> Reportedly the leadership of SpaceX manages him like he's a medieval boy king
A family friend who works closely with Elon at SpaceX puts it like, "you have to make him believe that your technical conclusions and recommendations are actually his to have any hope of traction." Otherwise, even if you're proven right years later when Elon's strategy fails, he will hold you to task for, "not convincing him hard enough."
Thanks for the question. It's still the one I wrote 6 months ago. That said, it is likely that the translation layer will change to the GPT-3/GPT-4 ecosystem. But at this point, it's too early to switch. I believe there is a strong need to prove that this app WILL actually solve a real problem before the transition to happen.
HOAs have their downsides, but I do really appreciate one of my CC&Rs: in my ~4 square mile city, we are not allowed to have exterior lights apart from ones to illuminate driveways and patios. Moreover, there are no street lights in the entire city.
It's an oasis of uncorrupted night in the unlikeliest of places: Los Angeles. You can see city lights from certain vantage points, but in most places it is pitch black. Living here feels like perpetual camping. It is wonderful, and it would be stressful for me to return to living in a place with perpetual illumination.
Yikes. Street lighting is one of the most important safety improvements, especially for people walking, as most pedestrian deaths due to drivers occur at night.
Of course, if we weren't so dependent on cars to do literally everything this wouldn't be the case, and we could safely get rid of a lot of street lighting.
Similarly, the installation of public lightening by Colbert in the XVIIIth in Paris, lowered criminality by an order of magnitude.
It also enabled women rights, since, with the ability to somewhat walk securely at night or in the early morning, comes the ability to go to the factory and work somewhere else than in the house.
We’ll need more and more of those studies as we switch off those lights to save energy. If it was possible to VC-fund them, that’s where I would put most if my money.
I appreciate how important it was in the past, but in the era of inexpensive and powerful LED flashlights, streetlights do seem rather redundant and wasteful.
I was under the impressions that street lights promote safety by reducing chances of person to person crime. It’s harder to hide in the shadows and get away without people seeing you with streetlights. So a handheld flashlight doesn’t solve that problem.
The problem is that extremely powerful lights, as many cities are tending to more and more, can actually create more blind spots and makes it harder for our eyes to adjust to those dark spots. If cities adopted more, weaker, warmer lights we'd likely see much less damage to the ecosystem AND increased safety
In typical night conditions, a single Nichia 219-series LED at full drive would temporarily flash-blind someone with just a quarter of a second of exposure.
I know some people think this is a silly question but the answer is, in my experience, yes. That's both in urban and exurban environments, in my experience.
Not usually, but sometimes cars drive too close to the edge of the road, and the road has no sidewalk.
And despite good advice (or simply due to a momentary circumstance), some people walk at night with dark clothing. You can turn a corner a hit a person very easily if they are in any half of your side of the street.
Street lights can also aggravate the problem of safety. Unfortunately most cities seem to believe that more lumens = more safety. But often times this creates more stark dark spots and makes it harder for our eyes to adjust to them
What would really improve safety the most is having more, warmer, weaker lights. One city in the UK ended up taking down their streetlights after some attacks and replacing them with christmas lights strewn across some city trees.
Not only did it look nicer, end up costing less, and was less damaging to the local ecosystem, but it also likely made the area much safer
Another approach is to have personal lighting. I regularly attend an event in one of the darker parts of Colorado where it's considered common courtesy to have a glowy something or other attached to you. There can be collisions even between pedestrians. Nobody gets hurt but it's awkward when it happens so you start to appreciate the extra cues.
I have a family member in Sedona, AZ. There are no street lights there except for a single state highway, and private always-on outdoor lighting is legally restricted to being low, dim, and shaded.
It's pleasant, and I find driving at night there easier because headlights provide more contrast when not everything is illuminated.
I'm just up the road in Flagstaff and the dark skies are absolutely one of my favorite parts of living here. Darkness is an underrated addition to quality of life.
