Haibo Zhao's Profile

Thanks Matt, very interesting trend. I have a similar view to CJ’s in terms of off-court and on-court use of wearable devices. My guess is that with the current health/safety concerns it’d be hard to start implementing things directly league-wide, on the court. If teams can first implement off-the court and have a more solid proof of concept, there’ll be much more buy-in bottom-up to push for an agreement that allows usage on-court.

Thanks Ting. I have a similar question to Akanksha’s. It makes sense to me how all the data gets recorded in the blockchain tech, but when I’m physically looking at a piece of diamond, how do I link that to its virtual ID? I assume a certificate separate from the physical iteam would be just as liable to fraud as it was in the pre Blockchain world.

Thanks for this interesting piece. My main question here is just around the economics of the company – with treasuries at 23% and offering low income customers cost of capital at 20%, how exactly are they making money here? Or is the idea to use this line of business to establish a customer base first and then to monetize that distribution channel and database through up-sells and cross-sells later on?

Thanks Christian. Quick question on the research kit and the sharing of data with leading healthcare institutions. Is apple partnering with them and providing the data for free? Or do they have a profit arrangement on the rights to the outcome of that research? How do they capture value for the tremendously valuable data they are capturing in their ecosystem?

Thanks for the post Zach. The key thought that sticks out to me about entertainment like sports is a decoupling of content and distribution. As the digital world makes distribution easier, content is less reliant on a platform like ESPN and talk shows can be hosted on sites like Youtube and gain significant popularity. In other words, easier distribution makes premier content key – do you see any systematic approach by them in terms of capturing that exclusive content especially as they pop up all around the web?

Thanks Christian. I think investing in more sustainable manufacturing practices and developing more energy-efficient devices makes a ton of sense. My main concern here is your last point on waste/disposed products. Is there an ongoing attempt to close the loop by allowing customers to return their widgets and centralize a recycling process for them right now?

Thanks Walter, interesting to hear about how cloud computing is actually a huge saver for societal energy consumption. Once cloud computing becomes even more ubiquitous, this is almost like centralizing the decision to use renweable power (which used to be scattered across millions of households) into the hands of one corporation. With all the limitations of renewable power like storage issues etc., how has AWS managed or strived to manage its resources using 100% renewable energy? Are we talking about solar or wind or natural gas here when AWS promises 100% renewable energy use?

Thanks for the piece Satoshi. I agree that a separate entity for renewables makes sense given potentially clashing incentives between the fossil-fuel based division and developing renewables. I wonder if we have a sense of how the return on investment and payback periods differ between developing renewable power plants and traditional fossil fuel plants? Are tradtitional plants still much more economically viable? If so a complete different entity that’s able to somehow attract capital with different required rates of return makes even more sense.

Thanks Wissam. Interesting to hear traditional ski resorts are now facing this problem. In Beijing, a relatively arid region, it snows quite rarely in winter, but there have been several “ski resorts” nearby that rely exclusively on artificial snow. It’s quite a sight in winter, you’ll drive through a mountainous region entirely dry, and then turn a corner to see one hill covered fully in snow. I think this process becomes quite expensive though, and wouldn’t work for really large ski resorts covering a larger area.

Interesting piece. I think I’d be most interested in how reliably one can adjust underwriting guidelines for broad, long-term trends like climate change. The inherent assumption here is that historical data won’t be as reliable going forward as extreme tail events become more likely. Although there’s general agreement within the scientific community that this is true, I wonder whether there’s actually a consistent view one can use to reliably quantify and incorporate this impact in underwriting/premium calculations.