Sure, there's a lot of science one can do even with a handful of pixels. The spectra tells us the atmospheric composition and the way the pixels change over time can tell us the size, orbit, rotations, perhaps even weather patterns or if the planet has any moons and the composition and size of those.

...Sigh

Without classics we wouldn't have architecture or democracy.
Without philosophy we wouldn't have logic
Without art we wouldn't have beauty or elegant design.
Without religion we wouldn't have modern science or medicine...of course you wouldn't know about the Medieval monks or the Golden Age of Islam if you hadn't studied History, but I suppose that is another 'irrelevant' humanities study.

Certainly there are plenty of classes out there with questionable value. It's a shame that you missed out on good ones. But by and large, humanities are the difference between learning a trade, and getting an education. These are the foundation for how our modern world and modern science came to exist through the thinkers of the Renaissance and Age of Enlightenment. Some of the biggest scientific and technological breakthroughs come from those who are able to look outside their specific field of study for inspiration. That English lit you found such a waste of time...I suppose then Mary Shelley's Frankenstein wasn't worth writing? After all, who cares about one of the first Science Fiction books .. a genre that has inspired millions of STEM graduates to work on great things? Dismissing humanities as useless is a failure to understand where we came from and how we got here.

Prett sure it shows cached images. One or the news sites in mine shows headlines over a day old

Besides the overuse of white space on the page, the single biggest thing they could do is copy the current commenting system. I want the same threshold controls I have currently. I want to see more than two comments fit on the screen at a time. I want them to take up most of the page width. This should be the #1 priority... comments are the lifeblood of Slashdot. Rarely does anyone click on the articles. Screw up the comments and you kill Slashdot.

The biggest thing I'm going to miss is the community here. Where else is there to go? Reddit?

Exactly, there is no shortage of work to do, whether it's fixing crumbling infrastructure, doing maintenance or even just providing customer support. The problem is of course finding the money to do it. Even if the money is available, there's no incentive for a company to spend it. So what is the solution? I suppose you could try to pass a law about maintenance or quality of service, but the companies will fight it tooth and nail. And in the end, even if something like that got passed, it will cost more to the customer for the sake of maintaining a profit margin. Either way, the problem always comes down to money. As a society how do we provide an incentive to do things like this, without driving away business? I don't know that there's an easy answer

Exactly. There are plenty of solutions; the problem is there is currently too much momentum built up in the idea that we must work 40 hrs a week to have a relatively high paying job, with no significant gaps in employment. It's going to be difficult for society to accept anything different.

Taking your example, we could set the full time workweek at 20 hrs. In theory, businesses would have to hire twice the people to cover 40hrs worth of shifts. In fact, many large corporations are already starting to do this with job sharing... two people split a job, each works 2-3 days a week, with one day overlapping to get up to speed. It's very popular with working moms. But these are the exception rather than the norm.