cdeonier

Here's some Makani code open-sourced by Google: https://github.com/google/makani

Here are some flight logs they released: https://console.cloud.google.com/marketplace/product/bigquer...

They also released reports that describe their findings; it's quite detailed (here's part 1 of 3): https://storage.googleapis.com/x-prod.appspot.com/files/Maka...

I don't know what standard we're holding companies to for projects they're shutting down. From my experience, projects that are closing down don't get as much support prioritization, especially when they're deemed unsuccessful.

I share your sentiment that we could get even more; it sounds like you're seeing even more interesting things the public is not. I am grateful for what they have provided so far.

When you're dealing with solar (or any renewable really), you have to think about the generation of electricity and storage of that electricity.

Solar thermal plants can be used to generate energy, but they're not great at storing it for dispatch at later times. Even the link you provided has thermal storage as a component of the system-- you need to figure out how to dispatch electricity at night.

What's proposed is a cheaper storage solution, and they state it can still provide power after 10 hours.

The comment seems to imply Gavin Newsom decided to shut the plant down-- but it's owned by a private corporation, PG&E. Did we expect Newsom to take control of the plant and keep it open? I can maybe see a case for policy change, but I don't see California being that different from other states in this regard.

While I don't like the trend of closing nuclear plants, this isn't a straightforward decision just to "keep it on", from what I understand. There were seismic concerns for the plant, which is probably a worthwhile consideration given its location in California.

Additionally, I think how the plant performed cooling (drawing from the adjacent ocean) would also negatively impact the local ocean environment, and that type of cooling process was being phased out of California more generally.

FWIW, I'm a fan of nuclear, but I think it's worth digging deeper into underlying problems so we can see what the future solution may need to overcome.

What's the reason for the emphasis on weight? From reading the technical reports (from Makani), there were larger issues with the design unrelated to the weight.

As an example, Makani's Y-bridle design to attach the tether to the kite introduce stability issues during hover, and limited their control when the kite was aloft making circles, which in turn limited their power generation.

Could I get your help understanding your statement "industrial processes/power generation needs a higher differential"? Why does geothermal need a higher differential for power generation?

Power generation is already accomplished with lower heat cycles (e.g., binary plants mentioned earlier would probably use a rankine cycle to deal with the low heat), though we'd expect those power plants to have less nameplate capacity than something like a double flash-steam plant.

I think you're correct you'd get more efficiency with higher gradients, but I don't understand what's limiting about the lower temperatures. Is it economics?

How does a deep well extract all along its length? My belief was the production well will experience a gradient (so the bottom of the well will have the temperature you need), and the temperature will drop as you get closer to the surface (which also contributes to the calcite scaling problem geothermal can experience).

Also, I think a lot of wells add concrete casing (or metal, as indicated in the article) around portions of the well, which would prevent extraction around those zones of the well.

Cheap drilling would be a large boon for geothermal, considering the cost of surveying/exploring/drilling is > 50% of the cost of the development of a geothermal site.

I don't understand the articles goal of 300C target, though. While some types of geothermal plants do require temperatures that high, binary cycle power plants can use lower temperatures (130C) [1], which seems to open up more area for geothermal development since we expect most gradients between the surface and bottom of the crust to be ~2.5-3.1C / 100M. A lower temperature requirement would in turn allow you to drill less deep, which could consequently also decrease drilling costs.

Another thing the article doesn't mention: another interesting approach (aside from improving the technology, like drill bits) is with financing innovation. There have been / are government programs to de-risk the exploration/drilling cost by reimbursing the costs of drilling (80% for failed wells, for example) which also likely adds well data that could better characterize the underlying geothermal resources in regions (which would allow more accurate future development).

Really glad to see a deeper dive on geothermal though; its non-intermittency is a valuable characteristic separating it from other renewables that we're currently favoring (solar/wind). Because we generally break down energy generation to LCOE, it omits advantages like uptime of the renewable resource.