Whereas I find nothing pleasant about my night-time drives through the suburbs of Bellevue. I spend the entire drive paranoid that someone's going to cross the street, and that I won't even see them until they are right in front of me.
Rain, darkness, tree cover, incredibly bright oncoming headlights, poor street lighting, and enough-of-a-walking-culture-that-people-might-be-walking-at-night is a great combination.
I came here to say the same as the sibling comment. Why not slow down? That is what happens in my city: residents drive slowly because they don't want to hit a neighbor.
It depends. If there's a full moon out, I often walk without a light. It's wonderful. Otherwise, I use a headlamp.
> Doesn't this cause issues?
No. I think the main effect is that people finish their walks, bike rides, and so forth before dark. Obviously that's impossible for much of the year for people who work 9 to 5, but given the demographics of this community—small business owners with flexible schedules and retirees—it works for most. In particular, there is one woman from a nearby street who walks past my office window every afternoon: in the winter she walks by at 3, and in the summers she walks by around 6 with her husband.
> getting lost
I don't think this is a realistic concern for those with smart phones. Moreover, the hilly topography and lack of cycles in the road network (barring one) make it very easy to remain oriented.
At night, if there is insufficient moonlight? Yes of course. Street lights only exist in urban areas, if you're walking anywhere else in the world at night, a flashlight seems like a logical choice.
If you have an HOA - you live in an urban area. So I'm not sure what your comment alludes to. If I live in such a place, I expect to be able to walk on sidewalks without a flashlight.
> If I live in such a place, I expect to be able to walk on sidewalks without a flashlight.
We don't have any sidewalks. People either take trails adjacent to roads or walk on the roads themselves. Everyone is aware that pedestrians and equestrians are first class citizens, so residents drive slowly. That's not true for some delivery drivers and domestic workers, but we find the risk-reward tradeoff reasonable enough to have left the lighting provision in our CC&Rs for the last eighty years. Sometimes, expectations are at odds with the realities of what is tolerable in terms of safety, good for local flora and fauna, and pleasurable for ourselves.
> I expect to be able to walk on sidewalks without a flashlight.
There are any number of ways to provide illumination that also mitigates light pollution. This generally means placing metal hats on any external light sources (vertical or horizontal) that effectively pushes the light down and minimizes leakage. The worst offenders in my area are the globular light sources that emit light in all directions.
> Half the month, in really dark places, the moon is sufficient
Came here to say this. Unfortunately, most people in urban environments have no idea. I spent literally decades walking at night in an area with no streetlights. Your eyes adjust to the dark, and anyone who comes along with a flashlight really annoys you.
Edit: I should note, that in all my time doing this, the only time I ever ran into a problem was when a herd of deer came running at me in the darkness. I don’t think a flashlight would have helped.
That's fair. Our only really dangerous snake is a cottonmouth. Even our rattlers and copperheads are mostly nonlethal and nonaggressive.
I was limbing a tree in the pasture, looked down after dropping a limb and a copperhead was just sitting next to my foot. Wasn't ready to strike, just watching me like dudes come out with chainsaws and cut trees next to him on the daily.
It depends on the time of year, the temperature, the area, and the time of night. I used to wander about in the country as a kid by moonlight in certain areas/times/etc, but I knew it was basically safe. Other times it would’ve been literal suicide.
I don’t think any snake is genuinely “aggressive”, but most will bite if you step on them. It’s one of those funny things about moonlight; you can see, but you can’t see detail.
The rattlers around here could fuck you up, particularly if you can't get medical attention within a few hours because you're disabled on the ground alone at night. But fortunately, rattlers rattle (usually) so the snakes actually help people avoid this sort of accident.
Unfortunately, may people kill rattlesnakes when they become aware of them, which is usually after the snake started rattling. So there is now a selective pressure on rattlesnakes to stop rattling. Very misguided.
