kfh's Profile

While its great that google is providing infrastructure to protect news publishers. Wouldn’t be better to figure out a way to secure all of the connected devices? This may fall on the device manufacturer or perhaps these devices should be behind a service like amazon IOT. What do you think is the best way to prevent this in the future?

Any idea what the legal implications of these types of hacks are. I would imagine that the owner of the devices could be sued for damages if they took down high profile sites. Any idea?

Do you think it is at all possible for B&N to compete with amazon? It seems that even if they drop the nook and stick to selling books online that Amazon will still destroy them due to the distribution network. Why would someone purchase books online from b&n when they can just buy them on amazon.

That is a great question and great idea. We should go automated, its a no-brainer. I’m pretty sure in non-right-to-work states its nearly impossible to fire employees represented by a union without facing major legal ramifications. Could it be that these labor inefficiencies actually slow innovation like self-driving trains?

Is there any evidence of these smart homes being hacked? I could envision some kid developing a trojan horse virus that effects home security systems and all of a sudden my garage door is going up and down on its own. That would really suck.

Also what keeps a burglar from just going to the electric panel on the house and cutting off all the power to the house and home security system? Or jerking the at&t box off the house. Then all of the smart house isn’t so smart.

What about costs? Can it lower the cost of education per pupil? Would this technology perhaps enable larger class sizes? Could there be any negative side effects of this type of thing? School teaches valuable social skills, like how to talk, kiss and fight. These social learnings are key later in life, would high levels of tech in the classroom detract from social skills?

Todd,

Very interesting technology. Does the feedstock need to consistent for downstream processing? For example, could a city have one large gasifier that handles waste sludge, trash, and biomass? Or would the gasifier and downstream processing technology require more consistent feedstock?

Any data on costs and outputs? It would be interesting to see what type of price environment and capex it would require to be cost effective.

I think that the driver education piece of this is huge. Before HBS I drove a Ford pickup and there was an LED screen between the Tach and speedo that showed me the truck’s instantaneous fuel consumption. This was a cool feedback tool and I found that I altered my driving to keep the fuel consumption as low as possible. Imagine if every vehicle on the road has this simple little driver training tool, I bet we would reduce co2 from vehicles by 10%.

If the current coffee production area will become non-productive by 2050, couldn’t the coffee farms just move north? Or could Starbucks work with a provider of GMOs to engineer a coffee tree that could thrive in a wider range of temperatures? Has starbucks considered the climate effects of their stores? It would seem that a Starbucks store would use a lot of electricity to heat water further contributing to global warming, higher coffee prices, and higher net margins. Maybe they have modeled this and decided they can actually be more profitable as a climate change supporter?

So if AWS is purchasing wind power are they actually consuming that power in the data centers or are they selling that back to the grid and claiming they own wind? It would seem that wind energy is physically located in places that amazon doesn’t have data centers making it difficult for them to actually use the power they’ve purchased. If in fact they are selling that back to the grid, are they actually offsetting the power they use because of the huge transmission losses to get wind power to markets where it can be used? If this is the case it would be interesting to see how many MW equivalents of wind they need to purchase to offset their MW usage.

Me,
Water is a major concern in TX. I find your figures on rainfall interesting, that E TX gets more rainfall in fewer rainfall events leading to increased runoff. Wouldn’t this mean that most of the runoff eventually ends up in groundwater? Would it be possible to use wells to irrigate and water cattle? Of course, if they drill wells you will have to consider how to pump the water, perhaps they have NG on property and could run NG pumps? These pumps release much less CO2 then diesel or gasoline pumps.

Also, have they considered the increased greenhouse gasses released by cab tractors vs non-cab tractors? For example, the a/c draws about 8hp from tractor’s engine thus burning more fuel and releasing more CO2? But perhaps they traded in old non-tier diesel engines to new tier rated engines to offset the emissions?

#guy who sits scribe#:

1) Has AEP identified these issues as well? Has management spoken about them publicly?

Yes, they acknowledge the need to update their generation with more renewable and NG on their website. I imagine that the 28% of production they are fueling with NG has been developed over the last decade as they phase out old coal plants.

2) If YES, what steps are they taking to address these issues? All of the suggestions you outline, or just some? What’s the timeline for implementation? Do you think they are doing enough, or should they be doing more to address climate change?

Per answer to #1, they do appear to taking action. It is a slow process due to the capital outlays and basic economics of producing electricity.