It's too convenient to just write off Jobs. The truth is somewhere in the middle, as it always is. The idea that plenty of others could have done what he did is just too dismissive. When he died the company was worth a third of a trillion dollars. Not just any sociopath can pull that off.

For their money, large companies want the proverbial throat to choke - even when they've never successfully choked the throats they've paid for. The footprint of open source in these companies often grew through bottom up implementation. The moment that somebody has to pay an ongoing support contract, it will become a financial and strategic decision. That means vendor management, tech and vendor downselection, risk analysis... the best-effort maintainer isn't going to fly.

If I were a betting man, I think the result would be a decline in usage - and that might be fine. If the model isn't working, that definitely needs addressing. But the companies most able to afford licensing are probably the ones least likely to pay for it.

Bespoke Echo Chambers? That's their new feature? Removing even the remotest possibility of an opinion differing from your own, what a great idea! /sarcasm

While it is an enormous problem, possibly the most significant, we know how to shield against radiation, but it's going to take mass in the form of hydrogen-rich molecules like water or polyethylene (as examples). To solve that problem we are either going to have to make launches a lot cheaper, or figure out how to do it all in orbit.

It's at the edge of our technological capacity to produce such a spacecraft now, so the barrier is economic. That's a massive barrier, but in theory we definitely could, if we put a significant percentage of GDP of the wealthiest nations towards the project, produce a spacecraft that keep astronauts alive and relatively protected from ionizing radiation both on the journey and while on Mars.

As to your general assholery, I guess everyone has to have an outlet, though why Slashdot is a bit mysterious.

Assuming it's remotely true (and there's good reason for thinking it isn't), it still means the FBI director was negligent in their choice of personal email provider, that the email provider had incompetent security, and that the government's failure to either have an Internet Czar (the post exists) or to enforce high standards on Internet services are a threat to the security of the nation (since we already know malware can cross airgaps through negligence, the DoD has been hit that way a few times). The FBI director could have copied unknown quantities of malware onto government machines through lax standards, any of which could have delivered classified information over the Internet (we know this because it has also happened to the DoD).

In short, the existence of the hack is a minor concern relative to every single implication that hack has.

Delete your account if you want to, but please don't delete posts and comments. I sympathize wanting to stick it to Reddit and not giving them free content to whore out to AI companies for training, but for the millions of normal people who might get value from comments it's really frustrating.

There are tools to mass-edit all your reddit comments and it's incredibly frustrating to see when people do it. I've thought I finally found the answer to some question or technical problem or whatever in a reddit thread, only to then see the original post replaced with something like "This comment was removed because Reddit made me angry. Lorem ipsum dolar sit amet shit." Perhaps unfair but it makes me hate that person's selfishness much more than make me dislike Reddit.

I live in Utah and get to witness this first-hand. Just yesterday it was windy enough that unpleasant dust clouds were coming off the dried parts of the lake bed. Utah snowpack is at a record low this year and peaked for the 2026 water year earlier in March. We broke several high temperature records this month (along with a bunch of other states in the west / mountain west). It's looking pretty bad.

Right now it's a lot like watching a slow-moving train derailment. Everyone knows what's coming, but 80% of the population, the majority being Mormon religious nuts, rationalizes it away or refuses to acknowledge it, but those that do see the problem won't take action to address it, preferring instead to "hopes and prayers". Brian Cox, the damned governor, has declared multiple "days of prayer for rain".

There's a sick fatalism amongst many religious groups, assuming that God won't let terrible things happen to them, but it's especially bad with Mormons. They think they're a chosen people, living in a chosen land, and that the "end times" are coming soon. All this adds up to "I don't need to do or sacrifice anything to deal with Problem because God won't let me suffer and it doesn't matter because the world is going to end soon anyway."

For any rational thinking person this is disgusting, but when 90% of the legislature, the governor, and all US congressmen are owned (mentally and financially) by the Mormon church, there's not much we can do. At best voting them out just gets a different lizard in the seat.

You haven't? How about this evidence, or this evidence, or perhaps this evidence, or...

You get the idea. The article doesn't say anything about a court order one way or the other, so we simply don't know the state there. Given previous track record, it's likely the request was made legally if Apple complied with it.

I'm too uneducated. If 92 antiprotons end up annihilating themselves in collisions with matter, how much energy is released? Is it "did you hear that?" or, "I found the driver's femur!"

And would Uber apply a surcharge?

Addiction is neurological, not chemical. Addiction is the consequence of the rewards centre of the brain becoming dependent on stimulation and that can be from anything.

Do try to make an effort.

Doesn't have to be a credit card. A class III user digital certificate requires a verification firm be certain of a person's identity through multiple proofs. If an age verification service issued such a certificate, but anonymised the name the certificate was issued to to the user's selected screen name, you now have a digital ID that proves your age and optionally can be used for encryption purposes to ensure your account is only reachable from devices you authorise.

Rob Reiner had talent, no one denies that - he also turned into a raging political gate-spewing jerk as he qualified for an AARP membership.

He made many excellent movies, more than I can count on both hands, but towards the end... uh, he was 'polarizing'

Not huge enough to turn a profit. Not huge enough to keep him on the air. But sure, it's 'huge'.

I suspect his foray into screenwriting is to keep him occupied/employed as he rides out a non-compete clause that will keep him off TV for a year or more... that's just a hunch, and that this project started to take form before his cancellation was announced works against my hunch, but honestly, it think it went from fun idea to kick-around with Jackson to a possible job once he found out his show was being cancelled.

You may want to explore the decision to cancel Late Night w/ Colbert - a show that loses tens of millions of dollars a year doesn't need government interference to be cancelled.

I suspect the reason Colbert is still on the air today, finishing out the season, is because the network would probably lose as much (or more) in severance packages to various staff, talent, the production company and the affiliates that would suddenly have a 90 minute hole in their schedule.. That and at the time of the decision they had nothing to put in it's place...

Look at the cost, look at the ratings, look at the contracts involved - its was nothing more than a solid business decision.

Writing a segment for "The Daily Show" or a monologue for "The Colbert Report" is one thing, writing (or having significant input) into a quarter-billion dollar project is a bit different.

He's teamed up with his son, and other successful screen writers, so it's not like he'll be writing the adaptation of the six chapters he loves so much by himself.

Remind me, how big is his writing staff on his current interview/entertainment show? My research indicates he has a writing staff of about 20.

I question how much writing he's done since he 'broke out' as a celebrity on "The Daily Show"...

He's got some comedic talent to be sure, but this isn't going to be a comedy movie, is it?