Recent submissions

Comment · 9 years ago
A very good heuristic is to compare their total $ costs for purchase and use, and then think about what sorts of externalities that doesn't cover. I've found over and over again that $ cost pretty much equals energy and therefore pollution cost, less the externalities. But the externalities are really super important, and of course, engine efficiencies and where in the cycle the energy is liberated from it's chemical bonds is important.
Comment · 9 years ago
Child has it. The way this study is written, we're asked to compare more or less the carbon impact of an empty gas tank and the battery pack. That seems a bit unrealistic to me. yes the drivetrain is different and therefore more costly, but when it comes down to it, looking at the examples in the paper, the comparison is between the battery pack and an empty gas tank. That seems disingenuous to the broader point of carbon emissions for the entire life-cycle of the vehicles, which presumably would include use.
Comment · 9 years ago
that study is problematic because while they look at the cradle to gate cost of the electric drivertrain including battery, comparing to the ICE car drivetrain, they don't look at all the cost of Petrol + all the unaccounted for externalities that go into it's extraction and delivery. A good comparison would include the cost of electricity extraction both for the ICE car and the electric and then do the comparison. As it stands, this study tells us that Electric cars are more 'expensive' than ICE cars.
Comment · 9 years ago
This is true, but centralized power generation is a lot more efficient then creating the power individually at the point of consumption like ICE cars do today. I believe that an ICE motor is something like 30% fuel efficient, Electric something like 80-90% and a combined cycle blah blah gas turbine is more like 60-70%. So no, it won't be the full 14% but it won't be a few points either, probably safe to say 5-10% reduction.
Comment · 9 years ago
This is a follow-up from their announcement a year or so ago that the two would combine forces to create an open sourced framework/playground for AI learning. This announcement is simply that promise made publicly manifest.
Comment · 9 years ago
This seems like such a small thing right now. Looking forward to the interconnectedness of people and machines, this is going to be a watershed event for a lot of people. Cochlear implants are in 10s of thousands of people today, and being able to directly connect them and other hearing aids to mobile supercomputers is a huge huge step. I cannot even imagine what new interaction modalities emerge as a result of this.
Comment · 9 years ago
I have a friend at Intel who works in the AR division and their comment to me is that in one way or another all AR/MR glasses are running Intel silicon. I asked them specifically, does that include, Hololens, Apple's Project, and a couple others specifically, and they answered in the affirmative. YMMV though.
Comment · 9 years ago
Comment · 9 years ago
My dad was not a successful founder. He quit his job at 40 or so to start a company. He failed miserably, and despite us being fairly well off, went into a downward spiral. He is divorced, alone, and living in a trailer park. Every time I visit him in his doublewide in Campbell, still same furniture as person who died in it had, I expect him to be hanging from the rafters. He was a serial startup employee with over 20 years tech startup experience before starting. His startup destroyed his life. the YC, anyone can become a founder mythology is toxic. My dad was rich from previous exits, had everything going for him, and had a good idea/execution. He just couldn't boil the ocean and it destroyed him.
Comment · 9 years ago
This is the craziest thing I've written in 2017 but: I sincerely believe we will have consumer fusion reactors by 2030 if not sooner. The work of MIT SPARC combined with graphene manufacture will make this a reality. Combine this with all the investment in battery load leveling and electric vehicles and you'll see a very rapid energy cost reduction and deployment. Probably 10 years once the design is functioning. As to the boats, these reactors are well sized for boats. My guess is ICE Air-travel will be completely eliminated for mass consumption by 2070 if not 2050, replaced by faster cheaper evacuated trains and electric short-range aircraft. The power density of li-ion batteries at roughly 350WHr/liter is not great, I'd wager we can easily get to 700WHr/liter with graphene supercapacitors utilizing a combination of 3D layering and fractal interaction. I've seen an experimental graphene supercap with fractal interaction at 1200Whr/Liter but it had a tendency to explode with only a few cycles. The normal graphene supercaps go like 100k cycles with no degradation, or 30 times longer than lithium ion cobalt (what tesla uses). We are so freaking close to cheap graphene it's ridiculous. That's the technology no one sees coming, it's just about to enter the productivity plateau. /end crazy person talk.
Comment · 9 years ago
10% -> 2025; 20% -> 2030; 50% -> 2040; 95% -> 2050. India/Africa are included there. I think 95% of potential GHG emmissions (not just indexed to today but to 'present time') will be crossed in like 2060 or so. Renewables are going extremely quickly. we are in the steep part of the s-curve and there is no reason to believe we wont' get a few doublings due to battery cost decreases and deployed solar cost efficiencies. The transition will be a lot faster than ppl believe.

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