diafygi

40 ms·

1. 331.▲
   by diafygi 10y ago

   The goal of the storage industry is not to take everyone off grid. The goal is to increase the penetration capacity of intermittent renewables. You can get to 50% penetration without storage, but you need demand response and storage to push
2. 332.▲
   by diafygi 10y ago

   I'd recommend checking out the exhibitor list for the big solar conferences[1][2]. Start browsing the companies and see if any interest you and have job postings on their websites. [1]: http://spi16.mapyourshow.com/7_0&
3. 333.▲
   by diafygi 10y ago

   Heh, Google Sunroof needs customer usage data, which is what we do :)
4. 334.▲
   by diafygi 10y ago

   Hmmm, it really depends on the company. Many newer energy companies have recognized that software is a profit center. Something like half of solar leads are referrals from existing solar customers, so there's a ton of effort put into g
5. 335.▲
   by diafygi 10y ago

   True, however since the distributed energy resource (DER) IoT (inverters, thermostats, etc.) is more critical to grid infrastructure than your WiFi router, there's a bit more incentive to start doing more security testing on these depl
6. 336.▲
   by diafygi 10y ago

   Not really. You can remotely tell if a system is broken based on the power it producing, and you usually clean the panels at least every few years. So any cracks would be discovered relatively quickly, but they are pretty rare anyway. The g
7. 337.▲
   by diafygi 10y ago

   I suppose. Electrical contractors are usually the ones with the closest experience to solar installation, so they are usually the ones who start installing systems in a new market first (then the national solar brands start offering package
8. 338.▲
   by diafygi 10y ago

   I'd recommend treating it as a normal HVAC or construction project. Call local contractors who have experience in the area and climate, get bids and recommendations, then choose a contractor. Most solar contractors either have financin
9. 339.▲
   by diafygi 10y ago

   True, so perhaps it would be better to ask you to join the cleantech industry as an employee first? Then, when you have learned the ropes and pain points, quit and start a company to solve that pain point.
10. 340.▲
    by diafygi 10y ago

    You're right, there isn't a lot of software in the solar panels themselves (they are indeed just a semiconductor). However, that's not where the costs are. Only about 34% of the cost of a solar installation is actual hardware
11. 341.▲
    by diafygi 10y ago

    Thanks for the comment! Gotcha, yes, it does take quite a bit of understanding of the dynamics and incentives of the industry to see how important software is to the industry. Here's a rundown of the problems that software can solve. F
12. 342.▲
    by diafygi 10y ago

    I work in solar, and here's my favorite climate change joke: "They say we won't act until it's too late... Luckily, it's too late!" Solar is no longer an experimental thing, and the industry is now focused on s
13. 343.▲
    by diafygi 10y ago

    I use example.com, which has all the scenarios without redirects. http://example.com https://example.com http://www.example.com https://www.example.com
14. 344.▲
    by diafygi 10y ago

    There's a great talk, Haunted by Data, by Maciej Ceglowski about how tech companies are making a mistake by wanting to collect more and more data on their users, because governments are just going to want to come in and take it.
15. 345.▲
    by diafygi 10y ago

    My question wasn't as much focused on the get go. But if my device was confiscated and we had many months of legal discourse, and I was then compelled to unlock my device, it's entirely possible that I've lost the muscle memo
16. 346.▲
    by diafygi 10y ago

    Serious question: What if he forgot? Totally not defending him, but if it's been some time since he had to unlock the device, it's not totally unreasonable for someone to forgot the code to unlock a device. I change my passwords r
17. 347.▲
    by diafygi 10y ago

    I think back in the early days Hulu served their video and ads from the same url format, so you couldnt distinguish. That's not how they do it now, but back then it successfully defeated adblockers. For example, if you were watching a
18. 348.▲
    by diafygi 10y ago

    You are forgetting half of the benefit of HTTPS. Not only is content kept secret, but it is also kept unmodified. Even if your don't care about secrecy, you should use HTTPS to ensure your content doesn't have ads or malware injec
19. 349.▲
    by diafygi 10y ago

    Why not embrace the Unicode world we live in now and just offset bytes to a Unicode region that has 256 non-space characters? https://github.com/diafygi/Offset248 Pros: simple, no ratio or ending calculation, easy copy
20. 350.▲
    by diafygi 10y ago

    I've tried probably half a dozen times to learn how to generate simple sphinx docs for my side projects. I start reading tutorials, then half a weekend goes by, and I give up because I'm knee deep in templates and rst. Either I&#x
21. 351.▲
    by diafygi 10y ago

    Remember all the threads recently about fake news? "The Midland Basin Wolfcamp Shale Is Not Worth $900 Billion - That's Not How Resource Economics Works" http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2016&
22. 352.▲
    IEA: Natural gas, renewables poised to meet global demand by 2040(utilitydive.com)

    2 points by diafygi 10y ago|0 comments
23. 353.▲
    Rolling a dice in Google has same results anywhere(youtube.com)

    4 points by diafygi 10y ago|0 comments
24. 354.▲
    by diafygi 10y ago

    Iceland had some pretty clever warnings for their geysers that iterate multiple times, "no really, it will burn you." https://innovationonearth.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/warnin...
25. 355.▲
    by diafygi 10y ago

    This is quite disheartening because if the FBI can get into devices, so can the bad guys. And the FBI doesn't seem too keen on working with the device makers to patch vulnerabilities. It really sucks for those of us in industry to no l
26. 356.▲
    by diafygi 10y ago

    Does it still require a wildcard TLS cert if you want to use over https?
27. 357.▲
    by diafygi 10y ago

    Yep, that's the idea. Do you happen to know what price we'd need to stay under to price out 2/3rds of assets? $40? $30? A carbon tax would really help here to start driving down demand more to try and drive down the price mor
28. 358.▲
    by diafygi 10y ago

    Nature will be fine, she's been through worse. It's humans who are in for a rough time. From some of the pentagon reports, it sounds like major wars over food and migration start breaking out at 2.5-3C, if not sooner. At 3-4C it&#
29. 359.▲
    by diafygi 10y ago

    Only about 7% of oil isn't burned. So you'd have to grow the plastics, asphalt, etc. industries by 10x to make up for the 2/3rd stranded assets. That's a lot of plastic spaceships and parking lots. http://ener
30. 360.▲
    by diafygi 10y ago

    There's a great report from the UK that analyzes the losses of stranded fossil assets if we're to hit our climate change goals. It says that in order to cap at 2C warming we can only pull up 1/4 of our existing proven reserve