That sort of wealth inequality is really required for this kind of pie-in-the-sky startup culture, though.

Bullshit.

If the company's costs are largely based on hours, whether estimated for a flat fee or actual for billing, it's going to track hours, salary or not. It's very common for certain salaried professionals to be paid for overtime. Sometimes that's straight-time pay, sometimes compensatory time off, sometimes something else.
(IANAL, YMMV, different states may have different laws.)

I'll try that again:

If you're paying salaried employees by the hour, they're not salaried employees./

Not strictly true. It's very common in my field (consulting engineering) to pay, as one of my employee handbooks put it, "1/80 of the bi-weekly salary for every hour over 80 worked in that two week pay period". As a professional, I was exempt from overtime rules, but employees would not be happy working overtime for free when fees collected by the company were generally based on hours worked (whether estimated for a flat fee or actual for hourly projects)

If you're paying salaried employees by the hour, they're not salaried employees./blockquot Not strictly true. It's very common in my field (consulting engineering) to pay, as one of my employee handbooks put it, "1/80 of the bi-weekly salary for every hour over 80 worked in that two week pay period". As a professional, I was exempt from overtime rules, but employees would not be happy working overtime for free when fees collected by the company were generally based on hours worked (whether estimated for a flat fee or actual for hourly projects)

Those who wanted to get an EV, have already got one.

I want one, and I haven't gotten one yet. (don't buy cars very often)

According to the NY Times, there was a meeting planned for 9 days later to figure out how to coordinate firing the laser with the FAA to prevent stupid accidents. So I'm thinking the FAA's 10 days was a WTF reaction to shooting the laser without any coordination.

I mean, if they are not firing the laser at Commercial or GA aircraft indiscriminately, why would the FAA need to close the airspace? And, right off the bat for 10 days?

10 days because there was a previously scheduled meeting 9 days in in the future to discuss protocols for using the laser in coordination with the FAA in order to prevent shooting things down that shouldn't be shot down. But the 12-year old boys in ICE/Border Control decided they couldn't wait to try out their new toy to shoot down a 'dangerous' balloon, showing that they really do need those discussions plus some actual training. Of course a 10 day shutdown wasn't sustainable, it seems to have been more of a shot across the bow.

My car insurance already uses AI chatbots. Couldn't get it to understand needing roadside assistance (part of our policy). Also couldn't handle that we were from out of state. And at one point got into their "press # if . . . " routine that didn't have an option for our non-crash-related situation. Ended up having to hang up and call our rep in our home state and have her handle it, which she had a hard time with also, but at least she could bypass the chatbot. In the end we got assistance from a friendly stranger, instead.

Did he still do his work?

Sort of. At that point he wasn't really trying too hard to do a good job.

Then whats the problem where he did it from?

Inevitably he was going to be asked to visit a job site, come into the office for some upgrade to his laptop, or any number of things that he couldn't do from overseas.

Sounds like you're jealous he got to do his work while sitting on a beach, while you had to waste hours of your time trekking into a miserable office every day.

LOL. I don't think he was sitting on a beach in March in Istanbul, and I was working from home during that time, not commuting (except for the occasional job site visit). Also, the office wasn't miserable, my commute was just long.
I wasn't jealous, I thought it was funny. The main problem I had with it was that he told me, so if my boss asked me about him it would put me in a difficult position. (Thankfully, that never happened, he was quietly fired after a couple of months, they never discussed it, never told anyone why he was let go.)

the only new thing mentioned is maybe using some snake faster compressors

Yeah, but the quoted 30,000 RPM is not that high of a speed for centrifugal compressors using standard refrigerants.
TFA doesn't really say much, but I'm guessing that it's some system that runs CO2 at high pressures and temperatures to cool the CPUs directly, and reject the heat to the outside air without a mechanical refrigeration cycle to raise the heat rejection temperature, since you're already running the CPUs at above-ambient temperatures.

TFA states 35,000 gallons a day is used for a medium sized data center, that's only 24 gallons per minute used. Assuming a 1.5% evaporation rate plus a 1.5% blowdown rate (to keep dissolved solids in check), that's 810 gallons per minute circulated. I think they are conflating water circulating and water used, but even with that they still seem to be off.

TFA doesn't explain anything about the system and seems to have a lot of misunderstanding. For example: 30,000 RPM is not unusual for centrifugal chillers. TFA includes a link to some Trane chiller system literature, but the only RPM references in that is to pumps for water circulation, which tend to be 1750 RPM, sometimes 3,500 RPM, with operating speeds usually controlled with variable speed drives.

You can do it either way, but spraying the condenser water directly into the air stream of a cooling tower is much more common.

The cooling side of a typical water chiller system is closed loop. The heat rejection side is often open loop - but they don't just dump the water, they run it through a cooling tower and blow ambient air across the water spray. An evaporation rate of about 1.5% of the circulated water cools the water close to the wet bulb temperature of the outside air. Numbers may vary, but with a 78F ambient wet bulb, the condenser water can get cooled down to about 85F even when the outside air temperature is 95F. Another 1.5% +/- of the water circulated is bled off and replaced with fresh water to keep solids from building up too much. I have designed systems w/ closed loops for heat rejection; with those you would be lucky to get the water entering the refrigeration condenser down to 105F when outdoor temperatures are 95F, which is obviously much less efficient than cooling the refrigerant with 85F water.

So one person out of a million takes advantage and you want to take it out on the million. In other words, you will only accept work from home once all people are infallible.

Oh, hell no. My commute was a bitch. Work from home was a blessing.
Though, since I worked in the design end of construction, and construction was considered an essential service, even during the Covid work-from-home mandate I was still getting out of the house a couple of times a month to visit construction sites. I feel that working from home 3 or 4 days a week is ideal for me.

I agree, also.
When living in the city, I could read the paper when on a crowded "L" train, even when standing, and the hour commute was only 20 minutes on the train, 20 minutes on a bus, some walking and some waiting.
When living in the suburbs it was an hour and a quarter train ride, with seats almost always available, and I could read, work, play on my laptop, or sleep. Much better (and cheaper) than driving, even if driving would cut off 15 to 30 minutes of commute time.