That's a feature lots of people are asking for.

How much of those gains were wiped out by patching for Spectre?

I use several old computers myself but noticed a fairly significant performance degradation after all the patching for Spectre and similar CPU flaws.

But the transition is still pretty disruptive. Entire industries around making horse-power available ubiquitously were pretty rapidly made much less relevant. Maybe the net number of jobs were the same but it's not certain that a farrier and a hay farmer could readily switch to being an auto mechanic.

I wish I could find the article I recently read but there are existing processes used in litigation over pollution that attempts to allocate such costs appropriately. It's research intensive, but is based on looking at how much of a pollutant overall is generated, then allocating it to the various polluters according to whatever weighting is the most reasonable. The strategy has apparently been quite successful in the courts.

It's not unlike the work done by Kenneth Feinberg in administering the 9/11 Victims Compensation Fund and TARP.

You can contribute to an IRA with those other contributions, but the contributions to the IRA won't be tax deductible like they normally would be.

And when their payment system glitches and doesn't properly record the payment?

If you are saying you've never paid something where there was a mistake in their system that didn't record it, then you're really lucky. More than once I've started making payments by rounding up to the next whole dollar and making the cents the same as the month number, just so I could prove to some company or another that I actually paid when I was supposed to (e.g. $39.99 internet bill becomes $40.02 in February).

I don't know. A good slashdot analogy must involve cars!

3. so many tech companies are doing 10%+ layoffs that the market is about to be flooded with great refurbished business-class machines and phones

But efficiency isn't about quality or safety. Efficiency is strictly the amount of output for a given input.

I you have a building team with 5 actual employees and 5 undocumented workers (off the books, paid in cash), they can build more than a team of just 5 actual employees. In both cases, the denominator is 5 employees, but in the undocumented case, there is more output, so it's "more efficient" in a strictly capitalist sense.

That said, better enforcement of workplace safety rules will likely cause a decrease in output as well, leading to a lower "efficiency".

I wonder if making it harder for undocumented workers to enter the country is part of this.

Building was "more efficient" when there were more "unofficial/off-the-books workers". Now there's fewer of them so more on-the-books workers need to be hired or less work gets done.

Do you realize there's more than one definition of "moderate". You're taking the meaning of the noun and applying it to the verb. In the verbal form, it's similar to "govern" and "regulate", having nothing to do with a "moderate" stance.

For example, I was once the moderator of a subreddit devoted to a children's cartoon. I petitioned to take it over when it was getting inundated with pornography. I established rules for the subreddit, deleted all the porn and sexualizations, and blocked users who posted that. Then I turned it over to other mods who had shown themselves interested in keeping the subreddit G-rated.

I was a moderator, governing or regulating the content on the subreddit, and stand by what I did. My status as a moderator had nothing to do with my being moderate or not.

Okay, boomer. The 50's are calling and they want their pocket protector back.

Did they give the researchers the passwd files (or other equivalent)? That alone makes the process a lot easier. And they already have all the usernames?

More than 20 years ago there was some password cracker called something John that could quickly do a dictionary attack against the shadow file. But you had to have access to that file in the first place.

Let me guess... you'll be on here later complaining about how they're living on a tent on the sidewalk after your policies have driven them out of their housing.

Rogue One was the last of the movies I enjoyed and like you, I didn't care much for the 3 sequels. The actors, sets, filmography, special effects, and music were great, but the writing and story-telling were disappointing.

However, I've really enjoyed the TV shows that Disney has produced. The Mandalorian and Boba Fett were really solid and "felt" a lot like the original movie. Kenobi was pretty good, and though it didn't feel as strongly written as the Mandalorian, it did bring a lot of nostalgia. Andor was also really solid too - it started slow, but by the season finale, I found myself wanting more.