Yes and no. As you allude, it is all about the value you provide. If I can pay you $200/hour and bill your time at $400-600/hour then I am pretty happy-- it generally covers direct and indirect overhead plus gross margins equal to salary. Likewise, if you can regularly do something in an hour that the client feels is worth $1,000 then paying you $XXX is well worth while.
I have mechanical engineers I pay $155k and $165k, electrical engineer at similar rates. It might not be the most a talented person can make... but it is pretty darn good in my book.
Ok, so you are angry that you don't get something for nothing?
From a network effect, rooftop solar reduces system costs: peak demand shifts from 1:30PM to about an hour before sunset, and the total peak magnitude is reduced. This is good for the utility, since it's costs are based on peak power flow.
The Net Metering problem though is that users cram power one direction during the day and use it at night. The first solution to this is "smart grid" crap-- making sure your demand is minimized during the new peak period: pre-cool house; water heater, washer, dryer off; don't start cooking dinner until after 7:00; etc. When residential users do this, they reduce their usage of the grid, and can lower costs while still making net metering attractive for everyone. Seasonal effects are worse, and likely should be the first to go-- only carry a 4-month rolling balance or something.
What is your current monthly bill? What effective interest rate were they charging? What have you done to improve the energy efficiency of your home? Did you need to do any upgrades to your roof to make it viable?
Generally speaking, rooftop solar is $3/W for a complete installed system, 10% higher in some locations based on labor and demand. Median for the US is about 1800 hours per year equivalent full output for a fixed rooftop array. So the system gives you about $1.67/annual kWh, or $1.15 after tax rebates, which makes it advantageous if your blended cost of electricity is $0.15/kWh or more at a minimum effective rate of return of 13%. If you are at a more risk tolerant and only need 8% return then you are good down to $0.10/kWh.
But yes, the kicker is net metering. Without that you would likely need to look at a comparison with off-grid economics. Based on the best numbers I have, that adds $400/kWh and translates to around $0.15/kWh additional, or effectively a doubling of costs or halving of return. The ideal solution is that you have a very small utility service (120V, 20A) that just hooks to a battery charger for cloudy days, but I am sure the utility would charge a huge premium for it.
I think you are stating the obvious there... this is one of the fundamental flaws of the Android ecosystem.
Are we going to have to start being nutjob-paranoid and placing a dedicated browser in a virtual machine with only a single trusted certificate and using a pin-protected RSA key for every transaction?
The Darius VAWT which I indirectly referenced was hurt by its "gale force wind" peak power numbers, which put capacity factor at 12%. Compensating generously for this, you might have been closer to 20%, which would have been competitive for the early 90's.
Today though a well sited 2MW+ HAWT will give a capacity factor closer to 40%, which is great.
To the parent's comment regarding manipulation of capacity factor data, while it shouldn't preclude use of renewable energy, it is meaningful for comparing total cost of different power sources.
Look into the PV trackers as well; going off-grid is starting to become viable. By my math it takes batteries around $300/kWh and a "minimum bill structure" that results in over $600 annual charges, although high heating loads can kill it.
VAWTs don't really work. There is plenty of history on this; the highest capacity-factor units produced were at 12% at scale, and only survived 10-15 years. They are much more decoration than solution.
The physics is pretty straightforward. For high wind-speed survival they are generally limited to two blades in a common plane, but that design causes vibration issues when the blades are in shadow of the mast. Mast-less designs have been done but not successfully, and not at large scale.
But, that said the difference on impact with wildlife is about the same. It is crashing into a wall that they can't sense effect that is the problem, not the speed of the tips. Both designs have the same flaw there.
Sure, but it takes more h1b's to get an equivalent output. Very rarely does the total cost result in more than a 30% net savings.
From what I have seen, the only times outsourcing business-critical tasks makes sense is when it is to cover short-term or seasonal needs where overtime alone would be insufficient. Support needs generally make sense in similar conditions, or if the time requirement is less than 35% of a FTE.
