> This topic seems to be broadly misunderstood. It is 100% verified fact by both myself and others (including university researchers) that diode strings can produce more heat (or watt-hours, BTU) from a given solar panel than a bare resistance element.
> It is 100% verified fact by both myself and others (including university researchers) that diode strings can produce more heat (or watt-hours, BTU) from a given solar panel than a bare resistance element.
In some of my early experiments with little radio transmitters some 30-odd years ago I managed to burn my fingers to an astonishing degree with little plastic transistors like ZTX300s and BC548s.
I remember my late father also commenting around that time "How come a 2N3866 which is rated for a couple of watts can get so hot it melts all its legs off when it's running off a half-flat PP3 battery?", astonished as yet another 2N3866-based amp got a bit lively and melted its legs off despite only running off a half-flat PP3 battery.
So yes I can believe a string of diodes would be a more effective heater than a resistor.
At the cost of very efficiently radiating that heat back out into space at night.
Making electricity and then using that electricity to heat something elsewhere lets you insulate, effectively allowing you to create a box that heat energy can only pass one way.
We have a one-way diode technology for heat, it's called "glass", and it'll bump your efficiency by about 25% versus uncovered flat plates on a still day. More in windy conditions etc, lots of hand waving assumptions about spherical cows in a vacuum etc.
You'd need some kind of storage for the heat, something with a large thermal mass that doesn't readily give up it's heat to the surroundings. Sand or water or even big rocks or a thick slab of concrete.
I suspect (didn't watch) it's just that a diode makes a crude MPPT tracker (since a PV array is just a bunch diodes arranged to collect photons at the P-N junctions). The benchmark is probably "non-variable resistor".
For people who don't know much about solar panels mystified about this:
Solar panels are not ideal voltage sources, their internal impendance varies depending on temperature and the amount of light falling on the panels. Because the point of maximum power in the circuit is achieved when the internal and external impendances are matched, a simple resistive circuit is inefficient and results in the panel converting less light into electricity. If you had a variable resistor, you could adjust it over the day to match the panel, but it is of course easier to use a semiconductor device that does this for you. Any halfway decent battery charger setup or PV inverter has one, but if you are building your own heating system, just stringing together a bunch of diodes might sound stupid, but totally works.
my thought was that a diode removes all the current from its voltage drop (aka: why your LED will burn out if it gets uncontrolled current). A resistor will never remove all the current going through it.
Maybe we're saying the same thing in different ways.
That is me right here... Plus I have some younger kids who have had fun playing with old Nintendo DSes for now. But their friends often have the Switch and I want the updated graphics plus group play (Mario Kart) so we'll buy at least one of these when it comes out. I've been holding off because the original hardware just seemed a bit wimpy when reading the experiences of people playing Breath of the Wild on it. I'm hoping the new model will have enough power to do full justice to BotW.
If you deposit checks, make sure SVB doesn't make it too much of a hassle. I don't know why but a prior employer banks at SVB and they have a real hard time getting my COBRA checks deposited. Sometimes, I'll have 4-5 months of COBRA checks deposited at once. I have a business account with plain old Chase and as long as the funds are in USD, I can deposit via a mobile app. Nobody really wants to deal with checks of course but if you do have to...
If my 61 year old dad asked me how to get into programming, I'd recommend they go to a company that was involved in the Software Craftsmanship model that had a long apprenticeship period. I'd recommend this because I've had prior experience working in such a company (8th Light -- Chicago office) and I think that such an environment would set them up for success because while the learning is very self-directed, there is a lot of oversight and involvement in a constructive way by other developers who want to see the apprentice succeed. That isn't to say you couldn't find the same thing at another company but the Software Craftsmanship approach, if done well, would not be as random as the ad hoc experience you might get on the job at another company. A further benefit of working at a consulting company like 8th Light as, if you progress past the apprenticeship, you would be working on a variety of projects in an environment that is focused on doing the job well so the exposure would be a to a wider breadth of the industry (more languages/stacks/team dynamics/etc).
I think Ubuntu server is a fine choice for your needs. I tend to use it on small VPSes as it's easy to setup and get running, relatively up to date and in wide usage.
But how do you translate that into (short term) OKRs and work that engineers can build a career upon as an achievement (for promotion)? I think there is a cultural mismatch between how engineers grow and what they work on at Google versus the quality of the search results. There seems to be very limit upside and huge potential downside to working on this at Google.
