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Everyone at NSF overseeing the Platforms for Wireless Experimentation is gone
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Re: Everyone at NSF overseeing the Platforms for Wireless Experimentation is gone
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
The vast majority of federal spending goes to the military (including Veterans Affairs), Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and debt interest. Everything else doesn't matter much. This is especially true given that Republicans will probably increase the deficit; any money saved will go to tax cuts for the rich, and then some.
For example: > The Senate on Friday forged ahead with plans to give the military an additional $150 billion in spending even as the Pentagon seeks to make sweeping changes and reductions in its budget. Senators voted 52-48 in favor of a budget resolution that will unlock $340 billion in spending for U.S.-Mexico border security, energy independence, Coast Guard modernization and military investments while mandating cu…
I doubt Trump is trying to balance the budget. He’s not a traditional economic conservative, definitely wasn’t in his first term. I think they are just trying to find waste and redirect it to other things.
Such as their idea to give $5k cheques to every American with the savings which would cost $1 trillion (+ $1T to pay off debt). https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/20/trump-doge-c...
Re: Everyone at NSF overseeing the Platforms for Wireless Experimentation is gone
#23[flagged]
The real question is, what negatively changed when the debt went from 600k to 666k? What about 500k to 600k? What will negatively change if it goes from 666k to 700k? I hear a lot about the debt going up. Not once have I ever heard what the consequences of this debt are to the regular tax payer. None of these cuts are going to give normal people significant tax cuts, and cutting all these programs certainly doesn't s…
Not sure why you're getting downvoted, since this is a very reasonable question to ask, especially since the related deficit spending doesn't just disappear. It goes somewhere, and you can't reduce one without reducing the other.
Re: Everyone at NSF overseeing the Platforms for Wireless Experimentation is gone
#24Sad to say but this will be the norm for the next 4 years, don’t expect any federal organization to come out intact. I’ve basically ruled out working as a federal employee as there’s no assurances about anything.
That's really the key idea behind this, IMO. Make it more scary to work for the feds or nonprofits since a Republican president can boot you every 4/8 years.
Re: Everyone at NSF overseeing the Platforms for Wireless Experimentation is gone
#25[flagged]
Re: Everyone at NSF overseeing the Platforms for Wireless Experimentation is gone
#26[flagged]
The vast majority of federal spending goes to the military (including Veterans Affairs), Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and debt interest. Everything else doesn't matter much. This is especially true given that Republicans will probably increase the deficit; any money saved will go to tax cuts for the rich, and then some.
And people obscure this fact by talking about spending controlled by XYZ instead of total federal spending.
Who cares that it's an act of congress that funds a given project instead of a regular budget? Your money is still being spent.
Here is an infographic from 10 years ago that shows where the money is actually going: https://visual.ly/community/Infographics/politics/death-and-...
In short: if you're not auditing the DOD you're not trying to fix anything.
Re: Everyone at NSF overseeing the Platforms for Wireless Experimentation is gone
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
What a strange UI/UX.
This is because a bunch of us use the Fediverse (Mastodon, etc.) as a general purpose social media network and really don't care to have the entire timeline be doom and gloom about how bad the world currently is, but want to read the other things folks have to say. So a bit of etiquette has built up over the years to stash those things under a CW (think of it like a subject line) so you can read it when and if you ha…
Have the spoons to do so...?
Re: Everyone at NSF overseeing the Platforms for Wireless Experimentation is gone
#28This is true for many programs for reasons that will be hard to understand if you aren't a scientist. The NSF program managers are often pulled out of academia for brief periods of their career to do various tasks as experts. This means they are often probationary. This is the only way to hire people with deep expertise on the topic-du-jour.
The trump administration fired in wide swaths many probationary employees at NSF with total disregard for what they were doing or why. Not evaluated efficiency cuts. Just thrashing about.
Science in the US will be chaotically torn apart by this and a host of other decisions.
https://www.wired.com/story/national-science-foundation-febr...
Re: Everyone at NSF overseeing the Platforms for Wireless Experimentation is gone
#29What is this supposed to be? It's a link to a bunch of posts on some kind of social media platform that all say "uspol science funding". Am I missing something?
There is a “show more” button
"""
I have been informed that everyone at NSF who was overseeing the Platforms for Wireless Experimentation (PAWR)[1] project is gone. This program has been providing testbed environments to help drive forward wireless networking, including mobile/cellular networks at locations in Harlem NY, Salt Lake City Utah, Ames Iowa, and Cary North Carolina. One of the explicit goals of the program is to keep the US competitive when it comes to both wireless technology development and training the workforce needed for leading-edge wireless networks.
I do hope that the program will continue with new leadership - some PAWR contracts are still active, and some platforms, including ours[2] have funding outside of PAWR. But the loss of institutional knowledge will seriously hurt these programs, and is definitely not "efficient"
[1] https://advancedwireless.org/ [2] https://www.powderwireless.net/
"""
Re: Everyone at NSF overseeing the Platforms for Wireless Experimentation is gone
#30Wonder who informed the author? And how did the DOGE thing go exactly?