Oracle directors give blessing to shareholder lawsuit against Larry Ellison - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/22/oracle-directors-give-blessing-to-shareholder-lawsuit-against-larry-ellison-and-safra-catz/ <comment><USER2> Top 60 Licensing Pitfalls For Oracle Databases And Oracle Technology Products: [http://omtco.eu/references/oracle/top-60-licensing- pitfalls-...](http://omtco.eu/references/oracle/top-60-licensing-pitfalls-for- oracle-databases-and-oracle-technology-products/)

I saw this document linked on Twitter yesterday and it's just amazing. I always knew that Larry Ellison's mug was in the dictionary next to the definition of "customer hostility", but man, it's another thing altogether to read the _top 60_ ways Oracle will screw you.

My favorite is how you can't use Oracle Technology Network (OTN DEV) licenses for testing. They're only for development, which is something you do without testing.

</comment><comment><USER3> Queue Bryan Cantrill's (DTrace, Joyent) USENIX talk on Oracle and Larry Ellison:

[https://youtu.be/-zRN7XLCRhc?t=2034](https://youtu.be/-zRN7XLCRhc?t=2034)

<comment><USER4> I really don't want to watch a long video. Is there a link that lays out his thoughts in text?

<comment><USER5> Quote:

"As you know people, as you learn about things, you realize that these generalizations we have are, virtually to a generalization, false. Well, except for this one, as it turns out. What you think of Oracle, is even truer than you think it is. There has been no entity in human history with less complexity or nuance to it than Oracle. And I gotta say, as someone who has seen that complexity for my entire life, it's very hard to get used to that idea. It's like, 'surely this is more complicated!' but it's like: Wow, this is really simple! This company is very straightforward, in its defense. This company is about one man, his alter-ego, and what he wants to inflict upon humanity — that's it! …Ship mediocrity, inflict misery, lie our asses off, screw our customers, and make a whole shitload of money. Yeah… you talk to Oracle, it's like, 'no, we don't fucking make dreams happen — we make money!' …You need to think of Larry Ellison the way you think of a lawnmower. You don't anthropomorphize your lawnmower, the lawnmower just mows the lawn, you stick your hand in there and it'll chop it off, the end. You don't think 'oh, the lawnmower hates me' — lawnmower doesn't give a shit about you, lawnmower can't hate you. Don't anthropomorphize the lawnmower. Don't fall into that trap about Oracle."

Source: [http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5170246](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5170246)

<comment><USER6> How is this different from VC tech companies with no foreseeable path to profitable where the VC backers only hope is an acquisition or pawning their money losing investments off to the public market?

<comment><USER7> Those are small, and we haven't all used their products or been affected by them in some way or another.

<comment><USER6> I don't think Uber or Lyft could be considered small products that most of us haven't used st one point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Sorry, I don't really understand from the article: how exactly did the accused supposedly break fiduciary obligations? Does it solely have to do with Larry's previous involvement in NetSuite?

<comment><USER9> Per the Reuters article [0], it sounds like Ellison had a vested interest (of the financial variety) in Oracle acquiring NetSuite at a premium unreasonably higher than NetSuite's actual value, so that's why the shareholders are suing him.

[0]: [https://www.reuters.com/article/otc-oracle- idUSKCN1V91UJ](https://www.reuters.com/article/otc-oracle-idUSKCN1V91UJ)

<comment><USER10> How much WeWork pays the owner for his properties would look bad through this same lens.

<comment><USER11> WeWork's investors are free to sue. That would probably derail the IPO to make it net negative for them.

<comment><USER12> it's a brilliant scheme. he also squatted domains and a trademark prior to renaming and hasn't faced consequences for the same reason

<comment><USER13> There wont be consequences. What wework's adam did is unethical but not illegal. Same for oracle.

The difference between both however is enormous. I suspect that for in Adam wework deal(s), information hardly reached directors and certainly not shareholders.

With Oracle , everyone knew about the premium paid. And everyone , is a professional money manager and had multiple times the time to shut down the deal. They made mistake after mistake: with CEO selection, with acquisition strategy, with BoD selection, with DD, and price paid.

Shareholders were asleep at the wheel. Now they want to point fingers at someone else.

In both cases there was some unethical on behavior, but that does not make it illegal and recoverable in court

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Can anyone explain how / why the Firemen's retirement system is involved in this?

> As Frankel wrote in her article, the lawsuit, which was originally filed by > the Firemen's Retirement System of St. Louis, could be worth billions:

<comment><USER15> Pension funds typically are some of the largest institutional owners of major public companies.

<comment><USER16> You can connect the SV housing bubble fairly directly to pension funds piling money into tech stocks and venture capital after the late-00s global financial crisis (because bond yields were in the gutter and they're more or less obliged to seek returns _somewhere_ , and they weren't available in less risky instruments).

Same kind of problem Berkshire Hathaway has; once you're big enough, available returns are limited by how much you yourself distort the market. Pension funds used to be able to buy almost limitless bonds in order to lock in annuity returns, but a) a bunch of them are a long way underwater and b) the effective rate of interest on bonds was below zero so they were forced to seek riskier assets, bidding up the price on those, which... etc etc etc.

Capital concentration – huge pension schemes, enormous corporations, big university endowments – has weird effects and it happens in all kinds of places.

<comment><USER17> I wonder what would be a good way to deploy that concentrated capital. Essentially, it's the combined labor of a large pool of people, hoping that their capital will be deployed in places where it will earn great returns. What happens when these pockets of wealth don't have anywhere to go?

Related: pensions are out of fashion in the US. Where is the wealth of young Americans going nowadays?

<comment><USER18> I'm 38 and have a pretty good salary. About 50% after tax goes to rent, 25% goes to paying down debt inherited from getting married and medical bills (previous employer had shit insurance). The last 25% is what we live on for essentials (insurance, gas and tolls to go to work, utilities, food, etc). My wife and I have long ago paid off out student loan debt. We have 10s of thousands in high interest, unsecured debt. Debt, that in theory we could pay off tomorrow from savings. However, since most of my savings (my wife has none) is spread across 2 401ks, a Roth IRA, a traditional IRA and a taxed investment account, and I work for an investment fund, I'm subject to all sorts of lockups, retention requirements and blacklists on trades on securities held by my employer. Tl;Dr; I have savings to cover my debts, but cant legally access most of it.

I'm not unhappy that I got married, but I didn't consider the financial repercussions before I went through with it.

<comment><USER19> With debt from marriage, are you talking about the costs of a wedding, or taking on debt from your wife or something else?

<comment><USER18> Taking on debt from my wife, cost of the rings, wedding was cheap, we just did a justice of the peace wedding. Also, furniture for our new place (needed more than my 1-bedroom + den apartment). Lots of little things that just kept adding on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Ironic; even Oracle execs ain't immune to being sued by Oracle.

<comment><USER20> Calling Larry an 'exec' is seriously downplaying his role in Oracle though, he is, after all, co-founder, chairman and ex-CEO of the company.

<comment><USER9> The current CEO is also a target of said lawsuit-blessing, so "execs" is a reasonable description that encompasses both (without something wordier like "current and former Oracle CEOs").

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> It seems that Oracle is like a cradle of corruption: [https://emerging- europe.com/news/oracle-romania-boss-accused...](https://emerging- europe.com/news/oracle-romania-boss-accused-of-taking-870000-euros-in-bribes/)

</comment><comment><USER22> I expect that some former SolarCity shareholders will be watching this lawsuit closely.

<comment><USER23> You mean Tesla. SolarCity was bankrupt and worthless nearly when Musk overpaid for it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I need the simple English version on what exactly this lawsuit is about.

<comment><USER25> Larry Ellison owned 40% of NetSuite when it was purchased at a very high price. He effectively ran both sides of the deal (between oracle and NetSuite) and funneled shareholder money into his own pockets via the transaction. Allegedly.

<comment><USER26> Sold for $10B (3 years ago). 40% of that is $4B, of Ellison's $65B financial networth.

The amount Ellison profited from scheming (the premium over actual value, discounted by the fact that Ellison owns much of money being spent on the purchase) seems...not big enough to matter? But his greed is unbridled?

<comment><USER27> I don't really understand when you already have billions of dollars why having more billions of dollars even matters anymore. How is more billions going to change your standard of living? You can buy two islands instead of just one? When you have so much money, how is getting more money a motivation?

<comment><USER28> Larry Ellison is a particularly greedy bastard. You could make a James Bond movie with him as the villain and nobody would notice.

He owns an island in Hawaii where the locals work for him as de facto serfs.

He has donated to two charities in his life: one to Stanford in exchange for not admitting fault in an options backdating scandal, and one to set up a charitable foundation to research ways to extend his own life.

The mission statements and internal marching orders at Oracle and his various other companies is "make lots of money for Larry". Nothing else matters, they will screw the users, screw the customers, screw the product, screw the employees, screw the open source community, screw the legal system, as long as there's revenue for Larry, the bosses are happy bacause that's all that the company exists for.

<comment><USER29> What else should for profit companies exist for?

<comment> t-writescode For profit companies should exist for whatever they want to exist for, as long as they can stay alive.

Public companies, on the other hand, apparently have a legal obligation to make as much money as possible, a feature I find despicable.

<comment><USER30> The idea that company directors have a fiduciary duty to maximise shareholder value is mostly a myth: it is one of those ideas that many economists like that seem to simplify things but actually can't be made to work. James Kwak has a nice article (Medium, sorry) on this

[https://medium.com/bull-market/there-is-no-effective- fiducia...](https://medium.com/bull-market/there-is-no-effective-fiduciary- duty-to-maximize-profits-939ae50d0572)

> The specific fiduciary duties of corporate directors...are common law: legal > principles that have been established by courts in the process of > adjudicating cases over the years. As it turns out, in Delaware, which is > the state that matters—not only because most large corporations are > incorporated there, but because courts in other states tend to look to > Delaware law when dealing with new issues of corporate law—there are exactly > two fiduciary duties: the duty of loyalty and the duty of care.

