lpaone

I am very interested in new energy solutions as a way to de-carbonize and provide consistent supply of low cost energy.

1. Green hydrogen production and fuel cells. We are just scratching the surface of green hydrogen production. Hydrogen can be the energy carrier we need in the various use cases where batteries are not viable.

2. Nuclear SMRs. Definitely something that is more of a "something to watch".

3. Pumped hydro. The longest lasting, highest capacity, lowest cost, 0 carbon, grid-scale energy storage solution. I have been closely follow a company I found on HN call Terrament. https://www.terramenthq.com

Researching and learning more about fuel cells, hydrogen, and the "hydrogen economy". Planning to start a company in this industry sometime in the next few years. I am trying to gain a better understanding of the market and current technology + limitations so that I can start working on solving the fundamental barriers to bringing my ideas to market.

Coming from a software background it is really fun to learn about something completely different and new!

I have this exact same question. The battery cost is significantly lower than anything else I have seen, by a large amount.

I did some further digging on the project and was unable to find anything about how the battery cost is so low.

Bosh grabbed the rebound because of arguably one of the worst coaching decisions in NBA history; that being to sit one of the greatest defenders ever (Duncan) on the bench for the most important defensive possession of the season.

Bosh would not have been able to reach over Duncan to get the rebound and it would have been over. To this day, I still cannot comprehend what Popovich was thinking.

That being said, Bosh definitely deserves a spot in the HoF. He was a MVP candidate his final year before leaving for Miami. A lot of people totally forget this.

I have a friend studying radiology with the hopes of working in the space industry. From what he tells me, I believe this would work.

My first startup attempt was a indie game right out of university. In hindsight, I was too inexperienced, and as the only programmer on the game; it failed.

I got a job and worked there for ~3 years to gain experience, learn, and make some money. About 2 years into that, I started working on a side project with my lead and we left about a year later to work on it full time.

https://www.stroom.live started out as a live streaming video "social network for local happenings". Shortly before we launched, Facebook Live/Meerkat/Periscope were launched, and we could not gather any traction. We took our base tech and pivoted, turning it into a low cost, high quality (allowing the user to plug their professional camera into a cell phone) professional live streaming platform for video and broadcast professionals. After 2 years, we are finally starting to gain traction and customers.

My founder and I were able to pay for it through savings, me sucking it up and living at home, side contracts, and a Canadian government research program IRAP.

The BC Liquor stores are not well run. In my experience, the service is slow, the people are not knowledgeable, and you will often have a huge lineup of people waiting at the only cashier that is open. The employees have 0 incentive to change this because they are protected by a powerful union.

On top of this, as mentioned in other posts, we have some of the most expensive alcohol in the world. I have travelled to several countries and have yet to find a place that has more expensive alcohol than BC.

I used to work beside a major liquor importer and after speaking with some of their employees, the general consensus in the industry is that the only people that benefit from this are the union employees that work at the government liquor stores and distribution centres. For everyone else: restaurants, consumers, independent store owners, etc. it is a negative.

edit: grammar

I think the biggest problem, as stated in the article, which I think is being missed by many commenters, is the cost. According to the article, the batteries alone (not including the chassis) cost almost as much as a current diesel truck.

Another huge issue is weight. Batteries are extremely heavy and a truck loaded with the batteries needed to have this range would seriously cut into the delivery capacity.

A better 0 emission alternative that is already being tested in real world applications [1] is battery power with a fuel cell range extender. Loop Energy has a fuel cell that is cheaper than diesel per mile with comparable range for the drayage, bus, and port/distribution markets.

Despite Musk's disparaging remarks about fuel-cell tech, until a major breakthrough happens in batteries, fuel cells are the best way to make battery powered heavy-duty trucks a reality from both a cost and practicality stand-point.

[1] - http://www.marketwired.com/press-release/loop-energy-fuel-ce...

Great questions. Thanks. Looking at their economy as it is, they are borrowing massively with essentially 0 growth. The government is doing this in an effort to prop up the economy and spur growth.

If they were to stop borrowing money without a substantial leap in technological progress, would the economy go into a deep recession? I do not know enough about economics to say, but I am basing my assumptions around this reasoning. Am I missing something?

I'm then assuming that if the country went into a deep recession, that quality of life for the average person would decrease.

"...are their citizens enjoying a relatively high quality of life?' I would say yes.

To me, the question is: can their high quality of life be maintained if there is no economic growth? Is it possible to print money/borrow indefinitely to support this quality of life?

Especially with regards to the article, I think these are valid questions.

How do you reconcile this with what is happening in Japan? Do you think huge amounts of automation would fix their problems? Isn't much of their manufacturing already automated?

I have a theory that may not be popular around here. I also probably have not thought this through and researched it enough, but I will throw it out there anyway. I would love to have it torn to shreds by someone who has studied economics or more likely this is something that has already been extensively researched.

It seems to me that real sustained economic growth cannot happen without population growth, at least the way things work right now. Efficiencies gained through technological innovation and financial manipulation cannot sustain growth indefinitely, they just smooth out the bumps and with population growth help increase the rate of economic growth. And without economic growth, we are going to keep running into these issues and others brought up in the article.