In my limited experience, streetlights encourage snakes. streetlights bring insects, insects bring birds, birds bring snakes. The snakes are not always under the light but in the trees around the area.
But even with streetlights, you are absolutely right, always bring a torch. Ive seen a snake get stepped on, but fortunately have never done it myself.
When you look at those darkness maps where I live is about as dark as the darkest places in the USA. For us the moon is the real light pollution. Accidentally look at the moon directly and your night vision is shot for a few minutes.
On a more serious note, it’s pretty common for UK roads to lack street lights. Particularly in more rural areas. The majority of my drive home from work is unlit.
I live in a small village with no streetlights, and lovely views of the stars. It is very dark here at night, was a real shock coming from the town, I used to walk around where I was previously, that was not well lit but the amount of ambient light was actually quite high. Very different here.
I find a flashlight and a small pocket knife are essential every day carry. It's a quality of life issue for me, I want to be able to examine something at any time of day, plus street lights are intermittent and I walk a lot. I live in Oakland, a major city, but still insist on turning on a flashlight when I cross the street. People don't pay enough attention.
I walk through my neighborhood at night, and some houses have streetside lights, but most do not. I always bring a flashlight but typically don't use it. I do teach my kids they have to be very careful of cars, because they are too short to be seen.
I'm fond of warm, yellow hues for indoor spaces. If I were forced to choose a color for outdoor lighting, I would go for the same. However, white vs. yellow has already played out in some areas: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1993-09-30-mn-40657-...
why completly ban the exterior lights when restricting the type, direction and power of the lights is enought to qualify for a region to be designated as a IDSR by the International Dark sky Association. For pratical exterior lighting tips approuved by the IDA this page is a good resource : https://en.cieletoilemontmegantic.org/citoyens
I think the LA area’s low street light density is partially because things are so spread out that it wouldn’t be worth it. You probably still have too much light to see things like the Milky Way.
And I gotta say anecdotally, one of my top-10 most stressful driving experiences was trying to navigate Gardena at night, because they not only have few streetlights, but seem to use ineffective reflective strips as well.
It's still LA, where driving is war between the insane, the jerk, and the insane jerk.
And earthquakes, forest fires, fresh water insecurity, neglect of the unhoused, and people who wouldn't get the South Park episode about the pretense of a personal brand.
If I were inclined to rob houses, I would find the challenge and risk of robbing houses here quite interesting. Apart from the fact that all roads in go through manned gates, this is the most republican city in SoCal. In translation: most of us have a lot of guns.
The alternative is gating on soft skills and job experience. Do you really think it's easier for privileged kids to game our industry's admissions tests?
A poor kid would have a much harder time developing soft skills and getting job experience than a rich kid would have passing our admissions tests, which would be worse for social mobility than the status quo. A poor kid with a blue collar dad can't get an internship at his dad's friend's startup. A poor kid didn't go to a high school with a computer science club. A poor kid didn't grow up developing soft skills at a dozen different after school activities.
However, the poor kid can go to college on a Pell Grant (like me), study hard, and at least have a chance to meet the Leetcode bar and gain entry to the middle class.
Chiming in to agree here. Standardized tests + leetcode tests gave me the ability to overcome being a ward of the state and become a software engineer/ then founder of a YC company with zero connections.
Quick aside, in addition to the Pell Grant, there's also for former foster youth the CHAFEE grant (California specific).
truly privileged "kids" ain't going around looking for jobs thorough interviews, they show up as "investors" or are otherwise brought in by their 'connections'...
Granted, but we're talking about upper-middle-class versus poor. Upper-middle-class means you speak the prestige dialect, you know what "business casual" means and you already have the proper outfit, and you have access to the relevant technology at home, not to mention free time to use it.
