While I agree that these theory based papers are useful, and are often the precursor to experiments, I believe the general understanding of "study has found X" in pop culture is that there is "hard evidence" of the finding being tauted. Theories are risky to place too much credence in without being steeped in the field yourself (is this a theory that most people in the field agree with, or is the one suggesting it an outlier?).
As usual science communication is never done as well as we could all hope, but I personally like this "hierarchy of evidence" approach in understanding if something is ready to be consumed by the general public, rather than requiring further discussion with the scientific community.
Agreed. At this point I am also not willing to just let science off the hook and blame it all on the press: If our smartest people can not find ways to differentiate between ideating and good results in a way that a sensationalist press can't simply ignore, then just maybe they are not trying all that hard.
I wish sci comms practice would have a standard set of terms for stages of development/belief. Here the headline should be something like “theory proposed that …”
Heliolytics is the leading provider in Aerial Inspection service for Solar Power Plants. Over the last two years, we’ve seen a massive increase in global demand for our services. As a team, we are working to set new standards on how to build and run solar energy sites at peak efficiency. To help scale our team effectively and achieve our goals in 2023, we’re looking for a Backend Developer to join our remote-first team.
We recently launched a new version of our inspection platform and are actively adding new capabilities to help our clients (typically solar power plant operators) better run their systems. We work with large amounts of geospatial and imaging data, dealing with challenges around remote data transfer, geospatial data manipulation, automated image analysis and much more.
We are hiring for a variety of experience levels, however on the backend we are looking for someone with prior experience in Python.
Our backend tech stack is:
- FastAPI (Python)
- Kafka
- PostgreSQL (+ PostGIS for geospatial problems)
- GraphQL
On our frontend we use:
- Typescript
- React
- Deck.GL
- GraphQL
I am one of the techinical leads on R&D team and would be happy to answer any questions in the thread.
Things that look "good" aren't necessarily ideal for coding. My favorite "bad looking" but very functional theme is the IntelliJ IDEA high contrast theme [0]. Everyone who looks at my screen says it's ugly, but I've yet to find one that is as good for improving readability/
I love the idea, and would consider paying for this after a nice trial period. I love my kindle and it has radically changed how much I read, I used to read maybe 2-3 books a year, now it's more like 2-3 books a month. I find the E-ink screen and "low techness" of it the most appealing. I'm really looking forward to using this for things other than books.
I was skeptical of screen readers until the Kindle e-ink. Have some OLED or LCD screen that you find on the standard tablets like some of the original Barnes and Nobles Nooks was just not appealing or comfortable. e-ink screens have definitely been a value on on my personal appeal on them, especially the Kindle's backlit ones.
Less doing well because of the downturn, more doing well despite of it, but many players in climate tech are doing really really well lately (for example [1]). Longer term, with IRA [2] now law, the industry is poised to continue to grow faster and faster.
This bill has a ton of what looks like awesome elements inside it, I encourage folks to peruse the summary to explore a little bit. One part that people here may find exciting is the fusion research funding:
> Sec. 10105. Fusion Energy Research.
Subsection (a) amends section 307 of the Department of Energy Research and Innovation Act (42 U.S.C.
18645) by authorizing $50,000,000 per year for FY 2023 through FY 2027 for research and development
of fusion materials. It extends the authorization for inertial fusion research and development, alternative
and enabling concepts, and the milestone-based development program through FY 2027. It authorizes the
establishment of at least two national teams to develop conceptual designs and technology roadmaps for a
pilot fusion plant, and authorizes $35,000,000 for FY 2023; $50,000,000 for FY 2024; $65,000,000 for
FY 2025; $80,000,000 for FY 2026; and $80,000,000 for FY 2027 for these activities. It directs the
Secretary to establish a high-performance computation collaborative research program and an associated
innovation center in high-performance computing for fusion. It directs the construction of the Material
Plasma Exposure Experiment including $21,895,000 for FY 2023 and $3,800,000 for FY 2024 to carry
out the project. The subsection also authorizes an upgrade to the Matter in Extreme Conditions endstation
at the Linac Coherent Light Source.
What I’d like is that the teams be rewarded with significant monetary renumeration if they achieve a milestone and curtail the subcontracting disease that permeates government purchasing.
> teams be rewarded with significant monetary renumeration if they achieve a milestone and curtail the subcontracting disease that permeates government purchasing
This has a poor track record for basic research and complex technologies. The Ansari XPRIZE recipient’s SpaceShipOne is a prime example.
These sorts of challenges work great for engineering problems where a little bit of money and a lot of sweat is all that is required to figure something out.
Fusion research is not that- it needs very large equipment investments for decades for even the most trivial experiments.
If we had tried to get to the moon with the same model we'd still be waiting!
This is what is holding fusion from commercial viability.
Give me a modern tokamak with 75 years of known dynamics, increase the size and magnetic field (i.e. bring high temp superconducting wires to market).
At the very least you get something as a consolation prize that has real uses vs. decades of wacky research ideas that more than likely will go nowhere.
IMO thinking of fusion as needing a "silver bullet" to viability is one of the major issues. Everyone wants the sexy new reactor concept, but nobody wants to be improving the boring donut design that's on the edge of practicality.
