Why shouldn't I take this personally? You won't tell me what I did wrong. What about my neighbor? What did he do wrong? My generation is made up of a bunch of individuals. What did any of us do wrong? I think you said it already; you don't know what to tell me.
Solar tax credit? Fair or unfair?
- Thread starter Will Prowse
- Start date
every tech billionaire. If you care about small business, bezos absolutely destroyed the idea of that existing. Every billionaire related to any social media or advertising firm (spying at this point). I'm just looking at the ones in the industry I personally understand. If you're not aware of the inanely scummy things most of the "big dogs" have done to maintain your position, you're in the dark. M$ has done everything in their power to pollute the software industry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween_documents
it's about the driving forces and what the people in "your generation" have done which has changed the world. What is the legacy of the boomers?
LOL, you tell me that "my generation" has changed the world, then ask about a legacy. You still have failed to provide any specifics.
anything I have to say about boomers will come across as complaining, maybe rightfully. I'd like to know what nice changes you think has come as a result as boomer's time in power, both in office, and the business world. Seems the rich got richer and poor got poorer, and right now, neither side can agree about shit, and most people are unhappy. How in the world did we get here?
Zwy
Emperor Of Solar
From this post.
"Think of all the things you enjoy today as a result of "robber barons" . They had the capital to make things happen. Because they profited from having a vision and acting upon it makes them a totally evil person? Look at Edison, he profited immensely but what if he hadn't developed the light bulb? Or Henry Ford who streamlined the production process and had a vision to build a car his workers could afford?
Progress creates winners and losers. Some act upon their vision and ideas and they make things happen. They take risks, they could fail. But yet they persevered because they understood it comes down to the individual."
"Think of all the things you enjoy today as a result of "robber barons" . They had the capital to make things happen. Because they profited from having a vision and acting upon it makes them a totally evil person? Look at Edison, he profited immensely but what if he hadn't developed the light bulb? Or Henry Ford who streamlined the production process and had a vision to build a car his workers could afford?
Progress creates winners and losers. Some act upon their vision and ideas and they make things happen. They take risks, they could fail. But yet they persevered because they understood it comes down to the individual."
You seem to be saying that you would be better off without your PC as you know it, or the relatively amazing prospect of getting things delivered to you in a few days (well, no doubt in Dallas you get everything the same day; where I live it is more like four days), or that you would rather drive to your remote site to check on your batteries instead of just check a web page. You have no idea what the world was like before you were born, yet you assume that it is now so bad that you just can't stand it. All of this technical stuff you enjoy was brought to you by the hard work of people before you.
The world you live in is really amazing. You got lucky and happen to live in the US. Our "poor" people have cars, cell phones, televisions, etc., meaning that genuine poverty here is relatively rare. You are unhappy with having a good job with great compensation despite not having an upper-level education. You are in a great position to end up quite wealthy, as many of us do after starting with nothing.
I get what you're saying, but would I be unhappier using a CPU from 2000? not really, I mean it would use more power, that's about it. Would I be ok without same day delivers? sure would except that's no longer an option because amazon has killed so many small businesses and retailers. Again, it's a monkey's paw thing: You get same day delivery, but now your only realistic choice is Amazon. That would be fine if it wasn't rife with counterfeit junk at this point.
You mention all these nice things "poor" people can afford, and most of that seems like trash to me. It's all consumer junk, and really falls into the category of "circus". I don't have an upper-level education, mostly technically. I have >100 credit hours in college, mostly with perfect scores in the classes, I just dropped out and got a job because I could not stand it. I felt like I wasn't learning anything and was wasting my time. I'm probably a unique case because I've been teaching myself about computers since I could read. I literally learned nothing technical throughout my entire college career.
Sure, "genuine poverty" is less common, what percent of the current population essentially falls into the category of "indentured servitude"? I mean it's not your employer providing you housing, but the end result is that a huge percentage of people don't really have freedom. They are tied to where they are renting and would be in a very bad position if they lost any of the support they are currently receiving. Good thing they have TikTok to keep them from losing their minds, so they can be happy having nothing.
I'm not unhappy about my job/pay/whatever as much as I'm unhappy with the current conditions in general, even if I'm in a relatively good position, compared to 80% of my peers.