Look at Japan, no amount of economic/financial manipulation has really helped them. Their main economic issues stem from the fact that there are not enough young people.

Aside from epidemics/catastrophes, there has almost always been sustained population growth through human history. It is in our nature to multiply and expand. I feel this is why so many people are fascinated with space and space colonization.

The current demographic trends in western society is unprecedented and in my estimation, I do not think it will end well unless someone finds another solution, or these demographic trends are reversed.

Feel free to rip apart my theory. I would love to hear what someone with a better understanding of this area has to say.

I think you are talking about Ferrari, and they do that with all of their "signature" cars.

Despite what Elon Musk says, fuel cells aren't dead in the slightest. Yes there has been some stagnation in innovation from the major players, buy there has also been some significant and ground breaking improvements in fuel cell efficiency in the past few years.

At least one company that I know of, Loop Energy, has proven (independently verified) fuel cell tech that will soon make cargo trucks 0-emissions. (Note: My brother was the lead engineer and basically developed this)

https://loopenergy.com/

Sure it has taken a while, but things like this would not have been possible without that initial investment in fuel cells.

This is pretty spectacular. Do you know of any other interactive hi-res paintings like this?

As a lover of art and someone interested in education, this would be a great way of educating people about art.

I think you are naïve if you believe that a government wouldn't fudge a study to support their best interests (best interests in this case being that most of their top campaign contributors are in the real estate business (1)). Let me give you an example of this happening recently in regards to the Vancouver real estate market.

The provincial government released a study on July 7th, stating that only 3% of real estate transactions across BC were from foreign buyers (2). Nobody believed this number, and plenty of people called foul (3). Every single person I talked to involved in the market laughed at those numbers (it is hard not to know someone involved in the market here). The government used these numbers as proof that foreign buyers were not an issue in BC.

Only 3 weeks later on July 26th, the exact same ministry in the government released new data that said that foreign buyers accounted for more than 10% of the value of real estate transactions in Metro Vancouver, which is by far the largest real estate market in BC (4). They used this as proof that foreign buyers were indeed a problem.

This is a prime example of the ridiculous politics that are at play here.

Also of note, if you look at (4), you will see that foreign buyers aren't just buying houses in the exclusive and expensive West Side Vancouver neighbourhoods. According to the data, Burnaby and Richmond, both had 18% foreign buyers.

(1) - http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/campaign-dono...

(2) - http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/bc-government-releases-p...

(3) - https://www.biv.com/article/2016/7/asian-real-estate-confere...

(4) - http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/vancouver-rea...

*Edit - formatting

Some great points here for sure.

I forgot to mention in my post that not only is the government in bed with the real estate industry (new rumors that the biggest real estate marketer in the city was notified weeks in advance about the new foreign buyer tax), but that they also "unexpectedly" took in 50% more than forecast, to the toon of $500+ million, in extra property transfer tax last year. Good luck getting them to slow down that gravy train.

What isn't talked about in this article is the effect this is having on the other industries in the city aside from real estate.

I believe that Vancouver has potential to be THE tech hub in Canada. Unfortunately, wages are very low compared to the cost of housing, and so the cost of living is super high. Combine that with extremely low vacancy rates, and it is very hard to attract talent from out of town. In fact, many young, smart and talented people just head south to Seattle or the valley because the wages are so much higher, and the economics of staying in Vancouver just don't make sense.

The other industries that could be thriving and building up a real economy in city are some of the biggest casualties in this whole mess. Unfortunately, all of the politicians from municipal to provincial are in bed with the real estate industry, so nothing truly effective and meaningful will be done.

The difference is that the first wave of foreign money that came into the city was from Hong Kong. Generally a lot of these immigrants started businesses in the city and contributed to the economy. This is not the case with the current influx of cash. Houses are sitting empty and there is evidence that it is really hurting the economy.

Thanks for the link. Very interesting.

I agree with you about PSNR and SSIM. There are plenty of times where they do a less than stellar job and a quick eye test makes it obvious. Unfortunately the VPxs and h.26xs of the world tune their internal comparison metrics for these to make their codecs score better on comparison tests. Consequently, this can sometimes lead to less than optimal video quality.

If this can be applied generally, work better than PSNR/SSIM and be made to run fast enough, it would be interesting to see if this could be used to improve block matching in video codecs.

*Edit grammar.

Thanks for the ideas and taking the time to give advice. It has sparked some ideas for getting in contact with more potential customers and getting more feedback on the product.

Thanks for the advice.

The enterprise product provides a dashboard that allows a news room to manage past and present media content created through our platform. It allows live modification of stream quality (full bit stream quality control) and description, remote control of the camera, live communication with the reporter/camera person, and some other features we are working on that bring us closer to parity and beyond with other companies in this field. A huge benefit over our competitors is our significantly lower cost and no need to carry around expensive specialized hardware, as we do not require it.

We are probably 2-3 months away from having a revenue generating product. Although we are in conversations with one major news organization, we have found it very difficult getting in the door with other companies.

As for the compression tech, it provides an opportunity to delivery adaptive bit rate video in a single stream. It would significantly decrease bandwidth, storage and compression costs. Anyone who has large libraries of variable bitrate video and is streaming it (YouTube, Netflix, etc.) would be very interested in this.