Jamie @JamieTerbeest - Twitter Profile

Data centers are worse than you think, they enable fundamental evils such as: - cancer research - cures for diseases - climate change and renewable research - aiding people with disabilities - studying bias in criminal justice - urban planning and housing policy - netflix

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Jamie

@JamieTerbeest

2 months ago

@Arcfunmi @grok @grok let’s see a finished side view of this house with beautiful lush landscaping

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Jamie

@JamieTerbeest

2 months ago

@danpeguine I’m doing the exact same thing 😂 I need it to walk me through cloud deployment on a platform I’m not familiar with. I want to have it auto search docs site and learn everything prior to starting (maybe in a knowledge graph)

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Jamie

@JamieTerbeest

2 months ago

I made a neat tool called modelspec. It’s designed to identify the EXACT LLM you need for every use case. I scraped every conceivable site for every LLM ever made, stored in a FalkorDB knowledge graph, and connected to a down select tool. CLI tool included for automated LLM routing. I added a custom 3D viewer for fun. Check out the amazing gravity well feature! https://t.co/j59TLumpSC

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Jamie

@JamieTerbeest

2 months ago

Interesting: there are real engineering reasons glass wins... Spectral transmission is only part of the story. Low-iron tempered glass transmits roughly 91–92% of light in the wavelengths silicon cells care about (about 350–1100 nm). That's excellent, but polycarbonate and many epoxies/acrylics can actually match or come close to that when new. The problem is what happens over 25+ years outdoors. Why glass wins: UV stability. This is the big one. Polycarbonate yellows badly under UV—you've probably seen old skylights or headlight lenses go cloudy and amber. That directly eats into transmission in the blue end of the spectrum, where silicon still harvests meaningful energy. Epoxies are even worse; most epoxy chemistries chalk, yellow, and embrittle under UV within a few years unless heavily stabilized, and stabilizers themselves can absorb useful light. Glass is essentially immune to UV degradation. Scratch and abrasion resistance. Wind-blown sand, hail, cleaning, bird grit—polymers scratch. Each micro-scratch scatters light and lowers transmission. Glass is much harder (Mohs ~6 vs. ~3 for polycarbonate). Moisture and oxygen barrier. Glass is effectively hermetic. Polymers let water vapor and oxygen diffuse through, which corrodes cell metallization, delaminates the encapsulant (EVA), and causes "snail trails" and power loss. A 25-year warranty is very hard to honor with a plastic front sheet. Dimensional stability and stiffness. A module needs a rigid front to protect the fragile silicon wafers from flexing. Glass is stiff and thermally stable; polycarbonate has ~10× the thermal expansion of silicon, which stresses solder joints through daily thermal cycling. Fire rating and soiling. Glass meets Class A fire ratings easily and sheds dust/water better because it's harder and more hydrophilic after weathering. Plastics tend to hold a static charge and accumulate dirt. Cost at scale. Low-iron solar glass is genuinely cheap—roughly $3–6/m² in bulk. Optical-grade UV-stabilized polycarbonate is several times that, and good UV-stable epoxy topcoats add cost on top of whatever substrate they're protecting. Where polymers are used: Flexible and lightweight modules (marine, RV, backpacks, some BIPV) use fluoropolymer front sheets like ETFE or PVDF. ETFE in particular has excellent UV stability and transmission, and it's what you'll find on curved or flexible panels where glass isn't practical. But it's expensive and softer than glass, so it's a niche rather than a replacement. Epoxies specifically are almost never used as the outer layer on any serious outdoor panel—they're a UV disaster.

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