V. Rubeus's Profile

Is UPS making any inroads into alternative delivery mechanisms like drones? Why even worry about bidimensional constraints when competitors are already moving on to three-dimensional delivery platforms that can simply bypass turns all together? Granted, ORION, seems to be working well for UPS now – and may prove useful in providing a competitive advantage in the short term – but how long will this be sustainable?

Is Current limited to competitive energy markets in which consumers – retail, commercial, or industrial – are able to choose which company will provide their energy and other digital products and services? If so, how will it compete with established players who have already figured out ways of conveying a similar value proposition but in a more convenient and user-friendly manner? If not, how will it be able to provide its products and services to customers if they are unable to switch?

The negative correlation between the recency and accuracy of polls doesn’t necessarily imply that going back to basics will improve poll reliability. Certain trends may limit the ability of any poll to accurately predict outcomes – e.g., priming poll respondents through repeated measurements, bombarding poll respondents with increasingly polarized and inaccurate information from “news” outlets, etc. By continuing to focus on the least informed cohort of the general electorate, which is becoming increasingly difficult to predict, given the aforementioned systemic problems, it is likely that both digital and nondigital polling methods will both suffer from the same fundamental errors.

Why worry about haptic feedback and automating certain responses when grape-suturing robots and jeopordy-solving computers can coexist? [1] Granted, a grape isn’t a human and jeoporday isn’t a surgical procedures repository (and neither have been integrated as of yet), but a grape-suturing robot and Watson are, nonetheless, demonstrative of the potential for extant technologies to work together to overcome the inefficiencies of human-based medicine.

[1] Da Vinci Robot Stitches a Grape Back Together. (2014, January 09). Retrieved November 18, 2016, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XdC1HUp-rU

First, neither the Silk Road or its replacements have ever served as substitutes for traditional illicit drugs markets. The level of sophistication and access to technology required to exploit these channels has always been limited to an extremely small group of tech-savvy aristocrats with a predilection for quality drugs offered by rated, trusted e-dealers. The vast majority of users could never rely on cryptomarkets as a viable channel.

Second, although the Silk Road may have eliminated some dealers from the intermediary-heavy supply chain common to most drug markets, it never completely eliminated the dealer. Drugs are rarely – if ever – distributed directly from producer to dealer to consumer. Typically, there are numerous dealers and subdealers who funnel the drugs through the channel before they every reach the end consumer.

Regarding the first step, wouldn’t restricting the oil supply, which could increase the global price of oil, benefit substitute technologies by making them more attractive alternatives to oil? Similarly, wouldn’t this also effectively reduce demand for Aramco’s oil supply in other countries that have oil reserves which can only be economically exploited once oil surpasses a certain price?

How do companies like DE cope with the double-edged sword of shifting to renewables? On the one hand, it diversifies their energy portfolio, making it easier to cope with mounting regulatory requirements and produce at lower cost over the long-term. On the other hand, however, it can reduce their total revenues as consumers – and not just the energy providers – follow a similar path by shifting to their own sources of independent renewable energy, which allow them to effectively disconnect from the grid. Is DE making any other investments (e.g., transmission systems, etc.) to offset the potential reduction in load as consumers follow a similar path?

The threat of competition to utilize the NSR over the coming years could also be compounded by the expected increase in demand for LNG in the Asia Pacific region. Exxon, for example, expects this region will comprise the bulk of increasing LNG demand for the foreseeable future. As the NSR continues to open up, it may become even more commercially significant as competitors try to take advantage of the expanding Asia Pacific LNG import market. As you’ve stated, exploiting the first mover advantage would seem to be key for Dynagas. [http://cdn.exxonmobil.com/~/media/global/files/outlook-for-energy/2016/2016-outlook-for-energy.pdf]

Investments in energy storage technologies (which facilitate the integration and utilization of intermittent renewable resources like wind and solar) could mitigate AWS’s reliance on non-renewable sources of power in the northeast. Although it would be a significant investment, it could provide short term benefits for AWS’s quest to improve its overall energy mix and reduce costs over the long-term. The storage market is still developing, however, so this path may not be entirely feasible in each area AWS houses its data centers, but may still be effective on a smaller, regional scale to facilitate AWS’s transition to a 100% renewables portfolio.

If disasters directly impact more people at an increasing rate and if media coverage becomes increasingly selective of which disaster to cover (given the increasing choice of disasters), then shouldn’t disaster fatigue be highly improbable? The thought is that as disasters hit more people, there may be a greater need for disaster relief, which, in turn, could end up boosting the Red Cross’s revenues. Similarly, if only the most spectacular disasters are publicized, then media consumers shouldn’t have an incentive to become complacent when deciding if and when to donate, thereby ensuring a continuous supply of revenues. However, if the disaster market does become increasingly lucrative, competition could pose an additional threat.