From wikipedia it sounds like the advantage is not really speed of recharging but just that it will repeatedly fire for as long as the lever is turned without any other actions or pauses needed in between. Maybe not losing 10% (or whatever?) of the time on bolt feeding was sufficient advantage? Maybe the ease of operation in a hectic battle situation was advantage enough? Or maybe the continuous power requirement made it more feasible to use multiple soldiers at once working at higher speed, without them having to synchronize starting/stopping/waiting every x seconds?
I think rahimnathwani's point was not that they get extra pay so it's fine, but that it seems economically irrational to overwork fewer staff if it's actually more expensive.
Here in Norway it's similar with doctors, they get paid a lot because they work crazy hours. But the doctors' association is fighting to keep it that way, as the old timers who didn't burn out along the way enjoys the high pay more than their spare time.
It's hard to argue you're underpaid if, as a result of short staffing, you're getting paid more (both in absolute terms and per unit of effort) than you signed up for.
What is your question? If you just want to know why Ulysses is seen as influential you can start with the wikipedia article. If you want to try again to read it you can try to read it with a guide of some kind, there are multiple, I used this one https://www.ulyssesguide.com/1-telemachus.
No question. It's completely against my being to consider something as good if it can't be enjoyed without a guide. I hated the tendency in computer science to hide simple definitions behind jargon. I'm okay with stuff having hidden meaning, with texts being interpretable, I'm not okay with it just being gibberish when not studying it in closest detail.
I'm aware that some think this book is influential, I'm not clear on how widespread that belief is. Also, whether regular readers really like it. And no, Wikipedia does not clear that up.
>I don't understand why people don't get this simple fact.
Some people think identity and the continuity of consciousness are based on information or computation, and not on specific physical matter or soul-like constructs, so for them a transfer of all relevant information would constitute a transfer of consciousness and identity. From this perspective (leaving aside questions of practicality) "you yourself looking from the biological body at somebody else in the computer" is exactly as valid as "you yourself looking from inside the computer at somebody else in the biological body" (and in fact the whole idea that you have to choose one or the other as "the real you" becomes moot on this view).
Of course it's a difficult metaphysical conundrum but to say that your view of things is "a simple fact" when the basic scientific materialist worldview of today points at least as much in the opposite direction is a bit overconfident.
If you were to slowly replace your brain with a cybernetic appliance, you could also have perfect continuity.
Not that it matters; we sleep and wake up, no one freaks out daily that they were unconscious for hours.
No reason to suspect waking up in 3030 after being unfrozen or in 6045 after being cybernetically reanimated would be any more disconcerting physiologically than an extended coma patients experience.
Your continuity is just as illusionous as your free will.
>I've never seen anything like it for a technically optional tool
If you broaden the comparison (only a little bit) it looks suspiciously like employees being forced to train their own replacement (be that other employees, or factory automation), a regular occurrence.
Yeah this is the thing I think many don't want to see. Imagine a bunch of farm laborers being trained to use a tractor/reaper early on its development. Certainly they'd think it's cool and convenient, because it is. But if it works out, then most of those farm laborers are now obsolete, and a handful of them can now replace the rest. And indeed this is why agricultural employment went from the majority of jobs to a footnote.
At least where I live the PFAS disaster is so widely known and publicized that I would say it's fair to leave it out of scope for this article. Oh and "who got hurt" - basically everyone worldwide for the foreseeable future.
> At least where I live the PFAS disaster is so widely known and publicized that I would say it's fair to leave it out of scope for this article
Doesn't that kind of assume that I and everyone too also been impacted, so we should have read about it in our local news? I don't think 3M's PFAS disaster ever been mentioned in either my country's newspaper, nor my local paper, my first time reading about it here, so would be nice if the article didn't make such assumptions.
I would think, but maybe not. In the US, the story was enormously reported on, perhaps second only to the Epstein files, with a long tail that still persists now. They are also called "forever chemicals", if you've heard that term.
Many municipalities across the country were/are forced to upgrade their water filtration systems - a huge cost, possibly too little and too late. I know many other countries are taking action too, but I don't know how it compares to how the US responded.
> They are also called "forever chemicals", if you've heard that term.
Yes, of course I've heard about PFAS before, but not that data centers were polluting public water systems with PFAS, did you mean earlier that you've read stories about PFAS in general in your papers? That'd put your previous comment in another light, I thought you specifically talking about the "more than 11,000 U.S. public water systems alleging PFAS contamination" part, not PFAS' in general.
