688 karma · joined January 14, 2009
| tinker & maker | engineer & manager | Silicon Valley |
riwimmer at gmail dot com
To me the nuclear energy debate should be made with a real long term view beyond this event and the next decades. There is nuclear waste, aging reactors all these things need to be carefully considered to be sure if this is really the choice we want on how we create energy.
I am personally against nuclear power plants, but even if that technology continues to be used the demand should be made that it will be build and operated as safe as possible.
Designing a physical product, which can be manufacturer and has a healthy margin for a business to survive will take some invest money. There had been exceptions, but usually you will need a couple hundred thousand dollar to get there and at the same time yo need protect your product with IP.
Once you reached that point you are in a symmetric market, where a product gets exchanges for cost plus profit. It will always be a more linear curve on profit. On the other side software and internet companies in high demand have this hockey stick potential, which makes it so attractive to investors.
So hardware is hard, because it has just a much higher barrier to entry and at the same time it offers less sexy chart types. The number of hardware companies are far less compared to a person with a computer and internet who could be a software or internet company.
You can check out quirky.com maybe that is a way to go for you.
Or read this blog indicating the effort you will have to put in place
http://www.crunchgear.com/2010/04/10/going-it-alone-how-to-m...
http://www.crunchgear.com/2010/04/11/going-it-alone-how-to-m...
ghostery
I was a little bit surprised to hear such a strong opinion. It is clear the federal reserves do have now better tools to avoid private institution collapse which could have severe impact on the economy. On a bigger scale, like states it seems not all that clear what regulation mechanism are available. But reading repeatedly the warning signs from several known analysts about the debt issue and upcoming correction I am wondering if such collapse scenarios will take place.
One of them is from the City of San Francisco who had a task force installed to look into the Peak Oil&Gas www.sfenvironment.org/downloads/library/peakoil_final_report.pdf It is pretty dark report when you read through the paper. One of the statements “events will unfold so badly that unemployment, hunger, and crime are prevalent, and the basic structure of society is unable to function”. But there are some interesting and specific recommendations like "City government could push much harder to promote small businesses” or "develop southeast waterfront" and rail projects. Although I am not sure if anything will happen. But it seems some politician and planers are looking at these scenarios.
"Thus, lighting was approximately 8.3% of national primary energy consumption, or about 22% of the total electricity generated in the U.S."
That I do not share this view. The residential household typically uses 11% of energy on light and commercial up to 20%. It might not be much as a single individual if you consistently flip the switch when not needed, but overall as a society it does safe MW of energy. An even better way is to safe energy is the use of CFL (4 times energy savings compared to incandescent light) or the new LED lighting solutions (4-6 times energy savings compared to incandescent light). Australia and some places in Europe by law banned already some incandescent bulbs, because the savings is enormous.