DDG and Kagi and Brave are also bullshit due to AI.

FreeBSD is also free software as defined by the FSF. ZFS is too.

When were you born?

They were a membership organization run by 3 universities.

ESP-32 is about twice the $4 price.

It would have been more like 1998. Yahoo Mail was part of an acquisition of Four11's RocketMail in late (October/November) 1997.

He's supposed to be from Bristol, after all.

I think it's pretty safe to assume that these companies have non-trivial amounts of IT infrastructure (that needs maintenance, migrations, upgrades, etc...). Any such system that doesn't require knowledge transfer must satisfy at least one of the below:

1) You have an oracle stashed somewhere.
2) You have volumes of documentation.
3) Retaining key people that actually do know the system.
4) You don't ever plan on upgrading/migrating and are content with the current system for perpetuity (I'll even throw in that it's trivial to re-image a computer when its predecessor breaks down).

We know 1 doesn't exist, or at least, no offshore company has one that they can assign to Carnival.

2 requires a team of engineers that pore over those volumes of documentation, make sense of it all, not fuck up any future plans with their 0 experience of the Carnival systems, all the while sticking around long enough such that said team can maintain the system, return a profit for the IT company for real services rendered, and learn enough to plan out/implement whatever upgrades/roadmap they decide to do.

Good luck with 3. I rarely see management being able to retain the right talent, even when it's not pressured by offshoring schedule and with relevant leads still in place. That and human nature to retain your friends.

So that leaves us with what? 2. Which means Carnival will never improve, and for sure I won't want to go on their cruise now. Or maybe you can come up with 5/6/7 etc..., which I'm all ears.

I think you're assuming that management always know who's the best at what, and their offers reflect that. In reality, their accuracy is hit or miss. And given it's Carnival, I'd be much more willing to place my bets on "miss."

Really? Then by your logic, I'm guessing that Carnival doesn't really need him, or the whole IT department, to transfer his/their knowledge then. But since Carnival does, so I guess knowledge of existing infrastructure/software/practices/setup is pretty much a "specialized skill."

And Samsung/Apple doesn't? Don't delude yourself.

You only get charged when your ad gets placed. So if anything, it was too easy to place his ads. If Google had to collect money every time someone spends $1000, then they'd have to collect too often.