- mbgerring parentNo, every President does not declare tariffs by fiat using specious emergency powers that change day to day depending on who kissed their ass most recently.
- What’s funny about this is that I actually can’t. 2 examples:
For years, I’ve tried to buy only American-made denim. When the Cone Mills plant closed, I bought a bunch of dead stock jeans. There was one attempt since Cone Mills closed to open a new US denim factory, but it failed. Unless you’re buying whatever’s left of that increasingly rare stock, you can’t buy American-made denim.
Another example — I’m currently in the market for custom-formulated silicone and acrylic products. Every US manufacturer I’ve approached just sends an email that says “no we don’t do that”. I have like 5 Chinese suppliers on Alibaba trying to make a deal with me.
I would much rather source domestically as soon as someone tells me how to do it.
- It makes sense that you wouldn't hire in such an uncertain environment. We have a President using emergency powers to affect sweeping, unpredictable, consequential changes to the economy that can dramatically alter unit economics overnight and completely tank a previously viable business. Within this calendar year, the President's ability to do this may be upended by pending court cases, an election, or both. Following those potential changes, the breach of trust created by the previous chaos may mean that trade never returns to normal. I don't envy anyone trying to make long-term business decisions, like hiring, in such an environment.
- Location: San Francisco
Remote: preferred
Willing to relocate: not a dealbreaker
Technologies: full stack web applications (JavaScript, Python, some Java, React, Svelte, AWS), embedded systems (C++ via Arduino for motor control, sensors, lighting applications), advanced manufacturing/fabrication (Rhino, 3D printing, CNC), power systems (low power DC electronics, solar/battery systems, AC power distribution)
Resume/CV: matthewgerring.com/resume
Email: gerring.matthew@gmail.com
I have ten years of experience in the energy industry, and I am a subject matter expert in utility tariff modeling and design and large scale off-grid clean energy systems. I have prototyped or implemented AI-based tariff modeling solutions at 2 different companies. I’m looking for high-impact roles in clean energy deployment, as close to the metal as possible. Also open to work in enterprise B2B software in a clean energy or climate tech adjacent role.
- Location: San Francisco
Remote: Preferred, open to onsite
Willing to Relocate: For the right role
Technologies: Python, JavaScript, DC power systems (solar, batteries, charge control, inverters, system design), embedded systems (lighting, sensors, motor control)
Resume: https://matthewgerring.com/resume
Email: gerring.matthew@gmail.com
10 years of experience in climate tech, in utility industry software and clean energy hardware deployment.
I have deep domain expertise in electricity price modeling, financing for distributed energy resources, and grid-independent system design and deployment. I have designed and built AI systems for extracting tariff document data, and if your company is pursuing this particular white whale, I’d be happy to help you.
Seeking a high-impact role in climate tech, as close as possible to direct clean energy deployment.
- It's hard to overstate the degree to which the United States is giving away the future to any country that can produce clean energy technology at scale.
Lithium is abundant in the United States. Nothing in the component chain of solar and battery systems is so complex it couldn't be made here. We could establish trade with African countries like China has, instead of doing these pointless tariffs. But for idiotic cultural reasons, we are not doing any of those things.
The world will permanently shift away from the fossil fuel economy sooner than most people think, and it will disrupt the entire system of dollar-denominated oil that underpins the U.S. empire. It's glaringly obvious where this is headed. And yet!
- Every professional conference and publication in the energy industry is starting to look at this, because the sheer amount of power required for these data centers is already putting stress on grid capacity.
Also, AI data centers aren’t just sited for proximity to power generation. They're often sited for access to water for cooling. Not all of those sites already have appropriate power infrastructure.
- I work in the energy industry. Any future containing widespread use of AI will require a hard electrical infrastructure upgrade equivalent to the initial deployment of electricity and phone lines. The intersection of AI and the electrical grid is a hard and as-yet-unsolved problem. Either way, power infrastructure will drive our destiny as much or more than AI.
- Projections of PV cell improvement and deployment by large energy forecasting agencies have been so wrong for so long that it’s a well known running joke in the energy industry.
Solar beats projections constantly and has been the cheapest available power source for many (if not all) applications for years already. Cheap, abundant, performant batteries already expand the possible surface area for solar deployment, and we can expect this to continue.
I have a hard time understanding what you mean by “proven insufficient.”
- This is another way of saying "EVs are getting cheaper," so it's hard to understand why this is framed negatively.
Moreover, EV batteries are recyclable. The main thing holding back lithium recycling has been the supply chain of used batteries, because the batteries are quite durable.
If the resale value of EVs is falling, that makes it easier to extract the batteries and use the raw material to build better batteries.
- If I need to know the details of a file (eg file extension, size, location, etc) I generally use the Finder for that, yes.
I do frequently convert file types through the Finder. Bulk converting a bunch of photos, for example, is easier to do through a file browser. Even if I were opening a different app to do that, a standard file browser would be the interface I would want for that.
It’s great if more iOS applications are storing files as regular files on the filesystem now. Apple should have encouraged that in the first place. There was some goofy notion they were going to get rid of the idea of “files” with iOS, but that’s not actually a good idea.
- "This theoretical event that I just made up would lead to 100% human extinction"
Neat, go write science fiction.
Hundreds of billions of dollars are currently being lit on fire to deploy AI datacenters while there's an ecosystem destabilizing heat wave in the ocean. Climate change is a real, measurable, present threat to human civilization. "Strong AI" is something made up by a fan fiction author. Grow up.
- Before LLMs were mainstream, rationalists and EA types would come on Hacker News to convince people that worrying about how "weak" AI would be used was a waste of time, because the real problem was the risk of "strong" AI.
Those arguments looked incredibly weak and stupid when they were making them, and they look even stupider now.
And this isn't even their biggest error, which, in my opinion, was classifying AI as a bigger existential risk than climate change.
An entire generation of putatively intelligent people lost in their own nightmares, who, through their work, have given birth to chaos.
- This is how you know these people are not serious:
> Prioritize the interconnection of reliable, dispatchable power sources as quickly as possible and embrace new energy generation sources at the technological frontier (e.g., enhanced geothermal, nuclear fission, and nuclear fusion). Reform power markets to align financial incentives with the goal of grid stability, ensuring that investment in power generation reflects the system’s needs.
None of these are "dispatchable power sources." Grid-scale batteries, for which technology and raw materials are abundant in the United States, are dispatchable power sources, and are, for some reason, not mentioned here.
What they will actually do is eviscerate regulations to allow for more construction of natural gas power plants, but they won't mention that here, because any sane person would immediately identify that as a terrible idea.
- This is suicide:
> We need to build and maintain vast AI infrastructure and the energy to power it. To do that, we will continue to reject radical climate dogma and bureaucratic red tape, as the Administration has done since Inauguration Day. Simply put, we need to “Build, Baby, Build!”
- We actually don’t know whether or not meaningful performance gains with LLMs are available using current approaches, and we do know that there are hard physical limits to electricity generation. Yes, technologies mature over time. The history of most AI approaches since the 60s is a big breakthrough followed by diminishing returns. I have not seen any credible argument that this time is different.
- Billions will die from starvation and conflict in a world where we deploy trillions of dollars to increase electricity usage for AI data centers but nowhere near the same amount of capital to decarbonize electricity production, which we can already do with existing technology. This is the world we live in now.