News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Transcend (YC S15) Launches an Extra-Efficient LED Light ... by ars on Thursday July 09, 2015 @04:24AM (#9856736)
> With 10^7 100km trips, the LEDs win.

Hu? You are planning on shipping a single tomato 621 million miles? That's enough to ship it to Mars and then back.

Why in the world would you do that? Wouldn't it spoil?

You know you have to pay to power the LED, right? It's not just equipment cost? It takes less energy to grow a tomato in the sun, then fly it somewhere then it does it grow it indoors with artificial light.

And no, LED efficiency is not going up all that much anymore - there are physical limits to that.

Re:Transcend (YC S15) Launches an Extra-Efficient LED Light ... by fineman on Thursday July 09, 2015 @02:09PM (#9859656)
Yes, I'd still grow just one single tomato and send it on many millions of trips. I'll call it "travel-with-my-tomato.com" (Overnight charges may apply for trips to mars.) /s
Re:Transcend (YC S15) Launches an Extra-Efficient LED Light ... by ars on Thursday July 09, 2015 @06:50PM (#9861210)
So if your whole post about 10^7 100km trips was a joke, why did you post it?
Re:Transcend (YC S15) Launches an Extra-Efficient LED Light ... by fineman on Thursday July 09, 2015 @08:46PM (#9861705)
Your point was that LEDs don't break even. My point is that there's a threshold at which they would.

If you only ever grew one tomato then you probably could buy a cheap plane ticket to deliver it, for less than the lights. So you'd be right, the LEDs would use more energy (cost to make, ship, and use) vs the delivery charges for the sun-grown (free energy) tomato from farther away - even if shipped expensively.

But if you grew millions of tomatoes from the same LEDs then you'd be wrong - now buying the grow lights is much more efficient than shipping in sun-grown tomatoes from even a few kilometers away.

How many tomatoes are you going to grow?

Re:Transcend (YC S15) Launches an Extra-Efficient LED Light ... by ars on Monday July 13, 2015 @03:50AM (#9876892)
Is there some reason you keep ignoring the power it takes to run the lights? It take FAR more power for the lights than it does for the airplane.

You keep focusing on buying the lights, but I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about running the lights.