industrial-ct-guide-to-coffee-roast-levels Coffee Scan of the Month: https://www.lumafield.com/scan-of-the-month/coffee
T1 · E11
14 abr 2026
40:10
Iranian cyberattacks hit medical device supply chains, the Pentagon orders 3,000 Skydio drones in 72 hours, a blood-filtering fraud earns federal charges, and plug-in hybrid owners almost never plug in.
The conflict with Iran has reached U.S. supply chains: an Iranian-linked cyberattack wiped devices across Stryker's global operations overnight, cutting the medical device company off from the hospitals it serves. We also cover the Pentagon's 3,000-drone Skydio order completed in 72 hours, California gas at $5.89 per gallon, a Fraunhofer Institute study finding that plug-in hybrid owners mostly don't plug in, criminal charges against a former ExThera Medical executive for concealing patient deaths from the FDA, Cargill's computer vision system that found $200 million in beef without adding a single cow, the OmniPod 5 recall, and iFixit's MacBook Neo teardown. Links from the discussion: How Cargill uses AI to get more meat from the bone as beef prices soar: https://www.ft.com/content/9089e369-92f4-48dc-ac09-46b6a62035a6?syn-25a6b1a6=1 Iran-linked hackers wipe Stryker devices in cyberattack: https://www.wsj.com/articles/stryker-hit-with-suspected-iran-linked-cyberattack-52f6615c Suspending the gas tax, reducing refinery regulations pushed by two Democrats running for governor: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2026-03-17/suspending-gas-tax-reducing-refinery-regulations-pushed-by-two-democrats-running-for-governor The uncomfortable truth about hybrid vehicles: https://www.theverge.com/column/890135/truth-hybrid-vehicles U.S. Army places largest single-vendor drone order in American military history with Skydio: https://www.skydio.com/blog/u-s-army-usd52-million-order-skydio-x10d ExThera cancer filter federal charges: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/05/business/exthera-cancer-filter-federal-charges.html Uber’s $1.25bn deal with Rivian for robotaxis: https://www.ft.com/content/9e09df32-cfc7-4a9e-9acd-fab25653a25c?syn-25a6b1a6=1 MacBook Neo is the most repairable MacBook in 14 years: https://www.ifixit.com/News/116152/macbook-neo-is-the-most-repairable-macbook-in-14-years Insulet OmniPod 5 recall (FDA): https://www.fda.gov/safety/recalls-market-withdrawals-safety-alerts/insulet-initiates-voluntary-medical-device-correction-certain-omnipodr-5-pods-us Scan of the Month: Drug delivery devices: https://www.lumafield.com/scan-of-the-month/health-wearables
T1 · E10
2 abr 2026
34:28
ValuJet 592 crashed in 1996 with 110 people aboard. We reconstruct the layered failure and what Perrow's normal accident theory says about why it happened.
In May 1996, ValuJet Flight 592 crashed into the Florida Everglades six minutes after takeoff from Miami, killing all 110 people on board. Investigators traced the fire to chemical oxygen generators loaded into the forward cargo hold without safety caps on their firing pins. What they could not trace was a single point of failure, because there was not one. We work through the layered collapse William Langewiesche documented in his landmark 1998 Atlantic article: work orders written in language the mechanics could not parse, safety caps that did not exist anywhere in the shop, paperwork signed off on work that was never done, a shipping clerk who put quotation marks around the word "Empty" on the manifest, and a copilot who recognized what he was looking at and said nothing. Drawing on Charles Perrow's theory of the normal accident and Diane Vaughan's concept of the normalization of deviance, we examine how the same mechanism that produced Challenger produced this, and where the two failures diverge. The deeper question the episode keeps returning to is one Langewiesche raises and does not fully resolve: if the failure emerged from the gaps between organizations rather than from within any one of them, and if adding more procedure to a system can increase the complexity that makes these accidents possible, what actually closes the gap between what the paperwork says and what happened on the floor? Links from the discussion: "The Lessons of ValuJet 592" by William Langewiesche, The Atlantic (1998): https://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/98mar/valujet1.htm Normal Accidents: Living With High-Risk Technologies by Charles Perrow: https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691004129/normal-accidents The Limits of Safety: Organizations, Accidents, and Nuclear Weapons by Scott Sagan: https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691021010/the-limits-of-safety The Challenger Launch Decision by Diane Vaughan:https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/C/bo22781921.html
T1 · E9
27 mar 2026
38:01
Why has manufacturing gotten dramatically cheaper for 200 years, and construction hasn't? Brian Potter of Construction Physics has spent years finding out.
Brian Potter is the author of Construction Physics and The Origins of Efficiency, published by Stripe Press in 2025. He is a senior infrastructure fellow at the Institute for Progress. Manufacturing has gotten dramatically cheaper over two centuries. Construction has not, and that gap isn’t closing anytime soon. Brian Potter has spent years trying to understand why, first as a structural engineer, then inside Katerra, the SoftBank-backed startup that raised billions to factory-build housing and went bankrupt trying. His conclusion is that the forces behind falling manufacturing costs resist construction for reasons that are structural, not accidental. Jon and Brian trace those forces from Ford's interchangeable parts to SpaceX's materials choices to the specific dynamics that have kept American shipbuilding uncompetitive for 150 years, and turn at the end to whether anything seems likely to change. Links from the discussion: Construction Physics (Brian Potter's newsletter): https://www.construction-physics.com The Origins of Efficiency (Stripe Press): https://press.stripe.com/origins-of-efficiency The Origins of Efficiency on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Origins-Efficiency-Brian-Potter/dp/1953953522 Institute for Progress: https://ifp.org Katerra (background on the SoftBank-backed construction startup): https://techcrunch.com/2021/06/01/softbank-backed-construction-giant-katerra-said-to-be-shutting-down-after-raising-billions "Why Can't the U.S. Build Ships?" (Brian Potter, Construction Physics):https://www.construction-physics.com/p/why-cant-the-us-build-ships
T1 · E8
12 mar 2026
47:18
Go/No-Go Episode 007 | Tesla Pivot, Amtrak Fleet, Olympic Medals
Tesla reallocates production capacity toward robotics and autonomy. Ferrari challenges screen-first design in its new electric Luce. Amtrak begins deploying its Airo fleet from a 60-acre Siemens facility. Olympic medals fail in competition. Airlines tighten power bank rules. Sugar markets shift under GLP-1 demand changes. A DJI robot vacuum security flaw exposes IoT risk. And frozen orange juice reaches the end of the line.
T1 · E7
23 feb 2026
30:56
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