That said, I don't work for Google and my conjecture is based on the hand wavy details (from engineers that do/have) posted online.
So here is how it works: The program runs on each computer. You plug your USB devices (presumably, a keyboard and a mouse) into a USB switch and then plug that into each computer. Then you plug each computer into each monitor (so you're limited by the minimum total number of inputs on the monitor(s) for how many computers you can switch).
When you press the button on the USB switch to go to another PC, the software detects this and sends data commands over the monitor connection (using DDC standard) to trigger the monitors to switch inputs. You can use this same data communications standard to do things like adjust the brightness of your display. For example, I have these setup on my Mac to adjust the brightness of my two attached displays (complexity increased with multiple displays and desire for each to change at same time, simpler commands with a single display):
alias day="seq 3 | xargs -n 1 -P 3 sh -c 'ddcctl -d \$1 -b 80' sh"
alias evening="seq 3 | xargs -n 1 -P 3 sh -c 'ddcctl -d \$1 -b 32' sh"
alias night="seq 3 | xargs -n 1 -P 3 sh -c 'ddcctl -d \$1 -b 10' sh"
Does that make sense? As mentioned earlier, you're limited by the minimum number of inputs on the monitor(s) and/or the minimum number of computers the USB switch can be connected to. The simplicity of this system is that the display connections do not go through any switching layer and are instead directly connected to the computers (which avoids a number of compatibility issues).
I should be clear that I haven't used this yet but I'm going to try it. The Acer monitors I'm using have two HDMI ports and 1 DisplayPort so I can in practice attach 3 computers assuming I buy a USB switch which can connect to 3 or more computers.
I experienced dilution as a former employee of a startup. Teespring did a 13:1 down round a year or so after I left (2015?). If you weren't an accredited investor that could afford to invest in the round, you had 1/13 of your original shares after the round finished. I experienced both being pushed into AMT when exercising the options (they didn't offer early exercise) along with having 1/13 of my shares later on. No idea if I'll ever see any money out of the deal so I've chalked it up being a lesson learned -- many say to value stock options as $0 but they can have negative value.
well to be fair, you should never exercise if it isn't early exercise. the odds are very much against you. I mean, by the odds you shouldn't early exercise either but at least you don't get hit by the AMT bullet.
That's certainly not true. You should evaluate the investment just like any other investment and decide if you can afford to lose the money and stomach the risk.
Part of your evaluation should be consulting a tax professional to determine if there are any immediate, negative tax consequences. You're not guaranteed to get hit by AMT just because you exercise some stock options.
There are very few times where the finances work out for options. Most employees lack access to the necessary company financials to make an informed financial decision, there is a 100% downside risk and barring early stage founder equity stakes - it's unlikely that the equity will do better than getting lucky on a top stock pick.
I have yet to hear a single case of an employee purchasing their options when they left and thinking it was the right decision later on.
that's the problem with anecdotal evidence - you can't really tell for sure a company is going to become a massive unicorn often until very close to the point it does. I've worked at companies that raised many millions of $s and seemed very promising and a few years later went out of business. Who becomes a winner is also not always completely "fair" (as in it depends somewhat on circumstances/fortunate happenstance).
I think it's the other way around - we comparatively hear a lot more about the successes than the failures. For every unicorn that made 400 people millionaires there are probably >1000 startups that either went out of business, never had a liquidation event, or never at the scale that rank and file employers got anything significant.
Obviously not literally "nobody", someone at some point joins google/microsoft/facebook/amazon/etc at an early stage and exists a millionaire many times over. Just like every week somebody wins the lottery. It's just not as likely to happen to you personally as the people selling you on joining their early startup would like you to believe.
aye - latecomers to a company may have massive financial/product impact but have less equity when the IPO happens vs. those who were there initially and left after 12 months. On the other side the board and others can dilute early equity holders at their leisure.
At the end of the day you're really throwing money into a black box which may turn out to contain a trash can. There is more financial transparency in penny stocks.
I've personally had great success with RSUs, but those are ultimately part of your comp even if you discount them to zero - there is no requirement to put in additional money.
I won't claim that it's the expected outcome for most, but I've exercised options well into AMT territory on multiple occasions, and it seems to have worked out favorably to the point that I could probably skip the ping pong and shrimping boat phases and jump straight to mowing lawns for fun like Forrest Gump.
