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Microsoft Wins Pentagon’s $10B Contract

nytimes.com

261–270 of 466 posts

Re: Microsoft Wins Pentagon’s $10B Contract

#261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Would we rather have the people in control of the military and our troops use out-of-date tech I don't trust or rely on any infrastructure that largely uses microsoft products...I'm sure there's some minor stuff hidden away here and there within systems. MSFT has a software philosophy, which is reciprocated in their culture, that can only be described as byzantine and unpredictable. They are basically 00's Oracle a…

I thought they have reinvented themselves with the new embrace for linux and the cloud? I've always thought Windows OS is garbage but Microsoft seemed fine without it nowadays. Can anyone with Microsoft knowledge share a little bit about the culture and how it's changed?

Microsoft has definitely turned the corner in terms of culture with some projects like Typescript, WSL, .NET Core, etc., but Azure is very much still the "old Microsoft." It was started before this turn and has many of the same old stinks that anyone who's worked in Enterprise Microsoft-land can smell.

They may yet right the ship as time goes on and their growing revenue points in the direction that they will, but anyone who's used all three major cloud-providers knows they're still at the bottom of the totem pole.

Re: Microsoft Wins Pentagon’s $10B Contract

#262
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would rather the military be less capable, because its current capability is being used for offensive, not defensive purposes. If it's less capable, it's less likely to get embroiled in stupid imperialistic adventures. Edit: I don't understand why so many people are, at the same time, so enthused by the idea of starving government (Because they think most of its services are a waste of money), while at the same tim…

[flagged]

This comment gave me woke cancer.

Re: Microsoft Wins Pentagon’s $10B Contract

#263
post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In regards to proximity, I felt the prior commenter was saying that aws had not made a physical investment inside a military state.. meaning the pentagon prioritized bidders that aligned with existing pork/spending priorities. I don’t know if that’s true but it’s an intriguing assertion.

I mean Amazon's HQ2 is pretty darn close to the pentagon itself, less than a mile away.

The pentagon is table stakes - everyone has something there. If you’re trying to demonstrate commitment, you invest in the hinterlands... and if you’re trying to justify a decision that otherwise is a deadlock that’s maybe where you find the tie-breakers.

Re: Microsoft Wins Pentagon’s $10B Contract

#264
post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the integration between the two helps...

What does my word processor have to do with my GPU cluster I use for creating ML models?

I meant for things like audit logs based on your account for every single thing you do.

Re: Microsoft Wins Pentagon’s $10B Contract

#265
post #48

What do the military need 10 billion US dollars in cloud computing for ? Are they going to fork Bitcoin? DDOS attack? If they are for example going to archive video footage, it's probably much cheaper to print it to film.

Quite frankly there are also a lot more boring answers as well, like they need email, they need a cloud office suite, they need servers to run their interanets, more than half a dozen stupid servers and applications that don't quite work right but have to be kept around because it is someone's pet project or X dollars was blown on it, etc. Think of the biggest organization you've worked in think of all the bureaucracy involved and all the stupid decisions and politics and now multiply that by having the CEO change every 4-8 years, people in the millions and just to make things even more fun the executives that make all the decisions are congress.

If anything I don't know if $10 billion is going to be enough for the level of crazy that can go on in the government.

Re: Microsoft Wins Pentagon’s $10B Contract

#266

Owning Post seems to cost Bezos quite a fortune.

What about the Post is related to this, specifically?

10s of millions of people in US think that Wash Post is colluding with coup orchestrators, trying to overthrow constitutionally elected US president.

With the above sentiment, giving Wash Post owner a 10 bln dollar Gov contract for work with military -- would have be borderline absurd. It is difficult to separate these types of discussion from political bias of commenters, but you would have to create your own views (if you do not have them already)

For pro-president, anti-Coup views on the topic, search for:

To find some examples of Wash Post collusion with the coup crowd, just use:

- "Washington Post forced to correct"

- "Washington Post fabricated" in non-Google non-Yahoo search engines.

- "Washington post Covington no apology"

- "Washington post sandbagged"

Re: Microsoft Wins Pentagon’s $10B Contract

#267
post #19

Original post from U.S. DoD: https://www.defense.gov/Newsroom/Contracts/Contract/Article/... There's several other contracts mentioned in the post. It's a good reminder of how much money goes into the military–industrial complex. The JEDI contract was by far the largest contract awarded in this round. The rest of contracts total roughly 1.5 billion dollars.

From the link, could anyone explain why there is a $148 million dollar contract for F35 testing expected to be completed in 2032? Why would it take 12 years to perform testing?

could be regression testing, or testing after each flight to make sure everything is ready to go at a moment’s scramble, like maintenance stuff maybe

Re: Microsoft Wins Pentagon’s $10B Contract

#268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Core to many Texans identity is a belief that someday Texas is going to secede from the Union again and become its own independent country. Don't get me wrong, I love Texas and I love many of the Texans I've met for being some of the chillest, most down to earth, pragmatic and welcoming people I have ever met, but they are a bit weird about this particular issue sometimes.

Many is a stretch. It's a running joke for sure, but being fiercely independent does not mean we actually want to secede from the Union.

“Many” is not a stretch. Nationwide polls consistently find upwards of a quarter of the population supporting secession of their state. (That’s about the same percentage os households that own a cat.) In the Southwest, it’s a third. Hispanic people in particular are relatively strong supporters of secession: https://mises.org/power-market/reuters-poll-shows-hispanics-.... (In the Southwest, opposition to secession among hispanics only slightly outweighs supports.)

Re: Microsoft Wins Pentagon’s $10B Contract

#270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Texas has a separate electrical grid from the rest of the US. This is interesting. The Wikipedia article has this gem: "The Texas Interconnection is maintained as a separate grid for political, rather than technical reasons" https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2003/08/why-texas-has-it...

Core to many Texans identity is a belief that someday Texas is going to secede from the Union again and become its own independent country. Don't get me wrong, I love Texas and I love many of the Texans I've met for being some of the chillest, most down to earth, pragmatic and welcoming people I have ever met, but they are a bit weird about this particular issue sometimes.

I've had the (mis? Fortune) of living in that one state in every country - Texas, Quebec and "Tamil Nadu" in India
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