Sorry, that was also brought to you by boomers. In fact, all microprocessors were brought to you by boomers.
I still don't understand your complaint. You think the world is a terrible place and that everyone in business is out to get you. You are wrong. Blaming a specific generation of Americans for what you perceive as a whole host of terrible wrongs is actually quite insulting.
What morals do you have to sacrifice to make more money? When you are young, it is easy to believe that you can only raise yourself up by climbing on someone else's back. It isn't true. You can raise yourself up while lending a hand up to those around you. What you will notice along the way is that some people don't really do enough to deserve a hand up. Not helping them is not the same as climbing on them to get up.
at this point who gets the handouts? those who can afford to lobby.
it's totally normal to be ashamed of what your "peers" are doing, I know I am. Especially when it comes to tech literacy. Those just a bit younger than me don't know the difference between an "app" and a computer. The way things are going, especially with "vibe coding", everything will be an invasive black box in no time.
Speaking of CPUs I'm trying to get into RISCV hardware which is getting trashed by tariffs, meanwhile intel gets gov bux.
it's totally normal to be ashamed of what your "peers" are doing, I know I am. Especially when it comes to tech literacy. Those just a bit younger than me don't know the difference between an "app" and a computer. The way things are going, especially with "vibe coding", everything will be an invasive black box in no time.
Speaking of CPUs I'm trying to get into RISCV hardware which is getting trashed by tariffs, meanwhile intel gets gov bux.
Last edited:
Tulex
Solar Wizard
I finally put this guy on ignore, first time I've used it.
This guy believes as strongly as you do.
Hedges
I See Electromagnetic Fields!
- Joined
- Mar 28, 2020
- Messages
- 25,044
You're not reaching back far enough.
I used CPU from 1980. It consumed less power, was faster, and saved to floppy faster. (compared to Xeon, Flash drive, 64GB ECC, Win10 that I use now.)
The difference is it couldn't display multiple video ads dancing all over a 4k screen, carrying personally targeted promotions gleaned by AI spying on my keystrokes and eyeballs at thousands of samples per second.
You say you didn't learn anything useful in college, self-taught the more important stuff. "IT" I called it, you mentioned going deeper. But that's all man-made software and networking structures. Soon to be obsolete. And undergrad often has a bunch of "breadth".
What I have found useful is my grad school including semiconductor physics, digital signal processing, control theory, statistics. If you haven't learned those yet, teach yourself. MIT "Open Courseware" is one option, notes and video recordings from past lectures. You can buy earlier edition textbooks for $1 to $20, vs. $200 to $300 current editions. I picked up such stuff to learn quantum, but it was over my head or at least I lacked motivation.
You need to keep learning what's coming. Those subjects I listed are timeless, while anything inside the computers you see today won't be around that long.
You're not in the top 20% of peers, more like top 2% to 5%. Of earnings. But possibly bottom 50% to 75% in terms of wealth because you spend it all (like most.)
The early years are the most important ones for investing, due to compounding.
Oh, are you doing anything at your job that can't be replaced entirely by AI in the next 6 to 24 months?
I designed custom ASIC microprocessors in the 1980's. We wrote our own CAD tools. We wrote our own silicon compilers. We wrote our own auto-routers. We wrote our own optimization of circuit speed. People suggested to me we were designing our replacements. That is probably the objective.
I left that work and moved on to many different and interesting engineering roles.
Keep running or you will get run over.
Last edited:
you can only blame yourself using w10 and a xeon
(most xeons tend to be better at multithreading than single core perf, which you feel more), my 7950x is blazing fast on gentoo.I'm working with RISC-V stuff at the moment, my main interest is boot code, and how this stuff varies by CPU architecture. RISC-V is pretty much the only modern CPU option which isn't a black box.
Once again, assuming I spend it all? I've said multiple times in this thread, I spend something like 30% of my income (after taxes) on rent/survival/true necessities (oil for my car, insurance, internet access, etc). Other than the portion that I would be homeless/hungry without spending, I save roughly 90-95% on average. I generally don't spend much on miscellaneous things, and most of those things I categorize as "personal investments"
I don't think any part of my job can directly be replaced with AI, as much as I'd like to use it to help me some.