[1] https://www.energy.gov/eere/geothermal/electricity-generatio...

> At first, when you start working at a rapidly growing company, what you see is smart, idealistic, driven people working together to accomplish a goal greater than themselves. When you leave, unless you are willfully blind or exceptionally naive, what you see is a ruthless political arena— a modern day Game of Thrones, where machinations take place over email, and battles are won and lost over cups of light roast coffee.

I grew with a rapidly growing company. While I don’t disagree with the author that these sorts of environments exist in our industry (or most industries), or even pockets inside of a company, I don’t think this experience describes mine. Maybe I’m willfully blind or naive (or maybe I was too low level to experience this), but I’d caution someone of taking this strategy wholesale and start assassinating the careers of your colleagues.

Keep in mind, a major goal of a company is to make money. The leader of the company is generally aligned with that goal. Those are their incentives. They hire people to make them more money. If you play a different game according to this quotation:

> So your job isn't to make good decisions to improve company metrics.

Then, if the leader is competent and they determine you’re doing this, you’re probably going to get fired. They might also be bad, and you might get promoted if you fool them. But you’re also probably fooling yourself if you also have the goal to grow your own skills.

Instead, I’d suggest this mindset: When you’re joining a company, you’re joining a group of humans who created a system to help them to work together. Each system is a bit different, tailored to the company and the people who compose them. Some are passable. Some are terrible. But there is variance, and you should probably think about the strategy you employ when you join a new company (or re-evaluate how you operate in your current one).

You don’t need to trust the system, but you do need to learn to see and work the system. I guess if the environment is truly toxic and your only goal is to get promoted, exploiting as the author suggests might be working the system. However, there are systems you can work in a more productive way that might end up making you feel more fulfilled.

I'm not a fan of open office spaces, but I don't think the article fully captures the problem that the open office space is addressing. Our company has a team dedicated to the design of our office space, and they're trying to balance against multiple stakeholders' needs, from different functions (engineering vs legal), to work environment needs (1:1 vs meeting room vs quiet place), all shoved into a fixed and (relatively) small space. The result is you have to do trade-offs, just like normal engineering problems.

From my understanding, it's easier to scale environments that are open-office. For a startup that's always have to contend with finding space for their ever-growing teams, I can see why executives may reach for an understood solution to that problem, even knowing the downsides.

My guess is there's a necessary iteration to work environments in the future, since I don't think open offices truly optimize for knowledge workers. Presumably knowledge-based companies (e.g., tech) will eventually start thinking about how to optimize their internal efficiency as a lever to growth in addition to their product development.

I work at at company that does OKRs as well. I think I've viewed both the symptoms you described and the common pattern described in the article of fitting an existing backlog to OKRs.

I think one observation that I have is that OKRs are really a framework to help teams understand what direction/goal to head to and understand progress toward that goal. And really, this mindset needs to be adopted not just by the development teams-- it needs rigor and consistency from leadership as well.

For example, the leaders are accountable for setting direction and describing what they think is important. If they then start asking you for things that aren't tied with an OKR, it's a perfectly fair question to ask leadership "Why are you asking me to work on this when you indicated it's not important to our company strategy?" If the team feels like they're going to be working on something unrelated to their OKRs, that's symptomatic of leadership not sending a consistent message on strategy or prioritization.

I've also seen it from the other side as described in the article. I've seen development teams really struggle to initially understand OKRs and the value. As mentioned earlier, it's really designed to help clarify direction and progress-- if a team is ignoring the OKR and fitting their backlog, that's symptomatic that they're really not trying to understand the direction leadership wants to head.

What I like about the author's suggestion is that it really forces the team to understand the problem the organization is trying to solve and think up solutions how to achieve it. Backlog bankruptcy is one way to do it, though there are likely some items that can still solve the problems outlined in the OKR. Those items just shouldn't automatically be transferred over without verifying they solve a problem that needs to be solved.

