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If Little Clouds of Doom Follow You Around, There Might Be Money In It For You!

by VioletLJGnnihr Posted on July 10, 2015

Mother Jones

Via Tyler Cowen, here’s an intriguing new paper that claims certain kinds of customers are—not to mince words—“harbingers of failure”:

We show that some customers, whom we call ‘Harbingers’ of failure, systematically purchase new products that flop. Their early adoption of a new product is a strong signal that a product will fail — the more they buy, the less likely the product will succeed. Firms can identify these customers either through past purchases of new products that failed, or through past purchases of existing products that few other customers purchase. We discuss how these insights can be readily incorporated into the new product development process. Our findings challenge the conventional wisdom that positive customer feedback is always a signal of future success.

There’s a chart, naturally, because Science™. For example, if repeated harbingers (dotted green line) account for half your sales, you’re pretty much screwed. Your shiny new product has less than a 10 percent chance of success. The reason I find this all intriguing is that I have lately begun to wonder if I myself belong to this group. I use Firefox and I think it’s great. Chrome sucks. I think Windows 8 is terrific on a tablet, far superior to either iOS or Android. And I read all my books on the Nook reader, which I like better than the Kindle reader.

Now, Firefox has had a pretty good run and may very well stay around for a while. But it’s not looking like a winner these days. Likewise, Windows tablets account for—what? Maybe 2 percent of the market, despite Microsoft’s massive marketing campaigns. And Nook, of course, is already officially dead, hanging on in limbo until it gives up the ghost for good.

So here’s the deal: I’m willing to rent out my services as a harbinger. Send me your new tech products while they’re still in testing, and then cross your fingers and hope that I don’t love them. If I do, it’s back to the drawing board.

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If Little Clouds of Doom Follow You Around, There Might Be Money In It For You!

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Home Weatherization Not As Good a Deal As We Thought

by DemetriBon Posted on June 24, 2015

Mother Jones

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Brad Plumer passes along some bad news on the effectiveness of residential energy efficiency upgrades. A massive controlled test in Michigan showed that it doesn’t pay for itself:

The researchers found that the upfront cost of efficiency upgrades came to about $5,000 per house, on average. But their central estimate of the benefits only amounted to about $2,400 per household, on average, over the lifetime of the upgrades. Yes, the households were using 10 to 20 percent less energy for electricity and heating than before — but that was only half the savings that had been expected ahead of time. And households weren’t saving nearly enough on their utility bills to justify the upfront investment.

The culprit appears to be the real world. Engineering studies suggest that residential upgrades should pay for themselves in lower energy costs within a few years, but in real life the quality of the upgrades is never as good as the engineering studies assume:

These engineering studies may not always capture the messiness of the real world. It’s easy to generate ideal conditions in a lab. But outside the lab, homes are irregularly shaped, insulation isn’t always installed by highly skilled workers, and there are all sorts of human behaviors that might reduce the efficacy of efficiency investments.

….In this particular study, the economists found that the federal home weatherization program was not a particularly cheap way to reduce CO2 emissions. Although energy use (and hence carbon pollution) from the homes studied did go down, it came at a cost of about $329 per ton of carbon. That’s much higher than the $38-per-ton value of the social cost of carbon that the US federal government uses to evaluate cost-effective climate policies.

Back to the drawing board.

Excerpt from:  

Home Weatherization Not As Good a Deal As We Thought

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The US Is the Only Country In the World That Locks Up Kids For Life. Could That Finally Change?

by LanHaileswgqpij Posted on February 11, 2015

Mother Jones

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Travion Blount was only 17 when a Virginia court dealt him six life sentences. Two years earlier, he’d robbed a group of teenagers with two older friends at gunpoint during a house party. They stole phones, money, marijuana, and purses. Blount hurt no one, but one of the older boys struck someone with the butt of his gun. Blount’s friends pled guilty and got 10 and 13 years. He went to trial instead, and when he lost, they sent him away to die in prison.

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The US Is the Only Country In the World That Locks Up Kids For Life. Could That Finally Change?

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