> They duty of care is basically the duty to pay attention to your job: in > essence, to make decisions on the basis of reasonably adequate information. > There is an academic controversy—fueled by careless uses of language by the > courts—about whether the standard of conduct is negligence or gross > negligence. But the point here is that the duty of care isn't a duty to do > any particular thing, such as maximize profits.

> The duty of loyalty is marginally more complicated. This duty (like the duty > of care) existed in agency law—the law governing the relationship between > agents, such as employees, and principals, such as companies—before > corporations became widespread in the nineteenth century. There, the duty of > loyalty essentially meant that you couldn't use your position as an agent to > make a personal profit—by stealing directly from the principal, via a > transaction with the principal, or, in the famous case of Reading v. Regem, > by using your British Army uniform to help smugglers during your off hours.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The BS-mometer on this one is off the scale... Allow me to explain

1 - a bunch of professional investors (the "affected") and money managers buy material stakes in Oracle 2 - the affected elect the CEO 3 - the affected elect board members 4 - the CEO explores, consults and executes on M&A transaction 5 - the board members vote on M&A deal 6 - the largest affected hear specifics of M&A deal and weigh in 7 - deal loses money. The affected want to sue.

I count no less than 4 times in which the affected as stakeholders should have made better decision. And a few other steps when other parties would have prevented problems if the affected parties had not been asleep at the wheel

These sort of lawsuits never happen because the improbability of investors clawing money back off their own (not others) mistakes.

And make no mistake. There is an element of sour grapes here.

</comment><comment><USER31> Good luck fighting Oracle's elite lawyers ..

Suits. Season 11 awaits

<comment><USER32> There are other elite lawyers in the country...just give them a chance to sue a rich, greedy person and they'll do it. For bragging rights. And money

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> What is current Oracle DB alternative which can fully replace it? Do we have any option in market which can fully replace Oracle DB?

<comment><USER34> What's hard to replace about it?

That's not meant as a dismissal, I'm just not very familiar with Oracle DB and I haven't heard about it dominating on query performance or language features. That might imply it wins at scales I haven't ever needed, but I could imagine some other reasons.

Are the standing advantages support and scaling, basic features, or something else?

<comment><USER35> I have heard rumors that Oracle DB is the best, but I've heard too many bad things about the parent company to ever look outside of postgres/mariadb.</comment></comment></comment>


Whom do we become when we inhabit another language? - <AUTHOR> https://believermag.com/translating-a-person/ <comment><USER2> That's an overcorrected "whom". Become is not a transitive verb.</comment>


Being treated like an adult is way better than having a beer fridge - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/wildcardmoney/why-your-dream-job-might-not-be-what-you-think-it-is-af2010040a68 <comment><USER2> Lately I've been annoyed with the content that shows up on Medium - or the fact that an interesting sounding article is pay-walled and I'm not willing to pull out my wallet for Medium.

But, I enjoyed reading this.

> _how long you work does not equal how much work you get done_

This is, in my opinion, undeniably true. The problem comes down to implementation and, importantly, perceived fairness. It's difficult to have two employees produce the same quality and quantity of work, for the same pay, but one is only required to work for 30 hours and the other is required to work 40. Is it fair? Personally, I think so - if you work faster than me but have the same quality of work, I'll be asking you how you do it! But I know, because I've encountered them, there are people who take this as an insult and would rather see their colleague sit idle for 10 hours so that they put in an equal amount of time.

> _People have a million different circadian rhythms and lifestyles. The idea > of 9am shoehorns the entire population into one of them._

This resonates. I think there is a problem in that lots of jobs need 24/7 coverage and shift work is an effective way of handling that. Also, we have an expectation of the "business day" \- everyone has an idea of what time period and days that covers. But I would be in a much better place if I could work according to my bodies sleep cycle, not my bosses.

> _You're the best person to set your own goals, and your peers will measure > you based on how well you achieve those goals._

Love the sentiment, but I disagree - in a work setting. This is great advice for personal growth, personal well-being, personal XYZ. But, personal goals and work goals don't always align, or as an employee I may not know all of the specific goals for the companies roadmap. Being an adult means we should have a conversation about our separate goals and how we can align them, not avoiding corporate goals altogether. After-all, I need you to stay in business so I can keep myself afloat. I think a good boss/corp would focus on setting realistic goals in consultation with their employee, rather than expecting their employee to have the same goals as them, and execute them in the same way.

</comment><comment><USER3> It sounds very nice in theory, but I wonder how many of their employees actually end up taking a solid month of vacation to travel the world. (And if my employer expects me to answer the phone while I'm on vacation, it's not a real vacation.)</comment>


Tesla's mass firings spread to SolarCity - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/25/tesla-firings-spread-across-solarcity-employees-blindsided.html <comment><USER3> 1,200 of 33,000 employees amounts to 3.6% of the work force. This level of action, 1 in 25 employees, gives managers an opportunity to release employees that looked good in the interview but did not meet expectations. Whether Tesla conducted this in a proper manner is open to debate and perhaps details will emerge if/when any former employees pursue Tesla in court. But any company needs to address the inevitable hiring mistakes and I don't see evidence that Tesla is doing any more than that.

<comment><USER4> > _I don 't see evidence that Tesla is doing any more than that_

If the lack of promised performance reviews is accurate, that's the obvious issue - it implies a labor force decision disguised as a performance decision. This is a pretty common move in e.g. game development, so it certainly isn't unthinkable.

The point about total workforce size is well taken, though; this still seems like it could be as simple as "times are tough so we're cutting more stringently than we might otherwise".

<comment><USER5> Would you say 3,6 % is that stringent though? I remember GE under Welch fired 10 % of the lowest performers every year, that seemed kind of stringent. But Tesla is fast-hiring and acquiring, so seem to have a larger need to fix hiring-errors than GE. At the end of 2015 they had only 14,000 employees! In light of that, 3,6 % seems completely reasonable to me. Low, even.

Concerning the performance review: would expect that after acquisition, SolarCity would adjust to Tesla's performance standards. So even if they were based on prior performance reviews, still seems like a reasonable action and level to me.

As much as I try to squint, I'm having troubles seeing the smoking gun here.

<comment><USER6> I thought the concensus now was that Welch's leadership under GE was not good.

There's been a lot of rants about the utility of stack ranking and this sort of "fire the worst performers because everyone else is better" attitude. Namely wrong incentives.

You have John Carmack and a clone of John Carmack working on your game engine. You have stack ranking. Which one should you let go during review season? Should you hire some extra people to protect your good people?

<comment><USER7> That worked at GE largely because they were getting rid of the gold watch retirement crowd. That worked in the past as companies had people who worked there all life, and most of the time late in career they would come to work, do nothing all day and go home.

Jack Welch was simply doing long pending layoffs.

<comment><USER8> _That worked at GE largely because they were getting rid of the gold watch retirement crowd_

You mean, getting rid of people who had been promised deferred compensation, before having to make good on it? That was the deal with old-skool companies, remain loyal for 30 years then ease your way into retirement. GE got the loyalty then shafted those guys.

<comment><USER7> The economic set ups across the world changed. You can't fault companies for doing what was needed.

In India many old people got shafted both the ways being asked to take voluntary retirements and being subjected to high inflation rates at the same time.

<comment><USER8> _You can 't fault companies for doing what was needed._

Well, you can, or no obligation means anything anymore. Why should a company even pay you your wages if things are a little tight this month, by that logic?

<comment><USER7> Salary is an obligation in return for your services. The company doesn't owe a person a job for passing time at office.

Its just people woke up to the fact that socialism wasn't a feasible model anymore.

<comment><USER8> OK, a company decides it won't pay your pension anymore then - <USER2> scenario.

<comment><USER7> Its not an identical scenario. Companies don't pay pensions in most countries. These largely get paid through Pension funds, which by and large investment money in Government backed securities.

These are debt obligations at the level of a country. On 'your' investments.

This is totally different than saying a person should be given a job, even if they don't work.

<comment><USER8> _Companies don 't pay pensions in most countries_

Ummm airlines and automakers in the US do, or did. Lots of companies/countries are the same.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> _Sources said that HR department representatives told staff in one office they were being let go due to problematic "conduct with peers." When questioned, an ex-employee said, HR declined to specify any details about the alleged poor conduct, which had never been previously discussed._

<tin foil hat> Is this pre-empting a union push?

<comment><USER10> I remember a while back some .com company laid off a bunch of their employees (more than 40%? 50%?). Firing that many people at once triggered a set of 'lay off' laws, which required certain behavior from the company (such as giving the employees X days notice, etc, etc).

This is pure speculation, but I wonder if Telsa is trying to do last-minute layoffs while avoiding whatever 'lay off laws' there are by claiming that each individual is totally being fired for totally legit individual reasons, for sure, yep.

<comment><USER11> The Department of Labor usually investigates these things.

<comment><USER12> This is not your father's Department of Labor. I see little chance that any enforcement will happen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Couldn't Tesla / SolarCity just said, "Hey, company didn't do well, sorry, here's 2 weeks severance"? Why do this whole "bad performance review" nonsense.

<comment><USER14> Because the stock price would drop and Tesla wants to do another round of funding (aka issue more stock) soon.

<comment><USER15> The stock price has dropped by $64 since the start of the week BTW. It was at $325 when I checked earlier today and came from a high of $389.

<comment><USER16> That's not correct. $389 is its all-time high. It closed at ~$345 on Friday and opened ~$350 on Monday.

<comment><USER17> it's literally $325 right now so what's not correct?

<comment><USER16> skgoa said "The stock price has dropped by $64 since the start of the week BTW."

It has dropped ~$25 since the start of the week. It's down $64 from its all- time high.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This doesn't really surprise me. A few years ago we had lead generation software that catered to the solar industry. We had some decent sized clients and it did really well for about 2 years. Once the tax credits started going away and the power companies started killing off their rebates, a lot of these solar companies were not able to survive.

One of our larger clients who was heavily funded went bankrupt this year and many of the smaller/mid sized clients have folded within the last year too.

It is risky basing too much of a business on tax credits and rebates.

<comment><USER19> I'm surprised. At the rate PV has been falling these subsidies are probably negligible (federal rebate withstanding).

