John Hintze's Profile

Google has created a prototype contact lens to measure the level of glucose in from your tear-duct. [1] We are a long way off from having this be cheap enough to compete with the OneTouch Verio Flex product you mention. But in due course someone may have invented embedded chips in our bodies to be able to input the data automatically… and at this point, the software could be bundled with the hardware to make a properly integrated product. Although, with the Theranos débâcle maybe this is too hopeful. [2]

[1] http://www.visionaware.org/blog/visionaware-blog/googles-prototype-smart-contact-lens-measuring-blood-glucose-levels-for-people-with-diabetes-1418/12
[2] http://www.wsj.com/articles/theranos-retreats-from-blood-tests-1475713848

I am interested to understand how the various organisations involved undertake dispute resolution with respect to various pieces of data. With a bank account, there are established systems of determining whether a bank account is a true record of account, but this may be more complicated with this kind of more extensive database, especially when that data could be copied onto other systems on an on-going basis.
Are they using any digital innovations in this dispute resolution space, given that the existing legal system may not be able to cope with additional cases ceteris paribus? [1]

[1] http://origin-www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-11-25/speeding-up-indias-courts

I find the suggestion that emails get automatically deleted to be a very interesting and constructive one one, although it may not stop the ‘Trojan horse’ style hacks where hostile agents sit within a system and systematically copy/edit all of its content over a long period of time. Dave Aitel talked about this risk in relation to the DNC email hack, talking of turning a hard-drive ‘into signals intelligence product’. [1] This is one of the big risk of the internet of things, namely that the live-feeds become hijacked by other parties for nefarious purposes. Thank you for talking about this!

[1] https://www.wired.com/2016/06/hack-brief-russias-breach-dnc-trumps-dirt/

There is a lot of chatter about VR being the future of gaming, but I think that there are huge challenges in getting the userbase and hardware ubiquity that is required. For example, the experience of using VR in the kind of ‘binge’ sessions that you describe from your summer youth is not very enjoyable, with the equipment being bulky and often inducing motion sickness. [1] Instead, I think these firms should focus on growing the business in a pretty straight-forward way, thinking about whether they should focus on countries already buying a lot of their product or instead trying to build new markets elsewhere. [2] Deploying capital into VR looks like a waste of time when they could catch up later by doing the kind of acquisitions you mentioned above in the mobile space.

But if LucasArts makes a game where I can become a Jedi Knight, all bets are off.

[1] https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/mainstreaming-virtual-reality-mapping-road-ubiquity-call-jason-pace
[2] http://venturebeat.com/2014/06/24/gamer-globe-the-top-100-countries-by-2014-game-revenue/

“If McDonald’s can find a way to remember preferences, when customers come back to the restaurant, or even another location, their preferences could pop up with an option to order exactly what they had last time (with exact specs: no pickles, extra Mac sauce).”

My understanding is that McDonald’s was already doing things in this domain. The company I wrote about, Plexure, worked with McDonald’s in Japan on this, launching May 2015. “This release sees the VMob platform providing the McDonald’s Japan app with a range of key features including personalization, location awareness, offers, newsfeed, NFC transactions, mobile loyalty and targeted push messaging.” [1] Who knows how successful it was though. Certainly a challenge to get people to download an app in the first place. Maybe they should give people in store discounts if they order via their app.

Also, pickles are great.

[1] http://www.plexure.com/investor-news/2016/7/31/vmob-now-live-for-mcdonalds-japan

It has always shocked me how in baseball they use so many baseballs, and how much more sustainable it could be if they used metal instead of wooden bats. Why don’t they try to use their materials better?

This article reminded me of the website Blackle [1] which claims to use less electricity because it uses a google search engine without a white background, instead using a black background. I am dubious of whether it actually saves energy because Blackle, presumably, uses its own server capacity as well as Google’s. On a similar vein of misdirected effort, I wonder whether some part of this new technology research is going towards trying to create something radical to replace carbon fuels,, when its resources could be better off creating incremental gains to dampen the effects of existing technologies.

[1] http://www.blackle.com/

This article stated that ‘to ultimately succeed they need to form alliances with what could be viewed as their biggest competition. They must strategically remove the friction associated with the incumbent agriculture industry and work with the government to realize their full potential and effect.’

I disagree.

In order to realise their full potential, they need a marketing and branding strategy. It’s not the agriculture industry or the government which is preventing success, but instead that consumers don’t want to eat this food. Hence why Impossible has sought collaborations with top chefs [1] to improve their branding: they’re trying to make consumers want it. But you already recognised this, in the your phrase that ‘Impossible knows that to change the world, they need to make a burger that everyone will love.’ They now need to make us love it.

[1] http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/news/2016/10/12/impossible-foods-s-f-celebrity-chefs-burgersvegan.html

This article focused on the architecture industry’s role in material science innovations and design specifications, both to deliver sustainable goals through operational efficiency. Another part of the architecture which could be changed is, as you discussed, ‘sustainable procurement’. Often this focuses on the materials element, but not on the construction process itself. As more and more elements are built off-site, as more and more buildings are constructed through ‘kits’, this presents an opportunity for designers to embed sustainability from the very beginning.

Hey there Nik,
Wonderful article and an inspired subject choice(!) You can see my writing more broadly about the summer and winter games here: https://d3.harvard.edu/platform-rctom/submission/could-the-olympics-solve-global-warming/

I was wondering whether you thought it would be appropriate to use the domestic legislation which gets implemented in order to host the Games (for so many varied things, such as intellectual property rights and tax breaks) as a way to bind countries to commit to the sustainability goals which they want to achieve. I also wonder whether the IOC could start doing joint regional bids (like the 2002 football World Cup) for sharing the burden of sustainability. We already have cities like London 2012 doing many of its events regionally across the UK, so it could also be possible to host some events across borders if there are good reasons to do so. It might diminish the cohesiveness of experiences for things like the Olympic Village, or for spectators trying to attend several events, but there are probably ways to mitigate this extremely well.