Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Microsoft is a national security threat: ex-White House cyber policy director

theregister.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 224 posts

Re: Microsoft is a national security threat: ex-White House cyber policy director

#111

Post by hackernewds »

faeriechangling wrote: post #99

Even if you pretended Microsoft didn't exist, I don't really see how any similar alternative actually presents a secure alternative. There's a mess of vulnerabilities and complexity at every layer of any modern computing stack you can think of. If you ACTUALLY want security, you're going to be dealing with computers which are 100x slower than what we're used to with a tiny fraction of the features. For the most part…

Don't hear this much about Apple. And most of tech companies run on Apple devices.

Re: Microsoft is a national security threat: ex-White House cyber policy director

#112

Post by nobodyandproud »

acdha wrote: post #92
nobodyandproud wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Partly this is due to the concentration of wealth, inaccessible to taxing. Naturally government pay would lag behind even the more mediocre H1Bs.

> Partly this is due to the concentration of wealth, inaccessible to taxing. This has nothing to do with it. Contractors cost notably more, so if the goal was economizing it’d be an obvious step to cut out the middlemen by hiring staff directly. The problem is that there’s an entire political ideology holding that government is inherently wasteful and its adherents will oppose any attempt to track market salaries bec…

> This has nothing to do with it. Contractors cost notably more, so if the goal was economizing it’d be an obvious step to cut out the middlemen by hiring staff directly.

It certainly has something to do with it.

The market rates for engineers was distorted because FAANG had a lot of money to throw around, so therefore hiring staff at government pay rates is quite difficult and is subject to the General Schedule (https://federalnewsnetwork.com/pay-benefits/2023/12/biden-fi...).

Contractors work from bills and projects, where the money is carved out; I agree it’s terribly inefficient.

The other issue is how difficult it is to get into government vs getting in as a contractor.

I tried the former many times without success; the latter? Easier than FAANG or finance.

Re: Microsoft is a national security threat: ex-White House cyber policy director

#113

Post by wrycoder »

eimrine wrote: post #67

> Microsoft has a shocking level of control over IT within the US federal government Apple has same within US schools oll over the country and nobody even cares. Your government will change but your children will be with you for a while.

High schools, at least, run on a giant pile of Chromebooks, not Mac hardware.

Re: Microsoft is a national security threat: ex-White House cyber policy director

#114

Post by ocbyc »

nobodyandproud wrote: post #77
qaq wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well you can't not outsource your security because gov payscale limits do not match market reality. You have to realise that a ton of people who should be directly employed by NSA etc. are actually working for their contracts for this reason.

Partly this is due to the concentration of wealth, inaccessible to taxing. Naturally government pay would lag behind even the more mediocre H1Bs.

This is a straw man. Even if the top richest people paid an additional 16 billion in taxes that would run the gov for like a day. Our problem is with spending.

Re: Microsoft is a national security threat: ex-White House cyber policy director

#115

Post by latency-guy2 »

nobodyandproud wrote: post #77
qaq wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well you can't not outsource your security because gov payscale limits do not match market reality. You have to realise that a ton of people who should be directly employed by NSA etc. are actually working for their contracts for this reason.

Partly this is due to the concentration of wealth, inaccessible to taxing. Naturally government pay would lag behind even the more mediocre H1Bs.

The single most well funded organization the world has ever seen struggles to pay the market rate, which the government also regulates?

Re: Microsoft is a national security threat: ex-White House cyber policy director

#116

Post by acdha »

ProjectArcturis wrote: post #100
acdha wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Partly this is due to the concentration of wealth, inaccessible to taxing. This has nothing to do with it. Contractors cost notably more, so if the goal was economizing it’d be an obvious step to cut out the middlemen by hiring staff directly. The problem is that there’s an entire political ideology holding that government is inherently wasteful and its adherents will oppose any attempt to track market salaries bec…

Yup. When a VC-backed company goes bankrupt, no one bats an eye. When Solyndra's loans go bad, even though it was a tiny fraction of the government's green energy portfolio, you get headlines and congressional hearings.

And when a big contractor has an 8+ figure write-off, they have a PR team working to prevent accountability and none of the people who were talking about private-sector innovation and efficiency will be asked whether they had a more realistic position now.

Re: Microsoft is a national security threat: ex-White House cyber policy director

#117

Post by ripjaygn »

nobodyandproud wrote: post #77
qaq wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well you can't not outsource your security because gov payscale limits do not match market reality. You have to realise that a ton of people who should be directly employed by NSA etc. are actually working for their contracts for this reason.

Partly this is due to the concentration of wealth, inaccessible to taxing. Naturally government pay would lag behind even the more mediocre H1Bs.

> Naturally government pay would lag behind even the more mediocre H1Bs.

Those "mediocre H1Bs" work their ass off compared to non-H1Bs because they get laid off/fired and deported on short notice with barely enough or sometimes no time to sell their belongings if they don't perform [1]. Meanwhile it's next to impossible to fire a govt employee for bad performance.

Maybe the solution is to fill the govt with mediocre H1B employees, not pay govt employees even more without accountability if they don't perform.

[1] https://www.timesnownews.com/technology-science/techie-on-h1...

Re: Microsoft is a national security threat: ex-White House cyber policy director

#119

Post by advael »

_mlbt wrote: post #5
cranberryturkey wrote: post #2

all tax payer funded software should be open source

I see this sentiment all the time, but it could never apply to the defense sector. Do you really want our nations enemies to have access to the source code of fighter jets, cruise missiles, the nuclear weapons program, or missile defense systems?

Unironically yes. Auditable software is inherently more secure, especially over the kind of timescale relevant to governments

Re: Microsoft is a national security threat: ex-White House cyber policy director

#120

Post by wrycoder »

michael_vo wrote: post #69

I've been told by current military folks that they are forced to use outdated windows (the ones without security updates) on official military computers on base. So this is where they access emails, surf the web, and all of that. They had to use IE instead of the evergreen edge browser. It's well known among the people who serve that it's a joke.

Not just on base. I had a conversation with a three star general. He remarked that while our warships had separate software and hardware for systems and fire control, the rest of of the ship’s IT ran on Windows. Supposedly, there was no connection between the two, but LOL.
Post reply on HN