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Everyone at NSF overseeing the Platforms for Wireless Experimentation is gone

discuss.systems

571–580 of 587 posts

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

#571
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.

Vote in 2026 (and hope your vote gets counted correctly).

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

#572
post #508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you really think that, for example, DOJ lawyers who defended Biden’s mass immigration policies are going to flip and use 100% of their talents to figure out how to do mass deportations now? Yes - every lawyer I’ve met considers it their professional obligation to work on their client’s behalf, even if it’s behaviour they personally disapprove of. This is especially true in government where the merit-based civil…

Lawyers are highly political, as we saw during the Trump administration. The ABA, for example, has been peddling completely absurd ideas, like that rhetoric Equal Rights Amendment has been ratified. Reversing Trump’s immigration policies is one of the first things Biden did: https://www.voanews.com/a/usa_biden-signs-executive-orders-r...

The ABA is part of the merit-based civil service now?

Your second link supports my point: there were changes between administrations but many of the people who worked for Trump also worked for Biden, and they followed the policies given by the current president. That’s the role you accept in that job, trying to interpret those policy directives under the various applicable laws, and everyone who applies to be a civil servant knows that this can mean big changes from administration to administration.

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

#573

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No and no. I'm referring to Gingrich's attitude of never crossing the aisle leading to Congressional gridlock. And how a functioning Congress could have easily passed laws nullifying most executive orders (especially the ones grabbing extra power). It was precisely the power vacuum of Congress that enabled the strong executive.

Anyone in congress can cross the aisle though, the hesitation to do so isn't unique. I do agree though that inept congresses has allowed the executive branch to act so powerfully. My only caveat is that congress first had to give those powers to the executive such that they could eventually be abused. Earlier congresses didn't have to choose to empower the executive branch with so much authority.

The ability wasn't unique, but how much it was used as part of an deliberate overall strategy was. Even recently, half of the introspection articles for why the democrats lost the election are asking how they can compromise with republicans more.

I don't really buy the argument the argument that earlier congresses should have foreseen their future inability to pass new legislation and done more to preemptively restrict how the executive could have abused general mandates. Passing highly specific fine grained laws would have been ineffective, both in the work required to foresee and draft all the specifics, and also having a few words changed here and there by lobbyists, completely undermining the intent. Congress could have delegated rule making to some sort of sub-legislative body rather than interpretation by the executive, but as I said that would have required them to foresee the gridlock that would leave them unable to clarify. Also, the possibility of having an outright-hostile-to-America-as-they-understand-it executive would have been pretty foreign to them.

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

#574
post #244

Modest proposal: hacker news is not the most left leaning of web forums, However, there seems to be a fairly consistent and relatively unanimous view that the actions of the current republican administration are deeply problematic. If you happen to be one of those people who thought that voting for the Republicans was in your best interest, yet you are shocked and horrified by what the Republicans are currently doing…

I did not vote GOP, at least not the president and most offices. I fully expected this outcome, and support it. Despite your accusations, I ask you to consider that it is you who needs to assess your sources of information as well as your political stances. I was previously an avid watcher of PBS NewsHour but stopped due to the constant, obvious propaganda in the 2016 election cycle. WETA and NPR should get defunded…

NPR doesn’t receive government funding.

One of the few falsifiable statements you made is absolutely, completely, objectively false.

Again, consider that perhaps your epistemology is broken.

You are free to explore their audited financials, as well as their IRS 990 form, which indicates all revenue, expenses as well as top 10 salaried employees.

https://www.npr.org/about-npr/178660742/public-radio-finance...

Regarding the source of the falsehood you believed to be true, there are only two potential explanations:

One, they intentionally deceived you, or two, they have no idea what they are talking about and should not be relied upon for truthful information.

That this particular false belief was so strong, and so core to your political stances, that you used it as the foundation for your argument as to why the current republican administration is acting in the best interests of the nation, I would hope that this would cause you to reconsider the rest of your stances as well as more carefully scrutinize your sources of information for veracity.