I purchased PV because the cost with a 20-year loan comes out to be 13c kWh, meanwhile PG&E charges 29c kWh. And the loan interest is tax-deductible.

<comment><USER20> What company did you use? I have received 3 quotes and none make much sense.

<comment><USER19> Solarcity. Highly recommended.

<comment><USER20> Weird. I had them come by for a quote and they were about 25% more than the second closest bid. I never did the full math. This was on a 5kW installation.

<comment><USER19> My email is in my profile if you want my details. Our system is 6.8kwh. I didn't go with solarcity because they were the cheapest.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I've been with a bunch of smaller companies and have seen layoffs as well as been laid off before/during and after mergers.

Not sure why this should be surprising in the case of Tesla + Solar City.

<comment><USER22> It's mostly of note precisely because they are not layoffs according to Tesla. They were full on fired with cause. It's strange to say the least. What would trigger a mass firing like that. It's unusual.

<comment><USER23> I'm a SolarCity customer and absolutely despise them. Their customer service makes Comcast look like a saint. I can't help but cross my fingers this is a sign Tesla might be doing something about it. But I'm not getting too hopeful.

<comment><USER20> I had them come by for a quote. I never bothered to put their numbers in to compare to other offers because it was a terrible experience. I have no idea if they are even working on changing that, or just pivoting to industrial installations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I am pretty pro-union. However, in the case of Musk's enterprises, where there is this larger goal that is finally seeming to become possible, I am torn. I feel that anyone that works at these places should know and be a zealot for the Cause...but I suppose that Elon Musk probably should share his stakes with them a bit more, in that case.

edit: I believe workers should be treated fairly, but I also want us to go to Mars. If 1 prevented 2, I would be torn. Why should this earn a negative vote?

<comment><USER25> > edit: I believe workers should be treated fairly, but I also want us to go > to Mars. If 1 prevented 2, I would be torn. Why should this earn a negative > vote?

I assume because this same argument, if you took it to ridiculous extremes, could be used to justify a whole range of terrible shit. Watch:

"I believe workers should not be enslaved, but I also want us to go to Mars. If 1 prevented 2, I would be torn."

"I believe Musk should not torture underperforming workers, but I also want us to go to Mars. If 1 prevented 2, I would be torn."

I don't think you are actually willing to torture or enslave people so that humanity can get to Mars, but the way you constructed your argument leads in that direction, which is probably why it's being met with resistance.

<comment><USER24> I am not trying to create an axiom meant to generalize to all cases. I am just willing to be a little less pro-union (and this point has gotten lost here apparently) than I am usually when it comes to THIS set of companies, for very particular reasons. That is because I tend to think of these companies (at least SpaceX) more as causes than as companies. When you willingly work for a cause, you expect these things. If you are fighting to treat victims of war near battlefields, you might get be indanger, and the organization might not be able to do much about it, or provide you the kinds of benefits that would be deserving in a perfect world.

<comment><USER26> Noble causes don't tend to be for profit entities. If SpaceX was a charity or not for profit I'd agree, but it's a business and it is hurting the workers to accumulate more capital for the owners. It's goal of getting to Mars is nice but a separate set of moral concerns as long as it is attempting to maximize profit

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> While I do commend Musk's role in getting change within industries, it can't be argued that his biggest strength over the last decade has been only PR (and I mean only!). Do some digging and see how he chooses to release news bits, diversions etc and holds on to the mastermind billionaire ideal that people bestowed upon him. Any other company making false promises ("Auto"pilot), providing factually incorrect data (Model 3 "mass" production), mass firings ("performance" layoffs) would not survive in the world. Musk just dumbs down science to his cult and they swallow it up. Remind you of anyone else? (hmmmm... Trump - different audience of course but similar cult following characteristics).

Tesla responding to lawsuits by former employees claiming they suffered racial discrimination and anti-LGBT threats (in The Guardian): "There is no company on earth with a better track record than Tesla."

Trump, March 2016: "Nobody knows more about trade than me."

Don't think any other person/entity give out such absolute statements routinely.

</comment><comment><USER28> > SolarCity employees say they were surprised to be told they were fired for > performance reasons, claiming Tesla had not conducted performance reviews > since acquiring the solar energy business.

Is it possible the _performance reasons_ cited may have been in reference to performance in sales rather than performance in work? Otherwise it does seem odd to dismiss over employee performance if reviews has yet to be conducted by Tesla.

</comment><comment><USER29> Call layoffs "firing" to look good in stock market and not have to pay severance packages... Elon is smart for sure

<comment><USER30> I dunno, my Tesla stock just took a big dump. Maybe I should sell.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Does anyone know if the reason Tesla gave is interfering with the newly fired collecting unemployment? There are certain types of firing that would stop someone from being able to collect unemployment.

</comment><comment><USER32> At Solar City, sales must be down if they're closing entire offices.

<comment><USER33> or redundant if they're using their Tesla stores to sell solar panels after the merger

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I wonder if the ideas of centralised layoffs based on performance reviews is even a good idea at all, especially for anything other than manual labor and the like.

</comment><comment><USER35> >Some of the firings came in big group employee meetings.

WOW. Great place to work. Yet gives a shit when their stock is like 60% up YTD, right? /s

</comment><comment><USER36> If there was one division at Tesla that deserved lay-offs, surely it was SolarCity?

I remember how everyone was talking about what a bad move Tesla made in acquiring SolarCity, because the company was a mess and unprofitable.

I've also heard stories about how aggressive and pushy SolarCity's sales people were with customers, which ended-up giving the company an increasingly worse reputation.

<comment><USER37> Solar City was doing fantastic here in Las Vegas. There sales people were BY FAR the best when they came door to door.

But Warren Buffet's power company changed the laws last year and basically screwed everyone who had solar. We have completely disincentivized putting solar panels up.

Now the company doesn't do well, and no sales people come door to door from any company. If you are putting up solar in Las Vegas this year, its because you are an extreme environmentalist and willing to pay the penalty that comes with it.

<comment><USER38> How did the laws change?

<comment><USER37> [https://www.reviewjournal.com/business/energy/solarcity- stop...](https://www.reviewjournal.com/business/energy/solarcity-stopping- nevada-sales-installations-after-puc-ruling/)

>>The PUC "has effectively shut down the rooftop-solar industry and taken the extraordinary step to punish over 12,000 existing solar customers, including schools, with exorbitant fees in what appears to be an attempt to protect the profits of the state's largest utility. All three members of the PUC, who voted unanimously to change the rules, were appointed by Governor Sandoval."

>>Rive said: "Most disturbing is the PUC's decision to retroactively sabotage existing solar customers' investments by changing the rules on them. The Nevada government encouraged these people to go solar with financial incentives and pro-solar policies, and now the same government is punishing them for their decision with new costs they couldn't have foreseen. These actions are certainly unethical, unprecedented, and possibly unlawful. While the rest of the country embraces a clean energy future, Nevada is moving backwards."

<comment><USER39> Net metering isn't even a US law thing, it's a physics law thing. Just basic physics should tell you that selling power for the same price you buy it doesn't make sense due to heat loss in the lines.

If you want a battery buy one, don't try to use the grid as a giant battery.

<comment><USER40> Potentially the net metered electricity doesn't have to travel as far. Maybe it goes to the house next door.

That said, it makes sense to steeply adjust the rate if the net metering starts causing long distance flows.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Has anyone else noticed a PR smear campaign against Tesla?

<comment><USER42> Anyone else? _You_ haven't even noticed it. Unless, you want to cite some examples

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> SpaceX, Tesla, and SolarCity: ponzi schemes that have a little tech behind them and pull on our heartstrings.

<comment><USER44> Ponzi schemes don't produce major technological advancement.

SpaceX made reusable rockets a thing.

Tesla made great cars with bleeding-edge EV technology.

SolarCity made "solar roof" a viable & aesthetic product.

All three are still thriving on a _lot_ of tech advancement.

Long-term success remains to be seen in three very difficult industries, but current performance is certainly not the facades of Ponzi schemes.

<comment><USER45> > SpaceX made reusable rockets a thing.

The space shuttle was reusable. It just wasn't cost-effective. So far, SpaceX hasn't proven their resuable rocket is cost-effective either.

> Tesla made great cars with bleeding-edge EV technology.

Model X ranked dead last in reliability: [https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/consumer-reports- survey-m...](https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/consumer-reports-survey-marks- tesla-model-x-as-least-reliable/)

Model S owners have also complained about reliability and build quality problems.

I don't know much about SolarCity as a business, but the Tesla buyout has a lot of sketchy signs about it [https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/10/18/solarcity- teslas-s...](https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/10/18/solarcity-teslas-solar- boondoggle.aspx)

I don't necessarily think Musk's companies are literally "Ponzi schemes", but they are less impressive than the hype surrounding them, and they all rely heavily on government subsidies.

I just wish HN would take the same critical eye to Musk that it does toward other business luminaries. It seems like far too many people are easily seduced by "Mars colony! Hyperloop! Rocket around the world!"

<comment><USER46> Comparing the shuttle glider to the boosters of the Falcon is completely inaccurate. Compare the SRBs and the main booster.

And yes, I think SpaceX has been working constantly to reduce cost of reuse of their boosters. Do YOU have proof, given their track record of improvements, that they are anywhere near as expensive as the Shuttle in terms of launch costs?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> \- It's not mass firing. It's not even 4% of the workforce.

\- So, employees were "surprised". As most people who are fired, ever, in any company and epoch. How is this news at all?

\- Recalling 11,000 units might not at all be connected with layoffs. Implying otherwise is a cheap yellow press journalism.

\- "Citing fears of retaliation from Tesla". Yeah, because Tesla _definitely_ is known for pursuing people like they're some kind of a cold-war era vengeful spy agency. Sure.

\- Some layoffs came 2 weeks early. Wow. Scandalous!

\- Somebody made the mistake of over-stating how much personnel a new office is gonna have. Surely, this is news-worthy, right?

\- Exact number of people laid off is unknown so hey, I have a genius idea, let's listen to the former employees who are now negatively biased against the company. I mean, they can't be wrong, could they?