Doh. Looks like the new yards are about 500' square by (say) 30' operating height, at 3.2GW that gives you about 4W/cubic inch. But the satellite images are kind of old and poor quality so it is hard to tell for sure where the separation between the AC substation and DC equipment really is.
The first iteration was around 80% conversion efficiency, but I understand they are in the low 90% range now. The challenge is the IGBTs need to be chained for the voltage, which increases switching losses.
Scrubbing contaminants is inefficient unfortunately. You can deal with 10-micron particulate matter, NOx, SOx, and I believe Mercury with reasonable pain, but it has consequences. As an example, the PM-10 is converted to smaller particles which are actually more carcinogenic.
Ultimately as a fuel source it just has too much carbon relative to the hydrogen, along with a whole lot of other non-productive elements.
Gold coins aren't for the Zombie Apocalypse... at least for rational people. Good financial planning is to have assets in different classes and forms. Keeping 1-5% of your liquid net worth in cash can quickly be a problem due to space constraints and challenges in concealing/securing it. A few dozen gold coins can be much easier to manage.
You also get the "Escape Artists" that want to bring more than $10,000 in cash into/out of a country, so they consider their $50 gold coin at face value rather than market value. Having lived in a place where being able to leave quickly with a small bag was important I can sympathize with that.
back on topic... Bitcoins are very easy to transport... even if they are more worthless than Gold in any kind of crisis.
It has been quite a while since I had Algebra 2/Trig, but I do remember a large number of people not grasping it at all in high school. Some people just aren't ready for it at that point in their education. It would be sad to eliminate it, but maybe an essential math for non math people is part of the answer. Maybe "using a calculator II" is a better class as long as people learn (or are exposed to) the basics. Not a huge reason for most people to understand HyperCosines and the like.
Doesn't matter; with the legal precedent set and complied with Apple cannot refuse in the future. It is three branches of government conspiring together to force Apple (and everyone else) to be able to break their devices.
I would think the other 10% would be interested in an independent system doing threat assessment rather than having it bolted onto the operating system.
Seems like it; the range I usually hear usually thrown around for the CEO of a company with $3-7MM revenue is $250-450k for the 25th-75th percentiles.
University presidents are an oddity to me though; i know it is a tough job and requires overseeing a large number of people making over $150k, but I have trouble understanding what they actually manage...
Tax transcripts give pretty much information-- being able to hijack that information and then do more targeted attacks for refunds is a very big deal. At a loss for how they could do it though; the transcripts are only supposed to be sent to your last tax return address.
One of the big issues is drug accountability. As an example, a Pyxis machines has multiple drawers and compartments and log who gets what when. The chain of custody then requires it to be logged in when administered to a patient.
My recollection was LVLT leased out the fiber at bargain basement prices; they still owned everything through at least 2004, and they still have a huge infrastructure.
I know Google and Netflix were "buying" a lot of fiber back in the CDN war phase.
However, generally speaking this fiber doesn't do anything to get neighborhoods and buildings lit. It is backbones that join HUBs and POPs, often along railroad lines. It is extended down some corridors for metro fiber, but that is much more limited.
The place I am intimately aware of is a very small real-estate market where I am interested in making a purchase, so I don't want to give up too much detail on that one. I can make some generalizations though:
Undeveloped land on the ocean front used to carry a 100% premium per acre to land across the street. Houses used to carry a 300% premium on the ocean. In the last three years, only one of 5 listed homes sold on the ocean side, and at a 35% premium to a similar home up the mountain a little bit. Land transactions on the water have fallen off a cliff so to speak, and what was once sold for $5MM is now on the market for half that and hasn't moved in 9 months.
You can see similar things in costal Oregon and northern California, but I don't have the same level of detail (or interest) there.
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Yes and no. As you allude, it is all about the value you provide. If I can pay you $200/hour and bill your time at $400-600/hour then I am pretty happy-- it generally covers direct and indirect overhead plus gross margins equal to salary. Likewise, if you can regularly do something in an hour that the client feels is worth $1,000 then paying you $XXX is well worth while.
