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Everyone at NSF overseeing the Platforms for Wireless Experimentation is gone

discuss.systems

61–70 of 587 posts

Re: Everyone at NSF overseeing the Platforms for Wireless Experimentation is gone

#61
post #32

Notwithstanding the other awful aspects of all of this, there’s a certain vibe of, “people who don’t understand how a system works attempting to act like they know how the system works and are too cowardly to admit they are breaking everything.” This just reads like “Character Limit” except replace Twitter with the federal government.

It's like an internet argument spilled out into the real world, with all the posturing and bravado to increase perceived expertise. Except it's gambling with an entire nation's fortune, instead of likes/votes/reactions.

4chan regime.

Re: Everyone at NSF overseeing the Platforms for Wireless Experimentation is gone

#62
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In addition to these scientists, I heard from my friends in academia that they will be taking fewer PhD students because they're unsure of the funding. We may be looking at a lost decade.

We're losing an entire generation at least. The pain that these cuts are going to cause won't be felt overnight. It will be felt over decades. "Things have been set into motion that cannot be undone".

Just like the Supreme Court :(

Re: Everyone at NSF overseeing the Platforms for Wireless Experimentation is gone

#63
post #31

This 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…

In addition to these scientists, I heard from my friends in academia that they will be taking fewer PhD students because they're unsure of the funding. We may be looking at a lost decade.

> We may be looking at a lost decade.

We're looking at the US wilfully letting go of the possibiility of remaining the most powerful nation in the world.

Reduced health, reduced education, reduced funding for research, reduced international aid programs (which both garner goodwill whilst also creating a bulwark against those who profit from misery), reduced oversight / regulation of the power of capital, alienation of prior allies, reduced safety nets for the vulnerable, increased rhetoric against poorly defined 'foreign types', anti-intellectualism.

It's a helluva vacuum being created, and I'm not particularly optimistic about what's going to fill it.

Re: Everyone at NSF overseeing the Platforms for Wireless Experimentation is gone

#64
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Why don't you care about nuclear safety, dmix? Is that the waste you're talking about?

Re: Everyone at NSF overseeing the Platforms for Wireless Experimentation is gone

#65
post #60
post #50

Consent matters. There is no worse tyranny than to force someone to pay for something they do not want to buy, simply because you think it would be good for them. I am vehemently pro-research and pro-education, but these tax-funded programs are not it. There must be some meaningful connection to the delivery of value, otherwise this stuff is just public-private wealth transfer. This seems obvious to me. Why should th…

You don't believe that, or you would have moved to be out from under this ultimate tyranny. Somalia, perhaps. Your argument is the classic Randist Libertarian one: "There is no such thing as society, everything I did I earned myself with no reference to anyone." It is, of course, complete and utter garbage. Government spending is the only known way of constructing projects that are not attractive money-makers: rural…

This violates consent, though. Consent matters, regardless of how much handwaving occurs after people choose to violate it.

The other such places you describe also violate consent. Same criminal acts: coercion by violence.

I do indeed believe in the things I have said, and I have indeed emigrated from the United States for many such reasons, principally among them my objection to being forced to fund neverending war.

Unfortunately the US Government still taxes me remotely.

Re: Everyone at NSF overseeing the Platforms for Wireless Experimentation is gone

#66

Why shouldn't the three monopoly cellular players in the US do this work themselves? Is there some reason the NSF is doing industry research for them? Are we /honestly/ afraid of "falling behind" in cellular technology if the government doesn't do basic research?

Ah yes the Verizon protocols were such a good contribution to standards.

Re: Everyone at NSF overseeing the Platforms for Wireless Experimentation is gone

#67
post #50

Consent matters. There is no worse tyranny than to force someone to pay for something they do not want to buy, simply because you think it would be good for them. I am vehemently pro-research and pro-education, but these tax-funded programs are not it. There must be some meaningful connection to the delivery of value, otherwise this stuff is just public-private wealth transfer. This seems obvious to me. Why should th…

Government subsidies should exist in general because fundamentally, humans are very bad at making long-term decisions. Institutions, taxes and transfers are how we make sure that society is oriented away from people's short-term preferences and towards long-term benefit to all.

Re: Everyone at NSF overseeing the Platforms for Wireless Experimentation is gone

#68
post #32

Notwithstanding the other awful aspects of all of this, there’s a certain vibe of, “people who don’t understand how a system works attempting to act like they know how the system works and are too cowardly to admit they are breaking everything.” This just reads like “Character Limit” except replace Twitter with the federal government.

To repeat popular quotes, there's a lot of walking up to fences gaily and then tearing them down, and a lot of "Government doesn't work, vote for us and we'll prove it"

Not much to say. If anyone is truly on the fence, please remember this and vote against it in 2026. Vote early, vote often. Vote local. I promise that killing trans people and defunding science is not going to make gas cheaper or anything.

Re: Everyone at NSF overseeing the Platforms for Wireless Experimentation is gone

#69
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The consequences are inflation. However, as long as there isn't inflation, it's just fine. And there are other sources of inflation, like energy crises, outside of spending based inflation.

Actually it goes the other way. Inflation erodes public debt [1][2]. It is, however, not necessarily good[3]. But at the end of the day, the causes of inflation are not cause and effect. You can print money to save an economy without causing inflation as we did during the 2008 financial crisis[4] or you can print money and cause hyperinflation as in the case of Argentina[5] or Zimbabwe. It’s more about how you do it…

QE isn't money printing, it's a duration swap.

Financial conditions tightened after 2008, despite QE. The money supply in the broader sense (global liquidity) tightened significantly because of banking regulations limiting balance sheet size, and because of collateral requirements massively tightening up. No more sending CMBS into repo to originate systemic leverage - it's treasuries or nothing. Repo within the US is about 5 trillion today, and probably about 20 trillion globally (with USD assets at the core of the chain), so the 2008 style collateral crisis was massively deflationary despite the various liquidity injections.

There is also a cost for the QE activity - the central bank takes on interest rate risk, essentially putting on a giant prop trade on short-term interest rates (and the results of such an unwind were seen post 2020, especially in areas like the housing price surge and the banking collapse).

QE is not money printing though. It's a misconception. In some ways it can tighten. It takes high quality collateral out of the system and exchanges it for bank reserves which are extremely limited. As the QE "money printing" got obscene, banks had massive amounts of excess reserves and further reserve accumulation from QE was not an injection of liquidity at all. It really had almost no effect. If you remember, trillions of dollars of reserves were parked back at the Fed in Reverse Repo, and when inflation forced interest rates up, the inflationary loop was accelerated by the interest on reserves - the risk never goes away, it transforms and slashes around. In the '10s though, there was arguably collateral scarcity from QE, and indeed it is undeniable that a giant bond bubble was built up with 0% (negative in Europe) long term debt. Meanwhile leverage was zero cost or even negative real cost, which showed up in massive asset inflation (bank reserves from QE mostly don't propagate to the real economy. Even bank lending post 2008 has little to do with reserves.)

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