And then the company tries to minimize the chance of former employees suing them. That's relatively normal if somewhat scummy, sadly it's a pretty classic state of affairs. Hardly exclusive to Tesla, though.

This "tech reporter" would do well to work with paparazzi. It'll match her journalistic expertise.

<comment><USER48> "Mass layoff" is defined by the United States Department of Labor as 50 or more workers laid off from the same company around the same time.

<comment><USER47> Might be legally correct. Still gives the wrong impression because most people aren't lawyers. Should outline percentage, not absolute numbers, IMO.

<comment><USER49> If the unemployment rate increased 3.6% tomorrow, I guess you wouldn't think it's a big deal, right? After all, it's not even 4%! The lack of sympathy people show these days. Sheesh.

<comment><USER47> It's one company out of hundreds of thousands.

You did not address all of my criticisms of the article which are logically sound -- you only cherry-picked one emotional point.

<comment><USER49> > It's one company out of hundreds of thousands.

> You did not address all of my criticisms of the article which are logically > sound -- you only cherry-picked one emotional point.

I'm not attempting to address whatever point you were trying to make.

I'm glad you replied the way you did, since that was my point.

<comment><USER47> The fact remains this was a sensationalist piece.

People lose jobs every day. Happened to me 20+ times in the last 10 years and was hard. I don't see value in comments like yours saying "you need to be more compassionate". What you are missing is that I am -- but that doesn't help anybody.

And, again, the article was of extremely low quality and it seemed to have been pushing an agenda.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Any franchise for starting a web development consultancy? - <AUTHOR>

I want to start my own web development consultancy. I was wondering if there was a franchise model I could pursue to get started? <comment><USER2> I don't know of any franchises per se, but Thoughtbot, a well known Ruby on Rails consultancy, publishes a "Playbook"[0] that outlines how they run their consultancy. I find it to be a good guide to consult from time to time. It covers everything from the development process to sales. It's written from the point of view of a new Thoughtbot employee, which makes it an interesting read.

0 - [http://playbook.thoughtbot.com/](http://playbook.thoughtbot.com/)

</comment><comment><USER3> WSI (www.wsicorporate.com) is still around. But I really don't understand the point of a franchise for a web development business. A web development business is one or more people with a computer, some skills and the ability to deal with customers. You don't need a consumer brand, a supply chain, specialist equipment and training or a stylish bricks & mortar store, so I'm really not sure what value you'd expect to get from a franchise fee.

If you need help getting customers, offer your services to other agencies for which _they pay you_

<comment><USER4> Well people don't know if you are competent, if your prices are reasonable, if you are honest, if you follow some standard business practices, if you document your work, and so on. The point of the brand is to promise all that to them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Bar None: The best authority on the broader subject of consulting in general is Alan Weiss. Only wish I discovered and read his stuff when I started out. Here's recommended book for you> [http://www.amazon.com/Million-Dollar-Launch- Kick-start-Succe...](http://www.amazon.com/Million-Dollar-Launch-Kick-start- Successful/dp/0071826343)

</comment><comment><USER6> Why not start small?

Get one client and go from here. The hardest parts will be learning how to manage your time, saying no to your clients, and figuring out how to take an idea from a client and transferring it directly to code.

<comment><AUTHOR> How do you get that first client?

<comment><USER7> Go meet people. It's amazing how many people are out there searching for talent. If they can't hire a full time, they often resort to contractors. That's you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> There are some franchises at entrepeneur.com/franchises/

you can do a search for marketing agencies.

hope that helps</comment>


Updates to Kubernetes 1.3 Performance and Scalability - <AUTHOR> http://blog.kubernetes.io/2016/07/kubernetes-updates-to-performance-and-scalability-in-1.3.html <comment><AUTHOR> We've doubled our performance and scalability in Kubernetes 1.3, and we're not done yet. If you have any particular questions, please ask!

Disclosure: I work at Google on Kubernetes.</comment>


How Ruby Method Dispatch Works - <AUTHOR> http://blog.jcoglan.com/2013/05/08/how-ruby-method-dispatch-works/

<comment><USER2> This is a good introduction to ruby's method lookup, even if it isn't fully accurate. The author notes that he hasn't read the ruby source code, and his explanation is "just a model you can use to understand things."

While mostly accurate, his description of the module hierachy as a tree leads to a wrong understanding of how ruby's method lookup actually works. If ruby did use a tree, then including module B in module A after including module A in class C would result B being one of C's ancestors, which isn't the case. Ruby's method lookup uses a linked list (not a tree) using iclasses for modules (a pseudo-copy of the module, which is why later includes have no effect). However, a description of that may be too in-depth for an introduction.</comment>


Joel on The Absolute Minimum Every Developer Must Know About Unicode (2003) - <AUTHOR> http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/Unicode.html

<comment><AUTHOR> "and, in fact, early implementors wanted to be able to store their Unicode code points in high-endian or low-endian mode, whichever their particular CPU was fastest at, and lo, it was evening and it was morning and there were already two ways to store Unicode."</comment>


Oculus Rift or HTC Vive – Which Should I Get? - <AUTHOR> https://unity3d.college/2017/07/11/rift-vs-vive-which-should-you-get/ <comment><USER2> I think the author of this article needs to update everything on here. I realize that the article is dated as today and that he reports the latest price drop for the Oculus but none of the rest of the article is really up-to- date.

For starters, he complains about the comfort of the Vive vs. Oculus due to the weight of the Vive. He's clearly using a 1st rev Vive, though, whereas the latest rev, which you can order today (and I don't think I'm wrong in assuming that the target audience is those buying a new one) is actually _lighter_ than the Rift.

As someone who has used both the 1st rev Vive and the latest and who also owns a Rift with 3 cameras, the Oculus Rift really only wins out for me in 2 areas:

1\. The controllers are awesome but they're not better than the new knuckles controllers. I even agree with his point that some experiences are actually better with the large, unwieldy Vive controllers.

2\. The price. The Vive really needs to come down in price to be a worthwhile recommendation, especially now.

Other than that, the Vive wins for me. You can choose whichever audio/band style you prefer, the ease of setup for the lighthouses is light years better, and the experience for most people when done 1-to-1 is better (for all the people I've demo'd them to). I typically show people AZ Sunshine, the Blu, Job Sim, and some seated games on both and then show off Lucky's Tale for the Rift (awesome game) and The Lab for the Vive. Without fail, everyone has preferred the Vive with a few people mentioning that the Oculus did have less distracting visuals in some areas.

Even for the price, though, I would recommend new users wait for the newer Vive when the knuckles come out. Especially with the Facebook fear-mongering, the Rift is just not where it needs to be to compete. There are too many places where it takes you out of the presence that VR absolutely needs to be compelling.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've rather enjoyed the HTC Vive, the room scale experience, breadth and depth of games available for it coalesce to make it a solid product.

I doubt I'd ever buy anything from Facebook, but then again I'm an oddball in that my FB account has been unused for many years. Last time I logged in it was a rotting cesspool of shitposts by people I had long stopped dealing with, not very enticing to go read.

</comment><comment><USER4> The bottom line is that both products are excellent, and you can't go wrong choosing either.

There are a few key deciding factors: people with (1) VR rooms > 4m^2 (~12'x12'), (2) large glasses, or (3) staunch anti-Facebook beliefs. If you fall into one or more of those camps, Vive is your best choice.

Otherwise, at $399 (vs. Vive's sale price of $699) the value of the Rift simply overwhelms all other factors. With ceiling mounted sensors, Rift's room scale tracking is within a percent or two of Vive's, though in a smaller range (as above, about 12'x12'). It also includes more software that adds to the value.

Note that a full apples-to-apples comparison adds the following costs to Rift: a 3rd sensor, a USB card, mounting brackets, and extension cables. Total: about $130 (note that the article misstates the price of a third sensor as $99; it is $59). This remains $170 less than Vive's $700 sale price, excluding software value.

Note that an equivalent comparison could also add costs to the Vive: A deluxe audio strap (for similar comfort and integrated audio), and potentially the upcoming Knuckles controllers. Total: between $200 and $250 (assuming a cost of $100 to $150 for the controllers, which seems conservative given a single replacement controller is $129 from HTC), getting back to the similar price advantage of the Rift.

</comment><comment><USER5> IMO: Rift has _way_ better controllers, but head-tracking and room-scale is so much better in Vive-land. Edge for me goes to the Vive, but you can make an argument for either.

<comment><USER6> Valve's new Knuckles controllers look very promising and will offer far better hand presence than the Touch controllers.

[https://www.vrheads.com/valve-knuckles- controllers](https://www.vrheads.com/valve-knuckles-controllers)

<comment><USER5> True! I'm excited to see them, but I haven't spent time with them so can't really rely on them with a recommendation. Right now, the Vive controllers are a step back.

<comment><USER7> I'm a dev that's used the knuckles controllers. You're in for a treat.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> the rift controllers are nicer, at least until Vive releases their new ones.

Tracking is less of a hassle on the vive. Fewer cables, easier.

rift has their own ecosystem which can also play almost every game on the steam library.

vive primarily has steam, but with some hackery (revive), you can play some rift games.

Hardware-wise, they're practically the same. Comfort-wise, Rift takes it.

Development-wise? tough, but I think Rift takes it as well. You get a free license for unity or unreal4 i forget which. And they've improved the developer documentation greatly recently.

The good thing is most multiplayer games support both.

<comment><USER7> Why do you say that the Rift takes it comfort-wise?I'm only curious because I take issue with the OP for exactly this reason. The latest Vive release ways less than the Rift (according to their specs) for which the hardware has changed very little. They were so focused on the controllers that they haven't bothered to update the main hardware and I think their win with the controllers will be short-lived.

<comment><USER4> As I understand it, the Rift's weight includes the weight of the integrated headphones.

Also, the actual HMD (excluding strap, headphones, cable hooks, etc.) of the Vive is still about 40% heavier than Rift's, so there's still more "face tug" and fatigue over longer sessions.

Again, I have not directly tested this, but it makes sense as there's substantially more plastic in the Rift's strap system (i.e., back of the head) than Vive's.