I'm not the commenter you originally replied to. Regardless, I think you might have misinterpreted the article:
3M is a huge manufacturer in material sciences, probably best known for adhesives/tape.
They were one of the high-profile sources of PFAS (Dupont is another that springs to mind).
The affected population is global. The "11,000 U.S. public water systems alleging PFAS contamination" is part of that global impact, not something related to datacenters.
They moved away from PFAS due to the lawsuits.
The topic of this article is: One of the things 3M stopped producing was a large piece of the supply chain for the fluid cooling process in datacenters.
Did you read the submission article? Seems they tried to use it for cooling data centers and were running a bunch of experiments, one example:
> Intel ran proof-of-concept data center cooling with Novec 649. The technology worked beautifully. The chemistry underneath it was poisoning groundwater.
I'm just chiming in with the best of intentions to say that I also think you're misinterpreting some things in a way that would be much more effort to explain than you simply reading the article again with this in mind.
As a case study, the Trump admin has done all those things (except the littering I guess) so I would say less likely since none of them have gone to prison.
The poor and marginalized tend to be incarcerated at much higher rates for lesser crimes than the richer and/or powerful whose crimes are much broader and more impactful on society.
The system in question in Essex is broken because it penalizes one race at higher rates than another race which commits the same crimes.
I guess the situation with boats is the same as with land speed records? In the limit, the fastest boat simply becomes an airplane just touching the water.
Indeed. The really interesting bit is that the power required is high enough that the wind can be used to cover distances far greater than a fuel tank. And, given their weight nuclear reactors don’t fly (as much as due to the kind of ships they’re in, granted).
I think one of the reasons politicians can be bought so cheaply by interest groups is that the opponents of the interests groups have practically no money. The interest groups don't need to spend a ton as long as they spend more than their opponents.
The linked post talks about the effectiveness of AIPAC but fails to mention how much is spent by say, Palestinian interest groups. Perhaps there's a good reason for this: do Palestinian groups have any money to spend on US elections? Try fundraising in Gaza right now.
Likewise, business interest groups have a lot more money to spend on elections than, say, environmental groups. The latter have to beg for small donations from individuals just to stay afloat. Thus, it's relatively easy for business groups to outspend environmental groups. To win an auction, you just have to be the highest bidder.
This assumes enough of the small dollar population agrees on anything to meaningfully compete on the cost of buying.
They may on paper, but of course a lot of money goes to dividing us up come election time. What you are suggesting is no shortcut - it would rather be almost like inventing an alternative political party.
Exactly, that is the proof. We are already losing this game. Trying to outspend lobbyists using some kind of crowdfunding sounds interesting at first, but is just restating the same terms on which the game is already rigged, which means you will just lose again.
I think there might be a way to make it work, however you would have to be very aware and plan for a way to not reinvent the same losing dynamics. It might not be possible.
Humorous of you to think they would be against AIPAC.
Gulf states have little to nothing in common with Palestinians. Citizens of most gulf states are born into relative wealth merely by the fact their countries are rich in petrodollars. They build lavish cities and have standards of living (for their citizens) that increasingly put the West to shame. They are "diversifying" from oil by building massive AI datacenters and essentially catering to Westerners who want to live unencumbered by Western pretensions of civic duty, avoid taxes in their home countries, etc. They make deals with the Israelis and have for over a decade now, even if under the table. They buy American weapons, their elites have frequently been educated at the most exclusive British or American universities. They like expensive Italian cars. Money is money.
Meanwhile Palestinians are born poor, in a failed state with no autonomy. Some UAE crypto influencer is yolo gambling away more money than most Palestinian kids will see in their lifetimes. They live under an occupation and have basically no rights in that regard. They are poor. Just google image a picture of Gaza vs the UAE. It just doesn't even compare. Maybe on some level they are both Arabs. But the same rule applies. Money is money.
The gulf state governments gave up on trying to care about them many many decades ago. They realized it was cheaper (and more prosperous) to go along to get along with the United States and Israel. If they hadn't, their capitals might look like Tehran right now. Over the years it became easy to blame other people for the problem - Iran, even the Palestinians themselves. They have long since washed their hands of caring.
Don't conflate the Gulf States with Palestinians, or associate them with anyone on the losing side of anything when it comes to money and power. They are as corrupt and bought-in to this system of wealth/might makes right as anyone.
Feels like a lot of words to avoid thinking about “black” money and favors in kind. For example, nobody would include Trump’s golden bar from Switzerland in such ann estimate - repeated ad nauseam for all lobbying corruption.
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