To be fair (to Oracle *gasp*), we don't know that there weren't reasonable alternatives. In this case, "downtime procedures" likely meant reverting to offline copies of records that could be printed out, written on, and transcribed/scanned back into the system when it was available.

Without knowing more the fact that it took 5 days to fix this "oopsie" does seem inexcusable, though.

And in this case they reverted to paper documentation to maintain some level of service.

Unfortunately, in the context of healthcare even a successfully executed business continuity plan will probably result in some amount of patient harm. I don't intend that as a knock on the plan - when you lose critical IT systems in any industry you're going to see some degradation of performance/efficiency - but in healthcare the failure mode means people get hurt and/or die.

Pretty much nobody who is using this software bought Oracle. They bought Cerner, who was acquired by Oracle in 2021 at which point it was renamed Oracle Health.

Kickstarter has valid use cases. I backed a small-time musician who needed a few thousand bucks to rent a recording studio and have someone produce their album. I got the CD I was promised for my $20 and warm fuzzies for directly supporting an artist I like.

But, yeah, the projects that make headlines for raising hundreds of thousands to mass produce some complex consumer good probably have a pretty grim success rate. Backing those should be seen as a form of charity - not a way to purchase a product.

Meta isn't forcing another company to do anything, but they are forcing consumers. "Competition" would be giving users the ability to choose which AI suite they want to use.

That's not to say it wouldn't be off-the-charts hypocritical for Apple to complain about someone else placing restrictions on what third party tools can be used in their ecosystem.

Did anyone think we were "programmed" to die?

We're complex biological machines and break down over time. I wouldn't have described it as "programming" any more than I'd call it "programming" that the engine in my car will eventually wear out.

I think what you describe applies on the micro (choosing not to fund an overseas version of sesame street) but not the macro (choosing not to fund the agency at all). If the executive chooses to slash programs and not replace them with other programs that align with the administration's policy objectives, there's a process for that: the president can notify Congress, and Congress can choose whether or not to object to decision to not spend the funds.

You don't just need to buy a few servers and licenses. You also need to also factor in the cost of employing someone competent (or the cost of paying a third party) to manage those servers, and arguably pay a premium for someone (or, again, a third party) who knows enough to manage that sysadmin and ensure that they are in fact competent. That ain't cheap. I don't know what you consider "too small" but I imagine you could get to hundreds of employees before it starts making sense, if you're not in an industry where you'd expect your staff to just incidentally have that kind of savvy.

That's not even getting into the true apples-to-apples comparison of what it takes to stand up in-house infrastructure that has redundant power, redundant cooling, is geographically redundant, has hot and cold backups, etc., that I'd expect any big name SaaS vendor to be offering.

There's also then the scalability issue, which to be fair is a bit different from the case you're describing. If you're a relatively new business and are unsure if within your infrastructure lifecycle your needs will remain stable, or grow by 20%, or by 50%, or by 100%, or more. Paying someone for what you need rather than trying to project is a useful hedge.

More importantly why is this the second post in a week about a claim by UBS (following Enterprises Are Shunning Vendors in Favor of DIY Approach To AI, UBS Says) with no link to a source?

Like the previous article, the top Google result is Slashdot article itself. The second result is a Twitter post from a guy with a blue check. Does that really pass muster?

The president choosing not to spend money allocated by Congress is called "Impoundment". A decent writeup from the National Constitution Center, here.

After some chicanery from the Nixon administration in the 70s Congress passed legislation mandating that the executive spend allocated funding. If the executive wants to delay (or cancel entirely) such funding, they must notify Congress and Congress can choose to override that decision. The Supreme court has upheld this law.

IANAL either, so this does raise some questions I can't answer about technicalities along the lines of your hypothetical (if Congress allocates $50bn to buy stealth bombers and the program only costs $49,999,000,000, must the executive either find a way to pad the cost of the program by $1m, or explicitly ask Congress for permission not to spend it?), but in general it seems the president must at least spend the money or provide Congress with a compelling reason why they can't/won't/shouldn't.

This was actually an interesting thought exercise. Two examples came to mind -

1) Advocacy for editions of books like Huckleberry Finn that have the n-word censored or replaced.

2) Bans on un-annotated editions of works like Mein Kampf and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion

For what it's worth I'm personally much more sympathetic to #2 than #1.

I'd have to take longer on this post than I'm able to right now to carefully define what makes those scenarios different from banning a book because the protagonist is trans or has two dads, but I'm sure the distinction is there. The easy answer is "Nazis are bad and gay/trans people aren't" but it'd be interesting to try and come up with something that doesn't rely on such a judgment.

For what it's worth, in nearly 20 years I've never had to manually set up voicemail on an iPhone.

Step 1: Insert SIM

Step 2: Voicemail works

Maybe something to do with your carrier?

Why would Google want other people to be able to sniff out your private data? Google doesn't need some weird side channel attack to know what websites you're visiting in Chrome.

Their whole business model is that they can sell unmatched levels of insight into their users' interests/behavior to advertisers. If any website a person happens to visit in Chrome can glean such insights, it erodes Google's market position.