The good news is that Roku has also introduced a recommended content row, that will compile picks from across various streaming services and use AI to point customers toward new shows and movies they might like.

How the fuck does this merit the description "good news?" Here, let me translate this for you:

"We're going to take away the channel selection menu that you put together and prioritized according to your own wishes, and replace it with paid placements and whatever our half-baked Mechanical Turk chundered up. And replace the lower-third of the main screen with video ads."

While you're at it, why not dump dogshit on my plate and call it chocolate cake?

That was 12 years ago. A 12 year out of date critique of a web technology that has had ongoing language updates and two entire rewrites in that interval should be viewed with some suspicion. Also, are you really just citing the title of the article and none of the content?

I'm not even defending PHP here, just questioning lazy kneejerk, "but it sucked once, so now I hate it forever" thinking.

John Oliver on Last Week Tonight did a whole show on McKinsey. The service they actually provide, as has been noted earlier in these comments, is a way for management to deflect responsibility for what they were always planning to do, anyway, which is usually budget cuts and layoffs, and/or massive boosts to executive pay packages.

Here's the show.

I'll disagree a little bit: we have heavy lift rockets bringing mass to orbit at a greater rate than any time in history and new larger and more efficient rockets on the cusp of being brought to use, with next generations planned for the future. Space launch technology -- the actual raw launching of mass to orbit, where it can be useful -- has advanced. And mass to orbit means more fuel -- if we really wanted to get something out there faster.

And that's where our statements arrive at the same conclusion: there's little need to do anything but super efficient deep space probes. While I can quibble with your implied assertion about newer technology not making a difference in ability, in a practical sense given our funding of deep space research, the big tech upgrade has been to data collection devices and communication. We'll have to have way cheaper lift capability before extra fuel to cut time off a project makes any kind of sense. But it is now at least plausible as an option.

(Also, this appears to be the only thread that isn't making Trek or Aliens jokes)

Cheap reliable oil bad.

Read up on the term "external cost", then actually think about the implications for more than 750ms.

You should then realize that oil is not, and never has been, cheap, but rather has been monstrously costly, and all those costs are coming due.

This (*cough*) game was essentially invented almost fourteen years ago by Alex Steacy of LoadingReadyRun -- as a joke.

And then someone actually wrote it.

Google's geniuses decided that switching tabs is something one needs to do with a mouse.

CTRL-PgDown / CTRL-PgUp. Geez...

And before you ask: Reposition the current tab using CTRL-SHIFT-PgDn / CTRL-SHIFT-PgUp.

"...Although I am unable to go into specifics, we had to evaluate our priorities and had to make the difficult decision to discontinue the service."

"Sensors detect Microsoft OneDrive contract, Captain..."

Narrator: "It was not, in fact, cheaper to host their files in The Cloud."

Someone smart with an RPi and a bit of code can intercept NNTP queries.

"Um, Actually..."

You meant NTP, the Network Time Protocol. NNTP is Network News Transfer Protocol, used to pass around USENET posts.

You'd have to take in a fair bit of formaldehyde for it to be a problem.

Define "fair bit."

Does the outgassing from petrochemical foam, force-fed through your nasal cavities and into your lungs for eight hours every night, constitute a "fair bit?"

Incidentally, a circle with a radius of 60 miles centered around the VMWare campus in Palo Alto includes: Monterey, most of Carmel-by-the-Sea, Salinas, Hollister, Manteca, a fair chunk of Stockton, Fairfield, Rocktram (Napa just barely escapes), Novato, Point Reyes Station, and the Farallon Islands.

"Tell me you don't live around here, without saying you don't live around here..."

On December 1, there was a story on SFGate -- the online component to the San Francisco Chronicle -- covering an email Broadcom management sent to all employees announcing:

• They're going to lay off 1267 workers,
• A mandatory return-to-office policy.

Said Broadcom CEO Hock Tan, "Remote work does not exist at Broadcom," but then clarified that sales workers and employees living more than 60 miles away from a Broadcom office would be able to stay remote. "Any other exception, you better learn how to walk on water, I'm serious."

The mandatory return-to-office reportedly went in to effect December 4. Now it seems his latest Genius Plan is to squeeze his customers, thinking he's got them over a barrel.

You'll forgive me if I'm not the least bit motivated to apply to work for the guy.