I remember being shocked at how BLATANT they were about using RTO as a cudgel to break up their employees’ unionization attempt, but then things went silent for more than a year (wheels of justice turn slow, and all of that).
“The labor board can order companies to change policies and reinstate employees with backpay, but it lacks the authority to force companies to pay punitive damages or hold executives personally liable for violations” - The angry primate part of my brain might want more (they were REALLY blatant about their union busting), but I’ll take it.
Not angry primate brain, but just normal parent brain. Why would a CEO not try to get away with this if all that happens is a little backpay and reinstatement? They will skirt any and every law they can if they won't be thrown into prison, and even then, well, it still happens.
“serfdom” is a good way to characterize it, since it’s a lot harder to save money (and eventually be able to rent/buy a real place to live) if you have to go out for meals, entertainment, and meeting your social needs.
“Giovanni Costantino, the chief executive of the Italian Sea Group, the company that owns Perini Navi, said that when operated properly, the Bayesian was ‘unsinkable.’”
I assign a rather low prior probability to any ship being “unsinkable”, so I’ll need better evidence than that before my posterior probability becomes more than minuscule
It's possible to come close. This is a U.S Coast Guard response boat being tested.[1] Using big straps and winches, it was pulled all the way over until it was upside down. It immediately righted itself.
Most modern rescue boats and lifeboats are self-righting. With proper hull design and enough foam flotation blocks in the right places, boats can be made to right themselves. Unless the boat is chopped into bits, it will float.
It's worth it for those classes of vessels. Their job is to handle very rough conditions. The price of such extreme stability is a rough ride.
Self-righting yachts exist.[2] But they look like rescue boats with nicer interiors.
Many recreational sailboats have enough flotation to survive 90 degrees of roll, with the sails flat on the water. This is called a "knockdown". In small craft, it's usually embarrassing but not a disaster. Larger sailing craft are usually built to avoid rolling that far.
There's a conflict between luxury and seaworthyness. The things you want for rough conditions, such as high freeboard and few openings, conflict with what people want in a luxury craft.
Bayesian apparently couldn't go past 45 degrees without water pouring in.
A stupidly tall and heavy mast allowed wind to push it that far over with no sails raised.
> Self-righting yachts exist.[2] But they look like rescue boats with nicer interiors.
> Many recreational sailboats have enough flotation to survive 90 degrees of roll, with the sails flat on the water. This is called a "knockdown". In small craft, it's usually embarrassing but not a disaster. Larger sailing craft are usually built to avoid rolling that far.
Offshore racing rules tend to specify things like minimum angle of vanishing stability (AVS), they tend to be around 130 degrees. Similarly yachts sold in the EU must fulfill ISO 12217-2 which, AFAIU, also requires a minimum AVS of 130 degrees.
Not sure if that applies to the Bayesian, it might be old or big enough to be exempt from these rules.
A former captain of the Bayesian wrote a 2-page note.[1]
"The downflooding angle for Bayesian was around 40-45 degrees". The Angle of Vanishing Stability was, he says, in the 75 to 90 degree range, depending on whether the moveable keel was down. The movable keel, he writes, weighed 60 tons. It had to be down when sails were raised, but usually wouldn't be lowered in harbor. There were 200 tons of fixed keel ballast.
Yes, I saw that writeup linked to in the discussion earlier. I'm no naval architect, but I'd imagine for such a big boat an AVS of 90 degrees sounds reasonable. But a downflooding angle of only 40-45 degrees, that's just bonkers.
The former captain says that's the angle at which the generator and HVAC air intakes flood. Those are closeable if the equipment is turned off. The US Coast Guard definition is "Downflooding angle means the static angle from the intersection of the vessel's centerline and the waterline in calm water to the first opening that cannot be closed weathertight and through which downflooding can occur."
So downflooding angle safety certification for bad weather apparently assumes the boat being in a buttoned-up condition. But, buttoned up, the yacht has no air conditioning or non-battery power. One article mentions that lowering the moveable keel for more stability results in a much noisier environment below decks. So, rigged fully for bad weather, it ceases to be a luxury yacht.
The ship was in harbor, at anchor. That's not usually a situation in which a ship is rigged for worst case conditions.
Here's a picture of the infamous mast.[1] It's not just a pole. There's a lot of structure with surface area. Nobody seems to have anticipated that wind on the bare mast system was enough to knock the boat down. But it was.
That's just an overview. The real question is, how did a heavily ballasted sailboat with no sails raised get knocked down by wind alone? Other boats nearby did not report large waves.
Nobody has really answered that yet.
About the best you can do is a boat that is fundamentally buoyant or (aka positive buoyancy) via a combination of materials and sealed spaces, which basically means you can submerge it, flip it, fill it with water, and it buoyancy is enough that it will come to the surface.
But if you overload it or damage it and compromise air spaces or break off or crush lighter-than-water materials (e.g., styrofoam filled fixtures and voids), then it's no longer unsinkable. So you're right, nothing is unsinkable. Not even when "operated properly" and maintained properly, there's no guarantee you won't run into unforeseen conditions. An unsinkable boat is as ridiculous as an uncrashable airplane or automobile.
That makes sense - if they were using a cryptographic hash then people could get around it by making tiny changes to the file. I’ve used some reverse image search tools, which use perceptual hashing under the hood, to find the original source for art that gets shared without attribution (saucenao pretty solid). They’re good, but they definitely have false positives.
Now you’ve got me interested in what’s going on under the hood, lol. It’s probably like any other statistical model: you can decrease your false negatives (images people have cropped or added watermarks/text to), but at the cost of increased false positives.
Rather simple methods are surprisingly effective [1]. There's sure to be more NN fanciness nowadays (like Apple's proposed NeuralHash), but I've used the algorithms described by [1] to great effect in the not-too-distant past. The HN discussion linked in that article is also worth a read.
This year when I checked my voter registration I noticed that the “phone number” field in my profile was not marked as required, and there was a little info icon that said “this is public information” when I clicked on it.
I removed my phone number and the number of text messages diminished (not all the way, but noticeably better). Not a magic bullet, but worth checking.
Yeah, taking adderall for the first time was a LOT like the first time I put on glasses. I never knew what it was like to be functional before that. There were deficits in every area of my life. From the obvious like focusing on work/school stuff (wish I’d found out before taking 6 years to get a BA), to stuff that completely surprised me (my handwriting improved, and I no longer have ZERO sense of direction).
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