I think we all know taking a walk is good for you, but it still helps to be reminded. Even better if presented with actual evidence that - yeah, you should probably budget some time in your schedule for a walk or two today.
With agents, you can set them to work on a task, and then head out for a walk while having a think about next steps. Come back, review the results, give it the next steps, and then head out for another walk.
I wonder how hard it would be to get an agent to send me a text message if it gets stuck on something.
I made an MCP server that basically implements all the tools an agent harness would provide. The code is checked out on my server, the MCP server creates git worktrees on "activation" and it can read, modify files, run bash commands etc. I have this setup in typingmind so I can do everything from my phone :p The only problem is that typingmind needs to be in the foreground on my phone, otherwise it will kill the connection.
There was a time where I was often stuck for an hour with nothing but my phone and I kept copying file contents into chat for context so I made this and it works surprisingly well.
I don't know what typingmind is but Termux is very good at keeping the pace when the screen is turned off. If it's just a chat interface you could probably grab someone's weekend hack in your favourite language off the Internet and plug it in through Termux.
> I wonder how hard it would be to get an agent to send me a text message if it gets stuck on something.
Not too hard, aka. I have a friend who did this. Rather than a text message, he uses IRC, but the effect should be the same. IRC is probably a little better.
Assuming you use Claude Code, the concept to look for is 'channels'. It's described as being for sending messages to Claude, but they work both ways. And I see one of the canned channels is iMessage.
I feel like most Ferrari drivers are buying them as collector's items to be preserved rather than something to be driven.
EVs, by contrast, feel more like appliances meant to be used and enjoyed. And there will always be a more advanced model coming out just around the corner.
They've kind of hinted at the fact that this is meant to be more of an appliance than other models, with a more accesible price:
> “We were excited about a five-seater car that was flexible, versatile and inherently luxurious,” he tells TopGear.com during an exclusive walk-round. “Of course, the price point means it’s exclusive but it’s more accessible and relevant. That’s a new paradigm, and also the biggest challenge.” He gestures to the roof-line. “Imagine how much easier our job would have been if we’d been able to pull this point down two inches.”
Although I suspect the price will still be very much out of my range, there may well be some wealthy buyers out there who would love to have a Ferrari as a family sedan. Look at the success of the Cayenne - something that a lot of people snubbed their nose at initially. Honestly if I had the means I would be much more interested in this than any of their other cars. I'm definitely in the cars-are-meant-to-be-driven camp.
Edit: oh the estimated price is $640k. Yeah I don't think it will sell well at that price - though I also don't pretend to understand the market for super cars or the motivations of super car buyers.
The Cayenna has never been a bad looking vehicle.
Like other German SUVs from that time it elevated an established design language into SUV form. If anyting it was criticized as lazy and unimaginative.
The real beef was Porsche enthusiasts (911 purists) thought SUVs were for unwashed masses and soccer moms.
They thought Porsche was jumping on the the relatively new (at the time) premium/luxury german SUV bandwagen establised by the X5 and ML500 (GWagen excluded).
Once they got over that they became customers.
This..thing...on the other hand is a tasteless abomination. Aside from the badges and tail lights there's nothing in it that's inherently Ferrari.
Ferrari uses cars like this to test loyalty. If you want to get 'on the list' buying cars like this is one of the ways to do it, especially if you haven't spent considerable $ with them before.
I've heard about this in a clip with Jay Leno talking about why he's never bought a Ferrari [1]. It all sounds absolutely insane to me, but Ferrari buyers are a different breed I guess.
Rolex run a similar scam with watches. It’s supposed to prevent people flipping the objects in question which is important for anything with artificial scarcity.
Honestly they only made economic sense in my case because of government incentives. Although if the price continues to fall, they may eventually even make sense in my area without incentives.
Electricity generation in the event of a power outage was another consideration for me.
But yeah as a techy I also just enjoy having them.
