to capture the cloud market, you also have to capture the mindshare at the desktop market. Do you think a new Linux distro comes out and people just install it on their servers? They try it out on the desktop first to see if they like it. It's why Fedora exists to get people into RHEL.
personal chauffeur to work and back home for $7 everyday? Not a bad deal. Google says insurance is $180/month(higher end) or $6/day. Add gas, registration, maintenance and this is a good bargain.
there are products where you can re-melt and create filament for 3d printers or push it into a mold. Can probably build your own for $500 + a $500 3d printer.
I hope these people form a group to develop software that directly competes with Microsoft or even make it free now that you have extra time. It'll keep your skills up and good for the resume.
Including people they want to keep? What if all the people they wanted to keep accepted while those they didn't want to keep stayed? Certainly makes no sense.
Just compile for your specific hardware sort of like what Gentoo does. I don't want you continuously running a model - sort of defeats the purpose of performance gains.