<comment><USER7> Where are you getting that info? According to the specs on both sites, the Vive is lighter than the Rift (although you're probably correct that this includes the weight of headphones whereas the Vive only comes with the in-ear buds). That to me makes it seem like the HMD hardware has gotten lighter because I can't imagine that they would make the straps _less_ sturdy to shed weight. I could be wrong, but that doesn't make sense to me.

Edit: It seems the initial Vive release _was_ heavier than the Rift but the latest release is lighter.

<comment><USER4> According to Palmer Luckey[1], the Rift strap assembly (including back of head counterweight and earphones) is about 150g. That puts the HMD portion at about 320g.

The new Vives weigh about 468g. According to Amazon, a replacement back strap weighs 1.8 ounces (51g)[2]. The Vive HMD w/out strap would be - at the least - about 417g.

Even at a 417g weight, that's about 30% heavier than Rift's strapless weight. Since the 1.8g may include packaging, the HMD may weigh a bit more, bringing the % up to 40% or so.

[1] [https://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/47rb3m/the_rift_cv1...](https://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/47rb3m/the_rift_cv1_is_66_heavier_than_the_dk2_470g_vs/d0f5y8j/)

[2] [http://a.co/6PUVw7v](http://a.co/6PUVw7v): "Package Dimensions 4.2 x 3.9 x 3.9 inches; 1.8 ounces" (so 1.8 ounces may include packaging).</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


After many false starts, hydrogen power might now bear fruit - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2020/07/04/after-many-false-starts-hydrogen-power-might-now-bear-fruit <comment><USER2> Hydrogen has an efficiency problem. You need to convert other forms of energy to hydrogen at a loss. Then you need to store it and transport it, which is costly and may impose quite some energy cost for cooling or compression. Then you need to convert it back to electricity, also at a loss. If you start at electricity, the electrical grid and batteries would be much more efficient. If you start at oil or gas, you could use convention ICEs and get comparable overall efficiencies. For them transport and delivery is a solved problem.

Hydrogen fuel cells are clean where you use them. But so are batteries. Inner cities could be kept cleaner using either. Inner city traffic is mostly short range, so batteries are at an advantage.

Batteries have a rare earth problem. But so do Hydrogen fuel cells. There is work to reduce it for both technologies.

Hydrogen fuel cells have a problem with varying loads. You would use additional batteries in cars to supply peak demand when accelerating or store braking energy. For comparable weight, range, and price you could replace all hydrogen technology with more batteries. Those bigger batteries would also wear out slower because the power demand per cell is lower.

So, when would hydrogen make sense? I think only if you don't care for efficiency. When you have so much electrical power that it costs you nothing and is available at least a few hours every night. Hydrogen would do well in a combination with large scale nuclear fission/fusion. It could take decades until we get there if we ever go that route.

I see that, as batteries become less and less expensive, the niche where Hydrogen could have good advantage is getting smaller and smaller. However you twist and turn it, either oil&gas or batteries have the advantage.

<comment><USER3> Many of the things you're saying aren't correct, see my other comment (sibling to yours) for references.

Nuclear is not cheap compared to photovoltaics, wind and hydro. Since the former two are bursty, overcapacity in them leads to cheap excess energy at times, which needs to be stored.

Which storage method is the best depends on multiple factors, particularly on the duration of storage, capacity required and frequency of charging/discharging.

Batteries are great for relatively short term storage, but for long term, seasonal storage, hydrogen and pumped hydro are the options we have. Pumped hydro capacity is limited, and the cost of hydrogen production and storage is coming down. So that's where hydrogen makes sense: Long term, high capacity storage.

<comment><USER4> Do we really need long-term storage? Wouldn't it be cheaper just to overprovision production?

<comment><USER5> It's almost always cheaper to overbuild renewables than to use seasonal storage. Seasonal storage is used once a year, so if you can store a Kwh of energy for $1 it still increases the cost of the stored electricity by 4-5 cents per Kwh. Let's look at a 1 Kw average output. Assume that you have 6 Kw of solar, along with 18 Kwh of batteries. This will work fine 7-8 months out of the year, but will not be sufficient for winter, so you will need seasonal storage. About 2000 Kwh should be sufficient to make up for the deficit. Alternatively, how much solar would you need to avoid seasonal storage? About 10-12 Kw would probably work. That would mean an additional $3,200 to $4,800 in capital costs, assuming 80 cents per watt of solar. In order for seasonal storage to compete it would need to cost less than about $2 per KWh. For hydrogen this would equate to about $40 per kg. That's on the low end of estimates I've seen for underground hydrogen storage, and doesn't even take into account the cost of generating the hydrogen. It also doesn't take into account revenue generated from selling excess electricity in summer. Even if you sold excess electricity for only 1 cent per Kwh you could still offset about half the cost of the extra solar capacity.

I think many people see excess capacity as a form of waste to be reduced, but it's like thinking that gigabit fiber is a waste because it's not used to it's full capacity. The value of oversupply is that it's always available when you need it. The fact that new industries can spawn from the super cheap rates for excess electricity or data is just a bonus.

<comment><USER6> > It's almost always cheaper to overbuild renewables than to use seasonal > storage.

I disagree, especially at high latitudes. Try that in the UK, for example, at [https://model.energy/](https://model.energy/)

<comment><USER4> Can't we just use more wind in the UK?

<comment><USER6> You can. It's cheaper to also have some hydrogen. Not just for seasonal storage, but to act as a backup for rare long lulls during winter. Without this insurance policy, the renewables have to be sized for extreme worst cases.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I've been diving into this literature a bit recently, and it's been mostly encouraging. Affordable clean energy is realistic.

Clean energy sources are typically the cheapest sources of energy [0]. The intermittent production issue is solvable: At ~150 $/kWh storage, a combination of storage and renewables is the cheapest energy source 95% of the time [1].

The cost of different energy storage methods is coming down exponentially [2]. A combination of Li-Ion battery (short-term), pumped hydro (medium-term) and hydrogen (long-term, i.e. seasonal) storage is probably how to smooth out the burstiness of renewable energy production eventually [3].

When green hydrogen infrastructure is commonplace, the hydrogen can also be used to make synthetic jet fuel and feedstocks for the chemical industry.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source)

[1] [https://www.cell.com/joule/fulltext/S2542-4351(19)30300-9](https://www.cell.com/joule/fulltext/S2542-4351\(19\)30300-9)

[2] [https://www.nature.com/articles/nenergy2017110/figures/1?pro...](https://www.nature.com/articles/nenergy2017110/figures/1?proof=true)

[3] [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S254243511...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S254243511830583X)

<comment><USER7> I've read about a couple of solar projects that projected x/kWh and turned out to be much worse in production.

Pakistan's big deployment is one example, it was planned to be 100MW but only produced 18MW. Mostly because they didn't factor in the dust that would cover the panels, keeping them clean was very expensive (I'm curious how this applies to other proposed desert deployments). Nor factoring in the typical malaise of public projects adding significant delays/costs, which is hardly unique to Pakistan when it comes to major infrastructure in 2020.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaid-e- Azam_Solar_Park](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaid-e-Azam_Solar_Park)

Then there's the famous Solyandra which got half a billion in US tax payer money and flopped without ever being competitive price-wise: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solyndra](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solyndra)

Tesla's famous Australian battery factory only has enough to power 30k homes for about 1-2hrs each day. It was on-schedule, which is rare, and also makes money but scaling it up to millions of homes to make a real dent in coal would be much more challenging, especially sourcing enough lithium.

I think it's safe to take any cheery prediction from green projects and add 1.5x time/production costs and/or minus 30% of the expected output.

Note: I'm not trying to rain on the parade, I'm otherwise all for this stuff as long as it's realistic on a large scale.

<comment><USER8> I'm honestly curious what is the big challenge with keeping large arrays of ground mounted panels clean in Pakistan. The prevailing wage for unskilled labor for a 6 day a week, 45-hour work week for one laborer to clean panels is probably about $250-300 a month (USD equivalent, in rupees) in that area. That would be a _good_ wage compared to construction work or farm work in that region.

With some basic equipment like rolling carts with sprayers and squeegees on extension sticks, how many individual 72-cell sized panels (1.99 x 0.99 meter size) can one person clean in one day? Multiply by probably 4 to 6 full time staff positions.

<comment><USER9> Quoting the Wikipedia page cited above:

> It required one litre of water to clean, each of 400,000 installed panels. A > total 15 days cleaning cycle required, 124 million litres of water enough to > sustain 9000 people, while rain in Cholistan desert is rare and far between. > Providing such huge amount of water in desert terrain, became a challenging > and daunting task for management team. Besides, the manual cleaning methods > allowed setting of dust before it was re-cleaned.

<comment><USER10> This seems kind of like a bullshit excuse where they just didn't really want to fix the issue. There are a number of waterless cleaning systems that have been available for years, for example [1]. Additionally, why the hell would you throw away the water used for cleaning? Filtering the dust particulate out of the water is pretty straightforward (hell, you can go from muddy to fairly clean water with nothing more than a cotton t-shirt), then you reuse it to clean more panels. 1L/panel with even basic reclamation is ridiculous.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdidbRQaUEY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdidbRQaUEY)

<comment><USER11> Agree. They could probably just have people walk around with blowers to blow the sand off.

<comment><USER12> Would those be a gasoline powered blowers ? ( ͜ʖ)

<comment><USER13> Perhaps a step down transformer that directly feeds a dyson blade style blower at one of the edges of each panel. More up front equipment and infrastructure cost but no employee wages. However I'm sure this is full of holes due to cost multiplied by number of solar panels and the number of transformers needed. It is also only able to clean only during the day assuming no battery or pumped hydro storage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I used to drive a hydrogen car once in a while a few years ago. It was nice to fill the car in a few minutes and get about 300km of range, but that was it.

With the hydrogen you have so few refueling stations, they are very expensive, that range anxiety is a thing. To not improve things, reliability is very poor. My work had a hydrogen refueling station on its parking. It was often broken and actually a bit scary to walk past it. They eventually removed it, which was a good call. Another hydrogen station sharing the same design exploded a few months later. The hydrogen car sales dropped from not much to virtually zero since in the country.

