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Microsoft Wins Pentagon’s $10B Contract

nytimes.com

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Re: Microsoft Wins Pentagon’s $10B Contract

#341

Post by 7952 »

Aperocky wrote: post #206
darktimesahead wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Real-time surveillance of the world. Who said what when where to whom. Was that a threat. What were the consequences. Feeds for video, sound, https streams from billions of Internet devices. ML to extract salient features, at multiple levels of resolution. $10B is a drop in the bucket. This is heading into trillions territory. I wouldn't be surprised that in 10 years half the Pentagon budget will be spent on the clou…

distributed Vietnam lmao. I think most of your description is coming form a high-ranking general's wet dream though. When it comes to actual engineering, it would be between the simple solution that works - or complex solution that doesn't work. Having worked in a predictive analytics role before, I can guarantee that '1000 individuals most threatening to our strategic position' would consist of 500 innocent villager…

And a wedding party.

Re: Microsoft Wins Pentagon’s $10B Contract

#342

Post by afarrell »

mattrp wrote: post #263
Frost1x wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Soooo... Iowa?

Re: Microsoft Wins Pentagon’s $10B Contract

#343

Post by Discombulator »

m0zg wrote: post #230
TomMckenny wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Post runs the same stories seen in essentially all papers in the world. A lot of them implicate the president negatively. But how does precluding the pentagon from it's first choice on these grounds good for the country? In a free and uncorrupt country, you don't allow leaders to intervene in national security issues because they are embarrassed by a paper's coverage. Thus few people are directly saying that amaz…

There's no such thing as "corruption free" country. The US is very, very far from corruption-free, both in the government and outside it. It's less corrupt than, say, Zimbabwe, but that's not saying much. Basically one has to ask themselves a question: given that the mainstream press is wildly unprofitable (with very few exceptions), might there be a reason why its owners sinks hundreds of millions of dollars into ke…

In my reading, your post implies that everyone is exclusively motivated by short term self interest. I do not think this is true, neither for myself nor for others, and I suspect you do not either for yourself and people you know.

The problem in general with negative fatalistic views like this one is that it is non falsifiable: there is not a single positive / selfless action to which you could not ascribe base motives.

Re: Microsoft Wins Pentagon’s $10B Contract

#344

Post by Avalaxy »

bnt wrote: post #309
tyingq wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hoping it also ups Microsoft's game on Azure Functions, monitoring, etc. AWS needs a reason to be scared.

Azure Functions are pretty nice, hope they continue evolving the service.

My issue with it is the 10 minute run limit, and the massive memory leak issues if you use durable functions with fan-out. I had to move away from functions and switched to NServiceBus instead.

Re: Microsoft Wins Pentagon’s $10B Contract

#345

Post by mcqueenjordan »

phil9987 wrote: post #310

"Google dropped out last October without submitting a formal bid, saying the military work conflicted with its corporate principles, which preclude the use of artificial intelligence in weaponry." <3

That was the PR spin, but in fact they lacked several of the basic requirements for the contract.

Re: Microsoft Wins Pentagon’s $10B Contract

#346

Post by Avalaxy »

Eclyps wrote: post #20

There’s not much to the article right now (developing story), but how big of a blow is this to Amazon? And how big of a boon to Microsoft? I realize that this is likely because of the people that I surround myself with, but I don’t know anybody who actually uses Azure. Is Azure’s core business large corporations/government?

Must really be your bubble. Here in the Netherlands pretty much every company I come across is on Azure. From small companies all the way to massive ones and governments.

Re: Microsoft Wins Pentagon’s $10B Contract

#348

Post by repolfx »

pradn wrote: post #222
look_lookatme wrote: post #180

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. This is an overstatement.

I've lived in Texas for 8 years and this has always been talked of as a fun fact or a curiosity, not as a real, possible thing (aside from some minor fringe elements.)

Don't read too much into that. Prior to 2016 people talked about Brexit and a Trump presidencythe same way.

Re: Microsoft Wins Pentagon’s $10B Contract

#349

Post by colejohnson66 »

jabagonuts wrote: post #195
fastball wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah, many of us do. TX isn’t just a state, it’s a state of mind, and also a former independent state. Besides, if TX secedes, how is Trump supposed to build his border wall?

> and also a former independent state

All of America used to be independent. Especially Hawaii and Alaska. Should they secede?

Re: Microsoft Wins Pentagon’s $10B Contract

#350

Post by colejohnson66 »

kortilla wrote: post #291
techsupporter wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a native Texan, it's weird for a few reasons: a) Pragmatically, separating from the rest of the United States would be devastating to our economy. Much like the United Kingdom from the EU, but on a much larger scale, because the vast majority of our trade, people, and connectedness come from being part of the U.S. Texans like to trot out the factoid that relatively little land in Texas is owned by the federal gove…

Alaska was not a country.

His point was that it used to not be owned by the US.
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