Does anyone have experience with going to a "school within a school" for "gifted and talented" kids? I was trying to figure out why I don't remember any bullying from my middle school or high school, when it dawned on me that I might have been insulated from it by taking classes exclusively with gifted and talented kids —i.e., kids from stable/whole/educated households. I went to a high school where kids came from a mix of blue collar and lower-earning white collar families; does bullying still happen at public high schools in wealthy areas?
There's a lot of discussion here about how private school kids are insulated from bullying. Does anyone have first-hand experience or hard evidence of this? Based on books and movies about boarding school, it's hard to believe this.
That's me. Grew up in a very middle to perhaps lower-middle-class area and went to more-or-less middling schools. It definitely wasn't 'the mean streets' or anything but very blue collar. I'm certain there were kids living through very real problems at home and in their personal lives all around me. But I was blissfully unaware and disconnected from all that as I was wrapped in the bubble of band and honors/gifted classes and the associated type of kid. A pretty good childhood overall. One time, one 5-minute instance, I was actively, actually bullied, in a very minor and entirely inconsequential way by the football captain jock kind of kid. Took me by surprise, but rattled my cage enough that I still remember it. He went on to play in the NFL, had a short and pretty much unremarkable career as an athlete best I can tell, and now is a construction worker nearby and I saw a headline once that he got arrested for a DUI. I now live in a much nicer neighborhood in a bigger house than he does, and based on the blurb about the DUI, I drive a better car than he does/did. Point is, I can't imagine what it's like to actually be bullied. One tiny thing happened to me in an entirely impersonal and inconsequential way and here I am decades later googling the guy and feeling smug that I came out on top. I would have been crushed by any amount of real bullying.
A lot of the biggest bullies at my schools growing up were the richest kids. They might bully about different things, but they were huge bullies.
It seems like a lot of the HN discussion is focused on kids being bullied for being smart, which makes sense given the audience on here. However, other kids get bullied for lots of different reasons.
Chiming in with my anecdote. Took all honors classes throughout high school, so I pretty much never mixed with kids outside of that bubble. Was one of the few Asians in my high school in the small midwestern town, so I'm sure there was potential for bullying. But I wasn't bullied, and I credit some of that to the tiered class system.
This is one reason I'm up in arms about public school districts near me shutting down their gifted programs because they made certain not academically-inclined demographics feel bad about not being represented. So now, kids in my demographic get to feel bad about being bullied.
If I understand you correctly, shutting down gifted programs because they aren’t equitable doesn’t make sense. But if you wanted my advice, you might get further if you made that point without the racism.
The assertion that there are “not academically-inclined demographics” comes from those working to shut down gifted programs. Need we pull out the Smithsonian’s “whiteness” chart again?
I looked up what you’re talking about and the good news is it looks like that chart was pulled with an apology, so you should be able to rest easy now.
This is essentially how "honors" classes worked at my large public high school. If I weren't in the Anime- sorry, I mean, Japanese Culture- Club, I would literally have only seen the same 50ish kids all day out of a class of ~1000.
In freshman and sophomore year I decided that English classes bored me to tears, so I took non-honors English both years. There was zero overlap between that class and the kids I saw the rest of my day in honors classes. Then in junior year when I decided to do IB and was forced to take IB/AP English, suddenly boom yep exact same set of kids.
I'll admit, I enjoyed the experience. Admittedly partly because even half-assed work got me easy A's and glowing appreciation from my teachers (for actually putting in some effort and not being disruptive etc), but also getting to meet lots of different people was fun.
Also good god did I hate English class. So many insufferable books of what I still consider to be terribly little literary merit. I wish we'd been allowed to just read classical literature all year. For one of the book slots we were allowed to choose our own book, and I chose Plato's Republic, which I enjoyed thoroughly. It was the only book from prior to the 20th century that I got to read for class that year as well. At least it got better in senior year when we got to do Shakespeare again.