What you described sounds sorta like what I do, I make 80% of the tools I use regularly. Some of which have even "caught on"
they are free and will continue to be free.
Last edited:
Hedges
I See Electromagnetic Fields!
- Joined
- Mar 28, 2020
- Messages
- 25,044
That's two (laptop) Xeon to you! With nVidia for CUDA, to support Matlab. Bought it maybe 6 years ago. "Not bad" for its time. The most money I've spent on a computer in well over 40 years. Intel of course started losing ground about then. Now it is my job to help them catch up (through better semiconductor equipment.)
Windows has so much cr*p running, multiple cores is the only hope a PC has. They became an absolute dog back in the 90's or 2000's and only became functional again whenever it was dual core appeared.
The ECU in my car never had that problem. No reason why a web browsing laptop shouldn't be able to at least display characters as fast as I can type.
RISC? Is that a thing again? I studied that in school (when it was new, or at least a new name for an architecture that looks suspiciously like an old IBM.) Then I spend 7 years designing them. Turned down a headhunter call to design CPUs with cache and virtual memory for Intel. "Why would I want to do that? I'm doing that right now for real computers at HP." After a few more years HP closed their fabs and bought from Intel.
If you are saving 90% of 70% or $63k+ per year, you're doing real well. Oh, after taxes. Not sure, maybe that leaves $45k? Still doing well.
4 years of that and you've got $180k down payment ... Oh, Dallas and $500k homes. 2.5 years and you've got $115k for 20% down & closing costs.
Should be no problem.
Then consider setting up your server in the basement, renting out the house, get yourself a room somewhere or live out of a van. You will deduct 100% of house costs (except principal) on schedule C and E while also taking the standard deduction.
Windows has so much cr*p running, multiple cores is the only hope a PC has. They became an absolute dog back in the 90's or 2000's and only became functional again whenever it was dual core appeared.
The ECU in my car never had that problem. No reason why a web browsing laptop shouldn't be able to at least display characters as fast as I can type.
RISC? Is that a thing again? I studied that in school (when it was new, or at least a new name for an architecture that looks suspiciously like an old IBM.) Then I spend 7 years designing them. Turned down a headhunter call to design CPUs with cache and virtual memory for Intel. "Why would I want to do that? I'm doing that right now for real computers at HP." After a few more years HP closed their fabs and bought from Intel.
If you are saving 90% of 70% or $63k+ per year, you're doing real well. Oh, after taxes. Not sure, maybe that leaves $45k? Still doing well.
4 years of that and you've got $180k down payment ... Oh, Dallas and $500k homes. 2.5 years and you've got $115k for 20% down & closing costs.
Should be no problem.
Then consider setting up your server in the basement, renting out the house, get yourself a room somewhere or live out of a van. You will deduct 100% of house costs (except principal) on schedule C and E while also taking the standard deduction.
well I just got my StarFive VisionFive 2 booting into linux today, using 100% home compiled code. I've never done that with any other system, it always requires some kinda premade binary blobs at some point. You can get further on ARM systems, but things like the GPU (early bootloader) and DRAM code is often proprietary and required to boot. It's a bit ironic I have more reason to trust this Chinese made board than any other hardware I own. (it is not fast or efficient thought, but has interesting IO for the power, almost feels retro-futuristic)
Your estimates were pretty accurate, but doesn't consider the year and a half I worked more or less the same position for about half the salary.
Hedges
I See Electromagnetic Fields!
- Joined
- Mar 28, 2020
- Messages
- 25,044
Sounds like you're doing OK then.
House prices are fast to rise, slower to fall. Sometimes an eager seller will price things right, usually a fixer upper.
As prices rose towards 2008, I knew they were too high. I told someone that if he bought a house for $500k and sold it 5 years later he'd have to get $700k just to break even. (after transaction costs and interest, compared to rent.)
By 2008 I said house prices in Silicon valley needed to drop by half, condos by 2/3. Outlying bedroom communities had shot up even more. Sure enough, that's just how much they dropped.
With interest rates dropping to 2% and employment boom in Silicon Valley, they made new highs. It became cheaper to buy than to rent, a first.
Now double that $700k. It isn't cheap to either buy or rent anymore.
