Agreed - using a search engine improves the signal to noise ratio for targetted consumption (i.e. reading about a specific thing).

Reddit, on its own, tends towards noise in some subs of interest to me (accepting this is a self-selected sample). This untargeted consumption (i.e. scrolling through a sub) is often not what is once was.

Reddit was designed for consumption related to ones interests - i.e. untargeted consumption within your choice of subs.

Unfortunately, unless you want cat videos and other ephemera, Reddit is not what it once was.

Maybe this is because many of the moderators left or, essentially, internet communities tend towards entropy.

It's not quite as simple as that - take a look at the oligarchs who use the judicial system to conduct lawfare in London.

Or Wipro where non-Indian workers are replaced by lower cost and lower competence personnel typically within a year of a contract win.

Please explain the logical conclusion of your thesis which seems to be:

1. That corporations should launch large constellations of satellites until the market is saturated.

2. That regulation for the public good inherently Communist.

The funding cuts disproportionately target Arts and Humanities.

Do you think this is correct?

Jira is a piece of software. Some people live with it, some people like it and some people do not.

I live with it but this does not make me an apologist.

I have never met a Scrum Master or Product Manager that uses every Jira feature. That would be strange.

For Kanban and it's integration with Confluence, GitHub and PagerDuty, Jira is OK. It may not be OK for you.

Citation needed.

Asda are migrating to a new ERP system and leaving the Walmart ERP system behind.

Consequently, maybe Asda is big enough to survive this.

Citation needed.

You are broadly correct.

1. Walmart sells Asda to an "interesting" pair
2. Asda needs to migrate from Walmart ERP to their new ERP
3. Blah, blah SAP HANA
4. ERP migration is delayed
5. Enter Tata Consultancy Services (so awful that even Wipro people laugh at 'em)
6. TUPE applies, but who wants to work for TCS?!

Broadly agreed, but t'Internet is a woeful mess of script upon script upon script. I use NoScript, Ghostery, AdBlock Plus and HTTPS Everywhere...but sometimes find well-known sites that still b0rk until I reconfigure an addon.

+1 Internet :-)

Get a Nexus. However, nothing is secure once someone has their hands on it (insert obligatory XKCD encryption link.) At least F-Secure Mobile Security reduces the attack surface before it's stolen and allows you to remote-wipe after it has been stolen. I don't work for F-Secure BTW!

For as long as idiots run commercial websites without backups, one can only hope they're found out...exploited and then relegated to an evolutionary dead-end. It's not as if offsite backups are particularly hard to figure out.

Having cut my teeth on Red Hat and Mandrake over a decade ago, I'm not a Linux newbie. That said, I don't tend to compile kernels or, these days, build much software from source. Earlier Ubuntus, with their Gnome 2, became my workstation operating system of choice. I stopped tinkering with the OS internals because productivity was more important and *things* *just* *worked* - until Unity.

I still liked Ubuntu's lack of hassle and the Debian roots, but was disappointed with Unity (it might be OK for craptops and netbooks, but it's awful on dual monitor rigs...assuming it bothers to detect the second monitor.) The Unity workflow is broken and I felt that it was less of a work platform (i.e. somewhere where I could run the handful of apps I require.)

I installed Mint on my laptop and liked it. Then I read about LMDE and live-booted it on my workstation. I installed it right away - hassle free, runs my apps and disappears into the background (as all good operating systems should.) I update it when I need to and it has the reassuring Debian feel (but it's suitably different from Debian.) I don't know why I like the fact it's different from Debian, but I do.

Anyhow, dear readers, LMDE - I heartily recommend it to you. It's beautifully uncomplicated and a joy to use.