Jules E's Profile

Bitcoin and other applications of the block chain are very interesting indeed. However, the technology is also very wasteful in terms CPU resources. As the chain itself gets longer and more transactions are added the computational power needed to add subsequent chains disproportionately increases. Also, the cost is essentially pushed from the government and to the distributed nodes of the block chain system – so there’s essentially a shift in cost from the government to private entities to pay for the currency system. If the core of the argument to use block chain tech is to save money I question whether or not that would be accomplished (at least with current technology). I do still think it’s worth investigating on the part of central banks though, because tech is constantly evolving. How do you think of the costs of powering servers to power this? Additionally how do you view the shift in paying for currency from the government to private entities?

Wow, this is very unsettling! The fact that not only were they collecting this data outside of it’s intended usage area but that they weren’t even disclosing that as a possibility in the T&C is absurd. Data privacy is a topic near and dear to me, and I fully recognize how seemingly innocuous non-standard uses of data can snowball into something much more insidious.

In the digital age, how do you think we’ll regulate the privacy of user data going forward? Obviously more should be done, but who should be doing this? Is it the government, industry, or some other third-party? Also, it’s good that someone who knows how to hack his smart pass figured this out, but what about the lay person who isn’t able to do that? How should we as a society view their fundamental right to privacy?

Interesting take considering how the loss of moving violations might affect municipal budgets. Do you see any offsetting effects of this shift though? For instance the city will now have a lot of now idle assets (parking spaces, garages, etc.) that they can presumably repurpose to generate revenue streams. I think it will be quite interesting to see how cities and companies react to the disruption in transportation. What will retailers do with massive parking lots if they’re no longer needed? How will car companies play a role in this? How will the business proposition of owning a car change? These are all really interesting questions that I think complement your article well and I’m very intrigued to see how this all plays out over the next 10 or so years.

Very cool article! The user experience in those videos is awesome. I remember the process of buying furniture and it was incredibly painful – measuring, trying to use what little imagination I have to picture a piece of furniture in a room, and hoping it works out. Barring the technical complications of this application of tech, what barriers are in the way of rolling this out to consumers? This value proposition seems to be crystal clear, and if I’m right why has no one successfully done this yet?

Also, do you think there are any other reasons WF isn’t on a public cloud? Is it possible they see some sort of advantage to building and maintaining their own infrastructure?

Interesting take on this issues. I wrote about autonomous cars in my post and briefly touched on this point. I think that if autonomous cars are truly an inevitability they’ll all have to “talk” which means they’ll all have to be linked to a common platform or at least speak via an API which could make a vulnerability even more dangerous. What do you think the future or car cyber security looks like in the context of autonomous cars which will be both linked to the cloud and in constant communication with each other?

Nicely written! I wrote something similar on fission’s estranged cousin fusion. I think long term these are our best bets for energy. However, you brought up some of the issues we currently have with fission reactors and I agree with you that CSR (if you can even call it that on such a crucial issue of responsibly disposing of nuclear waste) is crucial to making nuclear net-positive to the environment and public opinion.

Great job outlining the facts – this was very well researched! I had no idea that flowers constituted such a large piece of Columbia’s economy.

I think this is a particularly good example too because it’s clear that a large business is at risk purely because of rising temperatures. I’d be curious to know what the government is doing to address this issues since agriculture comprises such a large part of the country’s GDP. Also, it would be interested to understand the carbon footprint of the industry broken down by production vs. shipping. I’ve read air freight is a pretty large contributory to GHG so understanding the impact of growing vs. shipping could be useful to figure out which side of the problem to attack.

Awesome post!

Cool article – I hadn’t considered how my instagramming was contributing to GHG! Another thing to consider is how Google is making servers more efficient, not just from a power per CPU usage, but from a cooling power usage perspective. Keeping servers cool is incredibly energy intensive and the innovations in cooling technology can be scaled to other major data centers too. Check out this article which outlines how efficiently Google is cooling it’s data centers (https://www.google.com/about/datacenters/efficiency/internal/).

This is an interesting perspective on the topic which I hadn’t even considered. Outdoor professional sports more broadly could be severely affected by rising temperatures and building / cooling indoor stadiums for all of those sports probably isn’t a sustainable solution. Also, to your example of tennis, I think rising temperatures could introduce an interesting new dynamic to the game. For example, certain players may be more adept than others at adapting to higher temperatures and this could even change over time as the players age. I’ll be very interested to see how this plays out over time. This was a very cool and original take on the assignment – nicely done!

Great article! I was just reading something on water sustainability (http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21709541-water-scarce-because-it-badly-managed-dry-facts) outlining how half of the world’s population will be water stressed by the middle of the century. I think the moves Coke is making as such a large consumer of water will be good steps to encourage other large consumers of water to adopt similar programs. Also, in the context of Coke’s business I’m not sure how they could ever become truly “zero waste” but after reading this I’ll definitely be following the company’s plan.

Great post! The steps Royal Mail is taking are measurable, attainable and appear to be properly incentived (read: they might actually be effective at achieving their goals). A lot of companies adopt shadow goals or have vague programs aimed at making a dent in their eco-impact but it appears RM is taking this seriously. I’d be interested to know how these steps are being received by investors and if doing the right thing has been met well even though it might be more capital intensive up front.