Technology

Commercial, Merchant Compressed-air Energy Storage Plant Under Development?

7 Comments / Electricity, Technology / By

Michael Giberson Wind power RFP processes* are common enough these days, typically driven by renewable energy mandates placed on utilities. A recent wind power RFP announcement out of Santa Fe, New Mexico, is different. A new company, Chamisa Energy, has initiated an RFP seeking wind power to pair up with a planned compressed-air energy storage …

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Concentrated Benefits, Dispersed Costs: Million Dollar Fraud That No Victim Has Strong Incentive to Fight

1 Comment / Economics, Law, Technology / By

Michael Giberson Christopher Mims explains a “A Web Scam that Makes $500,000 a Month” in MIT’s Technology Review. In essence, a web programmer set up websites to generate revenue off of pay-per-click or pay-per-impression online advertising. That isn’t the interesting part, since many folks have tried to scam money this way. The interesting part is …

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Netflix Recommendations: Deep or Random?

7 Comments / Film, Networks, Technology / By

Michael Giberson I know that Netflix’s recommendation engine has some serious computation behind it, and it often offers up interesting and useful suggestions. But occasionally it puzzles me, and I wonder if it is incredibly deep in its analysis or simply somewhat random. Case in point: Suggested: American Experience: Into the Deep Because you enjoyed: It Might …

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U.S. Military Aid Funds Tear Gas Used to Repress Peaceful Protestors in Egypt

2 Comments / Liberty, Technology / By

Lynne Kiesling I am watching and following the events in Egypt with great interest. Of course as a technologist-of-sorts who studies complexity I am interested in the role of social media in enabling such a distributed movement to coalesce. Unlike what happened in Iran in June 2009, this uprising seems likely to have a longer-lasting …

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More on Evergreen Solar’s Move to China

Economics, Environmental policy, Technology / By

Lynne Kiesling As an addendum to Mike’s post Monday about Evergreen Solar and Ed Glaeser’s comments, note that WW at The Economist’s Democracy in America blog has also posted some remarks on the subject. In particular, he focuses on the use (or uselessness) of solar technology subsidies as social policy: If subsidies for solar-panel manufactures …

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Technological Developments Useful in Eventually Producing the Equivalent of Neal Stephenson’s “Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer”

Miscellany, Technology / By

Michael Giberson As any reader of Neal Stephenson’s book The Diamond Age knows, a Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer would be quite handy to have. Unfortunately, technology hasn’t quite advanced to the point necessary to actually produce such a thing. A recently published research report seems like one small step in the right direction. From a …

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An Example of Ways Poorly Constructed Markets Can Fail

2 Comments / Economics, Technology / By

Michael Giberson From the Mim’s Bits column in the MIT Technology Review: “How Mechanical Turk is Broken Why the world’s most famous outsourcing hub for tiny tasks is littered with spam and shoddy workmanship.” Mechanical Turk (MTurk) is Amazon’s site for linking companies seeking small web-based tasks requiring at least a bit of human intelligence …

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Hotel Rate Price Gouging During Snowstorm

5 Comments / Economics, Regulation, Technology / By

Michael Giberson Or maybe I should title this post, “Hotel charged peak prices during peak demand period,” or better still: “Hotel price gouging promotes public safety.” A Sea-Tac Airport area hotel raised its rates dramatically as it filled up during a snowstorm one night last month, and several patrons were shocked by bills from almost …

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Glamour and Policy – Virginia Postrel in the Wsj

Electricity, Environmental policy, Politics, Technology / By

Michael Giberson Have you noticed images of wind turbines appearing in ads for everything from cars to banks to university programs? For many people, wind turbines have a kind of stately grace, a beauty, a high-tech glamour. In the Wall Street Journal, Virginia Postrel claimed that wind power (and high-speed rail) gets a public-policy boost from the …

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