I'm not regurgitating anything. I'm looking at how much electricity my panels generate, and what percentage of it I use, and I can say definitively that it would not make financial sense for me if not for the feed-in tariff program that pays me a guaranteed rate for electricity I sell back to the grid.
You can't just blindly say "PVs save you money". It matters very much how much sunlight you get, the orientation of your roof, how much electricity costs, how much labor and installation costs, etc.
My location is far from ideal for solar. But with incentives - which are funded in my country via a per-kWh surcharge on everyone's electricity bills - it just barely makes financial sense to have solar panels on my roof.
Unless you have very cheap grid power / terrible sun / needlessly high installation costs, PV will be a winner. So Quebec is bad because electricity is absurdly cheap, and the only benefit is redundancy. California should be absurdly cheap but regulations are out of control. Germany also has insane regulatory burden and expensive labour but grid energy is even more expensive, double the US average.
In very sunny places with expensive grid power a battery is sensible, but again politics often favours flat rate tariffs that discount peak power, which again favours grid incumbents.
So it might not be economic for your region but that is entirely due to regional politics, a default choice to make PV power expensive.
Ok so you've backpedaled from "PVs always save you money" to "if it doesn't, it's because of politics".
The reality is not that simple. PVs are definitely the cheapest source of energy in a lot of places, which is why it is the fastest growing energy source in the world. But "cheapest in a lot of places" is not the same thing as "universally a winner in every scenario". Politics can be a complicating factor, but in other cases the math just doesn't work out due to plain old physics and economics.
I'm extremely optimistic about the future of solar. But I don't think it helps the argument to pretend that it's already a guaranteed win everywhere if not for foolish politicians. That's just swapping one oversimplification for another.
Electrek has a long history of going between blind fanboyism and blind hate, the history is all there to peruse. They only changed their tune with the referral program debacle a few years back which was seen as a betrayal.
It’s hard to trust “reporting” when it’s historically operated more like a tabloid.
I feel that way about the NY Post - a literal tabloid. Occasionally someone shares a story from the NY Post with me, and my first instinct is to think "why are you sharing this rubbish with me". But then I read story - often with the intent of pointing out why it's rubbish, and sure enough more often than not it actually is rubbish - and point out the issues with the reporting.
But sometimes it's not. I'll do my own fact checking (because I don't trust them) - and find out that maybe there is something to the story. Not only that - none of the sources that I typically read are reporting on the issue. And then I'm forced to admit that I actually learned something from the NY Post. And usually I've learned something about my own biases and bias in my regular information sources, too.
My point is this: if you can't get past the source of an article and actually engage with the content - then that says more about your own bias and trustworthiness as a source of information than it does about Electrek.
> The economics never worked either. An average Tesla Solar Roof costs approximately $106,000 before incentives, compared to roughly $60,000 for a traditional roof replacement plus conventional solar panels — a $46,000 premium. The payback period stretches to 15-25 years, compared to 7-12 years for traditional panels.
Yikes that’s a lot of money. For most people buying solar, I think payback period is probably the biggest consideration.
In my opinion, the Tesla Solar Roof really appealed to people who wanted good looks. They probably already have their “forever” homes and are not thinking of moving at all. It is more about the emotional attachment to this part of your home than its functional aspects. You can buy a $100 dining table from IKEA or you can buy a $1,000 dining table from Pottery Barn or you can buy a custom $5,000 dining table made from a solid piece of wood. It's the same functionality but emotionally very different.
Yeah and I think that's fine - and as I mentioned below my own reasons for installing solar panels were not just financially motivated. But the economics are also hugely important. Most people don't buy $5,000 tables, and most people don't buy Tesla Solar Roofs - the article says they sold 3,000 total in the last decade. And I don't think Tesla wants to be in the bespoke roof business - they want to be selling to the masses (or at least a sizeable well-off segment of the masses).
