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Everyone at NSF overseeing the Platforms for Wireless Experimentation is gone

discuss.systems

411–420 of 587 posts

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

#411

Sad 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.

More than 4 years. At least the way it seems right now. The democrats have no viable strategy or someone with a cult of personality that can unite all the factional groups.

They don't need a viable strategy if they regain control of Congress, gum up the works and use some of the checks and balances they are allotted. They can also order investigations so we can understand wtf is happening beyond leaks from throwaway acounts.

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

#412
post #59

Interesting approach to competing with China on wireless technology. I would have thought the US having a competitive edge over China in terms of research and development would be important to Republicans.

The federal govt can’t be the majority of technological innovation. If we’re lucky this vacuum will be filled by an even larger private sector innovation hub like Xerox park and bell labs.

Private sector research basically does not exist anymore, especially basic science research. A lot of truly revolutionary stuff starts in academia and spins into tech and biotech startups.

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

#413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wasn't Doge floated before the election, with Trump embracing the idea? Regardless, Trump has made a living as a (slimy) business man. No one should have heard his campaign speeches and taken them at face value. He didn't even have to be lying at the time, he could have simply changed his mind. The man seems to be driven only by two motivations: his family and making deals. The first one is often seen as admirable or…

Family is an interesting one, given five kids across three marriages, so the 'thought' is admirable and honourable, but he's unable to live up to it - which kind of educates us as to his ability to live up to his word, or his ability to deal with difficult situations calmly and rationally. And having Musk alongside him entirely destroys the family angle (media-prop children aside).

That really depends on your view what the "right" setup for a family is. Historically that's a husband and wife with their kids, but that isn't the only approach by far.

My point there was only that he does seem to actually care about and love his family, especially (maybe mostly?) his kids.

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

#416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Impoundment, or rather the idea that it is an issue, is a weird concept in general. Congress legislates executive directives that should be acted upon and provides a budget. They don't say "spend every dollar we give" and they rarely define metrics for success to know if the executive branch is meeting their goals. The fact that the Trump administration is able to so easily chest the game and roll back agencies is a…

No, this is quite wrong. It is well understood in American law that "spend every dollar we give" is exactly what the budget approved by Congress means. It is then the duty of the executive branch to do so in an effective manner. Laws shouldn't need to go into details on exactly how every last dollar is to be spent, they set the amount and the goals, and the executive exists to handle the details. The problem is that…

I'd be very curious where in our laws it is written that congressional budgets must be spent in their entirety every year. I could just be wrong here, happy to learn something new.

> Laws shouldn't need to go into details on exactly how every last dollar is to be spent.

Laws should go into every detail that matters to those writing it. If all they care about is that the money is spent and that there's an agency with a certain name and one line mandate, sure that's all they need to specify. If the legislators cafe about what is or is not done, or if they care about any specific metrics of success, those should be codified in the law to make the intention and expectation clear.

Birthright citizenship and immigration is a whole other can of worms. We can go there but it's pretty off topic here.

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

#417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I keep oscillating between are they just stupid or are they malicious and I'm starting to settle on the latter given the kinds of actions this administration is taking. Ironic that their voters thought they'd be mAkINg AMeRIcA gREaT aGAin when in fact they're going to cause us to lose our leadership role in many areas.

It's a good thing you are "starting to settle" 2025. I mean before 2020 they disbanded federal bodies for pandemic prep and look what happened.

But was that malice, or stupidity? Do you think they disbanded pandemic prep because they wanted people to die in a pandemic? It seems much more likely that they were too stupid to realize that being unprepared for a pandemic is way more costly than being prepared for one.

There's certainly a lot of malice: asking for names of FBI agents who worked on Jan 6 cases, and in putting Tulsi Gabbard over the CIA, refusing to enforce the laws against offering bribes to foreign officials, cutting agencies regulating Trump's and Musk's businesses. But cutting pandemic prep, firing people working on basic technology... that shows that they're both malicious and stupid.

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

#418
post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can migrate and renounce citizenship. Staying and benefiting from the spending is tacit consent no?

There is no such thing as tacit consent.

The fact that there’s a term for it which we all know suggests otherwise. It’s literally in textbooks, too, so you’d have a better argument if you explained your conceptual disagreement rather than trying to pretend the concept doesn’t exist.

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

#419

That area will then be handled by Huawai, which developed the 5G spec. The US no longer has much of a telecommunications technology industry.[1] [1] https://itif.org/publications/2021/11/08/mapping-internation...

The trade war US and China has had for years sure is going to feel different in a few years time when China is the source of increasing amount of innovation and forbids the export of that technology to US and its allies.

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

#420
post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a good thing you are "starting to settle" 2025. I mean before 2020 they disbanded federal bodies for pandemic prep and look what happened.

Still, "never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity".

in a practical sense, well executed stupidity is indistinguishable from malice.
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