Thinking Machines Corporation was building 8192 processor machines back in 1987.

It doesn't have to be "totally free" to save me money. Currently to e-file costs around $45. It's nearly a guarantee that the government can run the service cheaper than that. Virginia had a service like that nearly a decade ago and it cost them about $40k/year for the entire state. Lobbying from the tax return industry killed it and now every taxpayer in the state pays on the order of $55 each year to e-file. Millions of dollars funneled to H&R Block, Intuit, etc... because they bought off some representatives. Not once has any service saved me a dime off of my state taxes. I can't think of any money they have saved me on federal taxes either. The only reason I use them is because there is no free way to e-file if you have a middle class income.

Are you seriously advocating for people to send their taxes to multiple services (paying a fee for each) to determine which can find your lowest tax bill?

Nobody is saying that they want to outlaw accountants. That's a gross misreading of the law. If you want to having someone look for savings in your tax bill then that's your prerogative. If you don't think those people are worth their fee because your return is simple then a free government service will probably save you money. The only people who lose are the middlemen who take a fee and fail to find any extra savings, which is an extremely common situation.

$31 million is like a couple of hours of profit for Apple. This is a slap on the wrist.

Keep in mind we're talking about a project that's roughly the same length as Paris to Liechtenstein. It's not a trivial undertaking.

This is like saying that someone who got in a car and was then killed when a semi-truck had a blow out right next to him and pushed him into a ditch didn't have an accident because it was his choice to get in the car.

Unless we find a suicide note or some other indication that it was a suicide attempt it seems likely that it was an accidental overdose. Especially since fentanyl is so easy to OD on.

Because then you are in danger of being bought out by a hedge fund, having the debt from the buyout transferred to your company, and have to sell off all of the assets to pay for your own buyout and then going bankrupt when the new overhead costs of renting make your business unprofitable.

This is a big documentation failure on their part. On the Linux host you need to add yourself to the 'vboxsf' group (you may need to create it) or shared folders will fail silently.

To be fair, the old methods had their problems too, notably very high latency and low bandwidth. Plus they can leave a dangerous paper trail. Every system has its own risks.

All it takes is one line in a robots.txt file! This was sheer incompetence.

The thing that surprises me is that these were out on the public internet and not hidden sites on TOR. At least then Google wouldn't be trawling them. TOR is far from perfect, but it's way better than what they were doing.

The initial mission was for two years, but that's kind of misleading because it's mostly the point at which the mission managers can write "mission successful" on their end-of-year performance reviews. In practice most people expected it to last a decade or more.

It seems to me that it's an ablative thermal material. The question in my mind is what makes this material superior to reinforced carbon-carbon? It seems like there were some significant drawbacks to this material, one of which is that its inventor is a paranoid kook.

I'm kind of dubious that they'll be able to make a sharp crease on a large single panel, but I don't mind being surprised.

It will be totally lame if you can only bend it a little. Sure it might fit better in a pocket if it can hug your leg but it will still be huge.

It would apply to any site that allows users to post content. Most of the web at this point. Only the likes of Facebook or Google could hope to survive with user content. Otherwise allowing user content is suicide.

Look at the provision. Slashdot would be liable for everything its users post. Someone puts up a link to a mp3 file they would be on the hook for hundreds of thousands of euros in damages. Someone posts lyrics to a modern song and Slashdot will be party to the lawsuit. They have to become content police and personally examine every post before letting it be shown on the site. That's several full time jobs worth of effort.