News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on The death of corporate research labs. Parent comment

Re:The death of corporate research labs by AmericanChopper on Thursday May 21, 2020 @06:41AM (#23256842)
> We’re objectively spending more to get those than we used to need to. And that’s WITH google and scihub! Something is rotten.

What’s rotten exactly? Take a look at this lovely graph [0] showing the cost of solar cells going from $76.67/watt in 1977, to $0.74/watt in 2013 (the price of installation is obviously more than the cell production costs, at about $2.5-$3.5/watt today).

[0]: https://cleantechnica.com/2014/09/04/solar-panel-cost-trends...

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The death of corporate research labs by legolas2412 on Thursday May 21, 2020 @09:10AM (#23257890)
Surely you see the difference between explaining what dark matter is, and making solar cells cheaper.

Which one fits your definition of important scientific question that we should answer?

[ Parent | on HN ]