First I went to an average middle school an I remember many delinquents, but they had something like their own hierarchy independent from grades, so I guess nerds were no threat to their hierarchy, so they didn't care about nerds. Rather nobody cared about nerds to such extent that I didn't even know some animosity to nerds even exists. Standard grades were undefinable either, because ironically delinquents were below any standard, as a consequence nonstandard grades were undefinable either, so I guess separation based on grades was impossible as marginals were too numerous and visible. Then I went to an elite school for gifted kids (elite in terms of academic performance), but I didn't see anyone stereotypically rich there, and I'm not sure that a school for gifted kids is the same as a school for rich kids, I think they have very different goals. There was some kind of internment school for orphans nearby or something like that, so we got some flak from them, funnily I was once stopped by a girl and she tried to seduce me - a tomboy - I blushed, lol.
I was a physics major until I stumbled across the jargon file online. It was an, "aha, my people!" moment. It was already showing its age then—nearly 20 years ago!—but sucked me into CS where I was much happier.
I grew my first giant pumpkin this year. Unfortunately, it's a bit too small for me to sit in—it's only about 500 lbs [1]. I will know for sure next Saturday when I move it to a contest.
I think I'll be able to grow a larger one next year, since I did quite a few things wrong this time. If anyone in Los Angeles (South Bay area) wants into this silly project—whether for growing, escorting with a boat, or even paddling—please get in touch :-)
Ethics have a cultural and temporal context: if you believe strongly enough in the expansionary imperative of humanity, you would gift the generational ship's inhabitants with a suitable religion.
I got a couple of quotes for an installation in late 2019, balked, and tried to install and permit the panels myself. I'd never tried a "physical side project" or home-improvement project, but I found it surprisingly straight-forward.
I got a copy of my friend's permit application from a professional installation, learned a bit about the equipment and tools needed, started a spreadsheet of parts, and modified my "permit template" with details about my installation and house. My permit application was stamped on my first try (Manhattan Beach in LA County), so I placed my order.
It was a little tricky to get all my supplies on the roof of my two-story house. I settled on carrying things up the stairs, putting them on a balcony, and pulling them up a ramp I built out of some cheap wood. See pics here [1].
I probably went overboard on quality of parts to compensate for inexperience and not knowing which corners it's OK to cut, but my final cost ended up at $1.64/watt, including about $1000 for my electrician to pull some copper, ground everything, and connect to my panel.
> including about $1000 for my electrician to pull some copper, ground everything, and connect to my panel.
Yeah this is the only thing you cannot DIY out of the whole process, knowing where your rafters are is like 50% of the problem especially if it's an older home where warpage is known to happen; the rest is pretty straight forward with snap/rack installs and learning how to bend conduit and making misc brackets.
If anyone is in interested in learning how to do this before giving it a go on their own home, you can join a few installs to get the process down by signing up for Grid Alternatives [0], they allow you to help with an install process up until the tie-in. Hell, you can probably even make friends and get one of the local electricians to come by and do it for a nominal fee if you get on a few good crews.
The paperwork and approval is the real issue these days, especially in CA, because the install process has been pretty much been simplified as much as it can be at this poin.
Well done in the install, it looks pretty clean and especially well done for taking the time to map out your rafters on a roof that looks to have had work done on one side (non shingled). Most installers would probably just eyeball it and hit-miss and then use flashing(s) to hide the messiness which always ends up with some leaks down the line.
11k total install (solo job?) is pretty good especially with how energy prices have soared since your install.
> Yeah this is the only thing you cannot DIY out of the whole process...
That depends on the state.
In Idaho, you absolutely can. I 100% DIY'd my ground mount install (documented in depth here: https://www.sevarg.net/tag/solar2020/), including all the wire runs and hookups.
A neighbor of mine who I've helped out and has done electrical work has done a more in depth project, including replacing a panel in his house with a different one (225A busbar, derated main breaker on it), 100% himself.