I have mechanical engineers I pay $155k and $165k, electrical engineer at similar rates. It might not be the most a talented person can make... but it is pretty darn good in my book.
Ok, so you are angry that you don't get something for nothing?
From a network effect, rooftop solar reduces system costs: peak demand shifts from 1:30PM to about an hour before sunset, and the total peak magnitude is reduced. This is good for the utility, since it's costs are based on peak power flow.
The Net Metering problem though is that users cram power one direction during the day and use it at night. The first solution to this is "smart grid" crap-- making sure your demand is minimized during the new peak period: pre-cool house; water heater, washer, dryer off; don't start cooking dinner until after 7:00; etc. When residential users do this, they reduce their usage of the grid, and can lower costs while still making net metering attractive for everyone. Seasonal effects are worse, and likely should be the first to go-- only carry a 4-month rolling balance or something.
What is your current monthly bill? What effective interest rate were they charging? What have you done to improve the energy efficiency of your home? Did you need to do any upgrades to your roof to make it viable?
Generally speaking, rooftop solar is $3/W for a complete installed system, 10% higher in some locations based on labor and demand. Median for the US is about 1800 hours per year equivalent full output for a fixed rooftop array. So the system gives you about $1.67/annual kWh, or $1.15 after tax rebates, which makes it advantageous if your blended cost of electricity is $0.15/kWh or more at a minimum effective rate of return of 13%. If you are at a more risk tolerant and only need 8% return then you are good down to $0.10/kWh.
But yes, the kicker is net metering. Without that you would likely need to look at a comparison with off-grid economics. Based on the best numbers I have, that adds $400/kWh and translates to around $0.15/kWh additional, or effectively a doubling of costs or halving of return. The ideal solution is that you have a very small utility service (120V, 20A) that just hooks to a battery charger for cloudy days, but I am sure the utility would charge a huge premium for it.
Yup... It used to be that the smartphone was more secure without Java, Flash, Acrobat, and a "trusted" cellular internet connection.
Kids used to walk to school alone too!
Not sure how much is perception and how much is a real problem in either case.
I think you are stating the obvious there... this is one of the fundamental flaws of the Android ecosystem.
Are we going to have to start being nutjob-paranoid and placing a dedicated browser in a virtual machine with only a single trusted certificate and using a pin-protected RSA key for every transaction?
I almost want a dumb phone and a Filofax now.
The Darius VAWT which I indirectly referenced was hurt by its "gale force wind" peak power numbers, which put capacity factor at 12%. Compensating generously for this, you might have been closer to 20%, which would have been competitive for the early 90's.
Today though a well sited 2MW+ HAWT will give a capacity factor closer to 40%, which is great.
To the parent's comment regarding manipulation of capacity factor data, while it shouldn't preclude use of renewable energy, it is meaningful for comparing total cost of different power sources.
Look into the PV trackers as well; going off-grid is starting to become viable. By my math it takes batteries around $300/kWh and a "minimum bill structure" that results in over $600 annual charges, although high heating loads can kill it.
VAWTs don't really work. There is plenty of history on this; the highest capacity-factor units produced were at 12% at scale, and only survived 10-15 years. They are much more decoration than solution.
The physics is pretty straightforward. For high wind-speed survival they are generally limited to two blades in a common plane, but that design causes vibration issues when the blades are in shadow of the mast. Mast-less designs have been done but not successfully, and not at large scale.
But, that said the difference on impact with wildlife is about the same. It is crashing into a wall that they can't sense effect that is the problem, not the speed of the tips. Both designs have the same flaw there.
Sure, but it takes more h1b's to get an equivalent output. Very rarely does the total cost result in more than a 30% net savings.
From what I have seen, the only times outsourcing business-critical tasks makes sense is when it is to cover short-term or seasonal needs where overtime alone would be insufficient. Support needs generally make sense in similar conditions, or if the time requirement is less than 35% of a FTE.