$80 Billion was spent between 2014 and 2017 on R&D of autonomous vehicles [1]. That's 12 Billion / year (& numbers from a while back - I'm sure investment has kept going). The US government spends ~18 Billion on the entire DOE, the majority of which appears to be keeping facilities running / maintenance (even though it classifies all of that as R&D) [2]. Fusion saw about ~4.7 Billion in funding in 2022 [3].
Orders of magnitude matter and fission / fusion R&D has been criminally underfunded for decades.
Self driving is a little bit of money and a lot of sweat? Umm... I don't think I've ever seen such a major understatement.
The DARPA challenge kicked off a many many billions of dollars arms race of private capital and we're only just starting to see a trickle of self driving cars on the road some 18 years later. Not to mention meaningful R&D advancements in AI, sensing software algorithms, HW sensing capabilities, etc that have seen applications outside of self driving.
To be fair, a decent part of the current model for getting to the Moon does involve milestone based payments, with the general idea being that it's cheaper, more efficient and has fewer bad incentives than just endlessly funding until the desired outcome is achieved. IIRC pretty much everything in Artemis besides SLS+Orion is using a milestone based funding model (the lander, the space station, the various research orbiters and landers that started launching this year).
I think NASA's commercial cargo and crew programs were another good example, leading to the SpaceX Dragon and Orbital Cygnus. Of course, the Boeing Starliner's been having issues, but that's why competition is important.
I’m super happy to see these things, and some money is better than no money, but judging by how much my lab spends per year, $50M/yr isn’t going to get them very far. And we do consumer electronics.
This is too broad of a reading. Unfortunately despite the mission statement of organizations they are limited by their own laws and rules. In this case this is a narrowing of a particular reading of a paritcular rule that was used to limit greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. See https://reason.com/volokh/2022/06/30/supreme-court-rejects-b... for more details
For those looking to get an objective understanding of this decision I found this article useful[0]. The gist of it is that this is more about preventing future rules to be put in place rather than changing anything that the EPA is actively enforcing. Essentially the EPA cannot force the shut-down of coal fired power plants (or other high emission energy sources) using the Clean Air Act.
As someone very pro renewable energy obviously I would prefer a different outcome, but the good news is that these types of power sources are just plain uneconomical these days, so their shutdown is going to happen anyways. Perhaps renewables won't have as many regulatory assists as we hoped, but the good news is that they can stand on their own, and the clean power industry keeps building better systems then capitalism will take care of the transition for us.
Unless you are being extremelly pedantic than I would agree with the parent. The thesis of the article is essentially "Solar and Wind aren't the way forward, Nuclear is the way". While it is reasonable to acknowledge the solar and wind still face many challenges, the parent is pointing out that they are already doing a good job in accelerating decarbonization and Nuclear, while appealing, isn't the clear cut winner the article is saying it is.
I agree with your criticisms and support of the parent, but the thesis also included a chunk of "here is why I switched from a purely clean energy perspective to one that tolerates a bunch more nuclear."
I have in the past year undergone a similar shift, so perhaps I felt more tolerant of some of the article's slickness. A few centuries of "financially expensive" nuclear energy feels like it could provide a longer runway for science to figure out some alternatives.
It's really strange for me to hear people saying that. I was pro-nuclear a decade ago and thought solar/wind were pipe dreams. The cost situation is now so much in favor of solar/wind now that I no longer really see the point in nuclear. We should be subsidizing scaling up of storage technologies, not nuclear plants.
If the cost of storage gets cut in half in the next 10 years, we won't need subsidies, nuclear plants will simply be boondoggles. I really don't think we should invest in nuclear until we're sure the cleaner alternatives can't scale.
Here's a question for the group:
Regardless of whether you advocate for green energy or not, do you think that it's a wise strategy to create an artificial scarcity of fossil fuels to force a transition to green energy? After decades of green energy adoption, the world is still (conservatively) 84% reliant on fossil fuels. Without them, many people would freeze and/or starve, and whole economies would collapse.
I think we should be focusing on creating abundance of clean fuels. I do think it's worthwhile to tax fossil fuels to make people less likely to use them. Probably with dramatic taxes. But really there's no such thing as "natural scarcity" or "natural abundance" these things are all based on our choices. 30 years ago we could have created an abundance of nuclear power and we would be better off. Today it seems like creating abundance of other things is a superior option. We knew that persisting in leaving fossil fuels as the abundant option was a mistake but we did it anyway and continue to do it.
Focusing on clean fuels is just fine. My question had to do with a highly destructive national policy that is doing tremendous damage to the US/world economies (except for Russia and China).
Interesting product, I'm curious how the ongoing fees (operations and maintenace, etc.) are managed. Does the provider of the installation take a cut? Does Legends do the O&M?
We are still structuring our first retail investment (though we've done a few with accredited investors). We pledge to be upfront about our fee/cost structure which is likely to be an upfront financing fee and a portion of payments.
As usual science communication is never done as well as we could all hope, but I personally like this "hierarchy of evidence" approach in understanding if something is ready to be consumed by the general public, rather than requiring further discussion with the scientific community.