Isn't this kind of basic power engineering that is well solved for every data center and industrial users. You should know what your power draw is and the voltage/current of your feeds. It's not completely simple math, but a well-solved engineering problem.

Doesn't show a lot of confidence in planning if you can't do electrical 101. Also, data center in Palo Alto? Doesn't seem like the ideal locations as the data center can be located almost anywhere. Real estate costs, grid capability and costs per megawatt-hr are are usually the critical factors.

Although an interesting story, the number of power outages from vehicles (including delivery trucks) hitting power is probably much greater. Just doesn't make the news. On the other hand, taking out your average street corner pole probably only knocks out power to a dozen or so homes. Drones can do it more efficiently and take out major (or minor) distribution lines beyond the reach of cars & trucks.

Seems a little bit out of Adobe's area of expertise. I think Netflix was just dropped in the headline to make it sound like they had a deal to fix the problem.

If you need to use Creative Suite you don't really have a lot of competition and it's mostly used for work. Making Netflix hard to use and difficult to log into will just encourage users to cancel their subscription -- until something "must see" hits and then cancel it again.

The whole point of Netflix and other streaming services is that they are nearly frictionless to use -- the exact opposite of the CS experience.

Also, CS only works on a limited number of devices (some phones, PCs and Macs) -- netflix needs to support Firesticks, smart TVs and lots of other devices.

This is really just a clickbait press release promoting Adobes nascent AI capabilities.

Creating HTML emails is a very dark art. Every email client (from Outlook to Gmail on Android) is broken, but in different ways. Each has their own acceptable CSS and formatting. And often no fonts or external CSS.

Coding emails is 10x harder than webpages. And you have to make emails work even if images aren't downloaded.

It's a mess. Services like litmus.com make it somewhat easy to test across a variety of clients, but still hard.

As much as I like plain text, marketers like fancy formatted emails.

Code like it's 2000!

Although I like Teams (it's not terrible), I wish there was better channel management. I'd like to be able to archive a channel when I project is done, split channels or merge them.

However, the meeting features are really good. The automatic closed captions and transcripts are great for meetings and note taking.

The inviting users outside your company is pretty funky and not very intutitive.

Why don't we read about these kind of loses from modern banks? .... Oh wait:

https://www.npr.org/transcript....

https://www.bloomberg.com/opin...

I guess part of the difference is that these were internal screw-up rather than hacks, and mostly the investors did not lose money.

I couldn't understand why anyone we be opposed to programming in RUST for the peloton code. Maybe not my first choice, but nothing wrong with it.

The 70's called and they want their timesharing system back. Wasn't this available as TSO in 1974?

Mainframes we're the original cloud.

Some companies only respond with "confirming employment, and hire and departure dates" for reference checks. This minimizes the possibility of compliance issues. Individual managers are not permitted to provide any, or any more, information. They are instructed to redirect reference check to HR.

It's not a totally unreasonable approach as it prevents a vindictive manager from disseminating incorrect information. It also protects against law suits.

It's cheaper to (not) hire more support reps than creating a really smart support rep. If you make support painful enough you can discourage all but the most persistent customers.

Building a smart chatbot is a very different problem than managing a call center/support center. Mostly the point of support is to do it just as well (or poorly) as the competitors. Few companies compete on "best support" as by the time you need support they've already sold you the product and you are just costing them money.

I think chatbots are mostly used as one more speedbump in getting to an actual human for customer service.

The are the equivalent of "music on hold" when you're dealing with a website. The chatboxt asks a lot of questions to slow you down and discourage all but the most persistent customer.

On most sites the chatbox requires you to enter your customer information -- stuff like name, customer id, order number, etc. and then like the phone real world when you do get connected to an agent, none of that information pops on screen so they have to ask you the same info again.

And like the real world, your chances of getting disconnected while waiting for an agent are really high.

The physical equivalent would be a really long queue where you have to fill out many forms and randomly someone comes and kicks you out of line. If you ever do get to the front, the agent throws your forms in the trash.

There is no effort put into good chat bots... they are just designed to slow the "because of unusually high demand your wait time may be .... forever".

It's more than testing functionality in an office or lab. Does the software work in real world conditions? Are the options that seem to make sense in a calm test lab usable when some restaurant employee is screaming about a late pick up?

It also develops empathy with the frontline workers and customers. It's a great opportunity to get first hand info about what customers like or dislike about the app. Also useful to hear about new features and ones that seemed like a good idea at the time.

It doesn't seem that hard of task -- certainly less complex than writing software.

Most call centers ask managers and executives to occasionally take calls, and stores put executives in front of customers.

If the job that you're asking people to do is so terrible that you are unwilling to do it even one day a month, maybe you should find a new employer.

No sympathy here.

What's with the dolphins? Perhaps not the brightest animal in the sea, but not necessarily the dumbest. In the animal hierarchy I think dolphins rank pretty high.

I've wondered why some greener landscaper don't use a small 4-stroke generator and plug-in leaf blowers. This avoids the problem of swapping expensive batteries and the lower power and wight of battery operated leaf blowers.

It seems like there is an opportunity here for a compromise between really dirty 2-stroke leaf blowers and battery operated ones.

Some landscapers in our area do offer "no leaf blower" services and use old fashion rakes. They seem to be pretty successful -- and slightly more expensive.

The answers are mostly truthful, if a little misleading. You'd get the same response if you took your car into a dealership for repairs and asked why the genuine Toyota parts are more expensive than the third-party options. It seems fair, there might be more quality control and fit & finish on the manufacturer-supplied part than a second source. The dealer/Apple repair shop will also stand by the part if there is a problem.

However (mostly) with cars, use of a second-source part does not void the warrenty. For example, Ford can't require Ford-branded oil in your car.