So to resume, hydrogen cars are expensive, refueling stations are expensive, the energy is expensive.

Electric cars with large batteries are a much better solution to hydrogen cars IMHO. You can charge everywhere, the eletric grid is very will developped, the energy is cheap. The cars are also much more powerful thanks to the large batteries pack, it's useless but it feels nice.

<comment><USER15> The issue of charging was also there with BEVs, until Tesla straight up built a huge network of superchargers. The players in hydrogen say they will do the same. But for personal vehicles, hydrogen won't math out, it's greatest advantage is its energy density for trucks.

It's for long range trucks that we will see hydrogen first. Green hydrogen will act as energy storage, big renewables grids can dump excess into green hydrogen and thus avoid curtailment. Then, you replace heavy duty trucks, which need to be able to not have heavy batteries, with fuel cell trucks, and you build out 1000 large hydrogen stations across the transit network.

<comment><USER16> Maybe ships is an even better fit than trucks?

<comment><USER17> I was wondering the same thing, from a density perspective. And similarly for airplanes.

As planes and boats expend fuel, they get lighter, so less fuel is needed to move the second half of the journey, and less for the last quarter, etc. That "bonus" doesn't work out with batteries, you need to move all the weight for all the journey. The energy density of batteries, to my understanding, just doesn't add up correctly for boats or most airplanes.

What I would like to know is, wouldn't a hydrogen-powered boat or plane not only have a similar calculation on how much fuel is needed, but also (in the case of boats) be even cheaper to move because its fuel payload is lighter than water? Water 997kg/m3 vs liquid hydro 71kg/m3, also gasoline 783kg/m3, sounds like a nice bonus for jumbo jets too. (I am NOT a physicist or mechanical engineer)

Gasoline-powered sea vessels are terrible polluters, incidentally, accounting for 18% of all air pollution. Between the air pollution benefits and possibility of the vessels being so much more fuel efficient, it seems like hydrogen would be a benefit even if the production isn't completely clean.

<comment><USER18> _with batteries, you need to move all the weight for all the journey_

For metal-air batteries, one of the more promising areas of research, the problem is actually worse: the cells _gain mass_ as oxygen is reacted with the metal anode, discharging the battery.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal–air_electrochemical_cell](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal–air_electrochemical_cell)

For marine propulsion, heavy fuels are typically preferred (bunker fuel typically, thogh deisel and petrol engines do exist). Much of the pollution is in the form of particulates and sulfer emissions. You can actually see major shipping routes on atmospheric sensing maps by SO2 emissions:

[https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/chem/surface/level/ove...](https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/chem/surface/level/overlay=so2smass/orthographic=-257.23,7.16,346)

As long-term risks these are ... somewhat minor as these contaminants settle out quickly: in days to months rather than centuries to millennia for CO2 and methane. Not great for respiratory health, but not the long-term planetary risk fossil fuel combustion overall is.

<comment><USER19> > For metal-air batteries, one of the more promising areas of research, the > problem is actually worse: the cells gain mass as oxygen is reacted with the > metal anode, discharging the battery.

That's interesting, thank you for the info. Having a different characteristic from the usual one might lead to interesting applications. For instance, airplanes use a lot of fuel for takeoff, as they pay double the price for the weight of their fuel: they need to carry it up, when they have the most. This could actually be a game-changer, I think.

That could also be exploited: raise the battery when it is charged, have it gain weight, generate electricity while lowering it. Perpetual motion doesn't exist, of course. But gaining a bit of extra mileage is theoretically possible here :)

<comment><USER18> More likely, rethinking flight-segment dynamics and design.

The bulk of energy expenditure is on takeoff and climb segments of flight. Cruise is relatively low energy, and during approach and landing, aircraft are frequently effectively gliding. Pilots and aviation engineers speak of the amount of energy in the aircraft, exclusive of fuel, represented by its mass, altitude, and velocity.

Ideas I've seen suggested include catapult or towed launch, ejectable or jettisonable batteries, and/or hybrid fuel/electric designs, exploiting these factors.

The general problems are:

\- These all increase complexity and failure risks.

\- They are novel (and hence risky) concepts.

\- Virtually all have scaling issues, being possibly feasible for smaller (drone, single-passenger, or few-passenger craft), but not heavy or superheavy jumbo jets. (Square-cube relations mean, generally, small aircraft are easier than large ones).

\- The typical power requirements are violated in emergencies. Fuel-driven aircraft can apply TOGO (take-off/go-around) power on demand, whilst a hybrid or compound design likely could not. And final flight-phase aircraft typically have half their takeoff weight, having burnt the difference in fuel, further expanding performance options.

As for "lowering the battery", you'd do better to fly the entire aircraft at a gradually descending flight path, trading lower-drag high altitude for higher- drag lift as the battery gains mass. Current long-haul aircraft (sometimes) practice this in reverse, reching higher flight levels as fuel is consumed, lift requirements reduced, and lower-drag high-elevation flight being possible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This article looks like a fine discussion about the economics of hydrogen production, but unless I've missed something it skips over the immense storage difficulty.

Hydrogen is a difficult thing to manage in quantity. Its density is fantastically low, so storing it in gas form requires absurd pressures -- an inherent risk to any vehicle. Storing it in liquid form goes a long way towards solving the density/pressure problem, but now the system must have a full cryogenic process to _keep_ the hydrogen liquified. (Worse yet: over time hydrogen embrittles ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_embrittlement](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_embrittlement)) metals, making storage even more complicated)

This isn't much different than the problems faced by rockets, and it's why liquid hydrogen is not considered a 'storable propellant' for long-duration flight.

In a zero-net-carbon economy, residual demand for high power density may still have to be filled by some kind of bio-derived or synthetic hydrocarbon.

<comment><USER21> We don't need to rely on metals for hydrogen storage...composites work just fine. And for use cases like maritime and aviation power systems, cryogenic storage _isn 't necessary_. At all. Because even with simple styrofoam insulation, consumption rates vastly exceed evaporation rates.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Main points:

1\. The only hydrogen produced from electricity is ecological. Carbon capture doesn't work today.

2\. The hydrogen from electricity is expensive, though as wind and solar get exponential cheaper, we will end up with spikes excess cheap electricity (negative prices today or disconnecting plants). It makes sense to produce hydrogen during those spikes.

3\. Cars on hydrogen don't make sense at all. The massive cost of infrastructure plus batteries are superior and getting better on that front.

4\. Hydrogen from electricity can replace the first reformation from natural gas.

5\. Next promising use cases are industrial heating, such as steel production (instead of coal).

6\. Least profitable, but still plausible, uses hydrogen as long-term energy storage and mixing it with natural gas.

7\. I wonder whether generating hydrogen from seawater and getting back freshwater would improve the economics of this form of energy storage.

<comment><USER23> 1 kg of (electrically produced) hydrogen costs more than 1000 gallons of desal.

(1 kg of hydrogen would make a few gallons of water)

<comment><USER24> edit: misinterpreted "desal" as diesel rather than desalinated water.

Well that's just not at all true. Hydrogen by electrolysis costs <$20/kg. A much more interesting fact about a kg of hydrogen is also that it has very close to the same energy content as a gallon of diesel, and significantly more when used in a fuel cell vs an ICE.

[https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy04osti/36734.pdf](https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy04osti/36734.pdf)

<comment><USER23> 1000 gallons of desalination costs $2 or $3.

I was responding to point 7, not comparing hydrogen to _diesel_.

<comment><USER24> ah, I thought you had misspelled.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I wish I'd stop hearing about Hydrogen as a fuel source. It's not. It's just a battery, and should simply be compared to other types of batteries, like Li- Ion. Maybe Hydrogen fuel cells are better batteries, maybe not.

But it's still just a battery, and needs to be charged from the electric power grid (by using the electricity to separate hydrogen from water), just like any other battery would.

<comment><USER26> The defining difference between fuel-cells and batteries is that fuel-cells don't need to be "recharged" as in running an electrochemical reaction in reverse, they just need you to change the fuel.

<comment><USER27> But the fuel was charged from another source in fuel cells too. You don't mine hydrogen. The energy carrier point remains. The primary energy will be from gas, oil, coal, nuclear, hydro, solar, wind, geothermal, biomass, or tidal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> A summary of the virtuous cycle created by cheap renewables and hydrogen electrolyzation:

[https://www.carboncommentary.com/blog/2020/6/17/renewables-p...](https://www.carboncommentary.com/blog/2020/6/17/renewables- plus-hydrogen-almost-all-that-we-need)

Lots of comments on this thread that reveal folks are up to date with the state of hydrogen infrastructure c. 2017. It's changing really fast as billions of dollars are poured into R&D and pilot projects. For example, storage and transport:

[https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-japan-hydrogen-chiyoda- cor...](https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-japan-hydrogen-chiyoda-corp/japans- chiyoda-says-hydrogen-pilot-project-begins-to-fuel-power-plant-idUKKBN23W1LR)

Siemens has pledged to make turbines that run on 100% hydrogen by 2030: [https://new.siemens.com/global/en/company/stories/energy/hyd...](https://new.siemens.com/global/en/company/stories/energy/hydrogen- capable-gas-turbine.html)

Hydrogen trains: [https://www.snam.it/en/Media/Press- releases/Agreement_Alstom...](https://www.snam.it/en/Media/Press- releases/Agreement_Alstom_and_Snam_hydrogen_trains_in_Italy.html)

Hydrogen in steelmaking: [https://www.spglobal.com/platts/en/market- insights/latest-ne...](https://www.spglobal.com/platts/en/market- insights/latest-news/metals/061620-interview-gfg-alliance-readies-liberty- alvance-simec-for-ipos)

I could post 15 more. Our collective priors were well-grounded just a couple years ago, but it is time for a big update.

</comment><comment><USER29> EV owner here. Why would I want to drive to a fueling station when I can fuel up at home with electricity? And from a maintenance level, ev's have substantially fewer parts and almost zero maintenance, whereas hydrogen perpetuates the ICE-engine paradigm... frequent oil changes, many moving parts, lots of service costs at the dealership. The economics of H2 may be different at the commercial scale, but we use a Chevy Bolt in a far northern climate and get nearly 200 miles of range in the winter. The future is already here, and H2 missed the consumer vehicle bandwagon.