It also doesn't help that they seemingly had issues scaling up - and even people who were willing to spend $100K on a Solar Roof faced long delays if they were available at all in their market. Tesla's image has also shifted in the last decade, and having a Tesla parked in your driveway with a powerwall and solar roof doesn't carry quite the same image that it once did - which is important when you are relying on emotions to drive sales.
> the article says they sold 3,000 total in the last decade.
>It also doesn't help that they seemingly had issues scaling up
I think these two things were highly related. Same with the cost. They couldn’t figure out how to scale up, which kept prices high and volume low. Because of this, it really was a bespoke business. And while, it looks nice, that type of margin just is not going to provide the returns they promised investors.
Yeah, Elon's whole shtick is make things scale up that everyone else thinks can't scale up. Sometimes it works (batteries), sometimes it works spectacularly well (Falcon 9), sometimes it fizzles out because it turns out everyone else was right (tunnel boring, solar tiles).
They could have had that- if they had a standardizeable install method. Aluframes for the roofs, have bespoke solarpanels just slide in and lock up as roof over roof install. The problem there was the statics not working out
But I guess my first question is why you want solar panels at all then? For most people it’s about saving money long term first, then maybe energy independence (especially in emergencies) if possible, then just wanting to go green. If it’s aesthetics, you can do a cool roof without solar I assume.
What drove you to get solar panels ultimately and why did you go Tesla? Genuinely curious.
I have a feeling you’ll say something i hadn’t considered.
No, you're pretty spot on. It was the overlap of a couple of factors:
1. I wanted solar & batteries as a buffer for grid outages
2. I wanted to be able to offset some of my energy usage with solar
3. I wanted my roof to look nice, and personally I think solar panels strapped onto a roof don't look very appealing.
4. At the time, Tesla was one of the few names in town for an integrated solar roof.
Saving money wasn't really part of the calculus, which worked out because as the article and parallel comments note, getting a Tesla solar roof is a pretty bad decision if one of your primary factors is cost or saving money on your electric bill.
I mean, if your goal is to absolutely maximize the number in your bank account, no. But then there are other things you could be doing too -- you can do the math and cover all your nutritional needs for under $1 a day, by eating mostly potatoes. But most people prefer to spend 20x that much and have food that tastes decent. And a handful of people will spend 30-40x that to have really nice food.
If you think about money as a tool to maximize your "joy", then whether the Solar Roof is worth it completely depends on your preferences and your financial situation. Most people are fine with black panels; but if you have the money and like the look of the tiles, why not?
I don't get it. If it's cheaper to have a nice traditional slate/cedar roof and just buy my electricity from the grid then why would I want solar tiles? Just to tell my friends how I'm saving the planet? It's not like solar tiles have a monopoly on electricity or nice roofing materials.
Solar Roofs can still pay for themselves, it's just a much longer pay back period than with commodity panels. So I guess the Solar Roof strikes a balance between economic benefit and design that makes sense for some people.
> Just to tell my friends how I'm saving the planet?
This is a really uncharitable framing that I often see repeated that wealthy people are only motivated by how other people perceive them. And sure, that probably plays a part for some people. But maybe they just feel good about saving on their electricity bill in the long term and reducing their carbon foot print - even if it's not the most economical or environmentally friendly option available?
It's possible the math works out differently for people whose roof already needs to be replaced, or for people whose roof can be nearly totally covered with generating tiles.
In my case, it's been a while since I crunched the numbers but the pay back period is effectively infinite, assuming that had I not bought the roof I'd invested the money instead. This is especially true as temperatures continue to swing more and more widely (winters that push below the efficient window for my heat pumps are murderous on my banked solar energy) and more states and electric companies switch from net metering to newer rate plans.
If it was just about good looks, they could have built large panels with smaller tile style panels integrated on top of them and then used faux tiles to cover the gaps without having to actually connect them electrically.
It's even worse than that. They're making the comparison of a solar roof to a new standard roof plus solar panels, but most people absolutely do not replace their roof when they get panels so the cost difference is more like 106k vs 30k.
