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Microsoft Wins Pentagon’s $10B Contract

nytimes.com

391–400 of 466 posts

Re: Microsoft Wins Pentagon’s $10B Contract

#391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It's a lot more absurd to make government contract decisions based on newspaper coverage the president doesn't like.

Re: Microsoft Wins Pentagon’s $10B Contract

#392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The effort includes the test article configuration, the test article build, the test plan, the testing itself, and teardown and analysis. Curiously, how long do you think it should take and at what cost?

I'm not sure; that's part of the reason I was asking. I do think, however, that a 12 year timeline seems too long for any project. Usually people can't work effectively toward goals that far in the future. But maybe this contract is more of an extended support contract?

You are looking at it like a single, 12-year-long development project. This is likely a heterogeneous funding bucket that pays for multiple small, possibly overlapping, testing efforts over the contract period. These types of contracts are part of the DOD's effort to reduce the overhead of contracting by not requiring strings of short contracts for efforts they know are going to be multiple years long.

Re: Microsoft Wins Pentagon’s $10B Contract

#393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is that weird?

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…

Sounds a lot like Alberta right now, except it was never it’s own country and the federal government, Crown, and native treaties own much of that land.

Re: Microsoft Wins Pentagon’s $10B Contract

#394
post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is that non-sensical? The entire purpose of states is to be independent. Texas just actually takes it to heart to act like an actual separate entity wherever it can.

In order to form a more perfect Union... The entire purpose of states is not to be independent, the purpose of states is to provide a level of government closer to the People. The United States is an agreement between the States. Secession from the United States is against the law. It was ruled on in 1869. There is nothing in the Constitution allowing for secession, as opposed to Article 50 in the EU law that is spec…

There doesn't need to be something in the Constitution to allow for secession. There needs to be something in it to disallow it, otherwise it falls under the rights given by the red-headed step-child known as the 10th amendment. Regardless of that it generally just goes with where you fall in the compact-contract debate.

Re: Microsoft Wins Pentagon’s $10B Contract

#395

Owning Post seems to cost Bezos quite a fortune.

What about the Post is related to this, specifically?

The White House basically ordered this contract to not go to Amazon because Trump doesn't like how the Washington Post covers him.

Re: Microsoft Wins Pentagon’s $10B Contract

#396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"journalist with integrity" Is there such a thing? Media landscape in the US is a sad view these days.

Do you have any specific reasons to cite for this belief? It sounds like a minority of the population find certain facts inconvenient when they conflict with their world view. This doesn't mean that the way news is being reported is changing, unless you prefer "alternate facts".

I am not from US, so I don't count for minority or majority. Specific reasons... Just watch 5 min of CNN, MSNBC, 30 seconds of Maddow or Don Lemon. Staggering amounts of venom and obsession. This is not news anymore. This is an alternative reality.

Re: Microsoft Wins Pentagon’s $10B Contract

#397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is that weird?

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…

[deleted]

Re: Microsoft Wins Pentagon’s $10B Contract

#398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It could backfire I'm the case of war, if an enemy gets control of Texas the US can no longer cut their energy supply.

That’s a big if.

Getting a hold of Texas is a lot easier than getting a hold on pretty much anyplace in the MidWest. That's for sure.

But it's irrelevant in modern warfare anyway. The right play is to just flatten most of our states outright. You don't fight hot wars with amphibious landings anymore.

Hot wars between major powers would be over in a matter of hours these days.

Re: Microsoft Wins Pentagon’s $10B Contract

#399
post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That’s still different? AWS has CloudTrail that lots all actions

Re: Microsoft Wins Pentagon’s $10B Contract

#400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, and this is why electrical grid issues never take down entire regions of the US! Like the 2003 Northeast blackout, for instance. [0] Things like that, where an error in one part of the grid cascades into massive issues elsewhere - those don't ever happen. Sometimes, being big is a danger. Even when that's not the case, it can be worth accepting the same risk of each individual point on the map losing power if it…

That blackout was caused by a tree limb in Ohio, but it always seemed likely to me that the Blaster/Welchia worm either was a contributor or magnified the impact of the grid issues. I worked next to a power plant that shared some network components with my employer at the time. They did an emergency shutdown minutes before we were impacted by blaster. Some of our upstream providers operating backbones in NY also were…

No it was caused by poor grid management at First Energy. If your high voltage lines start to sag because you don't know how to distribute your load and you don't maintain your right-of-way because all you want is profit that is what you get. Ohio is now bailing these idiots nuclear plants out on its citizen's dime, along with coal plants that should have been shut down years ago.
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