</comment><comment><USER30> I think article missed a really large sector which uses coal and produces millions of tons of co2 each year, That is cement industry. Heating clinker to produce cement is energy intensive long process, where big investments towards technology for using Hydrogen can be fruitful.

<comment><USER31> Wood is basically emerging as an alternative in this sector lately. There are some wood based building materials coming on the market that are cheap, sustainable, light, safe, strong, etc.

Think people building sky scrapers in areas with exposure to earthquakes and tropical storms safe. I'm talking about Tokyo. [https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/feb/16/plyscraper- ci...](https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/feb/16/plyscraper-city-tokyo- tower-wood-w350)

Hydrogen is not really needed to fix this.

<comment><USER30> yup, new innovation is needed in construction. But wood is not gonna replace all cement-concrete use-cases.Cement-concrete has far more usecases from skyscrapers like bridges,Dams to road construction.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Following Musk's thinking... i'd really like to see that energy density volume vs mass chart adjusted for average vehicle weight. i.e see the total system, engine, storage components and fuel converter etc.

On that graph, compared to petrol, liquid hydrogen appears to be about 4x larger by volume but interestingly only 2/5ths of the weight.

The electric motors are lighter sure, but then what about the mass and volume of the compressed storage tank and the fuel cell itself? difficult to know if it starts to gain on IC engine again. lots of questions that make that graph feel pretty meaningless.

<comment><USER33> Not once you include the storage tanks.

<comment><USER32> That's my entire point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Hydrogen, to put it simply is a battery, not a fuel, and a relatively poor battery at that. For all the money dumped into it and the amount of research that has been done BEV is now generally considered the way forward. It also doesn't suffer from the problem that Hydrogen tends to go FOOF when you least expect it, and there isn't the pesky problem of Hydrogen embrittlement to deal with.

</comment><comment><USER35> Hydrogen is sexy but alcohol matches our existing context better.

Small-scale alcohol fuel production integrated into regenerative agriculture farms is different from mass ethanol production.

You can ferment anything that has starch or sugar, the leftovers from the distillation can be composted or fed to livestock. Most existing internal combustion engines can be modified to use alcohol fuel. And it's carbon- neutral.

<comment><USER18> Feedstock is the problem here: there's simply not enough net primary productivity on the planet, and humans already appropriate ~20%.

There are some marginal gains possible, but on the order of single-digit percentages of present fossil fuel consumption. _Maybe_ low double-digits.

The US had a largely biofuel based transport system in 1900. Horses consumed 20% of all US grain production, the population was under 100m, and transport generally was a small fraction of today's values (or at least last year's) per capita: closer to 300 mi/yr, much of that walking, than 15,000.

<comment><USER36> According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the U.S. has 434,164,946 acres of "cropland"—land that is able to be worked in an industrial fashion (monoculture). This is the prime, level, and generally deep agricultural soil. In addition to cropland, the U.S. has 939,279,056 acres of "farmland." This land is also good for agriculture, but it's not as level and the soil not as deep. Additionally, there is a vast amount of acreage—swamps, arid or sloped land, even rivers, oceans, and ponds—that the USDA doesn't count as cropland or farmland, but which is still suitable for growing specialized energy crops.

Of its nearly half a billion acres of prime cropland, the U.S. uses only 72.1 million acres for corn in an average year. The land used for corn takes up only 16.6% of our prime cropland, and only 7.45% of our total agricultural land.

Even if, for alcohol production, we used only what the USDA considers prime flat cropland, we would still have to produce only 368.5 gallons of alcohol per acre to meet 100% of the demand for transportation fuel at today's levels. Corn could easily produce this level—and a wide variety of standard crops yield up to triple this.

<comment><USER18> I (and many others more qualified) have run the numbers. It's not pretty.

A decade ago biofuels were my first thought. The maths simply don't add up. Our options are far less energy per person, far fewer people, other sources of energy, or, most likely, some combination of these.

The highest claimed yields are for algae, at a rather improbable 1,000 gal/(acre * year):

 _[Y]ou might consider floating the algae offshore, along the Pacific and Atlantic costs. It 's roughly 1,300 miles from San Diego, CA to Port Angeles, WA, and 1,800 miles from Homestead, FL to Lubec, ME. Dividing our 443,000 square miles by those two added together, we find we'd have to extend our grow region some distance off-shore. That is, 143 miles off-shore. The full length of both coasts._

 _Or perhaps you 'd prefer to re-purpose the Gulf of Mexico. Its total area is about 600,000 mi2, we'd need about 3/4 of it dedicated to algae growth._

[https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/2cvap7/the_int...](https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/2cvap7/the_intractable_problem_of_biomass_for_fuels_is/)

Tom "Do the Math" Murphy:

[https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2011/11/the-biofuel- grind/](https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2011/11/the-biofuel-grind/)

[https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2011/08/garbage-in-garbage- out/](https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2011/08/garbage-in-garbage-out/)

The late David MacCay's _Alternative Energy Without the Hot Air_ gives a comprehensive breakdown for the UK of alternative energy options. Again, the picture is bleak.

[https://withouthotair.com](https://withouthotair.com)

The takeaways are _we use a lot of energy_ and _there are a lot of us_.

<comment><USER18> Correction: that's David _MacKay_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> The article didn't touch on this at all, so has anyone heard updates on attempts at doing in-vehicle hydrogen production from water and some sort of reactant? It's been years since I saw something on it, but if I recall, it used some pellets made of certain metals that react with the water to produce hydrogen. You'd fill the tank with water, and after some number of fill ups you'd also need to replenish the pellets which could be sent off for recycling.

Edit: I found an article about this. It appears to have been developed by the military and has been licensed out for more development: [https://techxplore.com/news/2019-07-h2-power-hydrogen- fuel-s...](https://techxplore.com/news/2019-07-h2-power-hydrogen-fuel- startup.html)

<comment><USER38> A theory like that ignores most of known basic physics.

What would the energy source be? It does not matter what chemical or electrochemical reactions are possible in general, what matters is where does the energy come from. Water does not contain any energy. (Not any chemical energy that can easily be extracted. Of course it contains energy in the sense that E=MC^2, but in that sense we have about the same chance to run a car on sand, or rocks or oreos.)

On the other hand, if you do have an energy source, then why would you need water at all?? You would just use the energy to drive the car (like EVs do), you wouldn't waste half of it to hydrolysis of water into hydrogen first to use that hydrogen...

A theory about a "car running on water" (which, at least in my experience is often followed by conversations about how Nicola Tesla could transfer energy through the air, or about how government has all the technology for infinite energy, but they block it from being used because they are evil) - is a pipe dream which is heavily based on ignorance about physics and gross underestimation of the difficulty of real engineering problems.

<comment><USER37> I found the Wikipedia article: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminum_based_nanogalvanic_...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminum_based_nanogalvanic_alloys)

Saying this ignores basic physics is like saying gasoline engines ignore basic physics. No one is saying that it's free energy. The question is, what is the energy to produce/recycle the alloy? How many miles can you get out of a reasonable supply of the alloy before replacing it? If those numbers are good enough, maybe they'll perform better than battery vehicles. And so I'm asking what's the state of that research.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Hydrogen production is almost entirely produced from fossil fuels currently. Its not really a low carbon energy source unless electrolysis can be made much more efficient.

Its a shame this article didn't examine the production side of hydrogen.

<comment><USER40> I don't think most people consider it an energy source, more so a battery or storage medium. And cheaper storage is an important part of the renewables story because local supply can be unpredictable.

I saw this article earlier today along those lines: [https://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/alchemy- of...](https://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/alchemy-of-energy- breakthrough-offers-mass-hydrogen-storage-options-20200702-p558dj.html)

Supposedly this stores hydrogen metal hydrides cheaper than lithium batteries, whatever that means, but I'm not qualified to judge.

<comment><USER41> There is a video on YouTube about Bob Lazar the area 51 guy. Only it's about how he uses solar and wind to break down water into oxygen and hydrogen. He stores the hydrogen as a metal hydride. The tanks are heated to release the hydrogen and it's used to power his car.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> If you want an hydrogen-powered car, buy a Toyota Mirai. They've been on sale in California since 2016. There are a few hydrogen stations where you can fill it. 5 minute refuel, about 300 mile range. (400 miles in the 2021 model.) The first three years of hydrogen are included with the vehicle purchase. Vehicle price about US$60K. (Expected to be higher for the 2021 model.)

Total US sales in 2019: 1502.

It's just not selling.

<comment><USER43> _There are a few hydrogen stations where you can fill it._

...and that's the problem. Gasoline, diesel, and electricity are all far easier to find than hydrogen.

(Electrolysis is also extremely inefficient, for those who might be wondering.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Something practical not mentioned here is that the proton exchange membrane in fuel cells generally degrade in a few years and need to be replaced. This is a major expense. Degradation is accelerated if the hydrogen (fuel) or oxygen (from environment) are not pure.

</comment><comment><USER45> I think the charts are saying roughly a litre of lithium battery has 1kwh, a litre of liquid hydrogen 3kw and a litre of petrol 10kw. By 2050 your litre of green hydrogen might cost 10 cents to make or 3c per kWh.

<comment><USER31> Electricity is approaching 1c per kWh in some recent solar plant bids. For example, there were a few bids in the middle east recently that were getting close to that. Battery cost is on track to dip below 100$ per kwh. E.g. Tesla is rumored to be at or below that already/in the near future.

By 2050, energy cost is going to be measured differently. IMHO it stops being a variable cost once it dips substantially below 1c per kwh. Your basically spending more on coffee to keep yourself going on an average journey, Arguably, if you have access to square meters, it's a cost that is amortized over the one time cost of installing wind turbines, solar panels, batteries and other infrastructure. Kind of expensive today but doable; that will be very much different 3 decades from now.