There are companies that will install solar shingles into your roof and they only need to remove tiles in the places where the panels will be installed, so the Tesla Solar Roof is expensive even compared to an aesthetically pleasing roof.
In both cases I'm somewhat curious why seemingly no middle-man 'free solar roof' companies have sprung up where they install it with some sort of arrangement where the panels are free, but they get 90% of the generated revenue until it's paid itself off and then some. So you get a small electricity discount for many years and then eventually a much larger one, and free panels on top.
If they can work out the economics to the point that it's more viable than something like treasuries then I don't see the issue? Of course there's some potential market and other variability, but if this business model is sound then Lloyd's is there to insure it?
Something like this exists with PPA solar leases, and with home batteries.
But it’s usually a bad deal for the homeowner compared to a more conventional lease or purchase with a fixed rate. The incentives don’t match up, there is also the issue of the lease buyout if the home is sold.
> "requires on-site renewable electricity generation for new homes in England — solar PV covering around 40% of ground floor area where feasible"
As well as an end to new gas boilers, replaced with a heat pump mandate.
> The estimated build cost increase is around £4,350 per dwelling. FHS-compliant homes are projected to save homeowners around £830 per year on energy bills compared to a typical EPC C home
That .. looks rather different to a $100k gold plated roof.
You're comparing apples to oranges, at least a bit. $60k for a roof plus solar is going to be for a larger US home compared to a UK home- probably in the 3000 sq ft range, unless it's a very steep roof with lots of dormers or corners. Also, the cost savings for the UK home are due to much higher energy prices- the cost savings would be much smaller in the US.
With that said, Tesla's Solar Roof is definitely the gold plated unreasonably out of touch option.
OTOH solar is a lot less useful in the UK than in the US. The southern tip of the UK is north of all the major Canadian cities, in the depths of winter we get about 6 hours of daylight with the sun barely reaching 20 degrees above the horizon. The winter is also where most electricity usage is too, doubly so when you want to replace gas heating with a heat pump. No AC and summer daylight past 10pm means that residential electricy usage in the summer, when solar does make sense, is very low.
Meh, I've had people come out to give me a quote for rooftop solar and they told me not to bother. Between the latitude (upper Midwest) and tree coverage shading parts of the roof throughout the day, it wouldn't pay off in a reasonable time line.
Mind you, that's with having AC, electric laundry dryer, a private well pump, septic heater and all sorts of other energy hogs trotting about the place throughout the year. I'm not exactly living an ascetic lifestyle myself.
Maybe if I paid the UK's electricity rates it'd be different though.
I would love some kind of solar, but when I know how cheap it is to install it in places like Africa AND use cutting edge chinese solar/battery tech, my enthusiasm to pay a USA premium makes me just close the tabs. It's too expensive in america for some reason.
I agree it's frustrating. But shouldn't your decision be based on whether it makes financial sense for you, and not whether someone else in a completely different market with a completely different cost structure is paying a lower price than you?
IME a lot of the difference between solar for the US vs Europe for example, is that the energy usage in the US is way higher (often due to HVAC usage), so you just need much larger sized systems than in Europe if you want to cover your usage fully. Our house here in NL is 3.5 kWp, people I know in the US have more like 20-30 kWp.
You need to shop around. Problem is solar companies just hiring contractors with little value add. Spend some time looking for contractor yourself and you’ll easily save 30%.
What's the capacity though. Either way this seems extremely high unless we are talking in terms of like 100kw or something. For reference, I recently installed hybrid/net-metered system set up at my home in India; 7kw solar with a 20kWh battery for around $10K. The biggest cost is for the batteries though. The panels themselves have become extremely low price and the prices continue to fall.
It's interesting to see Tesla's solar business getting disrupted by Chinese manufacturers after EV.
> I would expect around 50k-60k for a 1000 sq ft roof (not US).