Don't expect a major correction this time. The dollar has been devalued so high prices are here to stay (may dip a little.)
What you need to do is keep ratcheting up your income.
$100k was good income in 2000. $250k is good income in 2025.
Will your employer pay for your education? The degree isn't worth much except it gives you a chance to apply for jobs. Which can make a big difference. As I said, I think my graduate education did much more to educate me. Maybe because I was a better student.
House prices are fast to rise, slower to fall. Sometimes an eager seller will price things right, usually a fixer upper.
As prices rose towards 2008, I knew they were too high. I told someone that if he bought a house for $500k and sold it 5 years later he'd have to get $700k just to break even. (after transaction costs and interest, compared to rent.)
By 2008 I said house prices in Silicon valley needed to drop by half, condos by 2/3. Outlying bedroom communities had shot up even more. Sure enough, that's just how much they dropped.
With interest rates dropping to 2% and employment boom in Silicon Valley, they made new highs. It became cheaper to buy than to rent, a first.
Now double that $700k. It isn't cheap to either buy or rent anymore.
Don't expect a major correction this time. The dollar has been devalued so high prices are here to stay (may dip a little.)
What you need to do is keep ratcheting up your income.
$100k was good income in 2000. $250k is good income in 2025.
Will your employer pay for your education? The degree isn't worth much except it gives you a chance to apply for jobs. Which can make a big difference. As I said, I think my graduate education did much more to educate me. Maybe because I was a better student.
The residential tax credit doesn't really work. The idea is great, but the reality is that contractors just charge more in most places.
From a national interests perspective, the thing that should be incentivized is reduced reliance on centralized utilities. They are expensive and a single point of failure. The "green" benefit of solar is better achieved with centralized facilities.
Likely the best path forward is to have nationalized standards on feed-in tariffs that favor distributed generation.
From a national interests perspective, the thing that should be incentivized is reduced reliance on centralized utilities. They are expensive and a single point of failure. The "green" benefit of solar is better achieved with centralized facilities.
Likely the best path forward is to have nationalized standards on feed-in tariffs that favor distributed generation.
Zwy
Emperor Of Solar
You will have to provide a link for this claim. If not, it should be deleted.
cs1234
Even a doofus can achieve high post counts.
- Joined
- May 9, 2022
- Messages
- 5,352
I could easily make 2-5x my salary working for a MAANG like company, but I don't want to be helping contribute to systems which more or less exist to extract and sell user data. Turns out doing morally dubious things can be extremely profitable. At some point these practices will become illegal, or everything will crumble. Tech can be a powerful tool, but when all the money is going into using it for immoral purposes, what then?
ksmithaz1
Solar / EV Junkie
Your story is so similar to mine without a divorce during the real estate bust. I would add a stint from High School doing construction, then 4 years in the Army, after realizing walking 4x8 sheets of plywood two at a time up a ladder was going to get old. But those skills, framing, building swimming pools, plumbing, electrical, were some of the most valuable training one could get. The push into electronics, and then programming were well served by the problem solving learned from doing hard work. I was born just about 5 years late. Computer stuff now is so esoteric it's not even funny.
I'm digging a conduit trench by hand in my back yard. I could pay someone, but I can use the exercise, some of my friends find it stunning I would dig a 4ft trench in my yard, I laugh, I've dug thousands of feet of plumbing trenches, its just honest work. I've actually been considering getting an apprenticeship and electricians license.
Zwy
Emperor Of Solar
Yes, that some billionaire is throwing batteries into ponds.
I've always had to provide proof on any claims or will be banned. Straight from admin. This is no different.
ncsolarelectric
Engineering Support CEO
Some prices went up 10%, some went down due to deeper volume discounts and loans. In the end, the Kit prices for Hoymiles microinverters and inverters haven't changed, but EG4 has gone up. It may get worse, but for now it's livable.
cs1234
Even a doofus can achieve high post counts.
- Joined
- May 9, 2022
- Messages
- 5,352
I just reread his original message, again, to make doubly sure, and it looks to me like it was a "what if" or hypothetical scenario. He doesn't need to provide proof for that. It was an exaggerated example of the kind of awfulness that a supposed evil billionaire / large corporation would commit.
Similar threads