Any business operating fleets of vehicles will want to minimize this cost. That means investing in cheap sources of energy and a mass switch to battery electric vehicles that is already kicking off right now. This takes time obviously and doesn't happen overnight. But it's also not going to take decades. It's one of those things where the payoff is non linear meaning it goes from "oh wouldn't that be nice" to "I must do this now to survive as a business" in just a few years. In other words, this will have largely been completed by 2050.

This is good news for hydrogen as well because it means that there will be plenty of excess energy from peak solar/wind that's basically there to be used. Producing hydrogen and other synthetic fuels (and water) is an obvious way to put that to use and can be used as a solution to fix e.g. shipping, heavy industrial use, and other sectors currently depending on oil or coal. That's after we've topped up our TWH of deployed grid and ev batteries of course.

And maybe we'll figure out fusion as well by that time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> So many comments saying hydrogen, like lithium, is not a power source. They are in a fusion device ;)

</comment><comment><USER29> Why would I want to drive to a fueling station when I can plug my ev in at home?

</comment><comment><USER47> The explosion limits of hydrogen are very wide. I do not want to live in a world with a widely deployed hydrogen infrastructure. Stuff is going to blow up. People are going to die. Disclaimer: chemical engineer, German University.

<comment><USER19> People said that about electricity, too. A lot of people died. Houses burned. Norms were changed regarding cabling and earthing. Hopefully, whatever we decide to adopt as a technology will come with adequate safety norms.

While only tangentially related, a lot of people think about the Hindenburg accident when talking about either hydrogen or dirigibles. But those contain less fuel than an airplane, at least in terms of energy. And 35 people died, around a third. To contrast with airliner accidents. But it sure left a mark on collective psyche. And I agree that hydrogen is incredibly volatile and explosive, which isn't a good fit for every application.

<comment><USER47> The physical threat ranges of electrocution and explosions vastly differ.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Sorry, haven't read the mountain of comments yet: will it be possible to have a hybrid car that runs on Electric, with Hydrogen fuel cells as an alternative fuel source?

</comment><comment><USER49> "might" \- so it won't, again.

</comment><comment><USER50> pedal power also propels

</comment><comment><USER51> Okay, going to chime in here because this is categorically wrong on so many fronts.

Tldr: Impossible for civilization to make an instantaneous non-gradual switch to hydrogen fuel cells.

People like Hydrogen because they're hyped about how it is:

\- Clean

\- Plentiful

\- Emission-less

Hydrogen is difficult to handle.

\- Unwieldy as a gas

\- Boils at 20 degrees F/ \- 6 degrees C / ~420 Kelvins

\- Tough to maintain at a high pressure.

To go 300+ miles or ~480km or more on hdyrogen is ugh tough.

H - 120 MJ/kg

Gasoline - 44 MJ/kg

Volume wise, ugh.

H- 8 MJ/L

Gasoline - 32 MJ/L

You need ~5-10 kilograms of H2 to deal with light duty vehicles.

Compressing the stuff is annoying.

Training and retraining all the gas station attendants to deal with cryogenic materials is no small undertaking.

There's 100K gasoline/diesel stations in the USA.

Very special handling for hydrogen.

Hydrogen penetrates metals.

Makes metals the enemy and things can wear down unexpectedly. Scary stuff. Preventative maintenance is complicated.

Gasoline has ~4x-8x the kwh per a gallon to compressed hydrogen fuel. (my calculation might be a bit off, but not that far off.)

Pumping hydrogen into a vehicle is done slowly from my recollection.

Hydrogen's explosion risk is extreme, the spark from the leak could cause it. eekkkkk.

Hydrogen's flames are invisible. It's a pale blue flame that's difficult to see during the day.

People might come back and say there's progress with magnesium adn/or carbon nanotubes or other things, but they're all meh and don't scale.

Hydrogen has a shitty power to mass ratio. It escapes independently/leaks out easily without you knowing. It's dangerously explosive!

It emits lots of CO2 to make the stuff. CH4+O2 = CO2+2H2 Makes the whole thing seem like a pointless exercise.

The efficiency of manufacturing hydrogen for fuel usage is probably like 10% to 30%. Can't imagine it being more than that.

I'm not a Chem E though.

To make a cryogenic pipeline system in the USA for H2 would cost $1T+

Every year I get asked about Hydrogen, it's all BS.

Any scientist that says it's highly viable has me wondering how much money they wasted on their degree.

<comment><USER2> Hydrogen might make some sense for long haul trucks. Then you need fewer refueling stations on only the major routes. You could also generate the hydrogen locally by using electricity.

Alternatively you could equip the trucks with batteries and connect them to the electrical grid via overhead lines similar to trains for recharging. Combined with autonomous driving those trucks could go non-stop and leave the highway with full batteries.

<comment><USER52> Do we really need to convert long distance trucks to fully electric? Why not just work on hybrid trucks to increase efficiency and allow them to operate with zero emissions while in urban areas.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> As soon as I read hydrogen stored in a tank - did anyone else think potential to explode in an accident?

<comment><USER54> Right. Based on the Hindenburg accident, we should just give up on Hydrogen.</comment></comment>


Tell HN: I made a minimalist timer. Launching today. - <AUTHOR> http://minutestocountdown.com/

<comment><USER2> I don't see why you have to do a postback to start the timer. I should be javascript only in my opinion.

<comment><USER2> Oh! I didn't see that the time was in the url so that you can launch it just by having the right url. Maybe you could try using a way that is url and javascript friendly like a hashtag?

<comment><AUTHOR> Maybe - but I find it handy to be able to use the browser's URL autocomplete to fill these in for me. That is, I type "5" and firefox pops up with 5.minutestocountdown.com and I can just hit enter to start it.

<comment><USER2> However, if you are someone who rarely uses the same timer, you would always have to type .minutestocountdown.com after your time because the browser wouldn't know the url yet. I guess it all depends on what use people will make out of it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Very similar to steep.it. I like the idea.

<comment><USER4> And <http://e.ggtimer.com/>, which powers steep.it and is less tea related.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> does the job. ui doesn't look too great though.

why so small? countdown time should take up entire screen.

<comment><AUTHOR> I thought people might want to use the site on a mobile device, so I bought a mobile theme from themeforest for $9. Turns out it isn't easy to find a minimalist site template that works well on both mobile and desktop browsers. Let me know if you know of any! I'm not a designer :-)

<comment><USER5> familiar with html and css?

you could design the page to be completely fluid and use up to 100% of the screen width.

then use the meta viewport tag and/or media queries to size the page for mobiles. [http://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2010/09/combining_me...](http://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2010/09/combining_meta.html)

used the technique here, only difference is i set max-width <http://concertsto.com></comment></comment></comment>


Node.js: Doing Rather Well, Actually - <AUTHOR> http://drdobbs.com/jvm/232600655

<comment><USER2> _Constructed using the Google Chrome V7 JavaScript engine_ ... :-)

<comment><USER3> Oh how the mighty have fallen.</comment></comment>


No more Hadoop for bioinformatics - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2013/02/genetic-data-glut/

<comment><AUTHOR> "Hadoop was built for software engineers — not geneticists. It's not the easiest thing for science researchers to wrap their heads around"

Sounds to me like

"Someone told me it's a great tool, but I downloaded it and couldn't make it work :-("</comment>


Norway's Sovereign Wealth Fund Is the Size of the Mexico's Entire Economy - <AUTHOR> http://thesoundingline.com/norways-sovereign-wealth-fund-size-entire-mexican-economy/ <comment><USER2> This is a stupid comparison. It is comparing flow vs. storage. This is comparing Joules to Watts. It isn't even wrong.

The Mexican economy generates $1 trillion of value per year.

The Norway Sovereign Wealth fund has $1 trillion in capital.

Over the past 2 years, it seems that Norway's fund generated an average return of about 10% a year.

That means Norway's fund is "equivalent" to a $100 billion GDP country, about 1/10th of Mexico.

<comment><USER3> Sadly this stock/flow confusion is rampant in economic thinking...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why do people keep comparing assets ($) to GDP ($/year)?

If you want to compare the two, 1 year isn't a reasonable term. You can convert a rate into a current asset value by multiplying by a P/E ratio, anywhere from 10 to 20 these days.

<comment><USER5> News media love to do this on a personal level too. Every month CBC runs a story about how Canadians' household debt (mostly mortgages) is 170% of their disposable income.

It isn't completely meaningless to compare these, but the units need to be right: Rather than "170%" (which scares people because it's more than 100%!) we should say that household debt is equal to 20 months of disposable income.

<comment><USER6> But that is the same thing, which isn't the case in the article.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Norway's Sovereign Wealth Fund has as much capital stock as the total flow of Mexico's Entire Economy. Obviously Mexico has a heck of a lot more capital stock which is required to create such a large economic flow.

</comment><comment><USER8> This is kind of a bad comparison to make since they're comparing the value of Norway's fund versus the output of Mexico's economy (which would be more like revenue in the context of a company/investment).

</comment><comment><USER9> These types comparisons are made all the time make no sense.

ITT Edit... lots of people complaining about the comparison (like me).

</comment><comment><USER10> And the UK spent its oil wealth on tax cuts...now the oil has gone and retired people are richer. Woop

<comment><USER3> The current Norwegian Government is doing pretty much the same...

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The capital stock of Mexico is estimated at $6.5T (2011 dollars, 2014 estimate)[1]. This is probably a better point of comparison.

[1]: [https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RKNANPMXA666NRUG](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RKNANPMXA666NRUG)

</comment><comment><USER12> This compares stocks to flows, which is incorrect and useless. Article dismissed.

</comment><comment><USER13> I find this stat far more fascinating:

> $190,000 for every one of Norway's 5.2 million citizens

<comment><USER14> yes. very interesting. it turns out that Norway is very unusual, on a per capita basis, among governments that have such funds:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_wealth_fund#Largest_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_wealth_fund#Largest_sovereign_wealth_funds)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The 4 China related/controlled funds add up to over 2 Trillion.

<comment><USER13> They've got 265x the population, though.</comment></comment>


PHP CE Conference 2019 cancelled after no female speaker found - <AUTHOR> https://2019.phpce.eu/de/ <comment><USER2> Already covered 12 hours ago at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20795709](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20795709)</comment>