The fact that you and others here seem unable to fathom a future where a human's basic nutritional needs are easily met (at negligible or no economic cost) thanks to technological/biological innovation frustrates me immensely.
Are you paying for the oxygen you breath every second of your existence? What makes food any different?
As an MEP guy I find your ideas intriguing and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
Will I see you at next year's ASHRAE or LightFair conference?
I picked lighting because it was the most-obvious waste of words in the article for the sake of green spin.
The "geothermal" mentioned in TFS (who reads articles, really?) is likely a ground source heat pump rather than a subterranean heat source/sink.
I like the efficiency numbers of such heat pumps, but am concerned about diminishing returns over time in areas with unbalanced heating and cooling seasons.
Evanston, IL is close to Chicago - 6450 HDD65, 750 CDD65 .
Assuming the target temperature is 65F (although 70-75 is more realistic in the US) and ignoring heat generation within the space (minimized by using "green" electronics and lighting), the pump could be pulling heat from the ground about 8 times as often as it puts heat into the ground.
This would tend to cool that ground over time, barring external influences.
The well field in what should be a heat source will be warmer than the ambient air on cool days at first, then on cold days after a few cycles, then only on the coldest days.
Once that has happened, they may as well have chosen an air-source heat pump (current models meet their design heat output to around 4F without significant efficiency loss) and foregone the cost of wells.
"Ultra-high efficiency refrigeration" sounds pretty cool.
I was under the impression that regulation of refrigerants to minimize ozone depletion (while in turn increasing global warming potential, but that's a different conversation) led to refrigerant cocktails operating at higher pressures so that their cycles would be useful in temperature ranges suitable for cooling food.
Do they have air-source heat inverters with food coolers as a source and HVAC as a sink?
I almost want to read TFA...
Daylight harvesting is a nasty misnomer - it really just means turning the artificial light down when natural light makes the space acceptably-bright. This is why Walmart stores built in the past two decades have skylights.
The 2012 IECC requires daylight harvesting or separate switching for daylight zones; complying with new codes is hardly a newsworthy achievement.
LED lighting for commercial spaces just recently reached a point where lumen output, specifically illuminance at the target work plane, can equal that of fluorescent for the same power input.
With a cost roughly double that of fluorescent fixtures, LED fixtures' lamp life allows the owner to spend less on maintenance labor, with a payback on the order of 2-10 years. A company as big as Walgreens would be foolish to use anything other than LED unless they expect to go broke before reaching their ROI.
I like what these guys are doing, but the PR spin is a bit much.
As a manager, I can tell you that I need to spend some hi-bandwidth time with my people on a regular basis
As a verteran engineer, I can tell you you're an idiot and a liability for whichever unlucky company you work for.
Lower res pictures with bigger pixels?
Yes. My 20D with 8 megapixels takes much higher quality pictures that any known cell phone, or any point and shoot with 50% more nominal pixels. It's not just the vastly better optics, it's also the quality of the sensor.
I have never had any issues with any Li-ion batteries as long as they are properly maintained. That means do not let it run below 20% (yes, it means stop yakking on the phone and stop playing games on the phone if it is that low).
In which universe does that qualify as acceptable usability for a consumer device? Especially considering that typical high end smart phones don't even last a day, just running maps or other moderate loads.
SD cards are going away on phones
Sounds like wishful thinking from someone who doesn't have one. SD cards are plenty fast enough for me. I would far rather have an SD card than be forced to futz around with USB cables, dongles, adapters etc. I have some Android devices with SD card and some without. I have a strong preference for the devices with SD cards. That's one of the big annoyances of the Nexus 4, no SD card. Plus, needing a special tool or a pin (problematic on an airplane) to get the SIM card out is just plain idiotic. But I digress. I note that Samsung has begun to see the error of their ways in that regard.
It already exists: https://openhatch.org/
I registered a while back but haven't really bother to use it.
Math is like love -- a simple idea but it can get complicated. -- R. Drabek