Doh. Looks like the new yards are about 500' square by (say) 30' operating height, at 3.2GW that gives you about 4W/cubic inch. But the satellite images are kind of old and poor quality so it is hard to tell for sure where the separation between the AC substation and DC equipment really is.
Matching inverters to an appliance would be my guess.
The first iteration was around 80% conversion efficiency, but I understand they are in the low 90% range now. The challenge is the IGBTs need to be chained for the voltage, which increases switching losses.
I guess it has been over six months since it was last posted on /. but a dupe none the less...
Scrubbing contaminants is inefficient unfortunately. You can deal with 10-micron particulate matter, NOx, SOx, and I believe Mercury with reasonable pain, but it has consequences. As an example, the PM-10 is converted to smaller particles which are actually more carcinogenic.
Ultimately as a fuel source it just has too much carbon relative to the hydrogen, along with a whole lot of other non-productive elements.
Gold coins aren't for the Zombie Apocalypse... at least for rational people. Good financial planning is to have assets in different classes and forms. Keeping 1-5% of your liquid net worth in cash can quickly be a problem due to space constraints and challenges in concealing/securing it. A few dozen gold coins can be much easier to manage.
You also get the "Escape Artists" that want to bring more than $10,000 in cash into/out of a country, so they consider their $50 gold coin at face value rather than market value. Having lived in a place where being able to leave quickly with a small bag was important I can sympathize with that.
back on topic... Bitcoins are very easy to transport... even if they are more worthless than Gold in any kind of crisis.
Likely hit an insulator and caused sufficient leakage current to be detected and acted on.
Nothing to see...
It has been quite a while since I had Algebra 2/Trig, but I do remember a large number of people not grasping it at all in high school. Some people just aren't ready for it at that point in their education. It would be sad to eliminate it, but maybe an essential math for non math people is part of the answer. Maybe "using a calculator II" is a better class as long as people learn (or are exposed to) the basics. Not a huge reason for most people to understand HyperCosines and the like.
Doesn't matter; with the legal precedent set and complied with Apple cannot refuse in the future. It is three branches of government conspiring together to force Apple (and everyone else) to be able to break their devices.
I would think the other 10% would be interested in an independent system doing threat assessment rather than having it bolted onto the operating system.
Seems like it; the range I usually hear usually thrown around for the CEO of a company with $3-7MM revenue is $250-450k for the 25th-75th percentiles.
University presidents are an oddity to me though; i know it is a tough job and requires overseeing a large number of people making over $150k, but I have trouble understanding what they actually manage...
Tax transcripts give pretty much information-- being able to hijack that information and then do more targeted attacks for refunds is a very big deal. At a loss for how they could do it though; the transcripts are only supposed to be sent to your last tax return address.
One of the big issues is drug accountability. As an example, a Pyxis machines has multiple drawers and compartments and log who gets what when. The chain of custody then requires it to be logged in when administered to a patient.
My recollection was LVLT leased out the fiber at bargain basement prices; they still owned everything through at least 2004, and they still have a huge infrastructure.
I know Google and Netflix were "buying" a lot of fiber back in the CDN war phase.
However, generally speaking this fiber doesn't do anything to get neighborhoods and buildings lit. It is backbones that join HUBs and POPs, often along railroad lines. It is extended down some corridors for metro fiber, but that is much more limited.
Happy my office has metro fiber though...
The place I am intimately aware of is a very small real-estate market where I am interested in making a purchase, so I don't want to give up too much detail on that one. I can make some generalizations though:
Undeveloped land on the ocean front used to carry a 100% premium per acre to land across the street. Houses used to carry a 300% premium on the ocean. In the last three years, only one of 5 listed homes sold on the ocean side, and at a 35% premium to a similar home up the mountain a little bit. Land transactions on the water have fallen off a cliff so to speak, and what was once sold for $5MM is now on the market for half that and hasn't moved in 9 months.
You can see similar things in costal Oregon and northern California, but I don't have the same level of detail (or interest) there.