That's about 90 m². Here in Germany [1], if it's just replacing tiles, you're looking at 10k, add 20k for adding heat insulation - and you can get 15-20% back with government assistance from that sum. The only way you reach 50k in costs here is if you have to fix structural issues (e.g. rotting wood due to water ingress, but if you take proper care of your roof you won't need to do that - expected life time for roofs is about 80 years for the tiles and much more to the tune of centuries for the wood framing.
I included the structure because I only know of cases (including my own) where both needed replacing. Centuries for the wood structure is hypothetically possible of course, but only if maintenance is ideal (no water ingress) and without insects. Once there are water issues, they rapidly decay. Retrofitting both new insulation and additional roof loads like solar is also not possible for every old roof structure. The flat roofs somewhat common in 60s and 70s construction also have very short lives and often need to be replaced wholesale after 40-50 years. Despite the reputation, they're not at all cheaper than traditional roofs, at least not when you have to adhere to the current building codes
A bundle of shingles is $50, 3 bundles to cover 100 sq ft is $1.50 sq ft in materials. Figure $1.50/sq ft to demo and dispose of the old roof shingles.
Materials and demo comes out to $3,000, figure $500 for tools and nails, mark it up to $4,500-5,000
Probably (4) people can knock out a 1000sq ft roof in an 8 hour day, call it 40 hours of labor for demo and install.
Surely the labor cost and markup is not $1,000 an hour, that’s what it would have to be for a 1000 sq ft roof to cost $50-60k. $125/hr for 40 hours is $5,000.00
Are these payback periods factoring in opportunity cost? If not the game is already lost. If so periods that long are so sensitive to alternate asset returns that they could easily be infinity.
No - these numbers likely do not factor in opportunity cost. And yes, you can probably earn a better return elsewhere. But the reasons that I installed rooftop solar were:
* Diversification. These days stocks, bonds, real estate, crypto, and even precious metals are increasingly correlated [1]. Solar panels offer pretty consistent returns regardless of what is happening in the stock market.
* Backup power. I live in an area that is prone to natural disasters. Having a backup power source gives me a bit of peace of mind.
* Hedge against increasing energy prices. My solar panels have actually performed better than I expected due to electricity prices increasing faster than I expected.
* Clean energy. When I turn on my A/C in the summer I take some enjoyment from the fact that it's powered by the panels on my roof and not burning fossil fuels.
* Entertainment. I enjoy nerding out and learning about the tech, monitoring output, etc. A lot of people think solar panels are ugly but I actually like the way they look.
Yes the S&P 500 would have returned signficantly more than my solar panels. But I already have a lot invested in the S&P 500, solar panels were fairly inexpensive and don't make up a significant portion of my overall investments, and the psychological benefits outweigh whatever opportunity cost I have incurred.
There is also the option to finance them. You need to be careful with financing, as I think there are a lot of predatory offers out there. But if you are buying or building a house, for example, and can roll the cost of the panels into your mortgage, then that's going to reduce the up front cost and hence the opportunity cost.
But yeah when you get into the $100K range for a Tesla solar roof, then I think that starts to be a pretty substantial amount for most people that can be better spent elsewhere. Not to mention the delays, customer service issues, etc that people have experienced with Tesla - which can easily offset any peace of mind benefits.
I'm in the same camp as you. I'll add that my panels are returning 16% on capital spent, and it's going up as electricity prices go up.
So, yes, I could probably get a higher return if I invested that capital elsewhere, but, apart from the diversification, I get benefits beyond the raw financial return.
Firstly, earlier this year, we had a cable coming into the house fail. By the time the electrician and city had done all they needed to do to sort it out, almost 4 days had passed. We would have been without power for that time. As it happens we ran completely on solar for that period - freezers stayed frozen, could run the laundry, etc. Some stuff was limited (no oven, no hot water) but the impact was minimal compared to what it might have been.
