Nate's Profile

I just read the 3D printed food post and was thinking this might relate to 3D printed fashion clothes or something. The recommendation algorithm truly is critical for this to work or else you pay shipping both ways for nothing and if you do that too many times, then you go out of business. Thanks.

3D printing is impressive, even with its limitations. I like the idea of being able to 3D print something at home instead of waiting for it to be sent to me. Printing food seems to be a novel concept to use the 3D printer to do. From a business perspective, it could be similar to an ink printer where the hardware can be sold at a loss because the cost of the ink will make up for the loss. Selling food preparation packages that can be used like ink in the printer would add value to the use, especially based on the frequency people need to eat. The future possibilities could mean that you may have to purchase the food packets, but then you could put them in slots in the refrigerator (if needed to be in the refrigerator) that could be selected based on the meal you want to have, and you could do that from your smartphone before you get home so your food is ready to eat when you get home and are ready to eat it.

I still have a concern about the true nutritional value of 3D printed food items. It seems like the food packets would be changed in a way that makes it not as effective for our bodies to get the nutrients out of it.

I think this is a really neat application of technology. At first it may only be available for those who can afford high prices to enhance their crop yields, but over time as the technology continues to advance, the cost will come down to a price that will be more affordable for the smaller farmer. Perhaps even in the future the drones or technology could apply individual care to each plant, but that may cost even more.

It is interesting to see the multiple ways that technology is being used to improve supply and warehouses. The robots that move entire shelves seems a bit slow and inefficient to me, but perhaps the particular application makes it work great. If it eliminates the need for some workers, then maybe the numbers work out. But, then you have the challenge of displacing workers and cost that becomes to the company. One other thought about timing is that it seems like a big jump to go from picking up a shelf and moving it, or picking up a package and flying to its delivery point, to becoming our controllers, so it may take a lot of time.

Wow! This sounds like it could be a disruption if it were easy to come up with investment strategies that worked better than the paid experts. They say that the wisdom of crowds is greater than a few experts, but I’m not sure it applies in this case. I would be interested to know how many in the crowd can create better algorithms than the investment gurus. What is the fee structure? Is that taken into account in ranking the algorithms? Does the ranking prioritize those algorithms that make the platform company more money?

Thank you for bringing up some interesting points about AI in accounting. I don’t know if I would want to be a recent accounting graduate trying to go into audit as the machines are taking over my function, especially if I wasn’t experienced enough to move into management consulting. If I were a manager at one of these firms, then I would consider whether it was necessary for new recruits to be able to do the assessment and if it was then I would give them opportunities to do so, but if it wasn’t then I would see how quickly I could have them add value somewhere else.

Great title. They have been very influential in the working with their suppliers. I tend to think that the suppliers find the improvements to be better for them as well, so they make the changes. For companies to continue to have influence, they will need to continue to have win/win ideas that improve all parties involved.

This seems to be an illustration of where differences of opinion create different investment decisions. Because Trump doesn’t agree with climate change he is more willing to make an investment in something that proponents of climate change would call a risk. Or perhaps his time scale desires money now rather than years down the road. He may sell the properties when they are closer to being at risk and just using the time now when they are great properties to pad his wallet. Also, because he doesn’t consider the climate changes to be real, then he will not be worried about taking any action to prepare for them. For him to take action, he would probably need to be convinced first.

Thank you for the thoughtful message. It is a good point to remember that even though they are doing much better than other companies, they still have a challenge. The one supplier issue can lead to problems from lack of diversification in more ways than just climate change, but may be more cost effective if there were no further changes coming.

I think it is neat that they can use AI to reduce the power usage. Computers may continue to help us resolve the climate change issues that we can’t quite wrap our brains around.

At first I struggled to understand the graph showing a decrease in effectiveness, because I would have thought that we would want to improve our effectiveness. It was much clearer when I reviewed the equation and saw its dependence on the industry IT contribution. The denominator was more like the required amount of power needed so to improve that ratio you would want to reduce the numerator.

I like to hear that people are coming together to solve the problem. Although for those who are small producers, even coming together will not be enough to help them overcome the challenges they will face. I wonder if maybe with climate change that other areas of the world may become suitable to grow it as well.

I like how you point how that they take a methodical approach to resolving the issue and go through what will make the most impact. Sometimes we may just want to do what is easiest or quickest, but we will now push ourselves to get some appropriate data.

One piece of information that I don’t think is painting the picture the right way is that some stores have zero waste because they compost. While I agree that composting is a great thing and can really reduce the waste, it is not a remedy for all waste. If it was then we would turn our landfills into compost piles. A store may have zero waste for its food, but it will still have other waste like light bulbs and cleaning products to consider. So, waste can be reduced to a point near zero, but other methods besides composting will have to help with the non-compostable items.