The limits out here are that you have to do it on your primary residence - I can do anything I want (with permits and inspections) where I live, but I can't legally do electrical work on a rental. Nor can I do electrical work on anyone else's house (though, of course, I can provide a set of hands to help them out with wire pulls and such).
There is also the slight scam that you can't claim the tax deduction unless you get the "official installer" magic paper. I find that the installers are basically inflating the price by the value of the tax deduction (20-30%).
This always happens for government incentives that require a certification of some kind.
Sometimes the workaround is to go on the two day course and get the certification yourself. That's even easier when the course is 'online' and you can just have the video call running while doing your day job.
A flat'ish roof makes DIY a lot more tractable. At my current age, my roof climbing days are over and it's just not worth risking it on my sloped NC roof two stories up...
Our electricity usage increased significantly when we realized that predictable temperatures result in better infant/toddler naps, so the "post-installation" numbers below are for more kWh than the "pre-installation" ones. We were also forced to switch from a "tiered" rate plan to a time-of-use (TOU) one when we applied for net energy metering, which also makes it a little harder to calculate the benefit. But the offset roughly averages out to ~$200/month. I'm unable to access my old bills because I moved to a new house, thus the imprecise numbers.
Your personal benefit is a function of your weather and latitude. High temps reduce efficiency, as do, more obviously, cloud cover and shading. With TOU plans, your benefit will also depend on your usage habits and schedule.
In my case, the benefit was mainly psychological. I never wanted to use AC before, but I started to use it liberally after I turned on my solar system. My wife and child were grateful!
I did roughly the same thing as the parent poster, but I bought used hardware and got my total installation under $1/Wp. I pay the minimum grid connection charge now. About $12/mo, down from about $150/mo before I got an EV.
I'm willing to spend, say, 5 or 10x what one would at Uniqlo or Old Navy to buy quality garments that will last a long time and be socially acceptable in upper middle class west coast cliques—i.e., I don't need tailored suits in my world. Where do I go?
Patagonia is not 5-10x those brands, but they do promise to repair your clothes if you bring them in. So even if the quality is not necessarily much better, at least they’ll help you make your clothes last.
Have they gotten better at that? I had a favorite pair of ski pants replaced instead of being repaired several years ago for a relatively minor zipper replacement. The cost of replacing a zipper is ridiculous compared to the cost of the zipper or even the pants. Probably because the pattern is not made with zipper replacement in mind. I was content to pin that pocket or add a flap and button over the zipper.
Good point. I couldn’t say, but I think most people never even consider the possibility of bringing the stuff back for repair.
Hence, I guess the demand for repair work is probably very low, and they might not have good processes in place to do it.
From a pure transactional perspective, it’s nice that they are essentially selling a clothing service for which you pay only once per item. But from an environmental angle, it sucks that they might not really be fulfilling their promise.
They have started designing their garments and sleeping bags to be more easily repairable. Especially around the zipper. It isn’t perfect but they seem to take it more seriously than any other company on the planet.
To be clear I don't fault them for making an assembly process where repair is not the highest priority. But it took me a while to appreciate why that little zipper repair was difficult enough to offer a replacement instead.
In many ways I suppose repairs always will be more expensive. The staff who know how to make the item may no longer work there, you cannot set up stations and a process, and every repair will likely be different. And without additional shipping, the employees doing the repair will be paid more than the original workers.
An acquaintance who owns an outdoor apparel company told me he doesn't want to make pants because the warranty and repair expectations are much harder to deal with than upper body items.
While I share the sentiment and willingness to do the same, the convenience of using the washer and dryer is immense! I cannot bring myself to separate clothes into lots based on their washing instructions, nor can I bother to hang dry them. Even the best quality clothes become rags very quickly in a dryer.
A family friend who works closely with Elon at SpaceX puts it like, "you have to make him believe that your technical conclusions and recommendations are actually his to have any hope of traction." Otherwise, even if you're proven right years later when Elon's strategy fails, he will hold you to task for, "not convincing him hard enough."