Put them in school zones and activate during the speed restriction times. Give ticket money to schools. Profit

The legislators will, flat on their back , taking it and enjoying it.

I completely agree with this. My state was all about banning ICE vehicles and gas stoves and furnaces in about a decade...but had very few plans to handle the terawatt capacity requirements...and this was *before* datacenters got a seat at the table.

I'm...not quite sure I agree with this one as much...

This...I think, has some wiggle room. Sure, training new models requires greater amounts of compute power, and as newer models and services develop, there will be a need to increase compute power. However, that doesn't mean that older models are useless. They may not be front-and-center, but they can still be used in lesser capacities. ChatGPT 3.5 isn't quite as awesome as v5, but if it's what is used to serve up ads in ChatGPT sessions, the hardware is still perfectly fit-for-purpose. Same goes for Google or Microsoft - older boards may not be front-and-center, but they can still do boring, smaller-scope tasks that are still useful.

...we can only hope.......

Look, they JUST finished their migration away from Lotus Notes...

Agreed; Stalwart isn't a bad mail solution...but Nextcloud isn't a mail solution. The GP's unsubstantiated statement was that Nextcloud was not viable for a business of any meaningful size. Since the claim was unsubstantiated, however, it was unclear what the recommended alternative would be. GP hasn't indicated why Nextcloud isn't viable, or what would be viable for a company with a need for browser-based file access and syncing.

In fairness to the GP, a large-enough company is going to prefer Google or Microsoft simply due to a desire to pass the buck to someone...but here on Slashdot, it's a default understanding that monolithic tech companies tend to have their own problems, starting with data sovereignty and continuing with the lack of customizability. So, while they're probably right that a big enough company would prefer to problem solve via litigation rather than through technological means, business priorities neither validate or negate the merits of Nextcloud, or any other available solution, hence the question.

Itâ(TM)s the moments of sheer terror that made it fun. Submarines once, submarines twice.,,

While Cloudflare is certainly free to release their own alternative...it's not like Wordpress lacks competition - there's Ghost and WriteFreely for blogging. There's Drupal and Joomla for website building. There's Plone, Concrete, Hugo, Silverstripe, and Ametys (if you hate yourself) for niche requirements. ClassicPress and WPDistrib are direct forks of Wordpress. All of these are free-as-in-beer. Most have some form of OSS license.

So...while I'd certainly agree that Wordpress sucks in its own way, its massive ecosystem makes it attractive to users who value the ecosystem rather than custom code development...and while EmDash might make some inroads due to Cloudflare integration, I'm not sure that the massive plugin/theme/custom code stacks will be drop-in replacements overnight...and until EmDash gives a compelling reason to move off Wordpress (or if the WP/WPE crap flares up again), EmDash is going to have an uphill battle ahead of it to accomplish what a dozen incumbents haven't.

Well, if we operate under your assessment, what would be your recommended alternative for an open source (any license) file sync / collaboration suite? Owncloud? Pydio? Seafile?

Or are you suggesting OneDrive or Google Drive or Dropbox?

No seriously, I'm aware that Nextcloud has its faults and shortcomings...but if you can "hardly believe any sizeable establishment would use [it]", I'm interested in what you'd recommend as your preferred alternative.

Yea, but as long as the size of your budget determines how much staff you get and how important you are, no.

John Boyd was part of those battles, recounted in Comer's excellent biography of him, titled "Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War."

They were the ones who publicized the $400 hammer and $600 toilet seat.

While I like those stories and many pointed out serious problems in government procurement, some also fail to tell the whole story because the headline is what someone wants since it causes outrage.

We used bolts that cost a lot of money and looked the same as a 10 cent one from a hardware store, but ours were designed to perform to an exact spec, traceable to the ore, and tested to ensure they meet specs. You don't want that bolt to fail to performa at a critical moment when you are above, on, or below the ocean. We had bronze tools that cost a lot but looked like ordinary tools because sparks around oxygen tanks can cause issues. My point: There is a lot of wastefull spending and overpriced stuff in government contracting, but sometimes there is more to the story than simply "Military spends $x00 for something that is $10 at Walmart..."

One big problem is how the government budgets. You generally have to spend all you money on an annual basis, and if you give money back that you saved, you risked getting less next year because "you didn't need as much as you said last year..." So, come Q4, you go on a spending spree to spend whatever is left; trying to spend more is better than trying to spend less.

Yup. I know teachers whose districts have all sorts of "safety" controls in place for computers the kids use; all that does is make it harder for teachers to go to sites they use and are approved while the kids access porn and anything else they want. The stupid get caught, like the one that thought it was a good idea to print the porn on the schools printer...

Anyone can click yes a question, or put in a fake birthdate. Scanning a drivers license would work, but not everyone has a license and using someone else's or a fake one (depending on if it uses a barcode) is pretty easy. So, how do you really effectively?

Clicking on it it is not the goal,seeing it is so that the product registers in your mind. Clicks are just a bonus.

Yea, 100 billion in Treasury Notes at 3.6 would be 36 billion. That's a high hurdle rate and basically zero risk; I'm guessing their hurdle rate is much higher and will be tough to clear.

I am not a fan of ads, but will tolerate them if I find the content worthwhile and it is free, as in someone else is buying the beer. There are sites I like and do not block ads because I want them to be around, and in the end they either need to paywall or run ads to stay in business. If I pay for a site, then I want it ad free. That's the deal.

For sites like Netflix, with ads + subscription price, I need to decide where the value/cost trade off occurs. For some sites, it's cancel and forget about them, others pay at some level.

Unfortunately, ads are here to stay. The days of Archie, Veronica, Lynx are long gone...