In short, please consider the possibility that your epistemology may be broken.

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

#575

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cost would be borne by the consumers of Telcos / wireless services rather than by all taxpayers. The Telcos would allocate funding / resources based on their financial position and their needs. I dunno, tbh maybe the government can do a better job at right-sizing the service and running it efficiently than the private sector could? Maybe! But it feels like most arguments along these lines would also apply to the…

What we are talking about is basic research, e.g. developing the physics and computer science behind networking. It’s common for governments to fund those types of investigations, and private companies often prefer it that way. It is risky in that the work is open-ended and “wins” are hard to predict. But when they are found, they benefit everyone. And then industry can swing into action commercializing it.

[deleted]

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

#576

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some suggestions: * Drop the electoral collage * Proportional and/or preferential voting * Term limits/retirement ages * An independent electoral organisation with real teeth to prevent gerrymandering (and verify the election) * Free and easy voter IDs (if ID are ever required) * All election days are public holidays, with requirements to allow workers on the day to vote * Compulsory voting (works in AU) * Minimum nu…

Agree with many of these. But changing to a parliamentary system would make the GOP even stronger: they won the House popular vote in 8 of the last 13 elections, including comfortably both in 2000 and 2016. But there is no such thing as an “independent electoral organization.” The Framers never credited the idea of an “independent” body that could be trusted to be somehow “above politics.” That’s why the constitution…

I suggest you look at other countries' electoral organisations and their processes, and how they are used to prevent gerrymandering.

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

#577

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Musk has power because he got on stage with Trump in Pennsylvania promising to fire all the federal workers. From Gallup [0]—top issues among all registered voters: The economy Democracy in the U.S. Terrorism and national security Types of Supreme Court justices candidates would pick Immigration Education Healthcare Gun policy Abortion ^^Taxes Crime Distribution of income and wealth in the U.S. ^^The federal budget…

If you look at polling, Trump voters prioritized democracy slightly more highly than Harris voters. The permanent government is a democracy issue.

Not even Trump or Musk is making this claim as the driving purpose of DOGE.

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

#578
post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We're looking at the US wilfully letting go of the possibility of remaining the most powerful nation in the world. It’s not hard to understand why people believe Trump Is a Russian asset

Yes - we don’t have proof that he is, but looking at things like the way he’s handling the Russian invasion of Ukraine makes it a fair question to ask whether it would be any different if he was. I’ve had a similar debate over the DOGE effort to install political commissars throughout the executive branch. There’s one alarm about how skipping a lot of safeguards would make it easier for an adversary to get inside (ei…

> we don’t have proof that he is

Sorry, I wrote that thinking that everyone know about his financiers. Trump’s business and personal loans aren’t from Americans banks… I’ll give you one try to guess which country they come from!

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

#579

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a tough comparison to make. The framers lived in a drastically different world with regards to the size and scope of the federal government. They design a federal government that was purposely hamstrung by the states. It was poorly funded, had no standing military, only briefly had a federal bank, and had very limited purview of authority that didn't fall down to the state level. If we want to remove bureaucra…

> That's a tough comparison to make. The framers lived in a drastically different world with regards to the size and scope of the federal government. That makes it more, not less, important for that expansive government to be highly responsive to elections.

Why is that? My statement was on the scale of centuries not 4 years

For what reasons should the government be expected to shift dramatically every election?

Personally my argument would be that the government's authority should be limited enough that it doesn't have to change very much every election.

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

#580

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where exactly is the proof that the ship of government funded science in the USA was sinking? If you don't mean just US funded science, then what evidence is there that the USA was sinking in general? When I look at the graph of debt increase, it was actually decreasing. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1366899/percent-change-n...

“The debt is increasing at a slower rate” isn’t really enough when interest rates are non zero. As the US has to keep rolling its debt to higher interest rates it’s going to continue to escape decline even with significant cuts to spending

OK, but if the debt was the actual issue of concern, then we certainly wouldn't be cutting taxes (income) at the same time, would we?
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