That’s about in line with what I figured. Iirc they are all hourly, not salaried, and there are (anecdotally) very few weeks that are under 40 hours. 170k less $30k in benefits (ex- my fam healthcare for 3 ppl costs me $22k/yr - add disability, life, retirement contributions…) is 140k in direct pay. At $50/hr, that’s 2800hrs.
Man, that’s a lot of words. If I read it right, the base rate for a full time driver with more than 4 years in the position is $35.xx/hr. With most good benefits packages in the 20-40k range, and allowing for a few adjustments, I’m guessing that the 170k is probably something like 2600-3000 hours a year. Most 40hr jobs with benefits are only about 1850-1900 hours/yr, including holidays and paid leave.
From some digging the "amazing" part is that it's floating. I'm not sure how they do distribution and collection, but from the UMA page it's a vapor distillation process - same as the old survival distillation process but on a floating platform. Solar energy heats the water, evaporating some, and it is passed over a cooler to condense the water. The "no brine" claim comes from the fact that they so inefficient that the localize increase in brine concentration due to the extraction of desalinated water is within the limits for not requiring treatment - they're just lifting evaporate from the surface and (I'm guessing) using a low power circulation loop to draw water from below the surface as their condensation cooling loop. I suppose it's possible that the cooling may even be a convectively driven vs a photoelectric conversion and standard pump, which would be useful for low maintenance. It's a cool project, no doubt. I'm still not sure how they're doing bulk collection and distribution of 1000kg of water a day. Maybe that's the 17% energy figure. Maybe it's someone else's problem to solve.
Current techniques appear to use around 1.8-2kWh/m3 for desalination. That would imply that this uses only 350-400Wh. You’d think you could her better production from 9m2 just going up a few solar panels and putting a conventional plant. I presume the author has no fucking clue how desalination of solar heating and distillation works and/or hasn’t even read the patent to find out how this works.
Good on the student team for thinking creatively, but they seem to have only two engineers but four managers on the team. And not a single coherent description from those four managers, who seem very proud of taking credit for the students’ work.
This is my biggest fear with BG - that I'll be sucked in. I'm probably 90% through a playthrough of W3 (after several abandoned starts) and now I kind of don't want to go do the final battle because I enjoy the game/setting/storytelling. I realy need to just finish it off as I'm somewhat OP for where I am (haven't done more than dipped briefly into the expansions). I don't want it to end, but I'm also avoiding starting other games as I'm worried I won't come back and finish it. lol
I’ve kept 10 on my workstation, and let my laptop go to 11. I have only one beef with 11 and that I’d that I’ve had some taskbar folders I used as shortcut menus, and they take an extra click to get to on 11. Otherwise it’s practically transparent. Feels more like W10 SP3, really.
I’m sure it would, but someone must think of the children, and make sure that the on board software is up to date for safety’s sake. (I can hear the money changing hands to fill the election coffers of the congressional oversight committee members even as I type this).
Once a month, on average, I’d guess. I just thought it’d be a nice way to game in the living room. It is, and I’d buy it again. Prior to opening it I would go months between times that I play. I wish I had more time to customize it, really, as the control scheme offers so many possibilities. But I can game or I can bind, and not both.
A century ago, in America, the largest retailer - Sears & Roebuck - tried shifting from handwritten letters to typed to their customers. There was a huge backlash because the typed letters came across as cold and impersonal. The company (temporarily) went back to handwritten letters, at greater expense, until the practice was more widespread.
The phone number gatekeeping is annoying. I think ChatGPT requires it. I can’t use it because it won’t accept my phone number as I only use VoIP numbers. Never mind they used to be land and cell numbers I posted there. Same with some banking sites. No sms 2FA allowed because the gateway they use can’t jump to voip - the codes just never arrive.
War is death.