Also, I have heard stories of former employees that didn't exercise their options or cashed out early, and I wouldn't say regretted it, but reflected on the fact that the stock did a lot better than they predicted it would.
Salt of the Earth folk love to share their stories of financial misery, but generally keep quiet about their embarrassment of riches.
I purchased options. Some didn't pan out. Some did. Was an early employee on all of them, purchase price was relatively low, and I don't regret any of them.
If you aren't getting hit by AMT, the company is not growing fast enough and you should not exercise. If you are getting hit by AMT, the chances are you are out the exercise cost plus the AMT.
I've done exactly what you're saying I should not do and it worked out very well.
My point is that these hard and fast rules don't leave any room for nuance. Consider, as I mentioned in another comment, you don't have to exercise 100% of your options. Exercise whatever makes you comfortable. Maybe that's one under the number that would push you into AMT.
If zero is your comfort level, then so be it. But get to that conclusion by doing a little thought and evaluation, not applying an arbitrary rule.
Preface: humans are really bad at assessing risk. Also, you can't help but be biased in the decision process. Most people want a chance at the golden ticket. Especially after all that hard work we put in! We deserve a payout! What was I going to do with the $10,000 anyway, really? It won't break me.
The people that can make a reasoned and well considered, as impartial as possible judgement about it don't need to be told to do so. In fact, a statement that one should never buy the options can and mostly will (rightly so) just be ignored by such people.
But, judging by the number of people that have NO CLUE about how it works, need only the tiniest thing to grab onto to make the wrong decision. There is zero need to recommend "well consider your risk". If you have to ask, then my advice is always as I gave it: not to skip it as a rule, but if you re-read you'll notice all I said was, the odds are not in your favor and you "should" just leave the options behind. I think there is a subtle but important difference. Maybe I'm splitting hairs, if so, sorry.
You're actually arguing survivor bias as being some kind of counter argument! You are in the pretty small minority, I do hope you understand that.
Tell me, how do you feel about COVID vaccine? Shouldn't we just be allowed to make up our own mind about it? If masks and vaccines work, well the scientific set can wear masks and vaccine up. The anti-vax crowd can do as they please and die. We don't need the government to TELL US what to do, do we? No one gets out alive anyway, amirite?
What is your recommendation on COVID? Evaluate the risk and decide for yourself? Surely you prefer Florida's or Texas' take on COVID to California's then?
I now come full circle: humans are really bad at assessing risk.
> You should evaluate the investment just like any other investment
Except it's not like any other investment. It's an investment that you are too close to. You can't think 100% objectively about an investment that you're too close to. For many people the solution is unambiguous: If I can't be objective about a decision then the answer is automatically 'no'.
There are lots of things I'm close to that I need to think objectively about. Maybe I don't hit your ideal of 100%, but I do my best. Investments is one area. The health and well being of my children is another. You can never have perfect objectivity. You do the best you can. GP's advice is too rigid and therefor not very good.
FWIW, I'm speaking from experience. Had I taken GP's advice and "never exercise unless it's early exercise" then I would have missed out on a lot of money.
The other thing to keep in mind is you don't have to exercise 100% of your vested options. If you're too nervous or don't trust your own judgement, maybe go for 10%, or whatever makes you comfortable. There's a lot of room between 0 and 100 here. Go ahead and explore it.
It does depend on what you mean by CPUs but the Ryzen G 5000 series are able to play video games at 720p (sometimes 1080p) with the graphics integrated on the CPU.
G 5000 series is marginally worse than 5000 series in CPU performance and it is worse than any discrete GPU that was released in last 5 years if we are talking GPU performance.
One option is to do some contract work either direct if you have the connections or through an agency. I've been working through Facet at facet.net for a couple of years and I've found them reputable, they put their fee on top of the rate you set and are transparent about that to the clients, you pick what to work on, etc. I'm sure you could find direct employment (there are monthly "who is hiring" and "who is looking" threads here for starters) but if you want to get your feet back in more gradually, contracting is nice in many ways.
> This topic seems to be broadly misunderstood. It is 100% verified fact by both myself and others (including university researchers) that diode strings can produce more heat (or watt-hours, BTU) from a given solar panel than a bare resistance element.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42XIbHA9Dv0