pyoung

11 ms·

31.
by pyoung 9y ago
Your worries about the economy are purely hypothetical, and most likely wrong. Infrastructure spending generally stimulates economies and there is no reason to suspect that building clean energy infrastructure will be any different. Addit
32.
by pyoung 9y ago
> What kind of margin pays to have someone walk door to door? If I had to guess, the door-to-door folks are probably lead gen companies that sell leads to solar installers. The economics work out largely because solar installations are
33.
by pyoung 9y ago
That website exists, to some degree: https://www.google.com/get/sunroof
34.
by pyoung 9y ago
I think their financials are already fairly intertwined, to the point where if one fails, they all fail[1]. Part of the outrage over the SolarCity purchase was that people were worried that Musk was just trying to bail out SolarCity (solar
35.
by pyoung 9y ago
This seems like the most plausible explanation. I recently read an article[1] regarding Ukraine's struggle against Russian propaganda. [1] http://www.npr.org/2017/08/21/544952989/rough-translation-w
36.
by pyoung 9y ago
From my understanding, a lot of it has to do with a combination of the subsidies that are being offered and with the rapid increase in range of newer models. For example, my buddy in Boulder, CO bought a brand new Nissan Leaf for ~$12k (MSR
37.
by pyoung 9y ago
For what it's worth, as a fellow non-electric bike commuter, plenty of non-electric bike commuters irk me. Whether it's jumping in front of me while I am waiting at a light, only to be significantly slower than me when the light
38.
by pyoung 9y ago
If Tesla was actively working to prop up our fossil fuel based electricity grid, than I think this would be a fair argument. But they are not. Instead they are actively engaged in the solar+storage market, and they have stated multiple ti
39.
by pyoung 9y ago
There is no guarantee that battery costs will come down naturally. The point of the subsidy is to help drive demand long enough so that the market forces have time to work on bringing those costs down. And even then, there is no guarantee t
40.
by pyoung 9y ago
There is a ton of important work that needs to be done that gets the short shrift in our society. Taking care of our elderly and our children, teaching, cleaning up and looking after the environment, community service. There is a massive
41.
by pyoung 9y ago
That is my understanding as well. These aren't your typical international investments, the goal is to get the money out of China entirely. Worth noting, China is also trying to limit international investments (in addition to capital f
42.
by pyoung 9y ago
I am no expert, but my rough understanding is that China has 'trapped' itself in a tricky situation by relying on its export economy and on debt/investments to stimulate growth. Ideally, a 'healthy' economy is balan
43.
by pyoung 9y ago
I am nowhere near those levels, but if you are in the low 7's you are probably still fine investing in index funds. However, there are probably a few investment options that would start making sense: 1. Real estate investments can be v
44.
by pyoung 9y ago
That is crazy. I have been keeping my eye on the electric motorcycle/scooter market as well as on electric bicycles thinking that that could be a good way to support/enter the electric market. But good electric motorcycles are r
45.
by pyoung 9y ago
Oh wow! I am only mildly familiar with them (mostly been hearing about how they have been trying to enter the US market). I didn't realize they crowdfunded. But yeah, this is a really good example of why microbreweries could be a go
46.
by pyoung 9y ago
Oh, I am in no way claiming this isn't a risky investment. But I have seen a trend in the microbrew market where a lot of these failures[1] tend to occur as they try to expand. The general pattern is they load up on debt to fund expa
47.
by pyoung 9y ago
I can see this working for a few niche markets that fall in between the gaps of kickstarter and VC. One market that immediately comes to mind is microbreweries. Small to midsize microbreweries have pretty good margins because they are usu
48.
by pyoung 9y ago
Energy: It's getting cheaper and cheaper thanks to competing technologies. California's wholesale rate went negative (due to solar) for the first time ever in April. If you are unemployed and on UBI, you have more freedom to to
49.
by pyoung 9y ago
But if we are demand constrained as opposed to supply constrained for most consumer goods, than you will see an increase in 'Q', not 'P'.
50.
by pyoung 9y ago
Traditional education is supply limited. But the internet is rapidly changing things. As an example, Udacity and Coursera are both offering various forms of certificates. I could see a future where people use UBI to bootstrap an education
51.
by pyoung 9y ago
They have a link to sunroof below their estimate. Not sure what happens if you aren't covered by sunroof, but their are a ton of solar estimation tools out there that will give you a rough idea of your potential just based on lat&#x2F
52.
by pyoung 9y ago
They are using Google's Project Sunroof[1] to do the modeling. The tool uses satellite images of your roof to create the estimates, and accounts for orientation, shading from trees, etc... [1] https://www.google.com/get
53.
by pyoung 9y ago
That is a good point. I did a quick internet search, and it looks like the max number of years for cliff vestings is now 3 years, which for most people is fairly reasonable. For gradual vesting, it looks like they can spread it out over 6
54.
by pyoung 9y ago
Does your company offer a 401k matching program? If so, that is basically an instant 100% return. If they are not matching, then you might be right, but if their is a match on the table, it probably makes sense to max that out.
55.
by pyoung 9y ago
But he played ball for 20 years. I think average number of assists per game is a better stat here, where he was ranked 136th according to this link [1]. [1] http://www.basketball-reference.com/leaders/ast_per_g_career.
56.
by pyoung 9y ago
Single family homes in SF are exempt from rent control.
57.
by pyoung 9y ago
> I work for your company, you pay me X salary. And if I don't work for your company, and I can't find other work, I starve. It's hardly win-win if one side of the transaction faces much more dire consequences if the nego
58.
by pyoung 10y ago
Maybe electric bikes and mopeds/scooters? Space seems to be a bigger issue for those than cars. And in the early days (and in some cases today) lead acid batteries were used. Lead acid had similar weight issues, but are much worse i
59.
by pyoung 10y ago
I think your analysis suffers from recency bias. Almost all inventions were incremental improvements on existing ideas and experiments, very few were huge Eureka! moments. Morse code was invented around 1840 and radio communication in aro
60.
by pyoung 10y ago
Thanks for the substantive reply;) In almost all cases where I need to do a find/replace there are typically no more than 4-5 references that need to be updated. And I think a better way to phrase my behavior is I search, inspect the

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