Teams shouldn't be fitting problems to work-- teams should be fitting work to problems.

That's pretty pessimistic. Sometimes there actually are interesting problems at those companies. Larger companies can also offer benefits that aren't available at some other companies-- sometimes security, sometimes work-life balance, greater access to resources or talented people. Not everyone's tradeoffs will be the same when evaluating where to work or what to do.

And in the end, pretty much everyone is working for someone to "make a few guys rich". Unless you're a completely self-funded founder or investor.

I remember seeing a show remarking on similar sensitivity being observed in foxes when hunting mice in the snow. Apparently, the fox is much more accurate when diving when facing north.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2SoGHFM18I&feature=youtu.be&...

One way it separates itself from radio is that radio is pretty much a one-way street; you don't really choose what you listen to unless you change the station. What's nice about the app is that it is almost a cross of a high-brow Reddit with radio. You can select which stories you want read aloud after reading brief, one sentence summaries. It ends up sounding like a customized BBC news program tailored to user, though with American accents.

I think one of their main objectives is providing speed to ordering. Instead of providing a full menu experience, they would provide something like six items without customization.

I think the judges probably voted by looking at actual pictures, where most male selection probably happens at the thumbnail level. I'd argue the second best has a thumbnail that would garner more attention, from color if nothing else.

One of the takeaways of the article is that the app icon is a form of a sales pitch to a potential user. You can have a great product, but a poor icon will hinder the visibility of said product. That being said, if I had to choose between a great app icon or a great product, I'd choose the latter. But I'm not convinced you are forced to choose only one.

I can't help but feel there's a better way to "make the Internet a better place". While it's not ideal customers are using IE7, belittling them and taxing because they might not know better seems a little extreme. The message reads more like developers venting their frustration supporting IE7 rather than trying to make things better.

This was probably exacerbated by Neil and Vivek working on it full-time, while the other founders were not. One can feel a little weird if one is going full-time and one's partner is going part-time, and there's an equal division of equity, even assuming everyone does the same amount of work.

The article states: "I think the problem is rooted in the business model that seems to be preached by Y Combinator: build a great product, choose investment over income, and exit as quickly as possible."

I'm pretty sure I've heard the first point mentioned before by the partners of YC, but I'm not sure I've seen evidence of the others. Is there actually evidence of YC telling its classes to exit as quickly as possible? My guess is any quick exits are more likely as a result of founders being offered a chance at a payout rather than YC pushing them to exit.

People are copyrighting the composition of the photograph, not necessarily the subject of it.

Probably helpful to realize that the lifespan is determined more than just one metric, such as healthcare. Cultural differences between different regions likely plays a significant effect. For instance, my guess is diet leading to obesity helps to drag down life expectancy in the regions where the life expectancy is lower:

http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/animated_map_slides/map26.jp...

Why would people use this app over Facebook or Twitter? Is it just because of the "I'm Down" button?

When I heard the problem, it helped me to think of it in terms of extremes. Instead of three cups, imagine a million cups, and you choose one. The person now removes 999,998 empty cups, leaving yours and one other. It's pretty unlikely that you happened to somehow guess your cup correctly (one in a million chance). Instinct should probably now tell you the other cup is much more likely, and not a straight 50/50 chance.

Agreed, no doubt it takes time to set up a phone to read QR codes. I was more interested to see whether there was some link/study which compared the actually processes of typing vs. scanning, which I thought was the intent of his fifth point.

I agree with your first four points, but how did you arrive at your fifth point? QR Code applications I've used scan in about 1-2 seconds (the time it takes to auto-focus), which I think is probably faster than typing a URL.

I think the degrees have an impact at large companies-- at the large company I worked at, developers with bachelors started at 10k less than developers with masters.

During a previous Q&A session the day before Startup School '11, I believe pg mentioned they interviewed ~170 groups the last batch.