Secondly, during the day at least, I'm not really fussed about electricity usage. If lights are on, or AC is on or whatever. So there's less "hey, that light is costing money" etc. So we end up using more electricity, but the marginal cost (during the day) is 0. My next car is electric (already on order) and that can charge at home as well (during the day, I work from home) and so that just increases the return (utilization of available power goes up.)
From a financial point of view, for me, it's a no-brainer. Obviously ymmv - everyone's numbers are different. For me the payback is in the 5-6 year range (probably under 5 once the car comes online.)
In an average year (not the past 4), 16% would be amazing. That it’s effectively guaranteed and will almost certainly increase every year is icing on the cake. I’d take that trade any day.
Not OP but I'll run what I plan on doing. In Germany you can get a plug-in ready kit with 2.2 kWh battery and 920W panels for less than 600€ [1]. The panels are about 1.8 m² each (=3.6 m² total), so with on average 1.200 kWh/m² solar radiation and 25% efficiency I'm looking at up to 1080 kWh in energy I'll get out of the system per year.
Electricity here in Germany is expensive at an average 30 ct/kWh, so the panels save 324€ worth of electricity - an ROI of > 50%. Choose some better quality for the inverter and battery and you'll still be north of 30% ROI.
The key thing making this high ROI possible is that it's small. Counterintuitive, yes - but explained by the fact that for larger installations than that, setup costs go up: you need to install the panels on your roof instead of hanging them off your balcony which can be thousands of € in labor, you need to run new power wires...
Your numbers are likely off by about half (in Germany your sunlight is less than 1200w/m2, panels are more like 22% effecient, you'll gave at least some cloudy days, your panels won't be tracking the sun.)
But a small system is still going to bring a return and is cheap to install. And it'll give you a real way to understand the concept and to experiment.
I started with a 660w small system, and it gave me lots of insight for planning my current system.
The inverter keeps a log of electricity generated, used, battery used, imported and so on.
I put that in a spreadsheet which calculates money saved. (Which is reasonably complex because of pricing tiers although fortunately I don't have to deal with daily pricing changes.)
Then some math returns the return on investment per month and per year.
Do you also subject the cost of upfront capital? Example: Imagine that you didn't have the upfront captial, and you needed to borrow it "from a bank" at X% for Y months.
Opportunity cost meaning investing with standard rule of thumb returns? I think usually it's just total cost at installation divided by the product of power generation and energy cost. So that's $ / (W x $/Wh), which should reduce down to just hours that can be trivially converted to years
> Cost of alternative investments not pursued as a result of deployed capital.
Once you’re achieving 30-50% annual returns over 20-30 year horizons (PE, HFT, invite-only HF) , you stop caring about cost of capital for anything less than US$1 million.
But 10% VTI / VOO, sure, factor that 10% into your excel.
With AI seemingly coming for my job, I've been thinking about what I want to do for the next phase of my career. Today I have found the answer - Monster Wolf builder!
It's hard work. It's dangerous. Many areas get heavy snowfall in the winter which interferes with work. Summers are brutally hot. Many customers in rural areas are living on fixed income, so you are limited in how much you can charge. Commutes to job sites can be long.
My roof was damaged in heavy snowfall this winter and I needed to wait 3 months to get it repaired. And I'm not even really in a rural area. The guy who did the repairs looked to be in his 60s - I don't think many young people are looking to get into this business.
I think most contractors would do better in more densely populated areas where lots of new construction is happening.
It certainly sounds terrible. I just don't know how credible this YouTube short is. They could be turning the gain way up, using a completely different sound recording, etc.
A sibling post links to a news story [1] which I think is more credible and they measured the noise at 90db right outside the data center - which is certainly high. But they are filming next to a highway and a shopping center, which were presumably quite noisy to begin with. And both of the residents they interviewed hadn't even noticed the noise before the interviewer pointed it out.
They also show some footage from a different data center in the area, and it is much quieter. So sounds like it can vary from datacenter to datacenter, with this one being unnusually loud.
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