Wait, if he's not up for re-election... could that mean he's genuinely interested in engaging younger audiences?

The implications boggle the mind!
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There is an unspoken assumption by abusers that the abusive way they're treating people is normal and that it's just that the person complaining is "too sensitive."

This is literally another form of abuse in and of itself. It's called minimizing.

Linus is playing the "people want me to be PC" card, and mixing it in with some anti-American-ism for popularity.

Nobody's asking him to be PC. Not many people are asking him to be friendly or polite. People are asking him to not be publicly abusive, to not be a bully, and to recognize the impact his words have on others. It is perfectly possible to be an effective manager and leader without being abusive and bullying. Stick to the facts, among other things.

Ie:

"Your code check-in appears to cause a bunch of compile errors, so I've rolled it back. Also, I've noticed that this isn't the first time. We're a large-scale project and it is helpful if contributors extensively validate their contributions."

Not:

"Don't you know how to validate your code? Stop wasting my time! Come back to me when you've evolved past a chimpanzee." ...and also not:

"Hello! Thank you for your code check-in! Now, I'm sorry to have to be the bearer of bad news, but there's a small problem with your code. If it's not too much trouble...." etc etc.

This is why I've been pushing to argue in favor of reducing fossil fuel use not from an environmental point of view, but from an economic one. People can bury their heads in the sand when it comes to science, but people always listen when money is involved.

Even though the US imports about a third of our petroleum, that's still equivalent to hundreds of billions of dollars per year leaving our economy. If we transition to renewable energies, that money stays around a bit longer.

Renewable energies might have a larger up-front capital cost (but not by much, and it's getting better every day), but the long term costs are overwhelmingly favorable.

With the current crash in oil prices it should be clear that our economy is in the hands of foreign interests. We are hostages to international petroleum markets. Let's develop domestic sources to free ourselves from foreign influence. Remember: There's no reason why oil couldn't have been this cheap all along, and the price only went down right when we were posed to start reducing imports in favor of domestic natural gas production. We're being played!

(Oh, and if we happen to mitigate the environmental damage we're doing in the process and avoid global catastrophe, I guess that'll be a bonus...)
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"Watch this space for updates."

If only there were places on the web one could go to watch live streaming coverage of event such as this, or liveblogs. Or a service where small messages containing updates could be broadcast to other users, searchable by special keywords called "hashtags"....

Well, no. The Shuttle's SRBs were a lot more than just a tube full of explosives.

They had thrust vector control; hydraulic power units, gimbal nozzles, control hardware. Electrical subsystems. Self contained navigation hardware. Range safety hardware. And of course everything was triple or quadruple redundant for reliability.
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The Shuttle's SRBs were reusable, and they reused them (or at least parts of them) pretty much every launch.

The big orange liquid fuel tank was not reused, though.
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I think you're misconstruing what is actually meant when physicists talk about the universe possibly being a hologram.

They don't mean the contemporary "Star Trek Holodeck" type of hologram. They mean that all of the information about the 3D volume of the universe can be contained and encoded within a 2D boundary.

This is not a mathematically rigorous concept of the universe, but if they can nail it down it might have some application in explaining how gravity works and the ultimate granularity of the universe (e.g. how small the smallest possible fundamental particles can be). But in no sense would this prove, or even really be evidence supporting, the notion that our universe is a simulation within some "larger reality."
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Actually... It is being rationalized on both sides of the debate, not one. Logic is being used, but only for one set of values, leading to a mistaken impression that one is right, as opposed to just having an opinion. Nobody is on any higher ground than "I have buddies here that agree with me". The reason for that is that this article was never about choosing which lives to save. The poster I replied to, in order to pose as a 'smarter than the rest of us' person, attempted to pervert it into that. But since he based it on a misunderstanding of why it came up in the first place, replying to my post about the actual value of the individual lives is fruitless. This scenario doesn't lend itself to this discussion.

None of what you said has any relevance to why the number of children and infants was brought up by the news outlet. If you want to have a hypothetical debate about the value of children, then let's talk about a scenario involving life boats.

It doesn't.

Yeah, you can tell how unknown he is by the fact a movie was just released about him.

I wish contrarianism didn't beocome so popular on this site. I mean, really, taking a shot at Hawking?

I heard your entire post in my head in Seven of Nine's voice.

Adults have lived some of their life. Kids have missed out on things most believe everbody should be able to do before they die, like their first kiss.

Everybody here actually understands this, I have no idea why you all picked now to suddenly act like you're Mr. Spock.

What's the value of an asshole that spends his evening judging the value of others he has never met?

"The cost savings is great, but isn't the biggest driver for me, it's mainly the principle that I don't own the device I paid for, and I'm really tired of having cat litter everything in my home."

So exercise your rights as a consumer to research beforehand and not buy it. Or return it. Or modify it, as you have. Or, for god sakes, ask your vet or friends with cats or reddit for advice on having cat litter everywhere (I believe the most common solution is a covered box with fairly high side.) You can also teach your cat to pee/crap in the toilet, believe it or not. There are little "litter box" inserts that reportedly make it pretty easy; the cat goes "oh, another litter box" and uses it for a week or two, and then you remove the insert, and if the cat notices, they go *shrug* and still use it. No more litter, no more stink.

But for god sakes....I was around on Slashdot when the fist inkjet printer companies started chipping their cartridges. I also learned about Gillette in...either middle school or high school. That was a century ago, if not more. The "handle is free, the blades are disposable and we have a very healthy profit margin on them" model is quite, quite old. Why are people surprised? Especially if you read Slashdot, why didn't you do research on it?

Your robotic, do-everything catbox would've cost substantially more if the company were not figuring on a continuing revenue stream. In fact, it might have cost so much that nobody would've bought it.